All Mortal Flesh

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  The interior door opened, slowly and silently, and he backed himself against the wall. “It’s me,” Clare said. She had a paper sack folded beneath her arm and was holding an ancient buffalo-check coat that looked like it had been doing duty as a rug. In a garage. She had a greasy flap-eared cap to go with it. “These are our sexton’s.”

  “For God’s sake, give the man a raise so he can afford something better.”

  She thrust the coat at him. “These are what he wears for dirty jobs. He’s off today, he won’t miss them.”

  “No lie.” Russ shrugged out of his department-issued parka and slipped on the coat. It reeked of cigarette smoke.

  Clare wadded up his coat and squeezed it into the sack. “Here. Take the hat, too.”

  He tipped it and looked inside. “This isn’t going to give me lice, is it?”

  “Mr. Hadley is a very nice man.”

  “I’m walking a half block down the street. This isn’t really necessary.”

  “Says the man who parked behind the snowbirds’ empty garage. You’re not exactly inconspicuous, you know.”

  He grunted but put on the disgusting hat.

  Outside, the same wind that was shoving a mass of gray, snow-laden clouds across the sky pushed against their backs, giving them both good reason to bow their heads and bury their faces in their coat collars. St. Alban’s walkway was well cleared, but the sidewalk running along Church Street and up Elm was icy. Russ reached out instinctively to take hold of Clare’s arm and steady her, but she twitched out of his grasp. “Mr. Hadley wouldn’t touch me,” she said, her voice barely audible in the sighing of the wind.

  He wasn’t so sure anyone would mistake him for the church’s janitor, even with the coat and hat. “Isn’t Hadley, like, six inches shorter than I am?”

  “Hunch harder,” she said.

  He wasn’t that worried—not yet, anyway. The department didn’t have enough men on this morning to lay down an effective beat presence and run an investigation, too. The moment he was in trouble was the moment Jensen decided she had enough to upgrade him from party-of-interest to suspect. He wondered how long it would take her to get an arrest warrant from Judge Ryswick. Russ had annoyed the old coot with enough middle-of-the-night and dawn hearings over the past seven years to likely make the judge quick on the draw. Once Jensen had a warrant, every cop, sheriff, and trooper between Plattsburgh and Albany would be looking for him.

  They had come to the rectory drive. “I’ll call you with what I find out,” Clare said, handing him the bag with his parka. Her cheeks were red from the cold. “Don’t forget to call your mom.”

  He nodded and forced himself to continue up the sidewalk instead of watching her make her way up her drive.

  He retrieved the station wagon. He quite carefully named it in his thoughts, to avoid the words “Linda’s car,” and was grateful beyond words that she had been a meticulously neat person who never treated her vehicle like a mobile closet. There was nothing personal to haunt him, no commuter mug or discarded shoes or overdue library books to tell the story of the woman who, until a few days ago, had driven this car. Only two fifty-pound bags of kitty litter in the back—for weight and traction, not for the cat she had acquired as soon as the door had shut behind him—and the emergency kit he packed her every winter: thermal blanket and flares, collapsible shovel and gorp, battery and phone recharger.

  He chucked Mr. Hadley’s smelly garb in the backseat and headed out toward Cossayuharie, driving the long way round, avoiding the town and the stretches where Ed and Paul, despite his directions to vary locations, habitually camped with their radar guns.

  Bainbridge Road, like all of the roads through Cossayuharie’s dairy country, rose and fell across ridges and hollows, running past well-tended farms and abandoned barns alike, past brook-threaded fields marked out by modern barbed-wire and ancient stone fences, past distant, dilapidated houses more likely to produce meth than milk. He knew two families who lived on the road, the Montgomerys and the Stoners, both of them still hanging on with their herds of forty or fifty cows, following in the manure-edged boot prints of their fathers and their fathers before them. Probably the last generation to do so—the two Stoner kids and the Montgomery boys would likely have long shaken the barnyard dirt off their feet by the time their turns came.

  Audrey Keane he did not know. At 840 Bainbridge Road, he found a small two-story house, with an enclosed front porch sagging away from the foundations and two cars in the dooryard of a Depression-era garage. One was a late-eighties Buick Riviera, whose half-deflated tires and crust of snow indicated it hadn’t been driven in some time. The other was a 1992 Honda Civic, with New York State plate number 6779LF.

  The drive was a combination of scraped-clear ruts and hard-packed snow. He eased the Volvo up behind the Civic and put on the parking brake. He pulled his service weapon out from beneath the passenger’s seat and checked the clip. Leaning forward, he snapped his belt holster in place and slid his gun in, heavy and snug against the back of his hip. He shrugged into his parka and slid out of the station wagon.

  He strolled slowly past the Honda, checking it out. It was the opposite of Linda’s car, littered with crumpled fast-food bags and empty soda cans, glittery Mardi Gras beads hanging off the rearview mirror, a Dunkin’ Donuts mug wedged between the two front seats. There was no K-Bar knife or blood-saturated clothing. At least not where Russ could see.

  There was a buzzer next to the door to the enclosed porch. He pressed it, once, twice, three times. No response, either human or animal. He tried the door. It was locked. The wooden frame and the lock made it just one step up from a screen door, rickety enough that a good hard kick would open it. He pursed his lips thoughtfully and walked around the side, where the wind whipping between the house and the garage had scooped out most of the winter’s snow, leaving a hard, easy-to-walk-on crust. From this sheltered position, his chin was level with the bottom sill of the house windows. Through the gauzy sheers he could glimpse what looked like an ordinary and empty living room and kitchen.

  The low-slung, square window of the garage revealed the usual detritus of an unused country garage—push mower, car parts, moldering cardboard boxes, and antiquated tools hanging off the walls. He turned the corner and saw, half buried in a drift, what he expected to see: an unused kitchen door, from the days when the lady of the house needed to bring her wet washing out to the line or harvest part of dinner from her vegetable garden.

  Russ waded through the snow and scraped away as much as he could from the edge of the door. The lock was a simple handle latch, $10.99 at your local Home Depot. Russ considered the situation. Audrey Keane had most likely been at his house interviewing with Linda about a seamstress job. She had no criminal record, and there was nothing overtly suspicious about her home or car. Based on what he had right now, he’d never get a warrant to search her house. One more step and he would be breaking and entering.

  It took him thirty seconds to pop the lock with his Visa card.

  He opened the door slowly, brushing the snow back one-handed as it collapsed into the kitchen. He kicked his boots against the door lintel and stepped in.

  The kitchen looked as if it had been modernized in the 1950s and not touched since, although the coffeemaker, microwave, and wall phone were all more recent additions. He grabbed a couple of paper towels from a roll hanging next to the sink and tossed them over the snow puddles spreading across the linoleum.

  The refrigerator was covered with yellowing newspaper funnies and horoscopes, held in place with the sort of cutesie cat-themed magnets Linda wouldn’t have allowed into the house. He tugged open the door. Bacon and eggs. Tupperware containers and a half-full jar of spaghetti sauce. Beer and milk. He uncapped the milk and sniffed. Still fresh.

  He walked quietly into the front room. Most of it he had seen from the side window—a living room suite in serviceable brown corduroy and darkly varnished pine, the sort of stuff people got from rent-to-own places. He supposed
even the plasma television in the corner, with its gleaming white satellite service box, might be a rental. A scattering of family photos hung from one wall, sepia-toned wedding pictures next to early-seventies prom portraits. An old lady in a poly pantsuit smiling in front of a Sears backdrop; a good-looking blonde with teased-up hair in a misty Glamour Shots photo. It all fit with the image he was building of Audrey Keane, a single woman earning enough to get by but not much more, living remote in a house she had picked up on the cheap or inherited from her parents.

  So what were three computers doing open on a table shoved against the far wall? He crossed the room and ducked down, looking beneath the table. Behind the tangle of power cords, he saw a wireless router plugged into a cable line. Straightening, he dug a tissue from his pocket, folded it over his finger so as not to leave his prints, and turned on each of the three laptops in turn.

  They must have been in hibernation mode, because they came on almost instantly. Unfortunately, that was far as he got, because the three screens displayed a password log-on request. Why would a woman living alone keep her computers password protected? Why would she have a three-computer network with instant, always-on access to the Internet? If Audrey Keane was self-employed in some sort of legitimate high-tech job, why did everything about her house and car scream that she was just getting by? Was the money going in her arm or up her nose?

  What the hell had she been doing at his house on Sunday?

  He had seen the entire first floor. The second would be two rooms and a bath. He mounted the stairs, careful not to confuse the prints by touching the banister. He had to come up with some way to persuade Judge Ryswick to warrant a search of this place. And the computers. Mark Durkee was probably more adept with them than any other officer in his department—that went with being a twenty-eight-year-old male—but if those hard drives held any evidence, he needed someone trained in cybercrime to crack them open.

  He paused near the top of the stairs. Three open doors, just as he predicted. He could make out the white gleam of the bathroom tiling. If there were any drug paraphernalia in the house, it ought to be in there. He could—

  A man launched himself from one of the bedroom doors.

  TWENTY-SIX

  There was a blur—balding, big, dark mustache, arms braced like a line-backer. Russ clawed for his gun. The man smacked into his chest. Russ went over, crashing against the stairs, flipping ass over teakettle, his shout of “Stop! Police!” converted into an inarticulate yell that became a scream as he smashed his knee into a step and kept rolling, bouncing, thudding downstairs.

  His assailant leaped over him, leaped on him, his boot driving whatever breath Russ had left out of his lungs. His glasses went flying, and the edges of his sight darkened as his chest heaved for air. He thudded to a stop at the foot of the stairs. The man wrenched the front door open, smashing it into Russ’s hip, and disappeared as Russ lay there shuddering, gasping for oxygen, every part of his body in pain.

  Then he heard the car engine starting up.

  “Shit,” he wheezed, staggering to his feet. It felt like someone had taken an ax to his kneecap. The world was a blur. He looked frantically around the living room floor. A glint of gold tipped him off, and he lunged for his glasses. His surroundings snapped into focus again. He limped onto the enclosed porch just in time to see his Volvo station wagon fishtailing out of the drive.

  “Shit!” He started to run, but a sharp pain fetched him up. Christ, between landing on his gun and the blow from the door, he probably had nerve damage in his hip. He dug for his cell phone as he limped toward the Honda Civic. Had he seen keys in the ignition? No, he had not.

  “Shit!” He spun around. From down the road, below the rise where the Keane house stood, he heard the screech of brakes and the rubber-stripping squeal of tire against asphalt. Then the crash.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” He gimped down the drive as fast as possible, slipping and sliding on the rock-hard snow, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in his knee and hip. Bainbridge Road’s shoulder was packed with gritty dirt-and salt-crusted snowbanks, so he took to the dry middle of the pavement, praying no one would come bombing along over the ridge.

  He heard an engine starting up again. Something—a yell? A car gunned. Accelerated. Back up the ridge. Toward him.

  He didn’t waste time swearing at this latest shitstorm. Russ flung himself over the filthy snowbank and scrambled on fingers and toes away from the road. The crumpled front end of the Volvo, Linda’s Volvo, roared past him, broken headlights spattering glass in its wake. Russ swarmed over the hard-shelled snow, back to the road, back toward the angry shouting he could hear drifting up from the base of the hill.

  Limping over the ridge crest, he could see the other party to the accident, a tall young man with hair shaved so short all Russ could make out was the pink of his scalp. He was stomping back and forth in front of what must have been a fine-looking Camaro before the rear quarter had been smashed in, cussing in a way that made up in sheer filthiness what it lacked in originality.

  “Hey!” Russ shouted, and the young man turned, his fists ready, his teeth bared. Russ held up his hands. “It wasn’t me!” He limped closer.

  The young man dropped his hands. “Chief Van Alstyne?”

  Russ squinted. “Ethan? Ethan Stoner?” He hadn’t seen the Stoners’ oldest since about a year back, after the boy had finished up community service for a piece of trouble he had been involved in. He sure hadn’t had a buzz cut and a car back then.

  “Yes, sir, it’s me.”

  Sir? Ethan wasn’t a mean kid—Russ always figured his problems arose from too much leisure and not enough opportunity—but he also wasn’t the sort to sir and ma’am his elders. Russ finally reached the boy and his brutalized car. “What happened?”

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  Russ raised an eyebrow. It hurt. “Just banged up a bit. Courtesy the same guy who just totaled your car. What happened?”

  Ethan pointed toward a driveway entrance down a few yards and across the road. “I was visiting the McAlistairs.” Way back through the field, some half mile from the road, the drive ended in a graceful old farmhouse. “I had just pulled out onto the road—I was going slow, Chief, really I was. I know you have to be extra careful right below the hill.”

  Russ nodded. “I believe you.”

  “Anyway, this asshole comes sailing over the top of the hill and bam! Before I could get out of the way, he nails the rear of my car.” Ethan looked mournfully at the vehicle. “Man, I still got two years of payments to make on this thing.”

  Russ sighed. “Don’t worry. The Volvo he was driving was well insured.”

  “If I get my hands on the jerk, he better pray he’s got good medical insurance.”

  Russ fished his cell phone from his pocket. At least he wasn’t going to have to worry about getting a warrant now. He dialed the dispatch number.

  “Millers Kill Police Department.”

  “Harlene? It’s Russ.”

  “Chief! Where have you been? I’ve been calling all over for you!” Harlene dropped her voice. “That rhymes-with-witch from the state PD has been carrying on like you escaped from custody.”

  “I’m on Bainbridge Road, in Cossayuharie.” He glanced toward the McAlistairs’ farm. Two people were hurrying down the long drive.

  “We’ve just got an accident report from there. Hit-and-run. One Scotty McAlistair called it in. Kevin’s responding.”

  “We’ll need more people than Officer Flynn. I want a crime scene workup at 840 Bainbridge Road. That’s just up the hill from the McAlistairs. And that hit-and-run? Assaulted an officer and stole his personal vehicle.”

  “You and yours?”

  “That’s right. I want an APB on him, male, Cauc, balding, black or dark brown Fu Manchu mustache. Middle-aged, medium height. He’s in a 1993 dark green Volvo wagon, New York plate number RYF 3050. He’s got damage to the grill and headlights.”

  “Are you all right? Sh
all I send an ambulance?”

  “I’m okay.” He held the phone away from his ear. “Ethan. How are you feeling? Do you need to have anybody take a look at you?”

  “Nah,” Ethan said. “I got smacked up worse in Parris Island.”

  Parris Island. So that explained the bald eagle hairdo. “We’re all good here, Harlene. When you bulletin this perp, make sure you add he’s wanted for questioning related to a homicide.”

  “He is?”

  The hurrying figures reached the road. A farmer in his forties, knit hat framing a red, weather-beaten face, and a curvy little girl Ethan’s age who launched herself into the boy’s arms.

  “I gotta go, Harlene. I’ll fill you in later.” Russ clicked off the phone.

  “Are you all right?” the girl said, high-pitched and breathless. “Daddy called the police. I saw the whole thing. He just drove right into you! I swear, for a moment, I thought—I was terrified . . .” She buried her face in Ethan’s parka and sort of quivered, which, Russ judged, must feel pretty good, even through two layers of down and Gore-Tex. Ethan’s cheeks pinked up. He tried to school his gratified expression into something more concerned.

  “You okay, Ethan?” The farmer ignored his daughter’s theatrics in favor of an assessing look at the boy.

  “Yessir. He did a number on my car, though.”

  “Cars can be replaced.” The farmer frowned at Russ. “You the guy responsible?”

  “No, sir, he didn’t have nothing—anything to do with it. This is Chief Van Alstyne. Chief of police.”

  The farmer held out his gloved hand. “Scotty McAlistair. You’re fast. I only just called nine-one-one.”

  “I was already here. The man who ran into Ethan was fleeing custody.” He thumbed up the hill, toward McAlistair’s neighbor’s house. “What do you know about Audrey Keane?”