All Mortal Flesh (7 page)

“Okay. Getting back to the subject at hand—”

“Of course. What else can I do to be of assistance? Let’s see. I have a master’s in counseling. I used to be a teacher, so I have a special interest in all aspects of Christian education. At St. Stephen’s, I worked extensively in parish development and volunteer coordination. And at Bethesda Church in Saratoga, I led the capital campaign to restore their historic bell tower.” She smiled brightly at Clare.

“Wow.” Clare couldn’t think of what to say to that litany of accomplishment. “I mean that. Wow. Why aren’t you a priest?”

For the first time, Elizabeth de Groot looked less than serene. “I’ve actually been up before the Discernment Committee several times.” She fingered her collar. “They seem to feel I just haven’t had… an authentic call.”

Clare felt her cheeks pink up. She had been silently carping at the woman, and now Elizabeth’s honesty shamed her. “It seems to me you have been called. To do what you’re doing now.”

The deacon set down her china teacup. “Well, I’m certainly not going to sit around moping about what can’t be.” Her voice was brisk. “And I believe it gives me a sensitivity toward—a reverence for the role of priest that will help me help you.”

Several alarm bells went off in Clare’s head. “Uh, just so you know, I’m not really comfortable with the whole reverence thing. Ordination didn’t suddenly make me a better and nicer person.”

Elizabeth smiled indulgently. “You remind me of some of the first-time parents I used to meet when I was teaching. They often felt insecure about using their natural authority with their kids. Accepting where you are in the hierarchy takes time and experience.”

“I was in the army for ten years. Believe me when I say I don’t have any problem with authority. I just don’t want to be stereotyped into something I’m not.”

“You don’t feel you have any problems establishing your control over your parish?”

Control. Good God. “Leadership isn’t a matter of control,” Clare said. “Leadership is infusing the people around you with trust and confidence and expectations, so that when you move in one direction, they follow.”

“What about the bishop?”

“What about him?”

“Do you have any problems with his authority over you?”

“I don’t see how that—” Clare was saved from making a rude remark by Lois’s appearance in her doorway.

“There’s somebody here to see you.”

“I’m in a meeting.” Clare’s voice was tight. “They’ll have to wait. Or call for an appointment.”

“No, you have to see her now.”

Lois’s tone caught Clare’s attention. The secretary’s face was drawn taut, her lips pressed bloodlessly together.

“Okay,” Clare said. “Elizabeth, please excuse me.” She stepped into the hallway. “What is it?”

Lois gestured down the hall, to the door leading into the sanctuary. “Just… go.” She retreated into Clare’s office. Clare could hear her asking de Groot how the tea was.

Clare walked toward the church with a rapidly coalescing mass of dread filling her stomach. It had to be bad news. But not a parishioner. She had had parishioners sicken, be injured, die. Lois would have told her the details. She wouldn’t have been so shaken. It had to be something personal.

Oh, God, what if it was her father? He owned a small aviation business, he flew nearly every day—what if something had gone wrong?

No, that didn’t make any sense. Her mother or one of her brothers would have called her directly. Who else did she know who might be—

Then she realized. There was someone else whose job exposed him to danger. She pushed open the door to the sanctuary and spotted a figure standing in the dimness of the north aisle. “Is it Russ?” she said. “Has anything happened to Russ?”

Anne Vining-Ellis, Clare’s closest friend among her congregation, turned. Her face, usually gleaming with a sly sense of humor, was grave. “No,” she said. “It’s his wife. Linda Van Alstyne was murdered yesterday.”

It was more like a wake than a meeting. Six o’clock Tuesday morning. Mark’s shift was officially over, and he had been awake since Monday morning, but he looked like an ad for Sealy Posturepedic next to the chief.

They sat in the bullpen, everyone who was working the investigation. Eric McCrea kept glancing between the chief and Lyle MacAuley, like he was watching to see which one would be the first to crack. MacAuley was at the whiteboard, writing down what little information they had. Noble Entwhistle sat in his usual spot, his notebook open on the desk in front of him. He looked the same as always, and different. Like someone had taken a drawing of him and rubbed out some of the edges with a gum eraser.

Kevin Flynn, who usually rattled all over the place talking and asking questions, sat silently. He was still in his civvies, although at some point he had put on his Day-Glo orange POLICE vest. Once in a while he looked as if he might say something, but he’d just drop his head and crack his knuckles instead.

And the chief… Mark wasn’t a religious man, but when he saw the chief come though the doors in the predawn darkness, he thought,
God, don’t ever let me come to that
.

“… just bring us all up to date,” MacAuley was saying. “Eric?”

McCrea stood. “The state CS techs didn’t find anything that leaped out at them. There were some hairs and a variety of prints. We’ll see when we get the report. The neighbor destroyed any tracks there might have been in the snow when she drove up to the door and then ran in and out.”

“Friend,” the chief growled. He was sitting in his usual place for a meeting, atop the sturdy oak table near the whiteboard, his feet resting on a chair.

“Uh… I’m sorry, Chief?”

“Meg Tracey isn’t a neighbor. She lives on Dunedin Road. She’s—she was Linda’s best friend.”

Lyle wrote her name and
BEST FRIEND
on the whiteboard. “What do we know about her?”

The chief blinked. “Know about her?”

“Chief, she found the body. We should at least eliminate her as a possible.” Lyle’s voice was gentle. “Eric, you took her statement. Anything?”

McCrea flipped open his notebook. “Her husband teaches at Skidmore. They’ve got one kid at Syracuse and two more at home. She doesn’t work. She claimed she was at her house, alone, all afternoon until her daughter got home from the middle school. She dropped the kid off for a piano lesson and then went to the Van Alstynes’.” He stumbled for a moment, breaking the smooth recital of facts. “She said she didn’t see anyone except the cat.”

“The cat? We don’t have a cat.”

“The Tracey woman said Mrs. Van Alstyne adopted it a week ago.” He looked at MacAuley. “Uh, found the cat behind the barn. We took it to the county SPCA.”

Mark looked toward the wall. He didn’t want to watch the chief deal with the fact that he hadn’t even known his wife got a cat.

Eric bent his head to his notes and went on. “She says she’s very close to the victim and was worried because she hadn’t heard anything from her since Saturday afternoon.”

The silence in the squad room was absolute. Eric realized what he said. “Shit! I meant Mrs. Van Alstyne. I’m sorry, chief.”

The chief shifted on his table. “Okay, guys.” He sounded very, very tired. “This is a homicide investigation. We’re not going to get anywhere if you have to apologize every time you say ‘victim’ or ‘murder.’ Let’s stop worrying about my feelings and focus on breaking the case.” He waved toward McCrea. “Go on, Eric.”

“Um… that’s about it. Mrs. Tracey didn’t know of anyone who might have posed a threat to… the victim. She said the only person Mrs. Van Alstyne had been having trouble with lately—” McCrea broke off, swallowing.

“Was her husband,” the chief finished.

McCrea nodded.

“Let’s get that out in the open, then.” The chief took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I think everybody here is aware I’ve been staying at my mom’s house since the Friday before last. Lyle?” He pointed to the whiteboard, and Lyle wrote down
JAN 8
. “Except for one counseling session, I haven’t seen Linda since then.”

Mark wondered if he was aware he was speaking of his wife in the present.

“I don’t know what rumors or stories have been making the rounds. The fact is, every marriage has its ups and downs. Linda and I started talking seriously about some issues in the middle of November. We decided we needed some perspective, so we started seeing a marriage counselor in December. Then Linda needed a break from having me around, so we agreed I’d move into my mom’s temporarily. Any questions?”

Mark held his breath, waiting to see if anyone was foolhardy enough to ask the chief about the rumors of his affair.

“Okay,” the chief said. “Lyle?”

MacAuley crossed his arms over his chest and stared into the middle distance. He wasn’t going to hide behind his notes like McCrea, but he wasn’t going to look at the chief, either. “Preliminary examination at the scene indicates the decedent was killed with a large knife. The ME won’t be able to tell exactly what we’re looking for until the autopsy, but it appeared to him that the fatal thrust was through the throat, which suggests the killer has at least some knowledge of professional knife-fighting techniques. There were no defensive wounds—suggesting the perp was someone either known to the decedent or someone unthreatening. There were—” Here he faltered and resorted to reading from his notebook. “Dr. Dvorak speculated that the significant postmortem wounds displayed the killer’s rage.”

Mark thought the chief might lose it. “What…” he said harshly, “what postmortem wounds?”

Eric McCrea had covered his face with one hand. He had been inside the house, Mark remembered. He had seen her. Of course, sooner or later they were all going to see her, in neatly labeled evidence photos. First the rest of the officers, then the men and women at the district attorney’s office, and then, if they did their job right, a judge and a jury and a whole courtroom of spectators.

“Her face was slashed. Repeatedly.” MacAuley’s face puckered, as if he had something nasty in his mouth.

The chief’s jaw was locked tight. He nodded once, a jerk of the head.

“I’d like to propose a working theory,” Lyle said. Mark could feel the whole room’s relief as the deputy chief changed the topic. “The chief hasn’t checked the house yet, but it appears at this time that this wasn’t a home invasion gone bad. Mrs. Van Alstyne had no obvious enemies. Chief, does anyone gain financially from her death?”

The chief’s mouth worked for a moment. He shook his head. “There’s her sister, Debbie. In Florida. My mom called to let her know last night. She has two grown sons. They get something. I think. We don’t have a whole lot. It’s mostly the house and the land, and that’s in both our names.”

“Insurance?”

“Just… just…” He seemed unable to find the words. His hands shaped a small rectangle.

“Burial expenses?” Kevin Flynn’s voice was so tentative, for a second Mark wasn’t sure he had really heard the younger man. The chief nodded.

“No financial gain,” Lyle said, writing the words on the whiteboard. “But”—he wrote
RUSS VAN ALSTYNE
on the board—“the victim was married to a cop.” Next to the chief’s name he wrote
20+
. “A cop who’s headed up our department for almost seven years. And who was an MP for twenty years before that.”

“Twenty-two,” the chief said automatically.

“Fact,” MacAuley said. “The perp either knew Mrs. Van Alstyne would be home alone or didn’t know the chief was away and expected to find him at home on Sunday.”

Mark could see the others nodding in agreement.

“Fact. Of the two Van Alstynes, a lot more bad guys have a hate-on for the chief than for his wife.”

“After thirty years of putting them away? Sure,” McCrea said.

“Theory. Linda Van Alstyne wasn’t the target of this murder. She was just the stand-in, either accidentally or incidentally, for her husband.” MacAuley slashed two heavy black lines beneath the chief’s name. “In other words, the intended victim isn’t Linda. It’s the chief.”

Russ Van Alstyne loved his house. After a lifetime of living in base housing or rental apartments, he had embraced the pleasures and pains of home ownership like an ecstatic embracing a demanding god. He restored the kitchen woodwork to its origins in the Second World War. He converted the cavernous walk-in attic into an all-modern-conveniences workspace. He reinforced the sagging barn floor so it could be used as a garage. He repainted it, clapboard, trim, and shutters, one side every summer.

Now he sat in his truck, in his driveway, looking at his house. Afraid to get out. Afraid he might throw up the moment he crossed the threshold.

“A cleaning crew’s already been in.” Lyle sat in the driver’s seat, waiting for him to get his act together. He had seen Russ in the station parking lot, fumbling with his keys, and roughly bumped him out of the way. “Shove it over,” he had said. “You’re not in any condition to drive.” Now he continued, “After the CS techs finished last night. The kitchen was cleaned.”

“That was fast.” There was a service in Albany that provided crime scene and biohazard cleanup, but it usually took a couple of days for them to make it to a job.

“I called in a few chips.”

“Oh.”

There was a silence.

“Russ, you have to go in sooner or later. And if you want the investigation to go forward, it’d better be sooner.”

“I know. It’s just—”

“I know.” Lyle nodded. “Look, how about we go in the front door?”

Except in the summertime, when they opened it to circulate air through the house, the formal front door was never used. In the winter, Russ didn’t bother to shovel it out, and he and Lyle would have to wade through several weeks’ worth of accumulated snow to reach it. But it was at the other end of the house from the kitchen. In fact, if he went in the front door, he might never have to set foot in the kitchen. He didn’t worry about later. He was living minute by minute now.

“Okay. Let’s.”