All Mortal Flesh Read online

  “No, you have to see her now.”

  Lois’s tone caught Clare’s attention. The secretary’s face was drawn taut, her lips pressed bloodlessly together.

  “Okay,” Clare said. “Elizabeth, please excuse me.” She stepped into the hallway. “What is it?”

  Lois gestured down the hall, to the door leading into the sanctuary. “Just . . . go.” She retreated into Clare’s office. Clare could hear her asking de Groot how the tea was.

  Clare walked toward the church with a rapidly coalescing mass of dread filling her stomach. It had to be bad news. But not a parishioner. She had had parishioners sicken, be injured, die. Lois would have told her the details. She wouldn’t have been so shaken. It had to be something personal.

  Oh, God, what if it was her father? He owned a small aviation business, he flew nearly every day—what if something had gone wrong?

  No, that didn’t make any sense. Her mother or one of her brothers would have called her directly. Who else did she know who might be—

  Then she realized. There was someone else whose job exposed him to danger. She pushed open the door to the sanctuary and spotted a figure standing in the dimness of the north aisle. “Is it Russ?” she said. “Has anything happened to Russ?”

  Anne Vining-Ellis, Clare’s closest friend among her congregation, turned. Her face, usually gleaming with a sly sense of humor, was grave. “No,” she said. “It’s his wife. Linda Van Alstyne was murdered yesterday.”

  EIGHT

  It was more like a wake than a meeting. Six o’clock Tuesday morning. Mark’s shift was officially over, and he had been awake since Monday morning, but he looked like an ad for Sealy Posturepedic next to the chief.

  They sat in the bullpen, everyone who was working the investigation. Eric McCrea kept glancing between the chief and Lyle MacAuley, like he was watching to see which one would be the first to crack. MacAuley was at the whiteboard, writing down what little information they had. Noble Entwhistle sat in his usual spot, his notebook open on the desk in front of him. He looked the same as always, and different. Like someone had taken a drawing of him and rubbed out some of the edges with a gum eraser.

  Kevin Flynn, who usually rattled all over the place talking and asking questions, sat silently. He was still in his civvies, although at some point he had put on his Day-Glo orange POLICE vest. Once in a while he looked as if he might say something, but he’d just drop his head and crack his knuckles instead.

  And the chief . . . Mark wasn’t a religious man, but when he saw the chief come though the doors in the predawn darkness, he thought, God, don’t ever let me come to that.

  “. . . just bring us all up to date,” MacAuley was saying. “Eric?”

  McCrea stood. “The state CS techs didn’t find anything that leaped out at them. There were some hairs and a variety of prints. We’ll see when we get the report. The neighbor destroyed any tracks there might have been in the snow when she drove up to the door and then ran in and out.”

  “Friend,” the chief growled. He was sitting in his usual place for a meeting, atop the sturdy oak table near the whiteboard, his feet resting on a chair.

  “Uh . . . I’m sorry, Chief?”

  “Meg Tracey isn’t a neighbor. She lives on Dunedin Road. She’s—she was Linda’s best friend.”

  Lyle wrote her name and BEST FRIEND on the whiteboard. “What do we know about her?”

  The chief blinked. “Know about her?”

  “Chief, she found the body. We should at least eliminate her as a possible.” Lyle’s voice was gentle. “Eric, you took her statement. Anything?”

  McCrea flipped open his notebook. “Her husband teaches at Skidmore. They’ve got one kid at Syracuse and two more at home. She doesn’t work. She claimed she was at her house, alone, all afternoon until her daughter got home from the middle school. She dropped the kid off for a piano lesson and then went to the Van Alstynes’.” He stumbled for a moment, breaking the smooth recital of facts. “She said she didn’t see anyone except the cat.”

  “The cat? We don’t have a cat.”

  “The Tracey woman said Mrs. Van Alstyne adopted it a week ago.” He looked at MacAuley. “Uh, found the cat behind the barn. We took it to the county SPCA.”

  Mark looked toward the wall. He didn’t want to watch the chief deal with the fact that he hadn’t even known his wife got a cat.

  Eric bent his head to his notes and went on. “She says she’s very close to the victim and was worried because she hadn’t heard anything from her since Saturday afternoon.”

  The silence in the squad room was absolute. Eric realized what he said. “Shit! I meant Mrs. Van Alstyne. I’m sorry, chief.”

  The chief shifted on his table. “Okay, guys.” He sounded very, very tired. “This is a homicide investigation. We’re not going to get anywhere if you have to apologize every time you say ‘victim’ or ‘murder.’ Let’s stop worrying about my feelings and focus on breaking the case.” He waved toward McCrea. “Go on, Eric.”

  “Um . . . that’s about it. Mrs. Tracey didn’t know of anyone who might have posed a threat to . . . the victim. She said the only person Mrs. Van Alstyne had been having trouble with lately—” McCrea broke off, swallowing.

  “Was her husband,” the chief finished.

  McCrea nodded.

  “Let’s get that out in the open, then.” The chief took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I think everybody here is aware I’ve been staying at my mom’s house since the Friday before last. Lyle?” He pointed to the whiteboard, and Lyle wrote down JAN 8. “Except for one counseling session, I haven’t seen Linda since then.”

  Mark wondered if he was aware he was speaking of his wife in the present.

  “I don’t know what rumors or stories have been making the rounds. The fact is, every marriage has its ups and downs. Linda and I started talking seriously about some issues in the middle of November. We decided we needed some perspective, so we started seeing a marriage counselor in December. Then Linda needed a break from having me around, so we agreed I’d move into my mom’s temporarily. Any questions?”

  Mark held his breath, waiting to see if anyone was foolhardy enough to ask the chief about the rumors of his affair.

  “Okay,” the chief said. “Lyle?”

  MacAuley crossed his arms over his chest and stared into the middle distance. He wasn’t going to hide behind his notes like McCrea, but he wasn’t going to look at the chief, either. “Preliminary examination at the scene indicates the decedent was killed with a large knife. The ME won’t be able to tell exactly what we’re looking for until the autopsy, but it appeared to him that the fatal thrust was through the throat, which suggests the killer has at least some knowledge of professional knife-fighting techniques. There were no defensive wounds—suggesting the perp was someone either known to the decedent or someone unthreatening. There were—” Here he faltered and resorted to reading from his notebook. “Dr. Dvorak speculated that the significant postmortem wounds displayed the killer’s rage.”

  Mark thought the chief might lose it. “What . . .” he said harshly, “what postmortem wounds?”

  Eric McCrea had covered his face with one hand. He had been inside the house, Mark remembered. He had seen her. Of course, sooner or later they were all going to see her, in neatly labeled evidence photos. First the rest of the officers, then the men and women at the district attorney’s office, and then, if they did their job right, a judge and a jury and a whole courtroom of spectators.

  “Her face was slashed. Repeatedly.” MacAuley’s face puckered, as if he had something nasty in his mouth.

  The chief’s jaw was locked tight. He nodded once, a jerk of the head.

  “I’d like to propose a working theory,” Lyle said. Mark could feel the whole room’s relief as the deputy chief changed the topic. “The chief hasn’t checked the house yet, but it appears at this time that this wasn’t a home invasion gone bad. Mrs. Van Alstyne had no obvious enemies.
Chief, does anyone gain financially from her death?”

  The chief’s mouth worked for a moment. He shook his head. “There’s her sister, Debbie. In Florida. My mom called to let her know last night. She has two grown sons. They get something. I think. We don’t have a whole lot. It’s mostly the house and the land, and that’s in both our names.”

  “Insurance?”

  “Just . . . just . . .” He seemed unable to find the words. His hands shaped a small rectangle.

  “Burial expenses?” Kevin Flynn’s voice was so tentative, for a second Mark wasn’t sure he had really heard the younger man. The chief nodded.

  “No financial gain,” Lyle said, writing the words on the whiteboard. “But”—he wrote RUSS VAN ALSTYNE on the board—“the victim was married to a cop.” Next to the chief’s name he wrote 20+. “A cop who’s headed up our department for almost seven years. And who was an MP for twenty years before that.”

  “Twenty-two,” the chief said automatically.

  “Fact,” MacAuley said. “The perp either knew Mrs. Van Alstyne would be home alone or didn’t know the chief was away and expected to find him at home on Sunday.”

  Mark could see the others nodding in agreement.

  “Fact. Of the two Van Alstynes, a lot more bad guys have a hate-on for the chief than for his wife.”

  “After thirty years of putting them away? Sure,” McCrea said.

  “Theory. Linda Van Alstyne wasn’t the target of this murder. She was just the stand-in, either accidentally or incidentally, for her husband.” MacAuley slashed two heavy black lines beneath the chief’s name. “In other words, the intended victim isn’t Linda. It’s the chief.”

  NINE

  Russ Van Alstyne loved his house. After a lifetime of living in base housing or rental apartments, he had embraced the pleasures and pains of home ownership like an ecstatic embracing a demanding god. He restored the kitchen woodwork to its origins in the Second World War. He converted the cavernous walk-in attic into an all-modern-conveniences workspace. He reinforced the sagging barn floor so it could be used as a garage. He repainted it, clapboard, trim, and shutters, one side every summer.

  Now he sat in his truck, in his driveway, looking at his house. Afraid to get out. Afraid he might throw up the moment he crossed the threshold.

  “A cleaning crew’s already been in.” Lyle sat in the driver’s seat, waiting for him to get his act together. He had seen Russ in the station parking lot, fumbling with his keys, and roughly bumped him out of the way. “Shove it over,” he had said. “You’re not in any condition to drive.” Now he continued, “After the CS techs finished last night. The kitchen was cleaned.”

  “That was fast.” There was a service in Albany that provided crime scene and biohazard cleanup, but it usually took a couple of days for them to make it to a job.

  “I called in a few chips.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a silence.

  “Russ, you have to go in sooner or later. And if you want the investigation to go forward, it’d better be sooner.”

  “I know. It’s just—”

  “I know.” Lyle nodded. “Look, how about we go in the front door?”

  Except in the summertime, when they opened it to circulate air through the house, the formal front door was never used. In the winter, Russ didn’t bother to shovel it out, and he and Lyle would have to wade through several weeks’ worth of accumulated snow to reach it. But it was at the other end of the house from the kitchen. In fact, if he went in the front door, he might never have to set foot in the kitchen. He didn’t worry about later. He was living minute by minute now.

  “Okay. Let’s.”

  Lyle grabbed one of the guys and asked him to unlatch the double doors from the inside. The snow was as bad as Russ had feared, but the challenge of breaking a trail through knee-deep crust and powder distracted him sufficiently so that it wasn’t until he whacked his boot against the first granite step that he realized he was there.

  He stomped up the steps—two, then a rectangular slab, then another two—shedding snow as he went. He pulled open the doors—tug, sweep, a kick of the boots against the jamb—and he was in.

  Inside.

  “You okay?” Lyle was crowding in behind him, forcing him to move forward in order to shut the doors behind them.

  “Yeah.” And, in some way, he was. The awful blankness of the kitchen awaited him, but in the tiny hallway, with the stairs he climbed to bed every night in front of him, he was okay. Not great, but he wasn’t going to get sick all over the oriental carpet.

  “What do you want to do first?”

  He had decided on the way over that he would have to be methodical to get through this task. Take it one step at a time. “The workroom,” he said. “End of the hall at the top of the stairs.” Farthest from the kitchen. Although it was Linda’s space, it was also the most impersonal as far as Russ was concerned. She designed and cut and sewed for her custom drapery business there; a workplace and nothing more. When he flicked on the lights he saw what he expected to see, the worktables clear, the racks and shelves of fabrics and hardware neat and organized.

  Lyle hovered in the doorway while Russ walked around. “Everything look good?” he asked.

  “I gotta be honest with you,” Russ said. “Unless the place was tossed, I wouldn’t be able to tell. Once I finished the renovation, I didn’t come in here except to ask her if she was coming to bed.” Regret squatted like a heavy toad on his breastbone. All the time and energy she had spent on her business, and the extent of his interest had been to find out when she was getting home from her fabric-buying jaunts. Why hadn’t he put more effort into appreciating what she was doing? He turned toward Lyle. “Let’s check the guest rooms,” he said.

  The two extra bedrooms were just as they always were, lavishly decorated and sterile. Once in a while they entertained couples from their army days, but most of the year they were alone. His closest relationships had always been among the people he worked with—relationships that closed Linda out without meaning to. Work had defined him and owned him. No wonder her friends were hers, and not theirs.

  “Anything?” Lyle asked.

  He shook his head. Stepped across the hall. Paused.

  “This is your bedroom, right?”

  He nodded.

  “You ready to go in?”

  “Hell, no.” That earned him a half-smile from his deputy chief. Christ, Lyle was looking almost as cut up as Russ felt. He had always liked Linda, had been one of the few guys on the force she could talk and laugh with. Russ wasn’t the only one who had suffered a loss. Not by a long shot.

  Their bedroom was heartbreakingly normal. The bed neatly made. Several empty dry cleaner’s bags tossed on Linda’s side—she never used wire hangers. Her closet door open, a pair of high heels tumbled in front of the full-length mirror. He could see her, standing there, scrutinizing herself. Frowning, shaking her head, kicking them off. “Not these,” she would have said.

  “Russ?”

  Lyle’s voice shook him from his reverie. He forced himself to cross the plush carpeting to Linda’s vanity, where she kept her jewelry in a drawer.

  The first thing he noticed was her wedding ring, sitting next to her engagement diamond and the diamond and sapphire eternity band he had gotten her on their twentieth anniversary. When had she taken them off? She had been wearing them at the therapist’s office.

  The rest of the contents of the drawer were intact, a fact he could have told without further search. No one after easily shopped swag would have passed up those rings. He paused for a moment, trying to exorcise the ghost sitting at the vanity, examining her skin, dipping her fingers into the expensive little pots littering the mahogany surface. What else would thieves possibly take?

  His gun safe was usually in his closet, but he had taken it to his mother’s when he left. Linda’s passport? No, it was still in her bedside drawer—always within reach for a quick getaway, she used to joke.
>
  Lyle came out of the connecting bathroom. “It doesn’t look like anything’s been touched in here,” he said. “Did she have any prescriptions that might have tempted somebody?”

  “Not unless estrogen’s suddenly become a black-market commodity.”

  Lyle’s mouth quirked upward, and Russ found himself half-smiling, thinking of Linda cracking jokes about hot flashes, and in the next instant his eyes filled with a rush of tears and he had to turn away, fumbling for the doorknob. “Better get to the rest of the house,” he said, when he could make his throat work again.

  He knew before they went downstairs that nothing would be missing, and he was right. The stereo, the DVD player, the silver collection she had amassed over the years—all of it was there. He and Lyle were headed for the small office off the parlor, where Linda paid the bills and managed her paperwork, when Kevin Flynn poked his head in from the living room. “Chief?” he said tentatively. “I’m sorry to disturb you . . .”

  “What is it, Kevin?”

  “It’s just—where did Mrs. Van Alstyne keep her purse?”

  “Her purse?”

  “I was going over the barn, and looking into her station wagon, and it made me think about my mom, who likes to keep her keys in the ignition in her car, so when I came back into the house I was sort of looking to see if you had some of those hooks for keys like folks sometimes have, you know, in the kitchen or the mudroom, except you don’t, so then I got to thinking where do ladies keep their keys if they aren’t in the car or on a hook and I figured their purses. Right?”

  Russ didn’t want to contemplate the amount of lung power it took for Flynn to get that sentence out. One of the advantages of being twenty-three. “Mrs. Van Alstyne hangs her purse on one of the coat hooks on the mudroom wall, Kevin. It probably has a coat tossed over it.”

  “No, sir, I thought of that. There aren’t any purses on those hooks. I checked.”

  Russ was through the living room, across the kitchen, and in the mudroom before he remembered to be afraid of the room in which Linda had died. He tossed the barn coats and parkas and rain slickers on the floor, one after another, until they blocked the door to the summer kitchen and the old-fashioned iron hooks gleamed dully in the morning sun streaming through the diamond-shaped window in the mudroom door.