Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

“Your wife hadn’t told anyone she was planning to be away?” Jensen asked.

“No, but that-”

“Do you have any evidence she hired this Keane woman? A check, maybe, or a record of a phone call?”

“We’ll have to look at the phone records and the bank statements again, now we know what to look at.”

“So you’re basing the entire connection between the pet sitter and the victim on the fact that your wife got a cat?”

“Quinn Tracey positively ID’d Keane’s Civic!” He expected her to treat him as a suspect. He didn’t expect her to blow off credible evidence pointing to another. He took a breath.

“A minor whom you questioned without the permission or presence of his parents.”

“I’m sure he’ll be willing to testify again. On the record.”

“I’m sure he would be. If you want him to.”

Now he really was mad. “What the hell are you implying? That I’m some sort of small-town Machiavelli who can co-opt anyone I come in contact with?”

“I’m not implying anything. I’m stating outright that this investigation has been tainted from the beginning. Your men left the goddam kitchen door open for hours, dropping the temperature and hopelessly muddling the time of death. Despite the fact that you were separated from your wife and have no alibi for the hours during which she might have been killed, you’ve refused to submit to questioning.”

“I have not-”

“You steered the investigation toward a mysterious ‘released felon’ ”-she air-quoted with her fingers-“who killed your wife out of spite. When I showed up asking questions, you disappeared. Now you pop up again with a new theory, supported by a conveniently absent pair of scam artists who-surprise, surprise!-have a knife identical to the murder weapon in their underwear drawer.”

Rage rendered him nearly inarticulate. “Are you saying I tossed a throw-down? You saying I framed this perp?”

She looked at Mark. “Officer Durkee, were you with Chief Van Alstyne at all times when he was upstairs?”

“Uh… mostly.”

“At all times, Officer Durkee.”

Mark stared at the floor miserably. “No, ma’am.”

“Did anyone witness this alleged assault?”

Russ broke in. “You can’t deny that. The bastard rammed right into Ethan Stoner’s car trying to get away.”

She stared at him, her eyes narrow. “For all I know, this unknown man fled the house after you threatened him. You have your service weapon, don’t you?”

He couldn’t speak. He jerked his parka to one side, revealing his holster.

“Officer Entwhistle, take custody of that sidearm.”

“Oh, for the love of Mike,” Lyle said.

“No!” Mark lurched forward. “The chief didn’t do it. He couldn’t have! For God’s sake, we needed your help because nobody was looking at Reverend Fergusson as a suspect. Not because anybody suspected the chief!”

“ We needed her help?” Lyle hitched his thumbs over his belt. “You were the one who called the staties down on us?”

Mark flushed red. Russ’s heart sank. Oh, no. Oh, crap. He had just about convinced himself it must have been Lyle. Not his best and brightest. Not the one he thought of as his protégé.

“Chief…” The naked pleading on Mark’s face was painful to watch. “I didn’t do it because I thought you were involved. I just thought… Reverend Fergusson had the means and the motive and no alibi and Lyle refused to even consider questioning her… and I thought, maybe if someone not so close to what was happening came on board…”

Noble stood stock-still, walleyed, a kid witnessing his parents’ marital meltdown on Christmas Eve. Lyle just shook his head, his face screwed up into an expression of disgust. “I’ve heard some stupid rationalizations for screwing someone over before, kid, but this takes the cake.”

The hypocrisy was more than Russ could bear. “He may have finked me out to the staties, Lyle, but at least he didn’t fuck my wife.”

Lyle’s face bleached white. Out of the corner of his eye, Russ could see Mark and Noble imitating widemouthed bass, and Investigator Jensen’s perfectly plucked eyebrows crawling into her hairline. But all his attention was focused on his deputy chief. His right-hand man. His friend.

“Aren’t you going to say something? Maybe a stupid rationalization? Let me guess. You couldn’t resist. Wait, I know. It didn’t mean anything. No, no, I got it. She came on to you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jensen said. Her rounded, modulated voice had given way to a broad, flat central New York accent. “This is the most fucked-up department I’ve ever been sent to. It’s like a fucking Peyton Place.”

Lyle ignored her. He looked at his hands. At the ceiling. Finally, he looked at Russ. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s it? You’re sorry? For what? Me finding out? I mean, if you were sorry about screwing my wife, you might have mentioned it some time in the last seven years, right?”

“I-”

Someone cleared his throat in the doorway. They all turned. Sergeant Morin stood there, holding an old-fashioned rolled fax flimsy in one hand, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Unh, sorry to interrupt,” he said. “Not that I heard anything. I mean, I just got here.”

Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did you find anything?”

“Yeah.” Morin thrust the flimsy toward Russ. “Got a hit on one set right off. Nothing yet on the other.” He pointed toward the stairs. “I’m just going to go back up there and take my photographs, okay?”

Russ nodded. Morin bolted up the stairs. No one else moved. The flimsy curled in Russ’s palm, so light a breath of air could carry it away. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to remember his way back into being a cop. Trying to give a damn about whatever information Morin had uncovered.

“Chief?” Noble’s voice was tentative. “What’s it say?”

Russ breathed out. Opened his eyes. Unscrolled the flimsy. “Prints belong to Dennis Shambaugh. Why does that name sound familiar?”

“Dennie Shambaugh,” Lyle said, his voice thin. “You remember him. The Check Burglar. Must have been six, seven years ago. Right after you took over from Chief Brennan.”

“Oh, yeah. Didn’t he go up to Plattsburgh?”

“Was he from the Czech Republic or something?” Jensen asked.

“Not that kind of Czech,” Russ said. “His specialty was jimmying the locks on houses and camps and making off with extra checks and a signature sample. The victims didn’t even know they’d been ripped off until they got their bank statements. Sounds a lot like the operation you described here.” He held the scroll at arm’s length, trying to read the tiny print containing Dennis Sham-baugh’s record. “He got ten years. He must have been squeaky clean to get out this early.”

“He got a dime for theft by breaking?” Jensen said.

“Assault,” Lyle told her. “He accidentally picked a house where the owner was home. The guy had a gun and thought he’d go all self-defense on Shambaugh. Who yanked the weapon away from the homeowner and pistol-whipped the hell out of him.”

“Didn’t he have a fiancée?” Russ said. “I thought the DA’s office tried to get his girlfriend to roll on him.”

“She claimed she didn’t know anything,” Lyle said. “Just thought he was a well-paid arborist.”

“Arborist?” Jensen said.

“That’s a tree cutter,” Lyle said.

“I know what a goddam arborist is.”

“Anyway, there wasn’t anything that linked her to the burglaries or the money. I think she dumped him. I don’t recall her even being at the trial.”

“What was her name?” Russ looked at Lyle, then at Noble, who, while slow off the block when it came to original thinking, had a prodigious memory for names and dates.