“No. With the Capital Medical Center trauma unit.” She straightened. “This is the third time I’ve gotten approached about a job with bigger responsibilities and better benefits. I’m getting tired of saying no just so you can grow up to be Russ Van Alstyne.”
He opened his mouth to say something. He didn’t know what it would be, just that it would be bigger and nastier and would cut her like she’d just cut him.
Then the phone rang.
“This conversation is not over,” she said, pointing a shaking finger at the bedside table.
“It might be the station.” He reached for the phone.
“Probably the chief. I’m sure he’s got lots of time to devote to work now his wife’s thrown his sorry ass out-”
“Hello,” he answered.
“Mark? It’s Lyle MacAuley.”
Mark frowned. Why would the deputy chief be calling him five hours before he was due in? “What’s up?”
“I need you to do something. Can you get away from home?”
Mark’s eyes flicked toward Rachel, who was hopping into a pair of jeans, swearing under her breath. “Yeah,” he said.
“I need you to pick up the chief and bring him to the station.”
“Pick him up? Is there something wrong with his truck?” Another oddity popped into his mind. “Hey, isn’t this his day off?”
“He’s staying at his mother’s, up where Old Route 100 crosses the river and heads toward Lake Lucerne. You know the place?”
“Yeah, but it’s gonna take me thirty minutes to drive there in this weather. Why-”
MacAuley cut him off. “His mom said he’s gone to the market. It could be the local Kwik-mart, or he might have gone all the way to the IGA. I need you to find him, get him into your vehicle, and bring him in.”
Mark stared out the window, where the snow was falling relentlessly out of a dark sky. Behind him, Rachel was still muttering baleful comments. “Lyle, what the hell is going on?”
“I’ll tell you when you get to the station. And Mark-no lights. Keep radio silence. I mean that. Don’t even turn your damn radio on.”
“But-”
“I’ll see you as soon as I can.” There was a click, and Mark was left listening to the angry buzz of a dead line.
He turned to Rachel. “I have to go.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “What’s more important than you being satisfied in your work? Certainly not anything I might have to say.” Her words whipped past him like the winter wind, annoying, but not something he paid attention to when he was thinking hard. As he was now.
What the hell was going on?
FIVE
Noble Entwhistle was about as solid and unimaginative an officer as Lyle MacAuley had ever worked with. He was the guy who did the door to door, called everyone on the thirty-page phone list, worked the radar gun. If you wanted leaps of deduction or seat-of-the-pants interviewing, he was no good, but if you wanted methodical, if you wanted organized, if you wanted polite to old ladies, you wanted Noble Entwhistle.
Lyle never in a million years could have pictured him hunched over in the snow, crying snot-faced, unable to speak.
Noble had made it three steps out of the kitchen door of 398 Peekskill Road before collapsing, openmouthed and weeping. He had reholstered his flashlight but forgotten to turn it off, and now a beam of light jerked up and down as his tree-sized back shook with sobs. Fat snowflakes blazed for a moment in glory and then vanished into the deepening drifts on the ground.
None of the three police vehicles parked in the drive had its lights on. Lyle had radioed them to go dark almost as soon as he had gotten the brief from Harlene, their dispatcher. Instead, he had left the mudroom door, open when they arrived, pushed wide. Warm light spilling out. Cold air seeping in.
“Jesus, Noble,” he said. “Try to pull it together.”
Noble twisted his head in Lyle’s direction. “Pull it together,” he gasped out. “Did you… did you see her? Her face is just
Lyle, shadowed against the bright light spilling from the mudroom and screened by the fast-falling snow, knew he was no more than a blur to his officer. And thank God for it. His self-control was hanging by a thread. One wrong word, one tiny misstep, and he was going to lose it as bad as Noble. Poor sonofabitch. He racked up his voice to make a steady shot. “I saw her.” Butchered like an animal. “You’re not going to help her by falling apart.”
He scanned the road. A lone car drove toward them, slowed down, and kept on going. Good. He heard the muffled crunch of boots through loose and packed layers of snow. “Whaddya got, Eric?”
“I completed the friend’s statement.” Officer Eric McCrea’s features emerged out of the darkness as he plodded toward the long rectangle of light. “Are you sure you don’t want me to run her down to the station and get it on video?”
“No.”
Eric leaned in closer, as if to pierce the shadow cast by the brim of Lyle’s cap. “This is not the time for shortcuts. We’re going to catch the fucker who did this, and when we do, we don’t want him getting off because we were half-assed putting the evidence together.”
Lyle drew in a breath to ream McCrea out, but cut it short with a click of his teeth. It wasn’t his fault. He was on edge. They all were. And Lyle wasn’t going to be able to carry this off by himself. He was going to need one or two others backing him up. Containment-that was going to be the trick.
“Well?” Eric demanded.
A brilliant splash of light broke their stare-off. Another vehicle was churning up the driveway’s slope, its headlights bouncing through the billows of white.
“Shit. That’s Kevin Flynn’s truck.” Lyle glared at McCrea. “Did you call him?”
“No. But what if I did? What the hell’s the deal, MacAuley?”
The almost-new Aztek looked like what it was, the prize possession of a boy who got his first learner’s permit seven years ago. It rumbled to a stop behind McCrea’s badly angled squad car, and Flynn jumped out. Kevin, the most junior officer of the Millers Kill Police Department, was finally getting enough meat on his bones to lessen his resemblance to a six-foot Howdy Doody puppet. In an effort to look older than sixteen, he had lately grown a soul patch, a would-be-cool square of facial hair beneath his lower lip. Unfortunately, Flynn’s facial hair was the same color as the stuff on top, and he now looked-to Lyle’s old and uncool eyes, at least-as if he had an enormous furry freckle on his chin.
“Harlene called me! On my cell phone!” Kevin kicked through the snow, his face open and eager. “I told her I wasn’t working today, but she said to get over here. Whadda we doing at the chief’s house?” He had gotten close enough to finally make out Lyle’s and Eric’s expressions. He frowned. “Guys? What’s up?”
Harlene called him. Lyle’s heart sank. Christ, she was probably ringing up every guy on the force to pitch in. How the hell was he going to manage this now?
Behind him, Noble lurched upright, a messy, tear-sodden bear emerging from its den. Flynn saw him. “Noble?” He turned to Lyle. He looked scared. “Is it… is it the chief?”
“No.”
The one-word answer didn’t do anything to relieve the anxiety on Kevin’s face. Lyle breathed in and tried again. “The chief is fine, Kevin. We’re trying to… deal with a crime scene here without drawing too much attention to ourselves.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Eric’s jaw swing open. “This is what you can do for me. Take your truck and park it at the intersection of Peekskill and River Road. You got your flares?”
Kevin nodded.
“Good. I’ve called in the state police CS unit. They’re going to be sending a van and a couple of techs, and I
