I Shall Not Want

His brother-in-law laughed. “Look at him. He’s gotten all wide-eyed.” He spread his arms. “It’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?”

  No, it pretty much reminds me of the cow barn I nearly got shot in two months ago. Where the best person I know had to kill a sociopathic monster to save my life.

  It reminds me of where I was when my wife died. He wanted to say it, so they’d have some idea of who he was and what was going on in his head. But he couldn’t. His mother would get scared and his sister would spend the rest of the evening being forcefully jolly. Trying to “make him feel better.” They didn’t want to know crap like that.

  Clare would understand.

  As always these days, the thought of her brought with it a wave of longing and loss and guilt and self-loathing. For once, he welcomed the acidic brew. It blew away the fog of fear and made this barn just another barn, just another place he had to be before he could climb into bed and achieve his fondest desire: total unconsciousness.

  His relations were looking at him expectantly. “Yeah,” he said. “Impressive.”

  Janet and Mike beamed at each other. “I knew you’d think so,” Janet said. “It’s ours.”

  “Well, ours and Mom’s.” Mike put his arm around his mother-in-law.

  Margy grinned. “Surprised ya!”

  “What?” Russ stared at them. “Yours?”

  “The Petersons wanted to sell out and retire,” Mike said. “It was the perfect opportunity to expand our operation.”

  “We’re doubling our herd to two hundred and forty head!” Janet said. “Plus an additional fifty acres with hayfields—”

  “We’ll be able to grow most of our own feed corn,” Mike broke in.

  “—and produce three million more pounds of milk a year!”

  Russ held up his hands. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I’m no farmer, but even I know doubling the size of your herd means a big jump in expenses. Not to be nosy, but how are you swinging this?”

  His brother-in-law grinned. “Well, we thought first we might raise a cash crop of wacky weed, but we figured that wouldn’t fly so well, with you being the chief of police and all. So we got a loan from the bank of Mom.” He put his arm around Margy’s shoulders and squeezed.

  “Not all Mom,” Janet added. “We took out a mortgage on our place.”

  “I’m a partner.” His mother beamed. “It’s an investment.”

  “An investment?” Russ gaped at the trio. “In a dairy farm? There’s been at least one farm closed in this county every year for the past twenty years!” He rounded on Janet. “You think that’s a safe investment for a seventy-five-year-old woman on a fixed income?”

  “Russell!” His mother sounded shocked.

  “Mom, I can’t believe you’d do something so irresponsible.”

  “It’s my money,” she said, at the same time Janet said, “Who are you to tell Mom what she can and can’t do?”

  “I’m looking out for her future. And if you thought a little bit more about her and less about yourself—”

  “Oh!” Janet stepped toward him, her eyes—the same eyes he had inherited from their father—blazing hot blue. “All those years you were gallivanting all over the world in the army, who was looking out for her then? I was! I was the one who stayed here in Millers Kill and spent every Sunday with her year in and year out when the only thing she’d see from you was a postcard!”

  “And that gives you the right to get her involved in this idiotic—ow!”

  Janet let out a similar screech of pain. Margy had reached up—way up, since they had also both inherited their dad’s height—and pinched hold of their earlobes.

  “Ow! Ow, Mom, stop it!”

  “Not until you two stop behaving like a pair of brats fighting over a lollipop.”

  Russ hadn’t heard that voice from her in years. He had no doubt she would tear his ear half off if he didn’t back down. He raised his hands in surrender. Janet did the same. Their mother let go. They both stumbled back a few steps, rubbing their respective injuries.

  “Russell, I’m sorry you don’t approve of my investing in Janet and Mike’s farm, but I’ve been handling my own money for nigh on thirty-five years, and I’m not about to start having somebody else make my decisions now.” Janet’s tense shoulders relaxed until Margy turned on her. “Janet, if you’re trying to tell me the reason you stayed in Millers Kill after you graduated was to keep me company—”

  “No! I mean . . . no.”

  “Good. Didn’t think so. One of you stayed and one of you went and it never made no difference in how I felt about you. So don’t start with that now.”

  Janet shook her head.

  “Russell?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She sighed. “I think you better go on home, after all. Give us all a chance to cool off. Mike’ll drive me back after supper.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jesus. Fifty years old, and she could still dress him down like he was a kid. He glanced at Mike, who had gotten very interested in one of the heifers during the argument, and then at Janet. She looked at him warily. He knew he ought to apologize, but he couldn’t. It was selfish and stupid to drag Mom into such a risky venture. “I guess I’ll see you later,” he said.

  Janet nodded. He beat a retreat, out the byre, through the barn, into the frosty evening. Opened his truck door and stood for a moment, trying to settle. Across the road, a car had pulled into the bungalow’s driveway. A woman got out.

  A woman in black clericals.

  Oh, no. Not this on top of everything else.

  But a second later, he realized the woman was too short and slight to be Clare. She turned, maybe attracted by the light spilling out of his pickup, and he could see she was the new deacon from St. Alban’s. What was her name, Groosvoort?

  “Chief Van Alstyne? Is that you? Is there some trouble?”

  “Uh, hi”—the name came—“Deacon de Groot. What? You mean because I’m here? No. No trouble.” He kept his voice neutral. “My sister and her husband—uh, farm around here.”

  “Well. How nice to see you again.” She pushed at her immaculate mass of ash-blond hair. “Excuse my appearance. I’ve been at the Glens Falls hospital since this afternoon.”

  She didn’t do hospital visits, did she? Wasn’t that Clare’s job? Had something happened to—“I hope everyone’s all right,” he managed to squeeze out.

  “Our sexton, Mr. Hadley, had an acute myocardial infarction.” She said it with the careful pronunciation of someone repeating what she was told. “Poor man had to have a quadruple bypass. I stayed until he was moved to the ICU. No visitors there, so I figured it was time for me to come home.”

  “Home?”

  Even in the half-light, he could see her charmed smile. She pointed to the bungalow with pride. “No more commuting down to Johnstown for me. I’ve just bought the Petersons’ house.”

  EASTERTIDE

  April and May

  I

  Kevin Flynn was checking himself out in the mirror. He tried combing his hair down flat, then dragging his fingers through it until it stood up in spiky chunks. Flat? Chunks?

  Behind him, Lyle MacAuley finished his business and zipped up. “For chrissakes, Kevin, it’s the morning briefing, not a beauty contest.” He went to the sink beside Kevin and turned on the water. “ ’Sides, either way you wear it, kid, it’s still red.”

  Eric McCrea emerged from one of the stalls, singing, “It’s Howdy Doody time!”

  “Like you ever saw Howdy Doody.” MacAuley shook off his hands and yanked a paper towel from the dispenser.

  “Just trying to provide a reference you could get, Dep. If I compared our young officer here to one of the Weasley twins, you wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “I knew a couple strippers called themselves the Beaver twins, but no, I never heard of any Weaselies.”

  “Harry Potter?” Kevin said. “Everybody’s heard of that.”

  MacAuley made a face. “Kids’ books.” br />
  “I like ’em.” McCrea twisted a faucet on. “Last one came out, I read it before my son did.”

  “Grown-ups reading kids’ books,” MacAuley said with disgust. “It’s no wonder we’re importin’ men from Mexico to do our work for us. We’re all getting too dumb to know one end of a hammer from the other.” He reached for the men’s room door handle, only to be squashed against the wall when Noble Entwhistle pushed it open. Kevin, doing a last check to make sure none of his breakfast was on his teeth, grinned.

  “Chief says, where’n the hell is everybody?” Noble reported.

  McCrea twisted the faucet off and dried his hands. “If you step back from the door a ways, Noble, I think Lyle might be able to get out.”

  Noble shoved his wall-like frame through the door. “Sorry, Dep.”

  Kevin and McCrea snickered as MacAuley and Entwhistle did the doorway dance. Finally the deputy chief squeezed past Noble and disappeared into the hallway, a string of profanities marking his passage.

  “What’s taking you guys so long?” Noble asked. “You know what they say. If you shake it more’n three times, you’re playing with it.”

  “Nah. We’re just giving Kevin some beauty tips. Much better now the fuzzy thing on your chin is gone, Kevin.”

  “Goatee,” Kevin muttered. It would have been a good one, too, if the chief hadn’t squinted at him in the dispatch room last week and barked, “No beards. Shave it off.”

  Noble rolled his eyes. “I got a tip for you. Don’t be late. If the chief don’t notice her,”—he wagged his head toward the hall, where the former public restroom had become the women’s room—”he sure ain’t gonna care how pretty you are.”

  In the mirror, Kevin could see himself blush. Everyone teased him about his freckles, but they didn’t bug him. The bright, spotty ones of his youth had almost faded away, leaving him with just a scattering across his nose and cheekbones. But God Almighty, he hated his fair skin! It was like a fricking mood ring.

  “We’ll be right there,” McCrea said. Noble grunted and lumbered into the hallway. When the door had shut behind him, McCrea said, “I have a tip for you, too, Kev.” His voice was light but serious. “It’s an oldie but a goodie. Don’t shit where you eat.”

  Kevin looked down at the sink. “Whaddaya mean?”

  McCrea sighed. “Kev, you didn’t give a rip what you looked like until last week, when Hadley Knox started showing up for the briefings. I admit, she’s a total babe. But you do not want to be fishing in these waters. I’d think everything that’s happened between the chief and MacAuley would have taught you that much.”

  “That’s different,” Kevin said. “MacAuley”—he dropped his voice involuntarily—”nailed the chief’s wife. I’d never put the moves on a married woman.”

  “It’s not about married or not married. It’s about sticking it to someone you’re going to have to see at work every day.”

  “I’m not—”

  McCrea held up his hands. “I don’t want to get into it with you. Just think about what I’m saying, okay?”

  The door thumped open. “Are you two waiting for an engraved invitation?” MacAuley said.

  They followed the deputy chief out, Kevin, as always, bringing up the rear. He kept his eyes fixed on MacAuley’s grizzled head until he had taken his usual seat in the squad room, an irregularly shaped space that had been knocked together out of several small offices about twenty years before Kevin was born.

  “Nice of you gentlemen to join us.” The chief sat on the scarred wooden worktable, his booted feet braced on two chairs.

  “Sorry,” McCrea said. If it had been, say, last November, he would have cracked a joke about them running a salon, or a book club, or something. But that was before the chief’s wife kicked him out. Before she died. Before the department imploded in a smoking mess of old wrongs and betrayal.

  None of them joked around within the chief’s earshot now.

  Kevin flopped his notebook open, and as the chief launched into the bulletins and BOLOs, he snuck a look at Hadley Knox. Eric McCrea had called her a babe, but that didn’t do her justice. Kevin had never seen anyone like her, with her perfect skin and her huge brown eyes and her round, pouty lips. Even in a tan poly uniform with no makeup on and her dark hair cut like a boy’s, she was better-looking than 99.9 percent of the other women in Millers Kill. McCrea had another thing wrong, too. Kevin knew he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell with a woman like that. If he had swapped more than six words with her since she started patrolling last week, he’da been surprised. He just wanted . . . to admire her. And to think that when she happened to look at him, she wouldn’t think he was a complete geek.

  “. . . with Kevin,” the chief was saying.

  He jerked to attention.

  “You think that’s a good idea?” MacAuley said. “I mean, isn’t that like the blind leading the blind?”

  “It’s a routine traffic patrol,” the chief said. “And I want Knox to get as much time behind the wheel as she can. Eric can’t take her, he’s working the Christie break-in.”

  “Paul?” MacAuley asked.

  The chief gave him a look.

  “Ah,” the deputy said. Kevin figured Paul Urquhart had made yet another dirty joke about the new recruit. Or did something inappropriate. Whatever it was, the dep had gotten it.

  Everything that’s happened between the chief and MacAuley. It was a waste and a shame, as his dad would have said: two old guys who worked so well together they could have a whole conversation with a word and a look. Now, those were the only conversations they had.

  “If Kevin runs into anything heavy while he’s out with Officer Knox, he’ll call it in. Right?”

  In like Flynn. “Yessir.” Kevin glanced toward her again, this time smiling reassuringly. Her face, looking back at him, was blank. What did that mean? Was she nervous about riding with him? Pissed off because she wasn’t going with one of the more experienced guys?

  “Eric, catch us up on the Christie B and E.” They were up to the current investigations. Kevin returned his attention to his notebook.

  McCrea flopped open the case folder and began to recite. “Saturday, April six, at five thirty P.M., Bruce Christie reported returning home to find his trailer in the Meadow-brook Estates trailer park had been broken into. The interior had been trashed, as near as Noble and I could tell”—there was some snickering on this—“but he said nothing was missing. The manager reports seeing a vehicle speeding out of the park entrance at approximately five thirty P.M. No description, other than it was ‘big and expensive.’” He glanced up from his notes. “That might mean any pickup or SUV with more steel than rust. Christie suggested it might be someone his two brothers owe money to and gave us a list of names.” He pulled a short stack of papers from the file and tossed them to Kevin, who took one and passed it on. “The manager suggested it might have been the two brothers.” McCrea looked up. “I tend to discount that. Whatever else you can say about the Christies, they hang tight together.”

  “If that’s what you wanna call it,” MacAuley said, under his breath.

  “What do you think they were looking for?” the chief asked McCrea.

  He shrugged. “Money? Pot? Neil Christie was up for distributing a few years back. Got it knocked down to possession.”

  “Sheep?” someone said. There was a snort of laughter, stifled.

  “Why did he report it?” The question was out of Kevin’s mouth before he remembered he was trying to appear cool and knowledgeable in front of their new officer. “If the intruders were looking for something illegal, I mean.” God, he sounded lame.

  The chief swiveled toward him. “You tell me.”

  “Um . . . he’s genuinely clean?”

  MacAuley snorted, but the chief gestured for him to go on. Kevin thought furiously. “He was lying about nothing being missing. He’s counting on us to lead him to the guys who took whatever it was.”

  The chief tapped his nose. ?
??Something to consider, isn’t it?” He looked at McCrea. “And, of course, it could be someone with a grudge, looking to beat the crap out of Bruce Christie and settling for wrecking his place. Between the three of ’em, the Christie brothers have a record as thick as the Cossayuharie Directory. Assault, possession—” He glanced at MacAuley. “Didn’t one of them do time for resisting?”

  “Donald. Got five in Plattsburgh, out in three. Tried to run over the state trooper who was taking him in for D and D.”

  “So, be careful.” The chief pointed at McCrea. “Anything strikes you funny, ease off and call for backup.”

  “Will do, Chief.”

  The chief pushed the chairs away and slid off the table. “That’s all.” He gathered up his folders and stalked out of the squad room. Through the doorway, Kevin could hear Harlene telling him about his calls.

  “Christies. They put the dirt in dirt poor.” MacAuley shook his head. He squinted up at McCrea from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “I’ve been to Bruce Christie’s place. How did you tell where the deliberate trashing ended and the usual trashing began?”

  McCrea snorted. “I wouldn’t have wanted to stay there any longer than absolutely necessary, I’ll tell you.” He jerked a thumb toward Entwhistle. “Noble here was freaked out by the great big googly-eyed Jesus tapestry he had tacked to the wall.”

  “It was creepy,” Noble agreed. “Its eyes followed you around. Like in that Stephen King book.”

  “Carrie,” Kevin supplied.

  “Thank you, Kevin.” McCrea smiled at him. Shit. There he was, doing it again. He had to stop trying to be so damn helpful all the time.

  “You know how you know if a Christie girl is still a virgin?” MacAuley grinned. “She can run faster than her brothers.”

  McCrea looked at him meaningfully and nudged his head toward Hadley Knox.

  “Uh—” The deputy chief was seized with a convenient coughing fit.

  Hadley rose from her seat. Looked at MacAuley. Looked at McCrea. “The way I heard it, it’s if she can run faster than the sheep.” She tucked her folder beneath her arm. “You coming, Flynn?”