Julia Spencer-Fleming - To Darkness And To Death

They might. Twilight came early in the mountains, and the sun already sat on the high horizon like a campfire burning out. Orange light stretched in long, dying streamers through the trees, stitching a shadow forest across the landscape.

Hayes paused every now and then to take a picture of the trampled grass or the single rutted track of the garden cart. There was no other evidence as to who or what had been down the track.

The forest opened up onto the red-washed remains of the old Haundenosaunee. Russ heard someone whistle. “Watch out for Count Dracula,” Eric said.

“Is this it?” Hayes asked.

“Yeah,” Russ said. “This is it.” They skirted the blank-faced wall of boxwood and approached the place where Eugene’s body had been found. Hayes and the technician began to set up a lamp on a tripod for photographs. Russ glanced up at the tower. When he had been here with Ed Castle, he had looked briefly for a sign that Eugene’s death might have been a cruel accident, but from the ground, the stone balustrades that bound the galleries and circled the top of the tower were aggressively intact.

“Noble. I want you to circle the base of this thing, see if you find anything. Eric, you’re with me. Let’s take a look inside.”

The men split apart, Russ and Eric going along a rough path toward the open tower door, Noble into the deep grass. Russ took the corroded handle and opened the tower door, creaking the hinges. He switched on his flashlight, throwing a bright circle on a bare flagstone floor, and moved from that to a flight of wooden stairs running up the inner wall. “Up we go,” he said. “Watch your step.”

The treads creaked and groaned. Russ tensed with every step, ready to leap to the next step if the wood beneath his boot gave way. When they reached the first open landing, he leaned over the carved stone banister. Sergeant Hayes and the technician were hard to his right, just visible beyond the edge of the gallery.

They mounted the next flight of stairs. They were circling around the tower, corkscrewing higher and higher. At the next balcony, they could see Noble below, methodically sweeping through the shaggy grass. Russ squatted down and examined the edge of the balcony and the floor in front of it. “Nothing,” he said.

“It’s all stone,” Eric said. “You could go over it without a snag. Hell, those balcony rails are so low you could fall over just by leaning out too far.”

Russ looked at him sharply. “You okay? With the height, I mean?”

Eric jerked his chin up and down. “It’s not my favorite thing. I’ll be okay.”

The third level held the surprise. Instead of the open interior of the first two stories, this one was bisected by a sturdy wall with a thick door, standing just ajar.

“Jeez,” Eric said, reaching for the handle. “It looks like something out of Young Frankenstein. ”

Russ grabbed his wrist. “Don’t touch it. Prints.”

Eric’s face flushed red. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“’Sokay.” Russ dug into his pocket for the pair of latex gloves Hayes had handed him and wrestled them on before tugging the door wide.

“Holy shit,” Eric breathed. He paused for a moment before fumbling to switch on his flashlight.

Russ’s first thought was Everything’s empty . The crumpled blanket, the husk of a backpack, the plastic sandwich wrappers littered across the floor. The smell of urine made him realize that not everything had been turned out and abandoned.

He and Eric circled the floor, cataloging the apple core-“May be DNA on that,” he said-and the Thermos, which Eric unscrewed after putting his own gloves on.

“Chicken soup,” he said, sniffing. “Cold.”

Russ spotted the olive green balaclava, tossed near the door, and was about to bag it when Eric whistled.

“What?”

The younger man was on his hands and knees at the opposite side of the tower. “I think I’ve got some blood on the floor. A few drops.” He sat back on his calves and looked up at Russ. “What the hell was going on here, Chief?”

Several possibilities came to mind. All of them were bad.

He crossed to the stone banister outside the door and leaned over. “Hey!” He called. He was, he saw, directly over Jordan Hayes. The state trooper looked up, his face blurring in the swift-moving shadow. “We’ve hit the jackpot. Get your stuff up here.”

He stepped back and beckoned to Eric. “Let me have your radio.”

The officer unhooked his radio and passed it to Russ. Russ keyed the mike. “Dispatch? This is the chief.”

A squeal of interference and a swish of static. He glanced at the stone walls around him and moved to the edge of the banister. Beneath him, the evidence technicians were packing up. “Dispatch,” he said again. “This is the chief.”

Harlene’s voice was faint but recognizable. “Go ahead, Chief.”

“Who’s on duty at the station?”

Static.

“Come back?”

“Tim Foster.”

“Okay. I want him to take Ed Castle’s statement on the events this afternoon at Haudenosaunee. And then tell Castle he’s free to go. With our thanks and apologies.” He thought for a moment. No, any apology from the department was as likely to land them a lawsuit as anything else. Better he apologize to Ed in person. “Cancel that last.”

“No apology. Got it.”

“I want you to call everybody in. Mark, Duane, everybody.”

Even with the bad reception, he could hear the surprise in her voice. “What’s up?”

He glanced toward the room behind him. Food. A toilet. Blood. “Damned if I know.”

“Come back?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“I have-” The last word was swallowed in static.

“Come back?”

“I have a message from your wife. ‘Don’t forget you promised-’” A squeal of static wiped Harlene’s words away.

He didn’t ask her to repeat. He knew what the message was. He stared down at Hayes, lifting his collection box on his shoulder as his tech tagged along with the light. This place would be dark within the hour. They had an unaccounted-for death in the morgue, an unaccounted-for woman somewhere out there, and an unaccounted-for assault suspect on the loose. If ever he should be on the job, it was tonight.

He thought about what Linda had said, about her work. It’s my turn now.

“Tell my wife I’ll be there as promised. Chief out.”

He stood for a moment in the freshening breeze, the last of the sun-warmed air flowing toward the cold dark. At the mountains’ edge, the sky was enough to make a man believe in glory, red-orange and pink and lavender. It was going to be cold and beautiful tonight, no clouds, the moon one day from full.

Too bad Eugene van der Hoeven and Millie van der Ho-even and Becky Castle couldn’t enjoy it. He closed his eyes briefly before turning from the beauty. Back to work.

Once, Lisa Schoof had driven home drunk. She hadn’t been Lisa Schoof then but Lisa Bain, nineteen, partying all afternoon at Lake George and then setting off home because she had to work early the next morning. She had been muzzy-headed, happy, sailing along, until she saw the state trooper in her rearview mirror.

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, she had thought. She was going to get arrested. She was going to be disgraced, fined, lose her license, which would mean losing her job. The world narrowed around her. Some things faded away-the green of the trees, the other cars, the music on the radio. Other things sprang into terrible clarity-the lines painted on the road, the odometer, her rearview mirror. She drove for miles and miles, her heart pounding, all the time intensely aware of the lines, the speed, the cop car relentlessly behind her.