In the Bleak Midwinter (22 page)

“Kristen?” he called.

She whirled, bringing her fist up. Her keys stuck up between her fingers like stubby claws. She held a bulky knapsack against her chest.

Russ raised his hands. “It’s me, Chief Van Alstyne. Reverend Fergusson is with me.”

“What? What’s going on? Is it Katie’s baby?”

“We need to talk to you. May we come in?”

Under her black knit cap, Kristen looked at them suspiciously. “Okay.” She waded through the snow drifting across her walkway and unlocked the town house door. She kicked her boots against the side of the door to knock off the snow. Russ and Clare followed suit. Inside, they all crammed together on a tiny patch of tile, trying to wrestle off jackets and tug off boots without spreading any more snow than necessary onto the pale green wall-to-wall carpet.

Kristen’s place was not what he’d expected from her all-black wardrobe and gothic hair. Instead of vinyl upholstery and posters of thrash groups on the walls, she had import-shop bamboo furniture in white with flowery pastel fabric. Reproductions of gauzy paintings of ballerinas hung over shelves filled with thin paperbacks and stuffed animals. The room of a young girl. One more thing Darrell McWhorter had taken away from her.

“What are you doing out here so late?” Kristen asked, dropping the knapsack on a glass-topped coffee table. “Is there news on Katie’s case?”

Clare looked at him as if to say, okay, how do you do this? Damned if he knew.
Your father’s had his brains blown out tonight. And by the way, did you do it
? If she didn’t have anything to do with McWhorter’s murder, he was going to start to look like her personal angel of death. First her sister, then her dad. “Where’ve you been for the last few hours, Kristen?” he asked.

She raked her hand through her ink-black hair, ruffling it upwards. “I went out for some ’za with my friends tonight after class. I’m studying for my CPA at WCCC.” At Clare’s raised eyebrows, she explained, “The community college.” Russ suspected Clare had been reacting to the idea of Kristen as an accountant rather than puzzling over the acronym. “Look,” Kristen said, “Will you please tell me what all this is about?”

The college class and the pizza joint should be easy to check out. “How long did it take you from the time you left the pizza place to the time you arrived here?” he said.

Her face shifted, from annoyed and curious to alarmed and cautious. “Maybe half an hour,” she said. “Has something happened?”

Clare stepped close to Kristen and laid a hand on the girl’s arm. “Kristen, your father was found dead tonight. He’s been murdered. If you know anything about it, please tell us.” She cut to the chase as quick as any cop he’d ever seen. Somehow, he’d thought a priest would be more… euphemistic.

Kristen gaped. “He’s
dead
?” she asked in a shrill voice. Then she burst into tears.

Russ felt like he was in a rerun of a bad television show. Kristen, sobbing and bleeding out her makeup, Clare holding the girl’s hand… if he wasn’t so goddamn tired he’d swear it was Monday morning instead of the middle of Wednesday night.

“Why’s she broken up over this guy?” he half-whispered to Clare.

She glared at him from over Kristen’s shoulder. “She’s not broken up like she was for Katie, for heaven’s sake. She’s angry.”

Kristen wailed. “Now I’ll never get a chance to tell him what I thought of him!” She sucked air in great noisy gulps. “Now I’ll never know about Katie!”

“If your father killed her, Kristen, he’s already paid for it. And if he didn’t, we’ll find who did. I promise you.” He watched Clare rock the girl in her arms and wondered if she would come to distance herself more from the people she wanted to help. She was going to crash and burn in a few years if she kept wading right in and feeling all this personally.

She met his gaze and he saw how tired she was, smudgy dark circles under her eyes, the fine lines on either side of her mouth noticeable. “Kristen,” she said, “do you have any idea who your father was meeting tonight? Do you have any ideas who might have killed him?” Russ wasn’t entirely convinced Kristen was innocent, for all that her tears might be real. But until her alibi checked out one way or another, he’d go with it.

Kristen shook her head. “I told you, I haven’t spoken to him since I left home. I got an unlisted number so he can’t call me. I was working up the nerve to call him and Mom about Katie’s funeral.” She jerked her head up, blinking swollen eyes at Clare. “Oh, God, now I’m going to have to make arrangements for him, too! Mom won’t be able to handle it.” She closed her hands over her face and wept, frustrated, angry tears that even Russ, who had learned to ignore crying from witnesses, could recognize.

“I can help you,” Clare said, rubbing her hands briskly along Kristen’s upper arms. “I can help.”

Kristen shook her head, dumb animal grief, over and over. “All I wanted was some peace to bury my sister in. Now he’s even taken that, the bastard. Why couldn’t he leave me and my sister alone. My sisterrrr…”

Russ mumbled his excuses and went into the kitchen to look for a telephone and to escape the pain and anger ricocheting through the living room. He suppressed a twinge of guilt at letting Clare take on all the burden of dealing with the girl. There wasn’t anything useful to be had out of her, not tonight, and maybe a priest was what she needed now, anyway.

He dialed the station first, and when the message to dial 911 clicked on, he hung up and called the Glens Falls dispatcher. She had the number of the detective in Albany who had been sent out with the black and white to Katie’s former home. In Albany, they got cell phones. Better pension plans, too, he’d bet.

Two rings and a brisk, feminine voice answered, “Ramirez here.”

“Uh… Detective Ramirez?”

“The one and only.”

“Detective, this is Chief Van Alstyne, from Millers Kill. I understand you’re assisting with a murder we’ve had up here.”

“Chief Van Alstyne. Yeah, I spoke with your man, what’s his name? Doofee?”

“Durkee,” he said. She owed him that for his obvious surprise at hearing a woman’s voice.

“We got a unit here right after we got your message, but your man had already been and gone.”

Russ slapped the receiver against his thigh and swore quietly. He jerked the phone back up to his ear in time to hear Detective Ramirez say, “… identified himself to the girl as your decedent’s father.”

“There’s a witness?”

“For what it’s worth. We’ve got her downtown with an artist right now, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. She’s eighteen, she’d had a few beers earlier in the evening, and she thinks everyone over the age of twenty-eight is, and I quote, a wrinkly.”

Russ laughed in spite of himself.

“The description we have so far is average height, average weight, no discernible identifying features except for a bushy mustache, which may be fake, and that he was one of the previously mentioned ‘wrink-lies.’ ”

Geoff Burns was what, forty? forty-two? Certainly would look like a wrinkly to Emily Colbaum or one of her housemates. And “average” would describe him to a T, until he opened his mouth. Russ sighed. “So, what did the perp do at the house?”

“According to the witness, there had been a call earlier from someone identifying himself as the murder victim’s father. Said he was coming down to get some of the girl’s things. This guy shows up around nine-thirty, goes to her room, and comes back out ten or fifteen minutes later with a backpack. It’s hard to tell at this point if the room was left messy or if he tossed it. We’re hoping for prints, of course.”

“I know this is a long shot, but do you have any idea what he took from the room?”

“Something that could fit into a student backpack?” Ramirez snorted. “Sorry, Chief. Could be almost anything. Was your girl into drugs?”

“Not that we know,” he said. “Was there anything pregnancy-related there?”

“Yeah, there was, as a matter of fact. Couple of books stashed under the bed.
What To Expect When You’re Expecting
, that sort of thing. Some used feminine napkins in the wastebasket, but that could have been her period. Look, give me your fax number, and I’ll have the complete report and the artist’s sketch to you by tomorrow morning. Uh, make that later this morning.”

Russ looked at his watch. Christ, it was after twelve. He was going to have to switch shifts with Lyle MacAuley. No way he could be working this case and still be alert enough to pull Friday night patrol tomorrow. He told Detective Ramirez the station’s fax number, thanked her for her help, and hung up.

In the living room, Kristen was sitting quietly, her head dropped back against the top of her flowery love seat, staring vacantly at the ceiling. Clare, in the bamboo chair next to her, looked up as he walked in. She asked a question with her eyebrows.

He shrugged. “Someone showed up at Katie’s house tonight claiming to be her father. He took something out of her room in a knapsack. One of her housemates was there, she’s talking to a police artist right now, trying to give us a description.”

Clare glanced at Kristen, who didn’t move. “Any chance it was Darrell?” she asked.

“Doesn’t sound it. Supposedly an older man with a mustache. I’m not discounting the idea that it might have been a disguise.”

Clare looked skeptical. “Who the heck could it be? Ethan? He’s in jail.”

“Kristen,” he said, then again, louder, “Kristen?” She rolled her head to face him without stirring from her position on the love seat. “I’ve asked you this before, but was there anyone else your sister might have been seeing? Maybe an older man?”

“I told you,” she said, her voice raw and tired. “If she was seeing someone else, she never let on to me.”

He glanced over to Clare. “The detective in Albany asked if Katie might have been into drugs. Maybe we’re on the wrong track, thinking her murder had something to do with the baby. Maybe she got on the wrong side of some bad people.”

Clare opened her mouth to respond, but she was cut off by Kristen. “My sister didn’t do drugs! Or kiddie porn or illegal adoptions or passing bad checks or anything else! She was a good person. A good person! If you weren’t such a cluck-ass small town cop you might have caught the man who did this to her by now!” She lurched upright in the middle of her tirade and stood pointing a shaking finger at Russ.

“Kristen!” Clare jumped to her feet. “That’s not fair.”

Kristen jerked her head around to face the priest. “What do you know about it! My sister is dead! And the best this guy can do is come here and ask me if I know any reason why she might deserve it? Oh, and by the way, did you kill your father tonight? Well, Chief Van Alstyne,” she made his name an insult, “if my sister’s murder didn’t have anything to do with her baby, maybe some nut case is out to kill off all the McWhorters! Who’s gonna be next? Me? Cody?”

“That’s enough, Kristen.” Clare’s voice cut through the air like a helicopter blade, sharp and no-nonsense. “You’re exhausted and upset and not thinking.” She moved to the door, pulling her coat off the rack and finding her boots with her feet, her eyes never leaving the angry young woman twisting her hands back and forth in front of the loveseat. “You call me tomorrow if you want any help with the arrangements.”

She waved a hand at Russ, who was still standing, stocking-footed and wool-headed, in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. He switched into motion, getting his coat and boots while Clare continued. “Chief Van Alstyne will let you know as soon as he finds out anything about the murders.” She laid her hands on Kristen’s shoulders and shook her once, like a mother cat settling a kitten. “In the meanwhile, I want you to get yourself something hot to drink and go straight to bed. Try to get a good night’s sleep and make sure you eat something in the morning. You have my number.” Kristen nodded. “Then we’ll say good night.” Her voice softened. “I’m sorry, Kristen. About everything.” Clare opened the door and jerked her head at Russ. “Time to go.” He kept himself from saying, “Ma’am, yes ma’am,” but he hustled out the door just the same.

“Good night, Kristen. We’ll talk tomorrow.” She shut the town house door and hunched her shoulders against the pelting snow, high-stepping past him to the truck in a futile effort to keep her boots from getting even more wet. She was inside, brushing off her jacket, by the time he climbed up into the cab, wincing a little at the ache in his hip. Definitely too long a day. He fired up the engine and sat for a moment, too wiped out to shift into gear and begin the long, slow ride back home. He rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. Back to the rectory, that was. Had to take Clare home first. On the radio, a psychiatrist was incredulously quizzing her caller who had fallen in love with her sister’s husband. “Reality Check!” Dr. Adele barked like a drill instructor.

He smiled as he reversed out of the parking space, his four-wheel drive chugging against the accumulated snow. “So you really were an officer,” he said.

“Sorry if I rolled over you in there, but I—”

“No, no, I appreciate it, really. I never know the right way to handle these scenes. Try to comfort someone and you’re just as likely to get an ashtray over the head. Hang tough and be professional, and next thing you know you’ve got a reputation as a heartless monster or worse, there’s a suit for police brutality on your desk.”

“Mmmm.” She turned her face away from him and leaned against the window.

He concentrated on the road, turning the defroster on full to clear the steam from his windshield. The snow came at him horizontally as he drove, as if nature were trying to sandblast his truck with the icy flakes. Traction was bad, even with his weight and the four-wheel drive. It had been a hell of a night. Thank god he hadn’t let Clare drive home in that ridiculous little mosquito of hers.

Between the roar of the heater and the annoying jingle for an auto dealership on the radio—“Fort Henry Ford for Quick Credit Cash Back Cars!”—he missed the first two or three muffled gulps from the other side of the cab. He risked taking his eyes off the road for a moment. Clare was twisted so he couldn’t see her face, her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection. He heard her again, the sound of something noisy being swallowed.