Kristen shook her head. “I told you, I haven’t spoken to him since I left home. I got an unlisted number so he can’t call me. I was working up the nerve to call him and Mom about Katie’s funeral.” She jerked her head up, blinking swollen eyes at Clare. “Oh, God, now I’m going to have to make arrangements for him, too! Mom won’t be able to handle it.” She closed her hands over her face and wept, frustrated, angry tears that even Russ, who had learned to ignore crying from witnesses, could recognize.
“I can help you,” Clare said, rubbing her hands briskly along Kristen’s upper arms. “I can help.”
Kristen shook her head, dumb animal grief, over and over. “All I wanted was some peace to bury my sister in. Now he’s even taken that, the bastard. Why couldn’t he leave me and my sister alone. My sisterrrr . . .”
Russ mumbled his excuses and went into the kitchen to look for a telephone and to escape the pain and anger ricocheting through the living room. He suppressed a twinge of guilt at letting Clare take on all the burden of dealing with the girl. There wasn’t anything useful to be had out of her, not tonight, and maybe a priest was what she needed now, anyway.
He dialed the station first, and when the message to dial 911 clicked on, he hung up and called the Glens Falls dispatcher. She had the number of the detective in Albany who had been sent out with the black and white to Katie’s former home. In Albany, they got cell phones. Better pension plans, too, he’d bet.
Two rings and a brisk, feminine voice answered, “Ramirez here.”
“Uh . . . Detective Ramirez?”
“The one and only.”
“Detective, this is Chief Van Alstyne, from Millers Kill. I understand you’re assisting with a murder we’ve had up here.”
“Chief Van Alstyne. Yeah, I spoke with your man, what’s his name? Doofee?”
“Durkee,” he said. She owed him that for his obvious surprise at hearing a woman’s voice.
“We got a unit here right after we got your message, but your man had already been and gone.”
Russ slapped the receiver against his thigh and swore quietly. He jerked the phone back up to his ear in time to hear Detective Ramirez say, “. . . identified himself to the girl as your decedent’s father.”
“There’s a witness?”
“For what it’s worth. We’ve got her downtown with an artist right now, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. She’s eighteen, she’d had a few beers earlier in the evening, and she thinks everyone over the age of twenty-eight is, and I quote, a wrinkly.”
Russ laughed in spite of himself.
“The description we have so far is average height, average weight, no discernible identifying features except for a bushy mustache, which may be fake, and that he was one of the previously mentioned ‘wrinklies.’ ”
Geoff Burns was what, forty? forty-two? Certainly would look like a wrinkly to Emily Colbaum or one of her housemates. And “average” would describe him to a T, until he opened his mouth. Russ sighed. “So, what did the perp do at the house?”
“According to the witness, there had been a call earlier from someone identifying himself as the murder victim’s father. Said he was coming down to get some of the girl’s things. This guy shows up around nine-thirty, goes to her room, and comes back out ten or fifteen minutes later with a backpack. It’s hard to tell at this point if the room was left messy or if he tossed it. We’re hoping for prints, of course.”
“I know this is a long shot, but do you have any idea what he took from the room?”
“Something that could fit into a student backpack?” Ramirez snorted. “Sorry, Chief. Could be almost anything. Was your girl into drugs?”
“Not that we know,” he said. “Was there anything pregnancy-related there?”
“Yeah, there was, as a matter of fact. Couple of books stashed under the bed. What To Expect When You’re Expecting, that sort of thing. Some used feminine napkins in the wastebasket, but that could have been her period. Look, give me your fax number, and I’ll have the complete report and the artist’s sketch to you by tomorrow morning. Uh, make that later this morning.”
Russ looked at his watch. Christ, it was after twelve. He was going to have to switch shifts with Lyle MacAuley. No way he could be working this case and still be alert enough to pull Friday night patrol tomorrow. He told Detective Ramirez the station’s fax number, thanked her for her help, and hung up.
In the living room, Kristen was sitting quietly, her head dropped back against the top of her flowery love seat, staring vacantly at the ceiling. Clare, in the bamboo chair next to her, looked up as he walked in. She asked a question with her eyebrows.
He shrugged. “Someone showed up at Katie’s house tonight claiming to be her father. He took something out of her room in a knapsack. One of her housemates was there, she’s talking to a police artist right now, trying to give us a description.”
Clare glanced at Kristen, who didn’t move. “Any chance it was Darrell?” she asked.
“Doesn’t sound it. Supposedly an older man with a mustache. I’m not discounting the idea that it might have been a disguise.”
Clare looked skeptical. “Who the heck could it be? Ethan? He’s in jail.”
“Kristen,” he said, then again, louder, “Kristen?” She rolled her head to face him without stirring from her position on the love seat. “I’ve asked you this before, but was there anyone else your sister might have been seeing? Maybe an older man?”
“I told you,” she said, her voice raw and tired. “If she was seeing someone else, she never let on to me.”
He glanced over to Clare. “The detective in Albany asked if Katie might have been into drugs. Maybe we’re on the wrong track, thinking her murder had something to do with the baby. Maybe she got on the wrong side of some bad people.”
Clare opened her mouth to respond, but she was cut off by Kristen. “My sister didn’t do drugs! Or kiddie porn or illegal adoptions or passing bad checks or anything else! She was a good person. A good person! If you weren’t such a cluck-ass small town cop you might have caught the man who did this to her by now!” She lurched upright in the middle of her tirade and stood pointing a shaking finger at Russ.
“Kristen!” Clare jumped to her feet. “That’s not fair.”
Kristen jerked her head around to face the priest. “What do you know about it! My sister is dead! And the best this guy can do is come here and ask me if I know any reason why she might deserve it? Oh, and by the way, did you kill your father tonight? Well, Chief Van Alstyne,” she made his name an insult, “if my sister’s murder didn’t have anything to do with her baby, maybe some nut case is out to kill off all the McWhorters! Who’s gonna be next? Me? Cody?”
“That’s enough, Kristen.” Clare’s voice cut through the air like a helicopter blade, sharp and no-nonsense. “You’re exhausted and upset and not thinking.” She moved to the door, pulling her coat off the rack and finding her boots with her feet, her eyes never leaving the angry young woman twisting her hands back and forth in front of the loveseat. “You call me tomorrow if you want any help with the arrangements.”
She waved a hand at Russ, who was still standing, stocking-footed and wool-headed, in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. He switched into motion, getting his coat and boots while Clare continued. “Chief Van Alstyne will let you know as soon as he finds out anything about the murders.” She laid her hands on Kristen’s shoulders and shook her once, like a mother cat settling a kitten. “In the meanwhile, I want you to get yourself something hot to drink and go straight to bed. Try to get a good night’s sleep and make sure you eat something in the morning. You have my number.” Kristen nodded. “Then we’ll say good night.” Her voice softened. “I’m sorry, Kristen. About everything.” Clare opened the door and jerked her head at Russ. “Time to go.” He kept himself from saying, “Ma’am, yes ma’am,” but he hustled out the door just the same.
“Good night, Kristen. We’ll talk tomorrow.” She shut the tow
n house door and hunched her shoulders against the pelting snow, high-stepping past him to the truck in a futile effort to keep her boots from getting even more wet. She was inside, brushing off her jacket, by the time he climbed up into the cab, wincing a little at the ache in his hip. Definitely too long a day. He fired up the engine and sat for a moment, too wiped out to shift into gear and begin the long, slow ride back home. He rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. Back to the rectory, that was. Had to take Clare home first. On the radio, a psychiatrist was incredulously quizzing her caller who had fallen in love with her sister’s husband. “Reality Check!” Dr. Adele barked like a drill instructor.
He smiled as he reversed out of the parking space, his four-wheel drive chugging against the accumulated snow. “So you really were an officer,” he said.
“Sorry if I rolled over you in there, but I—”
“No, no, I appreciate it, really. I never know the right way to handle these scenes. Try to comfort someone and you’re just as likely to get an ashtray over the head. Hang tough and be professional, and next thing you know you’ve got a reputation as a heartless monster or worse, there’s a suit for police brutality on your desk.”
“Mmmm.” She turned her face away from him and leaned against the window.
He concentrated on the road, turning the defroster on full to clear the steam from his windshield. The snow came at him horizontally as he drove, as if nature were trying to sandblast his truck with the icy flakes. Traction was bad, even with his weight and the four-wheel drive. It had been a hell of a night. Thank god he hadn’t let Clare drive home in that ridiculous little mosquito of hers.
Between the roar of the heater and the annoying jingle for an auto dealership on the radio—“Fort Henry Ford for Quick Credit Cash Back Cars!”—he missed the first two or three muffled gulps from the other side of the cab. He risked taking his eyes off the road for a moment. Clare was twisted so he couldn’t see her face, her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection. He heard her again, the sound of something noisy being swallowed.
“Clare?” For a selfish second, he thought please, please, not another distressed woman. I can’t handle any more today. “Are you okay?” The back of her head jerked up and down. He saw the bank of yellow lights ahead and coasted to a slow stop well before the oddly angled intersection of Route 39 and Tanco Road. He had once waited here while the Millers Kill fire department used the jaws of life to remove three mangled bodies from a station wagon that had tried to beat the light in bad weather. The driver had been a guy his age. “Clare,” he said, turning toward her, “if you’re okay, will you please look at me?”
The back of her head jerked back and forth. “Clare?” He thought back to how he felt earlier this evening, the weight and tension dropping off of him as he sat across from her at the kitchen table, talking. “Clare, who do you talk to? You asked me that, remember? Who do you talk to, Clare?”
Her voice was thick and tight. “I’ll be all right. It’s just been a long—” she couldn’t continue. The lights turned green. He didn’t move. “It’s just—” she tried again. “She makes me think of my sister,” she finally got out.
“Your sister,” he said. “The blond girl in those pictures on your table? What about your sister?”
She turned to him, her eyes bright, her face drawn and pinched. “She died. Five years ago this Thanksgiving.” She scrubbed her face with her open hands.
In the mirror, he could see distant lights headed up Route 39. He shifted the truck into gear and carefully drove on through the icy intersection. “Tell me,” he said, wondering as he said it why he was asking. He respected people’s privacy more than most, and this was clearly a private pain. “What was her name?”
“Grace. She was . . .” She coughed. “She was like a beautiful decoration on a Christmas tree. Funny and loving and frivolous. She was the sweet little sister and I was the tomboy know-it-all big sister. She was the beautiful one and I was the smart one.” One side of her mouth crooked up. “She was always trying to get me more interested in clothes and makeup and dating and all that girl stuff that came so naturally to her.” She plucked at the leather sleeve of her coat. “She gave me this jacket when I made first lieutenant, because she thought it looked like something a dashing aviatrix would wear.”
“She sounds like a very special person,” he said quietly.
“She was to us,” Clare said. “She never did anything that would make you stand up and take notice. She worked for our parents’ aviation company, secretarial work and bookkeeping. Enough to make minimum payments on her credit cards, she used to say. Mostly, she wanted to get married and have lots of kids. She would have, too. She had guys left, right, and center.” Clare smiled, a small, inward smile. “She volunteered at the local hospital because she wanted to meet a doctor.”
Russ didn’t want to hear more. He hated the dread creeping along the edges of his nerves, knowing how the story ended. He wanted the details left off, so he wouldn’t have to feel the ache under his sternum that had already begun. Aching for Clare, who had dried her eyes and was speaking in a low, thick voice.
“She was four years younger than me. Twenty-five when she—when it happened. She had had this pain on and off in her abdomen, thought it was indigestion or gas. It finally got bad enough for her to have it checked out.” She closed her eyes. “It was colo-rectal cancer, well advanced. She didn’t suspect. No one suspected. No one in our family had ever had cancer. She went in for a checkup in the morning and by that evening she was under a death sentence. In one day.”
He made the left-hand turn onto Main Street, the truck’s rear fishtailing gently before he got it straightened out. The shop lights were almost invisible in the snowy haze.
“I was stationed at Fort Bragg at the time, about four hours from home, so I didn’t ask for compassionate leave. Grace moved back into our parents’ house and I visited them every weekend. For awhile, I really thought she was going to get better. They treated it very, very aggressively, and I thought, she’s twenty-five, she’s under the best medical care possible, she has people all over the country praying for her, writing her letters, of course she can’t die. Of course she can’t die.” She folded her hands and pressed them to her mouth as if she were pushing a prayer back into her throat. “Four months. After four months, ‘she can’t die’ became the problem, not the expectation. Do you know anything about colo-rectal cancer?”
He shook his head.
“She was in agony. She was half-dead from the chemo and the half of her that was alive was suffering every day, all day. The fact that she was young and strong became a . . . a curse, because her body hung on, and hung on . . .” She rested her chin on her tightly clasped hands. “There was an intern she had dated, a friend of hers. Harry Jussawala. He would visit her, sometimes stay with her during treatments in the hospital.” She breathed deeply. “He came for Thanksgiving dinner. My folks always have friends as well as family for Thanksgiving. Their house is always open. I wasn’t there, I was on duty so one of the married guys could be at home with his family. Anyway, while the rest of them were in the kitchen or outside, Harry went into Grace’s room and gave her fifty crushed Valium pills suspended in a solution of cranberry juice and vodka.” She looked at Russ. “Does that sound stiff? That’s how I always think of it, you know, because that’s how I first heard about it from the investigators.” Her mouth quirked. “It was a Cape Codder, get it? Her favorite drink. She died within a half hour. She was dead when my mom went in to check on her.”
He didn’t know what to say. His heart hurt for her. “Oh, Clare. I’m so sorry.”
“Harry was never arrested. They talked about murder, then about manslaughter, but in the end, no one could prove anything except that he had brought the crushed Valium to her room. His medical license was revoked. I still don’t know, to this day, if it was really her idea to kill herself or if he acted out of his own sense of compassion. She didn’t leave a note or anything.” Her
face crumpled at last. “I never got to say good-bye to her.” She furiously blinked back tears. “And you know what’s awful? To this day, I don’t know whether to curse him or bless him. She was suffering, I know that, and it was going to end in her death. But she was alive! To be put down like a hurting dog . . .” she shook her head sharply, her lips closing tightly over her grief. She rubbed her face again, hard, and sniffled wetly. “I’m sorry. I never talk about this, I don’t know what got into me.”
He turned onto Church Street, swerving to one side to let a snow plow get by in the other lane. “It’s late and you’re tired,” he said. “Fatigue is like a truth drug, you know. Makes you do and say things you ordinarily wouldn’t consider.” He stopped at a red light and looked at her. “I think with all this stuff about Kristen and her sister, you needed to talk about Grace, and you needed a friend. I like to think I qualify there.”
She wiped a finger under her nose, smiling a little at him. “You do. You surely do. Thanks.”
He drove forward, past the park, past St. Alban’s, onto Elm Street. Over her protests about not trying to make it into her driveway, he shifted into second and churned a path up to her kitchen door. He was damned if he’d make her walk any farther than she had to in those skimpy boots she had on.
The truck idled quietly. “The guys on the graveyard shift always swing by my place around dawn,” he said. “Give me your key. I’ll radio them tonight before I turn in, ask if one of them will drive your car back into town if the roads are plowed by then.” She nodded, rubbing her eyes once more before fishing a key chain out of her pocket. She looked like a little kid at the end of an overlong day, all flushed cheeks and exhausted, tear-bright eyes. She pulled a key off the ring and handed it to him. “You need me to come in?” he asked.
In the Bleak Midwinter Page 18
