A Fountain Filled With Blood

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Yeah,” Russ said. “Let’s hope he doesn’t take it to someplace where they pay better.”

  Lyle snorted. His unofficial status as detective had finally been rewarded with a promotion at the spring town meeting, after four years of Russ lobbying the Board of Aldermen to create a detective position. He couldn’t get that approved, but they had eventually given in to his argument that Lyle would leave if his experience wasn’t recognized. So now Lyle was deputy chief, on a force with eight full-time officers and four part-timers. The only way he could make sense of it was to conclude the aldermen felt they were getting their money’s worth if they got two jobs filled with one paycheck.

  Sergeant Morin, one of the state police technicians, was opening his portable lab box and pulling out his elaborate camera equipment. “Has he been in yet?” Russ asked.

  “He and I searched the area adjacent to the body. Nothing turned up. People were swarming up from the riverbank, so I made getting the tape up a priority.”

  Russ nodded. “Good call. Let’s go see this guy, shall we?” He pulled on the latex gloves he had removed from his squad car.

  “He was done right here and then laid out in this thing,” Lyle said, holding a wet sumac branch out of the way. “There’s a hell of a lot of blood—on the ground, on the basin, in the water.”

  Russ stepped carefully in Lyle’s footsteps. When they reached the crumpled form in the watering trough, he sucked in against his teeth. “Jeez. You’re not kidding.” He squatted down slowly so as not to catch his clothing on any vegetation. “That must have been a garrote. I don’t think a knife could do that.”

  “That was my take. It’ll make it harder if it is. No cut pattern to match to a knife. Just wash off a length of wire and roll it back on the spool. Whose gonna know?”

  Russ stood again. The metallic smell of blood was strong enough to make his eyes water. “Yeah, but to use it, you have to be in close. Real close. Whoever did this must have been splattered with blood.” He looked at Lyle. “Anyone see anything?”

  “Nothin’ yet. But it couldn’t have happened too long before he was found. A lot of that’s still wet.”

  “I’ll wait for Emil’s opinion, but I have to—” Russ stopped, feeling foolish. “I mean, not Emil Dvorak…”

  “Dr. Scheeler is acting as our ME. He’s the pathologist on loan from Glens Falls Hospital.”

  “Until Emil gets back.”

  “Right. Until he gets back.” Lyle smiled a little.

  “Hey, guys,” Sergeant Morin called through the foliage. I need you to clear out for a few so’s I can get my shots.” Russ and Lyle retraced their steps slowly and deliberately, disturbing the plants as little as possible. “Thanks,” Morin said, disappearing into the leaves.

  “Okay. Who found him?”

  Lyle ran a hand over his bristly gray crew cut and nodded at a cluster of three trees, past the yellow tape, almost out of reach of the tungsten lights. “They did.”

  He could see a woman, her face a pale oval, sitting at the base of a maple tree, squeezed in between two enormous black-and-white dogs. “You’re kidding me,” he said.

  “Nope. It’s your priest all right.”

  “She’s not my priest,” he said over his shoulder, striding toward Clare.

  She looked up as he approached her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, her skin was starkly pale, and her dark blonde hair hung lankly over her shoulders. She had an arm wrapped around one of the huge Berns, her fingers buried in its thick fur. He stopped several feet away because he didn’t trust himself to get any closer without touching her. He squatted to be at eye level. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said, as if trying out a new voice. “I’m—whatever happened, it was all over by the time I got there.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  She nodded again. Took a deep breath. “I walked the dogs down here to see the fireworks. I was coming along that way”—she pointed toward the east side of Mill Street—“when I saw the fireworks were starting. There was a gate, a little gate, just past the corner of the mill, and I pushed on it to get through faster, because I wanted to see the fireworks, and they had started, and then Gal caught the scent. They both started whining and growling, and I thought it was—I don’t know, I don’t know what I thought it was, but I went to see what was scaring them.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes flooded with tears. “It was so…I keep thinking of this gruesome old hymn we used to sing at my grandmother’s church.” She tilted her head against the tree. “ ‘There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,’ ” she sang, her voice a shaky thread. “ ‘And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains…. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day; and there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.’ ”

  One of the dogs whined and butted her with its head. She clutched at its hair, scrubbing her eyes with her other hand. “It used to scare me when I was a little kid.”

  “I don’t blame you.” His hand twitched toward her, then stopped.

  “It was that developer, Bill Ingraham, you know. I could tell, even with…”

  “Yeah. I saw. Tell me about the gate. It was open?”

  She took another deep breath. “Yes. It surprised me at the time, because it obviously isn’t used regularly. There wasn’t any path leading from it into the park.”

  He glanced in the direction she had indicated. “Did you see anything as you came through the bushes there?”

  “No. But I was mostly just trying to keep the branches from smacking me in the face. There wasn’t anyone there, if that’s what you mean.” She frowned, and he relaxed somewhat, seeing reason replace her sheer emotional reaction. “The dogs would have reacted if whoever did that had gone the way we came in. The smell of blood made them very nervous, and he must have been—” her face wavered for a moment, but she went on: “He must have had a lot of blood on his clothing.”

  “That’s what we think, yeah. Did you see anything around the body? Anything that looked disturbed, out of place?”

  “Oh, God, I don’t know. There could have been signs hanging in the trees and I wouldn’t have seen them.” She turned her face into one of the dog’s necks for a moment. “I probably messed up the area some. I remember thinking not to touch anything, but I kind of fell backward and…I was in a hurry to get away.” Her expression changed again, and he realized she was ashamed. “I didn’t even think of saying a prayer. All I thought of was getting my sorry self out of there. I didn’t stop running until I found someone with a phone, and even after she called it in, I didn’t want to go anywhere near…him.”

  “Good,” he said firmly. “We don’t want you standing around praying at a crime scene. You did exactly the right thing. You got out, you reported it, and you helped us get here fast so we have a better chance of finding the bad guy.”

  “Oh.” She looked down.

  “When you were walking over here, did you pass anyone on the street? Anyone who seemed out of the ordinary maybe?”

  “Anyone dripping gore like Banquo’s ghost? No.” She immediately waved her hand. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be flip. I passed a few people on Church and Main, but after I turned onto Mill Street, I didn’t see anything, not a person, not a car.”

  “Okay, thanks.” He stood up, his knees complaining mightily. “You stay right here. I need to talk with Lyle and the crime-scene tech, and then we’ll see about getting you home.”

  “How’s your mother?” she asked suddenly. “Did you ever get her out?”

  “Safe and sound in the woman’s wing of the Washington County jail,” he said, “so I can rule her out as a suspect.”

  “Russ! That’s a terrible thing to say about your own—” She let go of the dogs and stood abruptly, glancing around. “At the protest this afternoon. I heard something.” She looked up at him. “It was right after you had ordered the demonstrators to disperse. I was trying to lea
ve, and as I was making my way through the crowd, I heard someone say, ‘He’s not gonna be a problem after tonight, is he?’ ”

  “Uh-huh. Look, it’s common to put all sorts of ominous meanings into ordinary things when a murder—”

  “Don’t make me sound like I’m a few chimes short of a clock. This voice was creepy. Threatening. It made me stop where I stood to try to see who had said it.”

  He held up his hands. “Okay. I’m not saying you didn’t hear something. But even if you did, it’s not going to be of any use to us.” Lyle was walking toward them, gesturing questioningly with his arms. “There must have been two hundred people in the park at that time. Maybe more. Whoever did this could have walked right past you, me, the mayor, and Officer Entwhistle, and there wouldn’t be any way of knowing it.”

  Lyle ambled up between them. “What’s up?” He bent over and scratched Bob’s head and was rewarded by a tail thump. “Doc Scheeler’s here, and Morin’s waiting with his Baggies to catch anything good. Thought you might like to sit in.”

  “Yeah, I do. Reverend Fergusson didn’t see anything.”

  “But I heard something,” she said.

  Lyle raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “You did? Great.”

  Russ shook his head. “Don’t get all excited. She heard someone with a threatening voice say, ‘He’s not gonna be a problem after tonight’ at the demonstration this afternoon. After the race.”

  “Oh.” Lyle turned to Clare. “I’m sure it sounded scary, but it really doesn’t tell us anything.”

  “If it was the man who killed Bill Ingraham, it tells us this wasn’t some case of gay cruising gone horribly wrong. This was planned out in advance.” Clare folded her arms, her posture challenging them to prove her wrong.

  Lyle and Russ looked at each other. “Ingraham was gay?” Lyle asked. Russ nodded. “Well, that puts a different spin on things.”

  “A bad pickup was the first thing that popped into my head,” Russ said to him. “Although I think Payson’s Park and out by the old cemetery are the only places we’ve chased off guys cruising before.” He frowned and swung back to Clare. “How do you know about cruising?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Russ, I didn’t spend my entire adult life locked in a seminary. When I was teaching at Fort Rucker, there was a strip where men would cruise for anonymous sex. With other men. There was a murder there, too—a young man from town. Two privates on leave picked him up and then beat him to death.” She looked from him to Lyle and back again. “But if I heard someone talking about murdering Ingraham this afternoon—”

  “Reverend, you probably heard someone talking about his blister, not planning a murder,” Lyle said. “That park was filled with the whole crowd from the race and a lot of folks who were going to stay on for the bands and fireworks. The chances the perpetrator was hanging around making threats within earshot are slim to none.”

  “You mean it’s unheard of for someone intending murder to follow his victim around? Keep an eye on him? Scout out the best place to do it?”

  Lyle looked at Russ and shrugged. “She’s got a point.”

  Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. “She always has a point, trust me. Maybe we are looking at a premeditated murder.”

  “Which would mean it’s tied in with the two other assaults,” Clare interjected.

  “Which would mean no such thing,” Russ said, speaking more loudly. “We don’t have any indication the attacks on Emil Dvorak and Todd MacPherson were planned. In fact, they seem to be pretty clearly crimes of opportunity. Which would argue that if this murder is connected to the previous assaults, it’s more likely to have happened spontaneously as part of a pickup.”

  “Why would Bill Ingraham come to a cold, wet park for sex?” she asked. “He’s staying in a comfortable inn run by hosts who wouldn’t blink no matter what guy he brought home with him.”

  “Why do guys get trussed up in leather and let someone walk all over them with spike heels? I don’t know! That’s how they get their jollies!”

  Lyle broke in: “This is getting real interesting, but if you want to see what Doc Scheeler finds, we’d better get over there now. I get a feeling the body could be bagged and slabbed before you two finish up.”

  Russ sighed. He grasped Clare’s upper arms and gave her an imperceptible shake. “I don’t want you walking back to the rectory alone,” he said. “You understand? Stay here and I’ll get someone to take you home.”

  “Yes, I understand,” she said, a tinge of exasperation coloring her voice: “Believe me, I don’t have any desire to go wandering off by my lonesome in the dark. Even with these two tagging along.” She glanced down at the Berns, who had risen when Clare had and now stood leaning their broad heads against her blotchy sweatpants.

  “Okay.” He released her and strode toward the center of activity, Lyle matching his steps.

  “You really think this might be unrelated to the previous assaults?” Lyle asked, pausing before the bushes to put his latex gloves back on.

  “No.” Russ tried to tug his gloves on too quickly and got his fingers stuck. He wiggled them partway off and eased them on more carefully. “I don’t believe in coincidences. I think he was targeted. What I want to know is how.” He held an armful of wet spiny-leafed branches out of the way. He and Lyle stepped into the now partially cleared opening where Sergeant Morin and Dr. Scheeler crouched over the body in the trough.

  Scheeler glanced up and nodded at Lyle. “Deputy MacAuley. And you must be…”

  “Russ Van Alstyne. Chief of police. Whaddya have there?”

  The medical examiner gestured with a long probe. “By the temperature, I’m going to say he died within the last two hours. There’s not enough water in here to change his lividity much. You don’t see this very often.” He delicately traced along what used to be Bill Ingraham’s neck. “Cut right through almost to the spine. He must have bled out almost instantly.”

  “We were thinking a garrote.”

  “Yes, I think you may be right. I’ll need to examine the edges under the microscope, of course, but it doesn’t have the shape characteristic of a knife cut.” The dead man’s hands were already encased in opaque Baggies to preserve possible unseen skin samples trapped under the fingernails. Scheeler slid a probe under one of the plastic-wrapped hands and lifted it slightly. “He had no lacerations or defensive marks here. You’d expect to see those if someone had been coming at him with a knife.” He removed the probe and lightly touched several places on the face. “And see here, and here, where the bruises are? I can’t be sure until I can examine the bone underneath, but I think he was beaten after he was dead.”

  “After?” Lyle said.

  “The bruises are flat, hardly diffuse at all. There’s been no swelling. Swelling happens fairly quickly to tissue while it’s alive, but it slows down markedly postmortem. I suspect he was killed quickly and then beaten.”

  “Uncontrolled rage?” Lyle asked, raising his thick eyebrows at Russ.

  “Or he wanted it to look like the other beatings,” Russ said. “It was a he, wasn’t it? It takes a hell of a lot of upper-body strength to pull a wire through someone’s throat.”

  “Absolutely. I suppose a particularly muscular woman might have been able to accomplish the feat, but I’d lay my money on an adult male. And the wire or fishing line he used must have either been wrapped around something sturdy he could hold on to or—”

  “He wore gloves,” Lyle said, completing the thought. “That’s something I’d like to find.”

  “If the glove fits, you must convict,” Russ misquoted. “Can you confirm it was done here, Doc?”

  “Oh, yes.” Dr. Scheeler pointed to the edge of the trough, where blood was congealing to the consistency of skim on a pudding. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he was alive when he walked in here. Once he’s in the lab, I may be able to see some markings that will tell me if he was coerced or not,” he added, forestalling Russ’s next question. The doctor unfo
lded himself from his crouch and stood, snapping his gloves off and pocketing them. “I’m done with the in situ examination. I should have the preliminary report to you within twenty-four hours. Toxicology will take longer—the state lab has been backed up.”

  Russ peeled his gloves off and shook the medical examiner’s hand. “Thanks for getting out here so promptly.”

  “It’s good to work with you. I’m just sorry it had to be under these circumstances. I know Emil Dvorak well. He’s a fine pathologist. Damned shame.”

  They exited the small copse, and Russ waved the mortuary boys over to do their job. “We need to extend the tape all along here,” he said to Lyle, his arm swinging wide. “I want this line of brush gone over from the little gate down to the riverbank as soon as it’s daylight. He left one way or the other, dripping blood, maybe shucking gloves. There’s got to be something.” He caught sight of Clare, still sitting beneath a tree with the dogs. “And I need to figure out how to get Reverend Fergusson home.”

  “What’s going on with you two?” Lyle asked, his voice neutral.

  “Whaddya mean ‘what’s going on’? Nothing. I’m a happily married man.”

  “So was I,” Lyle said. “Until I wasn’t anymore.”

  Russ’s reply was cut off by a gleeful crow from Sergeant Morin, who emerged from the thicket ahead of the two mortuary attendants. “Take a look at what was under the body,” he said loudly. A damp and bloodstained piece of paper dangled between Morin’s latex-covered fingers. The tungsten lights seared the paper, popping the black lettering off the page so that even from several feet away, Russ could see the boldfaced heading: STOP BWI DEVELOPMENT NOW!

  Chapter Eleven

  Russ closed his eyes for a moment, but the overly illuminated image of the bloody paper was there, too. “Okay,” he said, “bag it. Maybe we’ll luck out and there will be usable prints.”

  Lyle sidled closer. “Your mom is still in the county lockup, right?” When Russ rounded on him, teeth bared, the deputy chief held up both hands in mock surrender. “Just kidding! Just kidding!”