All Mortal Flesh (32 page)

You have no idea
, Clare thought. Part of her—the part that was still seeing Russ look at her, troubled and speculative—wanted to weep and moan and dump on the nearest warm body. But she didn’t have that luxury. She hadn’t in a long time. Since becoming the rector of St. Alban’s.

“I wasn’t arrested,” she said. A truth. “I am considered a ‘person of interest,’ but that’s because the police have to clear anyone who was remotely involved.” A half-truth. There had been nothing in Investigator Jensen’s avid expression indicating she wanted to absolve Clare of anything.

“Mrs. Burns said you were trying to give an alibi to the police chief and so you told the whole department you two had spent the night together. She was quite overwrought.”

How did she respond to that?
Yes, I lied to the police
or
No, I really did spend the night with Russ Van Alstyne
. When did you stop beating your wife, Congressman?

“I told the state police investigator, truthfully, that there was no way Chief Van Alstyne could have murdered his wife because he was with me during the established time of death. As it turns out, he had a pretty good alibi anyway. His wife hasn’t been killed.”

“What?”

“The dead woman was a pet sitter named Audrey Keane. She and her partner were evidently deep into stolen credit cards and identity information. The police think her partner may have killed her while robbing the Van Alstynes’, then fled.” And if Dennis Shambaugh didn’t turn up, she was in the spotlight. A fugitive couldn’t remain at large for very long, could he? Her mind helpfully threw up the name of D. B. Cooper, who parachuted into the Oregon wilderness and was never seen again.

“How on earth could they get the identity of the victim wrong?” Elizabeth sounded scandalized.

“They had similar body types and hair. Close in age, too, I’d guess. They’re not sure if she was killed because she was Audrey Keane, or if she was killed because someone thought she was Linda Van Alstyne. She was”—Clare passed her hand across her face—“mutilated after she was killed.”

Elizabeth glanced nervously at Cody, who, oblivious to the increasingly gruesome conversation, was singsonging, “Big wig, big wig, big wig wide zuh woad,” along with the video.

“That’s horrific,” she said. “And up here, too, in such a pretty little town. What are the odds of that?”

“Surprisingly higher than you would think,” Clare said. “Look, you’ve got a long drive home and the weather’s getting worse. Why don’t you go ahead and call it a day? I’ll watch Cody until his parents get home.”

“This has got to be so stressful to you,” Elizabeth said, showing no signs of budging from the sofa. “Have you thought about taking some time off? Maybe going on a retreat? I know the diocese would be happy to provide a supply priest, all things considering.”

“No. Thank you. I just came back from a sort of retreat. Six days alone in a cabin in the mountains. Now I need work.” Work and love, wasn’t that what Freud called the ultimate cure?

“Not quite alone in the cabin, surely,” de Groot said in a small voice.

“Alone enough,” Clare snapped. She breathed deeply. “Alone enough to realize that right now I need to make my parishioners my priority.”

“I hope I can help you to do that,” Elizabeth said. She sat to attention, very upright and brave. “Although… won’t it be difficult to concentrate on serving them when you have criminal charges hanging over your head?”

“There are no criminal charges!”
Great. Now I sound like a shrew
.

“Because of this Shambaugh fellow, right. Who’s a suspect.” Elizabeth paused. “But what happens if—just hypothetically, mind you—whatever sort of evidence they pull together doesn’t implicate him? Will they start looking at you more seriously? I mean”—she laughed briefly, a musical ripple that went down the scale and up Clare’s nerves—“it’s silly, because what reason would you have to kill a pet sitter?”

“I wouldn’t have reason to kill anyone!”

“Of course not! I just meant—well, you said the police didn’t know if someone killed that poor woman because he or she thought she was Linda Van Alstyne. And it seems as if—and I may have this wrong, this is just the impression I’ve been getting—you’re fairly close to Mr. Van Alstyne.”

“Elizabeth, what do you want to know? Did I have sex with Russ Van Alstyne and kill his wife? No and no.”

The new deacon’s head snapped back toward Cody, but it looked as if the
s-
word didn’t interest him any more than the
k
-word had.

“Goodness,” she said.

“I’m sorry to be blunt,” Clare said, although she could think of several words that would have been a lot blunter. “It’s been a miserable day. It’s been a miserable several days, and I’m in no condition to play ring around the rosies. So let’s just cut to the chase. Did I have a relationship with Chief Van Alstyne? Yes. Was it inappropriately physical? No. Did it cross over the bounds emotionally? Yes. Have I severed our connection?”

No. Never
. God, she was an idiot. It was a good thing she believed in redemption through grace. Otherwise, she’d have to say she was simply too dumb to live.

“Yes?” Elizabeth quivered with interest.

“I thought,” she began. She had come unmoored, and the words and events of the past four days swooped and fluttered through her head like a pack of cards tossed into the air. “We agreed not to see each other—of course, with his wife dead—but she’s not, now. They’ll have a second chance to be together. That’s good, isn’t it. No contact.”

“Clare?” the deacon leaned forward. “Are you all right?”

Pull yourself together or the bishop’s not going to suspend you, he’s going to institutionalize you
. “Yes,” she said. “I’m okay.”

The phone rang in the kitchen.

“Should we… ?” Elizabeth asked.

“It might be one of the Burnses,” Clare said. She rose from the chair with almost indecent haste and went into the darkened kitchen. The phone’s number pad was lit, and it was blinking with messages.

“Burns residence,” she said.

“Clare?”

“Karen. Hi. How’s it going?”

Karen made a noise that in a less elegant woman would have been a grunt. “Do you own a medium-sized backpack? Purple camo? From L.L.Bean?”

“Ye-e-es.”

“When was the last time you carried it?”

“This past week, when I was up at Mr. Fitzgerald’s cabin. I used it as a day pack when I went snowshoeing. It should still be packed from my last time out.”

“What sort of things would you put in it?”

“What sort of things? I don’t know. The usual stuff you’d take when you’re heading out into the woods in winter. Matches, gorp, one of those heat-reflective blankets. Why?”

Karen sighed. “Because they’ve just found a knife inside your backpack. A K-Bar. Which happens to be the same sort of knife that killed Audrey Keane.”

The knife doesn’t mean anything,” Lyle MacAuley said. “K-Bars are as common as dirt. You can pick ’em up at any army surplus or hunting supply store in the state. Russ had one. I have one. Who else has one?” His voice challenged the squad room.

Kevin Flynn raised a hand. “I got one when I was a kid. I was thinking of maybe going into the marines back then.”

Lyle looked at him, surprised, over the rim of his coffee cup.

“It seemed like the cool thing to do at the time,” Kevin said defensively. “It made me feel real”—he paused—“deadly.” He lapsed into a bad Clint Eastwood impersonation. “Do you feel lucky, punk? Do ya?”

“That was a .44 Magnum,” Eric said around a mouthful of doughnut.

Kevin looked horrified. “My mom wouldn’t let me have a
gun
!”

“Thank you, Kevin,” Russ said. “I think you’ve made your point, Lyle.” He settled himself more firmly on the desktop and planted his feet on two chairs. The familiar position helped him feel less out of place in his jeans and flannel shirt.

“Her lawyer says Fergusson’s had it since her army days.” Emiley Jensen sauntered into the middle of the briefing area and stood legs wide and arms akimbo, as if to remind Russ that this was her meeting, not his. “Says she took it up to the cabin because she wanted a knife with her when she went snowshoeing.”

“That’s just being safe, when you’re out in the woods,” Lyle said.

“Good woodsmanship or not, she’s got a K-Bar. The murder weapon.”

“No,
a
K-Bar’s been identified as the murder weapon. Not hers specifically. I’ve got one missing. Dennie Shambaugh’s got one.” Russ tapped the print report laid on the desk next to him. “And according to Sergeant Morin, his prints are in my house. Clare’s aren’t.”

Jensen hooked her thumbs into her pockets. She was wearing low-slung pants instead of a skirt this morning, with a tight shirt that fell over her waistband and a cushy jacket. If she had been in his department, he would have sent her home with orders to dress like a grown-up instead of an Abercrombie and Fitch model.

“I’m going to remind you, Mr. Van Alstyne, that you’re here on sufferance. You’re still suspended from duty pending the outcome of this investigation.”

Like he needed a reminder. The empty space on his hip where his gun wasn’t was like a missing tooth, constantly drawing his hand to test if it was still gone.

“I want a time line based on what we have now,” Jensen said, turning to the whiteboard on the wall. “McCrea?”

Eric put down his white mocha latte and flipped open his notes. “There were three phone calls made from Mrs. Van Alstyne’s cell to Audrey Keane’s cell. The last one was Friday at 6:00 P.M. On Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Van Alstyne spoke with Margaret Tracey from the house’s landline. Her son, Quinn Tracey, later witnessed Audrey Keane’s vehicle parked in the Van Alstyne driveway late Sunday afternoon, just before sunset.”

“Four to four thirty,” Lyle murmured.

“We’re still waiting on the phone company to fax us Keane’s records,” Eric continued. “Mrs. Tracey finds the body about 4:00 P.M. Monday. The next significant development is at 2:00 P.M. Wednesday, when the chief surprises Dennis Shambaugh at Keane’s house.”

“I dug out Shambaugh’s case file from seven years back,” Lyle said. “Audrey Keane was his girlfriend back then, if anyone had any doubts.”

“Was Shambaugh out early on parole?” Russ asked.

Lyle nodded. “He’s still got three years to go if he violates. We’ve got a call in to his parole officer.”

“Why was he still there?” Mark asked.

Everyone looked at him.

“I mean, he’s out on parole. If he so much as runs a red light, he’s going back to Clinton. Why hang around his girlfriend’s house for forty-eight hours or more after he killed her?”

“It’s his address of record?” Eric McCrea pitched his question to the room at large, pointedly not speaking to Durkee. “If he’s not there, he’s in violation of parole.”

Lyle shook his head. “Address of record is the Lafayette Arms.” The Lafayette was a single-resident occupancy hotel in Fort Henry.

“His computer setup, then,” Eric said.

“It would’ve taken him a half hour to unplug everything and pack it into the car.” Mark turned toward Russ. “I get why he ran when he saw you, Chief. There’s gonna be enough evidence on those computers to put him away for another ten years. I just don’t get why he was still there waiting.”

“Maybe because Dennis Shambaugh didn’t kill Audrey Keane,” Jensen said. She took a dry-erase marker and underlined Keane’s name twice on the board. “It doesn’t make sense if he killed his girlfriend. But if she wasn’t the intended target—if Linda Van Alstyne was—then why should he run? There’s no report in the news that Audrey Keane has been killed. Maybe as far as he knew, his girlfriend was still alive and kicking someplace.”

“After a woman had been murdered in the house where Keane was cat-sitting?” Mark sounded dubious.

“Maybe he thought Keane killed Mrs. Van Alstyne,” Kevin suggested.

“She has no record of violence,” Lyle said. “No record of any kind.”

“Besides,” Mark said, “wouldn’t that make it more likely he would’ve cleared out? Before we came knocking on the door?”

“Enough.” Jensen raised her hands. “We need Dennis Shambaugh. Family member?”

“A whole lot of ’em,” Lyle said. “He was one of seven kids scattered between here and Buffalo. Mary Ann, Mary Beatrice, Charles, Dennis, Eugene—”

“Jesus. They sound like the road company of
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
. Okay, get on them. Friends? Acquaintances? Anybody he owes money to?”

“We’ll start with what we can get from his parole officer,” Eric said. “I’ll call Clinton and see if they have any visitors on record.”

“Good.” Jensen let her gaze travel slowly around the squad room, making sure everyone there knew he was in her sights. “We need statements from everybody he and Keane came into contact with since he got out. We need to question this Deacon Aberforth who saw Reverend Fergusson Monday afternoon, and I want a warrant to search her car and that cabin she was staying at. We’ll pick this up again tonight at five o’clock. Maybe this investigation will make better progress now we’re not all worried about where Mr. Van Alstyne is.”

He had written down the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the last five clients Linda had worked with on site. He gave it to Harlene. “I don’t expect you’ll be able to reach my cell phone much,” he said. “A lot of these places are in the mountains. If you hear anything, anything at all, and you can’t reach me, try one of these numbers. I put ’em in pretty much the order I’m gonna visit ’em.”

Harlene, who had three counties’ worth of roads in her head after thirty years on dispatch, looked up from the list. “It’s supposed to start coming down hard around lunchtime. Are you sure you want to be out driving around in a storm? Can’t you just call ’em instead?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “You know as well as I there are things you find out in person you’ll never get over the phone.”

She gave him a look that said,
Now pull the other one
.