There was a confusing sentence about Heather, who had missed an organic chemistry final.
“Good. I want you to give her a yell—” he held the phone away from his ear as she did just that. “Uh . . . good girl. You make sure she stays with you until you’re feeling calmer, okay? If you need to, you go on over to the university clinic and tell ’em what happened. There’ll be someone you can talk with there, maybe fix you up with a sedative if you need one.” Wet, weepy snuffles. “I’m going to give you the number of the police station here in Millers Kill. You got a pen and paper? Good girl.” He told her his direct office line. “I’ll be calling you to talk later, Emily, but in the meanwhile, if you think of anything, anything at all, call that number. If I’m not there, you can talk to our dispatcher, Harlene.”
Emily blubbed a watery thank you and hung up, promising to call with any information she might have.
Kristen was gamely struggling her way into her long black coat, crying soundlessly, mopping her face with the ineffectual tissues. “Would you like me to come with her?” the manager asked, her face creased with what Russ judged to be equal parts worry over her employee and the prospect of leaving the bank unattended on a Monday morning.
“No, I have a, um, grief specialist waiting for us at the morgue. We’ll make sure Miss McWhorter’s taken care of.”
He held the office door open for the women. “Kristen, don’t worry about coming in to work tomorrow,” the manager said. “I’ll make sure your shifts are covered. Take all the time you need, honey.” She hugged the girl awkwardly.
Outside, it was another bitterly cold and clear day. Kristen rubbed her gloved hands over her cheeks as they drove. The heater wheezed and complained and started warming the car minutes before they reached the county morgue’s parking lot. Clare was already there, waiting in an older-model cherry-red MG that was going to give her more trouble than she could imagine on the winter roads. She got out as he parked the cruiser.
“Let’s get inside before we do introductions,” he yelled across the lot. She nodded and disappeared into the building, climbing the steps two at a time. He held Kristen’s arm to steady her until they got into the waiting room, then released her to help her out of her enormous coat. She had stopped crying and was looking around her with the same absorption she would have shown watching a fascinating movie. Not that there was anything fascinating about the dun-colored walls that someone had attempted to brighten with scenic travel posters. He had seen that look before, many times. It was the look you got when the bottom fell out of your world, and your own life seemed as distant and unreal as any big-screen fantasy.
“Kristen?” Clare took the girl’s coat from Russ and tossed it on a chair next to her own. “I’m Clare Fergusson.” She held out a hand to Kristen, who took it mechanically. “I was there when your sister’s body was discovered.” Kristen’s lips flexed and quivered. “I’m also a priest.” Given the clerical collar peeking out from underneath her black sweater, Russ thought that was pretty self-evident. He went to the window separating the waiting room from records storage. Tapping the bell three times brought the morgue assistant, who took in the scene in the waiting room and went to unlock the inner doors without a word. “Would you like me to come with you?” Clare went on, gently leading Kristen to the hallway. “Sometimes, it can make it less scary to be with someone else.”
Kristen stopped, looked into Clare’s face. “I’ve never seen a body before,” she said. “Isn’t that strange?”
“No, not strange at all,” Clare said, linking her arm through the girl’s. “It’s not bad, like you might think. Death looks different from life, from sleeping, but it’s not ugly.”
Russ had seen more than a few ugly deaths in his time, but he knew enough to keep his mouth shut. The attendant paused at a small desk outside of the body storage room. “We’re here to identify the Jane Doe,” Russ said quietly.
The attendant made a note in the log book. “She’s in number three,” he said, looking at Kristen’s black- smeared face. “You can go in alone, miss, or I could come with you, or . . . ?”
She shook her head at the young man and tightened her hold on Clare’s arm. “Will you come?” she asked. “I forgot your name.”
“I’m Clare. Yes, I’ll come with you.”
The attendant opened the dull metal door. Russ caught a glimpse of white tile and harsh fluorescent lighting before the door closed again, Clare and Kristen on the other side. It was a lousy place for a person to end up, laid out naked in a stainless steel drawer. Of course, there were worse ways to finish it. Zippered inside a body bag and hustled into a refrigerated cargo hold, for instance. He shut his hand reflexively. At times like these, he could still feel the material they made those bags from. He stilled his breathing, forcing himself not to get impatient to leave Death’s waiting room. What the hell was taking them so long?
Clare pushed the door open, letting Kristen pass through first. The girl looked into Russ’s eyes, her own dazed, full of clouds. “It’s her. It’s my sister.” She bit down hard on her lip. “I thought . . . I thought she’d finally be safe once she was in Albany. Once she was away. Why did she come back?” Fresh tears rose in her eyes. “Why did she come back?”
CHAPTER 9
“Kristen, what did you mean when you said you thought your sister would be safe once she was away at school?” Russ handed Kristen black coffee in a mug decorated with fat country sheep and geese, part of a set his sister had given them one Christmas that he and Linda had agreed were too damn cutesie-poo to keep at home. He hated Styrofoam cups: too small, too fragile, and too wasteful.
Kristen bent over the mug until her face was almost obscured by ink-colored hair and steam. “Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He dumped three teaspoons of sugar into another mug and handed it to Clare. She was sitting kitty-corner to Kristen, a Millers Kill P.D. tape recorder at her left hand. After Kristen had identified her sister’s body, the girl couldn’t get out of the morgue fast enough. She had agreed to give her statement at the police station, where Harlene, in full mother-hen mode, had fussed over her, fetching coffee and strudel from the dispatch room, opening the shades in the briefing room to let in the sunlight.
“You know, sometimes, the first thing that comes to mind is the right thing, no matter how bizarre or improbable it seems,” Clare said. “It could be your intuition was trying to tell you something. What was it, Kristen?”
The young woman put down her mug and smoothed her hands over her face. She had washed up in the station’s unisex bathroom—unisex by virtue of having both urinals and a tampon machine—and without her black and purple and red makeup, she looked like one of the pretty country girls from up the hills past Cossayaharie. Katie must have borne a strong resemblance to her sister before her death.
“Can you tell me how she died?”
