All Mortal Flesh

up,” she said, turning off the engine. With the blower and wipers off, she could hear the storm beating against the car, the wind whistling and thumping, the snow hissing and tapping.

Hearing it still didn’t prepare her for steeping out into it. A cold gust clouted the side of her head, and she tugged her hat down deep over her ears and eyes. Elizabeth emerged from the other side of the car with her scarf wound around her head and across her face.

At least it’ll keep her from going over my career prospects, Clare thought. She headed down the drive.

“Where are you going?” Elizabeth pointed behind them. “The house is that way!”

“I saw a pickup parked in the barn,” Clare yelled. “I’m not sure, but I think it might be Quinn Tracey’s.”

Elizabeth, either bowing to Clare’s wisdom or eager to get out of the storm, nodded. She followed in Clare’s tracks. They waded across the road and up the ramp, entering the barn along with the wind and the snow that was coating the truck’s bed. Clare walked far enough forward to get out of the worst of it.

“Is this his truck?” Elizabeth asked, tugging her scarf beneath her chin.

Clare pointed to the attached plow. “I don’t know, but I’m willing to guess so.”

“Where do you think they are?”

Clare walked farther in, until there was nothing but wide wooden flooring beneath her feet. Straight across from them, another double door was firmly closed against the weather. Just as in the cattle pens below, a transverse aisle ran the length of the barn. The remainder of the barn, two levels strutted with dark, hand-cut beams, was filled with hay. Hay in tightly rolled, spiraling bales. Hay in silvery-green mounds.

Elizabeth sneezed.

Clare looked toward the east end of the barn. Nothing there but a two-story-high wall pierced with five windows at irregular intervals. The window glass, rippled and melting with age, was crusting over with frost. The barn was, Clare realized, shaped very much like a church.

Elizabeth sneezed again. “Where do you think they are?”

“There’s a poultry barn and an equipment shed out back, but I doubt they’re there,” Clare said. “I suspect the downstairs is the hangout of choice. It’s the cattle pen, and it has to be a good twenty degrees warmer than it is up here.”

“Sounds good to me. How do we get there?”

Clare swiveled around. “There’s a door outside, but when I was here last time, I saw a ladder coming down from the west end, there. Look.” Sure enough, they could see two grainy supports and three rungs sticking up out of the floor.

Elizabeth sneezed. “It better be nailed in place.”

“Do you have allergies?”

Elizabeth looked at her with watery and red-rimmed eyes. “Yes. The sooner I can get out of here, the happier I’ll be.”

“Do you want to go back to the car?”

“Doh.” The deacon was as grim as Clare had ever seen her.

“Okay. Give me a sec to check the inside of the pickup, and then we’ll go down. I want to go first.”

“Of course.”

Clare couldn’t tell whether de Groot was being sarcastic or just prissy. Either way, she’d better hurry. She strode back to the pickup. The wind ripped into her as she stood on the running board and looked inside. She opened the driver’s door and slid in on her knees. Maps in the door pockets, three scrapers stuffed behind the seat. She popped open the glove compartment. Insurance and registration, in Quinn Tracey’s name. Paper napkins left over from a fast-food joint. Beneath them, two condom packages and a tin box of breath mints. What her brothers used to call their Hope Springs Eternal Kit.

In other words, nothing. No blood smears, no hidden K-Bar. She flipped down the sun visors and was startled by a piece of paper fluttering to the floor-mat. She pawed at it, clumsy in her gloves, until it came up into her hand.

Dear Mom and Dad,

I am sorry. I tried and tried but I could not control my urges and now a woman is dead. My friends tried to help me but no one knows that I am a killer inside. I am responsible. No one else but me. I’m sorry, but this is the only way I know to stop myself.

Quinn

“Sweet holy-” Clare stuffed the typed note into her pocket and slid out of the car. She looked around wildly. “Elizabeth? Elizabeth!”

The ladder. She hadn’t waited. Clare sprinted toward the west end of the barn, her boots thudding on the boards, almost skidding into the open square that led downstairs. She grabbed the edges of the ladder and scurried down, jumping the last rungs.

Too late. Elizabeth stared at Clare, eyes wide and terrified, frozen into stillness by the glittering knife held against her throat.

FORTY-EIGHT

Russ kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the switchback he was negotiating.

“I should have guessed. Even this comes back to Clare Fergusson. Did she come running to comfort you as soon as she heard the good news?”

He saw Debbie’s lights in the rearview mirror. She had made the curve safely.

“Boy, is she going to be pissed off when she finds out I’m still alive.”

I’m not going to mention Lyle, he told himself. I’m not going to mention Lyle. That was serious, deep-talking, kick-in-the-guts stuff.

Linda was quiet as they went through another turn down the mountain. They were getting close to the public road. He hoped the plows had been through.

“So who do you think did it now? I mean, who would want to kill our cat sitter?”

Ours? It’s not my damn cat. “We’re looking for Dennis Shambaugh, her boyfriend. His fingerprints were at the scene, and he fled when I went to question him.” Linda had never much cared for hearing about the details of cases he worked on. It struck him that this was one of the most detailed discussions of a crime they had ever had. Of course, it was also the first time anyone had been killed in their kitchen.

“I can’t believe it,” Linda said. “My God, I met him. And then he turns out to be a murderer? I never would have guessed it.”

He slowed down but didn’t stop at the sign at the bottom of the Algonquin’s road. A quick look told him nothing was coming in either direction. He rolled onto the white and featureless expanse of Sacandaga Road.

“Where’d you meet him?” he asked.

“At the house. He dropped Audrey off.” She turned in her seat. “Who’s been taking care of Bobbitt?”

“Who’s Bobbitt?”

“My cat.”

“You named the cat Bobbitt? As in, Lorena Bobbitt?” He shook his head. “The responders took it to the county shelter.”

“You let them take her to the shelter?”

“I had a few other things on my mind than the damn cat, Linda.”

“I can’t believe you! You thought I was dead, and you didn’t even bother to keep the last living connection to me.”

“If you wanted me to have a connection with the cat, you might have tried telling me about it. Or-hey, here’s an idea! You get me to watch the cat while you’re gone instead of hiring a woman whose boyfriend is a convicted felon! Oh, but wait. That would have required you to mention that you were going to disappear for a week!”