Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries) (23 page)

He nodded. “Yeah.” He straightened. “Bob, we’re going to take you back to the cabin and do what we can to stabilize your leg.”

“Then what?” Bob’s words were bitten off, brief syllables he could spare from fighting the pain.

“If you could get through the South Shore Drive, so can an ambulance.” Russ reached inside and unhooked the mic. It was dead. He flicked the on-off toggle and tried the computer. Nothing. He traced the wiring dangling from beneath the radio mount to where it ended in a shorn-off tangle. “Shit,” he said under his breath.

Clare laid her hand on his shoulder. “No radio?”

“The battery connection’s been severed.” Russ looked the opposite direction, down North Shore Drive, a narrow tunnel piercing the woods ahead of him. “We’re not going out that road. Even if the two of us could carry him over this tree trunk we’re risking the same thing happening again. Except without a car to shelter us.”

“Let’s get back to the cabin. It’s a mile’s hike in hard snow, but at least we’ll be out of this”—Clare’s mouth worked—“ice, we’ll be warm, and we can make him as comfortable as possible. Then we’ll plan our next move.” Another artillery-shell blast went off in the forest. She flinched. Another tree down.

“I’m sorry,” Russ said, in a voice that stuck in his throat. “I’m so sorry I dragged you here.”

She shook her head. “No. I’m fine. And the only person you’re going to be dragging is Lieutenant Mongue.”

4.

“What do you mean, we can’t speak to LaMar?” Kevin was trying to keep things calm and professional, but the attitude of the FBI agents he and Hadley were dealing with was starting to piss him off.

They had taken off this morning, driving south through utter crap—the speed limit on the Northway still forty-five, and what should have been a two-and-a-half-hour drive had taken three and a half hours. That hadn’t stopped other idiots from driving too fast, of course. They had passed three cars off the Northway, one of which looked to have done a complete three-sixty while plunging into the median. They shouldn’t have gone; there was going to be more work than the department could handle even without the investigation. But the Department of Corrections officer Hadley had spoken with that morning assured them they would be able to question Tim LaMar face-to-face. All they had to do was check in with the agents in charge first.

“Look, son, I’m sorry whoever put you on this detail didn’t think to call us first.” Tom O’Day was about the chief’s age, tall, graying, and dressed in an expensive suit that still managed to look completely forgettable.

“We don’t want to step on any toes,” Hadley said, “but the girl could die within a matter of days if she doesn’t get her medication. Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend are the prime suspects at this point. We’re looking for their possible whereabouts. That’s all.”

They were in the agents’ office in the Albany Federal Building, a modern brick construct with no distinguishing features. Industrial carpeting below, fluorescent light panels above, the furniture straight out of an office supply catalog. Everything had a bland, move-along-nothing-to-see-here feel to it. Which was the vibe Kevin was getting from this conversation.

The other agent working the LaMar case was Marie O’Day. Same name, same age, same lanky frame, same suit—although hers fit a lot differently. Husband and wife. When they had introduced themselves, Kevin had thought,
Partners and lovers. It is possible.
He had inadvertently flashed a look at Hadley—which Marie O’Day had noticed. Her red glasses were the only thing in the office that didn’t look as if it had been government issued. She had watched them with her sharp eyes, silent, while her husband handled the preliminary runaround. Now she pushed back from her desk and stood. “How do you know the girl doesn’t have her medication?”

Hadley looked at her as if she had grown a second head. “That’s your response? Really? Somebody kidnapped an eight-year-old and killed her foster parents, and you think it’ll be
okay
if she’s got her
medicine
?”

The agents looked at one another. It was the same kind of look Kevin sometimes saw the chief and the dep sharing. “This isn’t a surprise to you, is it?” he asked.

Hadley turned to stare at him.

Tom O’Day sighed. “No, this isn’t a surprise. Let me give you some background. Timothy LaMar is not your typical upstate meth head, not by a long shot. He used to be a major player with the Salt Warriors—you’ve heard of them?”

Kevin nodded. “A bike gang. They ran drugs and guns in and out of central New York. They got shut down in a federal sting a few years ago.”

“We assisted the Syracuse office with that investigation. LaMar was indicted with the rest of the gang, but the attorney general’s office couldn’t get any witnesses to the stand to testify against him.”

“Couldn’t get witnesses to the stand?” Hadley asked.

Marie O’Day’s lips twisted. “They had a way of dying before they could testify.”

“LaMar had contact with dozens of mom-and-pop meth cookers in Canada, eastern New York, and western Vermont and Massachusetts. He relocated to Poughkeepsie last year and started taking them over one by one. If they cooperated, they became part of his organization. Got funding and protection. Professionalized, if you will. If they didn’t…” He folded his hand into the shape of a gun. “Bam.”

Kevin frowned. “Okay. Where does our missing girl come in?”

“We’ve been trying to get something on LaMar since he started up operations,” Marie O’Day said. “It’s been … difficult. He keeps his meth labs spread out from rural Quebec to Dutchess County. He uses word-of-mouth communications and proxies to pass on his orders.”

“We think he headquartered in Poughkeepsie because he’s using convicts and their family members as messengers.”

Kevin could see that. There were no fewer than four state prisons in the area, ranging from a tiny women’s work farm to the the maximum security Fishkill. Plus nearby Albany was where two interstates linked up. Ideal for any drug lord’s transportation needs.

“If people get out of line,” Marie O’Day said, “they wind up dead. If they say anything, they wind up dead.”

“And nobody’s been able to pin anything on him?” Hadley sounded skeptical.

“They’re hard-core criminal scumbags.” Hadley glanced at Kevin. Her expression said,
Tell us what you really think, Marie.
“Nobody cares if they live or die, and if someone does? They’re not talking.”

“Six months ago,” her husband said, “Poughkeepsie police found a pair of bodies double tapped and dumped in Fallkill Park. No prints, no casings, nothing to tie their executions to anyone. Then we caught a piece of amazing luck. A highway patrol officer stopped LaMar for a taillight.”

“Were they following him?” Kevin asked.

“No. It really was just dumb luck. LaMar had a gun in his possession. Unregistered, of course.”

“Let me guess,” Hadley said. “Ballistics matched.”

The tall agent smiled faintly and tapped his nose. “But we had a problem. His lawyer copped to the illegal weapons charge, but he claimed the gun had been taken from LaMar’s house and that LaMar found it again tossed in the bushes outside.” The O’Days exchanged identical cynical looks.

“Without a witness to tie LaMar to the murder scene, we had nothing,” Marie O’Day said.

“We ran pictures of LaMar on local TV stations asking for help,” her partner said. “And lo and behold, someone came forward.”

“Annie Johnson.” Hadley shook her head in disbelief.

“No. A man named Lewis Johnson. Her father.”

5.

Russ made a travois out of two long branches, two short branches, his duffel bag, and Clare’s polar-plus jacket. They piled the rest of the clothing over Lieutenant Mongue, who couldn’t stop shaking—Clare thought from shock. She carried Mongue’s duty belt, his ammo clips, and as much food as she could fit in her day pack. She cradled the rifle beneath one arm, ready to hand it over if Russ needed it.

They followed the deep tracks the cruiser’s chain-belted tires had dug into the snow before it had crashed. The ends of the travois straddled Russ’s track on either side, scraping over the ice and giving Mongue as smooth a ride as possible—which, if his muffled exclamations were any indication, wasn’t very. They turned off the North Shore Drive and, with slow steps, crept downhill on the access road that would lead them to their cabin, unfortunately situated at the farthest point from where they were. As they passed one and then another cabin on their way, trudging ever downward, Clare’s exhaustion got the better of her. At the next snow-mounded mailbox they came to, she pleaded, “Should we just stop here? Break in?”

Russ shook his head. “I don’t know if any other houses are winterized out here. You and I could maybe take the cold, but we’ve got to keep Bob warm.” He shut his mouth over anything else he was going to say. Clare didn’t have to hear the rest. Lieutenant Mongue’s broken leg called for a fast ride to the emergency room and immediate attention. None of which he was going to get.

Clare concentrated on keeping her boots inside her track for a while. The enormity of their situation felt like another layer of ice, weighing her down, chilling her to the core. They had no ride. They had no way to contact anyone. Behind them was a badly injured man and ahead of them were a pair of armed men who might be holding a child hostage. To her right, a stand of birches bowed down into a series of ghostly arches. A crow, its feathers ruffled against the downpour, roosted at the top of one inverted U. It cawed at them as they passed.
One for sorrow. Two for joy.
They needed to find a second crow quick.

Then a thought occurred to her. “Won’t the state police send someone after Lieutenant Mongue? When he fails to report in?”

“Eventually. The trouble is, he’s an investigator. He doesn’t have to report in like a patrol officer.”

“But he came out here to find us.
Someone
will notice we’re not home and he hasn’t been heard from.”

“Yeah. I’m sure Lyle will start kicking and screaming sooner or later. We’ll just have to hope it’s sooner rather than later.”

The fur edging on his hood kept most of his face from her view. “Russ. What aren’t you telling me?”

He sighed. “It’s this damn weather. I’ve lived in the Adirondacks a lot of years and I’ve never seen an ice storm last like this. That tree—” He shook himself. “I’m afraid it’s not going to be just a case of every cop and firefighter in the region responding to accidents. With ice like this, we’re going to
be
the accidents. Once you’ve got cruisers and ambulances going off the road, it’s not going to take long for the situation to become a complete…”

“Charlie Foxtrot?”

“Yeah. And if that story about the cell tower going down wasn’t just a piece of gossip passed along on the radio, communications are going to be screwed.”

“I thought Homeland Security paid to harden the emergency comm networks.”

“Oh, they did. And every police and sheriff’s department, every firehouse, every hospital, and every ambulance will be trying to use the same network at the same time.”

“Oh, God.” Clare thought of some of the communications snafus she’d experienced in Iraq. Once you couldn’t move troops on the ground or talk to your people—“We’re screwed.”

As if to underline her conclusion, there was another ear-splitting boom from their left. She had just enough time to register the high-pitched whistle of a thousand pine needles whipping through the air when it was cut off by crunching and clattering and shattering glass.

She waded across the road toward the sound, Oscar gamely plowing through the crusted snow beside her.

“Clare, be careful,” Russ called.

She only had to go to the lip of the road to see what had happened. Another huge white pine had toppled over, this time square onto the roof of a modern redwood-and-glass house. Thirty seconds ago, it had been someone’s expensive vacation home. Now it was a disaster site. If anyone had been in there …

She turned and waded her way back to the tire track. She envisioned their little cabin. Their safety. Their refuge. Surrounded on three sides by woods. They were in a conservation area. The trees were old, well protected. Very large.

“We don’t have a cellar, do we?” She bit her lip.

“No.”

“The cabin’s not going to be any safer than driving through the woods, is it?”

“No.”

“We’re not just going to be able to sit tight and wait to be rescued, are we?”

“No.”

She nodded. Pressed a mittened hand against the side of her belly.
I’m sorry I brought you here, baby. I’ve been a pretty crappy mother all the way around, and you haven’t even been born yet.
“Okay then.” Up ahead, she saw the now-familiar shape of their mailbox. Almost there. Almost there. Almost there.

6.

Hadley used her phone to contact the deputy chief on the drive home. There was no way she and Flynn were going to use the radio after what the FBI agents had told them about the conveniently dying witness in the last Lamar case.

“Johnson agreed to testify,” Tom O’Day had said. “We figured since he was living quietly upstate in East Jesus—”

“Fort Henry,” Flynn said.

The agent tilted his head, conceding the point. “As you say. It was far enough away that we thought if we kept his identity locked down, it would be more effective than spotty police protection.”

“Why wasn’t the MKPD notified of this?” Hadley asked. “It’s our jurisdiction.”

“Only the attorneys working the case in the attorney general’s office knew.
No one
was notified.” Marie O’Day tucked a strand of chestnut hair behind one ear. “You understand the need for security.”

“Everything seemed to be fine,” her husband said. “Then, a week after Mr. Johnson had contacted us, Annie Johnson drove her car into a light pole.”

Hadley tapped one finger on the desk. “Don’t forget her daughter. Who was inside the car as well.”

Flynn frowned. “Are you saying that wasn’t an accident?”

Tom O’Day shrugged. “Maybe it was. Maybe LaMar got word that there was a witness and targeted the wrong Johnson.”