Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries)

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Please, call me—” But Mongue was already out the door. She turned on Russ.

  “I’m not going to just drop this lead,” he said. “But I want to get you somewhere safe first. Then we’ll get proper reinforcements, and then we can hit that house and question Travis Roy.”

  She shook her head. “What is it with you two? Every time I’ve seen you together you’ve been at it like … like he stole your lollipop or something.”

  “More like I stole his.” Russ picked up his duffel. “When Chief Gardiner retired from the MKPD, Bob was one of the applicants to replace him. He got far enough in the process so that it was down to him or me. The board of aldermen chose me.”

  “Ah. That explains a lot.”

  “Yeah, well. I thought it was mostly water under the bridge, until this last meeting that I crashed. Turns out Bob’s been the guy presenting the evidence the staties should take over the MKPD.”

  Clare nodded. “And you think he’s doing this out of animus toward you?” Her voice was neutral.

  “Oh, hell.” He jammed his fingers in his hair. “No. Probably not. It was the aldermen’s idea. He’s just the highest-ranking investigator who’s done a lot of work with us.” He frowned down at her. “But he definitely took this job because he wanted to lord it over me. ‘Bob Mongue has to rescue Russ Van Alstyne after he drives his truck off the road.’”

  “Really?” She slapped her leg and Oscar leaped off the floor. “Because I was thinking the road conditions must be so bad after twenty-four hours of icing that the state police are forced to use investigators to do the jobs their patrol officers would normally handle.” She opened the door and Oscar shot out. “Coming?”

  Russ followed her. Damn woman. She wouldn’t even allow him the pleasure of his irrational irritations.

  Mongue had set his parka and Clare’s day pack in the passenger seat. Fine. If he wanted to be petty, Russ wasn’t going to argue. He piled his duffel bag and a grocery sack of perishables on the seat and slid into the back. Unfortunately, instead of his wife, he found Oscar, ears pricked and tail thumping. Clare got in on the other side, leaving the dog between them. She shot Russ a glance. “Thank you again for coming to our rescue, Lieutenant Mongue. Is it as bad out there as I imagine?”

  “Depends on how good your imagination is, ma’am. We’re up to our neck in accidents, but the real trouble is the electrical grid.” Mongue put the cruiser into first and began a slow, churning drive through the unplowed stretch of their access lane. “Phone lines and power lines are coming down all over the place. I heard there was a cell tower up by Lake George that went down under the weight of ice alone.” Beneath them, the chains thunked and clanked against the tires.

  Clare looked at Russ. “Is that even possible?”

  He nodded. “If there’s enough area. It’s the cumulative weight. You take one twig and coat it with ice, it’s not much. You take a thousand twigs, and the weight can split a tree right in two.”

  The cruiser crested the lane at a steady pace and was on the North Shore Drive. The road was only visible as a flat, pale stretch through a thick forest of oak and hemlock, birch and white pine. The unbroken, ice-smooth surface was littered with twigs and branches. Russ leaned forward. “Are you going to have a problem getting a team together? For moving in on Travis Roy?”

  “Hell, yeah, I’m going to have a problem. We’ve got plainclothes behind the wheel because so many of our officers are dealing with accidents. We’re diverting more men to help evacuate people to shelters because of the power outages. We’ll be lucky if we can find a crossing guard and one of those old guys who does the cold cases to back us up.”

  “If you’ll waive the jurisdiction, I can get a couple of my—shit, Bob, look out!” There was an impossibly loud crack. At the same moment, a massive tree fell directly into the path of their car. Russ twisted and flung his arms around Clare, getting a face full of dog fur. The car slid as Bob made a futile effort to stop them from colliding with the enormous trunk. Russ heard the wrench-pop of the parking brake, and then the cruiser crumpled into the tree, its front end wedging itself into the pine and wood. Metal shrieked and the engine ground to a stop. They slammed forward convulsively. The air bag exploded with an acrid-tasting bang. Clare cried out, the dog yelped, and from the front, Bob was swearing in a voice shaking with pain and adrenaline. “God damn fucking shit that hurts!”

  Russ’s face was inches from Clare’s. “You okay?”

  She was pale and wide-eyed, but she nodded. “He needs help.”

  Bob was alternating between panting breaths and loud cursing. Russ unbuckled and tried to open the back door, but something had jammed in the crash. He swiveled sideways and, bracing himself between the front and rear seats, kicked the door until it creaked open. He slid out, Oscar and Clare fast on his heels.

  “Oh my God, Russ.” Clare was staring at the tree. It was an ancient white pine, the trunk at least three feet in diameter. Its jagged stump stood twenty feet from the road, and its full, bushy crown was another thirty feet toward the lake. The monster had smashed another, smaller pine into splinters beneath it and had lopped off a quarter of a maple as it fell. “If we had gone a couple of feet farther…”

  Clare, trapped in the car as that monster relentlessly fell … Russ’s gorge rose.

  Bob’s continued railing snapped him out of his sick horror. He waded around the car, breaking the thick crust of ice where the tires hadn’t already done the job. He hauled the driver’s door open. He could see what had happened. Bob had stood on the brakes in his hopeless effort to avoid the tree. He hadn’t gotten his foot out in time.

  Clare peered around his shoulder. “Can we slide him out?”

  “Bob, I’m going to get down there and take a look,” Russ said. “Try not to move.”

  “Move?” Bob gritted his teeth. “It feels like my goddamn leg’s been cut off.”

  The metal had pinched down, snapping his leg. “It’s broken, all right. I can’t tell if it’s a compound fracture.” Russ backed out of the well. “We’ll get you out of there and splint you up tight.”

  “How the hell are you going to get me out? You got a Jaws of Life in that bag of yours?”

  “The jack.” Clare was using her pilot’s voice, calm, assured, in control.

  “The jack won’t lift that tree,” Russ said.

  “It doesn’t have to. All it has to do is force an inch of space up into the engine block.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Let’s do it.”

  It took them twenty minutes, alternating on either side of Bob’s swollen leg, Russ stretched out across the passenger seat, ratcheting against the metal, then Clare kneeling in the door, throwing all her weight behind the jack’s lever. Bob let out a moan when they finally released the pressure against his shin. Clare tipped the seat back as far as it could go, and together they hauled Bob out of the wrecked interior. Russ tried to keep him as steady as possible, but even the slightest jolt caused the other cop to gasp with pain.

  They laid him on the broken snow next to the cruiser and bent to get a closer look at the damage. Russ sucked in a breath. “Jesus, that looks bad.” He glanced at his wife. “Sorry.”

  “There are ACE bandages back at the cabin,” she said. “And I was thinking—one of the chairs has skinny slats in the back. If you could break it apart—”

  He nodded. “Yeah.” He straightened. “Bob, we’re going to take you back to the cabin and do what we can to stabilize your leg.”

  “Then what?” Bob’s words were bitten off, brief syllables he could spare from fighting the pain.

  “If you could get through the South Shore Drive, so can an ambulance.” Russ reached inside and unhooked the mic. It was dead. He flicked the on-off toggle and tried the computer. Nothing. He traced the wiring dangling from beneath the radio mount to where it ended in a shorn-off tangle. “Shit,” he said under his breath.

  Clare laid her hand on his shoulder. “No radio?”

  “The battery co
nnection’s been severed.” Russ looked the opposite direction, down North Shore Drive, a narrow tunnel piercing the woods ahead of him. “We’re not going out that road. Even if the two of us could carry him over this tree trunk we’re risking the same thing happening again. Except without a car to shelter us.”

  “Let’s get back to the cabin. It’s a mile’s hike in hard snow, but at least we’ll be out of this”—Clare’s mouth worked—“ice, we’ll be warm, and we can make him as comfortable as possible. Then we’ll plan our next move.” Another artillery-shell blast went off in the forest. She flinched. Another tree down.

  “I’m sorry,” Russ said, in a voice that stuck in his throat. “I’m so sorry I dragged you here.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m fine. And the only person you’re going to be dragging is Lieutenant Mongue.”

  4.

  “What do you mean, we can’t speak to LaMar?” Kevin was trying to keep things calm and professional, but the attitude of the FBI agents he and Hadley were dealing with was starting to piss him off.

  They had taken off this morning, driving south through utter crap—the speed limit on the Northway still forty-five, and what should have been a two-and-a-half-hour drive had taken three and a half hours. That hadn’t stopped other idiots from driving too fast, of course. They had passed three cars off the Northway, one of which looked to have done a complete three-sixty while plunging into the median. They shouldn’t have gone; there was going to be more work than the department could handle even without the investigation. But the Department of Corrections officer Hadley had spoken with that morning assured them they would be able to question Tim LaMar face-to-face. All they had to do was check in with the agents in charge first.

  “Look, son, I’m sorry whoever put you on this detail didn’t think to call us first.” Tom O’Day was about the chief’s age, tall, graying, and dressed in an expensive suit that still managed to look completely forgettable.

  “We don’t want to step on any toes,” Hadley said, “but the girl could die within a matter of days if she doesn’t get her medication. Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend are the prime suspects at this point. We’re looking for their possible whereabouts. That’s all.”

  They were in the agents’ office in the Albany Federal Building, a modern brick construct with no distinguishing features. Industrial carpeting below, fluorescent light panels above, the furniture straight out of an office supply catalog. Everything had a bland, move-along-nothing-to-see-here feel to it. Which was the vibe Kevin was getting from this conversation.

  The other agent working the LaMar case was Marie O’Day. Same name, same age, same lanky frame, same suit—although hers fit a lot differently. Husband and wife. When they had introduced themselves, Kevin had thought, Partners and lovers. It is possible. He had inadvertently flashed a look at Hadley—which Marie O’Day had noticed. Her red glasses were the only thing in the office that didn’t look as if it had been government issued. She had watched them with her sharp eyes, silent, while her husband handled the preliminary runaround. Now she pushed back from her desk and stood. “How do you know the girl doesn’t have her medication?”

  Hadley looked at her as if she had grown a second head. “That’s your response? Really? Somebody kidnapped an eight-year-old and killed her foster parents, and you think it’ll be okay if she’s got her medicine?”

  The agents looked at one another. It was the same kind of look Kevin sometimes saw the chief and the dep sharing. “This isn’t a surprise to you, is it?” he asked.

  Hadley turned to stare at him.

  Tom O’Day sighed. “No, this isn’t a surprise. Let me give you some background. Timothy LaMar is not your typical upstate meth head, not by a long shot. He used to be a major player with the Salt Warriors—you’ve heard of them?”

  Kevin nodded. “A bike gang. They ran drugs and guns in and out of central New York. They got shut down in a federal sting a few years ago.”

  “We assisted the Syracuse office with that investigation. LaMar was indicted with the rest of the gang, but the attorney general’s office couldn’t get any witnesses to the stand to testify against him.”

  “Couldn’t get witnesses to the stand?” Hadley asked.

  Marie O’Day’s lips twisted. “They had a way of dying before they could testify.”

  “LaMar had contact with dozens of mom-and-pop meth cookers in Canada, eastern New York, and western Vermont and Massachusetts. He relocated to Poughkeepsie last year and started taking them over one by one. If they cooperated, they became part of his organization. Got funding and protection. Professionalized, if you will. If they didn’t…” He folded his hand into the shape of a gun. “Bam.”

  Kevin frowned. “Okay. Where does our missing girl come in?”

  “We’ve been trying to get something on LaMar since he started up operations,” Marie O’Day said. “It’s been … difficult. He keeps his meth labs spread out from rural Quebec to Dutchess County. He uses word-of-mouth communications and proxies to pass on his orders.”

  “We think he headquartered in Poughkeepsie because he’s using convicts and their family members as messengers.”

  Kevin could see that. There were no fewer than four state prisons in the area, ranging from a tiny women’s work farm to the the maximum security Fishkill. Plus nearby Albany was where two interstates linked up. Ideal for any drug lord’s transportation needs.

  “If people get out of line,” Marie O’Day said, “they wind up dead. If they say anything, they wind up dead.”

  “And nobody’s been able to pin anything on him?” Hadley sounded skeptical.

  “They’re hard-core criminal scumbags.” Hadley glanced at Kevin. Her expression said, Tell us what you really think, Marie. “Nobody cares if they live or die, and if someone does? They’re not talking.”

  “Six months ago,” her husband said, “Poughkeepsie police found a pair of bodies double tapped and dumped in Fallkill Park. No prints, no casings, nothing to tie their executions to anyone. Then we caught a piece of amazing luck. A highway patrol officer stopped LaMar for a taillight.”

  “Were they following him?” Kevin asked.

  “No. It really was just dumb luck. LaMar had a gun in his possession. Unregistered, of course.”

  “Let me guess,” Hadley said. “Ballistics matched.”

  The tall agent smiled faintly and tapped his nose. “But we had a problem. His lawyer copped to the illegal weapons charge, but he claimed the gun had been taken from LaMar’s house and that LaMar found it again tossed in the bushes outside.” The O’Days exchanged identical cynical looks.

  “Without a witness to tie LaMar to the murder scene, we had nothing,” Marie O’Day said.

  “We ran pictures of LaMar on local TV stations asking for help,” her partner said. “And lo and behold, someone came forward.”

  “Annie Johnson.” Hadley shook her head in disbelief.

  “No. A man named Lewis Johnson. Her father.”

  5.

  Russ made a travois out of two long branches, two short branches, his duffel bag, and Clare’s polar-plus jacket. They piled the rest of the clothing over Lieutenant Mongue, who couldn’t stop shaking—Clare thought from shock. She carried Mongue’s duty belt, his ammo clips, and as much food as she could fit in her day pack. She cradled the rifle beneath one arm, ready to hand it over if Russ needed it.

  They followed the deep tracks the cruiser’s chain-belted tires had dug into the snow before it had crashed. The ends of the travois straddled Russ’s track on either side, scraping over the ice and giving Mongue as smooth a ride as possible—which, if his muffled exclamations were any indication, wasn’t very. They turned off the North Shore Drive and, with slow steps, crept downhill on the access road that would lead them to their cabin, unfortunately situated at the farthest point from where they were. As they passed one and then another cabin on their way, trudging ever downward, Clare’s exhaustion got the better of her. At the next snow-mounded
mailbox they came to, she pleaded, “Should we just stop here? Break in?”

  Russ shook his head. “I don’t know if any other houses are winterized out here. You and I could maybe take the cold, but we’ve got to keep Bob warm.” He shut his mouth over anything else he was going to say. Clare didn’t have to hear the rest. Lieutenant Mongue’s broken leg called for a fast ride to the emergency room and immediate attention. None of which he was going to get.

  Clare concentrated on keeping her boots inside her track for a while. The enormity of their situation felt like another layer of ice, weighing her down, chilling her to the core. They had no ride. They had no way to contact anyone. Behind them was a badly injured man and ahead of them were a pair of armed men who might be holding a child hostage. To her right, a stand of birches bowed down into a series of ghostly arches. A crow, its feathers ruffled against the downpour, roosted at the top of one inverted U. It cawed at them as they passed. One for sorrow. Two for joy. They needed to find a second crow quick.

  Then a thought occurred to her. “Won’t the state police send someone after Lieutenant Mongue? When he fails to report in?”

  “Eventually. The trouble is, he’s an investigator. He doesn’t have to report in like a patrol officer.”

  “But he came out here to find us. Someone will notice we’re not home and he hasn’t been heard from.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure Lyle will start kicking and screaming sooner or later. We’ll just have to hope it’s sooner rather than later.”

  The fur edging on his hood kept most of his face from her view. “Russ. What aren’t you telling me?”

  He sighed. “It’s this damn weather. I’ve lived in the Adirondacks a lot of years and I’ve never seen an ice storm last like this. That tree—” He shook himself. “I’m afraid it’s not going to be just a case of every cop and firefighter in the region responding to accidents. With ice like this, we’re going to be the accidents. Once you’ve got cruisers and ambulances going off the road, it’s not going to take long for the situation to become a complete…”