yourselves.”
“Barb, give a quick poke to the sausages, will you?” Edith asked.
“In here’s my study. Right next to the kitchen in case I get a snack attack while working.” Vaughn let Clare and his wife enter the room, then shut the door behind them. The study was a monument to Fowler’s family and military career. Photos and maps and trophies and a few threadbare battalion flags.
“Working?” Clare asked, temporizing the moment of truth.
“On a history of Washington county.” He waved toward a pigeonholed desk, where an electric Remington typewriter sat next to several hardbound books. “It’s going to fill in the gaps other histories leave out.” Clare bent down to examine a black-and-white photograph of a lean young man in fatigues standing next to a general with a whole salad of ribbons on his chest. Both men were squinting into the sun, smiling stiffly.
“Sir. Is that you?”
“With my father. 1965. Day before I shipped to Vietnam.”
“You look just like him.” Clare straightened. Edith Fowler looked at her husband, who cocked his head toward Clare.
“You needed to speak with us about . . .”
She took a deep breath. “Sir . . . Vaughn . . . you recall when Chief Van Alstyne was showing the photographs of the dead girl in the parish hall? You said you’d never seen her before.”
“Of course I remember. That’s not the sort of everyday Sunday you’re likely to forget.”
“We know the girl’s identity now.”
“Yes, I know. Mitch and Barb told us all about it. Alyson identified her as one of her classmates.”
“Yes, sir. Her name was Katie McWhorter.” Clare clasped her hands behind her back. “Did your son ever mention that name?”
Fowler looked at his wife. “No,” she said. “What on earth does this have to do with Wes?”
“Today I discovered your son was seeing Katie McWhorter secretly. They were volunteers at the Infirmary together, as well as being in the same class at the high school. The director of nursing told me he used to see them sneaking off to neck. Whatever it was, it probably started in the fall, when Katie broke up with her boyfriend. It was certainly going on at Christmastime last year.”
“Wait a minute,” Fowler said, turning toward his wife again. “Wasn’t he going out with Alyson last year?”
“Of course he was.” Edith Fowler frowned at Clare. “If you had to speak with us about our son cheating on his girlfriend, Reverend Fergusson, I’m afraid I don’t see the point. Nor do I see that it’s any business of yours.”
Clare bit the tip of her tongue. “Katie McWhorter had a baby just a week or so before she was killed. So far, the police haven’t been able to identify the baby’s father.”
“So far? Are you suggesting—”
“Calm down, Edie. Clare, you don’t know our son. If anything, he’s overly responsible. And devoted to Alyson. Maybe he did have a little romance with this girl, but there’s no way he’d be so thoughtless as to risk a pregnancy.”
“This is ridiculous. How do you know it’s not some other boy anyway?”
“I have a photograph of them taken at the Infirmary Christmas party last year. It’s—” she reached into her pants pockets, coming up with nothing more than a fistful of change and a wadded tissue. “I left it in my coat pocket.” She let her hands drop. “I’m not saying that your son is involved in Katie McWhorter’s murder. I’m suggesting that he may have fathered her child. We know she had a boyfriend that she didn’t want her family to know about. Somebody accompanied her to a local motel around Thanksgiving and stayed with her while she had the baby. She named him Cody, wrote a note asking that he be adopted by Geoff and Karen Burns, and left him on the kitchen steps at St. Alban’s, despite having no connection to the church.” She flipped her hands open. “Don’t you see? Wes had a reason to want to stay anonymous. He was home around Thanksgiving, right?”
Vaughn Fowler nodded.
“And he’s a member of the church. He would have known about the Burnses looking for a child.”
Edith Fowler covered her mouth for a moment. “Oh, dear God. Vaughn, do you think . . . ?”
“I don’t know. It’s a long chain of supposition from just one link.” He looked at the floor, frowning. “Have you been to the police with this, yet?”
“No. Chief Van Alstyne is . . .” she paused, reining in the anger she still felt from yesterday. “. . . anxious to find the killer. He’s been frustrated so far, and he’s pouncing on possibilities without giving them much thought.” Had Geoff Burns been arrested yet? Not that Karen would call and tell her. “I’m afraid that if he hears about the connection between Wes and Katie, he’ll leap straight to the conclusion that Wes murdered her. And probably Darrell McWhorter as well.” Darrell had looked at the parish bulletin board before changing his mind about giving Cody to the Burnses. He had seen Wes’s picture there, with his family. And made a phone call that afternoon. “Does Wes have access to any money?” she asked.
“What?”
“Certainly. He has an account with a bank in West Point.”
“Sorry, I was just thinking.” A scared kid with his own cash made an easy target for blackmail. She glanced at Mrs. Fowler, leaning against her husband. Maybe their son was a murderer. One way or another, though, she was going to make damn sure she had gathered some evidence before handing the boy over to Russ’s tender mercies. “Let me check this out some before we involve the police,” she said.
Vaughn nodded. “I want Wes here to answer questions.” He looked at his watch. “I can head for West Point later this afternoon and bring him back tomorrow morning first thing.”
“Good. I’m going down to Albany. Katie’s sister gave me the address yesterday. I’ll talk to Katie’s housemates, and see what they remember. Do you have a picture of Wes I could borrow?” She looked around the room. All the
