I Shall Not Want

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Hello, Russell,” she said. “And who’s this? Is this Glenn Hadley’s granddaughter I’ve heard so much tell about?” She hugged her sister-in-law while keeping an avid eye on Knox. “Don’t you worry, dear,” she said. “I’ve come to spend the night.” Russ spotted the small suitcase on the doorstep and sprang to pick it up. He toted it to the second-floor bedroom, abandoning Officer Knox to Geraldine’s interrogation.

  She had gotten to who-was-Hudson-and-Geneva’s-father-and-why-wasn’t-he-here-with-them by the time Russ got back downstairs. He snagged the bag of cookies from the table and thrust it at the shell-shocked Knox. “Time for us to go, ladies. Mrs. Bain, you call us if anything else makes you nervous, okay?”

  “Rushing off to St. Alban’s?” Geraldine gave him a roguish wink. “Word is you’ve got yourself a sweetheart over there.”

  “Geraldine,” Mrs. Bain said in a repressive tone.

  “What? He can’t wear the willow forever, a good-looking man like that.” Geraldine looked him up and down. “If I weren’t old enough to be your mother, I’d give that Reverend Fergusson a run for her money.”

  Beside him, Hadley Knox made a gurgling noise. He leaned in toward the Bain women. “I don’t know as you should let that stop you, Geraldine. You know what they say about older women.” Then he winked. She hooted with laughter.

  Mrs. Bain frowned at her sister-in-law. “Oh, you and your foolishness!” She turned and looked up at him. “Russell, you will let Warren know what happened, won’t you? He does worry so about me.”

  “Of course.” He opened the door.

  “Be good!” Geraldine’s voice trailed after him. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do! And if you do, don’t get found out!”

  On the ride back down Route 17, Knox peeked at him several times, as if trying to work up the nerve to ask something. He figured it was about him and Clare, so he was surprised when she said, “Don’t you find it kind of frustrating? Spending the whole day holding hands and soothing nerves?” He glanced over at her. “I mean,” she went on, “it’s more like babysitting than police work.”

  “Weren’t you the one who said being a cop was like being a mother?”

  “Oh, crap.” She covered her face with her hands. “I did, didn’t I? I can’t believe I said that in a job interview.”

  “Don’t be. It’s one of the reasons I hired you.” Ahead of them, the light at the intersection turned red. He took his foot off the gas. “Sometimes it gets a little frustrating, yeah. Mostly because I want to see some development on this case, and nothing’s happening. But I try to remember that for most of the folks here, this is police work. Making sure Mom’s not trapped in her house with a broken hip. Stopping cars from speeding around the schools and the park. Asking the neighbors to turn it down so everybody can keep it friendly.”

  “Do you ever wish it was more . . . I don’t know, exciting?”

  “I was an MP for over twenty years. Believe me, I saw plenty of exciting. No, I knew what I was getting when I came back to my hometown.” The light turned green again, and he rolled onto Main Street. “Did you?”

  She looked startled. Then thoughtful. “I don’t know. I knew what I wanted, though.”

  He expected fresh air or a safe place to raise my kids or a new start.

  She pursed her lips. “Anonymity.”

  “Huh.” He bumped the cruiser over the walk and into the station parking lot. “I suppose, to the rest of the world, Millers Kill is pretty anonymous.” He twisted the key in the ignition and the engine died. “Of course, within the town, you can’t ask someone for a dance without everybody weighing in on it.”

  Getting out of the car, the heat that had been soft and drowsy in Mrs. Bain’s grassy yard pressed down on them like a tar-smeared steamroller. All he wanted to do was check in, sign out, and get to his mother’s house, where he could strip down to his shorts and try to catch a breeze in the backyard.

  Clare’s house would be cool. She believed air-conditioning was a constitutional right. He had helped her install a window unit last summer. She would have iced tea—sweet, like they made it down south—and cold beer. A glass for him and a bottle for her. He could stretch out in one of her oversized chairs and they could talk.

  Yeah. Talk.

  He knew, as soon as he stepped onto the marble floor of the entryway, that something had happened. He could hear the churn of conversation all the way down the hall. Eric emerged from the squad room, grinning. He sketched them a jaunty wave. “I’m outta here. My son’s got a game.”

  “What’s up?” Russ asked.

  Eric’s grin widened. “Go take a look.”

  Russ strode in, Knox on his heels. Lyle and Kevin were bent over a desk, heads bumping together, examining what looked like circ sheets. “What’s up?” Russ asked.

  Lyle looked up, grinning. “We’ve ID’d John Doe one. He’s Rosario de las Cruces, late of Prendiepe, Mexico. The Agencia Federal de Investigación faxed a whole buttload of stuff on him.” He waved Kevin back and handed the papers to Russ. “He’s associated with the Punta Diablos gang, which has members on both sides of the border: pot coming north and guns going south. He spent a nickel in prison, Federales de somethin’-or-other; you can read it for yourself”—he jammed a finger at the appropriate spot—“but he’s got no record of ever being in this country, which is why his prints didn’t turn up with our usual search.” He grabbed the papers back out of Russ’s hands and yanked one sheet to the top. “Here’s the Anti-Gang Task Force report on the Punta Diablos; they think de las Cruces was fairly high-level management but not at the top. Didn’t get near the product—he was put away for unlicensed possession of a gun, criminal threatening, and currency violations.”

  “Currency violations?”

  “Money laundering.”

  Russ felt a flare of excitement as the facts finally began to line up. “Our midlevel manager?”

  “Could be. Although, seeing as he’s dead, he’s not telling anybody the names and addresses of his distributors.”

  “Unless he recorded the info somewhere.” He and Lyle smiled at each other in wolflike satisfaction. “CD?” he asked. “Or one of those little whatchamacallits that you stick in the side of a computer?”

  “Flash drive,” Kevin Flynn said.

  “Thank you, Kevin.”

  Lyle shook his head. “Too easy to duplicate. Plus, it’s hard to really erase one of those things. They’d want something they could destroy completely if the Feds came knocking.”

  “Good old paper and pen?”

  “A notebook,” Lyle said. “Or a diary, or a journal.”

  “When they tossed Clare’s place”—some of the good feeling fizzled away—“that’s what they were looking for. Whoever ‘they’ are.”

  Lyle rocked back on his heels and rubbed two fingers over his lips. “They didn’t find it that night. And it wasn’t bagged with the money and the .357 Taurus. So either Esfuentes never had it, or he kept it someplace else entirely.”

  “Or it’s still hidden at the church,” Knox said.

  They both turned to face her. She shifted from foot to foot, looking like she wished she hadn’t spoken up. “There are books and notebooks all over the place. In the main office. In Reverend Clare’s office. Hell, in the Sunday School room. Amado went everywhere, cleaning. He could have slipped it between a couple of other items and no one would have noticed.”

  Lyle was nodding. “Makes sense.” He looked at Russ. “You said he led a pretty prescribed life, right? The Catholic church in Lake George, visits to the house out at your sister’s farm, and St. Alban’s.”

  “Right.”

  “He’s not gonna leave it at the Catholic church. What if he can’t get back? Same deal for stashing it in one of the volunteers’ cars.”

  “It’s possible he left it at the migrants’ bunkhouse.” Which meant the same crew who tossed Clare’s house might be coming over to the McGeochs. He’d have to warn Janet not to let the girls anywhere ne
ar the new farm.

  “Possible,” Lyle said. “But he didn’t leave the gun and the money there. The place has been on the patrol list ever since we twigged to the Hispanic connection, and so far it’s been quieter’n a—well, quieter than the church, that’s for sure.”

  Russ glanced toward Knox, the only other one of them to speak Spanish. “It’s not urgent, then. Knox, you and Kevin can head over there tomorrow to do a search. I’ll call ahead and let my sister and her husband know.”

  She nodded. He remembered her kids. Made a point of looking at the clock on the wall. “Okay, you’re off duty. Stop bucking for overtime and go home.”

  She nodded, her relief plain. She turned.

  “Hadley,” Lyle said. “One more thing about de las Cruces.” She turned back, her face half curious, half wary. “Those tats he had on his fingers? They were gang markings. Which means that the guy you saw in the Hummer—”

  “Alejandro Santiago.”

  “That’s him. He and his crew have maybe hooked up with the Punta Diablos. The AGTF didn’t know that.” The grin on his face widened. “We actually got a thank-you for passing on that piece of information.”

  Knox stared.

  “Good work,” Russ added, to clarify.

  She nodded, then vanished through the squad room door. They listened to her footsteps clatter down the hall.

  “I don’t know about that girl,” Lyle said.

  “Woman.” Russ picked up the sheets and shuffled back to the first one. “She’ll do fine. She’s coming along.”

  “I got two kids older’n she is. That makes her a girl in my book.”

  “Yeah? Your hunting rifle is older than Kevin. Doesn’t make him a Remington.”

  Kevin quivered to attention. “Anything else, Chief? You want me to check out St. Alban’s for you?”

  “No, thank you, Kevin. I’ll handle that myself.” He ignored Lyle’s huff of amusement. “See you tomorrow.”

  Kevin left with a great deal more reluctance than Hadley Knox had shown. When it was down to just the two of them, Russ let his feet wander to the big worktable. He hitched himself up onto its top. “Sister Lucia’s van—” he stopped. Shook his head. “A van with a load of Hispanic men gets shot in April.”

  Lyle crossed to the whiteboard and wrote it down.

  “Also, sometime in March or April, Rosario de las Cruces is killed in Cossayuharie.”

  “Or dumped there.”

  Russ nodded acknowledgment. “In May, Hadley and Kevin run across a carload of Punta Diablo gang members.”

  Lyle jotted on the board.

  “End of June, Amado Esfuentes is kidnapped and his residence is searched.”

  “If that kid was a gangbanger, I’ll eat my shorts.”

  “We agree on that.” Russ tapped the circ sheets and arrest papers against his chin. “Maybe we’re looking at this from the wrong end. What if it’s not a power struggle?”

  Lyle shrugged. “I dunno. I like that idea. It fits.”

  “It fits de las Cruces. It doesn’t fit Esfuentes. Or the van shooting. What if what we’re dealing with is the fallout from an intergang rivalry? Something happened. Maybe involving the older, unidentified bodies. And now what we’re seeing is a hunt for witnesses.”

  Lyle squinted at the ceiling for a moment. “Possible.” He glanced at the whiteboard. “A witness who has physical evidence. Money, the .357 Magnum, and this could-be list of distributors.”

  “You think I’m barking up the wrong tree with that? They were just looking for money when they tossed Clare’s place?”

  “Nope. Ten thousand’s a lot to you and me, but if we’re talking guys who import junk wholesale, it’s penny ante. Job money, for the driver.”

  “Shut-up money?”

  “Maybe. What’s the definition of an honest politician?”

  Russ smiled a bit. “One who stays bought. I take your point.” He slid off the table. “I’m going over to St. Alban’s. Maybe I’ll find this mystery list and you and I can stop chasing our tails.”

  Russ expected his deputy’s usual lazy assent and was surprised when Lyle stopped him with a hand to his arm. “We should call Ben Beagle tomorrow. Catch him up on some of this and tell him that we’ve searched the church and the rectory and come up empty-handed.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because.” Lyle looked dead serious. “When the Punta Diablo boys figure out Esfuentes might have hidden something at St. Alban’s, they’ll be over there themselves.”

  VII

  “What are we looking for?” Clare asked.

  “I don’t know.” Russ frowned at the bookcase taking up one wall of her office. “Something that doesn’t have anything to do with Jesus or the Episcopal church, I guess.”

  She pulled one of her Lindsay Davis mysteries off the shelf and handed it to him.

  “Or Roman history,” he said. “Smart-ass.” He looked at her with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. He had been in what she’d have described as a fey mood since he arrived; restless, upbeat, talkative.

  “It could be a journal or a diary or a notebook. I suppose it could even be a few papers stapled together.”

  “We ought to start in the office, then. There are a lot more bits and pieces there.” She led him into the main office. He groaned when he saw the bookcase built into the wall. It ran from the doorway to the corner, ceiling to floor, filled with ledgers and books and file boxes and three-ring binders.

  “It’s a church. What the heck do you do that generates so much paperwork?”

  She almost laughed. “Let’s split the job. Do you want here or my office?”

  “I’ll tackle this.”

  She retreated back to her own bookcase, grateful for the space between them and resenting it at the same time. He shouted out questions now and then: “What’s a proposed canonical amendment? . . . Did you know you have minutes to meetings from 1932?”—while she worked her way across her shelves.

  She had removed and replaced everything on her bookcase and was considering the feasibility of checking the coloring books and picture Bibles in the nursery when Russ charged up the hall with a spiral-bound notebook in his hand. He flipped it open to show her the printed entries: names, dates, numbers.

  “Sorry,” she said, taking it from him. “This is the overflow baptismal registry.” She walked back to the main office and eased an oversized leather-bound volume from its place on the middle shelf. BAPTISMS was impressed in gold leaf deep into its cover. “We need to buy another one of these, but they’re ridiculously expensive.” She opened it. “See? Name of the baptized, godparents or sponsors, date, age at baptism. Celebrant’s initials.” R.H.D.D., in the entry she was pointing to. “Robert Hames, Doctor of Divinity,” she said.

  He glanced at the notebook. It was arranged identically, although, without the example of the bound baptism record, the entries looked like strings of names. “C.F.M.D.” she said. “Clare Fergusson, Master of Divinity.”

  “How come you don’t just put down your name? Or ‘The Rev. C.F.’?”

  “I don’t know. It was the first time I’ve ever been in charge of a baptismal registry. I just copied what the last guy did.”

  He snorted. “That’s probably the origin of half the traditions you Episcopalians are so gung-ho about. Just copying what the last guy did.”

  “Mm-hmm. Which doesn’t sound like much until you try to do something differently. How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb?”

  “Uh. I don’t know. How many?”

  “What? Change the lightbulb?”

  He laughed, which she appreciated, since it was a very old joke. “I didn’t find anything,” she went on. “We’ve got some odds and ends in the nursery. Do you want me to look there?”

  “I guess.” He replaced the heavy old leather-bound book and then the fifty-cent spiral-bound version. He took the same care with each one.

  “You guess?”

  He made a noise in the back of h
is throat. “I don’t want to rule anything out. But let’s face it, sticking a list of dealers where any three-year-old might turn it into an art project isn’t likely.” He stepped back to size up the office bookcase again, almost knocking into her. He turned and grabbed her shoulders, steadying her. “Our best bet was right here. More loose bits and pieces. It woulda been easy for him to slide something in. If you or your secretary accidentally pulled it from its hiding place, you would have just put it back again as soon as you saw it wasn’t what you were looking for.”

  He was right. She could picture Amado, vacuuming in here, maybe wiping the shelves and the woodwork with a dusting cloth. Reaching into his pocket and slipping something between the papers. Hidden in plain sight. She poked her hair into place. Tried to get her mouth around the unpalatable truth. “It’s not looking good for Amado, is it? I mean, if he was hiding something important from whoever snatched him.”

  He looked at her. “No. It isn’t.”

  She rubbed her arm. Once in a while, she wished Russ would sugar-coat things for her. “Why wouldn’t he just come to the police, if he had seen something illegal? Or come to me? I would have helped him.” She looked at her hands. Folded them up tight. “I could have helped him.”

  Russ smiled a little. “You did everything you could, darlin’. You gave him a job and a place to live and you beat the crap out of the Christies when they tried to attack him.”

  “I defended myself,” she said. She brought her fists up, shoulder width, knuckles up and knuckles down, as if she carried an unseen oaken shaft. “I wish I had been there when whoever it was came to my house.” She looked up at Russ. “If I had only gone home an hour earlier—half an hour.”

  She was shocked when he took one of her hands, folding his fingers over hers.

  “Thank God you weren’t there. Because I know you, and I know you wouldn’t have let him go without a fight. And whoever has him, Clare, they’re bad people. I don’t know if you could’ve run them off with a cross and a candlestick.” He lowered her hand without releasing it. Tugged her closer. “Though if anyone could . . .”

  “What are you doing?” She sounded like a high school girl behind the bleachers, breathless and naïve.