In the Bleak Midwinter Read online

  Clare looked out a leaded-glass window to where snow flurries were spinning through the air. Ideas crowded her mind, far-fetched, practical, too expensive, possible—“We could start by enlisting parish support,” she said. She returned her attention to the table. “A letter-writing campaign to the DSS and the governor’s office. Get volunteers to help them transition from a couple to foster parents. Hold a Blessing of Adoption and invite the local press. Invite adoption support groups to meet at St. Alban’s.”

  “Good! Excellent! Knew you would be the priest for us,” Fowler said.

  Clare looked sharply at him. “What about my mother-baby project?”

  “You show us you can organize and get results on the Burnses’ adoption, and we’ll back you to the hilt on day care for unwed teens.” Fowler glanced around the table, registering assent from the rest of the vestry. “Agreed? Agreed.”

  Clare blew out her breath in a puff. “Then let’s adjourn.” Before anyone can think of something else to keep out the undesirables, she thought. Everyone stood, stacking papers and collecting coats.

  “I’ve gotta make it to Fort Henry Ford by one-thirty,” Terry McKellan said, buttoning his wool coat across a wide expanse of midsection. “My daughter blew out the electrical system in her Taurus, so we swapped her my wife’s Mazda while she was home for Thanksgiving. Now she wants to keep it. Can you imagine what our insurance is gonna be with her driving in Boston?” He looked at Fowler. “What did you get Wes?”

  “A Jeep Wrangler. Good in the snow, appeals to an eighteen-year-old’s idea of ‘cool.’ Unfortunately, it couldn’t carry all his stuff down. I’m off to West Point tomorrow with another load. We should have just traded the Expedition with him during the holiday.” Clare attempted to edge past the men as they drifted toward the hallway. “And speaking of vehicles, Reverend Clare, that car of yours is totally impractical.”

  Clare had already heard several people’s opinion of her bright red ’82 MG. She smiled brightly. “Your son goes to West Point? And you’re a graduate, too. You must be very proud.”

  Terry McKellan roared with laughter. “It was a disappointment to them when he couldn’t get into the Culinary Institute . . .”

  Vaughn Fowler ignored the witticism. “He’s the fifth generation of Fowlers to be an Academy man. Edie and I are very proud, yes.”

  Clare touched his arm. “Wonderful.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, look at the time. Gentlemen, I’ve got to run.” She waved to the remaining vestry members and quick-stepped down the hall before the subject of her car could come up again.

  She ducked into the parish office and caught her secretary, Lois, with a mouthful of nonfat yogurt and raw bran. Lois looked like a strawberry-blond Nancy Reagan, and she kept her size-two figure, as near as Clare could tell, by eating less than any other human being she had ever seen.

  “Mmph!” Lois put down the yogurt and waved her hands.

  “I’m escaping comments about my car,” Clare explained.

  “Mmmm,” Lois said, swallowing. “It’s too tiny. A Lincoln Town Car, that’s comfort and styling. And if you have blond hair, you can get the leather seats to match.”

  Clare made a face. “I’m a dirty blond. I’d have to have dirty seats. Besides, I’m too young for a Town Car.”

  Lois made a noncommittal noise.

  Clare poked at the Rolodex next to Lois’ white-and-pink book of message slips. “The vestry says they’ll support my young mother’s outreach project if I can help the Burnses successfully adopt Cody.”

  Lois sniffed.

  “Now I just have to figure out how to influence New York State’s Department of Human Services.”

  Lois’ eyebrows arched.

  “I think I’m going to need some help on this one.”

  “I think you might,” Lois agreed.

  Her desk chair creaked as Clare tilted back, looking out the window. Flurries swirled through the air outside, making tiny ticking noises as they hit the glass. The only help she could think of was Chief Van Alstyne. Whom she had already impositioned for a ride from the hospital and bulldozed into offering to take her along on his Friday-night patrol. He was going to think she was only ever after him for something at this rate. Which was a shame, because she had really liked him. He was good people, as grandmother Fergusson would say. He reminded her of friends she had in the army, friends who could always see her, no matter what uniform she was wearing at the time.

  Okay. She could ask how the search for Cody’s birth mother was going. Find out what was happening with DSS—surely he’d be up to date on that. And if she gave him a chance to change his mind about Friday night, it would probably be the right thing to do. She should do that. Well. Maybe. She picked up the receiver in one hand and the Millers Kill directory in the other.

  Russ was having one of those days that, if it were on video, you’d fast-forward through until you got to a good part. One of his officers had called in with a suspiciously early-in-the-season flu that was probably being treated with shots of cherry brandy and a long ride on a snowmobile. When Russ had taken a break from patrolling and shown up for an unexpected lunch at home, Linda had been too busy sewing up another order of curtains to eat with him. And she had asked him to drop off her loan application at the bank, when she knew he hated running personal errands in uniform. He always ran into somebody who would make some crack about how he was using the taxpayer’s dime.

  He had a mountain of paperwork covering his ugly gray metal desk, stuff he’d been putting off and putting off until it had become a full day’s job. When he’d bitched about it to Harlene, she told him if he’d worked at it a little at a time, he wouldn’t be staring down the barrel now, which he already knew, which made him even more pissy.

  And now this little gem. Circled in red in the Post-Star courtesy of Officer Pollack, who always brought in his copy before his shift. Russ had been expecting the article about the baby, of course. He’d given the beat reporter an interview, explaining what the police were doing to find the mother, saying the boy had been found “outside an area church” and omitting all mention of the note tucked in the box with the baby. She had gotten the resident from the hospital to describe the overall good health of the child. And a line from the Department of Social Services confirming the baby was being placed with an experienced foster mother.

  The usual stuff. What was making him grip his coffee mug to keep from throwing it across the room was the paragraph devoted to the Burnses. How the hell the reporter had found out about them he didn’t know, but there it all was, in glorious black and white: Saint Alban’s, the note, Burns complaining about DSS, and a plea to the mother to contact the couple directly. “We only want to help,” Karen Burns was quoted. “We believe what the mother did was courageous, not criminal.”

  He looked out his window, almost lost between the bulletins and WANTED posters and advisories taped up all over his wall, and watched the hard, dry snow spitting through the air. Temperature dropping, cold night tonight. He thought about Cody-No-Last-Name, thought about what might have happened if Reverend Fergusson hadn’t been heading out for a run that night. Maybe whoever had left the baby had been nearby, watching and waiting for someone to discover the box. Maybe not. Courageous. Yeah.

  The phone rang. Through the frosted glass window in his door, he could see Harlene’s outline as she crossed the office to pick it up. A moment later his line buzzed. “Hey, Harlene, can you get me some more coffee while I take this?” he yelled. He couldn’t hear her reply distinctly, but he thought it was something about being the dispatcher, not a geisha girl. He lifted the receiver.

  “Chief Van Alstyne? Clare Fergusson. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

  “No, no,” he said, “Not at all. I’m staring at about a thousand state and county reports I’m supposed to have filled out sometime in November and I’m contemplating whether I can throw Geoff Burns in jail for interfering with an investigation. I can use a break.”

  “You
’re contemplating what?”

  “I take it you haven’t read today’s paper. The article about the abandoned baby.”

  “No. It’s here somewhere . . .” There was a rustling and a thumping sound. “Got it. Where is it?”

  “Right on page three. Take a look at where Geoff Burns offers his protection and free legal services to the mother!”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. “Holy crow,” Clare said after a moment.

  “Yeah. After I had deliberately left out the note and the location where Cody was found. It’ll serve that little weasel right when he starts getting crank calls from half the teenagers in the county, claiming to be the baby’s mother.”

  “Is that what you mean by interfering with an investigation? Because, you know, if the reporter had come to me, I wouldn’t have known I wasn’t supposed to say anything about the note.”

  “It’s not just that, Reverend . . . Clare. This crap about protecting the mother from misguided officials. Burns might as well come right out and say ‘Come to us, and we’ll see the police never lay a hand on you.’ What are they gonna do, give her ten thousand and ship her off to Bolivia? Geez, that really frosts my cookies.” There was a strangled sound from the other end of the line. After a moment, he realized Clare was trying not to laugh. “Well, it does.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s really not funny.” She snickered. “ ‘Frosts my cookies’?”

  “Now you know one of our quaint local expressions.” The sound of her muffled laughter took the edge off his anger. He sighed.

  “Okay. Do you really think that Karen and Geoff might make contact with the mother and not tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  Now she sighed. “Me, too. Is there anything you can do now the information about where Cody was found is out in the open? You can’t really mean to arrest the Burnses.”

  “I’d like to. At least, I’d like to arrest Geoff Burns. Jesus Christ, what an arrogant little snot. Sorry.” Russ held the newspaper out at arm’s length to reread the paragraph. “But no, I don’t have any grounds. As much as he’s pushing the line, he hasn’t gone over it. There’s nothing illegal about giving your opinion on what the mother did or in offering free legal aid.”

  “So you can’t put the proverbial cat back in the bag. That leaves the problem of the mother turning to the Burnses for help instead of turning herself in to the police.”

  “There is that problem, yes.”

  “What if you offered to help them get the baby?”

  “What?”

  “They want to be Cody’s foster parents now. Think about it. That way, they not only have the note in their favor, they also will have bonded with Cody. They’ll be able to argue it’s in his best interests to stay with them.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “I think they’ll be less anxious about who finds the mother first if they have Cody already. You can offer to use your influence with the Department of Social Services to get the baby assigned to them. In exchange, they promise to let you know right away if the mother contacts them.”

  “My influence with DSS, huh?”

  “Oh, c’mon. You must know a few people.” Her slight Southern drawl was more noticable over the phone, he thought. “I’ll tell you, I’m under the gun here, too. My vestry wants St. Alban’s to pitch in and help the Burnses. I’ve decided to get a letter-writing campaign going among the parishioners. All the well-heeled Republicans here? There must be a few who’ve donated enough to make some politicians sit up and listen when they ask for a little consideration for this deserving couple, who have waited so patiently for so long to be a family.”

  He whistled. “You’re good. You ever think of running for office?”

  She snorted. “Preachers and politicians are kissin’ cousins, didn’t you know that?”

  “I guess it’s worth a try. Anything’s better than waiting for Geoff Burns to get ahold of some scared kid and wave money in her face to make her disappear. When were you planning to enlist your letter-writing troops?”

  “Putting it into my sermon this Sunday would be the simplest thing. Dang, and I was going to preach on what I saw going on patrol with you this Friday. Maybe I can work them both in . . .” There was a pause. “Um . . . you haven’t changed your mind, have you? About taking me?”

  “If I had, I’ve been effectively wangled into taking you now, huh?”

  Clare groaned. “I didn’t mean it that way . . .”

  Russ laughed. “Guess I’d better keep my end of the bargain, or you might get your parishioners to write to the aldermen and have me tossed out on my ear. What time can I pick you up?”

  “Evening Prayer’s at five-fifteen, so I’ll be free by six.”

  “Six is good. Wear a coat this time, okay? And some heavy boots.”

  “I’ll bring two pair of mittens and electric socks. I’m really looking forward to seeing the authentic Millers Kill, Chief. Thank you.”

  “It’s Russ, remember? And don’t thank me until the night’s over. You may be so bored, collecting stacks of letters might seem like a big thrill.”

  Standing behind the patrol car’s open door, Clare banged her knees together and kicked her feet against the front tire, hoping to keep her circulation going. Wishing she were in her office, writing letters.

  “I didn’t do nuthin’! Get your hands off me!” In front of a large video arcade, Russ was toe to toe with an angry, drunken young man. The kid was several inches over six feet, as tall as the police chief, and beefy. Clare glanced at the radio. On television cop shows, people were always calling for backup. Was she supposed to do that? How? She stomped her feet a few more times. If she had stayed home, she could be sitting down to the ten o’clock news with a cup of hot chocolate right now.

  Teens were crowded along the sidewalk outside the arcade. Its huge picture windows blazed with neon signs and the hypnotic flash of the cruiser’s red lights, giving the place a cinematic, high-tech look that jarred badly with the no-nonsense blue-collar bars and the depressed little shops that were its neighbors. The chief was leaning forward, talking to the kid in low tones. Not touching him, but ready to move if he had to. She couldn’t hear what he was saying over the insistent bass thumping from the inside of the arcade.

  Clare scanned the crowd, looking for any sign of someone else willing to take on trouble. She shivered inside the roomy police parka that Russ had loaned her. When she had stepped out of the church in her leather bomber jacket, he had laughed at it. Sure enough, within an hour she was begging for something warmer. At the station house, where they dropped off a drunk driver Russ had arrested, Harlene dug through the lockers and emerged with a regulation brown parka large enough to fit a moose. Or the young man who had been brawling in the arcade.

  Russ leaned back, said something, crossed his arms. The kid hung his head, and for the first time, Clare could see an oversized boy instead of a threat. From the crowd, another boy sporting several piercings said something she couldn’t make out. The kids around him laughed. Russ snapped his head around and pointed a finger at them, bellowing, “You damn well bet he is. And that’s what’s gonna keep him alive past seventeen. How about you, mister?” The boys in the group visibly shrank back. “I don’t want to hear any more from you, got it?” A few nods.

  Russ beckoned to two teens who had been hovering near him during the confrontation. Clare couldn’t make out his words, but it looked as if he was putting the troublemaker in their care. One of the boys clapped an arm around his inebriated friend. Russ pinned the big kid with a glare, raising his voice so everyone could hear. “If I have to come here again tonight, I’m arresting anybody involved. Got it?” There was a shuffle-footed assent from the crowd. “Good. Now get inside or go home. It’s too damn cold to be hanging out here on the sidewalk.”

  Russ trudged through the slush at the curbside and tugged open his door. He looked wearily across the roof at Clare, the whirling lights emphasizing the lines in his face. He seemed old
er than he had at the start of the night’s patrol. “Idiot kids,” he muttered, sliding behind the wheel. Clare gently kicked against her door, knocking snow off her boots before joining him inside the car.

  “You’re not going to arrest the boy who was fighting?”

  “Ethan? Naw. He didn’t hurt anybody.” Russ reached for the radio. “Ten-fifty, this is Ten-fifty-seven.”

  “Come in, Ten-fifty-seven.”

  “Harlene, will you call the Stoners and tell them to pick up Ethan at Videotek? And tell ’em he missed a drunk and disorderly by the skin of his teeth.”

  “Will do, Chief.”

  “We’re headed out to the kill. See if there are any other kids out tonight making fools of themselves. Ten-fifty-seven out.”

  “At the kill. Ten-fifty out.”

  He hung up the microphone and fastened his seatbelt.

  “You have got to tell me something.” Clare buckled herself in. “What, exactly, is the kill?”

  “Huh?” He glanced at her. “You mean, like in Millers Kill?”

  “Yeah. What is it?”

  “Kill’s the old Dutch name for a shallow river or a big creek. Lotta towns around upstate have ‘kill’ in their names—Fishes Kill, Eddys Kill . . . our kill runs from the Hudson to the Mohawk Canal.”

  “A big creek? I’ve crossed over it a few times and it looks more like a full-fledged river.”

  “It was dredged out during the building of the canal system in the early eighteen hundreds. Between the river traffic and the mills, it made the town. Geez, you’re gonna live here, you need to learn some geography and history. I’ll see if I can find you a few books to read.”

  He shifted and pulled into traffic. They headed west, cruising slowly down the strip, past bars, a liquor store, a tightly shuttered pawn shop. No candy canes and reindeer hanging from the battered old light poles here.

  “Why didn’t you take the boy in?” she asked.

  “I know the Stoners. His dad has a thirty-five, forty acre dairy farm that barely supports the family. Ethan’s not a bad kid.” Russ signaled, turned down a narrow street, and drove past two dark, boarded-up warehouses. Another turn took them into the parking lots behind the buildings. The headlights picked out churned-up snow and tire tracks crisscrossing randomly. “He’s just like a hundred other kids in this area. They drink, they do drugs, they get into car wrecks and fights because they’ve got nothing to do with their lives.”