Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries) (26 page)

“What brokerage do you work at?” Patten asked.

“I work from home.”

“Yeah?” Lyle looked around. There was nothing in the living room, at any rate, that looked like the guy was trading from here. “Can we see your setup? What do you have, the modern version of ticker tape? What is that?”

“I think it’s Bloomberg,” Patten said. “That’s how the mayor made all his dough.”

Davies sighed. “I don’t sell stocks. I’m more of … an information broker.”

“Information.” Lyle kept his voice flat.

“Information, introductions … you might say I bring people together so they can meet each other’s needs.”

“Sounds like pimping to me,” Patten said. He turned to Lyle. “Lemme check with Vice to see if anyone there’s heard of this guy.”

Davies started to look flustered. “This is harassment. I haven’t done anything wrong, and I don’t know anything about a missing girl.”

Lyle thought about the information from the Feds Hadley had managed to pass on between cell phone failures. “Sullivan did his time in Fishkill.”

Davies nodded warily.

“Your charity. You get other clients”—Lyle air-quoted the word—“out of Fishkill?”

“Of course. It’s the closest maximum security prison to Albany.”

“You know what?” Lyle continued. “I bet all your clients come from Fishkill. I bet if Detective Patten and I got a warrant for your charity’s records, we’d find nothing but Fishkill alums.”

Patten gave Lyle his trademarked so-what frown but didn’t say anything. “The Feds have a major meth trader on ice, name of Tim LaMar,” Lyle explained. “Big network all over the northeast part of the state. They think he does most of his communicating by messengers, everything face-to-face, no electronic trails or phone records to worry about.”

“Hey!” Patten said excitedly. He gave Davies a bright and knowing grin. “That sounds like bringing people together so they can meet each other’s needs!”

Davies’s color was up. His gaze kept bouncing around the room, and he was a little damp around the edges.

Lyle nodded conspiratorially. “That’s what I thought, Vince. Poughkeepsie thinks LaMar uses Fishkill cons and their family members as his mouthpieces. Now I figure, if you’ve got an organization like that, you need somebody to help keep track of your employees.”

“You mean, like a human resources manager?”

“Yeah. Like that. I think Mr. Davies here is that guy. Tim LaMar’s human resources manager.”

“I don’t know anything. I run a legitimate charity, and I think you gentlemen had better go now.” Davies still looked twitchy, but his voice was calm. “If you want to talk to me again, make an appointment, and my lawyer will come with me.”

Patten glanced at Lyle. “Okay, Mr. Davies. Tell you what I’m going to do. I know a reporter at the
Times-Union
who would love to get an exclusive about the upcoming Tim LaMar trial. So I’m going back to my office and I’m going to call her and let her know—I’ll be the unnamed source in the story—that the investigation has been greatly helped by police informant Jonathan Davies, who is expected to be a major witness for the prosecution.”

Davies went white. “You can’t do that.”

“Sure I can,” Patten said cheerfully.

“You can’t do that!” Davies grabbed Patten by his coat sleeves. “He’ll kill me! He’ll fucking kill me! I won’t live twenty-four hours after that story gets out!”

Patten removed Davies’s hands. “And why would he do that, Mr. Davies? If he’s never heard of you before?”

“Shit. Screw it. I’ll tell what you want to know, but nobody gets my name. I mean, it’s not even in your reports. We never had this conversation.”

“Why don’t you sit down and tell us what really happened with Sullivan. Did he snatch the little girl?”

Davies collapsed onto his sofa. “Sullivan’s nobody. I throw him a few hundred here and there. He runs errands once in a while.” He bent over and buried his head in his hands. “After he got arrested, LaMar was looking for Annie Johnson’s kid. She was a loose end, he said. Annie didn’t know where she was—CFS wasn’t giving her any visits. Then about a week ago, Sullivan came to me. Said he’d been cleaning in some house up in Cossayuharie and got talking to the little girl there.” He looked up at them. “I mean, of course he would, the guy’s a fucking child molester. He got her to tell him her name.”

“Mikayla Johnson.” Lyle didn’t like where this was going.

“Yeah. Meanwhile, I got a visit from one of LaMar’s enforcers, a guy who helps run the North Country operation. He tells me to let him know when information surfaces about the kid, because he knows her, and he can take care of the problem discreetly. Not that that’s the word he used. The guy’s got the mental capacity of a fucking four-year-old.”

“So when Sullivan came to you, you set up a meeting.”

Davies spread his hands. “I trusted the guy to perform according to his assurances. I mean, he was way ahead of the curve, otherwise. He knew about the kid before LaMar got the word out. How was I to know he’d get totally tweaked on meth and set a fucking house on fire? Discreet, my ass.”

“Who was it, Davies?” Lyle tried not to let his disgust for the man show in his voice. “Who was the enforcer you sent Sullivan to?”

“I set up the meet with Annie Johnson’s boyfriend. Travis Roy.”

12.

Walking on water. Clare kept that phrase centered in her mind, even though their trek across the lake was more like slogging over broken glass. She trusted Russ to navigate, keeping her eyes on her next footfall.

Clare was in the zone, all movement, no thought, so she almost yipped in surprise when Russ stopped. “What is it?”

“We’re getting close enough to worry about someone spotting us. We’re going to hug the shore from here on in.”

It was even harder going close to the land. Snow had accumulated on the edge of the ice, and the surface was littered with twigs.

She couldn’t see anything past the screen of evergreens blocking the next property. Russ stopped again. “Now what?” she asked.

Russ glanced up at the lowering sky. “Now we wait. I don’t want to make our move until well after dark.”

“Wait where?”

He turned and grinned wolfishly at her. “In there.” He pointed toward the house in front of them, abutting the lake.

“Are you sure?” She floundered through the snow after him, breaking holes with her boots, then kicking free. Russ was already up on the front porch. “How are you going to—”

He lifted one leg and smashed the heel of his boot into the door. It popped open as if it had been on an automatic timer. “Like that,” he said.

“Oh.” She climbed up the steps and followed him inside. They were in a large cathedral-ceilinged room, with a galley kitchen toward the rear and a loft overhead. Chairs, sofas, and a large table were all swathed with mismatched sheets—someone’s third-best bedding demoted to dust covers. It was as cold inside as it had been out.

“I’m going to see if they left any comforters or quilts behind.” Russ headed upstairs to the loft. “The electricity may still be on. Check the stove.”

The fact that the burners began to glow when Clare cranked their controls felt like the best thing that had happened to her since the start of her honeymoon. Her happiness was complete when Russ returned with several heavy blankets. They were itchy and smelled of mildew, but she didn’t care. They sat in front of the open oven door, tented in wool, Oscar collapsed in front of them.

For a while they sat in silence, soaking up the warmth. Clare’s legs felt twitchy, as if they were still shifting and balancing as she moved over the pockmarked surface of the lake. Ice legs, instead of sea legs. She stretched and flexed.

Russ unzipped the day pack and handed her a bottle of water and a sandwich. “Don’t say I never take you out for dinner.” His tone was light. Beneath it, she heard
Please let’s just forget what I said earlier.

She made her voice playful. “Where’s my linen napkin?”
Okay. Let’s move forward.

He stood up. “I don’t know about that, but there may be a roll of paper towels left behind.” There was a tall, narrow cupboard next to the refrigerator.

“I was just kidding. I don’t need—”

He opened it. Inside, she could see spice jars, mustard, breadcrumbs—the everlasting cooking condiments people always had in their pantries. And booze. A shelf of booze. Gin, vodka, spiced rum, Jaeger—she was still counting when Russ shut the door.

“Sorry.” His voice was gentle. “Nothing there we can use.”

She swallowed. Stared at the glowing orange elements inside the oven. Weighed her next words. “Do you ever stop wanting a drink?” she finally asked.

He sat down again. “Yeah. After a time, it’s not even the memory of a habit anymore, so you don’t think about it all that much. You can see a bottle or be around other people drinking and it doesn’t affect you. It’s just something you don’t do.”

“Do
you
ever want a drink?”

“Oh, yeah. Sometimes I’ve had a real good day, and there’s a game I’m looking forward to on the tube, and I’m kicked back in my chair and I’ll think,
Man, I wish I had a cold beer.
” He slanted a look at her. “But I can’t have
a
beer. With me, it’s twelve or nothing. So far, I keep choosing nothing.”

She had the uneasy feeling she wasn’t choosing not to drink so much as making sure she didn’t have a choice.

“Clare, about what I said—”

“It’s okay, Russ. We’ve gone from a honeymoon to a scene out of
Deliverance
in the past four days. You were stressed. People say things.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—you know I’d rather stab myself with a fork than make you feel bad.”

She reached out from beneath her blanket and took his hand. She noticed he didn’t say anything about being wrong, or it not being true. She felt a kick inside. Then another. The baby, lulled to sleep during their hike, had awakened. She didn’t mention it to Russ. For the first time, she was scared. Not for her safety or her employment prospects, not even for the baby’s health. Scared that she had broken something between the two of them and she wouldn’t be able to fix it.

13.

They left their unknown benefactor’s house well after dark. The plan was simple: Clare would pass Roy’s cabin, staying on the lake side. She and Oscar would keep on past the next three houses, then climb up to the road and wait for Russ. If anything happened to him, she was to get off the road and keep traveling toward Cooper’s Corners until she got a cell phone signal or found help.

Meanwhile, Russ would circumnavigate the other three sides, using his rifle’s sight to peer into the windows. If the truck was nearby, he’d take it, picking up Clare on the fly. If not, they would hike out together.

Clare had argued against that last part. Why tip Roy off with the sound of a truck leaving when they could walk to the nearest inhabited home without him knowing?

“Because we don’t know where the nearest inhabited home is,” Russ said, wedging a shim beneath the door he had kicked open. “We know things were bad this morning when Bob got here. It’s got to be much worse by now. If the power’s gone at Cooper’s Corners, the people living there may already have cleared out. Better we’re able to drive for help.” He tested the door to see if it would stay shut. “I’m not as good at hot-wiring cars as I am with breaking and entering.”

He had insisted she take the Maglite, and she accepted. It was pitch black outside; the heavy clouds dropping their load of icy misery blocked out any trace of moon or starlight. Without the flashlight, she probably would have stumbled and fallen a dozen times before drawing even with Roy’s house. She couldn’t imagine how Russ was making out among all the trees.

She could easily see which house was inhabited. The windows shone bright and cheerful, a promise of warmth and safety that wasn’t true. She kept close to the edge of the shore as she passed, ready to douse the flashlight and freeze if she saw any movement in one of the windows.

And there it was. She stopped where she was, switching off the light and sliding it into her pocket. She held herself still. Someone inside, with light-adapted vision, would notice movement if they saw anything in the rainy dark. She thought she heard a scraping noise coming from the house, but that might have been an ice-laden branch, ready to fall. The shape at the window moved—ducked, maybe?—and then Clare could see what the noise had been. Someone had slid the sash up, opening the window to the freezing night.

Clare waited, unmoving, her hand wrapped around the flashlight. Was this an escape attempt? Had the inhabitants of the house heard Russ somehow? Or was it just a smoker, clearing out the room?

The figure in the window vanished. Clare stood there, counting in her head. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. No shots, no shouts, and no one making an unauthorized exit. She shifted her weight and walked on slowly, taking each step with care. She had gone only a few feet before she realized Oscar was no longer at her side. She spun around.

In the faint glow of the window’s light, Clare could see the dog galloping up the incline toward the house. He bucked through the crusted snow, the sound of cracking ice and scrabbling nails half-hidden by the rain’s percussion. “Oscar!” she hissed. “Oscar! No!”

Reaching the open window, the dog reared up on his hind legs. His head was just below the ledge. He began barking, a booming, full-throated bark that could have been heard all the way across the lake.

“Oscar!” Clare yelled. “Oscar, come!” He ignored her, barking and scratching at the house’s shingles. She took one step toward the house, then another. For a second, she struggled with the urge to run up and retrieve him. Except there wouldn’t be any fast-and-out through the heavy snow and its icy cover. She would have to leave him behind. She opened her mouth to try one last time—

“Oscar!” Even over the dog’s excited barking, Clare could hear the little-girl voice. There was another figure in the window, small, reaching out with one hand. “Oscar!”

Mikayla Johnson.
Clare was headed up the slope before she could think about it. She floundered through the ice and snow, threatening to pitch forward with every stride, boots sinking and catching, breath sawing, heart pounding. She lurched into the side of the house, slapping the window ledge. “Mikayla! Mikayla Johnson!”