The trees grew close along the fence and the underbrush had been left to fend for itself, so it was hard to see. She couldn’t even make out the next explosion, but in the fog-reflected light, she could see a faster way into the park: an unobtrusive door-size gate almost indistinguishable from the fence around it. A century before, it must have been the quick lunch-hour entrance for the mill workers.
She pulled the dogs up short, almost jerking herself off her feet in the process, and pushed against the gate. She was actually surprised when it opened. Bob and Gal didn’t need any encouragement to desert the sidewalk. They plowed through the underbrush, sending whip-thin branches lashing back toward Clare, showering her with the collected damp off the leaves. When they emerged, Clare’s sneakers were thoroughly soaked and her hair was clinging to her head in wet clumps.
Another explosion, a halogen-bright expanding sphere that collapsed into a rain of stars. It was still too thickly wooded for her to see clearly. “Come on, guys, this way,” she said, heading toward the water. The next explosion was a series of green and pink shell bursts, accompanied a second later by a staccato of ear-popping bangs. She glanced down at Bob and Gal, but they were too busy covering every square inch of ground for scents to notice what was going on in the sky. Bob lurched toward a tree to leave his mark and Clare followed, her face still turned toward the sky. “Oh, look at that, I love that one,” she said as a series of red, white, and blue lights fountained across the sky. The dogs tugged her farther, snuffling and peeing as they went. A swarm of yellow lights spread round and flat, creating shapes in the middle of a circle. “Is that a smiley face? It is! Good grief.”
Gal whined.
Clare bent down and ruffled Gal’s silky hair. “Don’t like smiley faces? I can’t say I blame you.”
The dog didn’t respond to Clare. She quivered, body tense, nose pointed toward the thicket of brush and trees dividing the park from the mill. Bob turned in exactly the same position. Both dogs whined.
“What is it, boy?” Clare scratched Bob’s broad head. “Did you see a squirrel?”
The dogs pulled toward the thicket. “Is anybody there?” Clare asked, feeling foolish. Far away from the spectators at the water’s edge, hidden in the shadow of the three-story mill wall, the long stretch of vegetation was probably the perfect spot for necking. She didn’t want the dogs to flush out some poor pair of half-naked teenagers.
Gal growled, stopped, then barked once. Bob stopped beside her, growling. The hairs on the back of Clare’s neck rose, and she involuntarily looked behind her. “Who’s there?” she asked, infusing her voice with every ounce of authority she could muster.
The mist lit up as whirls of green and pink spun overhead. There was an explosive sound from the fireworks, but nothing except rustling leaves ahead. She knew she ought to just go. Take the dogs to the waterside and watch the end of the display. She could easily find someone with a cell phone and call the police if she honestly thought something was not right. She should go.
She tugged the leashes up to move the dogs toward the thicket. “Come on,” she said quietly. As they drew closer, Gal began whimpering again. The dogs slowed, too well trained to refuse but clearly reluctant. Two yards away, they both dropped to their bellies, whining.
Despite the cool dampness on her face and her wet hair, Clare felt hot prickles down her arms and along her back. She blinked, light-headed for a second, and realized she had been breathing too fast and too shallow. She opened her mouth and took a deep, shuddering breath that didn’t do anything to stop her heart from skittering inside her chest.
She tugged the leashes again, but the dogs had reached their limit. They whined, then whined even more fretfully when she stepped past them to part the branches of a bittersweet-entwined sumac to peer inside. Nothing. She made herself step through the undergrowth and brush, pushing through something with tiny twigs and clumps of berries that tapped against her cheeks and fingers. Nothing. She stubbed her sneaker-shod toe against something hard and swallowed a scream before she heard the clanking sound and felt a pipe rolling beneath her foot. She had stumbled across the graveyard of an old plumbing system. She squatted down and waved through the darkness until her knuckles hit something—smooth marble or polished granite. The shape of it under her hands made her think of a sarcophagus. She thrust the morbid idea from her mind. Rectangular, rounded edges—a basin? Her fingers slipped through something wet clinging to the cool stone interior. She gasped and jerked her hand away, lurching to her feet. Then she realized what she had found. One of the old watering troughs Russ had mentioned. It smelled of old water and decayed leaves and the iron tang of rust. The dogs keened behind her, and in a split second her fear flashed into irritation. “What is it?” she snapped. “If there’s some drowned cat in here, I’m going to be—”
Overhead, a white explosion cascaded into yellow and purple, and blue spheres filled the sky. A crash of explosions battered the air. She could see the watering trough now, bone-pale, long as a child’s coffin, mottled by the leaves’ shadows. And there, finally, was the reason for the dogs’ whimpering. Clare saw the fireworks reflecting in thick black blood, winking along the edges of torn flesh, illuminating dull, flat eyes.
Over the cacophony of the fireworks’ finale, she heard a wavering, high-pitched moan, rising and rising until she cried out, her voice choking, and she realized it was her. She was making the terrible noise as the cloudbursts of light exploded overhead, revealing and concealing the puffy, battered thing that had once been Bill Ingraham.
Chapter Ten
The crime scene was lighted like a carnival midway by the time Russ arrived. Two tall tungsten lamps flooded the ground and trees with a white glare, turning every shadow into a razor-edged anti-leaf and non-branch. The red lights of two squad cars circled monotonously next to what the Millers Kill PD referred to as “the meat wagon”—the squat mortuary transport used when there was no hope the ambulance would be useful. From behind a taut yellow tape, a dozen or more flashlights bobbed aimlessly as their owners, packing blankets and coolers, crowded in to get a glimpse of something much more exciting than fireworks. White, red, and yellow reflected off the lowering mist until the night itself glowed and Russ thought he could see individual drops of water suspended in midair.
Mark Durkee, who had been bumped up the seniority ladder when they’d hired Kevin Flynn, was working the crowd, notebook out, presumably taking names and statements. Russ ducked under the tape and waved at Lyle MacAuley. “Hey,” Russ said. “You set him on that?” He gestured with his head toward Durkee.
“He thought of it on his own. He read up on spotting perps who return to the scene and on this new technique of taking pictures of the spectators before running them off. It gets the possible witnesses on film, so we can match ’em up with their statements. He whipped out one of those little disposable cameras and went to it. He’s got a lot on the ball.”
“Yeah,” Russ said. “Let’s hope he doesn’t take it to someplace where they pay better.”
Lyle snorted. His unofficial status as detective had finally been rewarded with a promotion at the spring town meeting, after four years of Russ lobbying the Board of Aldermen to create a detective position. He couldn’t get that approved, but they had eventually given in to his argument that Lyle would leave if his experience wasn’t recognized. So now Lyle was deputy chief, on a force with eight full-time officers and four part-timers. The only way he could make sense of it was to conclude the aldermen felt they were getting their money’s worth if they got two jobs filled with one paycheck.