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

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

She frowned at the sight of his sopping clothing. “We need to get those pants off and your leg warmed up, or you’re going to get frostbite.” She held out her hands again, and he let her help him up without protest. She looked toward the cabin. From this angle, they couldn’t see the fire, only the heavy smoke trying to rise against the rain. “It should be plenty warm up there. Where’s Lieutenant Mongue?”

  “In the boathouse. I stuck him in a canoe with blankets and a bunch of hand warmers. He should be okay for a while.”

  She picked up the shotgun and handed it to him. “You should have stayed with him. I was coming to find you.”

  He slung an arm across her shoulder. They started across the ice, Clare balancing, Russ limping. “I didn’t know that, did I? I thought I was racing to save you from a fate worse than death.”

  “I can take care of myself. You ought to know that by now.”

  “You weren’t doing such a good job of it the other night, when they had you hogtied on the front porch.” He had no idea how he had gone from ecstatic to annoyed in less than fifteen minutes. “Never mind. How did you get away? And where’s the little girl?”

  As they walked to the shore, she gave him a rundown of her morning that sounded like the sort of heavily edited report he used to give to officious superiors. Before he could press her to tell him the real meat of the matter, she asked, “What do you think he meant by ‘the factory’?”

  “Factory implies they’re making something, as opposed to storing drugs for transport. Unless they’re repackaging smuggled cigarettes, it’s probably a meth house. I’m guessing Roy and DeJean didn’t drive along the Shore Road. They probably went past the turnoff, into the hills. Nothing up that way but a few old farms. Lots and lots of space, no neighbors. Remember, I told you, perfect country for cooking meth.” They reached land. Stepping into the snow, his right foot twinged. “I think I’m getting feeling back.”

  “Good. Let’s get you as close to the fire as we can.”

  “You know, a burning house isn’t the safest place to hang about getting toasty.”

  “If you have a better suggestion, I’m all ears.” Clare set her mouth in a line and continued upslope. In fact, the fire looked to be dying down. Russ could still feel the heat yards away, but the flames no longer roared and reared into the sky. As they drew closer, he could see why. The entire wall facing the road had burned away, and the loft, unbalanced and unsupported, had cracked and fallen at an angle. Fire was trying to chew its way farther down the side of the house, but without DeJean’s accelerant, the logs were proving a tough match. Clare led him to the woodshed, which was, ironically, untouched. Roofed and enclosed on three sides, it had trapped heat from the cabin fire. He pulled off his dripping poncho and began untying his boots.

  “There you go. Take off those pants and have a seat.”

  “Here?” It was warm and protected from the rain, but being so close to the cabin fire made him antsy. “What if something explodes and the whole place goes up?”

  “There isn’t anything in there to explode, except maybe what was in the composting toilet, and that’s already gone.” She took a few steps toward the remains of the cabin, scooped up a handful of snow, and tossed it against a strip of fire eating its way across a log. The flames sizzled and wavered. “Maybe we can put it out.”

  “Don’t get too close,” he warned, working his jeans off. Painful prickles replaced the numbness in his leg. He was warm, and his wife was safe, and he just wanted to rest for one goddamn minute.

  When he opened his eyes again, he had a wool blanket thrown over him and the pale gray sky had dimmed into twilight. He rose, stretching and snapping his spine, which screamed at him for falling asleep on a pile of timber. His parka fell, which was when he realized his jeans, boxers, socks, and boots were gone. Clare had left him a pair of thick wool socks last seen in the duffel he had left with Bob. He tugged them on, flexing and testing his leg as he did so. Apparently, his ice-water plunge hadn’t done him any harm. He wrapped the blanket around his waist and went around to the back of the cabin.

  The canoe, empty and overturned, was set in front of the porch door. He angled past it and walked inside, part of him amazed that the structure was untouched. The rest of him was amazed to see his wife and Mongue, draped in blankets and sprawled in front of the woodstove, talking. Clare had turned over the sofa and chairs and dragged them into a rough curve, capturing the stove’s heat and blocking the draft from the blackened ruins of the kitchen and bedroom.

  She looked up as he opened the inner door. “You’re awake!”

  “I am now.” He stared at where the loft floor had become a lean-to. “Clare, what were you thinking?” To his left, the bedroom’s French doors had split and shattered. Cold air sucked through the half-collapsed hole where the outside windows had been. “This place isn’t safe. The whole thing could come down any second.”

  Mongue twirled his hand above his head. “’S fine.”

  “I tested it before we set up camp,” Clare said. “I jumped and pulled and stomped on things. We’re okay in this corner.”

  She had a roaring fire going in the woodstove. He shook his head in disbelief. “What were you going to do if the loft had dropped on you while you were jumping and stomping? Jesus, Clare, if you can’t stop to think of yourself, at least think of the baby.”

  “Gotta take care of the baby,” Mongue agreed.

  “I’m sorry to have alarmed you.” Clare’s voice sharpened and her Virginia accent increased. Never a good sign. “In your absence, I had to trust in my girlish intuition and my pilot’s survival training and the experience I gained from tours of duty in two war zones!”

  “You tell ’im, Clare.”

  Her frown edged into a half-smile. “Thanks, Bob.”

  So it was Clare and Bob now, was it? Russ picked his way between Mongue and the open duffel bag to sit next to his wife. His wet clothing had been hung on one of the rickety porch chairs. “It’s dry,” Clare said, following his gaze.

  He peeled off the damp ragg socks and laid them on the hearthstone. “You should have woken me up. We could have crossed the lake, gotten the truck, and be gone by now.”

  “Bob and I discussed it. The ice storm’s been going on for two and a half days now. Even supposing we could drive out on the South Shore Drive without running into another fallen tree or downed power line, there’s no telling what condition the highway’s in. We could wind up off the road, trapped, with no help coming and no place to take refuge.”

  “We could have called for help!”

  “I tried that. The radio is dead. No signal. Bob and I decided the safer thing to do was to stay put for the night.”

  “In a half-destroyed cabin that could fall in on us at any moment. A pregnant woman and a guy with a broken leg.”

  “’M feeling better.”

  Russ peered at the trooper. “What the hell, Bob? Are you high?”

  “Yep.”

  “I grabbed a first aid kit from Travis’s place before I left.” Clare pointed to a white plastic box with a familiar red cross sitting next to Mongue. “It turned out it had a different kind of aid than I was thinking.”

  Bob rattled the box. “Oxys.”

  Russ stared at Clare. “You took Travis Roy’s OxyContin stash?”

  “Well, I didn’t know it contained narcotics. But yes.”

  “And gave some to Bob?”

  “’S good stuff,” the trooper said.

  “It is pain medication.”

  Russ hesitated, not wanting to sound suspicious. Something in his expression must have given him away, though, because Clare set her hand on his arm. “I didn’t sample any.” She kept her voice low.

  He was equally quiet. “I didn’t think—”

  She gave him a look. “Russ. I have a problem. I understand if you worry.” She looked around the ruins of their cabin. “Somehow, this didn’t seem like the time to fall off the wagon.”

  He snorted. “I have to confess
something.”

  “You’ve come to the right person, then.”

  “I didn’t want to go to a resort for our honeymoon because I thought this would be easier on you.” He gestured toward the darkness through the still-intact porch windows. “No temptations to resist.”

  She looked into the fire for a moment before nodding. “I think we’ve managed to go beyond ‘no temptation.’ But that reminds me!” She scooted across the floor and retrieved a box from behind one of the tipped-over chairs. “Animal crackers.” She handed the box to him. “Hungry?”

  In response, his stomach growled. Clare shook the box toward the state trooper. “Bob? Are you ready for dinner?”

  “No steak and potatoes, huh? Damn.”

  Clare laid a scarf on the floor and portioned out the tiny cookies into three piles. “You should have more,” Russ said. “You’re eating for two.”

  “You can both split my share,” Mongue said. “’S’not like I’m burning up calories running around.”

  “Yeah, but you need to keep your strength up. You know, to fight off infection.”

  “Enough.” Clare used her Officer Voice. “We all get an equal share.”

  Russ sketched a salute, smiling. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

  “Bossy, i’n’t she?” Bob said.

  “You don’t know the half of it.” They ate the animal crackers slowly, washing them down with water melted atop the woodstove. Clare was exhausted, her eyes smudged with deep shadows, her shoulders rolled forward as if the weight of her head were too much to carry. And poor Bob—Russ glanced toward the trooper. He was feeling no pain, thank God, but the Oxys would just mask the symptoms of the various problems they courted by not getting him to a hospital. “Tomorrow, we’re getting out of here,” he said.

  “We need to find Mikayla first.” Clare picked up the water. “She’s gone, what, five days now without her immunosuppressants? She doesn’t have much time.”

  “I agree,” Mongue said.

  “Look, you need medical attention,” Russ said, turning to him. “And Clare—”

  Mongue rapped on the first aid box. “I can manage for a while longer now I’ve got these. The little girl’s gonna die. We gotta help her.”

  Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow. First I have to get my truck and see if I can—”

  “No more splitting up,” Clare said.

  “I agree. Concur. Agree.”

  Russ glared at Mongue.

  “We should stick together,” Clare went on. “If there are three of us, it’ll increase our chances of being able to get Mikayla away from her father.”

  “These are seriously bad people, Clare—”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.” Her voice was sharp.

  He tried another tack. “With Bob’s broken leg—”

  “I can still shoot better than you can, Van Alstyne.” Mongue grinned. “Hell, you can stick me back in the canoe and strap me to the roof rack.”

  Clare laughed.

  “Okay. Okay.” Russ held up his hands. “We go together. But we go slow. If we can find the meth house, I’ll scout it out, and if I say it’s too dangerous, that’s it. And if either of you two give me any grief, I’m tossing you into the back of the truck and driving out of here. I don’t care if the highway’s closed down all the way to Lake George, with or without Mikayla Johnson, we’re leaving tomorrow.”

  13.

  Hadley had never been afraid before. She thought she had, when she was broke and homeless in L.A., when she went through the containment room on her first day as a prison guard, when she had been crouched beside her squad car while shots exploded around her. But those moments weren’t fear. This was, standing in the hallway of the Albany PD South Station, holding a paper that said her children had been taken.

  “The airport,” she rasped. “We have to get to the airport.”

  “Dylan can’t fly out tonight.” Flynn took the message and read it again. “The Albany airport’s closed down.”

  “Closed down,” she repeated. “The airport’s closed down.” She nodded jerkily. Then started. “What if he’s taken them to another airport? What if he’s taken the train to New York? Is the train running? Would he know where to catch it?”

  Flynn caught her hand and held it tight. “Hadley.” He was using his cop voice on her, the same voice she had used with distracted accident victims and frightened parents. “Chances are good he’s taken them back to his hotel. Let’s call there and see if he’s checked out or not.”

  She nodded again—up, down, Yes, let’s do that, and followed him to the comm room, screaming inside her head the whole while. The dispatcher who had handed over the message looked at her carefully and agreed to call the Algonquin. After the third failure, she shook her head. “Sorry, Officers. The landlines are well and truly down. The only places I’m getting through to are other emergency systems, and those are getting spotty because we’re all trying to use the same broadband at the same time.”

  “Okay.” Flynn exhaled. “Can you reach the MKPD dispatcher? Tell her we need a unit at the Algonquin Waters Resort. Officer Knox’s ex-husband is violating their custody—”

  “No!” Hadley grabbed his arm. “No, don’t send that,” she said to the dispatcher. She dragged Flynn back out into the hallway.

  “What?”

  “You can’t send—” She took a deep breath. “Dylan’s not in violation of the custody agreement. I am.”

  Flynn looked at her steadily. “Go on.”

  “The decree gave us joint custody, and neither of us was supposed to move more than a hundred miles away from the other unless the agreement was modified by the court.” She had thought herself lucky at the time. The judge handling their divorce had openly doubted her ability to give the children a “normal, stable” home. “After the divorce was finalized, I … I realized I wanted to start fresh. Granddad offered me a place to stay as long as I needed one. So I went to Dylan and asked him if it was all right if I took the kids to New York. He said he was fine with it as long as I didn’t expect any money from him.” She coughed up a bitter laugh. “I figured since he agreed, I could save myself the cost of getting the custody agreement changed. I never thought to get anything in writing from him. So now he’s here, and he’s going to be able to get full custody because I’ve been in violation for two years!” She hung her head, squeezing her eyes against tears she wouldn’t let fall. “Oh, God. How could I have been so stupid?”

  Flynn pulled her toward him and she came, letting herself lean against him, pressing her face into his sweater. She was being weak and needy and she hated it, but she couldn’t help herself. He wrapped his long arms around her and she felt better, even though she knew it was an illusion.

  “Why did he come here?” Flynn’s voice was quiet. “What does he want from you?”

  She gave it up, just like any suspect in the interrogation room. “Money. He wants me to give him twenty thousand for one of his stupid business schemes. If I don’t, he’s going to take Hudson and Genny back to L.A.”

  Flynn breathed in and out, her head rising and falling with his chest. “Do you have it?”

  “No. I own”—she caught herself—“the assets of a business he ran. He’ll take that instead of cash.”

  “Can you give it to him?”

  She thought of those tapes, made digital, images that anyone with a computer and a credit card could download forever and ever, amen. How old would Hudson and Genny be before they saw them? How long before one of their friend’s fathers recognized her and the crude suggestions started up again? How long before the mothers found out and the invitations to playdates and sleepovers vanished? The kids had been too young to notice their ostracism back in California. Here, now, they were fully old enough to understand every slight and slur that would come their way. But she had no choice. She couldn’t lose her children. “Yes.” She pushed herself away and Flynn’s tight embrace instantly loosened. “Yes, I can surr
ender the business assets.”

  “Then the first thing to do is retrieve Hudson and Genny.” He searched her face. “Are you okay to go?”

  She swiped away her tears. “I’m sorry. I’m just … I think with the storm and my ex and the little girl missing … I’m just on edge.”

  He nodded. “We can still get a call relayed through to the MKPD. The dep would send someone over to the hotel, no questions asked.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to involve anyone from work if I can help it.” She took a deep breath. “The kids aren’t in any danger from Dylan. He’s a cheating, lying jerk, but he’s never raised a hand against any of us.”

  “Okay. Let me tell the dispatcher we’re all set.”

  Getting out of Albany was a nightmare. Traffic lights were nonexistent, streets were blocked off, and the roads were so bad Flynn’s weighted-down four-wheel-drive SUV slid every time they turned a corner. The Northway lights were on, their orange sodium glow wavering in the rain-thick air, but huge swathes of land beyond the confines of the roadway were dark. No billboards, no gas signs, no lights brightening the windows of distant houses.

  “It’s the end of the world,” Hadley said, staring out the ice-streaked side window.

  “No,” Flynn said. “But it is one hell of a mess.”

  “Like my life.”

  She could hear him hesitate. “Hadley. Have you thought about what’s going to happen after you give your ex what he wants?”

  “He’ll go back to California.”

  “Is he reliable with money?”

  “Oh, God, no.” Hadley twisted in her seat and adjusted one of the vents to blow more hot air her way. “Hudson’s got more common sense than his father.”

  “Then what’s going to happen the next time he’s stuck and he wants cash?”

  “Nothing. I’ll have a lawyer draw up a custody modification. Once we get it filed with the court, that’s it.”

  “What if he doesn’t agree?”

  “Of course he’ll agree. Dylan doesn’t really care about having the kids close, believe me.”

  “Hand me my coffee, will you?” Flynn held out his hand, not taking his eyes away from the road. She gave him his go-cup—two creams, two sugars—and watched while he drank. He handed it back to her. “Do you have any way to make your ex sign a custody modification?”