Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries) (3 page)

She was right. The trembling Russ had taken for fear was the dog’s reaction to the deep freeze. “Could he have escaped from inside the house somehow?”

“Maybe,” Huggins said. “The front windows blew out before we got here. He would have been pretty scorched and smoky if that were the case.”

Clare squatted down and buried her face in the dog’s fur. “Smells like baby shampoo.” She rubbed briskly over the dog’s legs. “Somebody took good care of you, didn’t they?”

“What’s the deal about where the dog was?” Huggins asked.

Russ looked at the inferno that had once been a home and was now a funeral pyre. “If he was an indoor dog, one of the MacAllens had to let him out before the fire started.”

“To do his business. So?”

“So if one of them was up with the dog, how come neither of them made it out alive?”

4.

The dog came home with them. Russ hadn’t planned on it. Of course, nothing in his life seemed planned at this point—everything rolled over him, one chaotic accident after another.

What little he could do at the MacAllens’ was done; he wasn’t going to roust any of his people out of bed before the state arson investigator made a ruling, and Huggins assured him that wouldn’t happen until midmorning at the earliest.

Clare was kept busier than he was. She sat in the warming tent, the dog at her feet, and passed out Gatorade and talked with the guys. Once in a while she and the dog walked down the road a ways with one or another of them, her head bent, nodding, listening as they told her what they didn’t want their buddies to hear.

When Russ was sure every volunteer had cycled through the warming tent at least once, he collected her. The fact that she only put up a token protest told him how tired she was. In his truck, she closed her eyes and let her head fall back, one hand on her stomach and the other on the dog, who had wedged himself between her seat and the glove compartment and sat with his head resting on her thigh.

He called PJ Adams and got a recorded message letting him know she was vacationing for the week and any emergencies should be handled by the Glens Falls Animal Control Department. Their message said they would be open at 8:00
A.M.
He got a real live human being when he called Glens Falls dispatch, who assured him that he was free to drop an animal off at the impound, but no, they weren’t coming to get it unless it was dangerous. He cursed under his breath as he stowed his phone.

“What’s the problem?” Clare asked.

“PJ’s frolicking on some beach in the Caribbean, which means we’re going to have to take the dog to Glens Falls ourselves.”

Clare scratched the dog’s head and let out an unhappy sigh. The dog whimpered and butted against her. They both looked at Russ.

“It’s a perfectly good shelter. They take excellent care of the animals.”

Clare nodded.

“Somebody will be by to claim him or adopt him in a few days.”

The dog whined.

“Give me a break, Clare. He’s used to living out in the country. We live in town near a busy intersection. And we don’t have a fenced yard.”

Clare nodded again.

“Besides, we’re supposed to be heading up to the lake this afternoon for our honeymoon. What are we going to do, bring him to the cabin with us?”

The dog looked straight at Russ and perked his ears up.

“Cabin,” Russ said. The dog’s ears perked up again. “Cabin.” This time he got a tongue loll in addition to the ear alert. “Huh.”

Clare bent over Oscar and scratched beneath his jowls.

“Oh, for chrissakes.” Russ threw the truck into gear. “Just until we make other arrangements.” He pulled back onto the road. Christ. He didn’t want a dog. He shot a glance at his wife. She had leaned back and closed her eyes again. She was smiling faintly. He didn’t want a kid, either. They had agreed on that, hadn’t they? Before they had gotten married. No kids. Being a priest took too much out of her to leave anything left over for motherhood. And he was for damn sure too old for fatherhood.

She had found out at the beginning of November, a week after the wedding. Some blood work that should have been nothing turned up
something,
and he had been so nauseatingly scared it was going to be bad news that when she hung up the kitchen phone and turned to him and said, “I’m pregnant,” for a second he had felt nothing except a huge heartbeat of relief. Then the reality settled in.

“Pregnant?”

She nodded.

He collapsed into one of the ladder-back chairs. “How?” She looked at him incredulously. “I mean, I thought you had the birth control thing all covered.” He jammed one hand through his hair. “Jesus, Clare, I would’ve used condoms if there was a problem.” He squinted up at her. “You didn’t forget to take ’em, did you?” He didn’t mean to sound suspicious, but it came out that way.

She stalked across the kitchen and slammed the percolator on the stove. “I didn’t screw up my birth control pills in order to trick you into fatherhood, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He rose from the chair and went to her. Wrapped his arms around her stiff shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

“This is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you.” She poured a scoop of her home-ground coffee into the pot.

“You didn’t have any idea?”

“No.” She turned to face him. “I mean, yeah, I suppose I had symptoms. I was exhausted in the run-up to the wedding, but it wasn’t like I didn’t have other reasons for it. And I had some bouts of nausea, but never in the morning.”

“I don’t think it has to be in the morning.”

She pushed him away. “Well, thanks for updating me, Dr. Brazelton.” She twisted the faucet on and filled up the water chamber.

“How far along are you?”

“I don’t know!” She sloshed some of the water onto the enamel stovetop. She pressed her palm against her forehead.

He took the container and poured it into the percolator. “Let’s think.” He turned on the element, and the blue gas flame sprang to life. “We decided to forgo sleeping together about a week before we got engaged—”

“You decided.”

He bit his tongue before continuing. “Which was a week before Labor Day. So, mid-August. Which would make you two and a half months.”

“If that’s when we conceived! I got home from my tour of duty at the end of June. I could be over four months pregnant right now!” She yanked her baggy sweater up and stared at her abdomen. “Can you tell? Do I look different?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Oh, good Lord, what am I going to do?” She released the hem of her sweater and put her hands over her mouth. She shook her head. When she looked at him, her eyes were full of tears. “I’ve been married for a week and I’m going to start popping out any second. What’s my congregation going to think? What’s the vestry going to say?” She moaned and covered her eyes. “Oh my God, what’s the bishop going to say?”

He rubbed his hands up and down her arms. “They don’t need to know. We’ll get this taken care of quietly. We can find a good clinic somewhere outside the diocese if you’re worried about your privacy.” He didn’t mention it would be harder if she really was over three months along. Better not to borrow trouble before they knew.

“An abortion?”

“If we get it done as soon as possible, no one will ever know you were pregnant in the first place.”

“I’m not getting an abortion to save myself embarrassment, Russ.” She broke his hold on her and went to the cupboard.

“I’m not implying that’s the reason why—”

She banged two mugs onto the counter and yanked the silverware drawer open.

“Look, we agreed. No children. For very good reasons. Your job—your
calling—
takes a huge amount of time and emotional energy. You told me you didn’t think you could be a priest and a mother both. Right?”

She took out two spoons and nodded.

“And I’m fifty-two years old, Clare. I’d be sixty-five when the kid’s in middle school. I’ll probably be dead before we get the last college tuition bill. That’s not fair, not to me, not to a kid. Is it?”

She fetched the sugar bowl from the table and shook her head.

“So an abortion is the logical solution. Isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.” She poured out the two mugs and handed him one.

Her ready agreement threw him. He spooned sugar into his coffee, eyeing her. “Okay. Then the next step is to find a clinic.”

“No.”

“Clare—”

She stirred her sweetened coffee slowly. “This isn’t about logic or rational thought. It’s about a child, yes or no.”

“No,” he said.

She looked down at her abdomen with an entirely different expression than she had had only minutes before. His stomach sank. “Look,” he said, before she could say something that was going to blow up their life together. “We’ve just found out. Would you at least take the next twenty-four hours and think about it? Please?”

She picked up her coffee and blew across it. “Of course.” She was about to take her first swallow when she stopped. She put the mug down. “I can’t drink this.” She sounded as if she’d just discovered it was radioactive. “It’s got caffeine.”

And that was when he knew what her decision was going to be.

He pulled into the rectory driveway and shifted the truck into park. Clare was asleep. He looked at her sharp features and the violet smudges under her eyes. He almost hated to wake her.

The dog’s wet nose poking at his hand startled him. Reflexively, he scratched the mutt’s head. “Don’t get used to it,” he said. “In a week, PJ’s back and you’re gone.” He might not have any control over the rest of his life, but he could by God draw the line at a dog.

5.

Officer Kevin Flynn had developed a particular morning routine since he got put on the day shift at the MKPD. He got up at five and ate a bagel with peanut butter. Then he drove from his apartment in Fort Henry to the Millers Kill Community Center to work out. Other departments had their own weight rooms—the Syracuse PD, where he had served six months temporary detached duty, had a whole freaking fitness center on-site—but in Millers Kill, population eight thousand and falling, the best they could do was free memberships to the community center gym, where officers could keep duty-ready next to the Keep On Movin’ Arthritis Action class and the Mommy-and-Me yoga.

Showing up at 5:30
A.M.
meant Kevin was through before the moms and grandmas got in. He showered, shaved, and swung through the McDonald’s drive-through for two bacon-and-egg McMuffins. He tried to finish those off before arriving at the station; if he didn’t, the chief or deputy chief always wound up reminiscing about the good old days when they could eat whatever they wanted and stay up all night and walk uphill to school both ways. Kevin got ribbed enough for being the youngest person on the force; he figured he should at least be able to enjoy the benefits of being twenty-six without having to listen to the old guys jaw on about their lost youth.

He always stopped by the call center and said hi to Harlene first. Their dispatcher, who was even older than the chief and the dep, liked to give him a sort of eyeball health check. In the summer, she made sure he had on sunscreen. “You know,” she’d say, “fair-skinned redheads burn easier than anybody else.” Since his mother had been telling him so for longer than he could remember, Kevin did, in fact, know this. In the winter, she fed him home-baked goodies. “You need to put on some weight,” she’d say. “Skinny people die out in the cold, you know that?” Harlene herself was in no danger of death-by-thinness.

Then he logged in, checked the circ sheets, and booted up his computer. He kept his face to the screen until it was time for the morning briefing, not talking, only answering with a quick “Morning,” as the rest of the shift arrived in the single large squad room that served as everyone’s office.

Getting as much paperwork as he could done in the
A.M.
meant he got out faster in the afternoon. It also meant he didn’t see Officer Hadley Knox until roll call. A great deal of his time at the station was choreographed so as to avoid Hadley Knox.

Today, despite burying himself in a CADEA report, Kevin knew when she arrived. He could smell her. He didn’t know if it was perfume, or the shampoo she used on her boy-short hair, or if it was just Hadley, but he could always smell her. He stared at the heading CAPITOL AREA DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY as if it was the most interesting thing he was going to see all day until she had passed by.

Lyle MacAuley, the deputy chief, stuck his head into the bullpen. “Briefing.” Kevin folded up his laptop, grabbed his notebook and followed the rest of the officers out the door. He always got in last to the briefing, so he could position himself as far away from Hadley as possible. In Syracuse, they had sat by tens in ordered rows while their names were called off, but at the MKPD they had a jumble of wooden chairs and no more than five officers at any one time, so he had to keep flexible. He didn’t sit behind her, where he’d be tempted to look at her. To the side was best, where he only caught glimpses of her out of the corner of his eye.

When he got to the briefing room, Kevin was startled to see the chief in his usual place, sitting on the large wooden table, his boots planted on two chairs. At his TDY, Kevin had been bemused to see the sergeant in charge standing, behind a podium, with a laser pointer. In Syracuse, they had PowerPoint. In Millers Kill, they had Lyle MacAuley, with the erasable marker, by the whiteboard.

“What’re you are doin’ here, Chief?” Noble Entwhistle stopped in the middle of the floor while he processed the unexpected sight. “I thought you was going on vacation for the week.”

The chief gestured for them to take their seats. “I’m still heading out this afternoon. I had a call last night I wanted to get you up to date on.”

“The fire on Crandell Hill Road?” Kevin had read last night’s logs, and the only other activities had been a dead deer on Old Route 100 and a couple of low-level traffic stops for missing lights.

“That’s right. Home of Theodore and Helen MacAllen, who did not survive the fire. You all know the drill when there’s a fatality. The state fire marshal’s office’ll send one of their investigators over this morning, and Kevin, I want you to be there.”