A Fountain Filled With Blood (12 page)

She tugged the leashes again, but the dogs had reached their limit. They whined, then whined even more fretfully when she stepped past them to part the branches of a bittersweet-entwined sumac to peer inside. Nothing. She made herself step through the undergrowth and brush, pushing through something with tiny twigs and clumps of berries that tapped against her cheeks and fingers. Nothing. She stubbed her sneaker-shod toe against something hard and swallowed a scream before she heard the clanking sound and felt a pipe rolling beneath her foot. She had stumbled across the graveyard of an old plumbing system. She squatted down and waved through the darkness until her knuckles hit something—smooth marble or polished granite. The shape of it under her hands made her think of a sarcophagus. She thrust the morbid idea from her mind. Rectangular, rounded edges—a basin? Her fingers slipped through something wet clinging to the cool stone interior. She gasped and jerked her hand away, lurching to her feet. Then she realized what she had found. One of the old watering troughs Russ had mentioned. It smelled of old water and decayed leaves and the iron tang or rust. The dogs keened behind her, and in a split second her fear flashed into irritation. “What is it?” she snapped. “If there’s some drowned cat in here, I’m going to be—”

Overhead, a white explosion cascaded into yellow and purple, and blue spheres filled the sky. A crash of explosions battered the air. She could see the watering trough now, bone-pale, long as a child’s coffin, mottled by the leaves’ shadows. And there, finally, was the reason for the dogs’ whimpering. Clare saw the fireworks reflecting in thick black blood, winking along the edges of torn flesh, illuminating dull, flat eyes.

Over the cacophony of the fireworks’ finale, she heard a wavering, high-pitched moan, rising and rising until she cried out, her voice choking, and she realized it was her. She was making the terrible noise as the cloudbursts of light exploded overhead, revealing and concealing the puffy, battered thing that had once been Bill Ingraham.

The crime scene was lighted like a carnival midway by the time Russ arrived. Two tall tungsten lamps flooded the ground and trees with a white glare, turning every shadow into a razor-edged antileaf and nonbranch. The red lights of two squad cars circled monotonously next to what the Millers Kill PD referred to as “the meat wagon”—the squat mortuary transport used when there was no hope the ambulance would be useful. From behind a taut yellow tape, a dozen or more flash lights bobbed aimlessly as their owners, packing blankets and coolers, crowded in to get a glimpse of something much more exciting than fireworks. White, red, and yellow reflected off the lowering mist until the night itself glowed and Russ thought he could see individual drops of water suspended in midair.

Mark Durkee, who had been bumped up the seniority ladder when they’d hired Kevin Flynn, was working the crowd, notebook out, presumably taking names and statements. Russ ducked under the tape and waved at Lyle MacAuley. “Hey,” Russ said. “You set him on that?” He gestured with his head toward Durkee.

“He thought of it on his own. He read up on spotting perps who return to the scene and on this new technique of taking pictures of the spectators before running them off. It gets the possible witnesses on film, so we can match ’em up with their statements. He whipped out one of those little disposable cameras and went to it. He’s got a lot on the ball.”

“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 blond 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 leave, 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, ‘It’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.”