After a while, his heart slowed. He looked at the blue November sky, running like a river between the trees that enclosed his line of sight. His breathing came easier. His trembling slowed to twitches. He still felt feverish and sick, as if his skin were too small for his body, but he had to accept that he wasn’t going to drop dead on the spot. Which meant he had to face the crumpled, unmoving heap beside him. The woman. He turned his head, his throat aching. She was still, too still, and there was blood all over her white face. He rolled his head back. Looked at the river-sky. Oh, God. He was going to die. Not right now, not here in the dirt in the middle of the woods, no. He was going to die strapped to a gurney in a clean room with bright lights in Clinton. Because he had finally, irrevocably lost his temper.
He started crying again, tears spilling hot over his cheeks and running into his ears. His nose clogged and mucus clotted his throat, until he couldn’t breathe and he had to heave himself into a sitting position and hack.
He looked at her again. Should he go to the cops and turn himself in? Did he need to get a lawyer first? How was he going to afford a lawyer? Oh, God, what about Lisa? This would kill her. He had just wanted to stay with her, and now he was a murderer and he was going to be locked up for the rest of his life and die. He rocked back and forth, clamped in place by misery.
What should he do? What should he do? His whole life ruined because he hadn’t been able to keep a lid on it when that teasing bitch taunted him and took his picture. He looked at the disposable camera, abandoned in the dirt. That was it. That was what he was going to the death house for.
Unless he wasn’t.
The thought seemed to settle over him from the cold blue sky, to creep up on him through the gray and groaning trees. What if—he didn’t turn himself in? What if he wasn’t caught? What if he walked—no, ran down the hill and took her car and drove away? Was there any way to connect him to—he didn’t want to name her, but he gave her a wary glance. To her?
He thought about his day, about the trail he had left behind him. As far as Lisa and his brother-in-law were concerned, he was still at home. Lewis Johnson had seen him at the mill this morning, and Geraldine Bain at the post office at maybe ten o’clock. He hadn’t said anything about his plans to Ed Castle. So he was good there.
It broke down with his bike, though. Triple A would have a record. They had picked up his bike on her card, and he hadn’t even been there. Any cop asked, it’d be pretty damn obvious he had gone with her.
He had figured, when she offered him a ride, to have her drop him off at Mike Yablonski’s. He could pick up his truck there and take Lisa home.
Mike Yablonski’s. What if he had asked her to take him there first? That would have made good sense. If anybody asked, Yabbo’d say Randy had been with him the whole time, no sweat.
He didn’t waste any more time thinking. He snatched up the camera and rolled to his knees. Avoiding looking at her, he rose unsteadily to his feet. After a few tentative steps, he walked, then jogged, then ran the last of the way to her car. His throat ached with every breath. He flung open the door and bounced into the driver’s seat.
The sound of the engine was like the blast of doom. He froze in his seat, waiting for the fury of the law to hear and overtake him, but nothing stirred. He drove forward. His hands were shaking so, he had to clamp them tight on the wheel. He reached the surfaced road. Stopped. The worn and rutted edge where the dirt road bled onto asphalt stretched before him like some vast gorge. If he crossed over, he was out there, in public, where anyone could see, driving the car that belonged to the woman he had—he shook his head. Took a deep breath. The only thing more stupid than going was staying.
He swung out onto the two-laner, trading the grind of tires over packed dirt for the smooth hum of macadam. The shake became a shiver running down his spine. He had gotten away with murder. Now he had to figure out how to keep getting away with it.
11:35 A.M.
Russ shoved his chair back from his desk, frustration a bitter taste in the back of his throat. He had been tracking down McWhorters for an hour, looking for a Michael who might be Millie van der Hoeven’s lover, without success.
Harlene Lendrum shouldered aside his office door, which he had left half open to let the warm air circulate. She clutched a coffeepot in one hand. “Well, it’s no birthday cake and champagne, but you can have the rest if you want it.”
“Now that’s an invitation I’m hard-pressed to pass up. Three-hour-old coffee dregs. Yum.”
Harlene skewered him with a glance. “Nobody made you come in here on your birthday, mister, so don’t get all snippy with me.” The dispatcher, who had outlasted two prior police chiefs and was bidding fair to outlast him, didn’t put much stock in rank or deference.
“Sorry.” He slapped his pencil against one of a sheaf of papers he was working from. “This search is ticking me off. Finding the right guy is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I ran a printout of Michael McWhorters and M. McWhorters and split it with Noble.” Noble Entwhistle, a fifteen-year veteran of the Millers Kill Police Department, was Russ’s first choice for jobs like this. Noble didn’t have an original idea in his head, but he was dogged, organized, and content to ring doorbells all day, meeting people and checking names off lists. Work that would drive a brighter guy, like his up-and-comer, Mark Durkee, nuts.
“I take it you haven’t rustled up a likely suspect over the phone,” Harlene said.
He grunted. “I eliminated the ones I knew who were too old or too married for the girl, but there are still a lot of names on the list.”
“Being older and being married’s not necessarily going to stop a girl.”
He looked at her sharply. Her face was bland. “I had to do something to whittle the size of the pool down, or I’ll be here all day. There are just too damn many McWhorters.”
“Before you start in on the McWhorters, I’ll remind you my mother was a McWhorter before she wed.”
“So was my maternal grandmother. I’m sure you and I are related somehow.”
Harlene patted her springy gray curls. “You can tell by our resemblance.” Harlene was a good ten years older and a head shorter than he, as straight and square as a weathered wooden plank.
“We-e-ell,” he temporized. “I’ll ask my mom. You know how she is. Loves all that genealogy stuff.” The idea waltzed in on the heels of his statement. “My mother.”
“What about her?”
“You know how she is,” he repeated. “What does she love even more than genealogy?”
“All her causes. Save the whales and get out the vote and all that.”
“Exactly. She’s president of the local branch of the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation. And I’ll bet five bucks for the doughnut kitty that she knows a thing or two about our missing girl. Eugene van der Hoeven said his sister had met with the local ACC members.” He stood. “I’m going to my mother’s house. I’ll keep my truck radio on in case anyone needs to reach me.”
His dispatcher eyeballed his baggy camos and long-sleeved thermal T-shirt. “If you’re going to go on duty, you ought to check out a squad car and get changed. You still keep the spare uniform down in the evidence locker, don’t you?”
He waved her suggestion away. “As soon as I get a lead on this Michael McWhorter, I’m out of here. I plan to spend the afternoon reading a good thriller.”
She snorted. “Now I know you’re over the hill. Taking the day off when there’s a live case to work? I’ll believe it when I see it.”
11:45 A.M.
There was cold air. The smell of earth. And blood. Where was she? The pain made it hard to think. Becky tried to take a deep breath to clear her head, but the movement jolted her sides as if someone had touched her with a live wire. Little, shallow breaths, then. Dog-panting.
She opened her eyes. Her face was half in the dirt. She could see the road, and beyond that, tree trunks, bracken, and dead leaves. The angle was wrong. It made her feel queasy. She shut
her eyes. She pressed against the ground, trying to shift her weight. Her arms shook. With a stabbing pain, she rolled onto her back.
She didn’t want to move; she didn’t want to think; she didn’t want to be in her body right now. She stared into the sky. Why was the November sky, even on a sunny day, so much less blue than in October? In October, it always felt like she could reach up and touch the sky. Now, high and pale, it had retreated to the edge of the world. Soon it would snow.
The noontime sun shone straight overhead, warming her and the rocks and the dirt indiscriminately. But this was mid-November, and the sun was like a ball tossed in the sky, quick up and quick down. Within a few hours, it would be growing dark. And cold. When the sun set, the temperatures would sink below freezing. She ached so badly, she wanted to lie in the dirt and the sunshine and pretend that her dad would discover her at any moment. But she couldn’t count on that.
She rolled over again. Palms flat against the ground, she pushed herself, shoulders up, rump up, until she was on her hands and knees. She would get herself to her car. She wasn’t too far, maybe a hundred yards, maybe two hundred. If she could make it to her car, she could roll it down to the county highway. There would be traffic there, people that would stop at the sight of a woman with a bloody head. She could use the cell phone hanging off its charger.
She crawled downhill. Small rocks bit through the knees of her jeans, adding an undercurrent of teeth-gritting pain to the constant, throbbing ache that was her head and the sharp electrical jolts whenever she breathed too deeply or moved the wrong way. She inched forward, and forward, and forward, in a haze of pain and sweat and dirt and sunshine, and when she paused to see how far she had come she almost wept.
She wasn’t more than fifteen feet from where she started.
Think. What if she tried to walk? It would hurt, sure, with her broken ribs, but it already hurt crawling. At least she’d get to her car before sunset. Recalling that ribs were supposed to remain stable, she sat back on her heels and wrapped her arms around herself. Then slowly, ponderously, she staggered to her feet. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. She bared her teeth in a half smile, half grimace. Took a step. Took another. Her mind supplied her with an inane song from one of those Christmas shows that ran every year. Put one foot in front of the other. Down the road. Around the bend.
Where her car should have been, there was nothing.
A part of her mind that was well away from the pain noted that her Albany friends were right. She shouldn’t have left her keys in the car.
She wrapped her arms more tightly around her. She was cold, cold from the inside out, her feet and fingers almost numb. Okay. She was headed for the county highway. She’d just have to walk, that’s all.
So she walked. Put one foot in front of the other. She walked a yard, two yards, three. Made it past another bend in the road. Her head swam, and for a moment everything darkened, but she breathed, and the world came back into view. She was tired. So tired. She had to sit and rest. For just a moment. She sank onto the road, bracing herself with one hand. “Help,” she called tentatively. She took a deeper breath. “Help!” Noticeably louder. “Help!” she screamed, causing a group of crows to burst out of the trees and wheel through the clear sky above the road before disappearing up the mountain. “Help! Help! Help!” she howled, until the woods around her echoed with the sound.
Enough. Get to the road. She rolled to her knees and pushed against the dirt, trying to leverage herself up again. She felt a hot pain, biting and chewing at her guts. Deep inside her, something tore loose—oh, that’s not good, that’s not good, she thought and then everything tilted and a stream of dark bubbles roared up around her head and she was gone.
An Order of Service for Noonday
Officiant: O God, make speed to save us.
People: O Lord, make haste to help us.
12:00 P.M.
Shaun Reid stood in his office, considering the rest of his life. He had driven all the way home from his AllBanc meeting only to idle in the driveway, staring at his garage door, wondering what was the matter with him. Why the hell couldn’t he take the money and run? Terry McKellan was right: He’d have enough bucks to retire and live in style with his gorgeous young wife. Hell, he was still young himself, by today’s standards. Fifty was just breaking middle age. He had thirty, thirty-five years ahead of him if he watched his cholesterol and kept active.
That prospect was like looking into a puzzle box picture, where an endless series of boxes opened before him, and each box was a gray and empty room. He reversed out of his driveway and drove to the mill, down streets he had driven for thirty years. More, if you counted the times he had been sitting in the seat next to his dad.
He had loved coming to work with the old man. When he was too small to go onto the floor, his dad had given him the run of the administrative offices. He would ride round and round in the secretary’s chair that spun and rolled, and she would let him crank the mimeograph machine and swipe candy from the bowl on her desk. When he got older, he loved the way his dad would talk to him as if he were another adult, laying out facts and figures, asking for his opinion. At home, he wasn’t supposed to pester his dad, who would stretch out in his chair, tired from a hard day’s work, reading a magazine and drinking the Tom Collins Mom always served him. But at the mill it was a different story. Dad was alert, energetic, attentive. They were a team.
He had never wanted to kick loose, to move away or strike out on his own. In college, when his classmates were studying Marxist literature and marching against the war, he had lied about being a business major, because that was almost as uncool as being in the ROTC. But he never questioned that he was going back to Millers Kill, where an office next to his father’s waited for him.
He stood there now. It was small, tucked between the reception area and what used to be the payroll accountant’s office, until they outsourced payroll to a big firm that cut the checks and handled the taxes and Social Security for them. He had hoped Jeremy would one day work there, within earshot of his father, but—he shook that thought off. Entered the office that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s.
Most of the old pictures, from the first days of the company, were in the reception area now, impressing anyone who got off on the quaint idea that a business might run for over a century without changing hands. The pictures and plaques in his office were personal, and looking at them, he realized how much his life had been shaped by the presence of the mill and his role in its continuity.
There were his mom and dad, and him in bibbed shorts and curly hair, squinting into the sunlight at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the “new” dam and causeway, now forty-seven years old and aging fast. There were his high school and college graduation pictures. No honors. He had never pushed himself. Never had to. The picture of Jeremy in cap and gown, though, showed loops of gold braid and an Honor Society tassel. Even then, his son had been planning ahead for his getaway.
By his son’s graduation picture was a framed newspaper clipping with a picture of Shaun and Russ Van Alstyne at the 1968 trout tourney, showing off their winning fish, their arms around each other’s shoulders. Russ had left the year after that and not returned for a quarter century. Shaun had seen him a few times since he had become chief of police, at Rotary dinners and town meetings. They had nothing in common anymore. It wasn’t Russ personally. Shaun didn’t have much in common with many of the people he had called friends back in high school. They had aged into grocery clerks and dairy farmers, or they had left town and not come back. There weren’t many success stories in Millers Kill, not for the class of ’69.
He flopped onto the sofa Courtney had picked out for him. Soft leather as comfortable as an old glove. He had kicked and screamed, but once the old couch—picked out by his mother, circa 1964—had been carted away and the new one installed, he wondered why he had put up with the hard seat and scratchy upholstery for so long. Maybe selling the company would be the same. After it was swallowed u
p by the GWP empire, he’d wonder why he had ever fussed.
Sure. Just like the victims of the Borg never fussed on Star Trek. Prepare to be assimilated.
A knock on the door. He rolled off the couch as the door opened and Jeremy stuck his head in. “Hey. Am I interrupting?”
“What are you doing here?” Shaun’s tone was harsher than he intended.
Jeremy entered the office. “I’m looking for you. You weren’t home, and the Trophy Wife is at church, so where else could you be but at the Holy of Holies, the office.”
Shaun was willing to let the crack about Courtney pass. Once. “If you ever want to rise above the level of gofer, you might try a little work ethic, too. It was putting in lots of hours in this office that paid for your college and B-school.”
“And my year in London and my car. Don’t forget those, Dad.” Jeremy smiled insincerely.
Shaun jammed his hands into his pants pockets to avoid clenching his fists. It was always like this with them. Gretchen, Jeremy’s mother, liked to say they were too much alike. Shaun didn’t see it. At twenty-five, he had been a husband and father, putting in fifty or sixty hours a week at Reid-Gruyn. Jeremy was a glorified concierge who spent every minute out of the office partying. The only thing they had in common was their looks: both tall and rawboned, Shaun’s faded sandy hair the remains of Jeremy’s aggressive auburn.
“I repeat, what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see if you needed me to smooth your path tonight. I can wrangle you seats at the GWP table, if you want.”
“No, thanks.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Dad, it’s in your best interest to talk with these guys. If they make a bid for the company, your future is going to depend on them. I keep telling you, you can’t make it today just by keeping your nose to the grindstone. You have to be out there, networking. Schmoozing. Personal relationships are important.”
To Darkness and to Death Page 13