“I hate to toss a spanner into such a neat and tidy conclusion, but this man didn’t drive himself anywhere,” Emil Dvorak said. “Or if he did, he wasn’t alone.” He gently cradled the skull through the fine netting, lifting and rotating it so they could all see the back, where a network of fine cracks radiated out in a circle, like a fractured porthole. “See how depressed this is? This man may have been left in the water, but he didn’t drown. He was killed by a massive blow to the head.”
Chapter 33
Monday, April 3
Clare and Norm Madsen accompanied Mrs. Marshall to the morgue. She hadn’t wanted to go, despite a phone call from Dr. Dvorak late Friday afternoon, asking her if she could come in after the weekend and answer a few questions about her father.
“It couldn’t be him,” she said, turning around from the passenger seat of her car to address Clare. “What would his body have been doing there, anyway?”
“Remember the stories you used to spin when you were a kid?” Norm was a careful driver, hands at the two and ten positions, eyes on the road even while he was talking. “About your dad being ambushed by bootleggers?” He let the implication hang in the air.
In the backseat, Clare tried to think of a new way to answer the same question she had heard at least a dozen times since Russ had broken the news to Mrs. Marshall that the unidentified remains from the reservoir might be those of Jonathon Ketchem. There were only so many ways one could dance around the answer: Someone killed him and dumped his body there.
It had been a pretty miserable weekend all around. Friday’s clouds had brought a steady spring rain that lasted, on and off, until Sunday night. Clare had spent a gray and solitary Saturday afternoon in the old nursery at the historical society, searching unsuccessfully for more records of the Sacandaga land sales and peering out through the curtains of rain toward the clinic, dark and closed. At St. Alban’s, a leak worked its way through the roofer’s tarp, rendering several pews in the north aisle uninhabitable for Sunday Eucharist. And much to her senior warden’s dismay, she was in the newspaper. Again.
“Clare,” Robert Corlew said, bearing down on her in the parish hall. “Did you see Saturday’s Post-Star?”
She looked up from the table, where she was debating between the frosted brownies and the carrot cake. Coffee hour at St. Alban’s was always a celebration of butter and sugar. Occasionally, someone with higher ideals would bring in grapes, or pineapple chunks on toothpicks, or apple slices. They usually went untouched.
“I sure did,” she said, picking up a brownie.
“You’re in it. In a news story. About a crazy woman holding people at gun-point.” He leaned in more closely. “I thought we agreed after last year that you weren’t going to appear in print unless it was something nice and uplifting.”
“An Easter message of hope, I believe you said.”
Sterling Sumner had drifted over. “You know, the story went out over the wires. A friend in Albany called to ask me if my priest was the one mentioned in the ‘State and Local’ item.”
She knew. There had been a message on her answering machine from the diocesan office. Someone on the bishop’s staff wanted to Talk With Her. “It must have been a slow news day,” she said.
“Clare! This isn’t the kind of thing designed to attract new members-”
“New pledge-paying members,” Sterling added.
“To St. Alban’s! ‘Local priest, artist held in armed standoff.’ ” He looked to Sterling for support. “Am I right? Would this make you want to try out St. Alban’s?”
“I’m sorry!” Several heads turned in their direction, and she toned her voice down. “It’s not like I set out that morning with the goal of having a gun stuck in my face.”
“We’ve suggested before that you take a look at the people you’re getting involved with,” Sterling said. “You know what they say. If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”
“I get involved with people who need me.” She almost threw up her hands until she remembered the brownie.
“Notoriety isn’t a desirable quality in a priest,” Corlew said. “If we had wanted Daniel Berrigan, we’d have hired him.”
“I’m not courting notoriety,” she said. Corlew raised one eyebrow so high it nearly disappeared into the thicket of his hair. Or toupee.
“You must admit you’ve gotten involved in some pretty flamboyant incidents.” Sterling tossed his boys-school scarf for emphasis.
She bit the inside of her cheek. Counted to ten. Quickly, but she made it. She could argue with these guys from now until Good Friday and she still wouldn’t make them see things her way. It was time for a little dose of southern. She put one hand on Sterling’s arm, and her other on Corlew’s shoulder. “Gentlemen, you are absolutely right.” They both looked at her suspiciously. “My grandmother always said a lady’s name should appear in the paper only three times, and I can’t say I disagree with her. I never spoke to any reporter about the unfortunate incident with Mrs. Rouse, and I promise you here and now I never will. In fact, I could live happy never speaking to another reporter again, except on church business.”
“Like, about the white elephant sale,” Corlew said.
“Or Easter messages of hope,” she said.
The sight of the square brick facade of the county morgue yanked her back to the present. Mr. Madsen parked and they all got out. Mrs. Marshall looked up at the granite flight of stairs. “I won’t have to… look at the body, will I?”
“I doubt it,” Clare said, not adding, There isn’t much you would recognize.
Inside, Mr. Madsen gave Mrs. Marshall’s name to the attendant, who rang the medical examiner and then buzzed them through the door that separated the waiting room from the coroner’s office and the mortuary. Dr. Dvorak met them in the hall. Clare introduced Mr. Madsen, who described himself as “a family friend,” and Mrs. Marshall, who looked at the medical examiner’s hand a beat too long before shaking it, perhaps envisioning where it had been.
“Chief Van Alstyne is already waiting for us,” Dr. Dvorak said, limping down the short hallway to his office.
“Why?” Mrs. Marshall asked as the pathologist opened the door and ushered her through. Russ, seated at the far side of Dr. Dvorak’s desk, rose when she entered. Mrs. Marshall, Clare had noticed, had that effect on men.
“The chief is always involved in a homicide,” Dr. Dvorak said.
Mrs. Marshall turned on him. “Homicide?”
“Let’s have you a seat, Lacey, and then we can hear what the doctor’s got to say.” Norm Madsen patted one of the straight-backed wooden chairs, government-issue circa 1957 and never changed since then.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Dvorak said. “I didn’t know there would be so many.” There were three chairs ranged between the bookcases and the plants in the small office. “Maybe we can nip down to the waiting room and get another.”
“I’ll stand,” Clare said.
Russ, still standing, gestured to his chair. “Take this.”
Clare looked pointedly at his cast. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“I insist.” His back was very straight. She wondered if it was Margy Van Alstyne or the army that had instilled his good posture.
“Sit down, Russ. Doctor’s orders.” Emil Dvorak glanced at him just long enough to see Russ lower himself back into the chair, then turned his attention to the folders neatly squared on his desk blotter. One of them was obviously modern, the kind of plastic-tabbed manila thing everyone bought by the boxful at Staples. The other had a different look to it. Older. It was muzzy green and shedding, like felt left too long outdoors. Clare realized it must be the seventy-year-old police file. The Millers Kill Police Department’s oldest cold case had come alive again.