A Fountain Filled With Blood

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Peggy Landry. She owns a huge chunk of land northwest of the town. She’s been trying to develop it for years, but she never had the wherewithal to do anything more than plow a few roads in. The only money she made off it came from paintball groups and back-to-nature nuts. You know, people who scoff at amenities like toilets, showers, or cleared land for pitching tents.” He rolled his eyes. “She got a group out of Baltimore interested in the parcel a year or so ago. Before you came. They do spas, luxury resorts, that sort of thing. It was big news at the time because of the prospect of jobs for the town, of course. I didn’t realize they had already—”

  Jim Cameron straightened up. “Application papers of Landry Properties, Inc., and BWI Development, a limited partnership,” he read from a sheaf of papers in his hand. “Okay, Peggy, the town isn’t going to suspend your construction permits.” Several in the crowd yelled angrily at this. Several others cheered. The mayor frowned. “Keep it down! Look, our lawyer tells us we don’t have the authority to stop properly permitted projects unless the state rules they are, in fact, violating DEP standards.”

  “What about the possible release of more contaminants by the development?” Mrs. Van Alstyne asked. “How much of that poison is stored in the rock, waiting to be let out when they start blasting? Anything they let loose is going to wash straight down the mountain and into the town and the river!”

  “Who’s going to pay for the cleanup?” someone asked from the crowd. “Seems like the Landrys will be making a pretty penny and we’ll be left holding the bill.”

  Jim Cameron held up his hands. “People, if we can’t stick to the rules of order, I’m calling this whole meeting off!”

  A man stood up next to Peggy Landry, who was glaring at Mrs. Van Alstyne with enough venom to have caused a lesser woman to collapse back into her seat. “Mr. Mayor? May I say a few words?”

  The mayor looked pathetically grateful that someone was recognizing Robert’s Rules. “Yes. The chair recognizes…”

  “Bill Ingraham. BWI Development.” Cameron gestured to him to continue. Ingraham was thickly set, of middle height and middle years, with the sunburnt skin of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors. He looked more like a plumbing contractor than the developer of a luxury spa to Clare’s eye, but then, she had never really met any luxury-spa developers. “My partner and I—stand up, John, and let the folks here get a look at you.” A smartly dressed corporate type stood, waved unenthusiastically, and vanished back into his seat. “John and I are here to create a new resort, the best cross between the old Adirondack mountain retreats and an up-to-the-minute health spa. We want to build this because we think it’ll make us a whole lot of money.” There was a snort of laughter, quickly stifled, from the crowd. “I also think it’ll make your town a whole lot of money, because we see this as a destination resort, not a place to stay overnight while your visitor heads over to Saratoga during the day. This is gonna mean money spent in your town and jobs for people who live here, year-round jobs, because this is gonna be a year-round resort.” There was a scattering of applause across the town hall. “John and I are putting our money where our mouth is in more ways than one. We’re sponsoring the Fourth of July road race this year, and we’ve got plans for a ski meet at one of the local mountains this winter. Eventually, we want to support a special event in each of the four seasons.” He rubbed his hands together theatrically. “Give those tourists a little incentive to get into town and loosen their purse strings.”

  There was even more laughter than there had been applause. Ingraham paused for a moment, then went on. “I like this area. Don’t want to see it polluted any more than you do. And I’ll be frank with you. Our budget for the Algonquin Waters Resort and Spa does not include the costs of coming into compliance with the DEP. We had a run-in with them once before, when we were cocontractors on a Georgia project that had PCB contamination. We’re still paying folks to dig sludge down there. It was a total loss. Now, we bought into this project based on the work Peggy had already done with the permits. So here’s how we’re gonna handle it. If you all want to call in the state to retest our site because PCB levels have been rising several miles away, go ahead. But if the ruling goes against us, we’re shutting down. In my experience, once the government gets its teeth into things, it doesn’t let go until you’ve gotten a spot cleaner than it ever was originally. We don’t have the time or money to spend the next ten years chasing down stray leaks.”

  “What?” Peggy Landry turned to Ingraham, clutching his arm. “You can’t—” The rest of what she had to say was lost as she sat down, hauling him down with her.

  “Huh. It’ll certainly spoil her plans if the deal falls through,” Paul said. He shook his head. “Being an Adirondack land baron just isn’t what it used to be.” Throughout the room, rule-abiding citizens waved their hands in the air and rule-ignoring ones called out questions.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Clare caught the movement of the big double door swinging open. A tall man in a brown-and-tan uniform slipped through. He paused by the door, unobtrusive despite his size, and scanned the crowd. Clare quickly looked back at the front of the room, where a redhead in a nurse’s jacket was talking about the health effects of PCBs. Clare had seen Russ Van Alstyne rarely, and mostly from a distance, since last December, when they had first struck up a friendship while unraveling the mystery surrounding an infant abandoned on the steps of St. Alban’s. It had been so easy to talk and laugh and just be herself with him, without worrying about that man-woman thing, because, after all, he was married. Very married, as she had told her church secretary. It still smarted that she had been so completely unaware of her own emotions all the while. She had been Saul on the road to Damascus, oblivious until a moment’s revelation struck her and she realized she had fallen for him but good. It was embarrassing, that’s what it was. It was embarrassing and something she was going to get over.

  When Clare glanced back at him, he was looking straight at her. Even from across the room, she could see the summer-sky blue of his eyes glinting beneath his glasses. Her face heated up as he continued to look at her, his thin lips quirking into something like a smile. She pasted a pleasant expression on her face and gave him a small wave. He glanced next to her, frowned, and then looked back at her. He pointed and mouthed something. What? She shrugged. He pointed again, more emphatically. She raised her eyebrows and jerked a thumb toward Paul Foubert, who was absorbed in whatever the nurse was saying. Russ nodded.

  “I think Russ Van Alstyne wants to speak with you,” she said.

  “Hmm? The chief? Where? I didn’t know he was at this meeting.”

  “He wasn’t. Wednesday’s his regular patrol night. He’s just come in.”

  “You know his schedule?” Paul looked at her, bemused.

  “I’m good with schedules. Natural gift. Go on.”

  Paul rose with a groan. “Probably one of the Alzheimer’s patients wandered off again.”

  Clare resisted the urge to follow the nursing home director, although she was unable to keep herself from swiveling around to see what was happening. Russ looked serious. Grim. Washed-out beneath the fluorescent lights, despite his tan. He removed his steel-rimmed glasses when Paul reached him, then took hold of the larger man’s shoulder, drawing him close. A thread of unease coiled through Clare’s stomach, then tightened sickeningly as Paul abruptly twisted away from Russ and sagged against the wall.

  By the time Russ caught her eye again, she was out of her chair and excusing herself as she made her way down the crowded aisle. He urgently jerked his head in a summons. Paul was leaning on the town-hall bulletin board, his face turned toward a pink paper announcing summer dump hours, his huge fists clenched and shaking.

  “What is it?” she said quietly. “What’s wrong?”

  “Emil,” Paul said. “Attacked.”

  She looked up at Russ. “I don’t think I’ve met Emil before.”

  He put his glasses on. “Emil Dvorak. Our medical examine
r.” His thin lips flattened. “A friend of mine. He was found a while ago on Route One Twenty-one. Looks like his car hit something and went off the road.” Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “He was attacked. Beaten bad. He’s in the Glens Falls Hospital right now.” He tilted his head toward Paul. “Emil is Paul’s, um, friend.”

  “Dear God.” Clare pressed her hand against Paul’s shoulder, then moved closer, draping her other arm across his back. “Oh, Paul, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” She had known Paul lived with someone, but he had never mentioned anyone by name in their conversations at the nursing home. She looked at Russ. “We came to the meeting together. I’ll take him to the hospital.”

  “I can get there. I’m okay,” Paul said in a reedy voice, an oddly small sound coming from such a big man. Clare’s heart ached. He straightened up and looked around as if he had never seen the town hall before.

  “No. Clare’s right. You shouldn’t try to drive, Paul.” Russ ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair. “I have to stop at the station.” He looked down at Clare. “Can you find the Glens Falls Hospital?” She nodded. “Okay, I’ll meet you there.”

  Russ held the door open for them as Clare steered Paul out of the meeting room. Despite the hot air rolling off the street below, she shivered as she caught Russ’s last, whispered direction: “Hurry.”

  Chapter Three

  The whirling red lights of Russ’s squad car made a strobe effect with the blazing blue ambulance lights as he pulled into the emergency bay at the Glens Falls Hospital. He parked in the spot marked RESERVED FOR POLICE and left the relative cool of his cruiser for the oppressive weight of an impending thunderstorm. He strode across the blacktop and was almost to the ER’s doors when they hissed open and Clare tumbled out, hair flying away from her knot, her face drawn so that her high cheekbones and sharp nose stood out in stark relief. Her mouth opened when she saw him.

  “It’s you. Thank heavens.” She grabbed the sleeve of his uniform and dragged him away from the doors. “It’s bad. They’re prepping Dr. Dvorak for a life flight to Albany.”

  “Jesum. They couldn’t transfer him by ambulance?”

  “No. Brain trauma. I couldn’t understand half of what the doctor was saying to Paul, but from what I gathered, every minute counts. It was awful in there, Russ. They weren’t going to let Paul go in the helicopter because he wasn’t a spouse or a blood relative. What a stupid, bureaucratic waste of time….” She pulled a hank of hair off her neck, twisted it viciously, and shoved it back into her knot. “Paul is just…well, you can imagine. Oh, I got so mad. I told them if he couldn’t go in their helicopter I would rent one and fly him myself. Jackasses.”

  Russ grinned in spite of himself. “Can you afford to rent a helicopter?”

  “No.” She looked up at him and grinned back. “But I think they were so taken aback at the idea of the flying priest that it inspired them to come up with another solution. Turns out Paul and Emil have medical power of attorney for each other, and we got a copy faxed over from the Washington County Hospital.” She glanced back at the ER’s doors. “I’ve got to go get the car. He’s going to be ready to transport in just a minute, and I’m driving Paul. They land the helo at the West Glens Falls fire station’s parking lot, and I haven’t the faintest idea where that is. If I don’t follow the ambulance, I’ll get lost for sure.” She laid her hand on his forearm. “You will come, won’t you?”

  He had a bizarre urge to take her hand in both of his and kiss it. He squelched the notion, nodding instead. “Yeah. Absolutely. You get your car and I’ll follow you.” She flashed him another smile and jogged off toward the parking lot, her long black skirt flapping around her ankles. How the hell did she manage to be so damn pleasant and open and normal, when he felt like a seventeen-year-old around her? Ever since he had crossed that line last December, he had pretty much avoided her, on the theory that his feelings must be middle-aged idiocy and absence would make the heart grow indifferent. It hadn’t worked that he could tell. Spotting her in the park, running into her at the IGA, or even driving past the rectory made his chest squeeze and the back of his throat ache. Maybe this would be better, to go on as friends, ignoring that other thing. Hell, maybe if he acted normal, he’d come to feel normal, too.

  A blast of noise and movement swung his attention back to the entrance to the ER. Two EMTs, a doctor, and a nurse were moving a gurney in a carefully controlled frenzy through the bay, heading toward the open doors of the waiting ambulance. Between the bodies surrounding him, Russ could catch glimpses of Emil’s face. He winced. Christ. “Careful! Keep those lines clear!” the doctor said, levering himself into the ambulance as the EMTs maneuvered Emil, strapped to a spine board, from the gurney to the ambulance bed. The nurse passed over the IV bag she was holding above her head and scrambled up into her seat.

  The doors into the ER hissed open again and Paul emerged, accompanied by another nurse. On his face was the look Russ knew from Vietnam—the face of someone who has just seen his buddy blown away beside him. A mix of shock, fear, and terrible comprehension. “Paul!” he called out. The oversized man looked up. “Clare’s gone to get her car. I’ll follow you to the airport.” Paul nodded, as if speech was too much of an effort right then.

  One EMT had finished strapping Emil in and was jumping out of the back of the ambulance when Clare screeched in behind the wheel of her little white-and-red Shelby Cobra. She waved to Paul, who lumbered over and squeezed himself into the tiny passenger seat. The EMT slammed and sealed the door and dashed to the cab of the ambulance. It began moving before the cab door had swung shut.

  Russ and the ambulance both kept their lights flashing all the way to the fire station. He couldn’t shake the image of Emil’s ground-meat face. They had never been more than professional friends—he had precious few real friends for someone who had come back to his hometown, Russ realized—but in the five years he had headed up the department, he had spent a lot of time with Emil Dvorak—in the ME’s office, at the hospital, in courthouse hallways. He thought about the pathologist’s razor-sharp wit, his orderly office, full of thick books and opera CDs, his addiction to Sunday-morning political debates. The damage to that fragile brain when Emil’s skull had been pounded again and again—bile rose in Russ’s throat, threatening to choke him. He followed the ambulance across the intersection and into the fire station’s parking lot. Lights blazed from the station bays, burnishing the garaged fire trucks and emergency vehicles, glittering off the blaze-reflective strips on the life-flight helicopter, which was hunkered down in the middle of the asphalt. Several firefighters stood inside their bays, watching. He followed Clare’s car to the farthest corner of the lot, where the firefighters’ cars were parked.

  The life-flight team—a paramedic, a nurse, and a pilot—jogged over to the ambulance to help the EMTs off-load Emil on his spine board. Clare leaped from her driver’s seat and paused while Paul wriggled his way out of the passenger side. Russ joined them, a little apart from the medical team, which was carefully transferring Emil into the helicopter.

  “Paul,” he said, “I wanted to ask you—what was Emil doing tonight?” One of the nurses hoisted the IV high as they smoothly lifted the board into the belly of the chopper. “Do you know where he was? Who he was with?”

  Paul kept his gaze fixed on the figure disappearing into the helicopter. He rubbed his hands up and down, up and down along the seam of his shorts. “He had dinner with some friends of ours. Stephen Obrowski and Ron Handler. At their bed-and-breakfast, the Stuyvesant Inn. He was going to come straight home….” his voice trailed off.

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll be talking with them tomorrow. We’re going to get whoever did this.” Russ knew that was cold comfort when measured against Emil’s broken body in the helicopter. Paul looked at him, his eyes wide and red-rimmed.

  “Paul,” Clare said, “it’s time. The pilot’s going to warm up the engines now.”

  The pilot had been tying down str
aps by the door and didn’t look as if he was headed for the cockpit, but Clare was the one who had flown these monsters in the army, not Russ, so he walked with them to the open door. Sure enough, the pilot disappeared, and a second later, he heard the unpleasant whine of turbines kicking in.

  Paul stepped forward. Stopped. “The dogs,” he said to Clare. “Did I ask you about taking care of the dogs?”

  “You did.” She rubbed his arm. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll collect them and take them to the kennel. Don’t worry about them.”

  “C’mon, sir,” the paramedic said, jumping from the chopper. “Time to go.” He held out a helmet to Paul and helped the big man strap it on correctly, then pointed out the stepping bar and straps where Paul could climb up into an empty jump seat. The IV bag trembled where it hung from a hook in the ceiling and the flight suit–clad nurse bent over Emil to adjust something.

  Paul turned toward Clare, his brown hair and beard sticking out improbably from beneath the helmet. “Clare,” he said too loudly, “I’ve never been one for religion, but Emil is Catholic…he was…”

  Clare stepped close and spoke directly to his face, enabling Paul to see her lips moving, an aid to hearing inside the bulky helmet. “I’ll pray for him,” she said in a normal tone of voice. “I’ll pray for both of you.” She squeezed his hand. “Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to reach out to God the Comforter if you feel the urge. You can always go back to being an agnostic after Emil is well. I won’t tell on you.”

  “Sir, we have to go!” The EMT beckoned Paul urgently. Paul hoisted himself into the belly of the chopper as Clare and Russ backed away. Above them, the rotors began to circle slowly, then faster and faster, until the hard-edged chop of the blades challenged the turbines’ whine. Clare stopped in front of the nose of the ambulance. The hair fallen from her knot danced in the updraft, strands the color of honey, caramel, and maple syrup. Russ was caught by the look on her face.