There was a long pause. Somehow, she didn’t think he was rubbing the bridge of his nose this time. “Nobody drives up from the city for a party and then turns around and goes home,” he said. “Where’s he spending the night?”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just thinking of your reputation.”
“Do you mean to sound like a pompous hypocrite, or was that accidental?”
“I worry about what people might say about you!”
“You’re jealous.”
“I’m not going to get into this right now.”
“Hypocrite.” She knew she sounded childish and spiteful, but she couldn’t stop herself.
“I’m not the one who has to set a good example for my flock. What is it your church teaches? Sex should be reserved for marriage?”
“For a committed, monogamous relationship,” she said snottily. “Since I haven’t dated anyone other than Hugh for the past two years, I think we qualify.”
“A high roller from New York is only interested in one thing, and it’s not the Book of Common Prayer.”
Suddenly she deflated. “I kind of wish that was true,” she said quietly. “But it’s not. He likes me. A lot.”
There was a long pause. When he finally spoke, Russ’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “I’m sorry. I have no business sticking my nose into your relationship with him. Forget I said anything.” He paused, then went on with badly faked cheer. “If you two are, you know, moving ahead . . . that’s great. I mean it.”
“Well, there’s your trouble, as the song says. He’s moving ahead. I’m not.” She stared at the stains on her pants as if the secrets of the universe were written there. “I can’t give him something that already belongs to someone else.” She gave herself a shake. “And you know what? You’re right, this is the wrong time to talk about this. Compared to the Castles and the van der Hoevens, I have no troubles.” She smiled brightly. “Time to go where I can be useful. Don’t worry about trying to catch me later. You’re going to have your hands full.”
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said.
She paused. “No, I’ll be at the—”
“We’re going, too. Linda and me.” She could hear his humorless smile. “We’ll see you and Hugh there.”
2:30 P.M.
She was going to die. She realized, now it was too late, that her panic at waking up in the tower room of the old house had been more like playacting than the real thing. She raged and shook and whimpered out of the unknown, the faceless whoevers who had put her there. But she had been on Haudenosaunee land, at home, in a way, and some part of her must have been soothed and strengthened by that realization. She prepared to be the heroine in her own action film, counting on a lucky break like the ones that heroines always catch by the end of the third reel.
Shut in the stifling trunk of a car, she lost any illusions she had left. There was only the darkness, and the noise, and the continuous rolling and thumping and jolting, leaving her bruised and breathless and unable to think. She was in the hands of the man who had killed her brother, and she was so afraid she couldn’t even grieve for him.
The car stopped. She heard the driver’s door open, then one of the back doors. There was a clinking sound and then footsteps going away. After a while, they came back. She braced herself, but once again she heard the clinking in the backseat and then the footsteps disappearing. The next time they returned, though, there was an electronic click, the trunk sprang open, and she was blinking in the light, unable to make out anything other than a blurred black silhouette. He tangled his hands in the blanket that was still wrapped loosely around her and was hoisting her out before she could collect herself enough to protest.
She opened her mouth to scream, but he slung her over his shoulder, knocking the wind out of her. He climbed a short set of stairs, teetering under her weight, and she had the stomach-jolting sensation that she was about to fall. The steps were old, massive stone slabs instead of concrete, and there was a cold, fresh wind and the sound of water. That was all she absorbed before he passed into a dim, still place. He swung around, and she glimpsed a whirl of worn wooden floor and two small wooden crates, and then he flexed beneath her, straining, and she heard the squeak of unused wheels on a metal track.
“Nooo!”
The rumble of the door rolling shut cut off her despairing cry.
He didn’t bother to tell her to shut up. That, more than the cavernous, disused space around her, convinced her she was well out of earshot. Whatever happened here, no one would hear.
He humped her across the floor, between tarp-covered lumps and pallets of old-fashioned wooden crates, much larger than the ones he had stepped around at the door. Despite the golden afternoon sun outside, the huge space languished in twilight.
Facedown, she had no idea how high the vast room was, but overhead she thought she heard the sound of wings. The place reeked of machine oil and damp wood and mouse droppings. As her captor crossed the floor, the dust-flecked air grew lighter and the shadows clouding the machinery and the crates grew more defined. She noticed another thing: The sound of water, faint at first, was increasing steadily.
He stopped, leaned forward, unseated her from his shoulder, and thumped her onto a crate like a sack of grain. She tilted her head back. Above her, I-bars and rafters glinted in the pale light streaming from lozenge-shaped windows set high in the wall behind her. She looked at the man who was going to kill her. She had always thought of herself as a fighter, as a leading-the-charge-from-the-deck-of-the-Rainbow-Warrior sort. Now she discovered it was possible to be so tired, so hurt and sad and scared, that the Rainbow Warrior sank beneath a black sea, leaving her adrift, no surface under her feet. “What are you going to do to me?” she asked, her voice bleached of emotion.
“For chrissakes.” The man wrapped his hand around his upper arm, where she had bitten him. “I told you before, I’m not doing anything to you. You’re going to stay put for tonight. I’ll let you go tomorrow.” He paused. “Or Monday, at the latest.”
“You’re going to let me go.”
“I’m not the bad guy here. Christ! All I wanted to do was talk with your brother about buying some of the Haudenosaunee land. I didn’t know he had his own sister locked up in some kinky game of hide-and-seek.”
“That’s not what was going on!” She was grateful for the tears rising in her eyes. It meant she could still feel grief and outrage. “My brother was protecting me.” At some point between seeing her brother’s face in the tower and facing his murderer here, she had come to accept that Eugene hadn’t discovered she was missing and come creeping in to rescue her. He had put her in the tower, given her a bucket and blankets and food, and if she couldn’t imagine the reason right now, it didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
“Okay, then I’m protecting you, too. In better style, I might add. I’m leaving your gag off, for one.”
He didn’t have any duct tape. Not that she was about to point that out to him.
“There’s a washroom over there.” He pointed toward a dark shaft of a doorway at the far edge of the room. “It’s not in great condition, but it works. And I’ll bring you something to eat and a sleeping bag later. There’s even two cases of your family wine by the door. Be good, and you can have some later on.”
Along with grief and outrage, she could still feel amazement. His tone of voice clearly invited her to admire his generosity. To thank him. He stared at her, expecting some reaction. She didn’t know what to give him. He huffed and turned away. “You’re next to the kill,” he said over his shoulder, and for a moment she had an image of a serial killer’s dumping ground, before common sense reasserted itself. The kill. The river. “You can’t be heard, so don’t bother to wear your voice out yelling.” His figure blurred into the darkness at the other end of the building. “I’ll be back later.” His voice floated through the dusty air.
She expected to see a blaze of light as the wide door—a type of loadin
g dock, she recognized now—slid open. Instead, she heard a muffled thunk and click from another, smaller, unseen door. She was alone.
She waited, unmoving. Was it a trick? Did he want to toy with her before doing whatever it was he was going to do with her? Her proximity to the river suggested several unpleasant possibilities. She could hear it more clearly, now she wasn’t focusing all her attention on her captor. Water gurgled and swished directly below the wooden floor, and to her left she heard a steady rumble and hiss, water falling, fast, over an obstacle.
She waited some more. Minutes passed. More wings overhead. Birds. She hoped they were birds. The idea of sitting in this echoing space as the sun went down, surrounded by flying creatures that weren’t birds . . . she shivered. Then caught herself. She was thinking of the future, wasn’t she? At least, a future a few hours from now.
Her heart, painful, tender, hopeful, resurrected itself in her chest. He had really gone. She had time. She had an entire warehouse of possibilities. And tucked inside her sleeve, she still had the sharpened iron rod from the door hinge. She stood, a movement that was much easier from a crate than a floor. Better get started.
2:35 P.M.
John Huggins was ticked off. “You mean it wasn’t Millie van der Hoeven?”
“No,” Russ said for the third time. He was in van der Hoeven’s study, sitting in the dead man’s chair, using the dead man’s phone. He was not a happy man at the moment.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” There was a pause. “I didn’t just decide to call off the search, you know. Mr. van der Hoeven told me his sister had been found. If anybody’s screwed up here, it’s him.”
Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Eugene was . . . mistaken. Did your searchers leave all together? Or did they straggle out one by one?”
“No, we always do a head count and equipment check before we break a search. We all left together.”
“What time was this?”
“Half past twelve or thereabouts.”
Right around the time when Becky Castle was being taken to town in the ambulance. “Did any of you see Eugene van der Hoeven?”
“Sure. He came out and thanked us all for our help.”
“Was he inside or outside when you left?”
“Inside. He went inside after he spoke with us. I figured he was fixing to head out to the hospital to be with his sister.”
“Did any of your team go inside the house before they left?”
There was a stack of catalogs by the phone. Russ picked up the top one. Hunting gear. He flipped through a few more. L.L.Bean, Eddie Bauer, army-navy surplus. It made sense. A man like Eugene van der Hoeven, phobic about leaving his house and grounds, probably did all his shopping over the phone.
“No. What the hell’s going on?”
Russ uncovered another catalog. “I can’t say right now. Did you notice anything odd or unusual, anything at all, in the time between breaking the search and leaving?”
“No.” Huggins paused, then said, “Yes. Sort of. When I was driving down the road to the county highway, I passed a car coming up. It wasn’t actually coming up right then. It had pulled off as far as it could to let us through. We make quite a wagon train when everybody’s truck starts rolling.”
“What sort of car?”
“It was a black Mercedes. Looked kind of new, but you know how they are. Hard to tell.”
“Do you know the model?”
Huggins laughed. “Do I strike you as a guy who spends a lot of time around Mercedeses? Ask me about Chevys, then I can help you out. It was a four-door hardtop, New York plates, that’s all I can tell you.”
“Did you see who was in it?”
“Some guy. I couldn’t make out any details from my angle. I ride a lot higher up than that Mercedes.” His voice turned serious. “Look, if Millie van der Hoeven is still missing, do you want me to reassemble the team?”
“You got your dog handler back?”
“She’s on her way down from Plattsburgh right now.”
Russ thought for a moment. “We’re in the middle of an investigation, so I can’t have your people up here until we’ve cleared the scene. But put everyone on hold. Especially the dog handler.”
“Okay.” Huggins was clearly consumed with curiosity, and only his image of himself as a hard-bitten professional was keeping him from breaking down and begging Russ to tell him what was going on.
Russ said his good-bye and got off the phone. Outside, Lyle MacAuley was squatting in front of the third bay of the garage, squinting at the garden cart stowed there.
“What do you think?” Russ asked.
“It’s been used. Today. Look.” He pointed to where a torn blade of grass, still green, clung to a dab of dark soil. “That’s fresh.” He stood, stretching. “I don’t need some fancy-pants statie technician to tell me that. And take a look at the handle.” He pointed. “Smear of blood.”
“Yeah, I noticed that as well.” Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t see any open injuries on Ed when I took him into custody.”
“What about van der Hoeven’s body?”
Russ shook his head. “I asked Emil Dvorak to get the preliminary results to us as quickly as possible. There’s something about this whole situation”—he waved, indicating the cart, the house, and the wide woods beyond—“that sticks in my craw.”
“I dunno. I like Ed Castle as a suspect. He gets here, smashes into van der Hoeven with his SUV, and then dumps the body in the back of beyond.” Lyle spread his hands as if presenting a fait accompli. “We’re back home in time for the evening news.”
“Somebody else was here.”
Both of Lyle’s overgrown eyebrows rose.
“John Huggins saw a black Mercedes driving up the road to Haudenosaunee when the entire search team was making their way down.”
“Tight fit.”
“Huggins couldn’t identify the year or model, just that it was a sedan with New York plates.”
“Great. I’m sure there aren’t more than two, three hundred thousand Mercedeses in New York. Saratoga alone probably has more’n a hundred. I’ll get right on it.”
“We have a blank spot in van der Hoeven’s timeline as well,” Russ said. “An hour, an hour and a half between the time the search team left and you found him here with Ed.”
“Any possible witnesses?”
“He had a part-time housekeeper. I can’t remember her first name, but the last name’s Schoof. She’s Mark Durkee’s sister-in-law.”
“Lisa.”
“Good memory.”
Lyle leered. “You may be getting too old to notice, but the day I forget a good-looking woman’s name is the day you can haul me away in the garden cart.”
“I’m going to radio Kevin Flynn. Have him question her. Her husband came by to pick her up, so he may have seen something as well.”
“Kevin?” Lyle looked skeptical. “You sure about that?”
“He needs to start somewhere.”
“What about me?”
Russ grinned. “You’ve not only started, I think you’ve damn near finished as well.”
“Smart-ass. What do you want me to do?”
The whoop-whoop-whoop of a siren stopped Russ before he could answer. He watched as a paneled van emblazoned with NYSP CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION UNIT pulled up between Lyle’s and Noble Entwhistle’s squad cars. Russ let himself feel relieved when Sergeant Jordan Hayes stepped down from the driver’s side. Hayes had worked scenes for the Millers Kill PD before, and he was close to local law enforcement’s ideal of a trooper—smart, willing to take direction, and not likely to push for jurisdiction.
“You were going to tell me where you wanted me,” Lyle reminded Russ.
“Yeah. Get over to the hospital and take Becky Castle’s statement. She’s out of surgery.”
Lyle looked surprised. “The hospital called you?”
“Uh.” Russ forced himself not to look away from his deputy chief. “N
o. I was talking to Reverend Fergusson. She told me.”
“Ah.” Lyle paused. “You know, at fifty you’re supposed to be too old and too smart to be messing up your life.”
Don’t go there. Just don’t go there. Russ strode across the gravel toward the van, where another technician had joined Hayes in unloading the gear.
“Sergeant Hayes,” he said, his hand outstretched.
The trooper shook his hand briefly. “Chief Van Alstyne.”
“Ready to help us make a quick close on this one?”
“You bet. Show us the way.”
Russ pivoted toward one of the squad cars. “Noble,” he shouted.
Noble Entwhistle popped up from his slouched position against the side of his car.
“You’re with me.” Russ pointed a finger toward Lyle, who had drifted up beside him. “You. To the hospital.” He lowered his voice. “Be good.”
“Funny,” Lyle said. “I was going to tell you the same thing.”
2:40 P.M.
Clare had always considered the narrow brick stairs leading from St. Alban’s semibasement kitchen to street level her own private escape hatch. The great double door of the church was for Sundays and weddings and inconveniently faced Church Street’s public square, in the opposite direction from the rectory. The doorway out of the upper parish hall, opening onto Elm Street and the large parking space the church rented, was much more frequently used, like the driveway-side entrance in a house where the front door is too grand and inaccessible. As a result, the chances of Clare slipping in and out unobserved were slim to none. But few people used the kitchen stairs, which scuttled steeply up to St. Alban’s own minuscule parking lot and from there to a tall boxwood hedge dividing the rectory from the church grounds.
Her plan had been to sneak down the stairs, find Geoff Burns, and then hightail it out of there to her own house. She needed food and a shower. Or a shower and food. Maybe a sandwich in the tub.
The presence of an unheard-of three cars squeezed onto the postage-stamp-sized asphalt square was a tip-off that her plan was about to require some modifications. She nosed her Shelby against a plastic garbage bin and opened the door gingerly, so as not to smack into the neighboring Volvo.
To Darkness and to Death Page 22