“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” Her husband put his arm around her, turning her away from the others. Russ, rubbing away at the headache building behind his eyebrows, felt the weight of attention on him. He glanced down at Reverend Fergusson, who was looking at him instead of at the would-be-parents. It took him a moment to identify the expression on her face, it had been so long since he’d seen it directed at him. Sympathy.
The resident was trying to give his report to Durkee, who was just as doggedly pointing him in Russ’s direction. “Hey,” he said, “You’re the police chief? Really neat.”
“I think so.” Over the doctor’s shoulder, Russ could see Reverend Fergusson’s lips twitch.
“The baby’s in real good shape,” the doctor said, pulling out several sheets of paper stapled together. “Here’s a copy of his tests and the examination results. I place the time of birth within the last two or three days. No drugs in his system, no signs of fetal alcohol syndrome, no signs of abuse. His cord was cut and wrapped inexpertly, but somebody kept it nice and clean. We’ll have to wait until he’s had a bowel movement, but I’m guessing he’s been fed formula.”
Russ scanned the report, noting the blood group—AB positive—and the notation that the baby had been bathed at some point in his brief life. “Okay,” he said. “Mark, get me the box and the blankets, we’ll see if we can get anything from those. I want you to stay here until somebody from DSS arrives, unless you get a squawk.” Mark nodded and disappeared into the examination cubby. Russ folded the medical report and tucked it into his jacket pocket.
“Here you go, Chief,” Mark said, returning with the box. He passed it to Russ, who examined it without much hope of anything useful. It was sturdy, new-looking, marked with the logo of a Finger Lakes orchard. Lane’s IGA and the Grand Union probably had hundreds just like it tossed in their storerooms. The blankets were a mix: an old, well-worn gold polyester thing, a heavy woolen horse blanket in plaid, and what looked like two brand-new flannel baby blankets, the kind his sister had by the dozens. Russ had a sudden image of himself going door-to-door, asking, “Ma’am? Do you recognize any of these blankets? And has anyone in your household given birth lately?”
Reverend Fergusson had gone over to the Burnses and was talking softly to them. Karen Burns said something, looking at her husband, and he nodded. All three of them bent their heads. Russ realized with a shock that they were praying. Openly displayed religion made him as uncomfortable as hell, and it didn’t help when the priest signed the cross over both of them and then laid her hands on the baby and blessed him. She really was a priest. Jesus Christ. A woman priest. Were Episcopalians like Catholics? He’d have to ask his mother, she’d know.
When Reverend Fergusson broke away from the Burnses and walked straight toward him, he thought for one guilty moment she must have read his mind and was coming over to give him what for.
“Chief Van Alstyne, will you be leaving soon?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, warily. Did she want to pray over him, too?
“Ah. Well, Karen and Geoff are going to stay here until after the caseworker arrives, and I, um . . .” She worried her lower lip some, hesitating. “I called an ambulance, you see, ’cause I thought Cody ought to be seen as soon as possible, and I, I don’t have . . .”
The light dawned. “Do you need a ride home, Reverend?” Russ said.
“I don’t want to impose . . .”
“I’d be glad to give you a lift, if you don’t mind me stopping by the station to drop this off before we get to your house. I want to make sure our fingerprint guy has it first thing in the morning.” He hefted the box.
“I’m not in any hurry,” she said. “On the other hand, I did want to get to the rectory sometime tonight, and I understand that the taxis in Millers Kill aren’t the quickest to respond to a call . . .”
Russ snorted. “If you’re talking about In-Town Taxi, you’re right. One car is their whole fleet, and when the driver decides he’s done for the day, you’re outta luck.” He waved good-bye to Mark and gestured for the priest to precede him through the emergency department doors.
“ ’Night, Chief,” the admitting nurse called.
“ ’Night, Alta,” he said.
The dry, cold air outside the overheated hospital was like a good stiff drink after a hard day. Russ breathed deeply. He noticed the priest wasn’t carrying a coat. “Hey, Reverend, you can’t go outside in just sweats this time of year. Where are you from, anyway?”
She looked down at her unseasonable outfit. “It shows, huh? Southern Virginia. And when I was in the army, I managed to never get myself stationed any place where the temperature dipped to below freezing.”
“Neat trick,” he said. In the army? A woman priest in the army. What next? She parachute out of planes dropping bibles?
“I was a helicopter pilot,” she said. “Late of the Eighteenth Airborne Corps. You’d be surprised how often we needed to drop men and gear into overheated climates.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “I was career army. First in the infantry, then an MP. I retired about four years ago.”
“Really?” She stopped in her tracks. “We’ll have to compare postings.” She looked up at him curiously. “It’s just that the way you knew everybody, I assumed you’d lived in Millers Kill all your life.”
Russ pulled open the passenger-side door of his cruiser. She slid into the seat, yelping at the chilly vinyl. He crossed to the other side, dropped the box into the backseat, and got behind the wheel. “I was born here, lived here my first eighteen years.” He started up the car, turned on the radio, and grabbed the mike. “Ten-fifty, this is Ten-fifty-seven. I’m rolling, en route from the hospital to the station.” The radio crackled and Harlene’s voice came on the line. “Ten-fifty-seven, this is Ten-fifty. Acknowledged you en route from the hospital to the station. We’ll see you soon.”
The woman beside him was shivering, her arms clasped around herself, her knees drawn up. “Sorry,” he said. “The heater in the old whore takes a long time to warm up.” A second after he spoke, he remembered he was talking to a priest. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, caught himself, then blurted out, “Christ!” at his own stupidity before he could help it. He hung his head, laughing and groaning at the same time.
“You! Swearing in front of a priest!” She pointed her finger at his chest. “Drop and gimme twenty!” He stared at her, not sure he was hearing right. She smiled slowly, her eyes half-closing. “Gotcha.”
Russ shook his head, laughing. “Okay, okay. Sorry.” He shifted the cruiser into gear and eased it out of the hospital parking lot onto Burgoyne Avenue. Nearing midnight on a Monday, there was hardly any traffic on the normally busy road.
Reverend Fergusson shifted in her seat, exclaiming briefly when she hit a particularly cold spot. “You were telling me you were born and raised right here . . .”
“Oh, yeah,” he sighed. “Probably would have gotten a job at the mill and never left town. But I got out of high school in ’sixty-nine and my number came up in the Instant Loser Lottery. Next thing I knew, it was good-bye New York State, hello Southeast Asia.”
He checked the gauge on the heater. “Turned out the army and I made a pretty good match. We went from Vietnam to the Gulf together.” He switched the blower to high and the interior began to warm up. “After I retired,”—no need to go into detail about that phase of his life—“I decided the time was right to finally come home. The old chief was retiring, and they needed someone with experience who wanted to live the quiet life up here in Washington county. It’s a good outfit, eight officers and four part-timers, and I liked they way everyone worked together. My wife, Linda, loved the idea of us finally settling down somewhere other than a big city or busy post”—well, that was half-true, she had wanted him to settle down—“and she likes being so close to my mother and my sister.” Now that was a whopper. But it was the party line, and he stuck to it. “So that’s how I wound up back in my old home town a quarter-century after I left.”