Russ sat down in a red leatherette chair, cradling his coffee to warm his hands. “She was hit in the back of the head by something heavy and blunt, hard enough to make her unconscious. Then she was rolled off the trail downhill, to the edge of the kill. The medical examiner believes she died of hypothermia, that she never woke up.”
“How did she get out there? Do you know?”
“Only that it was a four-wheel-drive vehicle with all-weather tires. The wheel width indicates a truck or a sport-utility vehicle. We don’t know if your sister was conscious when she reached the trail, or if her killer drove her there after she had been knocked out.”
Kristen closed her hands over her face again for a moment. “What a weird thing to say,” she said. “Her killer. Like, her sister, her teacher, her boyfriend. Her killer. Somebody with a relationship to her.” She frowned. “Was she molested? Had she been, you know . . .”
“No,” Russ said. He glanced at Clare.
“What? What is it?” Kristen’s gaze flickered between the two of them. He tilted his head, passing the job of telling about the baby to the one who had found him.
“There is something else, Kristen,” Clare said. “According to the medical report, Katie had a baby within the past two weeks. We have strong reason to believe that she, or someone, left the baby on the back steps of St. Alban’s church a week ago. He’s in foster care right now.”
“He?”
“A little boy, yes. She left a note, naming him Cody.”
Kristen’s face contorted. “Oh . . . she always loved that name. She used to say if she had a boy, she’d name him Cody, and if she had a girl, she’d name her Corinne.” She squeezed her nose and eyes, trying to stifle more tears. “I can’t believe Katie would give her baby away. I just can’t believe it. Unless he made her!”
“Who made her, Kristen?”
She was crying openly now, shaking her head. “Our father.”
Clare and Russ looked at each other. “Your father would’ve made her give up her child because she wasn’t married?” Clare asked.
“No, no . . .” Kristen blew her nose on one of the paper napkins Harlene had piled next to the strudel. She took a shaky breath. “My father would have forced her to give up a baby if he was its father.”
Russ felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of the kill’s icy water over him. Clare was pale, but calm. “Kristen, what are you saying? Did your father sexually abuse Katie?”
Kristen pushed her hands through her short hair. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. But he used to do it to me.”
“Jesus,” Russ exclaimed, under his breath.
“Can you tell us, Kristen?”
The girl looked at Clare, indecision and grief warring on her features. “It’s hard. It’s hard to talk about.”
“Listen, Kristen,” Russ said, “You don’t have to be afraid of your father. Give me his name and address and he’ll be in the county jail before five o’clock.” With maybe an unscheduled stop on the way, where the bastard could fall down a few flights of stairs by accident. Nobody at the jail would make a comment.
“No, please!” Kristen said. “I don’t want to press charges. I got away, and that’s all I wanted. I thought Katie had escaped, too . . .”
“Tell us, Kristen. You don’t have to sign out a complaint against your father if you don’t want to.” Clare forestalled Russ’s complaint with a swift glance that said, “Back off.”
“I . . . I . . .”
Clare held out her hand, flat on the tabletop. “Take my hand and tell me. If it gets too hard, just squeeze as tightly as you can.”
The girl tentatively placed her hand in the priest’s. She took another breath heavy with unshed tears. “Okay. I’ll try.” She shut her eyes. “My father started in on me when I was around fourteen or so. Katie would have been twelve. I wasn’t dumb, I knew that what he was doing was wrong. But I was afraid to tell anyone, because without him, how would we live? He had his business—and he’s got disability and social security money. Mom was useless. Worse than useless. She would have denied he was fooling with me up one side and down another. Besides, she would have fallen apart without him. So I just . . . hung on. I knew girls who dropped out of school, or got pregnant to get a boy or the state to take care of them, but I wanted something more than that. I knew that if I could just last until I finished high school, I could get a decent job, make enough money to live on. So that’s what I did.”
“For four years?” Clare asked quietly.
“Uh huh.”
Russ felt sick. His muscles shook from the effort of sitting still and not pacing around the room, pounding on the walls.
“I started working at the bank the day after I graduated, and as soon as I had my first paycheck, I was out of there. I begged Katie to come with me, but she wouldn’t. She said Mom needed her.” She bit down on her lip. “I think she was worried that it would be too much, me trying to support the two of us until Katie finished high school. And she was really ambitious, too. She was so smart, her teachers all said she could get a scholarship. She wanted a college degree more than anything.”
“That’s how she got to the State University at Albany? A scholarship?”
“For her tuition, yeah. She’s been covering her room and board with student loans, and working for her book and spending money.” Russ could see Kristen’s hand tighten over Clare’s. “I didn’t know—before I left home, he never touched her. And she didn’t mention anything to me. But maybe she wouldn’t have. She was, I don’t know, sort of distant her last semester in high school. We didn’t get together as much. But I knew she was busy, working at the Infirmary and studying and all that.” She looked at Russ, pleading. “I mean, she would have told me if he
