Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries) (32 page)

He shook his head. The
why
was irrelevant. He wasn’t investigating here, he was trying to save Clare’s life. And Mongue’s. And Mikayla Johnson’s.

The rain, freezing, then melting at the heat of his skin, had plastered his hair against his scalp until his forehead and ears ached with cold. His unprotected hands were raw, stiffening with every minute he stayed out in the open.
Think. Think.
It would only get harder as he got colder. He had to get the SUV away from DeJean or stop the man permanently. Either way, he needed to be back at Travis Roy’s house—he checked his watch—in twenty minutes. His heart sank. It had taken DeJean that long to drive around the end of the lake to get here.

Get into the cabin. Get Mongue’s weapon. Find DeJean. Simple. He hadn’t heard anything from either DeJean or Mongue in several minutes. He’d like to think it was because Mongue had nailed the bastard, but it was more likely DeJean had retreated to a better position to avoid the state trooper’s line of fire. Which would mean taking the high ground up at the road, facing the side of the house with only one tiny window. From there, he could cut off any attempt to escape out the kitchen door or through the French doors in the bedroom.

But he wouldn’t be able to spot a man headed straight up the middle. Russ looked at the twenty yards of open ground between the lake’s edge and the cabin’s back door. Not so much as a sapling to shelter behind. He had a sudden, head-jerking vision of himself at nineteen, charging a nameless hill in Lao Du, avoiding the bullets that were chewing up half his platoon by sheer random luck. He took a deep breath. Then another. He had lost a lot of speed in the intervening thirty-four years. He hoped he hadn’t lost the luck.

He launched himself uphill before he could reconsider. He pumped and flailed and stomped and swung, horrified at the noise he was making but helpless to stop it. He ran toward the cabin the way his younger self had raced to the top of that hill, putting every last fast-twitch muscle in play, leaving nothing behind.

He slammed against the porch, chest heaving, thighs burning. Instantly, a shot rang out, spiderwebbing the window next to Russ. He raised his hands, waving frantically, praying Bob wouldn’t drop him where he stood.

Nothing happened. Hands still raised, he climbed the stairs and cracked the porch door. Crossed the porch and opened the interior door. Bob Mongue was straddling a chair, ammo pouch between his legs, his service piece pointed straight at Russ’s chest. “It’s me,” Russ said, his voice hoarse.

Mongue lifted his gun away. “I see. What the hell’s going on?” His voice was strained with pain and fatigue.

“A shitstorm of epic proportions.” Russ surveyed the cabin. Mongue had taken up position at the edge of the kitchen, where he had a line of sight through both sides and the porch. One of the windowpanes in the bedroom was shattered, as was the glass set in the kitchen door. “Did you hit him?”

Mongue shook his head. “No. I scared him off, though.”

“Did you hear his SUV leaving?”

“Hell, I didn’t hear it arriving. First warning I got was you screaming at me.”

Russ pointed to Mongue’s weapon. “How much ammo do you have?”

Mongue picked up the pouch. “Three clips.”

Thirty shots. “Okay. I’ll take ’em.”

“What exactly are you planning to do?” Mongue’s doubtful look changed to something sharper. “Where’s your wife?”

“Back at Roy’s cabin, with Roy and the missing girl. That’s the girl’s father out there. Hector DeJean. He gave Roy orders about Clare. If he’s not back in an hour…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

“What can I do?”

“Keep watch. Yell if you spot him. I’m going to go out there and kill him.” He was surprised at how matter-of-fact he sounded. His entire career as a cop was predicated on the idea of force as the last resort, but he had no intention of capturing DeJean. He was going to put him in the ground, and if he got a clean line of fire on Roy before Clare could object, he was going to kill him, too.

Mongue didn’t blink at his statement. “Okay. Better get something on over that sweater. And I’ve got shooting gloves in the inside pocket of my coat.”

Russ retrieved his waterproof anorak from the pile he had left on the floor when he dumped his ice-fishing duffel. He had turned to get Mongue’s parka off its hook when he caught the acrid scent of smoke. “You smell that? Did you throw something into the woodstove?”

“Nope.” Mongue sniffed. “Smells oily.”

“Oh,
shit.
” Russ bolted for the kitchen door. He could tell, by the heat radiating through it, that it was too dangerous to open. Then he spotted the bright orange lick of flame through the tiny kitchen window. The mingled odor of gas and kerosene was heavy in the air. “That sonofabitch is trying to burn us out.”

6.

Tracking down meth dealers in the Albany area during what the National Weather Service was calling “the ice storm of the century” was marginally better than a root canal without anesthetic. But it was a slim margin. The third time her feet flew out from beneath her and she landed ass-first on the sidewalk, Hadley began to reconsider her decision to move from California. The third time they came up empty, she began to reconsider her decision to become a cop.

Davies had given up four names. All active dealers, all potential snitches. All of them lived in parts of Albany that legislators, lobbyists, and school kids on state capital tours would never get to see.

They couldn’t find the first guy. His entire block, a row of sagging two-story houses that looked like they should have been condemned years ago, had emptied out when the grid went down. A city employee, seeing them huddled by the perp’s door, leaned out of a Bobcat he was using to scrape out the drainage grates. “Disbursed to shelters,” he yelled. “Without electricity, these dumps are like walk-in freezers.”

“Should we search shelters?” Hadley asked.

Patten shook his head. “Not unless we get desperate. He could be in any one of a dozen schools or churches at this point. Better try number two.”

They found perp number two. Or rather, they found his girlfriend, leading a lights-out party at his row house. She answered the door bundled up in a puffy coverlet, the odor of alcohol rising off her in waves. “He dead,” she told them.

“Dead?” Flynn peered past her shoulder, where similarly swaddled people were reeling through the room, laughing and waving candles.

“Yeah, this like a wake.” She turned away from the door and snatched a frame off a table. She showed it to them. Instead of a photograph, it held a neatly clipped obituary. “He dead.” She suddenly burst into tears. “Oh, my poor Levi! My baby! What I gonna do without you?” One of her friends staggered up and slung an arm around her.

“Okay. Um.” Flynn took off his hat. “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. Sorry for your loss.”

“If they don’t set that place on fire from the fumes alone, I’ll be amazed,” Hadley said, as they crept across the ice to where the Aztek was parked.

“I like a nice wake,” Patten said. “Cry and drink, drink and cry, until you pass out clutching the dearly departed’s mass cards. What more fitting way to see somebody into the afterlife?”

Lunch was sandwiches, cold, from a local bodega, eaten in Flynn’s Aztek. Hadley tried to raise Granddad on her cell but couldn’t get through. She prayed Flynn’s DVD player was holding up. Or that Granddad was. The kids hadn’t been in school since last Friday, and if tomorrow was a snow day again—as looked likely—she was going to hook up with some other moms and arrange a playdate. God knew when she’d be able to reciprocate, but Hudson and Genny had to get out of the house.

The third could-be informant had evidently been seeing one of his buddies into the next world, because he was stoned into incoherence. They found him in a heatless, lightless SRO that was in the process of being evacuated. “I’s tell ya sure,” he mumbled, when Flynn pulled him out of the bus line. They frog-marched him to the Aztek and sat him in the back. Flynn insisted on keeping both rear doors open to dissipate the smell.

“We’re looking for the location of LaMar’s meth factory,” Patten said.

“Ya sure L’mar.” The snitch listed sideways.

“If he looks like he’s going to throw up, haul him out of there,” Flynn said.

Patten shook the man. “That’s right, LaMar. C’mon, buddy, stay with me here. Tell me about LaMar.”

“Ya L’mar.” The guy’s eyelids fluttered. “Wha?”

“LaMar’s meth cooker. We heard you know something.”

“Oh ya sure.” He tipped his head back. A noise came out of the back of his throat.

“Is he snoring?” Hadley said.

Patten shook him again, harder. “Hey!” The guy looked at them, wounded. “Doan be mean.”

“Tell us where LaMar’s meth house is.” Kevin leaned in past Patten and held the man’s face between his hands. “Or give us the name of someone who knows.”

“Know wha?”

“This is useless!” Hadley kicked the Aztek’s tire.

Patten nodded. “I gotta agree with you on that. Let’s find out what shelter the buses are taking these folks to. If the fourth name turns up nothing, we can come back to Sleeping Beauty here.”

Davies hadn’t given them an address for the fourth man, but they had his place of business, such as it was. It was LaMar’s favorite haunt when he was in the capital.

“D’Oiron’s.” Patten looked up at the dead neon sign sporting the bar’s name and a huge cluster of grapes. “This place was around when my dad was a kid. The whole neighborhood used to be crawling with Francos, come down from Quebec to work in construction and the mills. St. Denis Parish was just around the corner there. The diocese shut it down two years ago.” He sighed. “Nice to see a mobster who appreciates his heritage.”

Hadley stamped her feet on the ice-slick sidewalk. “We better get moving before we freeze where we stand.”

“Is it open?” Flynn peered in the single dark window fronting the street.

“Oh, sure. They’ll have a generator. Probably doing record business with all the guys who haven’t had to show up to work today.”

Hadley was going to protest that nobody would go for a beer in a citywide weather emergency, but Patten opened the door and sure enough, the bar was crowded. She and Flynn stepped down into the dim interior, following the detective as he threaded his way past round tables, men in twos and threes looking up at her with undisguised disapproval. She wasn’t sure if she was made as a cop or if it was simply because she was a woman.

She leaned against the bar next to Patten, while Flynn stood a couple of feet away, trying and failing not to look like he was casing the room. The slab of wood was scarred with generations of condensation rings and cigarette burns. The bartender was professionally bland, coming over as soon as Patten crooked his fingers. “What can I get for you folks?” He was reaching for glasses as he spoke.

“I’m looking for a guy named Boileau. A mutual friend told me I might find him at your fine establishment.”

The bartender’s expression didn’t change. Without taking his eyes away from Patten, he said, “Hey! Boileau! These cops want to talk with you!”

Oh, shit.
Hadley shifted. Before she could turn around, a thickset, chin-bearded man leaped up and smashed a chair into Flynn’s chest. Her partner went down with a grunt of pain, skidding across the floor, ramming into the corner of the bar.

“Flynn!” Hadley lunged toward him, her hand reaching for the shoulder radio that wasn’t there. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Boileau shoving men and chairs out of the way. Vince Patten was drawing his gun, shouting, “Police! Stop! Get down!” Boileau pounded out the door, leaving the detective swearing.

“Flynn?” She dropped to her knees, one hand going to his neck, the other to his chest. White-faced, he tried to rise off the floor. “Don’t move,” she ordered. “You might have broken a rib.”

He waved her off. “’M okay,” he rasped. “Go.” At her doubtful look, he pushed her. “Go!”

She rose and sprinted through the doorway. Patten was a few yards ahead of her, slipping and sliding as he tried to run in his old-fashioned galoshes. Boileau was a shrinking form already halfway up the block, moving fast for a guy carrying a couple of spare tires. She might never make up the difference running on the iced-over sidewalk.
If you had caught Annie Johnson then and there, none of this would be happening right now. Do whatever it takes.

She clambered over the filthy wall of cement-hard snow past the sidewalk and leaped into the street. There was ice and slush enough to send a car into a spin, but there were also spots of clear asphalt and salt and sand, gritty and firm beneath her boots.

A minivan, undeterred by the fact that half the city was closed down, swept past her, showering her with slush, blaring its horn. Hadley clawed her badge out of her pocket and dropped it over her head, wishing it was a reflective
POLICE
vest instead. She was gaining on Boileau. “Police!” Her yell was lost in the spatter and whoosh of another vehicle passing her. “Police!” She was only a few yards away, but she and Boileau were still separated by that three-foot-high snowbank. Climb over? No. Intersection. If she could reach it before he did—

She gulped air and sprinted. She could see his face now, blotchy red from exertion, mouth open, stringy hair plastered to his forehead. She angled toward the crossroad, dodging cobblestone-sized chunks of snow, bounding over deadly patches of black ice. Boileau saw her, reached behind his back, going for his weapon. She had hers out and was shouting something, hearing nothing but the drumbeat of blood in her ears, and Boileau turned—to reverse course? to shoot?—and suddenly he shrieked and disappeared.

Hadley rounded the snowbank, her Glock ready, and almost discharged it accidentally as Boileau slid, bare-handed, straight into her. She went down on top of him, knocking out what was left of her breath, but he was even more winded than she was and disoriented from smacking the back of his skull on the ice. Hadley wrestled him onto his front and zip-strapped him. She sat on his back, heaving for air, until Vince Patten jogged up, galoshes still flapping, to do the honors on behalf of the city of Albany.