In the Bleak Midwinter (12 page)

“Can you think of any reason, anything at all, why someone might have wanted Katie dead?”

“God, no. I think it must be one of those random violence things, don’t you? Some stranger coming into town and raping and murdering the first girl he can lure into his car?” She shuddered visibly and dramatically.

Her mother whimpered. “Chief Van Alstyne, do we need to be worried about the safety of our daughter?”

“My God, what if it’s one of those serial killers, like the one over in Rochester a few years back?” Mr. Shattham put his arm around his daughter’s thin shoulders.

“Dad-dy…” she said, her voice rising in a whine.

“I can’t rule out a stranger killing in this case,” Russ said, “but I doubt that’s what we have here. And Katie was never raped.” He folded his fingers together and leaned his chin on his hands. “She had recently had a baby, though.”

Alyson’s mouth dropped open. Dust motes rose through the air on thermals caused by the sunlight puddling on the floor and the table. “What?” she finally choked out. “She was pregnant?” It was the first genuine emotion Clare had seen from the girl since she laid eyes on the photos of Katie’s body.

“She had been pregnant. The doctor who autopsied her says she gave birth within the last two weeks.”

“Pregnant. Holy shit.”

“Alyson!”

“Oh, Mummy, don’t have a cow.” Alyson’s shaded face stilled, only a small frown marring the blankness of hard thought. “It must have been Ethan,” she said finally. “He knocked her up and then killed her. It must have been Ethan.”

“Why do you say that?” Russ leaned back in his chair.

“Like, who else would it be? He was seriously in love with her. Aren’t most women murdered by their husbands or boyfriends? I remember discussing that in my health class.”

Clare thought back to health class at Hopewell High School. The only thing dangerous she had discussed was venereal disease, which over 50 percent of the male population was afflicted with, according to her teacher.

“Maybe he wanted her to, like, have an abortion and she wouldn’t. Or maybe he wanted her to marry him and she wouldn’t. Whatever.”

“Whatever,” Clare said under her breath.

“Wow. Ethan and Katie. And I know both of them. That’s like, creepy.”

“Alyson,” Russ asked, “do you remember Katie’s parents’ address? Was it on Depot Street?”

“No. I don’t know her parents’ names. Oh, whoa, she has a big sister, though. She was a senior when I was a freshman. Kristen. She works at Fleet Bank as a teller.”

“The branch here in town?”

“Yeah. I know because that’s our bank.”

“Okay, Alyson.” Russ gathered up the photos and closed the folder. “Thank you for your cooperation. You’ve been a big help.”

“I can go? I’m done?”

“That’s right. I don’t need a formal statement from you, there’s no need to go to the station.” He pulled off his shades and stared into her eyes. “Remember that we’re just gathering information at this point. I appreciate your, ah, insight into Katie’s relationship with Ethan Stoner, but none of us can draw any conclusions from that.” The girl gaped, a blank expression on her beautiful face. Russ sighed. “Don’t go telling everyone you meet that Katie’s dead and Ethan murdered her. Got it?” He turned to Alyson’s parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Shattham, thank you.”

“You will let us know if you come to suspect this was the work of some… some…”

“Wandering serial killer? I certainly will, Mr. Shattham.”

Russ and the Shatthams looked at Clare. She rose from her seat, gesturing toward the door. “Let me walk you out,” she said to the Shatthams. They got up, taking coats off the other chairs, and preceded her into the hall. Somehow, she assumed Russ would remain behind, sitting in the sunlight, thinking. Probably the same way he was assuming she’d come back as soon as she had seen the Shatthams off, to talk things over with him.

This time, she did bring her glass, as well as the remaining bottle. “Want a slug?” she asked, brandishing the cream sherry in her fist.

“I don’t think you can have a slug of sherry,” Russ said. “No, thank you.”

Clare sat down in the seat she had vacated, thought for a moment, then moved to where Alyson had been sitting, turning that chair sideways to catch more of the sun. “Lord, it gets cold in this room,” she said, pouring herself a measure of sherry. “I must say, though, the sun makes it almost bearable.”

“You’ve got thin Southern blood, that’s your problem. Keep your thermostat set at sixty and always wear no more than two layers of clothing. That’ll toughen you up.”

“Ugh.” She took a sip of sherry. “My mamma would call this a little tot.” She drawled the expression. “Every drink to my mamma is either a little tot or a splash. A tot of wine. A splash of bourbon.” She took another small sip. “So. What do you think?”

“What do you think?” Russ countered.

“I think Alyson’s not being entirely honest. I can’t say why. It’s not as if I know her or her family. It was just… something off.”

“Mmmm. I agree. You notice that we still don’t know what Katie’s connection to St. Alban’s is. Alyson only mentioned knowing her from school. Maybe that’s what she’s hiding.”

“Why, though? I mean, if you consider Alyson as a suspect, which I find very difficult to do, what possible motive could she have?”

“Jealousy? Rivalry?”

“They moved in entirely different circles, it sounds like. I remember Ethan Stoner from that fight you broke up on Friday. I realize he wasn’t showing at his best, but I find it hard to believe that even cleaned up and sober, he’d appeal to Alyson.”

“Hmmm mmmm. Ethan Stoner. I hate to think he could do something as bad as this. He was awful edgy and upset that night, wasn’t he?” Abstracted by thought, his upstate accent thickened, so that “wasn’t he” came out “wun’t he?” “Maybe he had real reason to be so upset.”

“Are you going to go out and talk to him this afternoon?”

“No. If I’m going to move him onto the list of possibles, I want more information first. There’s a good piece of advice about interrogating suspects: never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. Not that you ever know all the answers. But if I haul Ethan in now, I’ll be working in the dark. No, I’m going to find Katie’s parents first, if I can, or her sister. Get a handle on who she was, what she was about.”

“What do you mean, find her parents if you can? There can’t be that many McWhorters on or around Depot Street.”

“You haven’t seen the area. It’s our own quaint, rural version of a rat-infested slum. Mostly six- or eight- or ten-unit apartment buildings, falling down around the tenant’s ears. Not that most of ’em would notice if a place came down. Half the residents of that area don’t have telephones. They have twenty-four inch TVs and satellite reception, but no phones.”

“Being poor doesn’t make a person bad, Russ. Just as being rich doesn’t make a person good.”

“I don’t blame anyone for being poor. Hell, my mother was poor after my father passed on. I blame people who could change their condition but are too lazy or too attached to drugs or booze or who just plain don’t care that they live like pigs and suck off the public teat.”

Clare dropped her glass to the table and stared at him incredulously. “Maybe, if instead of being angry at them, you got angry at the forces that shaped their lives, you might find yourself an instrument of change, rather than just a complainer. Maybe if you tried seeing individuals instead of some amorphous ‘them,’ you’d see people with problems, not just people who are problems.”

“Of all the—’scuse me for being blunt, Clare, but that’s naive.”

“No, it’s not. Reaching out to people who may not even realize what sort of help they need is hard, thankless work. I’ve met men and women who’ve dedicated their lives to it, and they’re some of the toughest, least starry-eyed people I know.”

“I notice you’re not doing that inner city thing, though.”

She threw up her hands. “I think you’ve pretty well proved that Millers Kill has the full compliment of modern problems, even without an ‘inner city.’ Part of my work here is going to be to lead my congregation into service. To get them to open their eyes and see the need all around them.”

“And do what?”

Clare tucked a strand fallen from her French twist behind her ear. “To start, I want us to reach out to girls like Katie McWhorter, girls whose pregnancies would otherwise mean a lifetime sentence of dependancy and bad relationships. Help them to stay in school. Teach them how to find a job, be a better mother. Mentor them so they know there are other ways they have value besides producing babies. Support them in changing their lives.”

“You haven’t seen the ingrained pockets of country poverty yet, Clare. Folks who’ve never held a job, or lived in a house where some man wasn’t beating on a woman, or gotten through a day without pounding down enough booze to make ’em forget their hardscrabble life. I’ve been there, and I’ve seen it all and cleaned up after the messes, and I’m here to tell you, you’re gonna break your heart if you try to change people like that.”

She smiled at him. Maybe not such a hard case after all. “I don’t have a choice, Russ. We’re all called to see the Christ in all people. Even a down-and-dirty atheist like you must have heard of ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ ”

“Oh. Well, hell, if you’re gonna bring God into it…”

“You know, I like that about you.”

“What?”

“You’ve just seen me celebrate the Eucharist, I’m sitting here in my cassock and collar, and you still manage to forget that I’m a priest. You argue with me like I’m… just me. I like that.”

Russ shifted in his chair. “No big deal. I’m just too ignorant to know there’s a way I’m supposed to treat a priest, that’s all.”

Clare smiled into her sherry. Russ spun the manila folder around on the tabletop.

“Katie McWhorter.”

“Yes.” Clare dropped her glass on the table and rose from her chair. “We can check right now to see if there are any McWhorters listed in the phone book. C’mon into my office.”

Russ studied Clare’s eclectic decor while she paged through the Millers Kill directory. “No McWhorters listed for Depot Street. Or for South Street or Beale Avenue. No Kristen McWhorter, no K. McWhorter.” She flopped the book shut. “Now what?”

“Now, tomorrow morning I go to the bank and see if I can find the sister. The best way to a positive I.D. will be to have a family member identify her at the morgue. Failing that, I’ll head for the high school. They should still have Katie’s records.”

“Would you like me to come along to the bank? Or to the morgue? To be there when you break the news to Katie’s sister?”

“To what, comfort her in her hour of need? We don’t know if she’s religious or not, Clare. Maybe she wouldn’t want a priest hanging around.”

“Maybe not. But I’ll bet she’ll want to speak to the woman who was there when her sister’s body was recovered. And you’d be better off having someone from St. Alban’s there when you ask her about Katie’s connection to the church.”

“I will, huh? And this wouldn’t have anything to do with you wanting to be in on the investigation?”

“I’m already in on the investigation,” Clare pointed out. “This simply saves some time and lets me hear what she has to say firsthand. And if you’d like, I could help you tell her what happened to her sister. I’m… I took a course in grief work at the seminary.”

“Well, I never took any course. But I’ve broken this kind of news enough times to know what to do. The trick is to not leave ’em hanging. Get to the worst of it fast.”

Get to the worst of it fast, Russ reminded himself. He arrived Monday morning right at nine o’clock, opening time. He found the branch manager first off and filled her in on the situation. She expressed sympathy, and welcomed him to use her office when he told Kristen the bad news. She left for the service counter and came back with a young woman in tow.

“Kristen McWhorter?” Russ asked. The branch manager silently shut the door behind herself on the way out.

“Yes…” Kristen said, frowning. She was pretty, in a milkmaid sort of way that even her ink-dark punk hairstyle and thick black eyeliner couldn’t conceal. “Did my father do something?” she asked.

“Your father? No. I have some very bad news for you, Kristen. This past Friday we discovered your sister Katie’s body near the kill, about a quarter-mile upstream from Payson’s Park. She had been murdered.”

Kristen stood perfectly still, blinking. “No,” she said. “You’re mistaken. Katie’s in Albany. She’s a freshman at SUNY-Albany, and she hasn’t been home since school started. She’s in Albany.”

“She was identified in a photograph by someone who knew her in high school. We’d like you or your parents to view the body to make a positive identification.”

“I’ll go. I’ll go right now. It’s not Katie. She’s in Albany. I’ll get my coat right now. You have the wrong person. Oh, no, I’m starting my shift right now. I have to talk with Rosaline about getting off.”

Russ gestured through the glass walls at the manager. “I’ve already spoken with your boss, Kristen. Everything’s set.”

The manager came in carrying a heavy coat and a purse. “I brought these from the break room. They’re Kristen’s.”

Kristen grabbed at the purse and started scrabbling through it. “Wait! Wait! I can prove to you it isn’t Katie. I can call her house. I have her number. I have it here.” She dug through the purse like a small, desperate animal digging for shelter. She fished out a plastic address book the size of a box of cigarettes. “Here. Her number’s here. I can call her, she’s in Albany.” She looked around the office, frowning. “It’s a long distance number, though. Can I use your phone to make a long distance call, Rosaline?”

“Of course you can,” the manager said. She took Kristen by the shoulders and steered her to the phone on the laminate desk. “Go right ahead, Kristen.” She looked behind the girl’s back at Russ, asking him wordlessly for guidance. Kristen hammered out the number.

Russ made a smoothing gesture with his hands to let the manager know she was doing fine. “C’mon, c’mon…” Kristen said. “Pick up.” Her face brightened. “Emily!” she said. “It’s Kristen, Katie’s sister. Can I speak to Katie?” There was a pause. “Is she in class?” There was an even longer pause. Kristen’s eyes filled with tears and she pressed her palm against her mouth. She looked up at Russ. “She says Katie took a bus to Millers Kill on Friday morning. She hasn’t seen her since.” She blinked and the tears spilled over her cheeks. “Oh God, oh God…”