In the Bleak Midwinter Read online

  “Okay,” someone said, “let’s do it.”

  “One . . . two . . . three . . .” said another voice. There was a cracking sound. Someone grunted.

  “Watch the water, watch the water!”

  “Got ’er. Okay, okay, let go now.”

  Russ detached himself from the group and hiked up the slope to Clare. The paramedics followed, with Hayes and Flynn behind them in case they slipped. The figure strapped onto the pallet looked like something out of a fairy tale, white skin and dark hair, a train of servants and attendants. The flares’ glow gave the scene an otherworldly cast.

  When they reached the trail, the paramedics came close to tipping the pallet as they slipped carrying harnesses over their shoulders. “Be careful with her,” Russ snapped. Clare had been bracing herself for a disfigured death, but the body was more like a statue of a pretty, round-faced girl, asleep with her head fallen to one side. There were leaves frozen into her long hair. Clare looked at Russ. “May I touch her?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Carefully. Don’t move her.” Clare made the sign of the cross on the girl’s marble forehead.

  Hayes leaned over toward Russ. “Thought you said she wasn’t related to the decedent,” he whispered too loudly.

  “She’s a priest,” Russ whispered back.

  The state trooper looked at Clare, startled. “Ma’am?” he said. “I mean, Reverend.” Clare closed her eyes for a moment. She really, really didn’t want to do her song and dance about women priests at this point. “I’m a Christian, ma’am,” he continued, “and I’d be glad to join you in prayer.”

  She looked up to meet Russ’s gaze straight on. She wasn’t going to ask permission. Their eyes locked for a moment before he nodded almost imperceptibly. “Thank you, Sergeant Hayes,” she said. She spread her arms wide across the girl’s body. “Let us pray,” she said. The men bowed their heads. “Depart, O soul, out of this world; in the name of the Creator who first made you; in the name of the Redeemer who ransomed you; in the name of the Sustainer who sanctifies you.” She laid her hand across the girl’s icy chest. “May your rest this day be in peace, and your dwelling place in the Paradise of God.”

  There was a ragged chorus of “Amens.” Russ reached past one of the EMTs and pulled a blanket free from the foot of the pallet.

  “Chief?” Flynn said.

  Russ shook out the blanket and laid it over the girl. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s all get out of here.” Clare let Hayes and Flynn take the lead up the trail, following behind the paramedics and their burden. Russ fell into step beside her. “Don’t believe in God, you know,” he said.

  “Mmmm hmmm,” she said.

  “Never saw any use for organized religion, either,” he said.

  “No,” she said.

  “But I do believe that everybody deserves a basic respect as a human being.”

  “Even the dead.”

  They trudged on silently. “Maybe especially the dead,” Russ said at last.

  Clare nodded. “I like the way you pray,” she said. Russ shook his head, smiling faintly. “The last thing any of us can do for the dead is to show respect.”

  “No. The last thing any of us can do for the dead is give them justice.”

  She breathed in sharply and scrubbed the back of her glove against the sudden prickle of tears stinging her eyes. “Yes,” she said, after she knew her voice would be steady. “You’re right. We owe the dead justice.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The Burnses’ Range Rover was already parked in the lot across the street by the time Clare arrived to unlock the parish hall for their nine o’clock meeting. Fumbling with the heavy chain of keys, she paused to check her watch. She knew she was running behind, but even so, she prided herself on always being prompt. Her old steel Seiko, hanging from its olive-twill strap, read 8:55. The Burnses must not have wanted to linger around the house this morning. Well, neither had she.

  Last night, Clare had slept badly, dreaming of Grace for the first time in seven or eight months. When she dragged herself out of bed, still aching with weariness, she went for a long run along Route 51, the river running slow and wide to the old mills on her left, the mountains in front of her, shell-pink and cotton-candy blue in the first light. She ran herself hard in an attempt to outpace the images of angry teenagers, surly drunks, and most of all, the snow-white face of the dead girl. Later, in her shower, she let the hot water soak into her bones, trying to quiet her mind enough to hear the small, inward voice that would tell her which way to go. What to do. In her experience, hard knowledge, painful knowledge, was a gift. God’s way of pushing aside the distractions, the self-centeredness, leaving the right way clear, open, marked for travel.

  The heavy chunk of the Range Rover doors brought her back to the moment. The Burnses headed across the parking lot toward the back of the church. In their casual coats, jeans, and sweaters, they looked perfectly turned out for a Saturday morning, like models on the cover of a J. Crew catalogue. Younger, and more vulnerable than they seemed in their weekday suits or Sunday clothes. Clare succeeded in unlocking the medieval-looking door and bumped it open with her hip.

  “Good morning,” she said, juggling her thermos to shake hands.

  The Burnses returned her greeting, looking at her attire curiously. “Reverend Clare,” Karen asked, “are you moonlighting with the police department?”

  Clare plucked at the large brown parka she was wearing. “Oh. This. Chief Van Alstyne loaned this to me last night. I forgot to return it. I have to confess, it’s so much warmer than any of the coats I brought with me, I’m tempted to permanently forget to return it.”

  Karen nodded. “You used to have to go into Saratoga to get anything to wear,” she said, “but in the past few years some wonderful stores have moved into Millers Kill. I’d be happy to take you shopping some time if you like.”

  Clare looked at the lawyer’s beautifully-made felt coat, which appeared to have been hand-appliqued by Austrian nuns. Probably the same nuns who did the detailed knitting on her designer sweater. Clare had the feeling she couldn’t afford Karen’s wonderful little stores.

  “Shall we go inside?” Geoff asked. “Ladies?” he tacked on a moment later. They scuffed their boots on the protective mats that reached six feet into the parish hall.

  “I brought some breakfast pastries,” Karen said, holding up a neatly folded white bag. “There’s a place on Main Street called ‘In the Dough’ that does the most wonderful croissants. Not to mention real bagels.”

  Clare thought of the donut shop Russ had insisted on taking her to last night. “You can’t be a cop if you don’t eat donuts,” he had said, ushering her into the Kreemie Kakes Diner. He had spun out an elaborate theory that people’s personalities could be revealed by the type of donuts they ate. That the choice of jelly donut versus French cruller could unveil the secrets of a person’s soul. She had laughed at the time, but watching Karen pull an exquisitely puffed mini-muffin out of the bag, she wondered if he might not be on to something after all. She opened her door and let the Burnses precede her into her office.

  “Oh, my,” Karen said. They both stopped inside the doorway and looked around slowly. “It certainly is different from when Father Hames was here.”

  “Yes,” Clare agreed, thinking of the unrelieved English-country style that had been her predecessor’s office. “It’s a nice space to display some of my collections.” Over the fireplace that dominated the wall opposite the door, she had hung an intricately carved fragment from a Spanish rood screen, brightly colored Southwestern santos, olivewood bas-reliefs from the Middle East, and Pacific Island fabric-printing blocks. A pair of leather chairs that had originally furnished the admiral’s wardroom of a World War Two destroyer—her most spectacular military surplus find ever—were pulled up cozily in front of the fireplace. The large Victorian desk against the far wall was a hand-me-down from Father Hames, but Clare had replaced his oil paintings of stags and spaniels with aeronautical sectiona
l charts and aircraft design blueprints. They shared space on the wall opposite the fireplace with several gilt-framed flea-market mirrors. Clare was very pleased with that touch, since they reflected the light from the west-facing windows flanking the chimneypiece and made the whole room glow at sunset.

  “Huh,” Geoff Burns said.

  “How unique,” Karen added quickly.

  To the left of the door, a slightly saggy love seat faced the leather chairs. It was a donation Clare suspected hadn’t moved at the church’s last rummage sale. “Please, sit down,” she said, hanging her borrowed parka on the coatrack behind the door. The Burnses followed suit.

  Clare dropped her bag on her desk and unscrewed the top from her thermos. In front of the built-in bookcase, Geoff Burns was staring at an Apache helicopter clock her brother Brian had given her for a gag, and Karen was peering at a photo of Clare in T-shirt and camouflage pants. “Is this . . . you?” she asked.

  Clare smoothly pushed a mug decorated with a flying rattlesnake and the logo: DEATH FROM THE SKY! out of sight and poured her coffee into a Virginia Seminary mug instead. “That was me,” she said. “Several years ago.” She sat in a leather chair. “Let’s talk about this idea Chief Van Alstyne had for getting Cody into your foster care.”

  Geoff took the love seat. “Van Alstyne’s idea? When he called me, it sounded like your idea. He made it pretty clear that the only reason he was behind it was to make sure we would let him know if Cody’s mother contacted us.”

  “We were both thinking along the same lines, then.”

  Karen sat down in the other leather chair. “I talked to Chief Van Alstyne, too, and I’ll tell you what I told him. There’s nothing wrong, or illegal, about Geoff and me helping out Cody’s birth mother.”

  “I’m not suggesting there is. You two want Cody. From all we know, the mother—the birth mother—wants you to have Cody. And we all want to ensure that Cody has a good home with loving parents and that the girl who gave birth to him gets whatever help she needs, whether it be medical, or legal, or counseling. It would be an untruth to say we can guarantee a win-win situation—”

  “Of course not!” Geoff interrupted. “What’s to prevent a scatter-brained teenager who put him in a box in the first place from deciding, on a whim, that she wants him back? You’ve never dealt with DSS, Reverend Clare. You have no idea what those people are like. They act as if genetics were sacred destiny. If they get their hands on the birth mother, they’ll do everything in their power to persuade her to hang onto the baby. It doesn’t matter to them if she’s underaged, if she lives in a dump, if she’s going to be a welfare breeder all her life. In their book, providing the egg and sperm for a child is more important than providing him with a good life. I’m sick of it.”

  Clare sat back, blinking.

  “Geoff is so right,” Karen said. “We’ve been up one side and down another with them.” She opened her arms, encompassing herself and her husband. “Just as a logical starting point, wouldn’t you say we were better parent prospects than a girl who would leave a baby out in the cold on the back steps to the church kitchen?”

  Clare nodded. “As a logical starting point. Yes.” She took a sip of her coffee. “Why do you think DSS hasn’t given you Cody to foster at this time?”

  “Because we’ve put up a stink before,” Geoff said. “When they returned that baby girl we told you about to her abusive mother, we went to the press, we took them to court—”

  “It was a nightmare,” Karen said.

  “If you kowtow to DSS, they might throw you a bone now and again, but if you stand up to their fascist bureaucracy and let others know what they’re doing wrong, you get on their enemies’ list.”

  “We knew a couple, the Baldaccis, who ran a home for pregnant teens, a wonderful, caring place. They’d help these girls adopt out or find help for them if they wanted to keep their babies. A few years ago, they fostered a very troubled girl who kept her baby after it was born. She got into trouble later, DSS took the child away, and then, after one of their so-called parental re-education courses, they reunited mother and child. The Baldaccis wrote the caseworker and called her, they sent letters to everyone they knew in DSS warning them that the girl was unstable and the baby would be in danger. Six weeks after what DSS deemed a successful reunification, she murdered the baby.”

  “Oh, my God. How horrible!”

  “Yes, but that’s not the end of it. The Baldaccis were so outraged at this utterly needless death, they went public with the whole story. Despite the fact that they were the only home for pregnant teens in Washington county, DSS yanked their license and shut them down.”

  “That’s outrageous,” Clare said.

  “So you can see why we’re not eager for them to get their hands on the birth mother,” Geoff said.

  “We’ve already filed suit requesting temporary custody of Cody,” Karen said, “but we talked it over, and we think it might be helpful to have members of the congregation write letters in our favor to DSS.”

  “Especially if anyone knows someone personally they can write to, or call. A state senator, or a member of the governor’s staff, or someone on the board of governors for Social Services.” Geoff braced his elbows on his knees and cracked his knuckles. “You know, Reverend, when we first started trying to have a baby, I swore we’d do it ourselves, with no help from anybody, doctor or adoption agency. But now?” He scowled. “What the hell. Let’s get everyone involved. Maybe someone in the congregation has a friend of a friend who knows Senator Schumer. Whatever it takes to get the baby into our home as soon as possible.”

  “Okay,” Clare said. “At the end of my sermon tomorrow, I’ll ask the congregation for help. We’ll need some sort of directory, something that gives addresses that people can write to.” She reached for one of the croissants Karen had laid out on the flattened bag. “We can just squeak it into the December newsletter if you can get the information to Lois by Monday.” She bit off a chunk of croissant, showering her lap with buttery flakes. Her eyes widened at the taste.

  “Wonderful,” Karen said. For a moment, Clare didn’t know if she was talking about the bread or the plan. “I have a good feeling about this. I think having the backing of the whole congregation will make this time different.”

  Clare devoured the rest of the croissant and brushed the flakes off her lap. “I’d like to talk about the other half of this matter. The part that Chief Van Alstyne brought up with you. Have you thought about what happens when Cody’s mother shows up? From what I understand, the mothers in this sort of abandonment case are almost always caught, or turn themselves in.”

  “That’s why we need custody now,” Geoff said. “We’ll need to be able to argue that the baby has bonded with us, that she is an unfit mother, and that the child’s best interests will be served by remaining with us.”

  “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”

  “Reverend, finding a healthy white infant in this country is a harsh business. It’s not for the squeamish, or for people who aren’t willing to play hardball.”

  “And besides, maybe the mother won’t turn up.” Geoff and Clare both looked at Karen.

  “That’s an unrealistic attitude to take, Kar. We have to position ourselves strategically to win against her, not cross our fingers and hope she’s disappeared for good.”

  There was one more croissant left, and Clare snagged it, wondering what it said about her personality.

  “Of course. You’re right. It’s just I believe that Cody is the one. I just know he’s meant to be ours.” Karen beamed. Clare hoped that all their focus and intensity wouldn’t end in disappointment. Who could say? If passion and commitment made for good parents, the Burnses would be the best thing that could happen to Cody.

  “Then we’d better be prepared to do what we have to to ensure that he stays ours,” Geoff said.

  Russ resignedly contemplated the old glass-fronted vending machine in the hallway between the coroner’s office and
the mortuary, where he was reluctantly spending his Saturday afternoon. EAT-A-TERIA it proclaimed in vintage fifties lettering. HOT—COLD—TASTY—CONVENIENT! For a buck in change, you could get one of several sandwiches alleged to be turkey, ham, or cheese, and for fifty cents more you could make your meal complete with chicken soup, which poured out of a spout to the right of the sandwiches.

  Everything tasted as if it had been made sometime last summer and had been left in the machine since then. The idea of a limp mystery-meat sandwich and soup with more salt than chicken in it was pretty damned unappealing, but it was closing in on one o’clock, and if he didn’t get some food in him he was going to collapse. He was thinking longingly of lunch at his mom’s place when Dr. Dvorak came through the heavy wooden doors of the mortuary.

  “Don’t tell me you’re actually going to consume some of that swill,” the M.E. said.

  Russ snorted. “It’s your machine.”

  Dvorak shrugged off his lab coat and slung it over his arm. “It’s the county’s machine, my friend, probably put there to ensure a steady supply of customers to the hospital.” He headed up the short hallway to his office. Russ fell into step alongside him. “I tell you, Chief, in seven years I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen anyone refill that thing.” Dvorak opened his door, solid wood and frosted glass, just like the one to Russ’s office. “You didn’t need to come here, you know. Right now all I have is my preliminary report. We’ll have to wait on the state lab for toxicology.”

  Dvorak sat down at a desk considerably neater than Russ’s. The preliminary report, already color-coded, went on top of a thin stack of similar files, squared to the edge of the desk. A large desktop calendar was filled with precisely lettered notes and reminders, its edges held down with a pencil cup of identically sharpened pencils and a marble-based pen set from the New York State Association of Medical Examiners. The leather cup matched the framed photo of Dvorak, the heavyset, bearded man who was his partner, and their two border collies.