The case clock in St. Alban’s meeting room rang twelve slow, ceremonious hours. The donation of a grateful parishioner who had made a fortune carpetbagging in the post–Civil War South and returned to retire in his native eastern New York, it had a place of honor between two enormous diamond-paned windows. Where, Clare reflected, it had undoubtedly sat unmoved since 1882. She was beginning to suspect the congregation of St. Alban’s didn’t exactly embrace novelty and innovation. Hiring the first female head of a parish in this area may have exhausted their reserves of daring for the next ten years.
Norm Madsen, a basset-faced gentleman in his seventies, tapped the sheet of paper before him reproachfully. “This isn’t an agenda, Reverend Fergusson. We always have an agenda for the vestry meetings.”
“And the Wednesday lunch meeting is always financials, to get anything ready to pass on to the stewardship committee Thursday night.” Terence McKellan, the head of commercial loans at AllBanc—until recently The First Alleghany Farmers and Merchants Bank, he had taken pains to tell her—laced his hands across his commodious middle. “No offense, but articles about unwed mothers ought to go before the activities committee.”
“What sort of activity do you want them to take up, Terry?” Robert Corlew snorted with laughter. The wide-shouldered, bull-necked developer had an improbable mass of hair that Clare was sure must be a toupee.
Mrs. Henry Marshall, the only woman on the vestry board, looked quellingly at Corlew. “Since most of the ladies on activities are my age, Bob,” she poked a pencil at her silver waves, “I expect they won’t be adding to the unwed mother population any time soon. Though most of them are unwed by now,” she said thoughtfully.
Clare breathed slowly and deeply. In. Out. “I’m sorry I didn’t compile an agenda. I’ll be sure to do that next meeting. As for the newspaper article and the figures sheet in front of you,” she leaned forward, resting her arms on the massive black oak table that dominated the room, “you all know about the baby found abandoned here Monday night. That inspired me to do some research into what facilites are available to help single teen mothers.”
“There’s plenty of aid in Millers Kill,” Vaughn Fowler said, popping an antacid tablet into his mouth. “Welfare and low-income housing and a Goodwill store. We even support a soup kitchen with the other churches in town.” The retired colonel rapped the table with his chunky West Point ring as he enumerated each item.
“That’s true, Mr. Fowler. No teenager with a baby is going to starve here. But did you know seventy percent of the girls who get pregnant in their teens drop out of Millers Kill High?”
“Not to sound unsympathetic,” Fowler said, “but what makes you think these girls would have finished high school in the first place?”
Clare had seen that question coming since yesterday, when she had woken up with her inspired idea. “If you look to page four, you’ll see an article I copied from The Washington Post, about a Junior League program I helped with when I was a seminarian.”
“Junior League?” Mrs. Marshall adjusted her reading glasses and bent to the paper. “That’s always a good recommendation.”
“In their area, the League had found that one of two things tended to happen when a girl had a baby. Either she dropped out of high school to care for the child or her mother stopped working, and often went on welfare, to care for the child.” Terry McKellan read along, his plump cheeks quivering as he nodded. “Drop-outs were at very high risk for further pregnancies, drug abuse, and domestic abuse. Girls whose mothers gave up work to stay at home with the baby finished high school in higher numbers, but few of them found work afterwards, leading to the same sort of dependencies as their sisters with no diploma.”
Corlew frowned. “Couldn’t find work? Or didn’t look for it?”
“Most of these girls had no experience with or example of combining motherhood and work. That’s what the Junior League program did. It partnered girls with mentors, who tutored them in everything from parenting skills to how to interview for a job. It provided free day care for the girls during the school day and a quiet space for them to do homework after school. Girls who went through the program not only had a ninety percent graduation rate, but most of them then went on to either community college or to work.”
Fowler rapped the table with his ring. “Funding?”
Clare quelled the urge to respond, “Yes, sir.” Colonel Fowler was the double of several commanding officers she had served under, complete with graying brush cut and age-defying figure. He expected her to assess problems, devise solutions, and act. Or at least, that’s what he had told her during the interview process for this parish. She flipped open to the last page. “Initial funding came from the League, who paid for the day-care workers, some equipment and baby supplies, and a part-time grant writer to raise money independently. Area churches donated the space. Girls who used the facilities after they had started working paid an hourly fee, adjusted to their income.” She looked around the table, meeting the eyes of every man and woman, gathering each vestry member in. “I propose St. Alban’s start a similar project here. To be funded out of the general funds, using either the parish hall or the old nursery room for the day care. We could have a powerful effect on the lives of young women and children who otherwise don’t have much of a future.”
The room was silent for a moment. “You want us to be a home for unwed mothers?” Sterling Sumner raised his bushy eyebrows in disbelief. “Outrageous.” He flipped the ends of one of the English-school scarves he always affected.
“How much would this cost us?” Terry McKellan asked, scribbling some notes on the margin.
“What about insurance? State licensing requirements for running a day-care facility? Transportation to and from the school and the girls’ homes?” Fowler rapped his ring on every point. “This isn’t like opening our nursery for members’ children during the Sunday services.”
“No, si—no, it’s not. All of those are issues that will have to be researched. I don’t have a whole, detailed proposal to present yet. But I would like the approval and support of the vestry before I call up a committee or start running down licensing requirements. I’d like to know this project has your support so long as the general fund isn’t unduly strained by it.” Nervous energy forced her out of her seat to stride around the table. “It’s innovative, it’s meeting an unmet need in the community, it will open St. Alban’s doors to new faces, young faces. It exemplifies Christ’s charge to us to be his disciples by serving others.” She reached her chair and leaned against the worn green velvet back. “I believe those were some of the things you said you wanted me to accomplish as your priest.”
Vaughn Fowler’s bright blue eyes seemed to be assessing her for leadership potential. “One of the most important goals we set for you was to grow St. Alban’s. Bring in new families. Kids.”
“More pledges,” Corlew muttered.
Fowler shot him a curt glance. “This . . . unwed mother outreach sounds commendable. But will it attract more of the kind of members we want? Or will it scare some families away?”
Clare went blank. “What?”
“In other words,” Sterling Sumner said, “will the quality families we want to attract stay away because we’ve filled our landmark Eighteen-fifty Gothic Revival sanctuary with Daisy Mae and Queen Latisha!” He swiped at the table with one end of his scarf, as if wiping away contamination.
“My grandfather would have been more blunt,” Clare said, crossing her arms. “He would have come right out and said ‘poor white trash’ and ‘uppity coloreds.’ ”
Fowler held up one hand. “No name calling. Reverend Clare, please.” He gestured, flat-handed, for her to resume her seat. She did so, ungraciously. “Sterling was being melodramatic, as usual. But the core of the thing is a matter of concern. St. Alban’s was one of the first Episcopal churches in this area. We’ve been able to draw members from even beyond the Millers Kill-Cossayaharie-Fort Henry townships because we have traditional worship with wonderful music in a beautiful setting. Many of us,” his gesture encompassed the rest of the vestry, “are from families that have been congregants for generations.” Clare opened her mouth. “Let me finish. The parish needs to grow. It needs new blood and, realistically, new money. Before you plunge ahead with your teen-mother project, I’d like to see you do something to encourage families in. Something to draw favorable attention to St. Alban’s.”
Around the table the other vestry members were nodding. Clare folded her hands. “I can handle two assignments simultaneously, si—Mr. Fowler.”
His mouth tilted in the suggestion of a smile. “I’m sure you can.”
“Perhaps organizing some meet-the-parishioners teas?” Mrs. Marshall said.
“No, no, no.” Robert Corlew shook his head. His hair did not move. “We need something that’ll get us in the papers. Free advertising.”
“Tours of the church? An evening organ concert series!” Sterling Sumner brightened.
“You were inspired, you said, by the baby abandoned at our back door. I suggest you help the Burnses to foster him. That’s—” Fowler’s ring rapped for emphasis, “the kind of image and publicity that says we’re a family-friendly place. Helping a couple become a family by supporting their efforts to adopt.”
“But—not that I wouldn’t want to focus my time and effort on the Burnses, but isn’t that up to the Department of Social Services? And the legal system? And as much as I’m sure we’d all like to see them become parents, I don’t see how that will help us attract new members.”
“You don’t know what this town is like.” Terry McKellan laughed. “Word of mouth is a way of life here. Plus, the news about the baby is already in the paper. Why the heck not make sure they say a few nice things about us, huh?”
Clare looked out a leaded-glass window to where snow flurries were spinning through the air. Ideas crowded her mind, far-fetched, practical, too expensive, possible—“We could start by enlisting parish support,” she said. She returned her attention to the table. “A letter-writing campaign to the DSS and the governor’s office. Get volunteers to help them transition from a couple to foster parents. Hold a Blessing of Adoption and invite the local press. Invite adoption support groups to meet at St. Alban’s.”
“Good! Excellent! Knew you would be the priest for us,” Fowler said.
Clare looked sharply at him. “What about my mother-baby project?”
“You show us you can organize and get results on the Burnses’ adoption, and we’ll back you to the hilt on day care for unwed teens.” Fowler glanced around the table, registering assent from the rest of the vestry. “Agreed? Agreed.”
Clare blew out her breath in a puff. “Then let’s adjourn.” Before anyone can think of something else to keep out the undesirables, she thought. Everyone stood, stacking papers and collecting coats.
“I’ve gotta make it to Fort Henry Ford by one-thirty,” Terry McKellan said, buttoning his wool coat across a wide expanse of midsection. “My daughter blew out the electrical system in her Taurus, so we swapped her my wife’s Mazda while she was home for Thanksgiving. Now she wants to keep it. Can you imagine what our insurance is gonna be with her driving in Boston?” He looked at Fowler. “What did you get Wes?”
“A Jeep Wrangler. Good in the snow, appeals to an eighteen-year-old’s idea of ‘cool.’ Unfortunately, it couldn’t carry all his stuff down. I’m off to West Point tomorrow with another load. We should have just traded the Expedition with him during the holiday.” Clare attempted to edge past the men as they drifted toward the hallway. “And speaking of vehicles, Reverend Clare, that car of yours is totally impractical.”
Clare had already heard several people’s opinion of her bright red ’82 MG. She smiled brightly. “Your son goes to West Point? And you’re a graduate, too. You must be very proud.”
Terry McKellan roared with laughter. “It was a disappointment to them when he couldn’t get into the Culinary Institute . . .”
Vaughn Fowler ignored the witticism. “He’s the fifth generation of Fowlers to be an Academy man. Edie and I are very proud, yes.”
Clare touched his arm. “Wonderful.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, look at the time. Gentlemen, I’ve got to run.” She waved to the remaining vestry members and quick-stepped down the hall before the subject of her car could come up again.
She ducked into the parish office and caught her secretary, Lois, with a mouthful of nonfat yogurt and raw bran. Lois looked like a strawberry-blond Nancy Reagan, and she kept her size-two figure, as near as Clare could tell, by eating less than any other human being she had ever seen.
“Mmph!” Lois put down the yogurt and waved her hands.
“I’m escaping comments about my car,” Clare explained.
“Mmmm,” Lois said, swallowing. “It’s too tiny. A Lincoln Town Car, that’s comfort and styling. And if you have blond hair, you can get the leather seats to match.”
Clare made a face. “I’m a dirty blond. I’d have to have dirty seats. Besides, I’m too young for a Town Car.”
Lois made a noncommittal noise.
Clare poked at the Rolodex next to Lois’ white-and-pink book of message slips. “The vestry says they’ll support my young mother’s outreach project if I can help the Burnses successfully adopt Cody.”
Lois sniffed.
“Now I just have to figure out how to influence New York State’s Department of Human Services.”
Lois’ eyebrows arched.
“I think I’m going to need some help on this one.”
“I think you might,” Lois agreed.
Her desk chair creaked as Clare tilted back, looking out the window. Flurries swirled through the air outside, making tiny ticking noises as they hit the glass. The only help she could think of was Chief Van Alstyne. Whom she had already impositioned for a ride from the hospital and bulldozed into offering to take her along on his Friday-night patrol. He was going to think she was only ever after him for something at this rate. Which was a shame, because she had really liked him. He was good people, as grandmother Fergusson would say. He reminded her of friends she had in the army, friends who could always see her, no matter what uniform she was wearing at the time.
Okay. She could ask how the search for Cody’s birth mother was going. Find out what was happening with DSS—surely he’d be up to date on that. And if she gave him a chance to change his mind about Friday night, it would probably be the right thing to do. She should do that. Well. Maybe. She picked up the receiver in one hand and the Millers Kill directory in the other.
Russ was having one of those days that, if it were on video, you’d fast-forward through until you got to a good part. One of his officers had called in with a suspiciously early-in-the-season flu that was probably being treated with shots of cherry brandy and a long ride on a snowmobile. When Russ had taken a break from patrolling and shown up for an unexpected lunch at home, Linda had been too busy sewing up another order of curtains to eat with him. And she had asked him to drop off her loan application at the bank, when she knew he hated running personal errands in uniform. He always ran into somebody who would make some crack about how he was using the taxpayer’s dime.
He had a mountain of paperwork covering his ugly gray metal desk, stuff he’d been putting off and putting off until it had become a full day’s job. When he’d bitched about it to Harlene, she told him if he’d worked at it a little at a time, he wouldn’t be staring down the barrel now, which he already knew, which made him even more pissy.
And now this little gem. Circled in red in the Post-Star courtesy of Officer Pollack, who always brought in his copy before his shift. Russ had been expecting the article about the baby, of course. He’d given the beat reporter an interview, explaining what the police were doing to find the mother, saying the boy had been found “outside an area church” and omitting all mention of the note tucked in the box with the baby. She had gotten the resident from the hospital to describe the overall good health of the child. And a line from the Department of Social Services confirming the baby was being placed with an experienced foster mother.
The usual stuff. What was making him grip his coffee mug to keep from throwing it across the room was the paragraph devoted to the Burnses. How the hell the reporter had found out about them he didn’t know, but there it all was, in glorious black and white: Saint Alban’s, the note, Burns complaining about DSS, and a plea to the mother to contact the couple directly. “We only want to help,” Karen Burns was quoted. “We believe what the mother did was courageous, not criminal.”
He looked out his window, almost lost between the bulletins and WANTED posters and advisories taped up all over his wall, and watched the hard, dry snow spitting through the air. Temperature dropping, cold night tonight. He thought about Cody-No-Last-Name, thought about what might have happened if Reverend Fergusson hadn’t been heading out for a run that night. Maybe whoever had left the baby had been nearby, watching and waiting for someone to discover the box. Maybe not. Courageous. Yeah.
The phone rang. Through the frosted glass window in his door, he could see Harlene’s outline as she crossed the office to pick it up. A moment later his line buzzed. “Hey, Harlene, can you get me some more coffee while I take this?” he yelled. He couldn’t hear her reply distinctly, but he thought it was something about being the dispatcher, not a geisha girl. He lifted the receiver.
“Chief Van Alstyne? Clare Fergusson. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”
“No, no,” he said, “Not at all. I’m staring at about a thousand state and county reports I’m supposed to have filled out sometime in November and I’m contemplating whether I can throw Geoff Burns in jail for interfering with an investigation. I can use a break.”
“You’re contemplating what?”
“I take it you haven’t read today’s paper. The article about the abandoned baby.”
“No. It’s here somewhere . . .” There was a rustling and a thumping sound. “Got it. Where is it?”
“Right on page three. Take a look at where Geoff Burns offers his protection and free legal services to the mother!”
There was silence on the other end of the line. “Holy crow,” Clare said after a moment.
“Yeah. After I had deliberately left out the note and the location where Cody was found. It’ll serve that little weasel right when he starts getting crank calls from half the teenagers in the county, claiming to be the baby’s mother.”
“Is that what you mean by interfering with an investigation? Because, you know, if the reporter had come to me, I wouldn’t have known I wasn’t supposed to say anything about the note.”
“It’s not just that, Reverend . . . Clare. This crap about protecting the mother from misguided officials. Burns might as well come right out and say ‘Come to us, and we’ll see the police never lay a hand on you.’ What are they gonna do, give her ten thousand and ship her off to Bolivia? Geez, that really frosts my cookies.” There was a strangled sound from the other end of the line. After a moment, he realized Clare was trying not to laugh. “Well, it does.”
“I’m sorry, it’s really not funny.” She snickered. “ ‘Frosts my cookies’?”
“Now you know one of our quaint local expressions.” The sound of her muffled laughter took the edge off his anger. He sighed.
“Okay. Do you really think that Karen and Geoff might make contact with the mother and not tell you?”
“Yes.”
Now she sighed. “Me, too. Is there anything you can do now the information about where Cody was found is out in the open? You can’t really mean to arrest the Burnses.”
“I’d like to. At least, I’d like to arrest Geoff Burns. Jesus Christ, what an arrogant little snot. Sorry.” Russ held the newspaper out at arm’s length to reread the paragraph. “But no, I don’t have any grounds. As much as he’s pushing the line, he hasn’t gone over it. There’s nothing illegal about giving your opinion on what the mother did or in offering free legal aid.”
“So you can’t put the proverbial cat back in the bag. That leaves the problem of the mother turning to the Burnses for help instead of turning herself in to the police.”
“There is that problem, yes.”
“What if you offered to help them get the baby?”
“What?”
“They want to be Cody’s foster parents now. Think about it. That way, they not only have the note in their favor, they also will have bonded with Cody. They’ll be able to argue it’s in his best interests to stay with them.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“I think they’ll be less anxious about who finds the mother first if they have Cody already. You can offer to use your influence with the Department of Social Services to get the baby assigned to them. In exchange, they promise to let you know right away if the mother contacts them.”
“My influence with DSS, huh?”
“Oh, c’mon. You must know a few people.” Her slight Southern drawl was more noticable over the phone, he thought. “I’ll tell you, I’m under the gun here, too. My vestry wants St. Alban’s to pitch in and help the Burnses. I’ve decided to get a letter-writing campaign going among the parishioners. All the well-heeled Republicans here? There must be a few who’ve donated enough to make some politicians sit up and listen when they ask for a little consideration for this deserving couple, who have waited so patiently for so long to be a family.”
He whistled. “You’re good. You ever think of running for office?”
She snorted. “Preachers and politicians are kissin’ cousins, didn’t you know that?”
“I guess it’s worth a try. Anything’s better than waiting for Geoff Burns to get ahold of some scared kid and wave money in her face to make her disappear. When were you planning to enlist your letter-writing troops?”
“Putting it into my sermon this Sunday would be the simplest thing. Dang, and I was going to preach on what I saw going on patrol with you this Friday. Maybe I can work them both in . . .” There was a pause. “Um . . . you haven’t changed your mind, have you? About taking me?”
“If I had, I’ve been effectively wangled into taking you now, huh?”
Clare groaned. “I didn’t mean it that way . . .”
Russ laughed. “Guess I’d better keep my end of the bargain, or you might get your parishioners to write to the aldermen and have me tossed out on my ear. What time can I pick you up?”
“Evening Prayer’s at five-fifteen, so I’ll be free by six.”
“Six is good. Wear a coat this time, okay? And some heavy boots.”
“I’ll bring two pair of mittens and electric socks. I’m really looking forward to seeing the authentic Millers Kill, Chief. Thank you.”
“It’s Russ, remember? And don’t thank me until the night’s over. You may be so bored, collecting stacks of letters might seem like a big thrill.”
Standing behind the patrol car’s open door, Clare banged her knees together and kicked her feet against the front tire, hoping to keep her circulation going. Wishing she were in her office, writing letters.
“I didn’t do nuthin’! Get your hands off me!” In front of a large video arcade, Russ was toe to toe with an angry, drunken young man. The kid was several inches over six feet, as tall as the police chief, and beefy. Clare glanced at the radio. On television cop shows, people were always calling for backup. Was she supposed to do that? How? She stomped her feet a few more times. If she had stayed home, she could be sitting down to the ten o’clock news with a cup of hot chocolate right now.
Teens were crowded along the sidewalk outside the arcade. Its huge picture windows blazed with neon signs and the hypnotic flash of the cruiser’s red lights, giving the place a cinematic, high-tech look that jarred badly with the no-nonsense blue-collar bars and the depressed little shops that were its neighbors. The chief was leaning forward, talking to the kid in low tones. Not touching him, but ready to move if he had to. She couldn’t hear what he was saying over the insistent bass thumping from the inside of the arcade.
Clare scanned the crowd, looking for any sign of someone else willing to take on trouble. She shivered inside the roomy police parka that Russ had loaned her. When she had stepped out of the church in her leather bomber jacket, he had laughed at it. Sure enough, within an hour she was begging for something warmer. At the station house, where they dropped off a drunk driver Russ had arrested, Harlene dug through the lockers and emerged with a regulation brown parka large enough to fit a moose. Or the young man who had been brawling in the arcade.
Russ leaned back, said something, crossed his arms. The kid hung his head, and for the first time, Clare could see an oversized boy instead of a threat. From the crowd, another boy sporting several piercings said something she couldn’t make out. The kids around him laughed. Russ snapped his head around and pointed a finger at them, bellowing, “You damn well bet he is. And that’s what’s gonna keep him alive past seventeen. How about you, mister?” The boys in the group visibly shrank back. “I don’t want to hear any more from you, got it?” A few nods.
Russ beckoned to two teens who had been hovering near him during the confrontation. Clare couldn’t make out his words, but it looked as if he was putting the troublemaker in their care. One of the boys clapped an arm around his inebriated friend. Russ pinned the big kid with a glare, raising his voice so everyone could hear. “If I have to come here again tonight, I’m arresting anybody involved. Got it?” There was a shuffle-footed assent from the crowd. “Good. Now get inside or go home. It’s too damn cold to be hanging out here on the sidewalk.”
Russ trudged through the slush at the curbside and tugged open his door. He looked wearily across the roof at Clare, the whirling lights emphasizing the lines in his face. He seemed older than he had at the start of the night’s patrol. “Idiot kids,” he muttered, sliding behind the wheel. Clare gently kicked against her door, knocking snow off her boots before joining him inside the car.
“You’re not going to arrest the boy who was fighting?”
“Ethan? Naw. He didn’t hurt anybody.” Russ reached for the radio. “Ten-fifty, this is Ten-fifty-seven.”
“Come in, Ten-fifty-seven.”
“Harlene, will you call the Stoners and tell them to pick up Ethan at Videotek? And tell ’em he missed a drunk and disorderly by the skin of his teeth.”
“Will do, Chief.”
“We’re headed out to the kill. See if there are any other kids out tonight making fools of themselves. Ten-fifty-seven out.”
“At the kill. Ten-fifty out.”
He hung up the microphone and fastened his seatbelt.
“You have got to tell me something.” Clare buckled herself in. “What, exactly, is the kill?”
“Huh?” He glanced at her. “You mean, like in Millers Kill?”
“Yeah. What is it?”
“Kill’s the old Dutch name for a shallow river or a big creek. Lotta towns around upstate have ‘kill’ in their names—Fishes Kill, Eddys Kill . . . our kill runs from the Hudson to the Mohawk Canal.”
“A big creek? I’ve crossed over it a few times and it looks more like a full-fledged river.”
“It was dredged out during the building of the canal system in the early eighteen hundreds. Between the river traffic and the mills, it made the town. Geez, you’re gonna live here, you need to learn some geography and history. I’ll see if I can find you a few books to read.”
He shifted and pulled into traffic. They headed west, cruising slowly down the strip, past bars, a liquor store, a tightly shuttered pawn shop. No candy canes and reindeer hanging from the battered old light poles here.
“Why didn’t you take the boy in?” she asked.
“I know the Stoners. His dad has a thirty-five, forty acre dairy farm that barely supports the family. Ethan’s not a bad kid.” Russ signaled, turned down a narrow street, and drove past two dark, boarded-up warehouses. Another turn took them into the parking lots behind the buildings. The headlights picked out churned-up snow and tire tracks crisscrossing randomly. “He’s just like a hundred other kids in this area. They drink, they do drugs, they get into car wrecks and fights because they’ve got nothing to do with their lives.”
Russ swung the cruiser slowly out of the shadowy parking lot. The rear of the car slid in the snow, and he eased into the skid. “Nothing around here for average kids with high school diplomas and no money for college.” Back on Mill Street, the cruiser turned west again. Clare watched through the window as the commercial buildings gave way to shabby-genteel houses. Homemade signs hammered into snow-covered lawns gave mute testimony to the struggle to make ends meet: LITTLE LAMBS DAY CARE. DOLLHOUSES BUILT TO ORDER. PLOWING AND HAULING. DEER DRESSED OUT.
“Thirty years ago, that boy could have gone straight into one of the textile mills and made a good wage. Or gone to work for one of the big dairy farms in the area, saved up his money to buy land of his own. Or gone into the army.” Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Voluntarily or not, it gave a guy a chance to learn a trade or get money for college.”
The houses were fewer and farther apart. They drove past the last streetlight into the darkness. “This is Route One-Thirty-Seven. We call it the Cossayaharie Road,” he said. The pines and alders crowded in along the road, and beyond the trees, the Adirondack piedmont closed the horizon around them. The dark bulk of the hills looked like breaching whales outlined in starlight, old and powerful.
The car cocooned them in warmth, made them fellow travelers into the wilderness. Clare unzipped her parka and stretched her legs. The glow from the dashboard picked out Russ’s large, blunt hands, securely controlling the steering wheel. “Thirty years ago, you could get married and buy a house and have a family once you got out of school. And you didn’t have to leave the area to do it. But nowadays, there’s nothing for Ethan Stoner to do when he graduates next spring except maybe flip burgers part time. So he drives his old beater too fast and gets into fights and goes down to Albany to party with his buddies who’ve already left for good.”
He turned the cruiser into a narrow lane overhung with snowy branches. The road was noticeably bumpier. They were silent, Russ peering forward to negotiate the barely plowed road, Clare considering Ethan Stoner. They came to a dead end in a clearing marked by a few tire tracks.
She stared into the snow and darkness. “Where are we?”
Russ opened the door. Cold air rushed around the unzipped edges of her parka. “This is the lot for Payson’s Park,” he said, reaching behind her seat for two long, heavy flashlights. “In the summertime, the town puts out picnic benches and grills, and somebody always ties a few tire swings to the big branches overhanging the kill. It’s real nice.”
She accepted a flashlight and got out. “There aren’t any cars here,” she pointed out. “Don’t tell me your young lovers are rolling in the snow somewhere. I know teenagers are hot-blooded, but . . .”
Russ walked through the beams from the headlight toward the edge of the clearing. “There’s a trail that runs along the river for several miles. When I was a kid, you went on foot or you didn’t go at all, but nowadays everybody’s got four-wheel drive. And here we are, tire tracks.”
He aimed the light into the woods and Clare could see where the trail ran past the open picnic area and over a rise. They tromped forward, following the tire tracks marring the otherwise untouched snow.
“Half a mile upstream there’s an abandoned railroad bridge that crosses over the kill. That’s another spot we like to keep an eye on, for drinking or doing drugs. There’s a sheer slate embankment from the old train bed to underneath the bridge. A lot of people would rather get there by driving the trail instead of risking the climb down.”
“I can’t help think there must be more comfortable places to have a drink,” she said. Her breath hung in the air, glowing in the reflected light of her flashlight.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, ducking to avoid a snow-heavy branch. “But Napoli’s Discount Liquors and the infamous Dew Drop Inn are less than a mile up the road, offering a last crack at booze before you cross the town line into Cossayaharie. Which is one of the last dry towns in New York State.”
“So the good people of Cossayaharie drink here in the park instead?”
“Don’t know if I’d say the good people, but—”
Clare slipped where the trail took a downward turn, and Russ caught her arm, steadying her. She added boots with serious treads to her growing list of things to buy.
“Watch it,” he said, pointing his light to the left. The land sloped steeply down to the half-frozen edge of the river, visible between tangled bushes and slim stands of trees. “You don’t want to fall in in this weather.” She nodded and walked more slowly, staying between the tire tracks, emulating Russ’s steady tread. “I remember last year, some idiot came out here to jack deer, fell in the kill instead, and nearly died from the hypothermia. ’Course, it didn’t help that he’d been keeping himself entertained with blackberry brandy.”
“Jack deer?” She caught a flash of something dark and gleaming near the water. A deer? She aimed her flashlight toward the thicket it might be hiding in.
“Poaching. At night. If you shine a light into a deer’s eyes you can freeze it long enough to shoot.”
The gleam looked funny, familiar but out of place. She moved the beam of light to the right. And saw a hand, barely distinguishable from the snow it rested on. The dark gleam, that was hair. That was someone’s long, dark—
“What?”
“Russ,” she repeated. She pointed, part of her amazed at how steadily she was holding the flashlight. “Down there.”
“Oh my God!” he said. He scrambled down the slope, falling and sliding and catching at trees. “Oh Jesus, oh God, oh Jesus, no.” He yanked a bush almost out of the ground, stopping his headlong descent before he plunged into the water. Clare held her light tightly. She wasn’t sure if she could move it at this point. Russ squatted in the snow and bent over the . . . her mind tried to slide over the word “body.”
“Oh no. Oh, Jesus, oh no.” He hunkered down for a moment. She could see him backlit by the glow of his flashlight, shaking his head over and over. Then he straightened, wiped his face. Turned toward her. “It’s a girl. She’s dead.”