Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries) (16 page)

“It was unexpected. Like the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs.”

Wow. Okay. She was obviously unhappy about this. Kevin had no idea what to say in response. This was the most intimate conversation they’d had since the night of the chief’s wedding, when he and Hadley had done their best to destroy their relationship. Friendship. Whatever. “How do Hudson and Genny feel about it? Seeing their father again?”

Hadley hitched one hip against a desk. “Hudson thinks it’s great. All he remembers are the fun times. ‘Dad took us to the beach. Dad took us to Disneyland.’” She looked at Kevin. “Dylan used to drag the kids places when they were little and cute and pretend to be a divorced dad to pick up women.
I
paid for the trip to Disneyland.”

Kevin slid his Taser from its holster. “Let’s go tase him.” She laughed. “Seriously. We’ll sneak up behind him. You hit one side and I’ll hit the other. I bet if we juice him a few times we can give him convulsions.”

Hadley laughed until she had to wipe her eyes. “Oh, man. What I wouldn’t give to see that.”

“It’d make you feel better.” He stated it as a fact.

She sighed. “Yeah. It would.” She looked at him again. “You make me feel better. Thank you.”

He waved her gratitude away. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah.” She picked up her parka from where she had slung it over a chair. “He’s scared shitless of driving in snow, so he’s probably already on his way back to Granddad’s. I’ll terrify him about the road conditions and he’ll split for his hotel.”

“He’s not staying with you?”

She took her car keys out of her pocket. “God, no. There’s no way I’d let him, and Granddad’s house is much too downscale. Nothing but the best for Dylan Knox.” Her voice had gone bitter again.

“Where’s he staying?”

“The Algonquin, of course. What other five-star hotel is there around here?”

Kevin stroked his Taser theatrically. “Good to know.”

She laughed. “Good night, Flynn. See you tomorrow.” She vanished down the hall, still laughing.

He picked up his own parka. Stuffed his notebook into the pocket. The homicide. The missing girl. Sunday dinner. Syracuse.
Hadley.

The clock ticked.

9.

Mikayla woke up shivering with cold. She rooted around in the darkness, tugging her bedding into place. She had a heavy wool blanket to keep her warm, but it was scratchy, so she laid it on top of the quilt, and it liked to slide off the narrow cot onto the floor.

Everything was quiet. There had been somebody new here today, after dinner, with arguing and loud shouts and long quiet times. Mikayla had stayed in the little room and didn’t hear anything. She was good at not hearing. Sometimes Mom had people over at her apartment that Mikayla wasn’t supposed to see or hear. She would curl up in her bed and read really hard, until the only thing in her head was Amelia Bedelia or Junie B. Jones.

She had books here, too, and even though they were really old—like her Meme could have read them when she was a girl—they were okay. She was reading a funny one called
Mr. Popper’s Penguins.
She read it when she ate and when she heard weird noises coming from the other bedroom and even in the bathroom, because if she read and read and read she could forget there was someone standing there right in the doorway. He said he wasn’t watching, but it still made her feel all shivery and cold inside.

She slid out from beneath the sheets and crossed to the window. It was blacker than black outside, but she could just see the snow piling up on the window ledge. She thought, for a moment, about leaving. She could sneak out now when the whole wide world was quiet. She was a Mohawk, her Pepe was always saying, and she could do anything. He had taught her to find the mossy side of a tree and to make a shelter of pine branches and leaves and how to orient by the North Star if she forgot her compass at home. But mostly he said if she was ever lost to stay put and stay warm and the park wardens would find her.

She climbed back into bed. Besides, if she left, she wouldn’t see Mom. The police were keeping Mom away from her because they liked to boss people around and make themselves feel important. Except the lady police who had visited her in the hospital with Mrs. Schmidt the social worker. She was nice. She had given Mikayla a bear with a little badge sewn right in his shoulder. Mikayla had put her fire helmet on the bear after her class had visited the station. She had left the bear in her bedroom at Ted and Helen’s house.

Her eyes went watery and she blinked a lot. She didn’t want to think about Ted and Helen’s house. Maybe if she read some more? She was reaching for the lamp when she heard a creak outside. She slid way down and tugged the covers up until they were nearly over her head.
Go away,
she thought.
Go away, go away, go away.

The door opened.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 11

1.

The first thing Russ registered when he woke was
warm
. The heavy quilt was rucked up to his ears and he was wrapped around his wife, their legs tangled, one hand splayed over her rounded abdomen. The second thing was
cold
; his nose and brows and the top of his head twinging from the bite of the air. He should have put more wood in the stoves last night, but when they arrived back at the cabin it was as if an unspoken agreement lay between them to pack in at least one more night of honeymooning. They ate the stew that Clare had simmered on the stove all day and then made love with a desperate, grasping abandon that left them panting and sheened with sweat, the quilt and blankets kicked to the floor. The sex had wrung all the guilt and frustration out of Russ, and he had dropped into sleep as quickly and quietly as the snow falling outside.

Beneath his hand, Clare’s belly bunched and moved in a muscular wave.
Holy shit.
He was torn between yanking his hand away and leaving it in place. Then the kicking started. He had never imagined what feet
inside
someone’s body might feel like, but there was no mistaking the sensation, light as it was, against his palm. The kid was jumping against Clare like she was a trampoline.

Her hand covered his. “Mmm. Feel that?” Her voice was sleepy.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “It’s … a little creepy. I mean, there’s something alive inside of you.”

She laughed low. “Saw
Alien
a few too many times, did you?”

“I guess so.” He paused, trying to articulate what was in his head. “You’re not going to have a miscarriage, are you?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“I guess I figured that. You’re already farther along than…” He took a deep breath. “This … is really going to happen. The baby.”

“Yes, it is. On or about April twentieth.” She rubbed her hand along his forearm. “Does that make you feel any differently? About becoming a father?”

Becoming a father.
He thought of his own dad, and his grandfathers. His bum knee and his bullet scars. The kids he’d seen in the line of duty, scared or beaten or abused or old too soon. All the stuff he didn’t know—Christ, he had never even changed a diaper. The question was too big. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how it makes me feel.”

“Let me know when you figure it out, okay?”

He buried his face in her hair instead of answering. They lay together in a not entirely comfortable silence until Clare said, “What’s that?”

“What?”

“That tick-ticking noise.”

Now she mentioned it, he could hear it, too. Pinging and ticking and rattling. “Oh, crap.” He sat up and tossed off the covers. “It’s hailing.” Goosebumps swept over his skin. He shrugged on his robe and walked to the bedroom’s French doors. The small deck outside, which he had shoveled clear yesterday afternoon, was covered in a gravelly mix of slush and hailstones. More was falling from a leaden sky, thick wet flakes and hard icy pellets.

“What’s it look like?” Clare asked, still burrowed beneath the quilts.

“It’s slushing. And hailing. The temperature must be rising.” He crossed the freezing floor to where he had left the weather radio on the kitchen counter. “Probably going to turn into rain soon.”

“Will you try to leave before then?”

He started cranking the radio to power it up. “No. Safer to let the rain and the road crews clear the way first.”

“In that case…” Her tone of voice made him turn around. She was half sitting, half sprawled against the pillows, the covers fallen around her thighs. “Why don’t you come back to bed and get warm?” The cold that was making his bare feet ache was doing wonderful things to her nipples. “Mmm?”

Jesus.
“Warm,” he said thickly. “Yeah.” He dropped the radio back onto the counter. Ice. Hail.
Warm.

2.

Ice and hail. “Frigging wintry mix,” Kevin said, slowing the cruiser to a stop behind a line of cars cautiously creeping across the avenue into the Super Kmart parking lot. “We should’ve just taken my Aztek. It has four-wheel drive.”

“Quit bitching.” Hadley had the laptop tilted toward her and was scrolling through the list of names and addresses Noble had uploaded this morning. “It’s not that bad.”

“For a Californian, you’re awfully confident about driving in upstate New York weather.”

“I didn’t grow up in California. I moved there after I left high school.” She paused. “Dropped out.”

Kevin smiled a little. That was Hadley. Brutally honest, even when she was on the receiving end. Evidently, she misunderstood his expression, because she said, “I got my GED. Later.”

“I’m not judging you.” The Buick in front of him finally decided it was safe to cross the intersection. Kevin made a slow left, trying to get a feel for the road surface. “My father never finished high school. State school, it was called in Ireland.”

“Two streets and then a right,” she said, her eyes on the laptop. “Your dad is Irish? I mean, really Irish?”

“Yep. He came to Boston with a bunch of friends back in the sixties. Great pay doing construction back then. My mom was going to college at St. Mary’s. They met and bam! Love at first sight.” He signaled and made the turn Hadley had indicated. “Well, love at first sight for him. She took a little longer to get on board.”

“Okay, this is it. Here.”

Kevin wedged the cruiser into the foot of the driveway and turned off the engine. “This looks too nice.” The house was a large two-story with a shoveled walk that was rapidly filling with slush and hailstones. Neatly trimmed yew bushes gaped open under the accumulating weight of the wet snow.

Hadley sighed. “Probably another fake.” They had hit six homes already this morning, going off the license information Noble was collecting from various drugstore registries. Every one so far had turned out to be faked, the real ID copied with its picture replaced and birth dates fudged. All they had to show for a morning’s work was a bunch of worried civilians who now knew a lot more about identity theft. Hadley grabbed the pile of license printouts anyway. They put on their plastic-wrapped hats and parkas and trudged up to the door.

The young man who opened the door was in T-shirt and sweats, his hair still rumpled from bed despite the fact that it was close to ten. Hadley looked at the papers in her hand. “Samuel McKenna?”

The guy went white.

“We have a few questions for you, Mr. McKenna. May we come in?” Kevin already had his hand on the door and was stepping over the threshold. The guy backed away. His eyes were huge. Hadley held up the printout so Kevin could see the photo. This was him, all right. Young guy. Barely twenty. “You are Samuel McKenna?”

The kid jerked his head up and down. Hadley shut the door behind her. In the sudden hush, Kevin could hear the drip-drip-drip of melting snow sliding off their covers. He took his off, and Hadley followed suit.

“What…” The kid seemed unable to get the rest of the sentence out.

“Mr. McKenna, your driver’s license was used as ID in multiple pharmacies around the area to purchase pseudoephedrine.”

“Oh,
shit
!” The kid bent over. “Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. I knew this was going to happen. I knew it.”

Hadley looked at him, one eyebrow lifted.

“I swear to God, I’m not a user. I never touch drugs. I don’t even drink. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”

Kevin looked back at her. No, this one wasn’t going to require their ace interrogation skills. “Mr. McKenna, is there a place we can sit down and talk?”

The kid made a despairing noise and led them down a hallway lined with years of family photos. In the kitchen, he pulled out a chair and collapsed at the table. A half-eaten bowl of Cheerios sat on a place mat. Kevin sat. Hadley stood, blocking the doorway. “Mr. McKenna. Samuel.” Kevin hardened his voice enough to get the kid to look up at him. “Tell me about what you did.” He didn’t usually ask such open-ended questions, but he had a feeling this kid would spill his guts if Kevin said, “Boo.”

“I was just trying to earn tuition money,” Samuel said. “I’m not a criminal. I just needed money for college. I’m already maxed out on federal loans, and I kept hearing horror stories about graduates becoming like indentured serfs to the private bank loans.” He waved his hand at the walls around them. “I couldn’t ask my parents, they’re stretched enough as it is—”

“Samuel. How did you get started smurfing? Were you recruited? Who did you work with?”

Samuel blinked. “My buddy Jason. His older brother was in high school with this girl—woman—who was running a group.”

“Annie Johnson?”

Samuel moaned. “Yes. Oh, shit, you already have her? Oh, shit.”

“They hooked you up with Annie?”

Samuel nodded. He looked as if he were about to cry. “She had the van and the money and everything. It was just buying cold medicine. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone!”

Hadley broke in. “Samuel, did you ever hear Annie Johnson talk about her daughter?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I guess. A couple times. There was some problem. The kid wasn’t living with her.”

“Her daughter was kidnapped from her foster home Friday.”