Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

He had written down the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the last five clients Linda had worked with on site. He gave it to Harlene. “I don’t expect you’ll be able to reach my cell phone much,” he said. “A lot of these places are in the mountains. If you hear anything, anything at all, and you can’t reach me, try one of these numbers. I put ’em in pretty much the order I’m gonna visit ’em.”

Harlene, who had three counties’ worth of roads in her head after thirty years on dispatch, looked up from the list. “It’s supposed to start coming down hard around lunchtime. Are you sure you want to be out driving around in a storm? Can’t you just call ’em instead?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “You know as well as I there are things you find out in person you’ll never get over the phone.”

She gave him a look that said, Now pull the other one.

“I’m useless here. A lame duck.” He waved a hand at himself: no badge, no gun, no uniform. “I don’t get out and do something, I’ll go nuts.”

She shook her head. “Take care of yourself. Don’t make more work for us by wrapping your truck around a tree.”

He twitched a smile at her.

Walking down the hallway felt oddly final, as if he were going and not coming back. He paused in the foyer to zip his scarf inside his jacket and heard footsteps behind him. He turned. It was Lyle.

“Where are you going?”

“To find my wife.”

Lyle jammed his hands into his pockets. “We got that BOLO out on ’er. Coast to coast. Describes her as a cop’s wife, so everyone’ll be looking that much harder for her.”

Except, of course, the ones who would assume she was running away from the domestic violence that sometimes erupts in police families. He pulled his gloves from his pocket and tugged them on.

“Russ,” Lyle began.

He held up his hand. “Don’t.”

“Come on. You gotta hear me out.”

“No, I don’t. The only thing I’ve got to do is keep from smashing your face in.” Empty talk. Posturing. He didn’t feel like taking Lyle apart. He just felt sick and tired and dirty. And it was only eight o’clock in the morning.

“She’s alive. That means you’re going to have to deal with it sooner or later.”

“Her, I forgive. You can take a flying fuck.” He turned toward the marble stairs. Lyle grabbed his arm.

Russ spun around. He had a good five inches and forty pounds on MacAuley, but his deputy chief didn’t give an inch.

“I didn’t know you then,” Lyle said, his voice tight. “She was unhappy and lonely, and the only reason-”

“I don’t want to hear this!”

“The only reason we got together was because she was so pissed off at you for bringing her to Millers Kill.” Lyle glanced away. “I figured that out later.”

“Surprisingly, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Russ, get your head out of your ass. You’ve been so busy telling yourself you’re happily married you never opened up your eyes to see what was really going on. And I don’t mean Linda using me to flip you the bird seven years ago. Okay, I’m a son of a whore and you got the right to rearrange my face. I slept with your wife and then I got to know you and respect you and to like you, and I never had the guts to come clean. I’m sorry. Jesus. I can’t say it any more’n that. I’m sorry. But you gotta face the fact that there’s something wrong with the marriage when a husband and wife act like you two have.”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Russ said between clenched teeth, “but I know there’s something wrong with my marriage. And I’m going to fix it as soon as I find my wife.”

Lyle released his arm. He sighed, a flat, defeated sigh. “Right.”

Russ turned. Took the top two steps. Turned back. “The thing I don’t get,” he said, “is why? Even if you didn’t know me, you knew I was heading up the department. Why make trouble in your own backyard? Why my wife?”

Lyle smiled without humor. “I’da thought you of all people would’ve figured that out.” His eyes slid away from Russ’s and looked at some point seven years in the past. “I was in love with her,” he said. “I was in love with her, too.”

Clare refused to look at the paper Thursday morning. She cracked open the front door of the rectory and saw it lying on her porch in its bright yellow plastic bag to protect it from the promised storm, and wondered why she had never seen how much it resembled an unexploded pipe bomb. Or a large, malignant yellow jacket, waiting for her to reach out an unwary hand and be stung. She closed the door. Whatever was in it, she’d find out soon enough.

She dressed quickly, trying not to notice the jumbled disarray in her sweater drawer or the way her skirt hangers had been shoved to one side of her closet. In the kitchen, she opened the pantry door to get out the oatmeal and was so dismayed by the mess she shut the door again, her appetite gone. What had they thought she was hiding behind the canned tomatoes and boxes of rigatoni?

She poured coffee from the coffeemaker into her Thermos. She pulled on her boots and parka. Next to her coat tree, the phone on the wall blinked its red message light over and over and over again. She hesitated, her hand over the play button. Maybe Russ had called?

Then she thought of his face in the station, the distrustful cop mask falling over his features, and anger burst behind her eyes, bitter and salty in her mouth. No. Russ had not called. She left the phone flashing monotonously behind the kitchen door and crunched her way down her unplowed drive toward the church.

She let herself in by the back door, walking through the still-darkened parish hall toward her office. She was surprised, as she drew closer, to hear a voice from the main office. She was always the first one in. Lois didn’t show up until nine. She slowed her steps, drawing close to the doorway without entering.

The voice was talking, then pausing. A phone conversation. “I don’t know enough to make a recommendation.” Elizabeth de Groot. Goodness, she was quite the woman of Proverbs, wasn’t she? She riseth also while it is yet night. “I thought you should hear it from me first,” Elizabeth went on. Clare leaned forward, and the Thermos thumped against her leg. She froze. “No,” Elizabeth said. Another long pause. “Well, that’s for the police to decide, isn’t it?”

Clare suddenly saw herself as she was, lurking in the darkness outside her church’s office, eavesdropping on a private conversation. It was not a pretty picture. She retreated a couple of steps, cleared her throat, and called out, “Hello?”

There was a second’s pause before de Groot answered, “Hi, Clare! It’s me, Elizabeth.” Then something quiet into the phone. By the time Clare came through the door, she was setting the receiver into the cradle. “I decided to get in early today,” Elizabeth said. “There’s so much I have to absorb just to get up to speed.”

“Mmm.” Clare rested her Thermos on Lois’s desk.

“I really think I can make a contribution to the ongoing capital campaign,” Elizabeth went on. “Not to mention with the stewardship committee. And I’ve been thinking more about outreach. I think we can expand it way beyond simply getting people who are already congregants back into the pews.”

Clare let the deacon rattle on while she debated asking Elizabeth what her real agenda was at St. Alban’s. Would the information she got be worth tipping her hand? When reconnoitering enemy territory, Master Sergeant Ashley “Hardball” Wright drawled, the first, second, and last rule is: Don’t get caught. Her old SERE instructor would’ve flunked her if she blabbed about hearing the phone call or wondered aloud what de Groot was doing for the bishop.