All Mortal Flesh (4 page)

Of course, he might have been running Maddy to Rachel’s parents or to her cousin’s or to her aunt’s for a sleepover or a birthday or to go sledding. Rachel complained about her family taking over their lives at times, but she hadn’t ever

been without their wide and generous circle. He had grown up in a family that was neither warm nor close, and as soon as they could, its members scattered to the four corners, connected by nothing more than Christmas cards and a rare phone call. He liked the fact that generations of Bains made Cossayuharie their home. Times were good and bad, businesses grew and died, but they never lost sight of the fact that it was the family, first and foremost, that mattered.

Which was the gist of the screaming fight he was having with his wife when the phone call came.

“I can’t believe you’d go behind my back like this!” Mark said. “Christ on a crutch!” He rattled a letter beneath her nose. It was on a heavy vellum, with the seal of the New York State Police on the top. He didn’t have to see the body of the letter to know what it said. Since it arrived this morning, he had practically memorized the thing.

Dear Officer Durkee: I very much enjoyed our conversation at the Troy Forensics Conference. Based on the service records you forwarded to me, I’d like to invite you to apply to the NYSP with an eye to joining us here at Troop F…

“I forwarded Captain Ireland my service record?
I
did?”

Rachel shut the family room door, closing them off from Maddy, before turning on him. “For chrissakes, Mark. It’s an invitation to apply, not a death threat. I knew you’d never screw up the courage to send them your CV without a little push.”

“When were you going to tell me about this? Before or after you set an interview date for me?”

She stomped up the stairs. He followed. “What the hell’s wrong with the Millers Kill Police Department?” he asked.

She turned at the head of the stairs and glared down at him. “Mark, you’ve worked there five years now and you still can’t get moved off the dog shift.”

She disappeared into the bedroom. He trailed after her. She stripped her smock off and tossed it into the corner hamper. “Maddy’s halfway through kindergarten. Next year she’ll be in school from eight thirty until three thirty. She won’t need you at home during the day.” Rachel kicked her work shoes off into the closet. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, this day-night working thing sucks. Big time. I never get to see you.”

“You’re right. It does suck. Now explain to me how the solution to the problem is to for me to join the state police and move to Middletown.”

She unhooked her bra. He looked away, refusing to be distracted by the sight of her full breasts.

“Cut it out,” he said.

“I’ve done my research, you know. With your experience, you could skip trooper entirely and lateral in as a sergeant. You’d be making more money and actually have a chance to climb the ladder. You could be an investigator.”

“I have opportunities right here.”

“As what? The town’s so cheap they don’t even have a detective pay grade. You need to stop thinking the sun shines out of Chief Van Alstyne’s ass and to let him know that you’ve got other options.” She hooked her thumbs in her waistband and shimmied out of her bright blue work pants. “Maybe at least then they’d take your requests for a day shift seriously.”

Mark flopped back on their bed, feeling like his head might explode. He let out a strangled sound of frustration.

“No one’s saying you have to take a job with the state police. But wouldn’t it be neat to know you could?” The bed dipped as she knelt next to him, nude except for her bikini underpants. “C’mon. Try it. An application doesn’t commit you.”

Part of him—the part from the waist down—was telling him,
The gorgeous naked woman wants to have sex! Agree with her, you idiot
! The part of him above his neck noticed that this wasn’t the first time Rachel had sidetracked a heated discussion with sex. And, funny thing, he never seemed to get back to the points he had been making before they hit the sheets.

Who cares
? His groin howled.
It’s sex! Sexsexsexsex
!

He pushed himself up, off the bed. “Rache, we need to talk about this.”

“We are talking about it. You don’t want to work the graveyard shift anymore. I want you to have the recognition and opportunities you deserve.” She kneaded her hands on the bedspread and leaned forward. He had to look up at the ceiling. “You can even take the letter in, so Chief Van Alstyne can see you’re being all open and aboveboard.” The bed squeaked a little. “Now come on. We’re wasting time.
Beauty and the Beast
only has another twenty minutes.”

“Rache,” he said to the ceiling, “it’s not just contacting the staties without telling me.”

The bed stopped squeaking.

“It’s… look, I like the MKPD. I like my work. I like knowing Maddy’s five minutes away from her grandparents.” He glanced down.

Rachel’s face was very still. “Do you remember when we got married? I told you I wanted something more than to spend the rest of my life in Cossayuharie.” She rolled off the bed. “I thought you wanted that, too.” She snagged her robe off the hook on the back of the closet.

“Rache, when we got married, I was just starting out. I thought what I wanted from police work was all guts and glory. But working with the chief these past five years—I want what he has. A history with the place he’s protecting. Roots in the community.”

“A girlfriend on the side? A little late-night patrolling action?”

He clenched his hands. “Nobody’s got any proof of that. As far as I know, it’s a bunch of gossip.”

“And that’s one of the things that drives me crazy about living here. There’s no such thing as privacy in a small town.”

“Is this about your sister?” Two months ago, Rachel’s sister Lisa had lost her husband in a mill fire. That would have been bad enough as it was, but the guy had been in the mill in the first place because he had decided to try his hand at assault, kidnapping, and extortion.

“Maybe. A little. I can’t be sure, of course, because half the time when I come into the staff lounge, everybody else shuts up.”

“It’ll be old news soon, Rache. Something else will come along and start the biddies clucking.”

“It’s not just that.” She bent over her dresser and swiped it with the sleeve of her robe. “I’ve been offered another job.”

He paused. “Same place as last time?”

“No. With the Capital Medical Center trauma unit.” She straightened. “This is the third time I’ve gotten approached about a job with bigger responsibilities and better benefits. I’m getting tired of saying no just so you can grow up to be Russ Van Alstyne.”

He opened his mouth to say something. He didn’t know what it would be, just that it would be bigger and nastier and would cut her like she’d just cut him.

Then the phone rang.

“This conversation is not over,” she said, pointing a shaking finger at the bedside table.

“It might be the station.” He reached for the phone.

“Probably the chief. I’m sure he’s got lots of time to devote to work now his wife’s thrown his sorry ass out—”

“Hello,” he answered.

“Mark? It’s Lyle MacAuley.”

Mark frowned. Why would the deputy chief be calling him five hours before he was due in? “What’s up?”

“I need you to do something. Can you get away from home?”

Mark’s eyes flicked toward Rachel, who was hopping into a pair of jeans, swearing under her breath. “Yeah,” he said.

“I need you to pick up the chief and bring him to the station.”

“Pick him up? Is there something wrong with his truck?” Another oddity popped into his mind. “Hey, isn’t this his day off?”

“He’s staying at his mother’s, up where Old Route 100 crosses the river and heads toward Lake Lucerne. You know the place?”

“Yeah, but it’s gonna take me thirty minutes to drive there in this weather. Why—”

MacAuley cut him off. “His mom said he’s gone to the market. It could be the local Kwik-mart, or he might have gone all the way to the IGA. I need you to find him, get him into your vehicle, and bring him in.”

Mark stared out the window, where the snow was falling relentlessly out of a dark sky. Behind him, Rachel was still muttering baleful comments. “Lyle, what the hell is going on?”

“I’ll tell you when you get to the station. And Mark—no lights. Keep radio silence. I mean that. Don’t even turn your damn radio on.”

“But—”

“I’ll see you as soon as I can.” There was a click, and Mark was left listening to the angry buzz of a dead line.

He turned to Rachel. “I have to go.”

“Of course you do,” she said. “What’s more important than you being satisfied in your work? Certainly not anything I might have to say.” Her words whipped past him like the winter wind, annoying, but not something he paid attention to when he was thinking hard. As he was now.

What the hell was going on?

Noble Entwhistle was about as solid and unimaginative an officer as Lyle MacAuley had ever worked with. He was the guy who did the door to door, called everyone on the thirty-page phone list, worked the radar gun. If you wanted leaps of deduction or seat-of-the-pants interviewing, he was no good, but if you wanted methodical, if you wanted organized, if you wanted polite to old ladies, you wanted Noble Entwhistle.

Lyle never in a million years could have pictured him hunched over in the snow, crying snot-faced, unable to speak.

Noble had made it three steps out of the kitchen door of 398 Peekskill Road before collapsing, openmouthed and weeping. He had reholstered his flashlight but forgotten to turn it off, and now a beam of light jerked up and down as his tree-sized back shook with sobs. Fat snowflakes blazed for a moment in glory and then vanished into the deepening drifts on the ground.

None of the three police vehicles parked in the drive had its lights on. Lyle had radioed them to go dark almost as soon as he had gotten the brief from Harlene, their dispatcher. Instead, he had left the mudroom door, open when they arrived, pushed wide. Warm light spilling out. Cold air seeping in.

“Jesus, Noble,” he said. “Try to pull it together.”

Noble twisted his head in Lyle’s direction. “Pull it together,” he gasped out. “Did you… did you see her? Her face is just
gone
.”

Lyle, shadowed against the bright light spilling from the mudroom and screened by the fast-falling snow, knew he was no more than a blur to his officer. And thank God for it. His self-control was hanging by a thread. One wrong word, one tiny misstep, and he was going to lose it as bad as Noble. Poor sonofabitch. He racked up his voice to make a steady shot. “I saw her.” Butchered like an animal. “You’re not going to help her by falling apart.”

He scanned the road. A lone car drove toward them, slowed down, and kept on going. Good. He heard the muffled crunch of boots through loose and packed layers of snow. “Whaddya got, Eric?”

“I completed the friend’s statement.” Officer Eric McCrea’s features emerged out of the darkness as he plodded toward the long rectangle of light. “Are you sure you don’t want me to run her down to the station and get it on video?”

“No.”

Eric leaned in closer, as if to pierce the shadow cast by the brim of Lyle’s cap. “This is not the time for shortcuts. We’re going to catch the fucker who did this, and when we do, we don’t want him getting off because we were half-assed putting the evidence together.”

Lyle drew in a breath to ream McCrea out, but cut it short with a click of his teeth. It wasn’t his fault. He was on edge. They all were. And Lyle wasn’t going to be able to carry this off by himself. He was going to need one or two others backing him up. Containment—that was going to be the trick.

“Well?” Eric demanded.

A brilliant splash of light broke their stare-off. Another vehicle was churning up the driveway’s slope, its headlights bouncing through the billows of white.

“Shit. That’s Kevin Flynn’s truck.” Lyle glared at McCrea. “Did you call him?”

“No. But what if I did? What the hell’s the deal, MacAuley?”

The almost-new Aztek looked like what it was, the prize possession of a boy who got his first learner’s permit seven years ago. It rumbled to a stop behind McCrea’s badly angled squad car, and Flynn jumped out. Kevin, the most junior officer of the Millers Kill Police Department, was finally getting enough meat on his bones to lessen his resemblance to a six-foot Howdy Doody puppet. In an effort to look older than sixteen, he had lately grown a soul patch, a would-be-cool square of facial hair beneath his lower lip. Unfortunately, Flynn’s facial hair was the same color as the stuff on top, and he now looked—to Lyle’s old and uncool eyes, at least—as if he had an enormous furry freckle on his chin.

“Harlene called me! On my cell phone!” Kevin kicked through the snow, his face open and eager. “I told her I wasn’t working today, but she said to get over here. Whadda we doing at the chief’s house?” He had gotten close enough to finally make out Lyle’s and Eric’s expressions. He frowned. “Guys? What’s up?”

Harlene called him. Lyle’s heart sank. Christ, she was probably ringing up every guy on the force to pitch in. How the hell was he going to manage this now?

Behind him, Noble lurched upright, a messy, tear-sodden bear emerging from its den. Flynn saw him. “Noble?” He turned to Lyle. He looked scared. “Is it… is it the chief?”

“No.”

The one-word answer didn’t do anything to relieve the anxiety on Kevin’s face. Lyle breathed in and tried again. “The chief is fine, Kevin. We’re trying to… deal with a crime scene here without drawing too much attention to ourselves.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Eric’s jaw swing open. “This is what you can do for me. Take your truck and park it at the intersection of Peekskill and River Road. You got your flares?”

Kevin nodded.

“Good. I’ve called in the state police CS unit. They’re going to be sending a van and a couple of techs, and I want you to be on the lookout for ’em. You know how it can be with people from away driving these country roads. You send ’em up here. Can you do that?”