Out Of The Deep I Cry (16 page)

As Clare knew firsthand, having narrowly escaped hypothermia and frostbite last winter. He could see the unpleasant memories flicker behind her eyes, erasing, at least for the moment, her doubts about Russ’s motives in bringing Debba along. He felt a twinge of guilt, but absolved himself with the thought that it might, after all, be true.

Debba uncurled from her protective position and stood up.

“Do you want me to make you a thermos of hot coffee?” Clare asked her. “To take in your car?”

“We’ll take my truck,” Russ said. Both women looked at him. This time, it was Debba who frowned.

“It’ll be a lot simpler for me to go home from the reservoir,” she said. “Unless you don’t think I’ll be going home?” Her voice held a challenge.

He tucked his thumbs into his belt. “Your tire tracks are already part of the scene. No need to add confusion by having another set around.”

Clare frowned, too. No wonder. That sounded lame, even to him.

“I don’t feel comfortable with that,” Debba said.

“I’m sorry about that. But I need your car to stay here, away from the scene.” He kept his tone even, glossing over the fact that he had almost said “the crime scene.”

Debba looked at Clare. “I’ll drive you,” Clare said.

“Wait a minute-” Russ began.

“Are you sure?”

“It’s no problem.”

“
I
have a problem with-”

“Okay, I’ll hit the bathroom and then we can go.” Debba vanished upstairs.

“You can’t-,” he tried again.

“I don’t know what you’re up to,” Clare said, rounding on him, “but I don’t entirely trust you.”

“This is police business, Clare-”

“This is human business, Russ,” she said, mimicking his tone. Her voice softened. A little. “I know you’ll stay meticulously within the law. But you wouldn’t see anything wrong with manipulating that woman into getting whatever you need out of her.”

“A life may be at stake.”

She jerked her chin up. “Tell me you think Dr. Rouse is still alive. And make me believe it.”

He was silent.

“If he is alive, another pair of eyes won’t hurt. And if he’s dead, and you’re planning on pinning it on Debba, well, then she’ll need a friend.”

He felt his hands clenching and forced them to relax. “God save me from do-gooders.”

She grinned. “Not a chance. God has plans for you.”

He shook his head. “Keep out of the way. Do not talk to anyone at the scene. And for God’s sake, put something warm on.”

Well, she thought, two out of three’s not bad. She might not have been prepared for her first North Country winter, but she was a fast learner, and thanks to last spring’s sales and this year’s Christmas presents, she was as well protected from the cold as any of the men clumped around the hood of the volunteer fire chief’s Jeep Cherokee.

The chief, who had introduced himself as “Huggins-John Huggins,” was scoping out her qualifications. “You ever done anything like this before?” He was a short, well-braced two-by-four of a man, wearing a hat with flaps that fell to his chin and a suspicious expression. He reminded her of a crew chief she had met on her first posting, a lifer who had called her “girly.” One of the guys handing out equipment from the Jeep looked over at her, and she felt uncomfortably like the shaky second lieutenant she had been back then.

“I was a helicopter pilot in the army for nine years,” she said. “I’ve been trained in search and rescue.” Admittedly, that was searching and rescuing from the air. Who would waste a pilot by having her walk grids on the ground? But there wasn’t any air support for this operation, and if she couldn’t persuade Huggins-John Huggins to let her join in the search party, she’d be stuck sitting in her car, going crazy.

She had driven to this spot in the middle of County Road nowhere, parked obediently where Officer Durkee directed her, and sat patiently in her Shelby while Russ escorted Debba past the halogen-light poles shoved upright in the snowbanks on the opposite side of the road and the two of them disappeared into the shadows leading toward the reservoir.

But when the cars and pickups and SUVs started to arrive, stringing along the edge of the narrow roadside and disgorging members of the volunteer fire department, it suddenly struck her: Maybe Allan Rouse really was alive, injured, disoriented, slowly freezing to death in the snowy woods. And here she was, sitting on her tail in her comfy car while other people prepared to turn out and look for him. It wasn’t so much that she decided to volunteer, but that she was out of the car, pulling on her hat, before she decided not to.

“You. Were in the army.” Huggins squinted at her. He unsnapped a kangaroo pouch on his anorak and pulled out a topographical map, similar to the ones his men were spreading out over the hood of his truck. He folded it open and handed it to her. “Can you locate us on this map?”

The moon was near full, spotlighting down on them all when it wasn’t covered by fast-skimming stratocumulus clouds promising more snow. Of course, the search and rescue boys all had flashlights trained on their maps. She glanced over at them, then squatted down, her back to the warm artificial lights, and let her eyes adjust to the moon’s hard brightness. She scanned the map, flipped it over, unfolded it, and located the road and the reservoir. “Here,” she said, rising and holding the map out to Huggins.

“Okay,” he said, slowly. “Can you show me the inside and outside search boundaries?”

This guy wasn’t as much of an amateur as she had taken him for. “What’s the average walking speed in snow?” she asked. At his expression, she said, “I trained for warm-weather operations. Desert Storm. The Philippines.”

“Say two miles an hour.”

“Do you have a grease pencil?”

Huggins fished inside his big pocket and handed her one. She knelt in the crushed and dirty snow and spared a moment to thank her brother Brian, who had sent her the ripstop snow pants she wore. Then she did the math in her head, read the contour lines of the map, and drew in two circles, smoothly rounded over the reservoir, jagged where they followed the lines of the hills around them.

She got to her feet and handed the map to Huggins. He studied it. He looked at her. “Why’d you include the reservoir?” he said.

“It’s not fifty feet from the road right here. Dr. Rouse could have walked out, thinking he was getting clear of the trees, and-” Huggins was shaking his head. “No?”

“Well, yeah, he may have wandered out there, if he was disoriented. But we’re not going out there.”

“Isn’t it still frozen over? I heard the ice doesn’t leave most of these lakes until mid-April.” Clare surreptitiously flexed her toes inside her boots to help ward off the chill.
Next time, wool socks.

“Parts of it may still be a few feet thick,” Huggins said. “But the temperature’s gone above freezing more’n once over the past week. And we’ve had rain. There’ll be rotten spots all over the surface. Too much risk of…” He made an expressive gesture indicating someone falling through ice.

“Oh.”

“Tell you what. You say you came out with Chief Van Alstyne?”

“I drove the woman who was out here with Dr. Rouse.” Huggins’s eyebrows went up, and she realized how that sounded. “I mean, she was the last person to have seen him. They were, um, visiting the cemetery.”

“Don’t worry,” Huggins said, “I’ve been doing this job for twenty-five years now and I’ve seen it all. Doesn’t matter to me what folks do. I only come in if they get lost after doing it.” He spread the map open again. “I’ll give you this section, along the reservoir edge. It’ll be easy viewing and less chance of you stepping into a woodchuck hole and breaking your leg. Seeing as how you trained for warm-weather operations. Hey, Duane!”

A mustachioed man in a Day-Glo orange parka detached himself from the rest of the team. “Duane, this is Clare Fergusson. She’s been trained for search and rescue by the
army
.”

She forcibly squashed her irritation and reminded herself that Huggins was doing her a favor by letting her help. Calling him a Neanderthal wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Besides, he probably thought it meant a brand of German beer.

Duane nodded at her, then looked at her more closely, interested. “Are you
Reverend
Clare Fergusson? The priest?”

“She’s a priest?” The disbelief in Huggins’s voice would have been priceless if she hadn’t been worried he was going to turn her down for sure now. “I been a Catholic my whole life. There aren’t any women priests.”

“Ah, I guess you haven’t been to mass lately, have you?” She let the shot hit home as she turned to Duane. “Have we met?”

“No, no, but I work part-time as a patrol officer. In Millers Kill. I’ve heard a lot about you at the station house.”

Huggins was now looking uncertainly at her, as if wondering what other surprises were forthcoming. “You don’t have a record, do you?” He looked up at Duane. “Has she been in trouble?”

“She hasn’t been arrested or anything.” Clare thought that answer artfully sidestepped the question. “She’s a good friend of Chief Van Alstyne.”

Oh, crud. She could see on Huggins’s face the same expression he had shown when she stumbled over her description of Dr. Rouse and Debba. “Ah,” he said. “You know Russ from his army days?” Evidently he had just decided to ignore the whole priest thing. Too much to try to fit in.

“Nope,” she said. She was saved from further explanation by a pair of headlights coming toward them. Huggins stepped into the road and waved his light back and forth. The vehicle, a Chevy Suburban with skis racked on top, slowed to a halt. The driver unrolled the window. “What’s up?” he said. Clare could see a woman and a couple of teens in the car.

“A man’s gone missing along this stretch,” Huggins said. “Mid-sixties, about my height, gray hair. You haven’t seen anyone, have you?”

The driver shook his head. “Sorry. We’re heading home from Hidden Valley.” He pointed toward the roof. “Last ski trip of the season.”

“Where’s home for you folks?”

“New York City.”

“Okay, drive safe.”

“Thanks.” The Suburban’s window scrolled up and the car resumed its trip down the mountain.

“Flatlanders,” Huggins said. “That’s the third group so far tonight. Nine times out of ten, when we’re called for search and rescue, it’s one of them. I don’t go down to the city and get lost and make them come looking for me. I don’t see why they can’t return the favor.” He looked at Clare. “You’re from away, too, aren’t you?”

Hardball Wright had been a big believer in retreating to a ground of your own choosing. She decided now was the time, before she got lumped in with all the other incompetent flatlanders. “Do you want me to take that waterfront stretch now, or do I need to wait until you’ve organized the rest of the team?” She gestured toward the Jeep, where the map meeting had evidently ended.

He followed her hand, saw the men waiting for him to be done with her. “The waterfront. Yeah.” He marked off a section rounding the edge of the reservoir and handed her the map. “Duane, give her a walkie-talkie and a flashlight.” Duane handed over the goods. She shoved the walkie-talkie in her parka pocket and switched on the flashlight, testing it. “Walk slowly,” Huggins went on, thankfully sounding less interested in her relationship with the police chief and more like a man delivering a well-rehearsed spiel. “Better to cover less ground thoroughly than more ground and miss something. You see anything, give a squawk. You get into trouble, give a squawk. We’re on-what channel are we on, Duane?”

“Two.”

“We’re on channel two. Do not step onto any surface if you don’t know where it bottoms out. In fact, Duane, grab her one of the poles.” Duane ambled over to the Jeep and pulled something that resembled a long ski pole out of the back. He returned and handed it to her. “Use that to test for objects beneath the snow,” Huggins went on. “Return to the base, that’s here at the truck, after you’ve finished your section. And don’t take any risks. We’re here to rescue someone else, not you. Got it?”

“Got it.”

He waved her off, and she broke for the other side of the road before he could think of one of the many good reasons why she should be back in her car instead of joining in the search. She glanced back and saw Huggins pulling Duane in by the shoulder, as if to get the confidential on her “friendship” with the police chief. Double crud.

She paused at the edge of the road. If she plunged straight ahead toward the reservoir, she was likely to run into Debba and Russ, who wouldn’t pass on her search and rescue experience no matter how many topo maps she plotted. Instead, she headed down the road, walking around the Millers Kill cruisers and the state crime scene investigation van toward where a loudly huffing tow truck was maneuvering into place to ratchet Dr. Rouse’s Buick out of the woods. As she got closer, she could hear the clank of heavy chains as the tow truck operator went to work hitching up the ditched vehicle.

In the yellow-white glare from the various headlights, she could see deep ruts in the crusty snow where the car had gone off the road. She glanced behind her. There was a definite downward slope from the area where the doctor and Debba would have emerged after their visit to the cemetery. She could easily imagine a dizzy, possibly concussed man getting behind the wheel of his big old boat of a car, shifting it into drive, and then passing out, letting the car steer itself off the pavement, through the scrub brush at the side of the road, and finally into the tall pines, where it had hit nose first, crumpling the hood back to the engine block. She could also imagine someone-a voice inside her head supplied
Debba Clow
-opening the driver’s door, shifting the car into neutral, and running it down the road until it tore away toward the trees.

“Hey! You!” The bulky figure of a man hailed her out of the near-darkness just beyond the lights. She squinted to see who it was as he came closer. She could make out the brown police parka and winter hat, but his features were obscured beneath the balaclava protecting his face from the cold.