All Mortal Flesh

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “I wouldn’t have reason to kill anyone!”

  “Of course not! I just meant—well, you said the police didn’t know if someone killed that poor woman because he or she thought she was Linda Van Alstyne. And it seems as if—and I may have this wrong, this is just the impression I’ve been getting—you’re fairly close to Mr. Van Alstyne.”

  “Elizabeth, what do you want to know? Did I have sex with Russ Van Alstyne and kill his wife? No and no.”

  The new deacon’s head snapped back toward Cody, but it looked as if the s- word didn’t interest him any more than the k-word had.

  “Goodness,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to be blunt,” Clare said, although she could think of several words that would have been a lot blunter. “It’s been a miserable day. It’s been a miserable several days, and I’m in no condition to play ring around the rosies. So let’s just cut to the chase. Did I have a relationship with Chief Van Alstyne? Yes. Was it inappropriately physical? No. Did it cross over the bounds emotionally? Yes. Have I severed our connection?”

  No. Never. God, she was an idiot. It was a good thing she believed in redemption through grace. Otherwise, she’d have to say she was simply too dumb to live.

  “Yes?” Elizabeth quivered with interest.

  “I thought,” she began. She had come unmoored, and the words and events of the past four days swooped and fluttered through her head like a pack of cards tossed into the air. “We agreed not to see each other—of course, with his wife dead—but she’s not, now. They’ll have a second chance to be together. That’s good, isn’t it. No contact.”

  “Clare?” the deacon leaned forward. “Are you all right?”

  Pull yourself together or the bishop’s not going to suspend you, he’s going to institutionalize you. “Yes,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  The phone rang in the kitchen.

  “Should we . . . ?” Elizabeth asked.

  “It might be one of the Burnses,” Clare said. She rose from the chair with almost indecent haste and went into the darkened kitchen. The phone’s number pad was lit, and it was blinking with messages.

  “Burns residence,” she said.

  “Clare?”

  “Karen. Hi. How’s it going?”

  Karen made a noise that in a less elegant woman would have been a grunt. “Do you own a medium-sized backpack? Purple camo? From L.L.Bean?”

  “Ye-e-es.”

  “When was the last time you carried it?”

  “This past week, when I was up at Mr. Fitzgerald’s cabin. I used it as a day pack when I went snowshoeing. It should still be packed from my last time out.”

  “What sort of things would you put in it?”

  “What sort of things? I don’t know. The usual stuff you’d take when you’re heading out into the woods in winter. Matches, gorp, one of those heat-reflective blankets. Why?”

  Karen sighed. “Because they’ve just found a knife inside your backpack. A K-Bar. Which happens to be the same sort of knife that killed Audrey Keane.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Thursday, January 17

  “The knife doesn’t mean anything,” Lyle MacAuley said. “K-Bars are as common as dirt. You can pick ’em up at any army surplus or hunting supply store in the state. Russ had one. I have one. Who else has one?” His voice challenged the squad room.

  Kevin Flynn raised a hand. “I got one when I was a kid. I was thinking of maybe going into the marines back then.”

  Lyle looked at him, surprised, over the rim of his coffee cup.

  “It seemed like the cool thing to do at the time,” Kevin said defensively. “It made me feel real”—he paused—“deadly.” He lapsed into a bad Clint Eastwood impersonation. “Do you feel lucky, punk? Do ya?”

  “That was a .44 Magnum,” Eric said around a mouthful of doughnut.

  Kevin looked horrified. “My mom wouldn’t let me have a gun!”

  “Thank you, Kevin,” Russ said. “I think you’ve made your point, Lyle.” He settled himself more firmly on the desktop and planted his feet on two chairs. The familiar position helped him feel less out of place in his jeans and flannel shirt.

  “Her lawyer says Fergusson’s had it since her army days.” Emiley Jensen sauntered into the middle of the briefing area and stood legs wide and arms akimbo, as if to remind Russ that this was her meeting, not his. “Says she took it up to the cabin because she wanted a knife with her when she went snowshoeing.”

  “That’s just being safe, when you’re out in the woods,” Lyle said.

  “Good woodsmanship or not, she’s got a K-Bar. The murder weapon.”

  “No, a K-Bar’s been identified as the murder weapon. Not hers specifically. I’ve got one missing. Dennie Shambaugh’s got one.” Russ tapped the print report laid on the desk next to him. “And according to Sergeant Morin, his prints are in my house. Clare’s aren’t.”

  Jensen hooked her thumbs into her pockets. She was wearing low-slung pants instead of a skirt this morning, with a tight shirt that fell over her waistband and a cushy jacket. If she had been in his department, he would have sent her home with orders to dress like a grown-up instead of an Abercrombie and Fitch model.

  “I’m going to remind you, Mr. Van Alstyne, that you’re here on sufferance. You’re still suspended from duty pending the outcome of this investigation.”

  Like he needed a reminder. The empty space on his hip where his gun wasn’t was like a missing tooth, constantly drawing his hand to test if it was still gone.

  “I want a time line based on what we have now,” Jensen said, turning to the whiteboard on the wall. “McCrea?”

  Eric put down his white mocha latte and flipped open his notes. “There were three phone calls made from Mrs. Van Alstyne’s cell to Audrey Keane’s cell. The last one was Friday at 6:00 P.M. On Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Van Alstyne spoke with Margaret Tracey from the house’s landline. Her son, Quinn Tracey, later witnessed Audrey Keane’s vehicle parked in the Van Alstyne driveway late Sunday afternoon, just before sunset.”

  “Four to four thirty,” Lyle murmured.

  “We’re still waiting on the phone company to fax us Keane’s records,” Eric continued. “Mrs. Tracey finds the body about 4:00 P.M. Monday. The next significant development is at 2:00 P.M. Wednesday, when the chief surprises Dennis Shambaugh at Keane’s house.”

  “I dug out Shambaugh’s case file from seven years back,” Lyle said. “Audrey Keane was his girlfriend back then, if anyone had any doubts.”

  “Was Shambaugh out early on parole?” Russ asked.

  Lyle nodded. “He’s still got three years to go if he violates. We’ve got a call in to his parole officer.”

  “Why was he still there?” Mark asked.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “I mean, he’s out on parole. If he so much as runs a red light, he’s going back to Clinton. Why hang around his girlfriend’s house for forty-eight hours or more after he killed her?”

  “It’s his address of record?” Eric McCrea pitched his question to the room at large, pointedly not speaking to Durkee. “If he’s not there, he’s in violation of parole.”

  Lyle shook his head. “Address of record is the Lafayette Arms.” The Lafayette was a single-resident occupancy hotel in Fort Henry.

  “His computer setup, then,” Eric said.

  “It would’ve taken him a half hour to unplug everything and pack it into the car.” Mark turned toward Russ. “I get why he ran when he saw you, Chief. There’s gonna be enough evidence on those computers to put him away for another ten years. I just don’t get why he was still there waiting.”

  “Maybe because Dennis Shambaugh didn’t kill Audrey Keane,” Jensen said. She took a dry-erase marker and underlined Keane’s name twice on the board. “It doesn’t make sense if he killed his girlfriend. But if she wasn’t the intended target—if Linda Van Alstyne was—then why should he run? There’s no report in the news that Audrey Keane has been killed. Maybe as far as he knew, his gir
lfriend was still alive and kicking someplace.”

  “After a woman had been murdered in the house where Keane was cat-sitting?” Mark sounded dubious.

  “Maybe he thought Keane killed Mrs. Van Alstyne,” Kevin suggested.

  “She has no record of violence,” Lyle said. “No record of any kind.”

  “Besides,” Mark said, “wouldn’t that make it more likely he would’ve cleared out? Before we came knocking on the door?”

  “Enough.” Jensen raised her hands. “We need Dennis Shambaugh. Family member?”

  “A whole lot of ’em,” Lyle said. “He was one of seven kids scattered between here and Buffalo. Mary Ann, Mary Beatrice, Charles, Dennis, Eugene—”

  “Jesus. They sound like the road company of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Okay, get on them. Friends? Acquaintances? Anybody he owes money to?”

  “We’ll start with what we can get from his parole officer,” Eric said. “I’ll call Clinton and see if they have any visitors on record.”

  “Good.” Jensen let her gaze travel slowly around the squad room, making sure everyone there knew he was in her sights. “We need statements from everybody he and Keane came into contact with since he got out. We need to question this Deacon Aberforth who saw Reverend Fergusson Monday afternoon, and I want a warrant to search her car and that cabin she was staying at. We’ll pick this up again tonight at five o’clock. Maybe this investigation will make better progress now we’re not all worried about where Mr. Van Alstyne is.”

  He had written down the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the last five clients Linda had worked with on site. He gave it to Harlene. “I don’t expect you’ll be able to reach my cell phone much,” he said. “A lot of these places are in the mountains. If you hear anything, anything at all, and you can’t reach me, try one of these numbers. I put ’em in pretty much the order I’m gonna visit ’em.”

  Harlene, who had three counties’ worth of roads in her head after thirty years on dispatch, looked up from the list. “It’s supposed to start coming down hard around lunchtime. Are you sure you want to be out driving around in a storm? Can’t you just call ’em instead?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “You know as well as I there are things you find out in person you’ll never get over the phone.”

  She gave him a look that said, Now pull the other one.

  “I’m useless here. A lame duck.” He waved a hand at himself: no badge, no gun, no uniform. “I don’t get out and do something, I’ll go nuts.”

  She shook her head. “Take care of yourself. Don’t make more work for us by wrapping your truck around a tree.”

  He twitched a smile at her.

  Walking down the hallway felt oddly final, as if he were going and not coming back. He paused in the foyer to zip his scarf inside his jacket and heard footsteps behind him. He turned. It was Lyle.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find my wife.”

  Lyle jammed his hands into his pockets. “We got that BOLO out on ’er. Coast to coast. Describes her as a cop’s wife, so everyone’ll be looking that much harder for her.”

  Except, of course, the ones who would assume she was running away from the domestic violence that sometimes erupts in police families. He pulled his gloves from his pocket and tugged them on.

  “Russ,” Lyle began.

  He held up his hand. “Don’t.”

  “Come on. You gotta hear me out.”

  “No, I don’t. The only thing I’ve got to do is keep from smashing your face in.” Empty talk. Posturing. He didn’t feel like taking Lyle apart. He just felt sick and tired and dirty. And it was only eight o’clock in the morning.

  “She’s alive. That means you’re going to have to deal with it sooner or later.”

  “Her, I forgive. You can take a flying fuck.” He turned toward the marble stairs. Lyle grabbed his arm.

  Russ spun around. He had a good five inches and forty pounds on MacAuley, but his deputy chief didn’t give an inch.

  “I didn’t know you then,” Lyle said, his voice tight. “She was unhappy and lonely, and the only reason—”

  “I don’t want to hear this!”

  “The only reason we got together was because she was so pissed off at you for bringing her to Millers Kill.” Lyle glanced away. “I figured that out later.”

  “Surprisingly, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Russ, get your head out of your ass. You’ve been so busy telling yourself you’re happily married you never opened up your eyes to see what was really going on. And I don’t mean Linda using me to flip you the bird seven years ago. Okay, I’m a son of a whore and you got the right to rearrange my face. I slept with your wife and then I got to know you and respect you and to like you, and I never had the guts to come clean. I’m sorry. Jesus. I can’t say it any more’n that. I’m sorry. But you gotta face the fact that there’s something wrong with the marriage when a husband and wife act like you two have.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” Russ said between clenched teeth, “but I know there’s something wrong with my marriage. And I’m going to fix it as soon as I find my wife.”

  Lyle released his arm. He sighed, a flat, defeated sigh. “Right.”

  Russ turned. Took the top two steps. Turned back. “The thing I don’t get,” he said, “is why? Even if you didn’t know me, you knew I was heading up the department. Why make trouble in your own backyard? Why my wife?”

  Lyle smiled without humor. “I’da thought you of all people would’ve figured that out.” His eyes slid away from Russ’s and looked at some point seven years in the past. “I was in love with her,” he said. “I was in love with her, too.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Clare refused to look at the paper Thursday morning. She cracked open the front door of the rectory and saw it lying on her porch in its bright yellow plastic bag to protect it from the promised storm, and wondered why she had never seen how much it resembled an unexploded pipe bomb. Or a large, malignant yellow jacket, waiting for her to reach out an unwary hand and be stung. She closed the door. Whatever was in it, she’d find out soon enough.

  She dressed quickly, trying not to notice the jumbled disarray in her sweater drawer or the way her skirt hangers had been shoved to one side of her closet. In the kitchen, she opened the pantry door to get out the oatmeal and was so dismayed by the mess she shut the door again, her appetite gone. What had they thought she was hiding behind the canned tomatoes and boxes of rigatoni?

  She poured coffee from the coffeemaker into her Thermos. She pulled on her boots and parka. Next to her coat tree, the phone on the wall blinked its red message light over and over and over again. She hesitated, her hand over the play button. Maybe Russ had called?

  Then she thought of his face in the station, the distrustful cop mask falling over his features, and anger burst behind her eyes, bitter and salty in her mouth. No. Russ had not called. She left the phone flashing monotonously behind the kitchen door and crunched her way down her unplowed drive toward the church.

  She let herself in by the back door, walking through the still-darkened parish hall toward her office. She was surprised, as she drew closer, to hear a voice from the main office. She was always the first one in. Lois didn’t show up until nine. She slowed her steps, drawing close to the doorway without entering.

  The voice was talking, then pausing. A phone conversation. “I don’t know enough to make a recommendation.” Elizabeth de Groot. Goodness, she was quite the woman of Proverbs, wasn’t she? She riseth also while it is yet night. “I thought you should hear it from me first,” Elizabeth went on. Clare leaned forward, and the Thermos thumped against her leg. She froze. “No,” Elizabeth said. Another long pause. “Well, that’s for the police to decide, isn’t it?”

  Clare suddenly saw herself as she was, lurking in the darkness outside her church’s office, eavesdropping on a private conversation. It was
not a pretty picture. She retreated a couple of steps, cleared her throat, and called out, “Hello?”

  There was a second’s pause before de Groot answered, “Hi, Clare! It’s me, Elizabeth.” Then something quiet into the phone. By the time Clare came through the door, she was setting the receiver into the cradle. “I decided to get in early today,” Elizabeth said. “There’s so much I have to absorb just to get up to speed.”

  “Mmm.” Clare rested her Thermos on Lois’s desk.

  “I really think I can make a contribution to the ongoing capital campaign,” Elizabeth went on. “Not to mention with the stewardship committee. And I’ve been thinking more about outreach. I think we can expand it way beyond simply getting people who are already congregants back into the pews.”

  Clare let the deacon rattle on while she debated asking Elizabeth what her real agenda was at St. Alban’s. Would the information she got be worth tipping her hand? When reconnoitering enemy territory, Master Sergeant Ashley “Hardball” Wright drawled, the first, second, and last rule is: Don’t get caught. Her old SERE instructor would’ve flunked her if she blabbed about hearing the phone call or wondered aloud what de Groot was doing for the bishop.

  Elizabeth ran out of conversational steam and looked up at Clare with a mixture of sunshine and wariness.

  “You’d better think about gathering up what you need and taking it home,” Clare said. “They’re predicting this storm is going to be one for the record books. You don’t want to be trapped on the Northway.”

  The fine lines around Elizabeth’s eyes relaxed almost imperceptibly. “Are you going to close the office?”

  Clare shook her head. “Not yet. I’ve got a couple of counseling sessions this morning. If it’s looking bad after that, I’ll send Lois and Mr. Hadley home.”

  “What about Evening Prayer?”

  “Let’s take a listen to what the rest of the world’s doing.” Clare switched on Lois’s radio. The Storm Center First Response Team was reading off an alphabetical list of area schools that were closed, followed by businesses shutting early and manufacturers canceling shifts. Sounded like the world and his wife were going to stay at home and sit this one out. “Okay,” Clare said. “I’ll call the snow-closing hotline later this morning and let them know there’s no Evening Prayer.” Two and a half years ago, she hadn’t even known what a snow-closing hotline was. Now she had it on her speed dial.