“If you don’t need us to be here, I’m going to have Peggy take me into town to retrieve my car.” He handed Russ a business card. “Here’s the number for my cell phone. “I’ll be heading back here afterward to close up, so we can talk again if you need to.”
“Okay,” Russ said. “That’s fine by me.” He had originally planned to question Landry and Opperman while he was going through the files, but one look at the office had told him he would need several hours just to get a grasp on what he was reading. “I understand you frequently travel back and forth for your business, Mr. Opperman.”
“That’s correct.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d stay in the tricounty area for the immediate future. I want to be sure I can reach you if anything comes up.”
Opperman didn’t even blink. “Of course.” He thrust his hand at Russ, who shook it perfunctorily. “I’ll leave you to your investigative chore, then. Contact me as soon as you have any questions.” Then he was gone, the door swinging shut behind him with a dull aluminum clank.
Three hours later, Opperman still hadn’t come back. Which probably wasn’t a loss, as Russ had been wading through the history of the project and still didn’t have any information he could use to hook a line of questioning to. If there was a money trail leading to something that stank, he sure as hell couldn’t find it. He could stand in line for one of the state’s forensic accountants—a description that conjured up an image of a guy with a scalpel and eyeshades—but their backlog of work was so huge, he’d probably be retired before they could fit this case in.
He stood and stretched, cracking his back. God, that felt good. People thought you were getting old when you couldn’t run around the way you used to. But the really depressing thing about middle age was not being able to sit as long as you used to. He checked his watch. Seven o’clock. He had called Linda an hour ago to tell her not to hold dinner, and she had gotten ticked off and told him if he couldn’t manage to get home to spend some time with her, she might as well eat out with her friend Meg. Now his stomach growled. He needed to eat something, even if only leftovers. And his brain was fried. No matter what else he read tonight, he wasn’t going to absorb it. He turned off the computer and the desk lamp, walked to the door, stumbling slightly as he shook feeling back into his legs, and let himself out.
The long shadows cast by the setting sun softened the hard angles of the construction site and turned the tangled northwoods pines into a hazy dark cloud. He cracked his back again and strode down to his cruiser, the sole remaining occupant of the parking lot. There was something tan beneath his windshield wiper. He sighed and slid it free.
It was a program, one of those things they handed out in churches. Beneath an etching of St. Alban’s Church, it read “Holy Eucharist—the Sixteenth Sunday of Pentecost.” There was a list beneath the heading, presumably stuff they did during the sixteenth Sunday of whatever: the greeting, Sanctus Spiritus, a Bible reading. He flipped it over.
The message was in bold black letters, written with a felt-tip pen in the wide margin of the program. “Please call me. It’s urgent. Clare.” She had drawn a long scraggly arrow, which pointed to an underlined sentence from one of the Bible readings: “He is near that justifieth me, who will contend with me? Let us stand together; who is mine adversary? Let him come near to me.”
“Gosh, Marty, it’s a secret code,” he said. “Let’s go to the old abandoned mine and see what’s up!” He stuffed the program into his pocket and got into the car. He felt like the Pillsbury doughboy being slid into the oven. He turned the cruiser on and cranked the air conditioning, sticking his face in front of the blast from the vent. She had some nerve, he’d grant her that. It wouldn’t get him to make a side trip out to her place, but he had to admire her willingness to come right back to him, even after last night. The car interior had cooled enough for him to sit back in his seat without sticking to it. He shifted into gear and headed down the shadow-dark road through the forest. Unless, of course, it wasn’t bravery, and she was just oblivious to what she had said. No, she knew. She had probably been wallowing in it all day, dying to make an apology. The dirt road turned onto pavement in a crunch of gravel. Sooner or later, he would get in touch with her. Let her say she was sorry, accept it in good grace. But he sure didn’t need any distractions while he was working a homicide, not to mention the two assaults. He swung onto River Road, heading into town. Besides, he didn’t want to give the impression that he put too much weight in what she said. He knew damn well he wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass if any other person in that park had accused him of lying down on the job. In fact, the only opinions that mattered to him were those of the men on his force. And his wife, of course, who cheerfully acknowledged she knew next to nothing about police work and therefore kept out of it.
Traffic was light on Main Street, but he had to stop and go for the pedestrians jaywalking left and right as they went from art gallery to antique store to ice-cream shop—or SHOPPE, as the fake-old sign proclaimed. When he was a kid, the upper end of Main Street had had real stores, like Woolworth and Bilt-Rite Shoes and Biretti’s, which his mom had always referred to as “the Eye-talian bakery.” Then, while he had been traveling from post to post, building his career in the military police, one by one the old stores closed, victims of the Aviation Mall and the shopping centers that sprang up on Route 9. In the late eighties, while he had been looking at the world through the bottom of a bottle, the Board of Aldermen had gotten a major grant for downtown revitalization. Now the street was full of folks again, at least in the summer. You could buy pastries and etchings of Fort Ticonderoga and fancy clothes just right for a garden party in Saratoga during the racing season. What you couldn’t buy was a razor or a pair of shoes or a cheap sandwich.
He turned onto Church Street, where the shops were older, considerably less glamorous, and the pedestrian traffic a lot lighter. The thought of Biretti’s put him in mind of his mother. He hadn’t even called her to see if she had gotten home all right. His sister Janet had reached him that morning at the station, and she had given him an earful before letting him know she would be picking Mom up at the courthouse. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and scowled, causing the man who was in the crosswalk in front of the cruiser to sprint across to the other side. All he was trying to do was his job, as best as he knew how, and every woman in his life was dumping on him for it.
He swung around the small park at the end of Church Street and drove onto Elm. The rectory was dark, but a few of the stained-glass windows of St. Alban’s Church were glowing, the ones farthest from the door. He frowned. He didn’t think there were any services on Monday.
He parked the cruiser in Clare’s drive and walked back down the sidewalk to St. Alban’s entrance on Church Street. He decided not to think about the fact that he knew the Episcopal church’s worship schedule, even though the last time he had attended any religious services regularly was back in junior high. And then only because he had had a crush on a girl in the Methodist Youth Group.
He pushed against one of the great wooden doors and it swung open silently. He stepped through the narthex into the body of the church and paused to let his eyes become accustomed to the dimness. The sky outside was still orange and red, but the twilight glow couldn’t pierce the stained-glass windows that punctuated the stone walls. There wasn’t a single electric light on anywhere. He walked forward in a few more steps, hesitant about trespassing in the middle of a service. But there was no one sitting in the rows of pews. His eyes followed them, rank on rank, to the front of the church. Past the gilt and mahogany altar rail, past the plain rectangular table draped in embroidered linens, past the choir’s gleaming pews and Gothic arches was Clare. White-robed, on the steps leading up to an ornately decorated high altar, where a mass of candles provided all the light in the world. Her back was to him, her head bent over what he guessed was a book.
“Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this
night, so that we who are wearied by the changes of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”
Her voice wasn’t pitched to carry, but whoever had shaped the space had known what he was doing. In the cool silence of the empty church, Russ could hear her as well as if he were standing next to her.
“Keep watch, dear Lord, over those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love’s sake.”
He walked up the center aisle quietly, as the place seemed to demand, although not trying to hide his presence. He wondered if she really believed in angels swooping around, watching over people, or if that was just the company line.
She started singing in a clear alto voice: “Lord, you now have set your servant free, to go in peace as you have promised; for these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see….” It wasn’t a song exactly, more like a chant, rising and falling from one line to the next, even though there wasn’t any rhyme and only scant rhythm. She dropped back into speech to conclude, “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace. The almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”—he could see the movements of her arm as she crossed herself—“bless us and keep us.”
He joined in on her “Amen.” It seemed like the polite thing to do. She stilled for a moment, then pivoted. She squinted. Facing the candles as she had been, the rest of the church must have looked pitch-black.
“It’s me,” he said, stepping up to the first cloth-covered altar.
“Russ?” She sounded as if this were the last place on the planet she would expect to find him. “What are you doing here? I mean”—she glided down the steps from the high altar, her robes lending a sober grace to her usually athletic movements—“I would have thought you’d be at the station.”
“I’m not on call,” he said. “I wasn’t actually scheduled for duty today.” He shrugged. “But you know. Murder knows no overtime, or something like that.”
“But didn’t they call you on the radio? Earlier today, at the construction site, I found out—well, I wanted to tell you in person, so I left you that note, but then after I got home, I figured it was irresponsible to wait, so I called the station and spoke to Officer MacAuley—that is, Deputy Chief—”
“I know who he is, Clare. Get to the point.”
She grinned. “The man who owned the red truck. I told him I knew who he was.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was faster to call the station from Clare’s office than to retrace his steps and use the radio in his car. She had shown him to her desk and then excused herself to change out of her vestments. He was talking to Lyle MacAuley when she slipped quietly back into the office.
“We ran the registration, and sure enough, it’s a ’ninety-four Chevy pickup, registered to one Elliott McKinley. He’s got a few arrests on his sheet: one obstructing, a couple drunk and disorderlies, never anything that went anywhere. He pled out to everything. Eric remembered him from his last arrest, which was about two years back. He thinks this guy is a hanger-on. He was one of half a dozen guys: Eric and Noble and Nathan Bougeron—you remember Bougeron, right?”
Russ did. He was one of the several promising young officers who had headed south to the state troopers’ barracks in Loudonville during the five years Russ had been chief of the department. He’d worry that there was something wrong with his style of management, except every one of them had cited the same reason for leaving: better pay and more chances for advancement.
“Anyway, they broke up a fight outside the Dew Drop Inn. McKinley got picked up for obstructing, along with everyone else. But get this—he was there with Arnie Rider, who was the one who had started the fight.”
“Hold on. Is this the same Arnie Rider—”
“Who’s doing twenty years in Comstock for stabbing Chhouk, that Cambodian immigrant, yep. Get this. The Dew Drop brawl was a week before the stabbing. According to McKinley’s sheet, he was brought in and questioned about the Chhouk murder, but he didn’t turn anything useful.”
“Do you have McKinley?”
“Not yet. Eric and I went over in civvies right after Reverend Fergusson called. He lives in a rooming house on Raceway Street, down past the mills. No truck in sight, and there’s no parking provided by the landlord, so he would have had to keep it on the street. It must be stashed somewhere. He wasn’t home, and the landlord didn’t know when he’d be in. Eric’s there now on stakeout, waiting for him to show up.”
“I’ll bet whoever is holding that truck is up to his eyeballs in it.”
“I’ll take that bet.”
“Can we ID any known associates?”
“The rest of the crew who was picked up two years ago at the Dew Drop. I did a quick look at their rap sheets, but none of ’em look particularly promising. I didn’t want to start picking people up for questioning and scare off McKinley. Especially since there’ve got to be others involved.”
“No, you did good, Lyle. This is exactly the way I would have set it up. As long as we don’t shake the bushes too much, he’ll come home. And then we grab him. I want to be ready to move fast on any names he turns. If we need to, we’ll call up a few of the part-timers to cover patrol.”
“You know that’ll involve—”
“Overtime, yeah. I’m sure the Board of Aldermen will eventually have my—” Russ glanced over his shoulder, remembering Clare in the nick of time. She had settled into one of two leather chairs placed in front of the empty fire-place. “My feet to the fire. You can reach me at St. Alban’s if anything happens in the next few minutes. Then I’ll cruise over to the station before going home.”
“When are you going to get a cell phone like the rest of the world? Docs get ’em. Vets get ’em. Even Lithuanians and Letts get ’em.”
“Don’t quit your day job, Lyle. Bye.”
He hung up the phone and spun around. “Yes!” He pumped one arm like a hockey fan witnessing a beautiful slap shot. “Looks like your Elliott McKinley may be one of our boys. A few years back, he hung around with a bad guy named Arnie Rider. Arnie had some wrong strong views about racial purity in the United States, which he expressed by getting into fights with Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees in the area. Eventually, he got carried away and stabbed a young man named Chhouk.” The name made him think of the kid’s mother, a tiny woman who knew maybe ten words of English and who had keened incessantly, a high-pitched, barely audible wail, when she identified her son’s body. He shook his head. “They put him away for manslaughter, but I thought it should have been murder one. Who picks a fight while carrying a bowie knife in his jacket unless he’s itching to use it?”
Clare pulled her legs up so she was sitting tailor-style in the chair. “Are you saying McKinley is attracted to extremists? He’s a kind of hate-crime groupie?”
“Well, we don’t know enough yet to take it that far. But it certainly drops a few more pieces in place.” He strode to the bookcase-covered wall opposite her desk, then to the sagging love seat, then back to the desk, too charged up to sit. “You say the foreman at the spa site told you McKinley has problems with his boss being gay. Maybe he gets together with some of his buddies who were left behind when Rider took the long trip out of town. They piss and moan about gays, just like they used to about Asians, until somebody gets the great idea to go out cruising and get themselves a homosexual.”
“Emil Dvorak.”
“And they take McKinley’s truck.” He paused at the bookcase, standing in front of a clock shaped like an Apache helicopter. Its rotors were ticking the seconds away. “Okay, we don’t have confirmation yet that it was McKinley’s truck. I’m just speculating.”
“No, no, I see what you’re driving at.” She leaned forward in
her chair, her cheeks slightly flushed. “You’re thinking they were working themselves up to attack Bill Ingraham.”
“Maybe. Emil’s attack seems the most like sheer opportunism. Maybe they were driving by the Stuyvesant Inn, hoping to catch Ingraham himself, not knowing he was at the town meeting.”
“But then they succeed at that one. They don’t get caught. That eggs them on to the next attack.”
“MacPherson. Which strikes me as being more carefully planned out than when they went after Emil. Like they had set on a definite target.”
“So what about Bill Ingraham? Was he targeted? Was he what they were working up to with the other two assaults? Or did one of them just get…carried away?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We’re way out in cloud cuckooland here. Once we bring in McKinley, I expect the missing information will fall into place extremely quickly. These sons of scumbuckets fall apart under questioning. I’ve seen it before. He’ll give up his own mother to knock a few years off his sentence. It’ll just be a matter of rounding ’em up.” He threw himself backward onto the lumpy love seat. “And thank God for it, too. Between this case and my own mother disturbing the peace in the park, I’m about tapped out. And then there’re the news stories. If I don’t have ten messages from the mayor and the Board of Aldermen waiting for me on my answering machine, I’ll eat my hat.”
She pulled a long strand of hair between her fingers and fiddled with it. “Look, I need to apologize for running my mouth off last night in the park. Sometimes I have this tendency to speak before I’ve had a chance to think everything out.”
A Fountain Filled With Blood Page 16
