Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

She spent the five-minute drive to the station worrying about what she was going to do for child care over the summer. Granddad was going back to work sooner rather than later, and even in a small town she didn't want to leave Genny and Hudson home several hours a day. The Millers Kill recreation department had a seven-week day camp that sounded perfect, except that it was four hundred per kid. The sight of the TV vans parked in front of the station put an end to her pity party. There were three reporter/cameraman pairs on the front steps that she could see, bringing traffic to a near standstill as drivers on their way to work slowed down to rubberneck.

She pulled into the lot that ran beside and behind the station and killed her engine. She sat, hands still wrapped around the steering wheel, wondering how in hell she was going to get by those people without getting caught on camera.

A flash of copper near the asphalt caught Hadley's eye. Kevin Flynn's disembodied head rose from the edge of the parking lot. What the hell? He beckoned to her. She slid out of her car, snagging her tote bag, and hiked toward him. He was, she saw as she got closer, standing in a stairwell. Rotting leaves drifted over half the cement steps. At the bottom, a door stood ajar.

"In here," he said.

She didn't need to be told twice. She descended carefully so as not to slip on the leaves and ducked inside, Kevin treading on her heels. She was, she found, next to the evidence locker.

"They used to have cells on this floor in the olden days," Flynn explained, tugging the heavy door back into place. "This was the way they took prisoners out."

In the enclosed area, Flynn towered over her. She moved forward, well away from his body space, out of reach. She had decided she was going to approach him with a kind of big-sister courtesy unless and until he hit on her again. Cold and standoffish was a turn-on for some guys, and while she didn't think Flynn was like that, she wasn't taking any chances. She figured if she treated him like everyone else on the force did-as if he were sixteen years old-he'd get over his crush fast.

"Thanks for sneaking me in," she said. She threaded her way past file boxes stacked three deep against the wall and headed for the stairs. "When did the reporters show up?"

"They were here when I got in," he said, his voice echoing along the subterranean hallway. "The chief's not a happy guy right now."

At the foot of the stairs, she paused. Almost made him go up first. Then she pictured the two of them maneuvering around each other, changing positions. The hell with it. She mounted the stairs. If he wanted to get an eyeful of her brown poly-clad ass, so be it.

She could hear voices coming from Harlene's dispatch when she got to the top. "-gotta make a statement," MacAuley was saying.

"I know, I know." That was the chief.

She walked in and was surprised to see the deputy chief spiffed up in the brown wool uniform jacket none of them ever wore, his cap tucked beneath his arm.

"Morning," she said.

Harlene rolled her chair away from the board and stood up. "Looks like I better make more coffee."

"Don't bother on my account!" Hadley called after her, but it was too late.

The chief frowned at her. "Did you say anything to the reporters coming in?"

She shifted her tote bag to her other arm. "No, sir." She could feel a solid mass in the doorway behind her, and knew, without turning, it was Kevin Flynn. "Flynn let me in through a downstairs door. By the evidence locker."

MacAuley raised his brushy eyebrows. "How'd you know to let her in?" He directed the question well over her head.

"Um." Flynn's boots scraped the floor. "I was watching. From the interview room."

MacAuley and the chief looked at each other. The chief opened his mouth.

"I really appreciated it." Hadley leaped in before the chief could say anything. She spoke in a just-us-grown-ups tone, as if she were talking to Hudson's teacher with him standing there. "He's a thoughtful kid."

"Mmm." The chief gave Flynn one more considering look before turning back to MacAuley. "You sure you know everything you're going to give them?"

MacAuley flicked an invisible piece of lint from his hat. "You want to talk to them? Go right ahead."

"Hell, no," the chief said. "I've seen myself on camera. I always look like I'm about to grab the mike and start threatening people with it."

"Then trust me. I'm good at this." MacAuley buffed the bill of his already shining cap on his sleeve and settled it square on his head. He stood up straight, tugging his jacket into place, and was transformed from his usual sly, slouching self to a gray-haired diplomat for law enforcement. He immediately spoiled the effect by winking at them. "Once more into the breach, dear friends."

"C'mon," the chief said, as MacAuley sauntered down the hall toward the station entrance. "Let's get into the briefing room and catch everybody up."

"Everybody" consisted of Eric McCrea, leafing through the Glens Falls Area phone book and jotting down addresses and numbers in his notebook. "Lyle and I have already gone over things this morning," the chief said, tossing his folders on the table. "We got the report from Doc Scheeler on John Doe three's fillings. The amalgam's contemporary, no more'n five years old. Which jibes with Scheeler's estimate of his age as between twenty-one and twenty-five. We have DNA samples from both bodies taken from behind the Muster Field, and the state lab'll be happy to run a comparison for us within two to three years."

Flynn groaned.

"What about dental records?" Hadley asked. It was a lot easier to risk sounding dumb when most of the force was someplace else.

"Dental records are great when you're comparing an unknown victim to a known missing person. They're useless in tracking down an identity. We'd have to go through every dental office in New York State-assuming this guy was from New York. Where we are, he could just as easily be from Canada or northern New England."

"Anything on John Doe one?" Flynn didn't sound hopeful.

"No." The chief sat on the table and planted his boots against a chair seat. "It's making me nuts. We got prints. We got those damn tattoos. Even if there's no-" he cut himself off. Hadley was pretty sure the rest of the sentence would have been connection with the guys Knox saw . No one believed she had seen the same tattoos on Stud Boy: Santiago. She didn't know why that bothered her. It shouldn't matter. She got paid whether they caught whoever did this or not.

"John Doe one did time," the chief went on. "I'm sure of it. So why don't we have an ID for him yet?"

It was a rhetorical question. Hadley and Flynn looked at each other. "Eric." The chief pitched his voice to include McCrea. "You got anything to add?"

"Hadley and I interviewed the members of the volunteer search-and-rescue team yesterday. No one noticed anything unusual."

Hadley didn't realize she was making a face until the chief asked her, "What is it?"

She glanced toward McCrea. He grinned. "John Huggins wanted to know what a sweet little thing like Officer Knox was doing on the force."

The chief pinched the bridge of his nose. "Huggins has some… difficulties with women that don't fit his-ah, traditional ideas." He looked at Hadley. "He's harmless, though. And our departments often work closely together, so let's try to keep things civil."

Hadley frowned. "So I shouldn't have told him to eat shit and die?" The expression on the chief's face was priceless. She held up her hands. "Just kidding. I was very civil."

He gave her a withering look. "Kevin?"

"Between Mr. McGeoch and Agent Hodgden, I got a list of area farms that employ immigrant workers year round, and the names of laborers with legal permits and sponsors."