He turned onto Church Street, where the shops were older, considerably less glamorous, and the pedestrian traffic a lot lighter. The thought of Biretti’s put him in mind of his mother. He hadn’t even called her to see if she had gotten home all right. His sister Janet had reached him that morning at the station, and she had given him an earful before letting him know she would be picking Mom up at the courthouse. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and scowled, causing the man who was in the crosswalk in front of the cruiser to sprint across to the other side. All he was trying to do was his job, as best as he knew how, and every woman in his life was dumping on him for it.
He swung around the small park at the end of Church Street and drove onto Elm. The rectory was dark, but a few of the stained-glass windows of St. Alban’s Church were glowing, the ones farthest from the door. He frowned. He didn’t think there were any services on Monday.
He parked the cruiser in Clare’s drive and walked back down the sidewalk to St. Alban’s entrance on Church Street. He decided not to think about the fact that he knew the Episcopal church’s worship schedule, even though the last time he had attended any religious services regularly was back in junior high. And then only because he had had a crush on a girl in the Methodist Youth Group.
He pushed against one of the great wooden doors and it swung open silently. He stepped through the narthex into the body of the church and paused to let his eyes become accustomed to the dimness. The sky outside was still orange and red, but the twilight glow couldn’t pierce the stained-glass windows that punctuated the stone walls. There wasn’t a single electric light on anywhere. He walked forward in a few more steps, hesitant about trespassing in the middle of a service. But there was no one sitting in the rows of pews. His eyes followed them, rank on rank, to the front of the church. Past the gilt and mahogany altar rail, past the plain rectangular table draped in embroidered linens, past the choir’s gleaming pews and Gothic arches was Clare. White-robed, on the steps leading up to an ornately decorated high altar, where a mass of candles provided all the light in the world. Her back was to him, her head bent over what he guessed was a book.
“Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”
Her voice wasn’t pitched to carry, but whoever had shaped the space had known what he was doing. In the cool silence of the empty church, Russ could hear her as well as if he were standing next to her.
“Keep watch, dear Lord, over those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love’s sake.”
He walked up the center aisle quietly, as the place seemed to demand, although not trying to hide his presence. He wondered if she really believed in angels swooping around, watching over people, or if that was just the company line.
She started singing in a clear alto voice: “Lord, you now have set your servant free, to go in peace as you have promised; for these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see….” It wasn’t a song exactly, more like a chant, rising and falling from one line to the next, even though there wasn’t any rhyme and only scant rhythm. She dropped back into speech to conclude, “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace. The almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”—he could see the movements of her arm as she crossed herself—“bless us and keep us.”
He joined in on her “Amen.” It seemed like the polite thing to do. She stilled for a moment, then pivoted. She squinted. Facing the candles as she had been, the rest of the church must have looked pitch-black.
“It’s me,” he said, stepping up to the first cloth-covered altar.
“Russ?” She sounded as if this were the last place on the planet she would expect to find him. “What are you doing here? I mean”—she glided down the steps from the high altar, her robes lending a sober grace to her usually athletic movements—“I would have thought you’d be at the station.”
“I’m not on call,” he said. “I wasn’t actually scheduled for duty today.” He shrugged. “But you know. Murder knows no overtime, or something like that.”
“But didn’t they call you on the radio? Earlier today, at the construction site, I found out—well, I wanted to tell you in person, so I left you that note, but then after I got home, I figured it was irresponsible to wait, so I called the station and spoke to Officer MacAuley—that is, Deputy Chief—”
“I know who he is, Clare. Get to the point.”
She grinned. “The man who owned the red truck. I told him I knew who he was.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was faster to call the station from Clare’s office than to retrace his steps and use the radio in his car. She had shown him to her desk and then excused herself to change out of her vestments. He was talking to Lyle MacAuley when she slipped quietly back into the office.
“We ran the registration, and sure enough, it’s a ’ninety-four Chevy pickup, registered to one Elliott McKinley. He’s got a few arrests on his sheet: one obstructing, a couple drunk and disorderlies, never anything that went anywhere. He pled out to everything. Eric remembered him from his last arrest, which was about two years back. He thinks this guy is a hanger-on. He was one of half a dozen guys: Eric and Noble and Nathan Bougeron—you remember Bougeron, right?”
Russ did. He was one of the several promising young officers who had headed south to the state troopers’ barracks in Loudonville during the five years Russ had been chief of the department. He’d worry that there was something wrong with his style of management, except every one of them had cited the same reason for leaving: better pay and more chances for advancement.
“Anyway, they broke up a fight outside the Dew Drop Inn. McKinley got picked up for obstructing, along with everyone else. But get this—he was there with Arnie Rider, who was the one who had started the fight.”
“Hold on. Is this the same Arnie Rider—”
“Who’s doing twenty years in Comstock for stabbing Chhouk, that Cambodian immigrant, yep. Get this. The Dew Drop brawl was a week before the stabbing. According to McKinley’s sheet, he was brought in and questioned about the Chhouk murder, but he didn’t turn anything useful.”
“Do you have McKinley?”
“Not yet. Eric and I went over in civvies right after Reverend Fergusson called. He lives in a rooming house on Raceway Street, down past the mills. No truck in sight, and there’s no parking provided by the landlord, so he would have had to keep it on the street. It must be stashed somewhere. He wasn’t home, and the landlord didn’t know
