All Mortal Flesh (16 page)

“
Me
?” Then the rest of his statement caught up with her. “Russ? Killing his wife? That’s…” Words failed the wrongness of the idea. “Ludicrous,” she settled. Mrs. Marshall bobbed her head in agreement. Geoff Burns shrugged. “Geoff, he couldn’t have done it. He wouldn’t have. Not ever. Not for any reason.”

“Clare, I do a lot of criminal work these days. My clients have one thing in common. They’re all innocent.” He sounded as if he were drinking cynicism instead of coffee.

Clare shoved against the table. “You better have a
situation
besides ignorant gossip, or I’m out of here.”

“Please, dear.” Mrs. Marshall rested one hand on Clare’s arm. “I know this is hard for you. It doesn’t seem like it, but we’re here to help.” Her face, every edge softened by seventy-seven winters, radiated concern.

“None of us like the gossip any more than you do,” Terry McKellan said. “But it’s already loose in the town. The issue is, what can we do to stop it and minimize the damage to your reputation.”

“And to the church’s.” Clare didn’t know why the words were bitter on her teeth. Since the November day two years ago when she had first passed through the great double doors of St. Alban’s as its first female pastor, she had known that she was the public face of the church. Had known that she would always be under scrutiny, by those seeking a pattern for Christianity and by those wondering when she would screw up. She had tried to live up to her office. She had tried for two years of loneliness and isolation, with no one knowing who she really was except God and Russ Van Alstyne.

“I was thinking.” Terry McKellan stroked his mustache. “There’s that fellow you’ve been seeing down in New York.”

“Hugh Parteger?”

“How serious are you two?”

Clare spread her hands. “We enjoy each other’s company. I’ve been down to the city to visit him a few times, and he’s come up here a few weekends.”

“Nothing in the offing?”

“He’s climbing the ladder at an international capitalizing firm. I’m making twenty thousand dollars a year in a dinky rural parish. There’s a gap there.”

“Oh.” Terry’s shoulder’s sagged. “So… do you think he’d be willing to pretend to get engaged to you?”

All three of them stared at him.

“You want me to ask Hugh Parteger to be my beard?” Clare’s voice cracked with incredulity.

“Terry, you sound as if you’ve been reading one of my Regency romances.” Mrs. Marshall shook her head. “False engagement, indeed.”

Geoffrey Burns was, for once, speechless.

“Well…” Terry’s round cheeks reddened. “It may sound silly to you, but I bet it would work. What else are we going to do?”

“Ignore it,” Clare said.

“A word into the right ear can work wonders.” Mrs. Marshall deliberately touched her eye-scorchingly lipsticked mouth. “Pretty soon, everyone who’s anyone knows the truth.”

Geoff shook his head. “The story is a lot better than the truth. People want to hear about illicit sex and murder. No, I think we’ll have to be ready with a credible threat of a defamation of character suit. This is a classic case of slander. Van Alstyne may have killed his wife, but he sure as hell didn’t have an affair with our priest.”

Clare didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Her defenders. “There is no illicit sex. There is no murder. There is no story.” She got to her feet. “I’m not a dreamy-eyed girl in the throes of her first love. I knew I couldn’t have Russ Van Alstyne. I made a choice. I chose my congregation and my position as your pastor. If you can’t appreciate that and support me now when I need you, then to hell with you.”

 
The meeting broke up very shortly afterward.

 
When Clare went out the open door of the chapter room and in the open door of her office, she discovered Elizabeth de Groot, sitting wide-eyed and well within earshot, waiting for her.

“I couldn’t help but overhear—” de Groot began.

“Go home, Elizabeth.” Clare sounded rude and didn’t care. “I’m talked out for the night. Go home to whoever it is that loves you and thank God for your blessings. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Russ’s third day as a widower started at bad and went to worse. He dragged himself down his mother’s stairs—after taking twenty minutes to dress, stupidly holding up pieces of his uniform, trying to remember how they went—to find his mom and sister whispering furtively across the kitchen table. They both jumped up to hug and squeeze him, to rub his back and inquire how he was and how he had slept, and while he appreciated their heartfelt concern, he also knew they were trying to shield him from something.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

His mother and Janet looked at each other.

“Mom?”

She turned to the coffeemaker on the counter. “Linda’s sister’s plane was delayed last night. Mike was in Albany for nine hours, waiting to pick her up.”

Considering how reluctant his brother-in-law was to leave his dairy herd’s milking to anyone else, this was a true sacrifice. Then the import of it struck him. The silence. The lack of we-have-a-guest bustle. “She didn’t come here after I conked out, did she?”

His mother, dumping spoonfuls of sugar into his mug, shook her head.

“Is she at your place?” he asked Janet. “Oh, Christ, she didn’t go to the house, did she?”

“No, no, no.” Janet let out a breath, half sigh, half exasperation. “She’s at the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls. She refused to stay with either of us. In fact, she wouldn’t even let Mike take her to the hotel. She rented a car and drove herself.”

“She drove herself? That’s nuts. She’s lived in Florida all her life. She can’t drive for shit in the snow.”

“Russell!” his mother warned.

“ ’Scuse my french, Mom. But Debbie shouldn’t be on the roads up here in January.” He turned back to Janet. “When did she decide not to stay with Mom?”

Janet’s mouth twisted. “She had reservations when she got off the plane.”

His mother snorted. “Too bad she didn’t mention that before Mike wasted a day at the airport.” She handed Russ his coffee. “Never mind. She’s heartbroke and angry, and folks do foolish things when they’re in that state.” She tilted her head back to meet her son’s eyes. “You remember that, Russell.”

That was the bad. The worse was waiting for him when he arrived at the station. He hadn’t even made it to his office when Harlene stopped him. “I got a message for you from the mayor. He wants to see you to meet with him and a few of the aldermen as soon as you set foot in the door.”

Russ checked the clock. “I got the morning briefing in twenty minutes.”

“I think you better do as he said, Chief.” Harlene, who had been known to claim she could replace all seven members of the governing board and still do a better job, looked worried. “He sounded pretty urgent.”

Russ turned around and stomped out of the station. He didn’t have far to go; the Millers Kill town offices were just down the block. The original building, an overelaborate Italianate built during the boom times of the 1870s, had been torn down in an early-fifties improvement fit, when all things Victorian were anathema. It had been replaced with a then-cutting-edge cube faced with painted aluminum panels that had not worn well over a half century of harsh Adirondack weather. Every year it looked more and more like a giant child’s building block that had been kicked around too much and left out in the rain.

Russ took the concrete steps two at a time. Inside, the furnace blast of heat steamed up his glasses and forced him to remove his coat and scarf. He went up the blurry stairs and into the secretary’s empty office, where he wiped the condensation off his glasses with the tail of his shirt, retucked it, and strode into the mayor’s room.

Jim Cameron was seated not at his modest desk but at the rectangular table that took up much of the room’s space. With him were three of the six aldermen who ran the town board and a thirty-something woman Russ had never seen before. He had time to wonder if they had replaced the town’s attorney before Jim rose, clasped his hand, and said, “Russ.”

He sounded like he was speaking in a sepulchre. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear about your wife. I just can’t imagine what you’re going through. I know if I lost Lena, I’d just…” The whole time he spoke, Jim continued to pump Russ’s hand up and down. “Anyway. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” Russ ground out.

Jim released him. “You know Garry Greuling.” The retired teacher, his scalp tanned from his annual trip to Florida, rose and shook Russ’s hand with a brief condolence. “And Ron Tucker.” Ron ran the best garage in town, and when he leaned across the table to shake hands a faint smell of oil and gasoline followed him. “This is Emiley Jensen.” The unfamiliar woman nodded to him. “And you know Bob Miles.” Miles, a public works engineer for the county, was the only one in the room, besides the strange woman, wearing a suit. Their tastes were very different, though. Bob’s ran to expensive and conservative. Her pink tweed jacket was trendy but cheap. The sort of thing Linda used to call—

He sat down.

Jim Cameron took the seat at the head of the table. “Russ, we wanted to talk with you this morning because we’re concerned about you investigating Linda’s death.” He spread his hands on the table, revealing hairy forearms. The mayor habitually worked with his shirtsleeves rolled up, as if he were about to wrestle the problems of government to the ground at any moment. “It’s a hell of a time for you personally. You ought to be at home with your family, processing your loss and dealing with your grief.”

“I appreciate your concern. But right now, the only thing I want to process is the perpetrator’s county lock-up papers.”

Cameron glanced toward Garry Greuling. Russ remembered him from high school, when he had been the super-cool science teacher who grew sideburns down to his jaw and assigned
Star Trek
as homework. “Russ,” he said, “as I recall, the department regulations say any officer who’s undergone a traumatic experience gets a minimum one-week suspension with pay.”

“They’re supposed to seek counseling, too,” Bob Miles added.

“That’s for an on-the-job event, like a shooting,” Russ said.

“Shooting a criminal is more traumatic than having your wife killed?” Miles sounded incredulous.

“Dammit, can we not tippy-toe around why we’re here?” Ron Tucker had a surprisingly soft voice for a man of his size. “Russ, everybody in town’s flapping their gums over this thing, and half of them are sayin’ you had a hand in it.”

“What?” He had once taken a bullet to the chest. The body armor he had been wearing saved his life, but the force of the impact, smashing the air out of his lungs, hammering him to the ground, had convinced him he was dying. That was how he felt now.

“Easy on,” Tucker said. “We all know it’s a load of horsepuckies. But it sure in’t gonna help your investigation any. We gotta deal with this”—he looked for the first time at the woman, who had been sitting calmly throughout the discussion—“conflict of interest.”

“Is she a lawyer?” Russ was surprised to find he still had a voice. “Does this have something to do with the town’s liability? You’re worried someone’s going to sue you if I’m not shunted off to the sidelines?”

“Slow down, Russ.” The mayor spoke quietly. “This is
Investigator
Jensen from the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation.” She tilted her head in acknowledgement. “I spoke with Captain Ireland of Troop F last night, and he told me Investigator Jensen was the woman we wanted.”

Russ looked at him, incredulous. “Wanted for what?” He glanced at Jensen. “No offense, detective, but I was working homicides while you were still learning to tie your shoes. I was born and bred here, I’ve headed up this department for seven years, and I know half of Millers Kill by name and the other half by reputation. What can you possibly bring to this investigation?”

She held up one manicured finger. “Objectivity.” A second. “The ability to function, not as your coworker or friend, but as an impartial observer.” A third finger. “Another trained investigator for an eight-man department that must be strained to the breaking point by this crime.”

“We can handle a murder investigation.”

“I didn’t mean strained to the breaking point because of the demands of the case. I meant psychologically. Emotionally.” She leaned forward, spidering her hands on the table. “Chief Van Alstyne, I guarantee you, every officer in your department is walking around with the same nasty thought in the back of his head: Could it happen to me? Is someone I love going to die next?”

He cleared his throat. “There’s no evidence we’re dealing with some sort of pattern.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s what’s here”—she tapped her heart—“and not here.” She tapped her head.

“Russ, the decision’s been made.” Jim Cameron didn’t look happy, but Russ knew that wouldn’t stop him from doing what he thought was right. “You and the department need the support, and the public needs to know that there’s someone on the case who isn’t involved personally. I want you to take Investigator Jensen back to the station and put her experience to good use.” He stood up. The rest of them followed suit. “We all want the same thing. We want the person responsible for this atrocity behind bars.”

“Or strapped to the gurney in Clinton,” Eddie Palmer mumbled.

Russ stood to one side. “Get your coat and your things,” he said to Jensen. “I’ll walk you over to the station.”

She tripped past him in high heels. He hoped she’d brought something more sensible, or her feet’d be frostbit by nightfall. The aldermen trailed her through the door. The mayor would have followed, but Russ stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“I just want to get one thing straight. Was it the gossip that decided you to call Captain Ireland at Troop F? Or did the board put you up to it?”

Cameron looked surprised. “I didn’t call Ireland,” he said. “He called me.”