To Darkness and to Death

  She crossed the white room. The doors hissed open as she approached and hissed shut behind her. She turned right down the hallway, where the floor station gleamed ahead of her like the light at the end of a darkened tunnel.

  “Stacy?” The charge nurse glanced up, startled. “Can you take recovery for five minutes? The patient’s still resting. You don’t need to do anything.”

  Stacy frowned. “It’s not your break time.”

  “Please? I need to call home. You know how it is.”

  Stacy groaned exaggeratedly, getting up from her chair. “You gals with young kids. I swear, it really does take a village to raise a child. A village of coworkers.”

  “Thanks.” She swung behind the counter and had her hand on the phone when Stacy called to her from halfway down the hall.

  “Rachel? You owe me one.”

  “I do.” Rachel Durkee forced a smile before picking up the receiver. She had to call her sister. Fast.

  3:00 P.M.

  Shaun pulled into his garage and waited until the door shut behind him and the fluorescent lights popped on before getting out of the car. He stared in dismay at the caramel-colored leather seat, which now looked as if a big baby had wet all over it. God only knew if it was salvageable or not.

  Slamming the door shut, he dug out his garage door key and let himself into the breezeway. He eased off his shoes, crusted with mud and leaf rot, and went on stocking feet through the kitchen and up the stairs. Jeremy was certainly at work, and the cleaning woman didn’t come on Saturday, but he was worried Courtney might be home already from her church thing.

  He slipped into the guest bathroom and locked the door, stripped off his bloody shirt and trousers, and tossed them into the bathtub. His arm was a mess—a deep row of bite marks clotted with drying blood, surrounded by plum and indigo bruises. The skin around the bite already looked inflamed. He remembered, from the days when Jeremy was in preschool and biting was part of his peers’ social coin, that the human mouth was worse than any animal’s for germs and infections. Could you get tetanus from a human bite? It didn’t matter, he supposed—he wasn’t going to the doctor’s for any treatment, that was for damn sure. He reached for the medicine cabinet and froze as his face came into view.

  He was a mess. His nose was puffy, the flesh beneath his eyes purpling. His skin had split over his chin, and a goose egg was hatching on his forehead. He looked like someone who had been in a knock-down, drag-out fight. Courtney was going to freak.

  Shaun flipped the door open and grabbed the hydrogen peroxide. He unscrewed the top and, holding his arm over the bathtub, poured half the contents onto his wound.

  He bit down on his yell. Holy God, did that sting. The peroxide bubbled furiously in the bite marks. He turned on the tap, and when the antiseptic had done its job, he used a washcloth to sluice away the dried blood. He let the tub keep filling, soaking his clothes, while he bandaged the bite. He scrubbed off his face and dabbed antibiotic cream on his cut. Short of breaking into Courtney’s cosmetics, there wasn’t anything he could do for his black eyes.

  He leaned in closer to the mirror. Behind the bruising, his eyes looked the same as they always had, pale blue and preoccupied. He marveled that he didn’t look any different. That his eyes didn’t show he had killed a man.

  He blinked. Of course, technically, he hadn’t killed van der Hoeven. He had simply . . . let him fall. They had been struggling, and perhaps he had pushed him harder than necessary. But still, he knew now. What it felt like.

  He remembered a conversation with Russ Van Alstyne. He had been in college, and Russ had been home on leave. It was before they had given up on their awkward attempts at rejoining the severed ends of their friendship. What does it feel like? he had asked. Killing someone?

  It doesn’t feel like anything, Russ said.

  C’mon. You have to feel something.

  Russ had taken a long pull on his bottle of Jack Daniel’s. When you’re doing it, he said, you feel hot. And fast. Like doing speed in a sweatbox.

  And after?

  Russ’s eyes looked a long, long way off, into a place Shaun couldn’t go. After, he said. After, you feel cold.

  Shaun looked into his own fifty-year-old eyes and felt something Russ had left out. Or maybe, being a nineteen-year-old grunt, he hadn’t known the feeling for what it was. Exultation. And power. Let Terry McKellan sit behind a desk and say yes or no. Let the Reid-Gruyn board cluster around a table voting up and down. He had exercised real power, the ultimate power. He was taking his destiny into his own hands.

  Don’t get cocky, he thought. Events were still too fluid, too slippery. Squeeze too tightly or hold too loosely and he could be right back where he had been, waiting for the ax to fall on Reid-Gruyn. Except this time he’d be waiting inside a jail cell. But if he were smart, and daring and, most important, willing to use the power he had taken into his hands . . . he looked down at them. Flexed his fingers. Let himself think, for the first time since he had hauled Millie van der Hoeven out of that tower, that maybe there could be another accident.

  3:05 P.M.

  Lisa Schoof held the telephone tightly, as if loosing her hold, even for a moment, would let the malevolent black thing fly apart, its shrapnel embedding in her flesh, her blood seeping around the plastic wounds, her life dripping away from a hundred openings that could have no healing.

  “Say something,” her sister hissed over the line. “For God’s sake.”

  The thing that came to mind, I wish you had never called me, I wish I didn’t know, I wish it were still ten minutes ago, was useless. Lisa didn’t bother to ask for reassurance—Are you sure? Couldn’t there be a mistake?—because Rachel, smart, precise Rachel, didn’t make mistakes like this.

  She cleared her throat. “How long?” she asked.

  “How long what?”

  “Until it’s out.”

  Rachel clicked her teeth. A habit she had had since girlhood. “I can justify not calling the doctor in to see her for another half hour or so. She’s still sleepy and just had her medication. After that . . .”

  She didn’t have to finish. Lisa could guess. The patient tells the doctor. The doctor tells the police. The police arrest her husband. It reminded her of the circle game they played as kids. The cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone . . .

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I’m doing this for you, not for him,” Rachel went on. “If anyone finds out, it’ll mean my job. Not to mention what it’ll do to my marriage. Be smart. Take care of yourself for a change.”

  “Thank you,” Lisa repeated.

  “I love you,” her sister said.

  “I love you, too.”

  Rachel’s voice was replaced by a toneless buzz. Carefully, carefully, Lisa replaced the receiver in the cradle. She caught a glimpse of her blurred reflection in the microwave door. I’m happy, she thought. She pinched her cheeks for color, ruffled her hair jauntily. It’s just another Saturday afternoon. She strolled back into the living room.

  Kevin Flynn, who had been examining the photos hanging on the wall, turned. “Everything okay?” he asked brightly.

  “Yep.” She settled herself in the middle of the sofa, tucking one leg under her. She wasn’t up to controlling her face, voice, hands, and legs all at the same time. She grabbed a pillow, a souvenir from their honeymoon in Aruba with scenes from the island stitched on the cover. She wrapped her arms around it, one hand on a conch shell, one on a palm tree. “Just my friend Denise. Denise Hammond, you remember her.”

  It helped if she thought of him as little Kevin Flynn, who had been a painfully thin freshman during her senior year at Millers Kill High. Skinny Flynnie, that had been his nickname. She did her best to ignore his uniform, the belt strapped around his waist like Batman’s utility belt, for chrissakes, his gun.

  She wouldn’t think about his gun.

  Kevin lowered himself into the only other seat in the room, the wooden rocking chair. “Yeah, I remember her.
Whatever happened to her?”

  “She moved to Glens Falls. Got a job at the Post-Star.” She put on a teasing voice, one part of her marveling that she sounded so natural. “You should look her up. She’s still single, and she says a good man is hard to find.”

  Kevin blushed. “She’s older than me.”

  “That only matters in high school. Once you’re both out, who cares?”

  He shook his head. Evidently she wasn’t the only one who remembered Skinny Flynnie.

  What would I be saying if I didn’t know what I know now? What would she have done if the phone hadn’t rung a minute after Kevin knocked on her door, asking to come in? She’d ask him why he was here. Innocent people did that.

  “You didn’t come all the way out here for dating advice,” she said, still using that where did it come from? teasing tone. “What brings you to my door?”

  “Uh, is Randy at home?”

  She concentrated on keeping her voice even, her hands relaxed. “No, he’s been gone all day. Running errands. You know. Typical Saturday stuff.”

  “He didn’t bring you home? From your job at Haudenosaunee?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. See, the chief bumped into him while he was on his way up there—Randy, I mean, not the chief. I wanted to ask him if he had seen anything while he was up there. And you, too, of course, I want to ask you.”

  She was lost. Did Kevin have a coldheartedly clever way of befuddling suspects until they spilled everything? What the hell did anything up at Haudenosaunee have to do with Randy and . . . and . . . Her mind slid over the rest of that sentence. “I don’t understand,” she said honestly.

  He sighed. “Sorry. I’m still getting the hang of questioning people.” He drew himself up straight and tilted forward, stopping the gentle rocking he had slipped into. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your employer, Eugene van der Hoeven, is dead.”

  What he said was so far from what she had expected, it took her several minutes to decipher his meaning.

  “Lisa? Are you okay?”

  She stared at him. “Mr. van der Hoeven’s dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How? What happened to him?” She hoped her voice wasn’t as light and bubbly as she felt. Poor Mr. van der Hoeven. She tried not to smile. Poor, poor Mr. van der Hoeven.

  “Uh, I don’t think I can give you any details yet. We do know he was killed sometime between twelve-thirty and two o’clock. I was hoping you could give me some details.”

  “I don’t know what I can tell you. He was alive and well when I left at noon.”

  “Did you drive yourself home? Is that why Randy didn’t pick you up after all?”

  Careful. “No, I got a ride with a woman named Clare Fergusson. I knew Randy was going to be running around town, so I told him I’d find my own way home. He must have forgotten.”

  “Reverend Fergusson?” Kevin glanced up from the small wire-bound notebook where he was writing down her words. “Do you think she might have gone back up to Haudenosaunee after she dropped you home?”

  “I don’t think so. She was done with the search team for the day.”

  “Do you know if Eugene van der Hoeven had any enemies? Had he fought with anyone?”

  She made a face. “I cleaned up after him for four years, but I don’t know much about the man. He was neat, polite, and always gave me a good Christmas bonus. He never had anybody to stay at Haudenosaunee except family—his sisters and his dad, while he was alive.” She hesitated. “I was worried that Millie van der Hoeven was getting into something not so good.”

  Kevin looked up from his notebook.

  “But your chief probably knows about it. I told it to Ms. Fergusson this morning, and she said she was friends with the chief and she would tell him.” She untwisted her leg and tucked the other one up. “Starting from when Millie got here at the end of the summer, I’ve been finding these pamphlets and letters from the Planetary Liberation Army.”

  Kevin looked impressed.

  “You’ve heard of them? Yeah, they’re a nasty bunch. Anyhow, it worried me. Millie is one hardcore earth mama. And it always struck me as strange, the way she just up and left her own home in Montana to move in with her brother.”

  “Did she ever mention leaving?”

  “Nope. Isn’t that weird? Makes me wonder if she maybe had to leave her other home.”

  “Huh.” He riffled through his notes. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  The innocent question punched her in her gut. She shook her head.

  “Okay.” He flapped the notebook closed. “It looks like Randy was one of the last people up there before Mr. van der Hoeven was killed, so we’ll want to talk with him as soon as we can. Let him know when he gets home, okay?”

  She nodded. “Let me walk you out,” she said, unfolding herself from the couch, pleased to find her legs didn’t wobble at all. At the front door, she blocked his way with her arm on the doorknob, smiling up at him. He blushed again. “Give some thought to what I said about Denise, hmm?”

  He mumbled something, and she opened the door.

  Just in time to hear tires crunching down the drive. She and Kevin both looked out as her husband’s pickup rolled to a stop next to where Officer Flynn’s squad car was parked.

  Kevin turned to her.

  Skinny Flynnie, she reminded herself. Skinny Flynnie.

  “Hey,” he said happily. “Randy’s home.”

  3:10 P.M.

  ”We are not the first to be, Banished by our fears from Thee; Give us courage, let us hear, Heaven’s trumpets ringing clear.”

  “No! No! Tenors—you’re supposed to be trumpets! Not kazoos!”

  Clare, unfolding a chair, paused. “They sounded pretty good to me,” she said to Terry McKellan.

  He opened another chair and drew it up to one of the round tables. “Me, too. But then again, I have lousy taste in music.”

  “Nonsense,” Courtney Reid said, snapping a tablecloth between them. Settling in generous folds, it transformed the battle-scarred folding table into white linen elegance. “I’m sure you have very nice taste in music. Who’s your favorite group?”

  “Herman’s Hermits.”

  Clare and Courtney looked at each other. “You’re right,” Clare said. “You do have terrible taste in music.” She wrenched open a final chair and slid it beneath the snowy waves. All around her, tables and chairs waited for linen and china and silver to work their magic. “Courtney,” she said, eyeing the large stack of tablecloths and napkins heaped on a still-bare table, “do you want me to help with those?”

  She could see Courtney catalog the mud splatters and stains on her clothing. She resisted the urge to curl up her hands. Lord knows what her nails looked like right now.

  “No-o-o,” Courtney said, giving a credible imitation of someone who was sorely tempted to say yes. “I think I can handle it. And Sabrina’s finishing up in the kitchen. She can help me. I’m sure you want to . . .” She gestured with her hand, a neutral movement that might have indicated “read a book on theology” or “scrub yourself with Lysol.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I really need to get things ready for tonight.”

  “What’s tonight?” Terry asked.

  “A friend from New York City’s arriving this afternoon. We’re going to the dinner dance at the new resort tonight.”

  Courtney brightened. “Are you really? Shaun and I are going too! I got a fabulous dress on a shopping trip to Manhattan.” She dropped her voice, despite the fact that only Clare and Terry were there to listen. “We’re going to be at the VIP table, so I wanted to make a good impression.”

  Clare smiled wanly. She would be wearing a dress she had snapped up on sale in Germany during a three-day layover waiting for her unit’s helicopters to be loaded into a C-141 and flown to Saudi Arabia. It had been cutting-edge European designer chic—in 1991.

  “One of the sponsors of the evening, GWP, is ferociously courting Reid-Gruyn.” At Clare’s bla
nk look, she explained, “Shaun’s business. Pulp and paper. They want it bad.” Courtney glowed at the prospect. “I can’t wait. With the buyout, Shaun won’t ever have to work again. We can spend our time traveling and having fun—” She caught sight of Terry McKellan’s astonished expression. “Oh, and work for the causes we hold dear, of course. Like St. Alban’s.”

  “That sounds wonderful.” Clare tried to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. Coming to rest after a half hour of nonstop activity brought the hunger and the icky-sticky feeling roaring back. She could swear she was hallucinating a hamburger floating in front of Courtney’s face.

  “You look done in,” Terry said. “Let me walk you to the rectory.”

  She straightened. “I’m fine.” The last thing she wanted was for one of the old-guard vestry members to think she didn’t have the stamina to set up a few folding chairs.

  “Humor me,” he said. “I want to catch you up on some vestry issues.”

  Surprised, Clare nodded. “I guess I’ll see you tonight,” she said to Courtney.

  “Well . . . during the dancing. We’ll be up at the VIP table during the dinner, remember.”

  “Mmm.” This smile was even less convincing than the last. Terry McKellan tucked her hand under his arm and shambled out the back door. “What’s all this about vestry issues?” she asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to get you alone without having to explain everything to Courtney Reid.” He angled across the withered grass toward the sidewalk. “This may not fall under the rubric of ‘need to know,’ but I’m aware you like to keep your finger on the congregation’s pulse.” His big, round face fell into serious lines. Clare had long ago pegged Terry as “the jovial one” in her vestry lineup, and it was disconcerting to see him so grave.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s what Courtney Reid was saying. About her husband selling out and retiring.”

  They reached the sidewalk. “Yes,” Clare said, giving him permission to continue.