Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

In fact, Jensen had directed the crime scene technician, Sergeant Morin, to head over to Kilmer’s as soon as he finished with the Keane house. The BCI investigator might not have believed the chief’s assertions, but she wasn’t stupid. Mark waited for her to tell the chief, but she simply hung over him, her face as professionally sorrowful as a funeral director’s.

“Russ,” she said. “You have to help me here. Now maybe, as you say, it wasn’t you who killed your wife. Maybe it was one of her lovers. From what I’ve heard already, it sounds like she enjoyed whoring around with the best of-”

The chief came out of his chair so fast that Mark, watching through the observation window, jerked away involuntarily. Jensen stood her ground, her chin out, her mouth curved in a knowing smile.

“You bitch,” the chief growled. His hands were clenched into fists. Mark could see the pulse in his neck. “When we get through with this I’m gonna-”

A racket from down the hall buried the chief’s words. Mark was grateful. He didn’t want to hear that threat. He didn’t want to feel what he did now, the wavering, sick, maybe-could-he running through his nervous system.

It sounded like it was coming from the squad room or Harlene’s dispatch center, a cacophony of angry voices, male and female, and Harlene calling for Lyle and the thud of running feet.

Noble burst out of the door and trotted down the hall. He unlocked the interrogation room door without glancing at Mark. “Investigator Jensen!” he called. “You might want to get out here!”

She twitched with annoyance. “Can’t your deputy chief handle it?”

“Ma’am, I really think you want to get out here.”

Swearing under her breath, Jensen stalked from the room. “Durkee,” she said, catching sight of him. “You have the detainee.”

Mark’s mouth formed the word Me? But she had already swept up the hall, Noble hopping out of her way and hurrying to keep up with her.

Mark went to the door. The chief walked over. Looked up the hall. “What’s going on?”

“I dunno,” Mark said. He looked at his shoes. Shiny. Like always. He prided himself on being a spit-and-polish cop, his crease always sharp, his fade high and tight. Not like the chief, with his hair always in need of a trim and his beat-up old boots beneath unpressed trousers. He looked at those boots now. His throat felt hot and full. “Sir,” he said, “Investigator Jensen’s sent Sergeant Morin over to the funeral home. To… to get prints. I don’t know why she didn’t tell you.”

“She’s trying to get me mad enough to confess,” the chief said. His voice was almost clinical, as if he were passing along a point of law he picked up at a seminar. “I’ve probably conducted a thousand interrogations over the course of my career. Hard and soft, sitting in with men a lot more experienced than me and running them on my own. I know most of the techniques, and I know the number one rule, which is, if you don’t want anyone to have anything on you, shut the hell up. Jensen knows that I know, and she’s decided the way to get me to forget that sound piece of advice is to rattle my cage so bad I’ll break down the bars and take a swipe at her.”

“Is there… I mean…” Mark didn’t want to know, but he was compelled to ask. “Do you have something you don’t want her to know?”

The chief looked at him.

The babble of indistinct voices that had accompanied their talk suddenly sharpened. A woman shouted, “Russell! Russell!”

“That’s my mother,” the chief said, starting forward. Without thinking, Mark threw his arm across the door.

“You gonna keep me in here, Mark?” The chief’s voice was low. “You think I did it after all?”

“No, sir,” Mark said, because where would he be if it were true? He dropped his arm. The chief brushed past him and hiked up the hall.

Harlene’s dispatch center was jammed with people, cops and civilians alike. Lyle McAuley held Margy Van Alstyne by the shoulder as she listened, pink-faced and trembling, to something he said. That shyster Geoff Burns was in Jensen’s face-the first time Mark had ever been glad to see the obnoxious little prick. Noble stood behind the BCI investigator, imitating a wall. A bleached blonde in a ridiculously skimpy jacket wept with fury, mascara running black down her tan skin, while Kevin Flynn fussed around her, trapped between comforting her and staying the hell out of her way. And Eric McCrea was body-blocking a guy with a goofy tie and a notepad. “Oh, crap,” Mark said. He didn’t know the man’s name, but he recognized a reporter when he saw one.

“What the hell’s going on?” the chief said in a voice loud enough to stir the American flag in the front hall.

“Russell!” his mother said.

“Durkee!” Investigator Jensen looked like she wanted to rip him a new one.

Geoffrey Burns broke away from Jensen and shoved through the crowd to reach the chief’s side. “Don’t say another word until we’ve had a chance to talk,” he said. “I’m your attorney.”

“I don’t need a lawyer,” the chief said.

“Be smart for once in your life, Van Alstyne. Unless you’ve got your bunkmate all picked out at Clinton, you need a lawyer.”

“Fine,” the chief snapped. “I’ll call the bar association and ask for a referral.”

Burns butted up against the chief. His clipped, dark beard pointed accusingly at his would-be client’s chest. “I don’t like you any better than you like me, Van Alstyne. But I’m doing this as a favor to Clare. Do you want to be the one to tell her you turned down my representation?”

Mark could hear the chief’s teeth click, the hiss of his breath releasing. “No,” he said.

“Good.” Burns turned toward Jensen. “No more questions until I’ve had a chance to confer with my client,” he said.

“Russell.” Mrs. Van Alstyne waded toward them. “The man from the state police came to Kilmer’s-”

“They’re desecrating my sister’s body,” the bleached blonde said. Her voice shook with anger. “This bastard killed my sister and now he’s sending storm troopers over to pry open her coffin and… and…” She choked on tears and spittle.

“Goddammit, I didn’t kill your sister! That woman-”

“ She says you can’t account for where you were!” the blonde screeched, slashing her finger toward Investigator Jensen. “For almost twenty-four hours! Twenty-four hours! My sister was killed! Where were you, you sanctimonious bastard? Where were you?”

“He was with me.” A woman’s voice, pitched to carry over the crowd. Heads turned. People pushed each other for a better view. The reporter pivoted, his face alight with interest.

“He was with me,” Clare Fergusson said. “He spent the night with me.”

He arrived at the cabin just as the last streaks of orange and red were fading from the sky. He had a bag of groceries in each hand, and he balanced his steps carefully as he crunched up the snow-packed drive to the door. Maple and alder and birch trees cast pale violet shadows on the snow. Behind them, the forest thickened into the darkness of hemlock and eastern pine. He paused, one boot on the deck stairs. Above the cabin’s deep-eaved roof, he could see the first star of the evening glimmering through a thin veil of chimney smoke.

She opened the door, spilling golden light. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“What are you doing?” She bent down-slipping something on her feet, he guessed-and stepped onto the deck.

“First star,” he said.

“Did you make a wish?” He could hear, more than see, her smile.

“I don’t know what to ask for.”