“Nothin’,” he said, his mouth crooked. A movement across the road caught his eye. “Let’s get Kevin over here to take your statement. Kevin!”
She followed Russ back to his pickup, and she leaned against the bed giving her statement to Officer Flynn while his chief half sat, half stood against the passenger seat, resting his leg.
When she retrieved Dr. Stillman’s journal from Debba, she gave her a quick, fierce hug and said, “We’ll talk about this later, right?” Debba nodded, her lashes still wet with tears, Skylar still rocking and rocking in her arms. Clare dropped her voice, mock-confidential. “And I promise I won’t tell anyone about your torrid affair with Dr. Rouse.”
Debba gasped, blinked, and then started to laugh. She laughed and laughed until Lyle MacAuley and her mother both stared. She laughed until Skylar, serious faced, reached up and touched her cheek. “Funny Mama,” he said. “Funny.”
“What was that all about?” Russ asked her as she placed Dr. Stillman’s diary in the front seat of her car.
“Laughing in the face of adversity,” she said. She chucked the car door shut. “So, am I going to take you up to Stewart’s Pond, or not?” Ignoring the voice of her grandmother, who was saying, Nice girls don’t extend invitations, they accept them. Ignoring the voice of MSgt. Ashley “Hardball” Wright, who was reminding her, A smart soldier does not deliberately put himself in harm’s way. A giddy fearlessness was fizzing through her veins, and at that moment she was perfectly willing to do something that would probably turn out to be a big mistake.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Yes, which is why we need to get moving right now.”
He glanced over at Kevin, who was dragging a ladder out of the barn. She couldn’t figure out what he and Deputy Chief MacAuley were doing until she saw the jackknife and evidence bag in Lyle’s hand. Apparently Mrs. Rouse’s shot had gone into the barn’s clapboard front. “Kevin,” Russ shouted. The young officer stopped. “Reverend Fergusson is going to take me up to Stewart’s Pond so I can catch up with the M.E. You drive her car up there and meet me as soon as you guys are done.”
Kevin nodded. Lyle MacAuley gave them a long look before turning back to the ladder.
“Hope you don’t mind driving my truck,” Russ said, “because there’s no way I’m going to try to wedge myself into that little skateboard of yours.”
They jounced out of the Clows’ drive, Clare climbing the gears as they drove up out of the valley until they were flying along a good fifteen miles an hour above the speed limit.
“Hello,” Russ said. “Don’t make me give you a ticket in my own truck.”
“You can’t,” she said. “You don’t have the little ticket book.”
“Damn.” He flipped open his glove compartment. “I knew there was something I forgot.”
She laughed.
“Ah,” he said. “I see my mistake now.”
“What?”
“I thought I was getting into the truck with the Reverend Clare Fergusson. But no, it’s actually Captain Fergusson, the terror of Fort Rucker.”
She grinned at him. “It feels like that, yeah. Like I could get this machine airborne if I just hit…”
“Escape velocity?”
“Yeah.”
He leaned back into his seat in a kind of studied nonchalance. “It’s amazing how weightless you can feel once a gun’s not pointed to your head anymore.”
She laughed.
“You are, without a doubt, the damndest priest I’ve ever met.”
“I worry about that.” She slowed as they approached an intersection. “I’m not so sure I’m really cut out for parish life. Doing good is one thing. Being good is a lot harder.”
“What would you be doing if you weren’t rector of St. Alban’s?” There was a tone to his voice she couldn’t name, but she couldn’t spare a glance at him as she swung onto Route 9.
“I don’t know. I could re-up as a chaplain, but I think I’m too old for the army now. No, not too old. Too…” she thought about it. “I’ve lost a lot of my ability to fit in and follow orders.”
He laughed. “I find it hard to imagine you ever had much of that ability.”
“There ya go.” She shifted up. “I’d probably go for some sort of missionary work. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, that sort of thing. Doing something to ease somebody else’s life-that’s always seemed like the point, to me.”
“What about flying? You know, quitting the priesthood entirely. There have to be a lot of opportunities for someone with your experience.”
She laughed. “You can’t quit the priesthood. I mean, yeah, you can not work as a priest. You can get kicked out of your bishop’s diocese. But ordination is forever. Like baptism. You can’t take it back.” She glanced across the cab at him. “How about you?”
“How about me, what?”
“What would you be doing if you weren’t nailing down that chair at the police station?”
He took his glasses off and fished a tissue out of his pocket. “When I retired from the army, I had a couple job offers to manage private security firms.”
“I find it hard to imagine you running a rent-a-cop shop.”
“Me, too.” He cleaned his glasses, balled up the tissue. She glanced over again and found he was looking at her. “This is what I would be doing. This job. This is where I’m supposed to be.”
She turned onto Old Route 100. “This way’ll get us there, won’t it?”
“It sure will.”
They drove on in silence for a few minutes. “I think that’s the real difference between us,” she finally said. “You know you’re in the right place. Doing the right thing. With the right person.” He looked away from her. “I don’t have that certainty. I thought my call would make me certain. But it hasn’t.”
“I’ve got fourteen years on you,” he said, still looking out the window. “I’ve had a lot more time to figure things out.” He pointed. “Don’t miss the county road up there.”
She slowed down and kept the speed moderate as she drove up to the reservoir. The road twisted and rolled, up and down.
“There.” He pointed to a wide, cleared track through the trees. It was a good half mile before the site of the accident. “That’s a boat put-in. That’s where the diving team’s working from.”
She muscled the pickup down the trail, crunching over the last of the icy, hard-packed snow, the tires squelching and sucking through the water-saturated ground. The trees opened up to a clearing the size of a small parking lot, crowded with an ambulance, a state police dive truck, a trooper’s squad car, and two unmarkeds. She could see three men, one in uniform and one braced with a walking cane, gathered around some sort of aluminum dock. She parked as close to them as she could, eyeing the heavy gray clouds that were collecting across the sky. The walk would be hard enough on Russ’s leg without making him hike through rain. “Sit right there,” she said, killing the engine. “Let me help you down.”
“I can do it myself.”
“I’m sure you can. But if your crutches get stuck in the mud and you pitch face forward while getting out, you’re going to lose some of that cool law enforcement mystique.”
He grunted when she opened his door, but he handed her his crutches and braced his hand on her shoulder while he lowered himself out of the truck cab. She returned the crutches when he was on the ground. “Thanks,” he said. He caught her arm before she could move away. “That certainty thing,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m not. Certain. About lots of things. I just know where I belong.”
They walked down to where the men were standing, Clare shortening her usual stride so as not to outpace Russ. The man with the cane turned as they approached. He was short and squared off, his cropped graying hair almost the same shade as his expensive wool coat, and he might have been dapper if it weren’t for the ropy white scar that split his forehead from eyebrow to hairline. “Reverend Clare,” he
said. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi, Dr. Dvorak.” She hugged him. “I’m delivering Chief Van Alstyne.”
Russ leaned on one crutch and shook hands with the medical examiner. “Hey, Emil. Anything yet from the dive team?”
The uniformed man had turned around as well. “Nothing yet. But I expect we’ll hear from them soon. They’re maxing out their time for this water temperature.”
“Bob.” Russ nodded.
“Russ.”
“Still haven’t made the BCI, I see.”
“I’ll get there.” Bob’s eyes flickered toward Clare. Russ followed his glance.
“Have you met Reverend Clare Fergusson?” he said. “She’s the rector of St. Alban’s in town. Clare, this is Sergeant Robert Mongue. He’s with the state police.”
Clare grinned at him. “Your uniform was the tip-off.” He was as tall as Russ, but thinner, and his hair had long ago fled south. “Are you part of the dive team, Sergeant Mongue?”
“Nope. But they’re assigned to our troop, so when they deploy, it becomes part of an NYSP investigation.”
“Of course,” Russ said pleasantly, “it’s in our jurisdiction.”
Sergeant Mongue nodded. “Absolutely. It’s been two weeks, hasn’t it? Tough, not developing any leads in all that time.”
“Well, you know, when you take the time to actually investigate, as opposed to just picking a solution out of a hat…”
Clare thought she saw Sergeant Mongue’s nostrils flare. He glanced down at Russ’s cast. “I was sorry to hear about your leg. I heard you tripped and fell on your ass?”
Two pink spots stained Russ’s cheeks. “It was an accident at a crime scene.”
“Have you ever thought about establishing some minimum physical requirements for your department? You know, staying physically fit plays a major part in reducing accidents.”
“I think the normal activity involved in community policing gives my men plenty of exercise. It’s not like they spend all day sitting in a car with a speed gun.”
“Do you hear something?” Clare said, happy to jump on any excuse to stop the pissing contest. The diesel-pumped roar of a boat motor echoed across the ice and water. They all turned toward the reservoir.
The boat swung around the edge of the shoreline. It was low and wide and traveling slowly to give the ice-crusted water plenty of time to ease around the prow. Clare could see three figures, bulky and anonymous in orange dive gear, sitting aft. Another two people, bundled against the cold, were in the cockpit.
“How do the divers manage in this kind of weather?” Clare said. “That water’s still mostly covered in ice.”
“They’re wearing dry suits and neoprene liners,” Sergeant Mongue told her. “They’re probably more comfortable than we are right now. The real trick in extreme weather is keeping the tender and the pilot warm.”
The boat steered toward the aluminum dock, and Mongue excused himself to step out onto the floating platform.
Russ’s eyes narrowed. “The real trick in extreme weather.’ ” He parroted Mongue’s voice very well. “Like he knows.”
“What’s with you two?” Clare pitched her voice low. “I thought I was going to pass out from the testosterone fumes.”
He laughed. “Just a little intramural rivalry.”
The boat slid into position next to the dock, and the tender-at least that’s who Clare assumed it was, since the woman neither piloted nor dove-tossed a line to Mongue. They tied the boat into place and the divers stood up, lifting a webbed stretcher, and Clare had so steeled herself for the sight of Allan Rouse, pale and cold and waxy, that it took her a moment to process what lay on the stretcher.
“That’s a skeleton,” Russ said.
Dr. Dvorak glanced at him. “Very good.” He turned to the divers, clambering over the side of the boat while balancing the remains. “Be careful.”
The one who wasn’t toting a skeleton removed her suit hood and climbed over the boat’s bow. “Are you the M.E.?” she said.
Dr. Dvorak was beckoning the two divers closer. “Yes,” he said, his eyes fixed on the remains. “Can you stop here for a moment?” he said when they reached his side. The remains were loosely wrapped in a fine net, and Clare could see that although the divers had been meticulous about keeping the pieces together, most of the bones were no longer connected to one another. Dr. Dvorak bent over the skeleton, examining it closely, touching it here and there with a single finger. The bones were long and brown, as if they had been steeped in tea for a decade or more. He straightened. “I think I can tell you with absolute confidence this is not Allan Rouse,” he said to Russ.
“Ya think?” Russ glared at the bones as if they had been laid on the stretcher for the sole purpose of frustrating his investigation. “Who the hell is it?”
“Whoever it is, it…” Dvorak drew a thoughtful finger across the skeleton’s pelvis, and another along the length of its thighbone. “He,” he said, more emphatically, “has been in there for a long time.”
The woman diver drew up to the stretcher, Bob Mongue close behind her. “We almost didn’t spot it,” she said. She had short, dark curls plastered against her scalp, and a cool, appraising look not unlike Dr. Dvorak’s. Clare figured you’d have to be pretty unflappable to go diving through muck or dark water looking for dead people. “It was the car we noticed first.”
The medical examiner went around to the other side of the stretcher, peering closely at the skull and neck bones. “Very well preserved,” he said to himself.
“What car?” Russ said. He looked toward Bob Mongue. “You remember any missing person and car?”
The dark-haired diver shook her head. “This wasn’t a car either of you guys would ever have heard about. From what I could see was left of it-the leather top and tires, some of the body-this was like a Model T or something. Old. Like, your-grandfather-drove-it-when-he-was-a-kid old.” She peeled off a rubbery orange glove and ruffled her hair. “We can go in for it if you want. There aren’t any single pieces left big enough to call for the winch. There’s a leather roof, some wire-spoke wheels, stuff like that.” She looked at Russ and Bob Mongue, who were staring at her. “Hey, we figured we were there for the body. Nobody said anything about a car.”
Clare couldn’t stand biting off her question one second longer. “Did he commit suicide, do you think? Drove into the water and drowned?”
The diver shook her head. “It was in the middle of the reservoir. His car never would have gotten that far.”
Russ looked at Clare. She felt like she could read his mind. And he could read hers. “But he could have driven it in,” he said, not looking away from her. “If he had come here a few days after the dam was finished and the river began piling up behind it. He could have driven right into the rising water-”
“At night,” Clare said. “Into the condemned property, where nobody in his right mind would have gone.”
“And parked the car. Waiting for the water to take him.”
“I hate to toss a spanner into such a neat and tidy conclusion, but this man didn’t drive himself anywhere,” Emil Dvorak said. “Or if he did, he wasn’t alone.” He gently cradled the skull through the fine netting, lifting and rotating it so they could all see the back, where a network of fine cracks radiated out in a circle, like a fractured porthole. “See how depressed this is? This man may have been left in the water, but he didn’t drown. He was killed by a massive blow to the head.”
Chapter 33
NOW
Monday, April 3
Clare and Norm Madsen accompanied Mrs. Marshall to the morgue. She hadn’t wanted to go, despite a phone call from Dr. Dvorak late Friday afternoon, asking her if she could come in after the weekend and answer a few questions about her father.
“It couldn’t be him,” she said, turning around from the passenger seat of her car to address Clare. “What would his body have been doing there, anyway?”
“Remember the stories you used to
spin when you were a kid?” Norm was a careful driver, hands at the two and ten positions, eyes on the road even while he was talking. “About your dad being ambushed by bootleggers?” He let the implication hang in the air.
In the backseat, Clare tried to think of a new way to answer the same question she had heard at least a dozen times since Russ had broken the news to Mrs. Marshall that the unidentified remains from the reservoir might be those of Jonathon Ketchem. There were only so many ways one could dance around the answer: Someone killed him and dumped his body there.
It had been a pretty miserable weekend all around. Friday’s clouds had brought a steady spring rain that lasted, on and off, until Sunday night. Clare had spent a gray and solitary Saturday afternoon in the old nursery at the historical society, searching unsuccessfully for more records of the Sacandaga land sales and peering out through the curtains of rain toward the clinic, dark and closed. At St. Alban’s, a leak worked its way through the roofer’s tarp, rendering several pews in the north aisle uninhabitable for Sunday Eucharist. And much to her senior warden’s dismay, she was in the newspaper. Again.
“Clare,” Robert Corlew said, bearing down on her in the parish hall. “Did you see Saturday’s Post-Star?”
She looked up from the table, where she was debating between the frosted brownies and the carrot cake. Coffee hour at St. Alban’s was always a celebration of butter and sugar. Occasionally, someone with higher ideals would bring in grapes, or pineapple chunks on toothpicks, or apple slices. They usually went untouched.
“I sure did,” she said, picking up a brownie.
“You’re in it. In a news story. About a crazy woman holding people at gun-point.” He leaned in more closely. “I thought we agreed after last year that you weren’t going to appear in print unless it was something nice and uplifting.”
Out Of The Deep I Cry Page 30