Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

Russ knew she wasn’t speaking to him, but he stumbled to his feet and went to her. He wrapped his arms around her and held her as tightly as he could.

“You did what you had to, love,” he said. “You did what you had to.”

Ironically (she thought later, when she began to be able to think about it), it was Quinn Tracey, not Russ Van Alstyne, who saved her from descending into a paralysis of guilt and horror. Over Russ’s voice, soothing and supporting her, she heard another gasping rattle.

“He’s not dead yet,” she said idiotically, replaying the Monty Python joke.

“He is, darlin’. I’m sorry, but it was him or me, and he’s dead and I’m not.”

She pushed against Russ’s solidity. “Not… him.” She couldn’t say his name. “Quinn.”

He wasn’t. Russ stayed with him, compressing his wound, because he was heavier. Clare went back outside and stood in the road, buffed and battered by the wind and snow until she felt scoured raw and she saw the headlights of what turned out to be Kevin Flynn’s cruiser. Noble Entwhistle was right behind him, and, thank God, a Glens Falls ambulance that Harlene had diverted. She showed them where to go and then retreated to her car. She turned the heater on full blast and listened to Tal Bachman’s melancholy voice: “I was there all the time-even I couldn’t find me. So how did you see? What made you believe?” She refused to think of anything. She leaked tears. After a while she achieved a passable state of numbness.

Then the passenger-side door opened and Russ climbed in. He slammed the door shut behind him and looked at her. He touched her jaw with fingers as light as a drift of snow. “You should get in the ambulance and let them take you to the hospital. You ought to have that checked out.”

She shook her head. “Nothing broken. I didn’t lose any teeth.”

“Clare-”

“Hold me,” she said, her voice breaking despite herself. “Please.”

He leaned toward her and gathered her in an embrace. He rocked her awkwardly over the stick shift while she cried. When she had wrung all the salt out of her body and her face was hot and puffy, she sat back. He let her go but kept hold of her hand. He rubbed her knuckles with his thumb. “Holding on,” he said.

“Not letting go.” She smiled a watery smile. “Hey, we’re talking. Our lawyers won’t be very happy.”

“Like I was ever going to listen to what Geoff Burns said.”

Her smile faded away. “Tell me something good. Please.”

“Dennis Shambaugh’s in custody. Jensen’s gone to Loudonville to interview him. Kevin says that Harlene says that the Loudonville dispatcher says that Shambaugh didn’t even know his wife was dead until the news broke in the paper. Supposedly he went back to our house to pick her up, saw all the cop cars, and kept on going. He was waiting around to hear from her when I showed up.”

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

“I don’t know how good you’ll think this is.”

His tone of voice tipped her off. She looked at him. “You’ve found out where Linda is.”

“More like she found me.” He shook his head and huffed half a laugh. “She showed up at the Algonquin right after I finished turning the place upside down looking for her. Turns out she had gone to St. Croix, courtesy of John Opperman.”

“And he finally gets revenge on you for destroying his helicopter.”

“I was just along for the ride. You were flying it.”

She squeezed his hand hard. “I’m glad she’s back. And I’m truly, truly happy she’s alive and well. I want you to be happy. More than anything, I want you to be happy.” Her voice was quavering, so she shut up.

“I want that for you, too, love.”

She drew her hand out of his and laid it in her lap. Looked at both her hands. Hands she used to greet parishioners, soothe the sick, comfort the mourning. Hands that cradled the holy mysteries of the Eucharist. “I’ve killed a man,” she said. “With these hands, I killed a man. How can I hold the body and blood of Jesus in these hands?”

He reached over the stick shift and enfolded her hands in his own. “I love your hands,” he said.

She shook her head.

“I love you,” he said.

She hiccupped a laugh. “Let’s not start that again.”

He didn’t let go. “I’m going to have some sorting out to do. Linda’s royally ripped at me.”

That was enough to distract her from her failings. “She was the one who left without a word. How can she be mad at you?”

“She was with me when I got Harlene’s message about you being here. She heard every word. Told me that if I left her sitting in the truck cooling her heels while I swanned off to rescue you, she was leaving with her sister. I wouldn’t back down, so off they went.”

“Oh, God.” Clare leaned forward and bumped her head against the steering wheel. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. I told her, it was police business.”

She looked at him. “Uh-huh.”

“I was driving right by here on my way to Mom’s.”

“So you had to stop right after she reappeared from the dead? And you would have done the same if it had been, say, Ben Beagle from the Post-Star who was chasing down Quinn Tracey?”

“Well…” He shifted in his seat. “Maybe I would have taken her and Debbie home and then come back. But I would have come back.”

A shape loomed out of the gathering dark and rapped on her window. She unrolled it to reveal Kevin Flynn’s eternally cheerful face. “Glad to see you safe and sound, ma’am!”

“Thanks, Kevin.”

“Chief, we’ve secured the scene in case the CS guys want to look it over, but we’ve got to make tracks. There’s been a bad accident on Route 57, and they’re calling everybody in. Crap weather. This’ll be the fourth accident I’ve responded to today.”

“We’ll follow you,” Russ said, leaning over Clare. “We have to go that way to get Reverend Fergusson home. You can get us past the tie-up.”

Clare turned to him. “We?”

“I’m driving you home.” His tone did not invite debate.

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Then I’m going to borrow your car. I gave mine to the woman who was with you.”

“My new deacon.” She didn’t want to think about how today’s events would affect her standing in the diocese. And she couldn’t think, yet, about how they would affect her ability to pastor. “You may be in luck. She’s probably back at St. Alban’s, typing up a report to the bishop.”

They traded places. Clare sat back, happy to leave the difficult task of driving through a snowstorm to someone vastly more experienced. She kept quiet, letting Russ concentrate on staying on the road, letting herself be hypnotized by the snow whirling out of the darkness into the headlights’ beam.

“Kevin’s right,” Russ said, his voice strained. “This is crap weather.” He sighed. “I was going to head over to Debbie’s hotel, but I guess I better report in at the station instead.”

“Aren’t you still suspended?”

He grinned in a way that made Aaron MacEntyre’s words echo in her head. I have you pegged as a wolf. “With Quinn Tracey in the hospital waiting to confess all? Just let Jensen try to keep my badge from me. Her and her extra e. Hah.”

“Is he going to be okay, do you think? I mean, healthwise?”

“Tracey? Yeah. He had a punctured lung, but the paramedics were pretty optimistic. Being seventeen helps.”

“Do you think he’ll get charged as an adult?”

“Dunno. Depends on what we can uncover about MacEntyre. I didn’t know him very long, but he sure struck me as a casebook sociopath. Tracey’s lawyers’ll probably have a pretty good argument that MacEntyre led their client down the road to hell.”