To Darkness and to Death (31 page)

She could see Courtney catalog the mud splatters and stains on her clothing. She resisted the urge to curl up her hands. Lord knows what her nails looked like right now.

“No-o-o,” Courtney said, giving a credible imitation of someone who was sorely tempted to say yes. “I think I can handle it. And Sabrina’s finishing up in the kitchen. She can help me. I’m sure you want to…” She gestured with her hand, a neutral movement that might have indicated “read a book on theology” or “scrub yourself with Lysol.”

“Okay. Thanks. I really need to get things ready for tonight.”

“What’s tonight?” Terry asked.

“A friend from New York City’s arriving this afternoon. We’re going to the dinner dance at the new resort tonight.”

Courtney brightened. “Are you really? Shaun and I are going too! I got a fabulous dress on a shopping trip to Manhattan.” She dropped her voice, despite the fact that only Clare and Terry were there to listen. “We’re going to be at the VIP table, so I wanted to make a good impression.”

Clare smiled wanly. She would be wearing a dress she had snapped up on sale in Germany during a three-day layover waiting for her unit’s helicopters to be loaded into a C-141 and flown to Saudi Arabia. It had been cutting-edge European designer chic—in 1991.

“One of the sponsors of the evening, GWP, is ferociously courting Reid-Gruyn.” At Clare’s blank look, she explained, “Shaun’s business. Pulp and paper. They want it bad.” Courtney glowed at the prospect. “I can’t wait. With the buyout, Shaun won’t ever have to work again. We can spend our time traveling and having fun—” She caught sight of Terry McKellan’s astonished expression. “Oh, and work for the causes we hold dear, of course. Like St. Alban’s.”

“That sounds wonderful.” Clare tried to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. Coming to rest after a half hour of nonstop activity brought the hunger and the icky-sticky feeling roaring back. She could swear she was hallucinating a hamburger floating in front of Courtney’s face.

“You look done in,” Terry said. “Let me walk you to the rectory.”

She straightened. “I’m fine.” The last thing she wanted was for one of the old-guard vestry members to think she didn’t have the stamina to set up a few folding chairs.

“Humor me,” he said. “I want to catch you up on some vestry issues.”

Surprised, Clare nodded. “I guess I’ll see you tonight,” she said to Courtney.

“Well… during the dancing. We’ll be up at the VIP table during the dinner, remember.”

“Mmm.” This smile was even less convincing than the last. Terry McKellan tucked her hand under his arm and shambled out the back door. “What’s all this about vestry issues?” she asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Nothing. I just wanted to get you alone without having to explain everything to Courtney Reid.” He angled across the withered grass toward the sidewalk. “This may not fall under the rubric of ‘need to know,’ but I’m aware you like to keep your finger on the congregation’s pulse.” His big, round face fell into serious lines. Clare had long ago pegged Terry as “the jovial one” in her vestry lineup, and it was disconcerting to see him so grave.

“What is it?”

“It’s what Courtney Reid was saying. About her husband selling out and retiring.”

They reached the sidewalk. “Yes,” Clare said, giving him permission to continue.

“It’s not going to happen. Well, it is, but not the way she describes it.”

They walked past the hedge dividing the church from the rectory. “Uh-huh,” she said. What did Courtney Reid’s husband’s business plans have to do with her? She wondered if too many years in the corporate loan department had slanted Terry’s view of life.

“As far as Shaun Reid is concerned, any move by GWP will be a hostile takeover. I believe he’ll do anything, including putting his house, his savings, and his family’s stock holdings on the line, to stop it.” He shook his head. “He’s not going to succeed. And when he loses control of his family’s company, he’s going to lose everything, as far as he’s concerned.”

They had gone down the driveway and reached Clare’s kitchen door while Terry was speaking. She rested her hand on the railing and turned to him. “So the happy retirement and the traveling and all that?”

“That’s Courtney’s fantasy.” Terry sighed, puffing out his great brown mustache, increasing his resemblance to a walrus. “I feel a little… guilty, because I turned him down for a loan today. It was the right decision to make, but…”

She smiled. “You have a good heart, Terry.”

His face reddened. “That makes me sounds like a character out of a Dickens novel.”

“Okay, then, despite your razor-sharp business acumen, you have a good heart.”

“Better.” He smoothed his hairy brown wool sweater over his expansive stomach. “Will you… I don’t know, keep an eye on Courtney Reid?”

“I will. Thanks for letting me know.” She climbed the two steps to her kitchen door. “I’m going to go off duty for a bit. I’ll see you later.”

Terry waved good-bye and shambled back down the driveway. Clare slipped inside, closing the door with a careless kick and sinking into one of the old wooden chairs she had purchased in an attempt to warm up her all-white, straight-out-of-the-box kitchen. She sat for a moment, listening to the silence. Blissful silence.

This
, she thought,
is the real reason for celibacy
. She had no husband, no children, not even a dog or a tropical fish relying on her, yet she still felt as if she had half the weight of the world sitting on her lap. She tried to imagine what it would be like, dragging home all the concerns and issues of people who needed her as a priest, only to deal with the people who needed her as a spouse and parent. She could remember how exhausted her mother had always looked at the end of the day, riding herd over two high-energy girls and twin boys. And she didn’t have an outside job. How had she done it? How did any woman do it?

Groaning, she pushed herself up from her chair. Time to shower. Then she’d raid the fridge and pour herself a glass of wine. She crossed through her living room, taking a moment to look over the framed photographs clustered on the sofa table. Come to think of it, that had been her mother’s method, too: a long, hot bath and a martini.

She had one hand on the banister when she heard the knock at her front door. For a split second she debated ignoring it, but even as her head urged her to stay still and be silent, her feet were crossing the foyer.

She opened the door to a looming crow of a man. “Ms. Fergusson?” he said. “I’m Deacon Willard Aberforth.”

3:15 P.M.

They walked slowly down the path, single file, Sergeant Hayes and the assisting technician in the lead, then Noble Entwhistle, then Eric McCrea, who had been called on-shift early and had made it to Haudenosaunee just in time to join the trek to Eugene van der Hoeven’s last resting place. Russ brought up the rear. He and his two men carried Maglites, long flashlights that were heavy enough to be potentially lethal and could light up an entire grove in this forest if they had to.

They might. Twilight came early in the mountains, and the sun already sat on the high horizon like a campfire burning out. Orange light stretched in long, dying streamers through the trees, stitching a shadow forest across the landscape.

Hayes paused every now and then to take a picture of the trampled grass or the single rutted track of the garden cart. There was no other evidence as to who or what had been down the track.

The forest opened up onto the red-washed remains of the old Haundenosaunee. Russ heard someone whistle. “Watch out for Count Dracula,” Eric said.

“Is this it?” Hayes asked.

“Yeah,” Russ said. “This is it.” They skirted the blank-faced wall of boxwood and approached the place where Eugene’s body had been found. Hayes and the technician began to set up a lamp on a tripod for photographs. Russ glanced up at the tower. When he had been here with Ed Castle, he had looked briefly for a sign that Eugene’s death might have been a cruel accident, but from the ground, the stone balustrades that bound the galleries and circled the top of the tower were aggressively intact.

“Noble. I want you to circle the base of this thing, see if you find anything. Eric, you’re with me. Let’s take a look inside.”

The men split apart, Russ and Eric going along a rough path toward the open tower door, Noble into the deep grass. Russ took the corroded handle and opened the tower door, creaking the hinges. He switched on his flashlight, throwing a bright circle on a bare flagstone floor, and moved from that to a flight of wooden stairs running up the inner wall. “Up we go,” he said. “Watch your step.”

The treads creaked and groaned. Russ tensed with every step, ready to leap to the next step if the wood beneath his boot gave way. When they reached the first open landing, he leaned over the carved stone banister. Sergeant Hayes and the technician were hard to his right, just visible beyond the edge of the gallery.

They mounted the next flight of stairs. They were circling around the tower, corkscrewing higher and higher. At the next balcony, they could see Noble below, methodically sweeping through the shaggy grass. Russ squatted down and examined the edge of the balcony and the floor in front of it. “Nothing,” he said.

“It’s all stone,” Eric said. “You could go over it without a snag. Hell, those balcony rails are so low you could fall over just by leaning out too far.”

Russ looked at him sharply. “You okay? With the height, I mean?”

Eric jerked his chin up and down. “It’s not my favorite thing. I’ll be okay.”

The third level held the surprise. Instead of the open interior of the first two stories, this one was bisected by a sturdy wall with a thick door, standing just ajar.

“Jeez,” Eric said, reaching for the handle. “It looks like something out of
Young Frankenstein
.”

Russ grabbed his wrist. “Don’t touch it. Prints.”

Eric’s face flushed red. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“’Sokay.” Russ dug into his pocket for the pair of latex gloves Hayes had handed him and wrestled them on before tugging the door wide.

“Holy shit,” Eric breathed. He paused for a moment before fumbling to switch on his flashlight.

Russ’s first thought was
Everything’s empty
. The crumpled blanket, the husk of a backpack, the plastic sandwich wrappers littered across the floor. The smell of urine made him realize that not everything had been turned out and abandoned.

He and Eric circled the floor, cataloging the apple core—“May be DNA on that,” he said—and the Thermos, which Eric unscrewed after putting his own gloves on.

“Chicken soup,” he said, sniffing. “Cold.”

Russ spotted the olive green balaclava, tossed near the door, and was about to bag it when Eric whistled.

“What?”

The younger man was on his hands and knees at the opposite side of the tower. “I think I’ve got some blood on the floor. A few drops.” He sat back on his calves and looked up at Russ. “What the hell was going on here, Chief?”

Several possibilities came to mind. All of them were bad.

He crossed to the stone banister outside the door and leaned over. “Hey!” He called. He was, he saw, directly over Jordan Hayes. The state trooper looked up, his face blurring in the swift-moving shadow. “We’ve hit the jackpot. Get your stuff up here.”

He stepped back and beckoned to Eric. “Let me have your radio.”

The officer unhooked his radio and passed it to Russ. Russ keyed the mike. “Dispatch? This is the chief.”

A squeal of interference and a swish of static. He glanced at the stone walls around him and moved to the edge of the banister. Beneath him, the evidence technicians were packing up. “Dispatch,” he said again. “This is the chief.”

Harlene’s voice was faint but recognizable. “Go ahead, Chief.”

“Who’s on duty at the station?”

Static.

“Come back?”

“Tim Foster.”

“Okay. I want him to take Ed Castle’s statement on the events this afternoon at Haudenosaunee. And then tell Castle he’s free to go. With our thanks and apologies.” He thought for a moment. No, any apology from the department was as likely to land them a lawsuit as anything else. Better he apologize to Ed in person. “Cancel that last.”

“No apology. Got it.”

“I want you to call everybody in. Mark, Duane, everybody.”

Even with the bad reception, he could hear the surprise in her voice. “What’s up?”

He glanced toward the room behind him. Food. A toilet. Blood. “Damned if I know.”

“Come back?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“I have—” The last word was swallowed in static.

“Come back?”

“I have a message from your wife. ‘Don’t forget you promised—’” A squeal of static wiped Harlene’s words away.

He didn’t ask her to repeat. He knew what the message was. He stared down at Hayes, lifting his collection box on his shoulder as his tech tagged along with the light. This place would be dark within the hour. They had an unaccounted-for death in the morgue, an unaccounted-for woman somewhere out there, and an unaccounted-for assault suspect on the loose. If ever he should be on the job, it was tonight.

He thought about what Linda had said, about her work.
It’s my turn now
.

“Tell my wife I’ll be there as promised. Chief out.”

He stood for a moment in the freshening breeze, the last of the sun-warmed air flowing toward the cold dark. At the mountains’ edge, the sky was enough to make a man believe in glory, red-orange and pink and lavender. It was going to be cold and beautiful tonight, no clouds, the moon one day from full.

Too bad Eugene van der Hoeven and Millie van der Ho-even and Becky Castle couldn’t enjoy it. He closed his eyes briefly before turning from the beauty. Back to work.

3:20 P.M.

Once, Lisa Schoof had driven home drunk. She hadn’t been Lisa Schoof then but Lisa Bain, nineteen, partying all afternoon at Lake George and then setting off home because she had to work early the next morning. She had been muzzy-headed, happy, sailing along, until she saw the state trooper in her rearview mirror.