I Shall Not Want (27 page)

A clatter on the stairs, and Genny trotted into the kitchen, holding a pair of dress boots Hadley had picked up on sale at Wal-Mart a week after they arrived in the North Country. “Mom, will you help me zip up my boots?”

Hadley pulled out a kitchen chair and deposited her daughter in it. “Lovey, it’s June. We don’t wear boots in June.”

“But these are Hello Kitty boots. And I have a Hello Kitty shirt on.”

She couldn’t argue with that. “What about the sandals Grampy got you?”

Geneva gave her a look like Joan Rivers dissecting a badly dressed actress on Oscar night. “Those are Strawberry Shortcake sandals. Strawberry Shortcake is for preschool. I’m in first grade.” She wriggled the boots on and stuck her legs out.

Hadley weighed the teacher’s reaction to the unseasonable footwear versus the time lost convincing Geneva to change her mind, and decided she could live with Mrs. Flaherty thinking she was a neglectful mother. She zipped the boots. “You get your cereal and I’ll help you with the milk,” she said. She strode through the family room to the foot of the stairs and yelled, “Hudson!”

He emerged from his room, an overfull backpack swinging from one shoulder, clutching a fistful of papers. “I need signatures,” he said, handing them to her. “And two checks.” Behind him, she could hear Granddad thumping down the hall.

Hadley examined the papers as she followed her son into the kitchen. Permission slip for a field trip to Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Cost, ten bucks. Permission slip for a field trip to the Mohawk Canal museum. Cost, five bucks. So much for getting her hair cut this week. A notice of upcoming field days—please make sure your child is adequately sun-screened. She dropped the forms on the table and poured milk into Genny’s bowl, holding it away from herself to avoid splashing her uniform. “I don’t know why they bother to have school into June,” she said to Hudson. “You’re not spending any time there.”

She grabbed her checkbook from the tote and started filling out the forms. “You should have given these to me last night,” she told her son, who was steam-shoveling spoonfuls of cereal into his mouth. He nodded.

“Hey, Honey,” Granddad called from the family room. “Come on in here and check this out.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Your police department’s on the channel six news.”

Hudson and Genny both looked up, eyes wide. “Finish your breakfast,” Hadley ordered, even as they slipped from their chairs and ran into the next room. “I am not driving you to school,” Hadley warned, following them. “You’re out the door at five to eight whether you’ve finished breakfast or—”

She broke off. A streaked blonde in a pink jacket was breathlessly talking into a microphone in front of the MKPD. Before Hadley had a chance to hear what she said, the picture changed to dawn breaking over the Muster Field. “This was the site where the second and third bodies were found.” The blonde, wearing a trench coat in this shot, turned to an “area resident who witnessed the recovery of the victims.” She thrust the mic toward a heavyset man who seemed excited about his moment of fame, despite the early hour. He launched into a description of the events of Sunday afternoon.

“Mom, we didn’t see any bodies,” Hudson complained.

“That’s ‘cause we went home like sensible people once they found the Burns boy,” Granddad said.

The screen switched back to the MKPD. “Mom, look!” Hudson said. “Maybe you’ll be on TV, too!”

God forbid.

“Could this be the work of a serial killer?” the reporter asked the camera. “So far, the Millers Kill police refuse to confirm or deny the possibility. But meanwhile, the residents of this far-flung rural township watch. And wait. And wonder. This is Sheena Bevins, WREB News.” The screen switched to the anchor.

“Mom, what’s a serial killer?” Genny asked.

“Someone who puts poison in cereal.” Hudson leered menacingly. “You may have already eaten it. Do you feel sick?”

Genny shrieked.

“Stop it,” Hadley said. “Both of you, into the kitchen and finish your breakfast.”

Granddad shook his head. “What’s this world comin‘ to?” He heaved himself up out of his recliner. “You any closer to solving this?”

“We’ve got nothing.” Hadley flopped her checkbook open against the top of the television and began to write out the field trip payments. “We don’t even have an identity for the first guy.” She ripped the checks out and folded them in the permission slips as she crossed the kitchen. “Upstairs and brush your teeth, you two,” she said, zipping the papers into Hudson’s backpack. She scooped up the bowls—still half full of milk and cereal, in Genny’s case—and dumped them in the sink.

“I’ll take care of those,” Granddad said. “You better get going. They’re going to need you at the station.”

Granddad was convinced she was one rung below the deputy chief at the department. He seemed to think her twice-weekly trips to Albany were some sort of high-level investigator’s training, instead of Police Basic. Albany. Tonight. Shit. That meant she had to fill up her gas tank.

She ran up the stairs to her room, pausing just long enough to stick her head into the bathroom and say, “Brush!” without checking to see what the kids were actually doing. She had five bucks and change in a mug on her dresser. She emptied it into her pocket and then took her gun safe down from the closet shelf. She didn’t like to put on her belt before the kids left for school, but it couldn’t be helped when they were running late. She unlocked the safe box, checked the gun just like her instructor had told her, and snapped it into its holster. She wondered if she would ever feel at ease with the thing. She made sure everything else was secure—baton, cuffs, radio mount, ammo pouch—then buckled it on. She twitched the rig around a few times to try to get more comfortable, then banged on the wall adjoining the bathroom. “Finish up!” she yelled. “It’s bus time!”

Geneva bolted past her as she left the bedroom, with Hudson following. He eyed her rig. “Ooh, Mom,” he said. “Could I—”

She held up one finger. “No. I don’t even want you to ask. If you ask again, you’re getting a consequence.”

He gave her a Look and slumped downstairs, muttering just quietly enough for her to ignore it. In the kitchen, the kids shouldered their backpacks and kissed their grampy, who had abandoned the morning news long enough to make coffee. The pills lay untouched in the cup. “Take your medicine,” Hadley said. “And no smoking!”

“I’m not smokin‘ no more,” he said, with the same expression Hudson got when he was lying.

“I’ll try to get home at lunchtime and return the cans and bottles.” She kissed Granddad. The deposit money and what she had in her pocket should get her to Albany and back. She hoped. She shooed the kids out the door before her and tossed her tote into the back of the car. The bus rumbled to a stop and Hudson and Genny climbed aboard without a backward glance—which, she supposed, was a good thing.

She spent the five-minute drive to the station worrying about what she was going to do for child care over the summer. Granddad was going back to work sooner rather than later, and even in a small town she didn’t want to leave Genny and Hudson home several hours a day. The Millers Kill recreation department had a seven-week day camp that sounded perfect, except that it was four hundred per kid. The sight of the TV vans parked in front of the station put an end to her pity party. There were three reporter/cameraman pairs on the front steps that she could see, bringing traffic to a near standstill as drivers on their way to work slowed down to rubberneck.

She pulled into the lot that ran beside and behind the station and killed her engine. She sat, hands still wrapped around the steering wheel, wondering how in hell she was going to get by those people without getting caught on camera.

A flash of copper near the asphalt caught Hadley’s eye. Kevin Flynn’s disembodied head rose from the edge of the parking lot.
What the hell
? He beckoned to her. She slid out of her car, snagging her tote bag, and hiked toward him. He was, she saw as she got closer, standing in a stairwell. Rotting leaves drifted over half the cement steps. At the bottom, a door stood ajar.

“In here,” he said.

She didn’t need to be told twice. She descended carefully so as not to slip on the leaves and ducked inside, Kevin treading on her heels. She was, she found, next to the evidence locker.

“They used to have cells on this floor in the olden days,” Flynn explained, tugging the heavy door back into place. “This was the way they took prisoners out.”

In the enclosed area, Flynn towered over her. She moved forward, well away from his body space, out of reach. She had decided she was going to approach him with a kind of big-sister courtesy unless and until he hit on her again. Cold and standoffish was a turn-on for some guys, and while she didn’t think Flynn was like that, she wasn’t taking any chances. She figured if she treated him like everyone else on the force did—as if he were sixteen years old—he’d get over his crush fast.

“Thanks for sneaking me in,” she said. She threaded her way past file boxes stacked three deep against the wall and headed for the stairs. “When did the reporters show up?”

“They were here when I got in,” he said, his voice echoing along the subterranean hallway. “The chief’s not a happy guy right now.”

At the foot of the stairs, she paused. Almost made him go up first. Then she pictured the two of them maneuvering around each other, changing positions. The hell with it. She mounted the stairs. If he wanted to get an eyeful of her brown poly-clad ass, so be it.

She could hear voices coming from Harlene’s dispatch when she got to the top. “—gotta make a statement,” MacAuley was saying.

“I know, I know.” That was the chief.

She walked in and was surprised to see the deputy chief spiffed up in the brown wool uniform jacket none of them ever wore, his cap tucked beneath his arm.

“Morning,” she said.

Harlene rolled her chair away from the board and stood up. “Looks like I better make more coffee.”

“Don’t bother on my account!” Hadley called after her, but it was too late.

The chief frowned at her. “Did you say anything to the reporters coming in?”

She shifted her tote bag to her other arm. “No, sir.” She could feel a solid mass in the doorway behind her, and knew, without turning, it was Kevin Flynn. “Flynn let me in through a downstairs door. By the evidence locker.”

MacAuley raised his brushy eyebrows. “How’d you know to let her in?” He directed the question well over her head.

“Um.” Flynn’s boots scraped the floor. “I was watching. From the interview room.”

MacAuley and the chief looked at each other. The chief opened his mouth.

“I really appreciated it.” Hadley leaped in before the chief could say anything. She spoke in a just-us-grown-ups tone, as if she were talking to Hudson’s teacher with him standing there. “He’s a thoughtful kid.”

“Mmm.” The chief gave Flynn one more considering look before turning back to MacAuley. “You sure you know everything you’re going to give them?”

MacAuley flicked an invisible piece of lint from his hat. “You want to talk to them? Go right ahead.”

“Hell, no,” the chief said. “I’ve seen myself on camera. I always look like I’m about to grab the mike and start threatening people with it.”

“Then trust me. I’m good at this.” MacAuley buffed the bill of his already shining cap on his sleeve and settled it square on his head. He stood up straight, tugging his jacket into place, and was transformed from his usual sly, slouching self to a gray-haired diplomat for law enforcement. He immediately spoiled the effect by winking at them. “Once more into the breach, dear friends.”

“C’mon,” the chief said, as MacAuley sauntered down the hall toward the station entrance. “Let’s get into the briefing room and catch everybody up.”

“Everybody” consisted of Eric McCrea, leafing through the Glens Falls Area phone book and jotting down addresses and numbers in his notebook. “Lyle and I have already gone over things this morning,” the chief said, tossing his folders on the table. “We got the report from Doc Scheeler on John Doe three’s fillings. The amalgam’s contemporary, no more’n five years old. Which jibes with Scheeler’s estimate of his age as between twenty-one and twenty-five. We have DNA samples from both bodies taken from behind the Muster Field, and the state lab’ll be happy to run a comparison for us within two to three years.”

Flynn groaned.

“What about dental records?” Hadley asked. It was a lot easier to risk sounding dumb when most of the force was someplace else.

“Dental records are great when you’re comparing an unknown victim to a known missing person. They’re useless in tracking down an identity. We’d have to go through every dental office in New York State—assuming this guy was from New York. Where we are, he could just as easily be from Canada or northern New England.”

“Anything on John Doe one?” Flynn didn’t sound hopeful.

“No.” The chief sat on the table and planted his boots against a chair seat. “It’s making me nuts. We got prints. We got those damn tattoos. Even if there’s no—” he cut himself off. Hadley was pretty sure the rest of the sentence would have been
connection with the guys Knox saw
. No one believed she had seen the same tattoos on Stud Boy: Santiago. She didn’t know why that bothered her. It shouldn’t matter. She got paid whether they caught whoever did this or not.

“John Doe one did time,” the chief went on. “I’m sure of it. So why don’t we have an ID for him yet?”

It was a rhetorical question. Hadley and Flynn looked at each other. “Eric.” The chief pitched his voice to include McCrea. “You got anything to add?”

“Hadley and I interviewed the members of the volunteer search-and-rescue team yesterday. No one noticed anything unusual.”

Hadley didn’t realize she was making a face until the chief asked her, “What is it?”

She glanced toward McCrea. He grinned. “John Huggins wanted to know what a sweet little thing like Officer Knox was doing on the force.”

The chief pinched the bridge of his nose. “Huggins has some… difficulties with women that don’t fit his—ah, traditional ideas.” He looked at Hadley. “He’s harmless, though. And our departments often work closely together, so let’s try to keep things civil.”