To Darkness and to Death (36 page)

“Tell me and I’ll cut you loose.”

She made a noise. “Okay.” She took a breath. “I saw a man kill my brother. He put me in his car and brought me here. I think he’s trying to decide if he’s going to kill me or not.”

His head whited out for a moment while he tried to fit that statement into the real world he lived in. The first thing he thought was
Again, my luck is lousy
. He had stumbled into a freaking
Sopranos
episode. If he let this woman go, he’d have some contract killer after him.

“What… what was your brother into? So that this guy killed him?”

“Into? He wasn’t into anything.” Her voice broke. “He was a recluse who lived in the mountains and never saw anyone except me and my sister if he could help it. I don’t know why he was killed. I don’t know anything about what’s going on.”

Recluse. Mountain. Lisa saying,
Oh, honey, it’s terrible. Mr. van der Hoeven’s been killed
!

“You’re not Melanie. You’re van der Hoeven’s sister, Millie,” he said.

She was silent for a moment. “Yeah,” she finally said.

“You’re missing!”

“If you cut me loose, believe me, I won’t be.”

He moved behind her and worked the tip of the knife under the fraying edge of one of her duct-tape manacles. He sawed back and forth. He had found the missing woman. Maybe she’d be so grateful, she’d give him an alibi. The duct tape parted around one of her wrists, and with a groan of pain she brought her arms around to her front.

“God.” She bent over, rocking back and forth. “Oh, that hurts.”

“Um.” He sat down, scootching a little way from her so he was out of range, in case her arms weren’t really as useless as they seemed. “Maybe since I’m helping you out, you could help me out.”

She made a noise that might have been an encouragement to continue.

“I’m, um, in a bit of trouble. That’s why I’m here. Maybe you could say that I was with you earlier? Like, in the middle of the day for a few hours?”

“I could,” she said, her voice thin with pain, “but don’t you think it would look odd that you left me tied up all day? Whatever trouble you’re in, I bet kidnapping would be worse.” Her voice changed. Became harder. “Besides, it’s up to me to get the man who killed Gene. I was the only witness to what that bastard did.”

“What happened?”

“I was…” She hesitated. “I was in an old observation tower. It’s a good walk away from where our camp is now. This man tried to take me, and my brother was protecting me, and he—the man—threw him over the railing.” She wavered for a moment before going on. “The bastard left him lying there, out in the open. Like garbage. I have to get to him, take care of his body before—” She broke off.

Randy thought of what could happen to a body left out in the woods for a few days. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me, too. And so will that rat bastard be. As soon as I get out of here, I’m heading straight to the cops.”

Randy twitched. It sounded too close to his own actions today. Maybe the man who killed her brother had been a cold-blooded murderer. But maybe he had been like Randy, someone who just took one more kick from life than he could take and was then left frantically pedaling to get out from under what he hadn’t even meant to do in the first place. It didn’t seem fair that a man could spend his whole life doing the right thing and then blow it all up in five minutes’ time.

“Who was he? This guy. I mean, why was he after you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know his name.” He couldn’t see her face at all, hunched over like she was, but he could hear the edge of satisfaction in her voice when she said, “But I got his license plate number. Right before he dumped me in the back of his Mercedes. I said it over and over to myself while I was locked in there.”

Randy stared into the darkness, seeing not the cold and grimy old mill but the Haudenosaunee driveway under brilliant sunshine. The driveway that was blocked by a black Mercedes.

“This Mercedes,” he said. “Did you see a bumper sticker on it? Something about the Sierra club?”

A swish of hair. She lifted her head. “Yeah.”

“Shaun Reid,” he said, scared and exultant. “That’s who killed your brother. The guy who owns this mill. Shaun Reid.”

5:10 P.M.

Lisa was expecting the two squad cars that pulled into her drive. After Randy left, she had gone about her normal routine for a Saturday afternoon, showering, a load of laundry, cooking. She had a big pot of stew simmering on the stove, figuring that if she really didn’t know what her husband had done or where he had gone, she’d have dinner waiting for him. She stuck
Titanic
in the VCR and poured herself a glass of rum and Diet Coke, props to simulate a normal afternoon: hanging out, watching a chick flick, waiting for her husband to get home. She picked up the drink, thinking to calm her nerves, but decided the last thing she needed was to have any of her edges dulled by alcohol. Instead she swilled some around in her mouth and spat it into the sink, following that with half the contents of the glass. Simulation. The illusion of reality.

So she shouldn’t have felt sick to her stomach when she saw the headlights swinging into her dooryard. She did take a swallow of the rum and Coke then, for real, and breathed slowly and deeply before walking to the door. No sense pretending she hadn’t heard anyone driving up the road. She dropped her hand to the doorknob.

I don’t know anything. I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent. I know nothing.

She opened the door. Not surprisingly, it was Kevin again, and some old cop who was, with his brush-cut hair and weight-lifting body, a preview of what her sister’s husband was going to look like in thirty years. She supposed she should be grateful. At least they didn’t send Mark out for this.

“Lisa?” No smiles this time. “May we come in?”

She stepped back, opening the door. “What’s the matter?” She had thought about this, about how she’d first react. Tossing bagged veggies into the stew pot, she’d considered what she would have thought if the police had come to her door last Saturday, a time that was forever now going to be set off as
before
. Now was
after
. And she did as she rehearsed.

“Oh, my God.” A hitch of breath. “Is it Randy? Has he been in an accident?”

The old cop smiled as he walked past her, crinkling up his eyes, as if he were playing Santa Claus. “No accident.” He held out his hand. “I’m Lyle MacAuley, Mrs. Schoof.” She took his hand, staring mostly at Kevin the whole while.

“What is it, then? Is it Mark?”

Kevin shook his head.

“Kevin was here earlier, asking about what you might have seen at Haudenosaunee.”

She nodded. Realized she was standing there with the warm air pouring out of the house. Shut the door.

“There’s been another incident today. A young woman was beaten and left on one of the logging roads on Haudenosaunee. Did your husband mention it to you?”

“No,” she said.
How would I react to this news
? she wondered.
I would be scared of it happening to me
. She glanced toward the window nervously.

“Why don’t we sit down?” The old guy phrased it like a suggestion, but he was already crossing the room, taking in everything, the movie, the drink, the stack of bills by the phone, the water stain on the ceiling. “Is your husband home?” he asked, sitting on one end of the couch.

“No.” She glanced back toward the door. “Do I need to worry about being alone out here?”

Kevin crossed his arms over his chest. “Where’s Randy?”

Lyle MacAuley patted the couch next to him. “Calm down, Kevin. Let the lady have a seat.”

She couldn’t not sit after that. She wedged herself in the corner opposite MacAuley.

“You certainly don’t have to worry right now,” MacAuley said, smiling again. “And if you’d like, we’d be glad to drop you off at a friend’s or neighbor’s when we go. If your husband isn’t home yet. Do you expect him soon?”

“By dinnertime,” she said. “He didn’t say he’d be gone longer than that.”

“Where’s he off to?”

“Errands, I guess. I was in the shower when he left.”

“When was that?” Kevin said.

MacAuley shot him a look. “I’d hate to leave you alone out here if you feel uncomfortable,” he said. “Do you have someone you usually stay with?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know. If things blow up and one or the other of you has to cool down.”

“You mean Randy and me? We don’t fight like that.”

“No?” His expression invited confidence. “I’ve been there myself. You’re young, married, money’s tight, one or the other of you is always working… you mean to say you never fight?”

“Of course, we have fights. I mean… not so’s one of us has to leave.”

“He’s never gotten a little rough?”

She was genuinely outraged. “No!”

He raised his hands in surrender. “Whatever. I don’t like to interfere between husband and wife.” He smiled. “Has your husband ever mentioned a woman named Becky Castle?”

Her heart jumped so hard she knew he must have seen it in her throat. She shook her head.

“I’m sorry?”

“No,” she said. “Kevin asked us if we knew her. Earlier.”

He leaned forward. “I don’t want to upset you, here, but… have you ever suspected your husband might be seeing someone else?”

“No!” She glared at Kevin. “Kevin, what’s this about?”

This time, he kept his mouth shut. “Becky Castle was the young woman who was assaulted today,” MacAuley said. “The poor thing was beaten so badly she had to undergo surgery to stop her internal bleeding. Somebody punched her and kicked her and hit her until she was so much raw hamburger.”

The words, the images, were so ugly she wanted to slap her hands over her ears and howl until they burned themselves out of her brain.

“We think your husband might be able to help us in our inquiries,” MacAuley went on. “It’s important we talk with him as soon as possible.”

She forced herself to nod. “Of course. I’ll have him call you as soon as he gets home.”

“Is there anyplace he’s more likely to be? At a bar, or a friend’s house? Time is important. You know, we always say the first twenty-four hours of an investigation are the most important. ‘The golden hours,’ we call them. We want to be able to talk to anyone who may know something as quickly as possible.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He was at Mike’s earlier. Mike Yablonski.”

MacAuley glanced at Kevin, who nodded once.

MacAuley stood, startling her. “Okay, then. Thanks, Mrs. Schoof.”

She unfolded herself from the couch and joined the two police officers heading for the door. She didn’t understand. She had thought he would keep at her. Ask her more about her husband. “I’ll be sure to have Randy call you as soon as he gets home tonight,” she repeated.

MacAuley smiled at her, eyes crinkling, bushy brows rising. “We’d sure appreciate it.”

“Um… is there anything else I can do to help?”

He smiled even more broadly, looking less like Santa and more like the cat who swallowed the canary. “Why, yes,” he said. “Can we have a look around the house?”

5:15 P.M.

Clare looked into the burgundy surface of her wine. If she sat very, very still, she could see her reflection. Or rather, the reflection of her eye.
For now we see through a glass, darkly
, she thought.

Hugh thumped his glass against the table. They were sitting in the kitchen. The only other spot to sit face-to-face downstairs was in her living room, where she and Russ had been talking. By mutual, unspoken agreement, Clare and Hugh avoided that room when she returned downstairs dressed in a sweater and jeans.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at a loss for words,” Hugh said.

“There’s nothing to say.” In a way, she was telling the truth. For close to two years now, she had kept her mouth soldered shut, refusing to even think about the unthinkable. She had cracked and admitted it to herself; eventually, she had admitted it to Russ. It terrified her to think that the truth was so close to her surface that she was on the verge of admitting it to a nice man she saw every six or seven weeks. “There’s nothing to say,” she repeated.

“Is he going to divorce the little woman?”

That made her look up from the depths of her glass. “No.”

“Are you planning on chucking the whole priest thing and living a life of wickedness as a kept woman?”

She couldn’t help it; her lips twitched. “No.”

“Bit of a sticky wicket, eh?”

“You sound like someone in the 1939 version of
The Four Feathers
. ” She took a sip of the Shiraz. They had discovered, on her first trip to New York, that they shared a common devotion to prewar British films.

“The fellow who went blind and gave up the girl because it was the right thing to do, no doubt.”

She smiled into her wineglass.

He swallowed a gulp of wine. “Where do you think this thing is going? With you and me, I mean.”

She was surprised. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

“Good Lord. You must be the only single woman over thirty I know who isn’t thinking about how to get herself married off.” He spread his arms and looked down at himself. “Am I not eligible? Not repulsive, don’t drool or pick my teeth in public, ready for housetraining.”

She took another sip, uncertain if he was joking or not. “Hugh, are you proposing? Or just looking for more affirmation that your shirt looks okay?”

“I’m just trying to figure out why you don’t at least eyeball me as potential husband material.”

She sighed. “Because for the past six or seven years, I’ve thought of myself as someone who is never going to get married. It’s not as if I’ve had men throwing themselves at me. Believe me. When I realized my calling, it sort of dovetailed with my spectacular lack of a love life. I figured I was meant to be a celibate.”

“Okay.” He ticked off one finger. “So, aspirations to be bride of God. Anything else?”

“Hugh.” She interlaced her fingers and propped her chin on the back of her hands. “Look at you. You’re urban, you’re trendy, your job involves travel and parties and reveling in the spoils of capitalism. I’m a priest who has settled in a little Adirondack backwater. Can you honestly see any way of me fitting into your life? Or you fitting into mine?”