might find out there, not about trace evidence in her vehicle.”
“If she just dumped him out here, there might not be anything in her car anyway.”
“That’s right. And in that case, bringing her back to the scene might just sweat something out of her.”
“Okay. I’ll see you when you get here. Make sure you got your boots on. It’s colder’n a witch’s tit out here.”
Russ laughed as he hung up. He skipped Harlene and called John Huggins, the volunteer fire department chief, directly. He explained the situation and asked John to turn out his men in their cold-weather gear for a search.
“I’ll call Glens Falls and tell them to take any calls we might get,” Huggins said. “This’ll be good for my boys. We been practicing turning out for lost hikers and whatnot. Nighttime work’ll be a challenge. See ya there in twenty.”
“Drive carefully-,” Russ said, but Huggins had already hung up. Sometimes Russ suspected the main reason John Huggins had devoted years of his life to the squad was because it gave him a legal excuse to drive like a bat out of hell.
He hung up the phone and walked back into the living room. Clare was down on one knee in front of the fireplace, nudging a log into place with an iron poker. Debba was sitting where he had left her, tucked into the corner of the sofa, arms wrapped around her knees. “Dr. Rouse’s car is still there, but he’s nowhere to be found. The fire department search team and the mountain rescue folks are on their way, and I’d like you to come back there with me, Debba.”
“Me?”
“You’re the last person known to have spoken to the doctor. You may be able to help the searchers in some way.” Clare rose, looking at him suspiciously. He was willing to bet that the next words out of her mouth would cut right though that bit of tissue paper he had just hung up, so he went right for her weak spot. “If he got confused and wandered off, there’s a chance we can still save him. But we don’t have much time. The mountains are a bad place to be lost on a bitter cold night.”
As Clare knew firsthand, having narrowly escaped hypothermia and frostbite last winter. He could see the unpleasant memories flicker behind her eyes, erasing, at least for the moment, her doubts about Russ’s motives in bringing Debba along. He felt a twinge of guilt, but absolved himself with the thought that it might, after all, be true.
Debba uncurled from her protective position and stood up.
“Do you want me to make you a thermos of hot coffee?” Clare asked her. “To take in your car?”
“We’ll take my truck,” Russ said. Both women looked at him. This time, it was Debba who frowned.
“It’ll be a lot simpler for me to go home from the reservoir,” she said. “Unless you don’t think I’ll be going home?” Her voice held a challenge.
He tucked his thumbs into his belt. “Your tire tracks are already part of the scene. No need to add confusion by having another set around.”
Clare frowned, too. No wonder. That sounded lame, even to him.
“I don’t feel comfortable with that,” Debba said.
“I’m sorry about that. But I need your car to stay here, away from the scene.” He kept his tone even, glossing over the fact that he had almost said “the crime scene.”
Debba looked at Clare. “I’ll drive you,” Clare said.
“Wait a minute-” Russ began.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s no problem.”
“
“Okay, I’ll hit the bathroom and then we can go.” Debba vanished upstairs.
“You can’t-,” he tried again.
“I don’t know what you’re up to,” Clare said, rounding on him, “but I don’t entirely trust you.”
“This is police business, Clare-”
“This is human business, Russ,” she said, mimicking his tone. Her voice softened. A little. “I know you’ll stay meticulously within the law. But you wouldn’t see anything wrong with manipulating that woman into getting whatever you need out of her.”
“A life may be at stake.”
She jerked her chin up. “Tell me you think Dr. Rouse is still alive. And make me believe it.”
He was silent.
“If he is alive, another pair of eyes won’t hurt. And if he’s dead, and you’re planning on pinning it on Debba, well, then she’ll need a friend.”
He felt his hands clenching and forced them to relax. “God save me from do-gooders.”
She grinned. “Not a chance. God has plans for you.”
He shook his head. “Keep out of the way. Do not talk to anyone at the scene. And for God’s sake, put something warm on.”
Chapter 14
Well, she thought, two out of three’s not bad. She might not have been prepared for her first North Country winter, but she was a fast learner, and thanks to last spring’s sales and this year’s Christmas presents, she was as well protected from the cold as any of the men clumped around the hood of the volunteer fire chief’s Jeep Cherokee.
The chief, who had introduced himself as “Huggins-John Huggins,” was scoping out her qualifications. “You ever done anything like this before?” He was a short, well-braced two-by-four of a man, wearing a hat with flaps that fell to his chin and a suspicious expression. He reminded her of a crew chief she had met on her first posting, a lifer who had called her “girly.” One of the guys handing out equipment from the Jeep looked over at her, and she felt uncomfortably like the shaky second lieutenant she had been back then.
“I was a helicopter pilot in the army for nine years,” she said. “I’ve been trained in search and rescue.” Admittedly, that was searching and rescuing from the air. Who would waste a pilot by having her walk grids on the ground? But there wasn’t any air support for this operation, and if she couldn’t persuade Huggins-John Huggins to let her join in the search party, she’d be stuck sitting in her car, going crazy.
She had driven to this spot in the middle of County Road nowhere, parked obediently where Officer Durkee directed her, and sat patiently in her Shelby while Russ escorted Debba past the halogen-light poles shoved upright in the snowbanks on the opposite side of the road and the two of them disappeared into the shadows leading toward the reservoir.
But when the cars and pickups and SUVs started to arrive, stringing along the edge of the narrow roadside and disgorging members of the volunteer fire department, it suddenly struck her: Maybe Allan Rouse really was alive, injured, disoriented, slowly freezing to death in the snowy woods. And here she was, sitting on her tail in her comfy car while other people prepared to turn out and look for him. It wasn’t so much that she decided to volunteer, but that she was out of the car, pulling on her hat, before she decided not to.
“You. Were in the army.” Huggins squinted at her. He unsnapped a kangaroo pouch on his anorak and pulled out a topographical map, similar to the ones his men were spreading out over the hood of his truck. He folded it open and handed it to her. “Can you locate us on this map?”
The moon was near full, spotlighting down on them all when it wasn’t covered by fast-skimming stratocumulus clouds promising more snow. Of course, the search and rescue boys all had flashlights trained on their maps. She glanced over at them, then squatted down, her back to the warm artificial lights, and let her eyes adjust to the moon’s hard brightness. She scanned the map, flipped it over, unfolded it, and located the road and the reservoir. “Here,” she said, rising and holding the map out to Huggins.
“Okay,” he said, slowly. “Can you show me the inside and outside search boundaries?”
This guy wasn’t as much of an amateur as she had taken him for. “What’s the average walking speed in snow?”
