All Mortal Flesh (17 page)

She did have boots. In the time it took for Russ to get the mayor’s two-by-four between the eyes—
I didn’t call Ireland. He called me
—she had changed into mukluks and was zipping up a midsized duffle. “This way,” he said, jerking his head. He didn’t register leaving the town hall and walking to the station. All his attention was inward, trying to construct some Rube Goldberg logic machine that would enable him to believe the staties hadn’t been tipped off by someone in the Millers Kill Police Department.

He couldn’t do it.

They had been keeping a near-blackout in the press. The
Post-Star
reported the MKPD was investigating “a suspicious death,” a semifiction they carried off because the department, with MacAuley as its affable spokesman, was usually transparent to the local media. It might have become an item of gossip around town, but what civilian would know to call the state police and get them involved? One of the aldermen? But no, Jim Cameron would have said something.

It had to have been one of his own.

“Hey, you’re back.”

Russ blinked. He was startled to find himself standing in front of Harlene, who was staring at Jensen with open curiosity.

“Uh,” he said. “Harlene, this is Investigator Jensen. She’s here from the Troop F BCI to help us with the investigation. This is our dispatcher, Harlene Lendrum.” He didn’t quite turn toward Jensen.

“Chief? That you?” Mark Durkee strode into the dispatch area, his hands full of manila files.

“What are you doing here?” Russ asked.

Mark stared at Jensen stripping off her wool coat, then at Russ. “I got put—I’m on day duty now, remember?”

He didn’t, but that was fine. Mark was the perfect person to unload his unwelcome guest on. “This is Investigator Jensen of the New York State BCI,” he said. “She’s going to be joining us for the investigation.” Durkee’s eyes widened. “Show her the file and get her up to date on everything.” He spun on his heel and disappeared behind his closed office door before either of them could reply.

He needed more information. Who could he call? He leaned against one of the window frames, watching the traffic crawl down Main Street. The plows had shoved the remains of Sunday’s storm off the road, but the parking spots on either side were still clotted with snow. Trucks and SUVs that forced their way into the compacted mess stuck out into the roadway, narrowing the thoroughfare into a single lane at spots. He would have to call in Duane and Tim, the part-time officers, to hand out a few tickets and get the TEMPORARILY CLOSED TO PARKING signs up.

Nathan Bougeron. Of course. He had been a talented young officer when Russ took over the MKPD seven years ago. Too talented—within two years he had been wooed away by the staties. He was in Lafayette now, in plainclothes. Russ dropped into his chair and riffled through his Rolodex. He punched the number in.

“Investigator Bougeron.”

“Nathan, it’s Russ Van Alstyne.”

“Hey, Chief! Good to hear from you. How’s it going?”

The commonplace nicety threatened to swallow Russ whole.

“Chief?”

He decided to skip over the end of his life as he knew it. “I’ve got a situation here, and I was hoping you could give me some information.”

“If I can. What’s up?”

“We’ve been assigned an investigator from the Troop F BCI. Name’s Jensen. She’s young, about your age—”

Bougeron snorted in amusement. “I’m thirty-two, Chief. I don’t know if that qualifies as young.”

“Trust me, when you’re fifty, it does. Anyway, do you know anything about her?”

“She doesn’t sound familiar. What’s her first name?”

“Uh… I don’t know. We haven’t gotten that informal yet.”

“Doesn’t matter. There can’t be too many Jensens working out of Middletown. Let me make a few calls, and I’ll get back to you.”

Russ thanked his former officer and hung up. As soon as his line was free, Harlene buzzed him. “Are you gonna give the morning briefing now?”

“No,” he said. “I’m waiting for a callback. I’ll round up everybody as soon as I’m finished.”

“Sure thing, Chief. I’ll let the guys know not to disturb you.”

He hated the way people talked to him now. Four days ago, if he had told Harlene he was postponing the morning briefing, she would have made a crack about him getting lazy in his old age. It was if he had found himself in a foreign country, surrounded by natives who spoke at him very… slowly… and… clearly so he might understand.

“Wait,” he said. “Is Lyle here yet?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you ask him to come in?”

“Sure thing.”

The door opened within seconds, leading Russ to guess that not only had Lyle been in the building, he had been standing next to Harlene asking her about the morning’s events. The deputy chief strolled in and took one of the chairs, relocating a few file folders onto the floor. He tipped back on the rear legs, balancing himself on the toes of his boots.

“You meet this investigator from the BCI yet?”

If Lyle was surprised at Russ’s brusqueness, he didn’t show it. “Yep. Mark introduced us. She’s in the squad room right now, going over the initial reports and the autopsy.”

“Did you call the BCI in on the case?”

“What?” Lyle lurched forward as the chair crashed onto all four legs. “Hell, no! I’ve been trying to keep the lid on this thing since it happened. Why the hell would I invite the staties in?”

Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’ve been encouraging me to stay home and back off of the investigation. I thought maybe—”

“You thought wrong, as the saying goes.”

“Sorry.” Russ sighed. “But the only thing I can figure is that one of us blew the whistle. I mean, I’m not being irrational, right? I ought to welcome any and all help to bring in this guy, I know that, but Jesus Christ, the thought of one of my own guys calling down the staties…”

The phone rang. Russ snatched it up. “Van Alstyne here,” he said, motioning Lyle to sit back down in his chair.

“Hey, chief, it’s Nathan Bougeron.”

“That was fast. Whattaya got for me?”

“It was fast because your girl has made herself well known. Her name’s Emiley, Emiley-with-an-extra-
e
, by the way.”

“An extra
e
?”

“I think it stands for energetic. She’s been with the force for ten years now, at BCI for six. The guy I spoke to said she’s poised to become a senior investigator, if she wants the job.”

“Senior investigator? After six years? That’s unbelievable. Why wouldn’t she want it?”

Across the desk from him, Lyle was raising his bushy gray eyebrows.

“My guy says she’s got her eye on politics. She has a master’s in psych, and she’s working on a law degree. The word is, when she finishes, she’ll jump ship to some district attorney’s office downstate.”

“Huh. Well, she wouldn’t be the first to use the DA’s office as a launching pad. Does this mean that I can expect her to spend all of her time with her nose in a law book?”

“Nunh-unh. She’s a tough cookie, according to my guy. Very, very focused. Here’s the kicker: She put in a couple of years in Violent Crimes, and then moved to Homicide for a couple more, but last year she was reassigned—my guy didn’t know, but he thinks she asked for the job—to the Ex squad.”

“The what?”

“Oh, sorry. That’s our nickname for it. The External Law Enforcement Investigation squad. The guys who work with DAs and county prosecutors to take down dirty cops in departments where they don’t have an internal affairs division.”

Or where the IA department was corrupt as well. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah. I just never heard the nickname.” The Ex squad. Christ on a bicycle. What had the mayor said?
You and the department need support
. Yeah.

“So I’m wondering, what’s going on up there? I can’t believe you’ve got a rotten officer.”

Russ cleared his throat. “She’s helping us with a homicide.”

“Really? Huh. Maybe my guy got his info messed up.”

No. He didn’t.

“Thanks for taking a look for me, Nathan. I appreciate it.”

“Anytime, Chief. You let me know if I can do anything else for you. And say hi to all the guys.”

“I will. Thanks.” After he hung up he said, “Nathan says hi.”

“Talk’s cheap. Let him drive over here and buy me a drink.” Lyle leaned forward onto Russ’s desk, propping his elbows on a broadsheet from the department’s HMO and a smear of opened envelopes. “What about Jensen?”

“She’s bright, ambitious, and evidently on her way to becoming the first female governor of New York, after a brilliant career in law enforcement and a successful stint as an ADA.”

“Yeah? Then what’s she doing sitting in our squad room, drinking Harlene’s day-old coffee?”

“Since she made investigator six years ago, she’s worked VCAP, Homicide, and the External Law Enforcement Investigation squad.”

Lyle grew very still. Then he shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. If she’s all smoked to work for the DA’s office, she’s going to need to stay in tight with the rest of us out here humping our tails to catch the bad guys.”

“Unless she wants to be able to tell the good people of New York how she brought down a crooked chief of police and the department he had in his back pocket.” He rolled his chair back. “Somebody in our department thinks I murdered my wife.”

Lyle shook his head again. “No.”

“You were the one who pointed out that I was a logical suspect.”

“Yeah, but I was just trying to get you to see—”

“Doesn’t matter. Jensen is going to tap me as a suspect.” He got up and paced across the floor. “It’s what I’d do if I were walking into this investigation. Hell, Lyle, it’s what you’d do if you and I weren’t friends.” He looked out the window. Same snow, same shoppers, same SUVs. “Let’s say you’re Jensen. Your boss at BCI has sent you out here because he believes I’ve killed my wife and I’m using the department to cover it up. You go over the records of the evidence so far. Do you find anything to rule that theory out?”

“No.”

“Hell, no. I’ve got no alibi for the time when the murder occurred. In fact, time of death was muddled because Meg Tracey left the door open and you guys never closed it.”

Lyle dropped his gaze and mumbled something.

“I’m not blaming you, Lyle. Linda was your friend, too. Everybody was shook up that evening. But to Jensen, it’s going to look like collusion. Now, add in the fact that my missing knife could be the murder weapon and e-mails on my wife’s computer suggest that she was seeing someone else when she died. You’re Jensen, with the mayor and the aldermen and the power of the BCI behind you. What are you going to do?”

“Put you on leave. Immediately, if I can.”

“She can. You should have heard the aldermen at the surprise meeting this morning. They were dropping fifty-pound hints that I take a week off.”

“It’s times like these that being an elected sheriff would come in handy. No town board waiting in the wings to hand you a pink slip.”

“Huh. So you boot the chief. But you’re also worried about the deputy chief, because he’s your suspect’s right-hand man. You can’t suspend him, though, because you need someone who can run the police department while you’re working the homicide.”

Lyle’s mouth twisted in a sort of smile. “If she knew anything, she’d put Harlene in charge.”

“You can bet Jensen thinks Harlene’s a gossipy old broad who should have been retired years ago. What do you do?”

Lyle sighed. “I isolate him. Take him off the case and route all the investigation reports directly through me.”

“Okay. So you and I can figure out which direction she’s going to take the investigation in. Here’s the tricky part: What’s she going to do in the next hour? And what does she think I’m going to do?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. I figure I have three options. I could go back to my mom’s place, crawl into bed, and not come out again until spring or an indictment, whichever comes first. Or I could figure out some way to sidestep her, so that I can keep on with the investigation. I’m worried that if she likes me as the perp, she won’t pay enough attention to the other evidence lying around.” He paused. The light was changing outside. A little more white, a little less bright. As if ice were sheeting over the sky. More snow coming.

“What’s the third option?”

“I could eat my gun.”

“Don’t joke about that.” Lyle’s mobile face was dead serious.

Russ flipped his hand to show it was open. “Sorry.”

“I think she’ll assume you’re going to go head to head with her,” Lyle said, dragging the conversation back to Russ’s question. “Once she pegs you as the prime suspect, she’s got to assume you’re going to be busy covering your ass with both hands. Maybe by hauling her back out to the mayor’s office for a showdown while the rest of us trash the files. Or manufacture some new evidence implicating somebody else.”

Russ thought for a few seconds, then pushed away from the window frame. “I want you to do two things for me.”

“Okay…” Lyle’s voice was tentative. “What?”

“I want you to get me the registration info for the license number of the car the Tracey kid saw at my house. But before that, I want you to have an accident in the squad room.”

“A what?”

“Carry in some coffee or one of Harlene’s strudels and drop it all over the floor. Make it big and messy and make sure everybody’s paying attention to you.”

“And in the meantime, you will be doing what, exactly?”

“Getting out of Dodge.” He could see the question taking shape in his deputy chief’s mind. “It’ll be better if you don’t know anything else. Plausible deniability and all that. When you’ve got the car owner’s info, leave me a message on my cell phone.”

“Leave you a message.”

“I’m getting on in years. I may forget to turn it on.”

“Uh-huh.” Lyle levered himself out of his chair. “We got fifty-odd years of law enforcement experience between us, and here we are, plotting like a couple of junior-grade James Bond wannabes.” He grinned up one side of his mouth. “I like that.” He stuck out his hand. “Good luck, Russ.”

He left his office door open after Lyle left and listened as his deputy chief loudly asked Harlene if there was “anything good” in the kitchen. Of course there would be, since Harlene baked compulsively during the winter months and brought the resulting sugar bombs in to work so that her husband, Harold, fighting the onset of Type II diabetes, wouldn’t fall to temptation.