Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Yeah, the boyfriend’s there.” He swung a backpack over his shoulder and wedged the car seat under his arm before reaching in for the suitcase. “Jesus, babies take a lot of stuff. I’ve gone on deployments with less than this.”

  Clare bit back a grin. “Be careful,” she said. “The last thing we need is you slipping and falling down a flight of stairs.”

  “Smart-ass.” He slammed the door and vanished down the stairs. Clare walked a little farther down the road, pausing so that Oscar could mark two more mailboxes.

  “All set,” Russ called. She turned around. He was waiting beside her door, and behind him, in the distance, she saw a pair of headlights.

  “Somebody’s coming,” she said.

  He turned around. “They can get by us. Come on.”

  She tugged the lead and Oscar obediently followed. The lights slowed as they grew closer, until an SUV pulled up alongside them and stopped. The window rolled down. “You folks lost?” the driver asked. It was hard to make out his details. He was a large man, with a knit cap pulled down low, concealing his hair.

  The dog lunged toward the SUV, barking at the man behind the wheel. “Oscar!” Clare hauled on his leash. “Bad dog! Bad!”

  “Nope.” Russ raised his voice to be heard over Oscar’s deep-throated barking. “Just dropping someone off.”

  “Sorry.” Clare tugged the dog back toward the truck.

  “You’ll be able to get home before the storm, then,” the driver said.

  Oscar was bracing himself, stiff-legged, refusing to budge. Clare hauled against the lead. “We’re not going home—”

  Russ cut her off. “Storm?”

  “Yep. They don’t know if it’s going to dump snow or rain or wintry mix. Supposed to be an unchristly mess, through. You staying here at the lake?”

  Russ made a noncommittal noise. “Thanks for the heads-up on the weather.” He opened Clare’s door. “Oscar, come.” The dog gave one more bark, then jumped into the truck. Russ handed Clare up and shut the door behind her. She watched him say something, then wave. The SUV’s window rolled up and it drove off, making new tracks in the poorly plowed road.

  “What was that?” she asked, as soon as Russ had climbed into his seat.

  “I don’t like telling strangers my business.” He buckled in but didn’t shift the truck into gear. “We don’t know who that guy is.”

  “This is a cop thing, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s a sensible safety measure thing.”

  “And we’re sitting here instead of driving on because…?”

  “I’m giving him lots of space. The road’s not good. I don’t want to risk skidding into his tailpipe.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I bet you got his license plate, didn’t you?”

  Russ made another noncommittal noise. He shifted into gear and drove on. After another mile or so, Clare spotted the green of a road sign. “I think this is it,” she said. Russ slowed the truck. “Haines Mountain Road and North Shore Drive,” Clare read.

  “That’s us. North Shore.” The road itself, once they had turned onto it, was barely more than a depression in the snow. Russ shifted into a lower gear. Clare peered into the darkness on either side of them. The mailboxes and shadowy roof lines of the cottages had disappeared. Nothing but thick evergreens and bare, gnarled branches bending beneath the weight of the snow. “Are we going to get stuck?” she asked.

  “If we do, we eat the dog first.”

  She whacked his arm. Suddenly, the trees fell away. The darkness lightened, and Clare could see open land rising to her left and the long, empty stretch of the lake to her right. After the claustrophobic tunnel of trees, the vastness of the sky was dizzying. “Wow,” she said.

  “This is where the conservation easement begins. There’s a public beach and boat launch down there in the summer, but you won’t see any more houses until we come around to the north shore.” She could make out the dark, irregular edges of the shoreline against the ice. A narrow islet rose up in the middle, like a galleon caught in the ice.

  The road turned to the east again, and the trees closed around them, blocking off the view. Russ shifted again as the road rose higher. Clare could feel the tires churning through the snow, trying to maintain a grip on the surface. “They’re sure not spending a lot of time plowing out here. You do realize we could be trapped if there is a bad storm.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m an expert in winter survival.”

  “Oh, you are?” She tried to suppress her smile. “So enlighten me. What are the basics?”

  “First, find a hot woman and get her into your bed.”

  Clare laughed.

  “Second, make sure you’ve got enough food to keep an entire platoon going for a month.”

  “Which we do.” Some women overpacked clothes or beauty items. Clare could go away for a week with just a small overnight bag, but if she was going to be cooking, she brought half the contents of her pantry along.

  “Right. Third, you have to have a plan to keep yourself occupied until rescue arrives.”

  “And you plan to keep yourself occupied…”

  “With sex and eating.” Without taking his eyes off the road, he flashed a grin. “Maybe a little ice fishing, if I can fit it into my busy schedule.”

  Despite the darkness and the claustrophobic closeness of the pines and the slow, shaky progression of the truck, Clare felt everything was a little lighter. Whatever had kept Russ quiet and unresponsive, it wasn’t bothering him now. Which meant it must have been a work issue, not an I’m-still-pissed-off-that-you’re-pregnant issue. Thank God.

  “This is it.” A sign announcing PRIVATE DRIVE marked the turnoff from the North Shore Drive. A dozen weather-beaten slats with names like ALTPETER and THE ROSENS hung off the pole. The barely discernible lane dipped low, bringing them close to the water again. More trees, more darkness, more barely passable road surface. They passed one snow-mounded, dark cottage, then another, and then—“Here we are.” Clare craned her neck, but just like at Amber’s father’s place across the lake, all she could see was a ramshackle one-car garage on one side and a mailbox and the suggestion of a roof line far below the other edge of the road.

  “It looks like we’re going to have to shovel out the garage door,” Clare said.

  “Yeah.” He switched on his four-ways. “Let’s get you inside first.”

  “I can help unload the truck, Russ.” She bit off the words and why do you care, anyway? She knew why. Whether he disapproved or not, he would take care of her.

  “You can help by getting the fires going and lighting the kerosene lamps.” He reached under his seat for the safety box and retrieved his Maglite. Clare opened her door and let Oscar out before climbing to the ground. Snow crunched beneath her boots. When Russ had first proposed a week in an unelectrified cabin, the idea of cooking on an old-fashioned woodstove and evenings by lamplight had seemed cozy and romantic. Now, with the wind blowing stiff and cold off the frozen lake and nothing but a flashlight to show the way down a half-buried flight of steps, it sounded like complete insanity.

  “Okay,” she said in her most chipper voice. “Let’s go!”

  12.

  It was getting close to sunset when the arson investigator said he was ready to wrap up. “Nothing more I can take away here,” he told Kevin. The ME had left an hour earlier, after confirming that yes, those were gunshot wounds to the cranium. He promised to have the preliminary autopsy results to them tomorrow. Not that it was going to make a big difference in the investigation. Shot and then burned or burned and then shot, some bad guy out there was going up for murder one.

  Like the chief had said, Kevin signed off on all the bagged evidence. Now he was back in his squad car, updating his preliminary notes on his laptop and waiting for Patrick Lent, who was in his car updating his notes on his laptop. They were going to swap files before leaving the scene.

  “Fifteen-sixty-three, this is Dispatch. Respond, fifteen-sixty-three.”
r />   Kevin unhooked his mic. “Yeah, Harlene, I’m here.” He was too damn tired to use code.

  “You still at the MacAllens’ place?”

  “For about ten more minutes. What’s up?”

  “Hadley’s got something for you. Hold on, I’m connecting you to fifteen-seventy.”

  There was a snapping sound, and Hadley’s voice came on, thinned out as it always was on the car-to-car band. “Flynn? You’ve found remains?”

  “Yeah. Two adults with GSWs to the head. Why?”

  Even over the bad connection, he could tell she was upset. “There may be another body in there. It turns out the MacAllens were fostering a little girl.”

  * * *

  “Her name’s Mikayla Johnson.” Hadley wasn’t great at doing the unemotional cop voice at the best of times. Now, standing in the squad room reporting on this little girl, she was worse than usual. “She’s eight years old.” Eight. The same age as Genny. Her throat tightened. “The MacAllens’ daughter told me about her when I interviewed her. It took me a while to find anyone at Children and Family Services who could tell me anything, but I finally got a caseworker who knew a few of the details.” She focused on the notes in her hand. “Mother, Annie Johnson, lost custody a few months ago after she got cranked on meth and drove into a tree. Mikayla was severely injured. She had to have a liver transplant.” She glanced up from her notebook. “The MacAllens had experience dealing with the post-transplant issues. The daughter I spoke with had had a kidney transplant when she was a kid.”

  MacAuley looked at Flynn, sprawled in a chair, his usual immaculate uniform crumpled and filthy. “Any sign of a third body?”

  “No. As soon as I got the call from Hadley—from Officer Knox—the fire marshal’s team and I started the search over again. By the time it got too dark to see, we’d sifted through anything we hadn’t gotten to during the afternoon. She wasn’t in the house when it burned.”

  “Thank God,” Hadley said under her breath. Flynn glanced at her.

  “Did anybody have overnight visitation privileges?” the dep asked. “Grandparents? Aunt and uncle?”

  Hadley shook her head. “Supervised visitation only with the family members, according to CFS.”

  “Yeah. Probably a whole clan brewing up hillbilly heroin.” MacAuley chewed his lip. “So this kid was taken. Why kill the MacAllens? Why burn the place down?”

  “Patrick Lent, the state investigator, told me lots of first-time arsonists overestimate how much a fire will destroy.” Flynn brushed at his sooty pants almost unconsciously. “There was accelerant splashed all over the place. Could be whoever set the fire thought everything would be burned down to ashes, with no way to tell who had died in the fire and who had survived.”

  “Where’s the mother?” The dep’s gaze went back to Hadley.

  “Out on bail awaiting trial for possession, reckless endangerment, criminal speeding, evading and resisting.”

  “Is there a father in the picture?”

  Hadley shook her head. “Not according to the birth certificate CFS had on file. There are grandparents over in Fort Henry. I’ve got last known addresses.”

  “Okay. We start with the mom and the grandparents.” He pointed to her, then to Flynn. “See what you can find out about the father, or another man in the mom’s life who might be involved. You’ll want to talk to the girl’s teachers and her caseworker. See if she self-reported anything funny going on beforehand. Run up the sex offenders list. It’s not likely, but it could be she was marked as a target by a pedophile.”

  Hadley glanced at Flynn before looking back at the dep. “You want us to take lead on this?”

  Flynn wiped the side of his face, leaving a faint sooty streak along his angular jawline. “Both of us?”

  “Unless you’ve got something better to do, yes, both of you.” The deputy chief raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “The chief has confidence that you two can handle this, and so do I.” His jaw tightened, and Hadley could almost hear the unspoken warning: So don’t screw this up.

  “You’re going to let the chief know, right?” Flynn was usually gung ho for any investigation, but right now he sounded a little wavery. Hadley didn’t blame him.

  “’Course I am. I expect he’ll head back here right quick. Skipping the murder investigation was bad enough. A missing kid’s even more time-sensitive. Not to mention—” MacAuley snapped his mouth shut.

  “Dep,” Hadley said, “about that time sensitivity.”

  “What about it?”

  “According to the caseworker at CFS, Mikayla’s on several daily medications because of her new liver.” She checked her notepad to get the word right. “Immunosuppressants.”

  “Good. Find her doctor and put out a med alert at all the area pharmacies. If we’re lucky, whoever took her will waltz right in and fill the prescription.”

  Hadley shook her head. “No, listen, the caseworker told me. She has to have this stuff or her body will start to reject her transplant. If whoever took her didn’t also grab her medication, or doesn’t know how important it is, she’s going to get very sick, very fast.”

  “How fast?” Flynn moved to her side, his head cocked to see her notebook.

  She could feel his nearness, a tingle along her skin, a slow deep surge of blood. She stared at her notes and forced herself to concentrate. “A few days. Maybe seven or eight. After that, no drugs will help. Her body rejects the liver and…” Her voice trailed off.

  “She dies,” Flynn said.

  13.

  Annie Johnson’s address of record was a third-floor walk-up on Causeway that looked like it was one good storm away from collapsing into the old canal that ran behind the street. This part of town, with its weary tenement houses and narrow streets running down to abandoned mills and rotting remnants of wharves, was not a place the shoppers or skiers or leaf peepers would ever see. Johnson’s was one of several apartment houses in the neighborhood that were regularly visited by the MKPD. Kevin debated a stealth arrival by parking a block away, but he figured by the time he and Hadley had walked halfway to the building, everybody on the street would be texting each other a warning. They double-parked and got out in front of the apartment house.

  In the sickly orange glow of the streetlights, the sagging facade’s peeling paint and battered aluminum trim were obvious. Hadley pulled on her watch cap and gloves. “I’ll take the fire escape.”

  “In case she runs? You sure?”

  “I’d rather hang out in the freezing dark than breathe the air in there. Everybody over the age of seven smokes in that building. You risk lung cancer just walking up a flight of stairs.”

  “It can’t be worse than the Los Angeles smog.”

  “Hey. California was banning indoor smoking while you New Yorkers were still selling kids packs out of cigarette machines.” She started to grin up at him, then looked away. Their bitter words from last November hung in the air.

  Look, Flynn, we can still be friends, she had said.

  With me slicing myself open every day and you waiting and dreading the next time I break down and beg you to love me? Is that what you really want? No. I guess I don’t.

  He had been so heartsick, he couldn’t even face her. I didn’t think so.

  It was his fault she couldn’t even smile at him now. God, he was stupid. He cleared his throat. “I’ll give you a squawk if she’s not there. No sense waiting around in this cold any longer than you have to.”

  She nodded without looking at him and headed to the back of the building. Kevin tried the front door. Locked. He flattened his hands and pressed all eight apartment buttons at the same time. Somebody would buzz him in without bothering to check.

  He was right. The door clicked open at the same time a male voice crackled “Who is it?” over the speaker. Kevin slipped in and jogged up the stairs, figuring speed was more important than silence. At Johnson’s apartment, he rapped on the door. Nothing. He rapped a second time, then rang the bell.

&nbs
p; “Who is it?” The voice was muffled but definitely female.

  “Annie Johnson? Millers Kill police. We’d like to talk to you about your daughter, Mikayla.”

  There was no response, except for the thudding of footsteps and a thump.

  “Ms. Johnson! Millers Kill police. Open the door and put your hands on top of your head!”

  His shoulder mic cracked on. “She’s running!” Hadley said. “She’s on the fire escape. She’s carrying—” The line went dead. Kevin stepped back and smashed the flat of his boot against the door’s lock. The shock of the impact vibrated up to his hip, but the door didn’t budge. Dead bolt. Great. He spun around and leaped for the stairs, bouncing down three at a time until he arrived at the phone-booth-sized foyer. He burst through the outer door in time to see Hadley race past, clutching a … blanket? Pillow? He didn’t waste time asking, just took off after her. He pounded up Causeway, rounding the corner and nearly running into Hadley, who was bent over, panting. “Lost her,” she gasped.

  Kevin scanned the area. “Did you see if she cut between those buildings? She could have gone through the yards to Beale Street. Or maybe the back alley behind Depot.”

  “Didn’t see her.” Hadley sucked in air. “She got too far ahead of me.”

  “What the hell happened? I thought you had the fire escape covered?”

  “I did! I was drawing my Taser and warning her to stop when she threw this over my head.” Hadley thrust the bundle toward him. It was one of those life-sized baby dolls, tied up in a couple of flannel blankets.

  “She threatened you with a doll?”

  “I thought it was a baby, dumb-ass! I dropped my Taser and dove for it. By the time I saw what it really was, she was off the fire escape and halfway down the street. Shit!” Hadley kicked a clump of ice into the street.

  “Why are you still carrying it?”

  Hadley looked down at the doll. “I have no idea.” She tucked the decoy baby beneath her arm. “Let’s go see what we can find in her place.”

  They went in through the fire escape window. Normally, Kevin was a stickler for observing the proprieties, but he didn’t have the patience to track down the landlord or the management company and demand a key. He wanted to get in, get out, and hopefully salvage something from this goat cluster.