To Darkness And To Death

no. Before she could recover and lunge for the phone, Kevin crossed the floor and snatched up the receiver. He held it out a few inches, so they could both hear, and beckoned her over. At that moment, she hated him. If she had thought she could get away with it, she would have clawed the receiver out of his hand and clubbed him to death with it.

He motioned again, fiercely. She walked over to his side. “Hello?”

“Lisa? Is that you? You sound like you’re on a speakerphone.” Lisa trembled with the effort of not sagging with relief. “It’s my sister,” she said.

“What?” Rachel said.

Kevin handed her the receiver and went back to the coffeepot as if it were perfectly normal for him to hijack someone’s phone.

“Sorry, Rache.” Lisa glanced toward Kevin. “Kevin Flynn is over, and he mistakenly thought you were a call he was expecting.”

There was a long pause on her sister’s end. “Is he alone?” Rachel eventually asked.

“Nope.”

“Oh, God, they didn’t send Mark over, did they? He called me just a little while ago. He has to go in to work early.”

“Mark was a real sweetheart to drive me to my job this morning. Will you be sure to thank him for me when you see him?”

There was another pause as Rachel parsed Lisa’s statement. “You need to be careful,” she said. “Mark told me they’re calling everybody in, all shifts, the part-time guys, everybody. The only time they usually do that is when things get really crazy, Christmas week, New Year’s, stuff like that.”

“Uh-huh,” Lisa said. Across from her, Kevin was scooping coffee out of a can. “Why do you think Mom and Dad are doing that?”

“Mark didn’t say, but I’m guessing they’re pulling out all the stops to find your husband. Lise, you need to think about hiring a good lawyer and having Randy turn himself in. This isn’t like ducking out of a traffic ticket. Mark and the rest of them will be searching for someone they think is dangerous. They have guns. People get killed evading arrest.”

Lisa’s throat closed up.

“Look, I’m off shift. I’m going to pick up Madeline from the neighbor’s, and then we’re coming over to keep you company.”

“With what’s going on? Mark won’t like it.” Her sister and Mark were both control freaks. They tended to wrangle a lot.

“He doesn’t get a vote. Besides, he’ll be at work. He doesn’t need to know. The important thing is, will it help, me being there? Or would you rather be alone?”

“I’d love you to come over,” Lisa said gratefully.

“Okay. I’ll see you when I get there. Till then, keep your legs crossed and your mind on higher things, as Mom would say.”

Lisa was laughing as she hung up.

Kevin looked at her. “What’s up?”

Her brief bubble of good humor faded into air. She shrugged. “Our parents.”

“I know how that can be. Coffee’s almost ready, if you want to get the cups.”

Lisa turned over possibilities as she unloaded two clean mugs from the dishwasher and took out the sugar bowl and spoons. She could do as Rachel suggested. Find a lawyer, tell Randy to turn himself in when he called. But then where would they be? If Randy was found guilty, he’d do time, no way around it. They knew a guy who got into a bar fight in Lake George with somebody who’d been messing with his girlfriend. Busted him up. Got sent to Plattsburgh for a year. How would she and Randy survive for a year without his income? They’d have the lawyer’s bills to pay, on top of the loans and the credit cards and everything else.

She opened the refrigerator and removed the jug of milk. Ultimately it boiled down to the fact that prison would kill Randy. He needed to be outdoors. He hated the jobs that shut him up inside; being locked away for a year or more would gut him. Then there was his temper. He needed to have her around for ballast. On his own, bottled up and seething, he’d explode. And some drug dealer, some guy who was a real criminal, unlike Randy, would knife him.

The coffee ceased bubbling out of the filter. She waited a second to see if any last drips fell, then pulled out the pot and poured two cups. So. No lawyer, no surrender. Or not yet. That could always be their reserve, their fallback position.

Clumping on the stairs. MacAuley poked his head through the doorway. “Thought I smelled coffee.”

Lisa forced a smile. “Can I get you a cup?”

“Sure.” He sauntered in and took up a post leaning against the refrigerator. “Nice place you have.”

She poured MacAuley a cup and handed it to him. “Thanks,” he said. He slopped in enough milk to turn it tan and took a deep, appreciative drink. Then he looked at her over the rim of the cup. “I hate to cause you distress, ma’am, but we do have reason to believe your husband may have been seeing Becky Castle.”

Lisa had split firewood before, and she knew what he was about. He was poking at the surface of the log, looking for a crack he could wedge his splitter into. It could take hours to chop apart a log with an ax. You needed an opening. It didn’t matter how small: Once you worked a splitter into it, down came the maul, and that log was gone, split in two, ready for the woodstove.

She took out her own splitter. “No, he wasn’t. And I know that to be true, because I know who she was seeing.”

MacAuley’s bushy eyebrows flicked upward. She had caught him off guard. “Who?”

“Shaun Reid.”

“The guy who owns the mill?” Kevin made a face. “Get out! He’s older than my father!”

MacAuley looked at him wearily. “It doesn’t shrivel up and drop off when you turn fifty, Kevin.” He turned to Lisa. “How do you know this?”

The first rule of lying: Keep as close to the truth as possible. “I clean for the Reids. Thursdays. And I was at Millers Kill High when she was. I know some of the same people she knows. There’s always talk. It’s a small town.”

“She lives in Albany now.”

“He never travels ‘on business’? She never comes up to ‘visit her folks’?” She shrugged. “Maybe I’ve got it wrong. But I’ve never heard any whispers about her and my husband.”

MacAuley set down his mug. “Mrs. Schoof, what would you say if you I told you that Becky Castle has named your husband as the man who assaulted her?”

“I’d ask why on earth Randy would want to hurt a woman he can barely remember from school.”

“She says he was planning on stealing her father’s logging equipment. She took pictures of him, and when she wouldn’t surrender the camera to him, he beat her up.”

“Oh, please. Randy was going to steal a skidder? And what, escape with it down the highway at twenty-five miles an hour?” Ladling scorn kept her from wincing. She knew Randy tended to act without considering the consequences, but she hoped even he wasn’t stupid enough to try to guarantee job security by ripping off heavy equipment. “Who’s more likely to have a reason to try to shut her up for good? A man who wants to get a good recommendation from her father? Or a man who’s already been through one expensive divorce and can’t face another one?”

MacAuley and Kevin glanced at each other. She clicked her teeth together. The second rule of lying: Don’t say too much.

“Miss Castle told us she ran into your husband’s motorcycle at her father’s house this afternoon. She called the tow truck and had it taken to Jimino’s garage on her dime. We’ve got a confirmation on that from the tow truck dispatcher and the mechanic.”

Lisa noticed MacAuley had dropped the “what would you say if I said” fig leaf. She looked him straight in the eye. “So she did meet up with him today. That explains why she used his name when she had to find someone to pin her injuries on.”

“Oh, come off it,” Kevin said.

Lisa put her hands on her hips. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve never known a battered woman to lie about