To Darkness and to Death

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  She opened the refrigerator and removed the jug of milk. Ultimately it boiled down to the fact that prison would kill Randy. He needed to be outdoors. He hated the jobs that shut him up inside; being locked away for a year or more would gut him. Then there was his temper. He needed to have her around for ballast. On his own, bottled up and seething, he’d explode. And some drug dealer, some guy who was a real criminal, unlike Randy, would knife him.

  The coffee ceased bubbling out of the filter. She waited a second to see if any last drips fell, then pulled out the pot and poured two cups. So. No lawyer, no surrender. Or not yet. That could always be their reserve, their fallback position.

  Clumping on the stairs. MacAuley poked his head through the doorway. “Thought I smelled coffee.”

  Lisa forced a smile. “Can I get you a cup?”

  “Sure.” He sauntered in and took up a post leaning against the refrigerator. “Nice place you have.”

  She poured MacAuley a cup and handed it to him. “Thanks,” he said. He slopped in enough milk to turn it tan and took a deep, appreciative drink. Then he looked at her over the rim of the cup. “I hate to cause you distress, ma’am, but we do have reason to believe your husband may have been seeing Becky Castle.”

  Lisa had split firewood before, and she knew what he was about. He was poking at the surface of the log, looking for a crack he could wedge his splitter into. It could take hours to chop apart a log with an ax. You needed an opening. It didn’t matter how small: Once you worked a splitter into it, down came the maul, and that log was gone, split in two, ready for the woodstove.

  She took out her own splitter. “No, he wasn’t. And I know that to be true, because I know who she was seeing.”

  MacAuley’s bushy eyebrows flicked upward. She had caught him off guard. “Who?”

  “Shaun Reid.”

  “The guy who owns the mill?” Kevin made a face. “Get out! He’s older than my father!”

  MacAuley looked at him wearily. “It doesn’t shrivel up and drop off when you turn fifty, Kevin.” He turned to Lisa. “How do you know this?”

  The first rule of lying: Keep as close to the truth as possible. “I clean for the Reids. Thursdays. And I was at Millers Kill High when she was. I know some of the same people she knows. There’s always talk. It’s a small town.”

  “She lives in Albany now.”

  “He never travels ‘on business’? She never comes up to ‘visit her folks’?” She shrugged. “Maybe I’ve got it wrong. But I’ve never heard any whispers about her and my husband.”

  MacAuley set down his mug. “Mrs. Schoof, what would you say if you I told you that Becky Castle has named your husband as the man who assaulted her?”

  “I’d ask why on earth Randy would want to hurt a woman he can barely remember from school.”

  “She says he was planning on stealing her father’s logging equipment. She took pictures of him, and when she wouldn’t surrender the camera to him, he beat her up.”

  “Oh, please. Randy was going to steal a skidder? And what, escape with it down the highway at twenty-five miles an hour?” Ladling scorn kept her from wincing. She knew Randy tended to act without considering the consequences, but she hoped even he wasn’t stupid enough to try to guarantee job security by ripping off heavy equipment. “Who’s more likely to have a reason to try to shut her up for good? A man who wants to get a good recommendation from her father? Or a man who’s already been through one expensive divorce and can’t face another one?”

  MacAuley and Kevin glanced at each other. She clicked her teeth together. The second rule of lying: Don’t say too much.

  “Miss Castle told us she ran into your husband’s motorcycle at her father’s house this afternoon. She called the tow truck and had it taken to Jimino’s garage on her dime. We’ve got a confirmation on that from the tow truck dispatcher and the mechanic.”

  Lisa noticed MacAuley had dropped the “what would you say if I said” fig leaf. She looked him straight in the eye. “So she did meet up with him today. That explains why she used his name when she had to find someone to pin her injuries on.”

  “Oh, come off it,” Kevin said.

  Lisa put her hands on her hips. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve never known a battered woman to lie about what happened to her because she was afraid of the guy who hit her? Or in love with him?” She let her anger and her irritation show fully in her face, so they wouldn’t see past those emotions to where she was desperate and afraid.

  Lyle looked at her as if he were measuring her. Finally he swung his gaze toward Kevin. “Time to go,” he said. Kevin promptly put his cup down, coffee untouched.

  “When your husband comes home,” MacAuley said, “have him contact us immediately. Whether he’s responsible or not, things will go a lot easier for him if he does.”

  Thunk. Thunk. The sound she heard as she ushered them out of her house was the echo of two pieces of wood falling, neatly and sweetly cloven in two.

  5:55 P.M.

  Clare barely made it into the dry cleaners before they closed. She wasn’t the only person to wait until the last possible moment. Ahead of her, a harried-looking woman balanced a cranky toddler on her hip while accepting a stack of shirts. Behind her, the door chimed in a good-looking young man whose suit and camel coat looked decidedly out of place on a Saturday in Millers Kill.

  “Clare Fergusson,” she told the attendant, after the woman had struggled away with kid and clothing. “One dress and two blouses.”

  The woman took her slip and nodded past her at the young man. “You?”

  He reached past Clare to hand in his pink receipts. “Jeremy Reid and Shaun Reid.”

  Clare twisted around, interested. “Excuse me,” she said as the woman bustled toward the back. “I don’t mean to be nosy, but are you related to Courtney Reid?”

  He raised his dark brows. “She’s my stepmother.” He looked at Clare. “And you’ll have to excuse me, but you don’t look at all like one of Courtney’s usual friends.”

  “I’m the priest at St. Alban’s. Clare Fergusson.” She held out her hand.

  He shook it. “I remember. One dress, two blouses. I’m Jeremy Reid.” He grinned, exposing teeth so dazzlingly white they had to have been bleached.

  “Are you home for a visit?” Behind the counter, she heard hangers rattling. Millers Kill boasted the last dry cleaner in America to resist automation.

  “Nope. I work here. Well, not here, exactly. At the new resort.”

  “Oh! I’m going to be there tonight. At the grand-opening dinner dance. At least,” she considered, “I think I’m going. If it’s still on.”

  “It’s still on. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Because of the van der Hoevens.” A plastic thwap-thwap drew her around. The woman laid Clare’s clothes on the counter.

  “Twenty dollars,” the attendant said, her impatient expression signaling that she was mentally already locked up and gone.

  “What about them?”

  Clare dug her wallet out of her jacket pocket. “Millie van der Hoeven is missing.” She dropped her voice. “And I don’t think it’s made the news yet, but Eugene van der Hoeven died today.”

  “Holy shit!” His eyes went to her collar, which she had put on for her hospital visit, and he blushed slightly, burnishing his high cheekbones. She smiled to herself. Her sister Grace would have gone after this one with both hands. “Sorry. But no, we haven’t heard anything about canceling the dinner dance. When I left, preparations were in full swing.”

  She handed over her twenty. “Who’s sponsoring the event?”

  “GWP, the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation, and the resort. It’s not just for the land transaction, you know? It’s also a thank-you for Mr. Opperman’s investors and big donors to the ACC.” He frowned. “Even without the van der Hoevens, I don’t think Mr. Opperman would pull the plug. He wants to open the resort with a bang.”

  “Mmmm.” She had met John Opperman two summers ago,
when the resort was just breaking ground. He had engaged in the most cold-blooded business dealings she had ever witnessed. She had destroyed his corporate helicopter. It was safe to say neither had been left with a good feeling about the other.

  The clerk hoisted a stack of suits and shirts onto the counter. “Forty-three bucks,” she said. Jeremy handed her a card.

  “Do you think your father will be worried? If the land deal is off?”

  He looked at her sharply.

  “I heard the company buying the property was on the verge of making a bid for your family’s mill.”

  “That’s not widely known.”

  She smiled in what she hoped was a disarming fashion. “Priests hear all sorts of stuff that’s not widely known.”

  He bent over to sign the charge slip. “Yeah, well, Dad won’t be shedding any tears if the deal doesn’t come through.”

  “Oh? I heard he was looking forward to retirement and travel.”

  Jeremy stood. “Courtney told you, right? I swear, Dad could shave his head and become a Buddhist monk and she wouldn’t notice if it didn’t fit in with her worldview.” He dragged his clothing off the counter. “He’s not happy about the acquisition. I think it’ll be good for the company and good for him, and I’m trying to convince him of that, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking he’s all okay with it.”

  “Excuse me,” the woman behind the counter said. “We’re closed now.” She stared pointedly at Clare’s dress and blouses, still on the counter.

  “Right. Sorry.” Clare scooped up her clothing. “What do you think your dad will do? If the company gets bought out?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “Join the twenty-first century? There’s not much call for small manufacturers who want to pass down the business from father to son like a feudal lord. Maybe if he’s forced to hand over the reins, he’ll finally accept that I’m not going to be the fifth generation of Reids to spend his life chained to a paper mill.”

  “Excuse me,” the woman said loudly. “We’re. Closed. Now.”

  Jeremy stepped ahead of Clare and opened the door for her. “Thanks,” she said.

  “My pleasure. I’ll see you at the dance tonight.” He flapped the plastic bags. “You’ll recognize me by my neatly pressed dinner jacket.”

  She smiled. “Nice meeting you, Jeremy.” She watched him cross the street before turning and walking down the sidewalk to her car. She had parked in front of Coffee To Go and was considering getting a cup before heading over to the hospital when she became aware of a large red pickup parked behind her little Shelby.

  She laid her dress and blouses in her car and crossed to the truck’s passenger side. The window rolled down. Warm air and the sound of country music spilled out of the truck cab.

  “Are you following me?”

  Russ hooked one hand over the steering wheel. “I’m on my way from the station to the hospital. I saw your car. There was a parking space right behind it.”

  “That’s quite a coincidence.”

  In the faint light from his dashboard, she thought she could see him blush. “It’s not entirely coincidental. I, um, remembered you said you were going to the dry cleaners.”

  “And to the hospital?”

  “Mmm.”

  She couldn’t stop her mouth from curving into a smile. “Why don’t you walk with me, then?”

  “Walk?”

  “Sure. It’s only, what, five or six blocks away?”

  “More like eight or nine,” he said, but he was already shutting down the engine and sliding out of the truck.

  “C’mon. Walking’s supposed to be good for you senior citizen types.”

  He gave her his death-ray glare. She laughed.

  “Just you wait, darlin’,” he warned. “First time you jaywalk—you’ll feel the long arm of the law.”

  6:00 P.M.

  “Help me get this stuff off my ankles.”

  “No.”

  “For chrissakes, then!” Millie stood up from the box where she had been sitting. “Just give me the damn knife! I’ll do it myself!”

  Randy backed out of reach. “No.”

  “I thought you were going to help me!” Anger fueled her stride, and she tried to stalk toward the man fading into the darkness. The six inches of duct tape stubbornly twined around her ankles caught her up short, and she would have plunged face forward onto the dirty floor if she hadn’t flung her arms wide and dropped into a squat. Finally her yoga lessons were paying off.

  “I have helped you.” She couldn’t see him at all now. “I cut your hands free, I gave you food, I helped you to the bathroom—”

  Her face burned. “You’re keeping me as much a prisoner here as Shaun Reid is.” Her gratitude toward this guy for putting a name to her brother’s murderer had shriveled up somewhere between the sandwich and the potty break, when she realized he was keeping her hobbled for a reason. “You’re probably in it with him.”

  “I am not!”

  She had learned a few things about Randy Schoof in the hour or so since he had stumbled into her new prison. One: He had little, if any, control over his emotions. Her father would have rolled his eyes at the way Schoof revealed his passion and his envy as he spoke about his wife, his hard luck, and Shaun Reid. He gave himself away with both hands, something van der Hoevens learned not to do by the age of four.

  Two: Randy Schoof wasn’t very bright. She discounted formal education—she knew several environmental activists who hadn’t graduated high school and yet were razor sharp and well read—but Randy didn’t fall into that class. He seemed little informed about and less interested in the world. She got the feeling that in the right circumstances he might be downright gullible.

  Three: He was scared of something. And that made her scared as well, because he had all the impulse control of a fourteen-year-old with ADHD. If it was Shaun Reid who frightened him, she might be in bigger trouble than before.

  She sat back down. She needed to keep him her friend. “Just tell me what it is that’s keeping us here. You know, I have friends and connections all over the country. I could help you disappear.”

  “I don’t want to disappear. I just want to stay in my house, with Lisa.”

  “Lisa could come with you. I have an awful lot of money, you know.” Actually, compared to her parents in their heyday, she was practically a pauper. But she was pretty sure that in Randy Schoof’s eyes, she was rich.

  “I don’t want a handout.” He was only a shadowy form as he spoke. Moonlight from the window above them shafted onto the floor several feet away. “I wasn’t looking for no special favors. I just want a chance to make a decent living out in the woods. That’s all I want. But you know, everything’s stacked against a guy like me. If you didn’t get into the business forty years ago, like Ed Castle, forget it.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is that I can help you. But you have to help me.”

  “I will. But we need to stay put for a while. I’m gonna call my wife soon, and then we’ll see.”

  Theoretically, there was nothing keeping her from getting to her feet and inching her way across the warehouse until she found the door to the outside. She had more than a hunch that he’d stop her by force if he had to, though. Her arms were untied, but she didn’t have any illusions on that account. He had carried her into the ancient and odiferous water closet, and although he wasn’t much taller than she was, he was built like a hunk of Adirondack granite. It was, she thought, a kind of game. If she put him into a position where he felt he had to restrain her, she would lose. In order to keep playing, she had to stay on his side.

  “Why don’t you go call her, then?”

  She felt, rather than saw, his consideration.

  “I won’t try to leave,” she promised. “If you want, you can even tie up my hands.” She forced a chuckle. “Although I’d appreciate it if you did it in front instead of in back. My shoulders are still aching.”

  “Well . . .”

  She crammed her fear and
desperation into a tiny, tight box and pushed it to the back of her mind. She spoke to her latest captor in the jolly “we’re all in it together” tones that she used to cajole agreement out of sulky activists trapped in overlong meetings. “C’mon. I’m in a jam. You’re in a jam. I know you need to talk to your wife before you do anything else. The sooner you do that, the sooner we can get out of here.”

  “Okay.”

  His capitulation surprised her. “Okay,” she echoed. Stay on his side. Show him how well you cooperate. “Um . . . do you want to tie up my hands?”

  “Naw. I figure you ain’t going nowhere. Even if you made it to the door, I’d be back by the time you could get outside. And outside, there isn’t no place to hide.” There was a scraping sound. Millie stiffened, but it was only him rising from whatever crate he had been perched on. “I’ll be back.”

  She was alone in the darkness again.

  6:05 P.M.

  Millers Kill was closing down for the night. Russ walked with Clare along Main Street, hearing the door chimes jingling as shopkeepers locked up, looking into store windows where display lights simmered like fires banked to last out the night. This being one of the last dry towns in New York, there were no bars or pubs springing to life, no restaurants gearing up for an influx of customers. Except for gamers hanging out at All Techtronik or dads dashing into MacPherson’s Video for the latest movies—action for him, chick flick for her, Disney for the kids—the streets emptied out. If you lived in Millers Kill, you went elsewhere on a Saturday night. To the Dew Drop Inn across the Cossayuharie line, or to the second-run cinema in Fort Henry, four screens, no waiting. If you wanted Dolby Sensurround and well-sprung seats, it was another half hour to the Aviation Mall in Glens Falls. If you wanted to drink in a place where the bartender didn’t look at you funny for ordering a martini, well, Saratoga was forty minutes and a whole cultural time zone away.