In the Bleak Midwinter (24 page)

A girl with a toddler balanced on her hip trudged past Clare, ignoring the unusual sports car, intent on keeping her cigarette ash from blowing into the child’s face. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and Clare wondered if it was choice or a lack of them that kept her out of school. This was the sort of young woman and child her proposed program could help, if she could only get the vestry behind her. She blew out her breath in frustration.

A slamming door jerked her back to the here and now. Kristen had arrived. Clare killed the engine and slid out of her car. Kristen walked around the MG, her eyes wide, nodding. “This is your car?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Wow. Way cool. I didn’t think priests had enough money for this sort of thing.”

Clare laughed. “I don’t. I’ve had it for seven years and if something big goes, I’ll be in deep pockets. I really ought to sell it and get something more practical.”

“Must be lousy in the snow.” Kristen opened the passenger-side door and peered in at the leather interior. “But, oh, man, it sure has some style.”

Clare caressed the curve of the hood. “It sure does, doesn’t it?”

Kristen clicked the lock and slammed the door shut. She pointed to Clare’s side. “You oughtta lock up around here.” She glanced up at the third story windows while Clare complied.

“Are you ready for this, Kristen?” Clare asked, picking her way over the sidewalk snowbank to keep her boots dry.

“No. I feel kinda sick to my stomach, to tell you the truth. But I’m here, so hey. Let’s do it.”

Mrs. McWhorter buzzed them up without comment. The stairs were steep and poorly lit, and Clare wondered if this place could pass a municipal safety inspection. Did Millers Kill have safety inspectors?

The door to 4A swung open at Kristen’s knock.

“Hello, Ma,” she said, her voice forcibly calm. Clare tried to school her shock at the size of the woman who embraced the ramrod-stiff girl.

Brenda McWhorter pulled away from her surviving daughter, her expression a mixture of hurt and frustration. “Aw, Kristen, don’t be like that.” Her eyes flickered to where Clare stood in the hall. “Aw, now don’t tell me you’ve brought a cop with you. Krissie…”

“She’s not a cop, Ma, she’s a priest. She’s the one who was there the night they found Katie’s—the night they found Katie. She’s been helping me out. This is Reverend Clare Fergusson.”

Clare stuck out her hand. “Mrs. McWhorter,” she said, rummaging for something to say. “Pleased to meet you” and “Sorry about your husband” seemed grotesquely inappropriate under the circumstances. “I’m so very sorry about your recent losses,” she said. “From everything I’ve heard, Katie was an exceptional girl. She’ll be missed.”
And as for your husband, good riddance to bad rubbish
, Grandmother Fergusson added.

Brenda McWhorter shook hands and led Kristen and Clare into the apartment. They bunched awkwardly in front of a massive maple sideboard. “Well, go ahead, take your coats off,” Mrs. McWhorter said, gesturing toward a row of hooks by the door. “Same place, nothin’s changed since you left.”

Kristen rolled her eyes but obediently gathered up Clare’s bomber jacket and hung it alongside her own bulky coat.

“What interesting pieces you have,” Clare said. “They look like antiques.”

Brenda surveyed her kingdom. “They were my parents’. Came from the big farmhouse we had out toward Cossayaharie. We had to sell it when my dad passed, but I kept some of the furniture.”

Kristen plunked herself into the narrow Victorian settee and crossed her arms. “What are you gonna do now that he’s gone, Ma? Move back out to Aunt Pat’s? Get a job? What?”

Her mother sat, an operation that required her to lower her center of gravity over a well-used, well-sprung chair and then drop in a controlled fall. “Well, honey, I thought I’d stay right here. I know that we’ve had some problems in the past, but I figured now your daddy’s gone you and I can take up again, get to be friends. I got enough money to keep me…”

Clare sat on a cane-seated ladder chair, her face composed and pleasant, wondering how another human being could let herself get that large. She shifted in her chair. No, that wasn’t fair. Not everyone grew up in an active family and started off in a career that demanded physical fitness. On the other hand, basic self-respect should get you off the sofa and on your feet—she twitched. She didn’t call alcoholism a lack of self-respect. She shouldn’t see obesity that way, either. If some people didn’t have the discipline to push away from the table after a third helping—her cheeks warmed at her persistent failure of compassion. Dear God, she thought, help me to accept as Christ accepted. Keep my mind on helping, not judging. And remind me to put in a five-mile run this evening.

Kristen was going over her mother’s financial situation, asking to look over the pension and insurance documents, quizzing her on any other benefits. Mrs. McWhorter was at best vague about money matters.

“Ma, you’re going to have to learn to keep a checkbook now. Come on down to the bank tomorrow and I’ll set you up. That way, I can help you balance your account for awhile. You got the information on the CDs and the savings? Can I see it, please?”

Mrs. McWhorter heaved herself up from her chair and waddled down the hall. “Isn’t she smart?” she tossed back to Clare.

Clare turned to Kristen, still sitting back with her arms crossed defensively over her chest. “You are smart about finances,” she said.

“Everybody’s good about something, they say. I like it. I like numbers.”

“So consistent, aren’t they? So easy to control.” Kristen shot her a look. Clare went on. “It can be a lot easier to throw yourself into your work than to face personal problems, have you noticed that? It’s comfortable and distracting.”

Kristen shot up from the settee and threaded her way through the heavy furniture to the pass-through kitchen. “You want something to drink? I know Ma’s got soda in here.”

“I’m fine. Are you going to ask your mother about what she’d like for the funerals?”

Brenda McWhorter lumbered up the hallway, a sheaf of papers and envelopes in her hand. She stopped dead at Clare’s words. “Aw, Krissie,” she said. “We do gotta talk about that. You’re gonna take care of the details, aren’t you, honey? You know I’m no good at that sort of thing.”

Kristen slammed the refrigerator door with enough force to set the contents rattling. “Yeah, Ma, I’m gonna take care of the details. I know you’re no good at that sort of thing.” Her voice began to crack. “You don’t like to deal with life’s crappy little details.” She slammed a liter bottle of orange soda on the counter and knocked over two plastic glasses in the drainboard before grabbing hold of one.

“Krissie…”

“Ma, I’m the kid here, remember? You’re the mom. You’re supposed to be taking care of me, not the other way around.” The soda slopped over the pebbled sides of the glass. “You were supposed to take care of me and Katie and I gotta tell you, Ma, you did a piss-poor job of it.” A barking sob escaped her before she covered her mouth.

“Krissie…” Brenda’s hands fluttered ineffectually. Clare suddenly saw, very clearly, the small woman inside that bulky disguise. Had she done that to herself? Or was it more of Darrell’s handiwork? “I tried… you don’t understand. You never understood what it was like to need someone.” She looked down at the paperwork charting how her and Darrell’s money had grown over the years. She looked beseechingly toward Clare. “In a lot of ways, he was a real good husband and father.”

Clare clenched her teeth tightly to keep her gorge down.

“Ma, I gotta know. Was he doing Katie? Did he start messing with her after I moved out?”

“Kristen! How can you say that!”

Her daughter leaned over the speckled countertop, hands braced. “I know. We never say that, do we? We none of us ever came right out and said what was happening, did we? Not even Katie and me. Did he, Ma? Did he?”

Brenda dropped her gaze to the carpet and shook her head. “He… I dunno if Katie told him something or if it was… if it was just you. He was good around Katie.” She looked up at her daughter again. “I couldn’t lose him, Krissie. I didn’t think…” She looked at the papers in her hand. “I didn’t think about it, that’s all. You gotta learn to overlook some things when you’re married. He took good care of me, and he loved me.” She started to cry.

“Aw, Ma. Jesus, Ma. You didn’t think about it.” Kristen plodded around the counter and put her arms as far around her mother as she could. “Ma, he used all of us.” Her voice cracked, but she went on, “I made myself into the kind of person who will never get used again, and you can, too. It’s not too late.”

Her mother shook her head. “I ain’t tough like you nor smart like Katie. I’ve always needed somebody to help me get along. I know you hate him, and I can’t blame you, you got that right. But I don’t know what I’ll do without him. God damn him for thinking he could make one last big deal.”

Clare stepped forward involuntarily.
What
?

Kristen wiped her eyes and nose with her sleeve. “Geez, him and his big deals…”

“Kristen.” The girl looked at Clare, red-nosed and blotchy-eyed. “If your father was killed while involved in one last ‘big deal,’ whoever he was dealing with may have been his killer.” Brenda jerked her head off her daughter’s shoulder. “It may have been Katie’s killer.”

Kristen and Clare both looked at Brenda, who stepped back out of her daughter’s hold. “No,” she said. “I don’t wanna borrow trouble, Krissie, and neither do you.” She darted a glance at Clare. “I already said my piece to the cops, I don’t got anything else to say.”

“Ma…” Brenda shook her head, backing away another step. Kristen’s eyes narrowed. “Ma,” she hissed, “if you know something and don’t tell me, I’m heading out this door and you can bury Dad in a shoebox by yourself for all the help you’ll get from me.”

Clare laid a hand on the girl’s arm. “I don’t think your mother’s reluctant so much as she’s scared. Is that it, Mrs. McWhorter?”

The woman shifted from foot to foot, her gaze darting from Kristen to Clare to Kristen again, her face a mask of misery. “I don’t want no trouble from the police,” she said.

“The police will have to know what you tell us,” Clare said, “but I don’t see that they need to know who told us.” She caught Brenda’s eyes, wide and white, and made herself still, wiping out everything she already knew about the woman, her whole body open, listening.

Clare held Brenda’s gaze until the older woman sighed and quivered in relaxation. “Darrell said he knew who the baby’s father was. Said he had surprised Katie and him together last winter, in a car.” She looked at the sheaf of papers trembling in her hand. “He said he could get money from the guy. He called him that afternoon, that last afternoon.”

“Darrell called someone?”

“Oh my God, Ma, do you know the phone number? Do you know his name?”

Brenda’s face quivered. “He didn’t tell me none of the details, honey. You know I’m not good—”

“Not good with details. Yeah, I know.”

“There was a phone number written down.” Clare’s heart squeezed with excitement. Now they were getting somewhere. “I thought about doing something with it, but I wound up throwing it into the disposal.” Clare couldn’t help a small groan of frustration. “I was scared. I figured whoever this man was, he’d killed your father and maybe your sister and who’s to say he couldn’t kill me, too. I may not be smart, but I know when to keep my mouth shut.”

“Mrs. McWhorter, when Darrell told you that he was going to get in touch with this man, did either one of you consider that you were going to be making a deal with the man who probably killed your daughter?” Clare knew she was speaking too sharply, but Brenda’s monstrous self-absorption was sucking the patience out of her.

“Well…” Brenda looked uncertainly at Clare. “You know, there wasn’t nothin’ gonna bring Katie back, was there? And maybe Darrell would have turned him in after he’d gotten what he wanted.” She opened her hands. “I didn’t really… think about it.”

Russ was dropping piles of papers on the big scarredoak table in the briefing room when Mark Durkee strolled in, fifteen minutes early for the evening shift. “Hey, Chief. How y’doing?”

“This goddamn case is giving me a goddamn headache,” Russ informed him, slapping down a manila folder next to a reprint of Katie McWhorter’s high school photo.

“Actually, I was thinking more like, how are you feeling after that shootout at the Stoner’s place yesterday? Everything cool?”

Lyle MacAuley stopped in the doorway, already changed into his civvies. “Yeah, Chief. That post-cow stress disorder can be a killer.” Mark laughed. “Maybe you ought to have yourself checked out,” Lyle went on helpfully, “make sure you didn’t pick up any hoof-and-mouth disease.”

Russ gave both of them what he hoped was a killing look.

Mark laughed harder. “Really, Chief, we were worried about you.”

Lyle nudged past the younger officer. “Hell, Mark, it’ll take a lot more than some pumped-up kid with a twenty-two to take out the chief here. It takes a solid ton of muscle, hide, and milk to make the man sweat.” He leaned over the assorted folders and files, his bushy, graying eyebrows rising in interest. “Whatcha got here?”

“I’m drowning in reports on the McWhorter case. I’m sorting everything out, trying to shake something loose.” Russ slid a broken stick of chalk across the table to Lyle. “Get up to the board there, Lyle, help me time line this thing out.”

Lyle moved to the school-room sized blackboard hanging on the windowless wall of the briefing room.

Russ opened the medical examiner’s report on Katie McWhorter. “Friday, December fourth.” Lyle chalked the date in the upper left-hand corner. “Sometime between seven and nine o’clock, the killer—no, wait, better make that killer A—bashes Katie’s head in and drives off.” Underneath the time, Lyle added “A→Katie McW.”

“A could be one or both of the Burnses. They have no alibi other than each other for Friday night. It could have been Darrell McWhorter—”

“Those names he gave you checked out, though,” Lyle reminded him. “Dave Jackson?” He stepped back to the table and ran his finger over the single-sheeted investigative reports. “Here it is. He was ready to affidavit that he and his wife had been with the McWhorters from seven to eleven that night.”