To Darkness And To Death

Russ’s eyes looked a long, long way off, into a place Shaun couldn’t go. After, he said. After, you feel cold.

Shaun looked into his own fifty-year-old eyes and felt something Russ had left out. Or maybe, being a nineteen-year-old grunt, he hadn’t known the feeling for what it was. Exultation. And power. Let Terry McKellan sit behind a desk and say yes or no. Let the Reid-Gruyn board cluster around a table voting up and down. He had exercised real power, the ultimate power. He was taking his destiny into his own hands.

Don’t get cocky, he thought. Events were still too fluid, too slippery. Squeeze too tightly or hold too loosely and he could be right back where he had been, waiting for the ax to fall on Reid-Gruyn. Except this time he’d be waiting inside a jail cell. But if he were smart, and daring and, most important, willing to use the power he had taken into his hands… he looked down at them. Flexed his fingers. Let himself think, for the first time since he had hauled Millie van der Hoeven out of that tower, that maybe there could be another accident.

3:05 P.M.

Lisa Schoof held the telephone tightly, as if loosing her hold, even for a moment, would let the malevolent black thing fly apart, its shrapnel embedding in her flesh, her blood seeping around the plastic wounds, her life dripping away from a hundred openings that could have no healing.

“Say something,” her sister hissed over the line. “For God’s sake.”

The thing that came to mind, I wish you had never called me, I wish I didn’t know, I wish it were still ten minutes ago, was useless. Lisa didn’t bother to ask for reassurance-Are you sure? Couldn’t there be a mistake?-because Rachel, smart, precise Rachel, didn’t make mistakes like this.

She cleared her throat. “How long?” she asked.

“How long what?”

“Until it’s out.”

Rachel clicked her teeth. A habit she had had since girlhood. “I can justify not calling the doctor in to see her for another half hour or so. She’s still sleepy and just had her medication. After that…”

She didn’t have to finish. Lisa could guess. The patient tells the doctor. The doctor tells the police. The police arrest her husband. It reminded her of the circle game they played as kids. The cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone…

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’m doing this for you, not for him,” Rachel went on. “If anyone finds out, it’ll mean my job. Not to mention what it’ll do to my marriage. Be smart. Take care of yourself for a change.”

“Thank you,” Lisa repeated.

“I love you,” her sister said.

“I love you, too.”

Rachel’s voice was replaced by a toneless buzz. Carefully, carefully, Lisa replaced the receiver in the cradle. She caught a glimpse of her blurred reflection in the microwave door. I’m happy, she thought. She pinched her cheeks for color, ruffled her hair jauntily. It’s just another Saturday afternoon. She strolled back into the living room.

Kevin Flynn, who had been examining the photos hanging on the wall, turned. “Everything okay?” he asked brightly.

“Yep.” She settled herself in the middle of the sofa, tucking one leg under her. She wasn’t up to controlling her face, voice, hands, and legs all at the same time. She grabbed a pillow, a souvenir from their honeymoon in Aruba with scenes from the island stitched on the cover. She wrapped her arms around it, one hand on a conch shell, one on a palm tree. “Just my friend Denise. Denise Hammond, you remember her.”

It helped if she thought of him as little Kevin Flynn, who had been a painfully thin freshman during her senior year at Millers Kill High. Skinny Flynnie, that had been his nickname. She did her best to ignore his uniform, the belt strapped around his waist like Batman’s utility belt, for chrissakes, his gun.

She wouldn’t think about his gun.

Kevin lowered himself into the only other seat in the room, the wooden rocking chair. “Yeah, I remember her. Whatever happened to her?”

“She moved to Glens Falls. Got a job at the Post-Star.” She put on a teasing voice, one part of her marveling that she sounded so natural. “You should look her up. She’s still single, and she says a good man is hard to find.”

Kevin blushed. “She’s older than me.”

“That only matters in high school. Once you’re both out, who cares?”

He shook his head. Evidently she wasn’t the only one who remembered Skinny Flynnie.

What would I be saying if I didn’t know what I know now? What would she have done if the phone hadn’t rung a minute after Kevin knocked on her door, asking to come in? She’d ask him why he was here. Innocent people did that.

“You didn’t come all the way out here for dating advice,” she said, still using that where did it come from? teasing tone. “What brings you to my door?”

“Uh, is Randy at home?”

She concentrated on keeping her voice even, her hands relaxed. “No, he’s been gone all day. Running errands. You know. Typical Saturday stuff.”

“He didn’t bring you home? From your job at Haudenosaunee?”

“No.”

“Oh. See, the chief bumped into him while he was on his way up there-Randy, I mean, not the chief. I wanted to ask him if he had seen anything while he was up there. And you, too, of course, I want to ask you.”

She was lost. Did Kevin have a coldheartedly clever way of befuddling suspects until they spilled everything? What the hell did anything up at Haudenosaunee have to do with Randy and… and… Her mind slid over the rest of that sentence. “I don’t understand,” she said honestly.

He sighed. “Sorry. I’m still getting the hang of questioning people.” He drew himself up straight and tilted forward, stopping the gentle rocking he had slipped into. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your employer, Eugene van der Hoeven, is dead.”

What he said was so far from what she had expected, it took her several minutes to decipher his meaning.

“Lisa? Are you okay?”

She stared at him. “Mr. van der Hoeven’s dead?”

“Yeah.”

“How? What happened to him?” She hoped her voice wasn’t as light and bubbly as she felt. Poor Mr. van der Hoeven. She tried not to smile. Poor, poor Mr. van der Hoeven.

“Uh, I don’t think I can give you any details yet. We do know he was killed sometime between twelve-thirty and two o’clock. I was hoping you could give me some details.”

“I don’t know what I can tell you. He was alive and well when I left at noon.”

“Did you drive yourself home? Is that why Randy didn’t pick you up after all?”

Careful. “No, I got a ride with a woman named Clare Fergusson. I knew Randy was going to be running around town, so I told him I’d find my own way home. He must have forgotten.”

“Reverend Fergusson?” Kevin glanced up from the small wire-bound notebook where he was writing down her words. “Do you think she might have gone back up to Haudenosaunee after she dropped you home?”

“I don’t think so. She was done with the search team for the day.”

“Do you know if Eugene van der Hoeven had any enemies? Had he fought with anyone?”

She made a face. “I cleaned up after him for four years, but I don’t know much about the man. He was neat, polite, and always gave me a good Christmas bonus. He never had anybody to stay at Haudenosaunee except family-his sisters and his dad, while he was alive.” She hesitated. “I was worried that Millie van der Hoeven was getting into something not so good.”

Kevin looked up from his notebook.