I Shall Not Want (20 page)

Her sexton froze behind the vacuum cleaner. His caramel skin was pasty, throwing his scraggly beard and mustache into high relief. Clare doubted he understood anything they had said, but he didn’t need to. The smell of violence clung to the intruders, filling the church. The kid shivered, toppled the vacuum into the aisle, and rabbited toward the hallway behind him.

“Hey!” ZZ Top roared. He and the mullet accelerated down the center aisle. Clare, seeing five hundred pounds of good ol‘ boy bearing down on her, whirled and dashed for the same doorway Amado had disappeared through. Hide. Where? Everything still unlocked had to be locked by key. She’d never have—

Just short of the door, she lunged sideways, to where the processional cross and torches were cradled in their wooden brackets. She grabbed the processional cross and spun back toward the invaders. “Stop!” she shouted. Amazingly, they did so.

She held the heavy six-foot-long oak staff cross-braced in her hands, barring the way like Little John at the ford. The gleaming cross screwed atop it was a foot high, cast in solid bronze, weighty enough to break bones. “Get out of here,” she said, her voice hard.

“What are you, a ninja? Get outta my way,” the mullet said. He feinted toward the door she blocked. Clare rammed the butt of the staff into his chest and, as he folded with an explosion of hacking coughs, hit him over the head with a crack that sounded like a branch being snapped in two. He dropped.

“What the hell!” The bearded guy stared at the fallen man. “What did you do to my brother, you bitch?”

He lunged toward her. She tried the ramming trick again, but he dodged left, reaching for the staff. She let it drop out of one hand and swung it low with the other, slamming into his knees and calves, hard enough to hurt, not—
dammit all
!—hard enough to cripple him.

“You goddamn bitch!” He lurched forward, hands outstretched, deflecting her blows with forearms, left, right, left. She was backed against the wall beside the door, unable to get the leverage to make them count. He got his hands on the processional cross and shook, hard, Clare clinging on, jerking back and forth, knowing if she let go he’d use it to beat her unconscious. Bad breath and spittle and a stream of monotonously vile words spewed into her face. She brought her head back and then forward, fast, her forehead connecting to his nose with a crunch that left her eyes watering.

He howled. Rammed himself into her, oaken staff and all, splattering her with the blood running out his nose and driving the breath from her body. She stomped, stomped again, trying to get his instep, his foot, anything.

She heard a loud click.

“Step away from her or I blow your brains out,” Russ said.

The bearded man let her go. Raised his hands. Stepped back. Clare sagged against the wall, clinging to the cross.

“On the floor,” Russ said.

The bearded man looked at him sullenly. “She attacked me! I was just—”

Russ holstered his Glock, drew back his arm, and smashed his fist into the side of the man’s head. Clare shrieked. The bearded man reeled, and Russ punched him, once, twice, his back and shoulders working, until the attacker fell to his knees. Russ reached for him, twisting his fists in the front of his sweatshirt, ready to haul him up and pound him again. Clare dropped the processional cross and grabbed Russ’s arm, trying, without much success, to drag him away from the injured man.

“Stop!” she said, her voice a strangled whisper in her throat. “Stop!”

He looked at her with eyes she didn’t recognize. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s not my blood. He was after Amado, not me. It’s not my blood. I’m okay.”

He shook himself. Looked at Clare’s assailant, who was bleeding copiously into his beard. Released his sweatshirt. “Down on the floor,” Russ said. The man slumped forward without protest this time, spread-eagled on the polished wood.

From outside, she heard the rising and falling of a siren. Russ yanked at the handcuffs on his belt. He got down on one knee and clicked them around the bearded man’s beefy wrists. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said.

She raised the cross off the floor with shaking hands.

“You have the right to an attorney.”

The intricate bronze work was spotless.

“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”

She drew her sleeve across her mouth, wiping away the blood and spittle, and kissed it.

“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

In thanksgiving. In apology.

The siren broke off, and a moment later the inner doors swung open. Kevin Flynn charged into the nave, his gun out, followed by Amado, who stayed well behind, clutching his cast.

“Call an ambulance, Kevin,” Russ said, levering himself off his knee. The younger officer skidded to a stop, his eyes widening at the prone bodies and blood-spattered floor.

“What the—?” He looked at Russ. “What happened?”

Russ glanced at the two on the floor. Then at her. “They were stupid enough to mess with Reverend Fergusson.”

Her kitchen light was on. He hadn’t known if it would be. It had been at least two hours since he had stalked out of St. Alban’s, his arms still spasming with unspent rage, his head pounding blackly behind his eyes. He had walked—across the street, into the park, around the circle—while Paul Urquhart arrived and Kevin took Clare’s statement and the EMTs loaded the two Christies into the ambulance. He finally cooled off enough to be sure he wasn’t going to break his hand hitting a wall, and went back to question the young sexton, who was both terrified and bewildered by the Christies’ interest in him.

They hadn’t gotten anything out of the Christies, of course—well, out of Donald, who was the only one able to talk. Neil was still unconscious. Russ hadn’t been as neat and efficient as Clare. When she put a man down, he stayed down.

Christ, wasn’t that the truth.

The Christies were in the Washington County Hospital, waiting for their lawyer and their medical releases before Urquhart transported them to the county jail. Their would-be victim, despite Russ’s glowering and Kevin’s offer to take him back to the old farmhouse on Lick Spring Road, was bunking at the rectory tonight, at the insistence of his employer and savior. When Russ had seen the hero worship in the kid’s eyes, his warnings about Clare putting Amado up fell flat. After this evening, her latest charity case would cheerfully take a bullet for her.

Another poor sonofabitch down for the count.

Now he was sitting in the cab of his truck, pulled over across the street, looking at the rectory. It was dark, except for a single lamp deep inside the living room and the kitchen light shining out the side door.

He pulled into her drive, butting up snug against the rear of her Subaru. He got out, closing his door with a solid
thunk
, letting her know he was coming. He saw a shadow at the kitchen door, and as he trudged up the steps, he heard the sound of a bolt turning and a chain rattling as it was drawn away. She opened the door to him.

“You locked your door,” he said, like an idiot.

“Yeah.”

He stepped inside. The kitchen smelled of chocolate and peppermint. “You never lock your door.”

“You’ve been after me about it for three years now. Eventually, even I can learn something new.” She looked up at him. “I’m not going to just let someone waltz in here and hurt me.”

He stared at his boots until she walked back to the white enamel stove. Her feet were bare. She was wearing a blue and white seersucker robe loose over mint-green pajamas. “I didn’t know if you’d still be up,” he said.

“I couldn’t fall asleep.” She glanced at the ceiling, to where, presumably, her guest was dreaming of happier days south of the border. Although she kept her voice low, so maybe he wasn’t asleep yet, either. “I got Amado settled in, but my mind was going a mile a minute, so I decided to come downstairs and make hot cocoa.” She gestured to a mug on the white counter. HELICOPTER PILOTS DO IT WITH BOTH HANDS, it read. There was a bottle of peppermint schnapps and an open carton of eggs next to it. “I still have some in the pan, if you’d like a mug.”

“No, thanks,” he said.

“It’s nonalcoholic. I put the schnapps in afterward.” She took a long drink from her own mug.

“I’m not staying long,” he said, even as he shucked his jacket and dropped it on the back of one of the chairs drawn haphazardly against the heavy pine table.

She shrugged. “More for me.” She took another pull from her drink and turned toward the stove. He heard the
click-click-click
of the gas jet, and then the pilot caught and a blue flame shot up from the black iron burner. She turned it down and slid a cobalt-blue omelet pan over the heat.

“How’re you doing?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said. She reached for the egg carton. Cracked an egg into a grass-green ceramic bowl. “Grab the milk out of the fridge for me, will you?”

Her twenty-year-old refrigerator was almost buried beneath photos, clippings, comics, and brochures. He figured the whole appliance was held together by magnetic force at this point.

He set the carton on the counter next to where she was now whisking eggs furiously in the bowl. She took another drink of hot cocoa before slopping a measure of milk into the frothing eggs. He eyeballed the schnapps bottle. It was more empty than full.

She cracked pepper from a scarlet peppermill into the mixture and then beat it as if it might get up and walk away if not subdued. She crossed to the refrigerator, popped it open, and retrieved a lump of greasy white paper, which, unwrapped, proved to be a lump of greasy white something else. She hacked off a piece of it and dropped it into the omelet pan. It snapped and sizzled.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Pig fat,” she said, taking another swig of hot cocoa. She bottomed out the mug and looked into it, frowning. “You can’t make comfort food without pig fat.” He noticed her Virginia accent was more pronounced. She took a spoon from the drainboard, stirred the pan at the back of the stove, and poured more hot cocoa into her mug. She unscrewed the schnapps and added a liberal splash.

“Don’t you think you ought to ease up on that?”

She turned on him. Cocked her fist against one hip. “Maybe I should relax by beating somebody to a pulp instead?”

“Christ, Clare, you were the one who broke his nose!”

“I was defending myself. What’s your excuse?”

He inhaled, took his glasses off, and rubbed them on his shirtfront. “I don’t have any excuse.” He tossed his glasses onto the pine tabletop and ran both hands through his hair, tugging at it, hard. “God knows, I already feel bad enough without you laying into me. If one of my officers had done that, I’da had him on suspension by now.” He dragged a chair out and dropped into it. “I don’t know what got into me. I just don’t know.” He stared at his hands. In the glow of the hanging lamp, he could see the nicks and scars from every accident he’d ever had. The knuckles of his right hand were reddened and puffy and aching.

“Do you want some ice for that?” she said, her voice quiet.

“No.” He flexed his fingers into a fist and opened them again. “I want it to hurt.”

She sighed. He heard the sizzling pan slide off its burner. He heard her bare feet as she crossed the floor. Then her hand settled over his, light and warm. “What did you come here for, Russ? Absolution?”

He shook his head. “I wanted to… make sure you were okay.” He folded his hands on the table and stared at them. She hesitated for a moment, then touched his hair, her fingers stroking him like you’d pet a cat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess that was…”

She gave him time to finish, but he had no idea what he was saying. She sighed again. “I can’t solve your problems, dear heart. I’m part of them.”

He looked up at her, then. “No,” he said. “Never that. It’s me. I’m… stuck. I’m like an old truck up to its hubcaps in snow. I go forward, I go back, nothing ever changes or shakes loose, and the whole time I’m cold, inside and out. The only time I feel anything is when I’m angry. And that scares the crap out of me.”

Her hand never stopped moving over his hair. “How do you feel now?”

He studied her face. Let himself feel for a moment. “Naked. Sometimes you scare the crap out of me, too.”

She laughed a little. He pressed his palms against the table and pushed himself up. She stepped back. “I better head home,” he said. “I think I’ve reached my maximum daily limit of honesty.” He pushed the chair back into place. “If you hear or see anything, anything at all, that makes you nervous, call nine-one-one. And call me. We’d rather come out on a false alarm than see you get into trouble again.”

She smiled, one-sided. “Thank you, Chief Van Alstyne.”

He covered his eyes with one hand. “Christ, I’m pitiful, aren’t I?”

He felt her arms go around him. She hugged him, something she probably wouldn’t have done without the encouragement of the schnapps. “No,” she said. “You’re human. And someday, when you can admit that to yourself, you’ll stop feeling so bad that you can’t save everyone.”

He looked down at her, about to say that sounded like a pretty damn accurate description of her, but her eyes were X-raying through him, and her pointed half smile said
I know you
.

He didn’t let himself think. He kissed her. As lightly and briefly as one of her blessings. A thanksgiving and an apology. Then he lifted his head and saw her face, tipped back like the survivor of a long winter on the first day of hot spring sunshine. “Clare,” he said, his voice thick. She opened her eyes, full of heat, and just like that the desperate desire he thought he’d never feel again flamed to life like blue gas jetting out of cold iron.

He dug his fingers into her hair and pulled her to him, kissing her, deep, hungry kisses that tasted of chocolate and peppermint. She moaned in the back of her throat and wrestled her hands free from around his waist to twine them about his neck. He bumped against the kitchen table and bent her back, kissing her, kissing her, her mouth and her jaw and the pulse trip-hammering in her throat. He felt something huge and powerful racing through him, sparking every nerve end, blanking out everything in the world except Clare, the taste of her, the sound of her, panting and gasping, the feel of her, oh, God, better than anything he had ever fantasized, as he yanked open her pajama top and pushed it aside and touched her, touched her, touched her.