I Shall Not Want

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Good. Give me directions.” She looked over at him. His confusion must have been plain. “I just . . . I can’t face my kids and my granddad yet. And I sure as hell don’t want to hang out someplace where anybody can gawk at my uniform.” She was right. The word had probably already gotten out. Whoever didn’t know about the shooting already would get the news tomorrow, when the Post-Star hit the doorstep. “So let’s go eat at your place.” She glanced at him again. “You don’t live with your parents, do you?”

  He wheezed a laugh. “No.”

  He told her how to reach his duplex in Fort Henry. He had the top half of a Depression-era workingman’s house, plain as crockery, but the street was quiet and shady and he had garage space for his Aztek.

  “Nice.” Hadley parked in front of his space and dropped her rig in her cruiser’s lockbox. Upstairs, he showed her the kitchen and excused himself to secure his own gun. “Get changed,” she said. “Believe me, if I could get out of this damn outfit, I would.”

  He locked up his .44 and traded his uniform for baggy shorts and a T-shirt. It felt weird, stripping with her right down the hall in the kitchen. By the time he got back, she’d turned on the oven, found his stash of Miller’s amber ale, and unwrapped four packages of frozen stuffed potatoes. “You know,” she said, “these aren’t that hard to make from scratch. Takes six minutes to nuke a potato.”

  He held out a T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts. “You want to borrow these? I mean, they’ll be big, but the shorts have a drawstring.” She stared at the clothes. He felt his face heat up. It had seemed like a good idea in the bedroom.

  “Yeah,” she said, finally. “I do.”

  He showed her the bathroom. Got the potatoes in the oven. Tried very hard not to imagine her undressing. Opened a beer. At least he wasn’t feeling so stone-cold miserable anymore. It was hard to be depressed and awkward at the same time.

  He heard the toilet flush. She was laughing. Oh, shit. The bathroom door opened. “Flynn,” she said, “you’ve got the rules of admissible evidence taped to the inside lid of your toilet seat.” She laughed some more. “That’s about the geekiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “It was from a long time ago,” he protested. “I was studying. I forgot to take it down.”

  She picked up her beer. His T-shirt hung off her like a beach cover-up. “I bet you put a new topic there every week.” She grinned at him. “Maybe I ought to try that with Hudson. He’s been having trouble with his fractions.” She wandered out the other end of the kitchen, where a table and four chairs divided his small living room from the enclosed porch. “Wow. You have a ton of books. Maybe I should just send Hudson over here. Let you tutor him.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I like kids.” He rolled open the glass door to the porch.

  She rested her bottle on one of his bookcases. “That’s because you are one.”

  He picked up her beer. “Come out to the porch. It’s cooler.”

  She sat on the rattan couch that used to be his parents’ and he stretched out in an Adirondack chair that had been his oldest brother’s shop project. They propped their feet up on the rattan coffee table. The early evening breeze sighed through the screens. They sat in silence, drinking their beers. Hadley studied the beads of condensation rolling down the amber glass.

  “I’m going to quit the force,” she said.

  He stared at her. “What?”

  “It hit me, today.” She looked at him. “What the chief told me. This isn’t like working at an insurance office or a restaurant. This is like signing up for the army. People get killed.”

  “No officer on the MKPD has died on the job since 1979.”

  “Thank you, Kevin,” she singsonged. Her voice hardened. “That statistic’s about to change.”

  He pushed himself out of his chair. He couldn’t sit still and talk about this at the same time. “The chief will be fine.”

  “We don’t know that! Even if he lives, he could be disabled, or have brain damage from his heart stopping so many times, or—”

  “Don’t. Please, don’t.” He crossed to one screened-in window, then another.

  “I’m sorry.” She got up herself, now, and blocked his pacing. “I’m sorry.” She looked up at him. “It’s different for you. To you, it’s still like a kid’s game of shoot-’em-up.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not.”

  She dropped her eyes. “No,” she said. “It’s not. I’m sorry.”

  He took a step closer to her. “And for once and for all, I’m not a kid.”

  “No.” She looked up at him again. “You’re not.”

  Then—he had no idea how—she was in his arms and he was hoisting her up, crushing her against him, and they were devouring each other, kissing, biting, sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

  “I don’t want to be alone tonight,” Hadley gasped. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “No. No.”

  She hugged her arms and legs around him so tightly she nearly cut off his circulation. “Take me into your bedroom. Now.”

  “Yes. Oh. Yeah.” He staggered down the hallway, and then they were in his room, then they were throwing off their clothes, then they were in his bed, and—oh my God—she was hotter, softer, wetter, sweeter than anything he could have imagined. He almost lost it, trying to touch her everywhere at the same time, but she slowed him down, said, “Here” and “Like this,” and, “Oh, yes, that’s just right.” Let her show you what she likes, he had read, so he did. He was good at following directions, damn good, maybe, because she shook and then she clutched at him and then she arched off his bed, her voice strangling in her throat, and he felt amazed and powerful and tender all at the same time. Then she drew him over her and wrapped her legs around him and he pushed and everything in the moment must have been written all over his face because she laughed low in his ear and whispered, “In like Flynn.”

  XVII

  There was no place to kneel and pray in the Critical Care Unit. A funny oversight, Clare thought. They had every other type of lifesaving equipment stuffed into the windowless space. They only had one chair, which she and Margy and Janet had rotated between them until Janet had to go home to her kids and her cows and Margy fell asleep on a wide sofa in the CCU waiting room. Clare dragged the chair’s footstool to the foot of Russ’s high-tech bed and knelt there. A little idolatrous, perhaps, as if she were praying to the long, broken body lying still and pale beneath the blanket.

  She knew she ought to pray for God’s will, not her own. She knew that bad things were not tests or punishments. She knew God was not a celestial gumball machine, and there was no combination of words or rituals that could force God’s awful hand.

  But desperation stripped away her knowledge, leaving her praying like a small child. Please, God, please, please, don’t let him die. I’ll do anything. Please don’t let him die.

  She had stopped in at the church and gotten her traveling kit after returning Sister Lucia to the Rehabilitation Center. The old woman had framed Clare’s face between her hands and said, “I will pray without ceasing. For him and for you.”

  Now, at three in the morning, she anointed Russ with oil. “I lay my hands upon you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” she said, “beseeching our Lord Jesus Christ to sustain you—” It was meant to be an outward and visible sign, but in her slippery fingers it was a talisman, a seal, a dare to God to take him now she had protected him. She would have drenched the room in holy water, hung crosses on his ventilator and saint’s medals over his heart monitor if she had thought she could get away with it. Magic. Faith. Her will. God’s will.

  Please, God, please, please, please. Let him live. . . .

  She woke with a start when the day nurse entered. She was sagging off the end of the bed, her arms completely numb, her thighs cramping. She fell off the footstool when she tried to get up.

  “Good heavens, Reverend. Fell asleep, did we?” The nurse hauled her to her feet
and sent her lurching toward the waiting room. “We need to clear the room for a few,” the nurse said. “Why don’t we get something to eat and some fresh air in the meantime?”

  “Why don’t we?” Clare mumbled. She collapsed on a sofa opposite the sleeping Margy and tried to ignore the shooting pain of the circulation coming back into her limbs. She was lined up with the opening to the corridor, and so had a perfect view of Lyle MacAuley getting off the elevator. He had changed into a fresh uniform—she hoped he had burned the other one—but he was red-eyed and haggard from lack of sleep.

  “You look terrible,” Clare said.

  “Not compared to you, I don’t.” He halted in front of her, like an out-of-gas car rolling to a stop where the road comes level.

  “Sit down.” She slapped the cushion next to her once, the best she could manage. “The CCU nurse is in there. No visitors right now.”

  MacAuley collapsed with a groan. He sat, simply sat, for a moment. “Any change?” he finally asked.

  “No.”

  “Hell damn.”

  “Yeah.”

  They were silent for a while. She wondered if he was afraid to talk about it, like she was. Afraid that one wrong word, two, and she’d find herself saying I don’t think he’s going to make it.

  “What’s going on with the case?”

  The lines in his face fell into something resembling a smile. “Well, that answers that.”

  “What?”

  “I always did wonder if you were playing with police work because of Russ, or because you’re terminally nosy.”

  “Both,” she said. “Plus, it’s a lot more interesting than the Mary and Martha’s Guild meetings.”

  “Too damn interesting, these days.”

  She nodded. It seemed as if she could hear the slow whoosh . . . whoosh of the ventilator, breathing for Russ.

  “We’re pretty sure the Punta Diablos—that’s a gang running pot out of New York—are the ones who did Amado. Looks like they left him up on the Muster Field so’s we’d run into him sooner and head straight over to the Christies’.” His face worked, as if he was chewing on something bitter. “They used us to clear out the dogs and the Christie men, and then went to the farm to get their property.”

  “The distribution list?”

  “Told you about that theory, did he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, we still don’t know for sure if that’s what they were after. Neither of them can tell us.” There was a grim satisfaction in his voice. “Have to sweat it out of the Christies.”

  “But why Amado? He had no connection to the Christies.”

  “They came after him, didn’t they? And two of ’em got booked for it. Woulda been all over the county jail. You never heard gossip till you heard jailbirds.”

  “But why would they think a man the Christies hated would know anything?”

  “Dunno.”

  “How did the Christies get hold of the list?”

  “Dunno. Yet.”

  “What’s the connection to the bodies behind the Muster Field?”

  “Dunno.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know, Deputy Chief.”

  He sank back farther into the couch. “You got that right, Reverend.”

  They sat silent again. Across the way, Margy Van Alstyne snored gently. She’d been up until two o’clock or so. Clare hoped she’d sleep on. Asleep, she wasn’t eaten up with fear for her only son.

  “You might want to go visit Isabel Christie while you’re here.”

  “The sister?” she said.

  “Ayeah. When Russ told her about Amado yesterday morning, she was pretty broke up about it.”

  “Oh, God.” Clare exhaled. “So there was something there.” She looked down at her clerical blouse. There was dried blood crusted on it. “I don’t know if I’m in a fit state to help her.”

  He rolled his head to one side and looked at her. “Can’t think of anyone better.”

  She gave him a wavering smile. Thought about losing someone you loved. Someone you weren’t supposed to love.

  “Lyle?”

  He grunted.

  She took a breath. “Was it true? About you and Linda Van Alstyne?”

  He paused for so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally he said, “Yeah.”

  “Have you talked to Russ about it?”

  “Apologized. He wouldn’t take it. We’ve been limpin’ along since last January.” He swallowed. “After he was shot, he—” He held up one hand and closed it around empty air. “He apologized to me. Called me—” His voice cracked. He snapped his mouth shut, muscles jumping in his jaw. “Friend.” His voice was so husky she could barely hear him.

  She took his hand and held it tightly, tears filling her eyes. “I know he forgives you. He loves you.”

  Lyle made a noise. “Jesum.” He cleared his throat. “Don’t be saying that in public. I’ll never live it down.” He looked at their hands. “He was thinking of you,” he said. “The last thing. He said your name.”

  She closed her eyes. Hot tears spilled over her cheeks. “We were fighting,” she whispered. “Before he got the call about Amado’s body. I told him I hated him. Oh, Lyle—”

  He reached around and pulled her against his shoulder. “Shh,” he said. “Shh. Just what you said to me. He forgave you. He loves you.”

  “I told him we had to wait,” she said between sobs. “I told him it was for him, but it was really for me. I was a coward. I was too afraid of getting hurt again to take the chance, and now—oh, God, that was the only time we had together, and I wasted it! Why? Why did I do that?”

  “Shh.” Lyle rubbed her back in comforting circles, just like her father would have. “Shh. I don’t know why, Reverend. We don’t have near enough time on this earth, and what we do have, we fritter away acting like damn fools.”

  XVIII

  She took Lyle’s advice and went to see Isabel Christie that afternoon. She found her propped up in bed, her face half hidden by a bandage, the parts that weren’t covered up puffy and purpling. Clare introduced herself.

  “I never saw a lady priest,” Isabel said. Her voice was stuffy, as if she had a head cold.

  “I’m not much of a lady,” Clare said. And sometimes not much of a priest, either.

  Isabel eyed her warily, as if Clare might spring onto the bed and forcibly convert her. “Pastor Bob at the Free Will Fellowship used to say that priests were an abomination in the sight of the Lord.” Even in her clogged voice, there was a note suggesting Pastor Bob hadn’t been her favorite person.

  “I bet ol’ Pastor Bob said women should submit to men, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that parents that loved their children should chastise them?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And that everybody who didn’t worship at the Free Will Fellowship was going to roast marshmallows in hell?”

  “Especially Catholics.” Above her bandage-swathed nose, Isabel’s forehead creased with worry. Amado had been a Catholic.

  “Well, if Pastor Bob was right, then I probably am an abomination and all that. I say that male and female are equal in the sight of God, that Jesus would never have smacked a little kid, and that God’s grace means we’re going to be very surprised by who-all gets into heaven.”

  Isabel stared at the opposite wall, where a muted television showed the channel 9 news. “I never liked Pastor Bob. After I started developin’, he used to hug me.” She looked at Clare. “You know?”

  “I know.”

  “There’s my house,” Isabel said.

  Clare looked at the television. It was a distant shot of the Christies’ farm from yesterday afternoon, with cops and SWAT team members still walking around. It was replaced by a photo of a smiling middle-aged woman standing on a mountaintop somewhere in the High Peaks. “That’s the lady from Children and Families,” Isabel said. “She tried to get away.” She picked up the remote and switched the volume on as the scre
en switched back to the farm.

  “Millers Kill Chief of Police Russell Van Alstyne is still in critical condition at Washington County Hospital following the high-stakes hostage-taking—”

  “My niece Porsche said he saved her life. And her baby’s. Scared the heck out of her, though.”

  “I know.” Clare looked away from the TV, where Lyle MacAuley was asking viewers to be on the alert for other members of the Punta Diablo gang. “He’s a friend of mine. The police chief.”

  “Is he gonna be okay?”

  “They don’t know yet. It’s been twenty-four hours since he got out of surgery, and he’s still on a ventilator.” Doctors clumped around his bedside. Frowns and pursed lips. The discussion falling off when they spotted Margy’s pale face.

  “I’m sorry,” Isabel said. “It’s my brothers’ fault.”

  “No.” She gestured toward the TV. “You saw the report. They were gangbangers from New York City.” Clare paused. Hoped she wasn’t about to reopen a wound. “I don’t know if this helps, but Deputy Chief MacAuley told me they were also responsible for Amado Esfuentes’s death. They were after something, just like at your house, and they thought Amado knew where it was.”

  Isabel’s already inexpressive face became a mask. Her eyes were dry and hollowed out. “One of the cops said he’d been . . .”

  “Yes.” Isabel deserved the truth. “We who survive like to comfort ourselves by saying ‘It was quick’ or ‘At least he didn’t suffer.’ It’s a hard thing, when we can’t believe that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But we do know that whatever happened, whatever he went through, it’s over now. And nothing can ever hurt him again.” She smiled a little. “I bet Pastor Bob used to preach Revelations.”

  “Oh, yeah. A lot.”

  “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

  Isabel was very still for a moment. “Even Amado’s?”

  Clare thought of the shy young man, vacuuming one-handedly, polishing the choir stalls, humming to himself when he thought no one could hear. “Especially Amado’s,” she said.