I Shall Not Want (16 page)

“Oh.”

He glanced at her again. “You ever see a dead body before?”

“My grandmother. At the funeral home. I’m guessing this one won’t be laid out on satin with an ugly arrangement of carnations draped over him.”

Okay. If she could keep her sense of humor, she’d be fine. “Why don’t you tell me what we need to do and what we’ll be looking for once we get there.”

She went through the list with minimal prodding from him, and by the time they emerged from the mountain road into the bright sunshine spilling across the valley he felt confident she could handle herself without a lot of babysitting on his part.

“Is that your sister’s house?” Knox asked, pointing to the bungalow ahead.

“No, she and her husband live a few miles down the road. This farm’s a new addition to—” He broke off. Janet’s car was parked on a denuded piece of earth angled between the massive central barn and the silos, and right next to it was a bright red Subaru WRX. As he pulled in, he saw the old bumper stickers, THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH WELCOMES YOU and MY OTHER CAR IS AN OH-58 had been joined by JESUS IS COMING: LOOK BUSY. His throat felt thick with anticipation and dread.

“Isn’t that Reverend Clare’s car?” Knox asked. Her eyes went round. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”

He killed the engine. Turned to look at his juniormost officer, who had the same expression he’d expect to find if she’d lost the key to the evidence locker.

“Sorry? What for?”

She had one of those birthstone rings on her finger. She twisted it around in a circle, not meeting his eyes. “Um,” she said. “Deputy Chief MacAuley told me not to mention the Reverend around you.”

Sweet tap-dancing Jesus. “He did, huh?”

She nodded. “Or St. Alban’s.”

He opened the door and got out. Popped the locker and retrieved the backpack with their basic evidence kit and a fistful of bright purple non-latex gloves. She got out on her side, and he tossed her a pair. “You don’t happen to know if that suggestion was just for you or for the whole department, do you?”

She shrugged, clearly wishing she had never brought the matter up.

Christ only knew what MacAuley had told the rest of the force. Either that he’d break down sobbing or go postal at any reminder of his… his former relationship.

Beloved
, his inner voice corrected.

He shook it off. “Officer Knox. In the future, please feel free to talk about the reverend, or St. Alban’s, or any other citizen or organization in town. Nobody is off limits to me.”

Clare is
.

The small side door of the central barn swung open, and she emerged. After picturing her in her BDUs for the past month, he was startled to see her sober clericals: black skirt, black blouse, white collar, silver cross. He became aware of Knox’s nervous glance toward him at the same moment he realized he was staring.

“Reverend Fergusson,” he said.

“Chief Van Alstyne.” She looked at Knox and smiled. “Hi, Hadley. I thought you were teamed up with Officer Flynn.”

Knox shook her head. “That was just the one time. Usually, I ride with one of the older officers.”

“Mmm.” She glanced at Russ, and her eyes lit with a well-worn private joke. “There’re few older than Chief Van Alstyne.”

“Don’t start with me,” he said, irrationally pleased that she was teasing him. He glanced over her shoulder, toward the gaping entrance to the barn. “Where’s Janet?”

“I believe she’s going to meet you halfway and show you the location of the body. It’s at the far end of the property, where the new electrical fencing is going up.”

“What are you doing here? Please don’t tell me you were with her when she found it.”

Clare shook her head. “I came to pick up Amado.”

He looked at her blankly.

“The kid with the broken arm? Our interim sexton.”

Oh, yeah. A fourteen-dollar name for the temporary janitor. “I remember.”

“Janet asked me to call it in and wait for… whoever showed up. She said cell phones rarely work out there.”

“Did she give you a description of what she saw?”

Clare paused. When she spoke, she spoke as if dictating for an unseen recorder. “The body is a male Latino, bloated, with damage to the back of the skull that might be from a gunshot wound.”

“Did she recognize him as one of the missing workers?”

She shook her head. “No. She was sure it wasn’t one of them.”

“How?”

She blanked. “Uh… pictures?”

“Anything else? Description? Clothing?”

“No. Janet was pretty upset.” She looked into his eyes. “Go easy on her when you talk to her, okay?”

“As easy as I can.”

She nodded. Turned and pointed to the other side of the barn. “There’s a two-rut road running between the big barn and those outbuildings that leads toward the mountain. She took that.”

A black GMC Scout slowed on the road and turned into the barnyard, doglegging tight to park on the other side of Janet’s car. Russ didn’t recognize the car, but he wasn’t surprised to see the Glens Falls pathologist get out. By his jeans and WASHINGTON COUNTY SOFTBALL LEAGUE T-shirt, Russ deducted they had interrupted Scheeler’s Saturday morning game.

“Chief Van Alstyne.” Scheeler crossed toward their small group. “Good to see you again.” He shook Russ’s hand. The clip-bearded pathologist radiated the kind of intellectual intensity Russ associated with revolutionaries and Jesuits. Now he trained that intensity on Russ. “I was so sorry to hear about your wife. It must have been a great loss.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Russ inhaled. “You haven’t met our newest officer, Hadley Knox.” Knox and the pathologist shook hands. “And this is the Reverend Clare Fergusson.”

Scheeler’s dark eyebrows went up as he shook Clare’s hand. “Are you the one who found the decedent, Ms. Fergusson?”

Russ answered for her. “No. Unfortunately, that was my sister.”

Scheeler’s attention returned to him. “You do have a small town here, don’t you? Is this going to be awkward?”

Only if she killed the guy
. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Why had he come back to his hometown for this job? He knew there had been a reason, but damned if he could remember it.

“I arrested my mother a couple years ago,” Russ said. “I figure I can handle questioning my sister. If I have to rough her up, I’ll just ask Officer Knox to take over.”

“Chief?” Knox’s eyes went round again.

“He’s joking, Hadley.” Clare gave him a we-are-not-amused look. Scheeler’s black eyes glinted. Russ gestured toward the Scout with his head.

“Does that thing have four-wheel drive?”

“It wouldn’t do me much good in the winter if it didn’t.”

“Can we take it? We have to get across a few pastures to the site, and our squad car isn’t built for off-roading.”

“As long as I can bill the town for the car wash afterward.”

“You got it,” Russ said. “Throw in a wax, too.”

“Do we need to wait for the State Crime Scene truck?”

“We haven’t called them in yet. You’re here to help us figure out if this
is
a crime scene.”

Scheeler nodded. “Let’s go see, then. Officer Knox?” The pathologist ushered the young officer toward the SUV.

Russ turned toward Clare. “I know asking you to stay away is a lost cause, but—”

She raised her hands. “My part in this is done. I’m collecting Amado and heading back to St. Alban’s. I—”

“No, no, no!”

“What?”

“Your interim sexton is the only person I have who might be able to ID our body. I need him.”

“Why? Because he’s Latino? I told you, the dead man isn’t one of the missing workers.”

“How do you know?”

“I—” She poked at her hair, twisted into a knot at the back of her head. Her eyes slid past him to examine the silos. He frowned. She wasn’t being straight with him.

“Clare…?”

“I don’t know,” she blurted out. “But I really do need Amado. We have to get the church cleaned up after the noon Eucharist and ready for the choir concert tonight, and then put it back to rights after the concert.” She glanced at her watch, a steel-edged Seiko hanging from a much-worse-for-wear khaki strap. “He should be done for the afternoon by three or four. Could you wait until then?”

He exhaled. “I’ll send someone by St. Alban’s to pick him up.
If
you promise me you won’t discuss anything you know with him beforehand.”

“I promise,” she said, holding up two fingers like a Girl Scout. “Most of our communicating is done via the
Pocket Guide to Useful Spanish Phrases
, anyway.”

“Yeah? How useful is it?”

“It would be great if I needed to tell him how long I wanted a hotel room or rental car. It’s a little thin on ‘Help me move this pew’ and ‘Can you vacuum here?’ ”

He snorted. “I bet. Look, what time do you need him back?”

“The concert’s from seven to eight, so—” She frowned. “Wait a minute. It doesn’t take four hours to identify a body.”

“I may need to ask him a few questions.”

“A few questions! The boy doesn’t know a word of English.”

“
Entonces es una buena cosa que sé hablar español
.”

She looked at him, suspicion glittering green in her hazel eyes. “I want you to promise me you’ll accord him the same rights and warnings you would any English-speaking citizen.”

“What do you think I’d do?”

“I don’t know. But I know you. You’ve got an unexplained dead man in your town, and that’s going to ride you and ride you like a jockey with a whip until you can figure out who and what and where and why. I don’t want my poor sexton getting trampled because he’s in the way.”

He blinked.
I know you
. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“I won’t treat your guy any different than I would anyone else.”

Her mouth quirked, one-sided. “I’m not sure that’s a comfort.”

“You know what I mean.”

She nodded. “Yes. I do.” Their words hung in the air like dust motes floating through the late-morning sun. He had that sense that he only ever got around Clare, that they were saying one thing and talking about something entirely different.

“So.” She studied her watch. Glanced toward the barn. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah.” He took a step toward the waiting Scout. Turned back toward her. “How have you been?”

She looked surprised. “Good. I’ve been good. Keeping busy. Last Sunday was Pentecost, that’s a big one, and this evening we’ve got the concert, and then the parish picnic is coming up next week, So… busy. Good.” She looked at him, with her eyes that always seemed to say
You can tell me anything, and it’ll be all right
. “You?”

“I’m doing okay. Still at my mom’s for the time being.”

She nodded. “I bet that helps. Both of you.”

“Yeah. I—”
Miss you
. He cleared his throat.

“¿Señora Reverenda?” They both turned to see the young man they had been discussing lope across the barnyard, a small duffel bag clutched in his good hand.

“This way, Señor Esfuentes.” Clare pointed toward her car, already moving, already leaving him. “Sorry,” she called over her shoulder. “I can’t be late for the noon Eucharist. Say hi to your mother for me.” And then she was gone, slipping into her Subaru, starting up the engine before the kid had even shut his door. Eager to get away from him. Not that he could blame her.

The Scout honked. Knox powered down the window. “Are you coming, Chief?”

He nodded. Better this way. He climbed into the backseat. “Let’s go,” he said.

She had worried about not knowing what to do. She had worried about not fouling the scene. She had worried about looking like a raw newbie with nothing but the fig leaf of eight weeks of classes to cover her.

What she should have worried about was her breakfast.

“You all right?” Chief Van Alstyne patted her back. In response, the rest of her stomach lurched up and out and spattered onto the ferns and grass at the creek’s edge. Oh, God.

“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” he said. “We’ve all done it.”

From her doubled-over vantage point, Hadley saw jeans and sneakers approaching. “He throws up all the time,” Mrs. McGeoch said. Now that Hadley had fallen apart, the chief’s sister seemed a whole lot calmer. “Here. Water from the truck. It’s clean.” Hadley squirted a cupful into her mouth. It was hot and tasted of plastic. She bent over again and spat it into the creek.

“I do not,” the chief said, over her back.

“You do, too. You throw up when you’re stressed.”

“If I threw up when I was stressed I wouldn’t be able to leave the damn bathroom for more than ten minutes at a time.”

Hadley straightened. “Sorry,” she croaked.

“Don’t worry about it,” the chief said. She heard the snapping of footsteps through the brush and then Scheeler’s voice.

“If we didn’t vomit five or six times the first year of medical school, the professors didn’t think they were doing their job.”

Hadley wiped her mouth with her sleeve and turned toward the pathologist, keeping her eyes on him so as not to glimpse the bloated, fly-blasted corpse.

“I remember this one old coot,” he went on, “used to have us drink urine. We were supposed to be able to—”

The chief peered at her face. “I don’t think that’s the best topic of conversation right now.”

“Oh. Right. All right, then, let’s talk about John Doe, here. Or maybe we should call him Juan Doe.”

“That
is
a gunshot wound, isn’t it?” the chief said.

Scheeler nodded. “The occipital entry point has been enlarged by animal depredation”—Hadley’s stomach lurched again when she translated the med-speak as
animals ate his brains
—“but there’s no doubt. I suspect, from the lack of any anterior damage, I’ll be digging out a small load. Maybe a twenty-two.”

“Knox.” The chief’s voice, addressing her, caused her to snap to. “Tell me what you can infer from what Doctor Scheeler here has told us.”

“Uh… .” She took a deep breath. The surfaces of things seemed hallucinogenically bright; the sun bouncing off the chief’s uniform buttons, the razor edges of the willow leaves drooping toward the ground. “A twenty-two. Not much stopping power. Whoever killed him would have had to have been pretty close.”