A Fountain Filled With Blood

Dr. Scheeler interrupted. “Gentlemen, you’re getting well out of my area of expertise. I’m going to bid you good night. Chief Van Alstyne, I’ll have my report to you as soon as possible.”

“Thanks, Doc. And thanks for being available to go to the scene on such short notice. We’re usually not this busy.”

The medical examiner’s teeth shone whitely in the darkness. “That’s okay. My patients never complain.” His car door thunked behind him and he backed out of his parking spot. Russ could hear Faith Hill on the radio, wailing away about breathing as the doctor drove away.

He turned back toward MacAuley. “I want to keep Noble tracking down anyone who knew Chris Dessaint. I want to know the people he ran with, what he liked to do, and whether or not he might have played McKinley and Colvin. First thing in the morning, we’re going back to his trailer and taking apart everything we didn’t touch the first time. Maybe we’ll find something that’ll let us close this case.”

“You don’t sound very hopeful.”

Russ sighed. He took off his glasses and tried to find a clean, dry spot on his shirt to polish them. “We still have that APB out on Jason Colvin?”

“Yeah.”

“We need to update it. Let everyone know the suspect we’re looking for may already be dead.”

Chapter Twenty-One

It was fifteen minutes after they left Robert Corlew’s boat slip in the marina that Clare finally understood, really understood, why someone would voluntarily live through winter after brutal winter in the north country. They had motored out past the docks, the mainsail billowing, until they passed some unmarked point and Corlew turned the boat away from the wind, swung out the boom, and told her and Terry Wright to run up the jib. The forty-two- foot boat surged forward like a thoroughbred let out at the Saratoga racetrack. Clare stood clutching the mast with one hand, half-sheltered from the brilliant sunlight by the red-and-white curve of the jib sail, as the boat surged and rose repeatedly beneath the soft soles of her old Keds. Ahead of her, the long lake stretched out forever. Its water, a forbidding slab of black in the winter, was dancing blue now, a thousand sparks of spray and sunlight flashing all around her. And at the shoreline, the mountains rose up out of the water, smoky blue and alpine green. It was like living in a fairy tale. She half-expected to see a white-towered castle rearing out of the forest.

“I think Story Land amusement park is over there somewhere.” Terry Wright waved in the direction of the opposite shore, where a little town emerged from the forest in a clutter of bright-roofed houses that ran down to the water’s edge. The rotund banker eased himself down until he was sitting on the deck, his feet braced against the low lip running beneath the rail line. Clare followed suit.

“I was just thinking it looked as if there ought to be a castle here somewhere.”

“There are. Fort Ticonderoga, at the head of the lake, at the point where it meets with Lake Champlain. And behind us, Fort William Henry. Fought over by the French and the Indians, the British, and the colonists. This place was called ‘the key to the continent’ in the eighteenth century. There’s been a lot of blood spilled into these waters at one time or another.” He smiled, his round cheeks sunburned underneath his enormous mustache. “That’s not, by the way, a hint that there will be today.”

Clare laughed. “Fair enough.” She leaned back on her elbows, closing her eyes and letting the sun sink into her bones. “Hard to imagine wars here at the moment. It seems like heaven to me.”

“There was a war over heaven, too, wasn’t there? And now look. The place is overrun with tourists, just like Lake George. Of course, heaven isn’t closed between October and May. I hope not anyway.” He laughed. Terry’s infectious laugh gave him a reputation as a comic because it made listeners join in even if what he said wasn’t particularly funny.

“What are you two nattering on about up there?” Mrs. Marshall’s voice cut through the rush of the water and the wind. “Come down here and join us. Robert’s breaking out the drinks.”

Clare followed Terry along the edge of the deck and dropped beside him onto a well-padded bench in the boat’s cockpit. Mrs. Marshall and Sterling Sumner were occupying the opposite bench, Sterling holding the wheel steady with one hand. His ever-present scarf, in deference to the eighty-degree weather, was of jaunty striped silk rather than wool, and one long end fluttered in the breeze.

As she bounced into place, Robert Corlew leaned out of the hatch, his wide shoulders nearly filling the space. The developer had unusually thick hair that sprang with suspicious abruptness from his forehead. Clare had thought today might be the day when she would finally be able to verify that it was a rug, but Corlew had a captain’s cap jammed firmly onto his head, hiding everything underneath. He handed two tall glasses up to Mrs. Marshall. “Lacey, gin and tonics for you and Sterling.” He turned his attention to the other bench. “Reverend Clare, Terry, what’s your poison?”

“Beer,” said Terry. “If I don’t keep working on it, this belly will disappear.” He laughed again.

“Same here,” Clare said. Corlew ducked out of sight and reappeared a moment later with two bottles, ice-cold and dripping. Clare handed Terry Wright his bottle and tilted hers back, drinking down a third of the beer at one go. “Boy, this sun sure makes you thirsty,” she said, lowering the bottle.

Mrs. Marshall was staring at her with exactly the same expression Grandmother Fergusson used the time she caught Clare in a burping contest with her cousins. Too late, Clare noticed the pair of glasses Corlew was holding in his other hand. Silently, he handed one to Terry, who proceeded to pour his beer. Corlew proffered the other glass to her.

“Unless you’d rather…” Swill it down like that, Clare thought, finishing the sentence for him. She smiled weakly and accepted the glass, then dutifully poured and handed her bottle back to Corlew.

I’m thirty-five years old, she reminded herself. I’m these people’s spiritual adviser. I’m not going to be intimidated by the fact that they’re all old enough to be my parents. She glanced at Mrs. Marshall. Or grandparents.

Robert climbed back out of the hatch with his own beer, in a glass, and slipped behind the large wheel to sit on the transom locker at the very stern of the boat. “Cheers, everyone,” he said, and raised his glass.

“Cheers,” they all replied.

Clare twisted in her seat to look back at the shoreline slipping past them. A boardwalk jutted into the water, crammed with arcades, T-shirt shops, and rickety stands selling Italian sausages and fried dough. A redheaded