Clare pressed her gloved fist against her mouth. Her flashlight never wavered. Russ pointed his light up at her, making her eyes sting and blink. “Clare? Are you okay?”
She nodded. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him looking at her, realized he might not see the small movement.
“Yes. I’m okay,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Can you make it back up the trail to the car and call for help? I’m going to have to secure the area now, see if I can find anything before—before they get here to take her out.”
“Turn on the radio and ask for Harlene?”
“Yeah. Tell her we’ve found a body off the trail, about a quarter mile upstream from Payson’s Park. Can you do that?” She nodded again. “Good girl,” he said.
Clare couldn’t stop herself from looking at that hand once more, so pale and still it might have been carved out of snow. Snow on snow, the old hymn went. Snow on snow. She could make out some kind of sleeve, disappearing into the tangled brush. Whoever it was must be half in the water. Did she jump? Had she changed her mind and tried to crawl out? Clare blinked the blurriness out of her eyes and filled her lungs with sharp, dry air. She headed up the trail, jogging as quickly as she could in the snow. The trees crowded in against the path. She slipped and slid, trying to keep her footing and not break her pace. There was an explosion of snow from her left. She yelped and almost dropped her flashlight. A doe leaped into the beam of light and vanished again in another shower of snow. Clare staggered, her heart about to hammer its way out of her chest.
She made it to the cruiser finally, her knees aching from several falls, sweaty and hot under her borrowed parka. She slid into the car and flicked on the radio, and when she heard the dispatcher’s hail she keyed the mike and said exactly what Russ had told her. Harlene put her on hold for what seemed like an eternity.
“Okay, Reverend, I’ve got an ambulance on the way and I’ve notified Doctor Dvorak. He’ll be waiting at the county morgue. Officer Flynn is headed out to lend a hand, and the state troopers are sending a technician along with a crime scene van. Can you sit tight and lead them to the chief when they get there?”
Clare keyed the mike again. “Yes, I’ll be here.”
“Are you okay, Reverend?”
“Yeah, Harlene. Thanks for asking. I’ll be fine.”
“Good girl. Dispatch out.”
Clare stripped off her gloves and blew on her fingers. She could remember the time when she would have torn into anyone who called her a girl. At thirty-five she was finally mellowing. Had Russ seen a woman down there in the snow and ice? Or was it really a girl? She yanked her coat around her, her exercise-induced heat seeping away in the chill of the car. As cold and as still as the grave.
Clare leaned her cheek against the rigid vinyl of the car seat. She shut her eyes very tightly, trying to put the sight of that white hand, that dark hair somewhere she could bear it. Did something drive that woman out here to end her own life? Something inside her so dark and cold that the moonless night and the icy water seemed preferable? Merciful God. That was the start of the collect she would pray tomorrow, looking at the comfortable, satisfied faces of her congregation. Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace . . . Give us Grace . . . she felt hot tears behind her eyelids. Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins . . .
She was exhausted, numb and sleepy when the squad car and ambulance pulled into the lot. The flare of red lights against her closed eyes jerked her into alertness and prodded her out of the car before her mind had caught up with her body. She shuffled through the snow, waving to a uniformed man who must have been Officer Flynn levering himself from his squad car. Next to the car, two paramedics in bulky snowsuits jumped from the ambulance. Clare slogged over to the officer.
“Ma’am,” Flynn greeted her. “I’m awful sorry you had to see something like this.” She echoed the sentiment silently. The doors to the ambulance clanged open. The EMTs hauled a rescue pallet off the van bed.
“If you follow me, I can take you to the chief,” she said. Her voice seemed unnaturally loud in the still, cold air. Flynn opened the trunk of his car and hefted a canvas bag over his shoulder. As they began their slippery processional, he fished into the bag and retrieved a self-starting flare. He yanked the tab and the clearing lit up with a harsh chemical glare. Flynn stuck the flare butt-end into the snow beside the trail.
The EMTs balanced the pallet between them, picking their way through snow as they pushed on toward the water. Every few yards Flynn lit another flare. The trail resembled a nightmare version of a garden walkway illuminated by torches for the benefit of evening strollers. Clare kept her eyes on the tracks as they walked, tire marks crisscrossing at the edges of the trail, two sets of boot prints leading downward, small, deep holes left by deer hooves, and blurry disturbances where she had fallen in her headlong rush to get back to the cruiser.
“There,” she said, pointing down the steep slope where a single flashlight beam appeared and disappeared through the pines.
“Chief?” yelled Officer Flynn. Clare pointed her flashlight toward the water.
“Yeah!”
She shifted her light toward his voice and nailed him straight on with the light. Russ threw his hand in front of his face. “I’ll come up! Don’t anybody climb down until we’ve gotten some photographs of the tracks.”
Flynn pulled the tab on another flare. The trail sprang into high relief. The trees cast hard, dark shadows downslope, concealing and revealing glimpses of Russ’s brown parka as he clambered back up the hill. Clare could hear him grunting with effort. By the time he reached them, he was breathing hard.
“Are you all right?” she asked, peering up into his face.
He leaned against a birch tree, panting. “Been up and down this damn stretch of ground about six times already,” he said. “Jesus, I’m getting too old for this kind of thing. Sorry, Clare.” He sketched a wave to the two paramedics. “Guys, you can retrieve the body just as soon as the state crime lab gets here.”
Flynn stared down at the water’s edge, craning his neck for a better view. “What’s it look like, Chief? Not a jumper moved downstream?”
Russ tilted his head toward Clare. “Every once in a while somebody decides to check out by jumping off the old railroad bridge,” he explained. He turned away from the officer and shone his flashlight a couple of yards up the trail. Clare could see where the tire tracks they had been following came to an end. “Somebody drove in to this point and then backed up again.” He shifted the light to the edge of the trail closest to the water.
“What’s that?” Clare asked. The snow was heavily churned.
“That is where the girl slid all the way down the slope.” Russ sounded worn down. “I followed the trail she left back up to the car tracks. Looks just like when little kids roll themselves down a hill.”
Flynn whistled, a high, excited sound. Russ glared at him. “Sorry, Chief,” the young officer replied. “Just . . . I haven’t done a homicide yet.”
“Homicide?” Clare looked down toward the water. “Someone killed her?”
“Looks that way,” Russ said.
Clare touched Russ’s arm, heavy glove over thick parka. “Any clear tracks from whoever drove the car away?” she said.
He shook his head. “Nope. Could be whoever it was threw her body down the hill, hoping she’d land in the kill and disappear for a while. Or it could be she and the driver got into a fight while they were standing here, he hauls off and clips her one, and she falls down the hill. He panics and drives away.”
Clare shook her head. “Dear God.” She shivered. “Imagine lying there hurt, unable to move or help yourself, and seeing the car lights disappearing . . .”
“Don’t. Don’t think about it too much,” Russ broke in. “We won’t know anything until the coroner’s report. Don’t start speculating or you’ll make yourself crazy.”
She looked up at him. “The voice of experience?”
“The voice of experience,” he agreed. They both looked into the darkness at the creek’s edge. Impossible to tell, from here, what was rock and what was shadow and what was water. “There’s something else,” Russ said.
“What?”
“I think this murder may be connected to the baby you found.”
“What? Why on earth would you—”
“Because I have two unusual, unexplainable events happening back to back. A girl abandons a baby. Now a girl shows up dead. This isn’t New York City, where kids are stuffed into trash cans and Jane Does turn up twice a week. This is my town. This sort of thing doesn’t happen in my town.” She cocked an eye at him. He swung his arms wide in frustration. “I mean, of course it happens, obviously it has, but it sure as hell makes the back of my neck crawl. Which is my brain’s way of telling me to keep my eyes open.”
A halloo echoed further up the trail. A state trooper, bundled up to his ears and wearing his distinctive hat over a knit balaclava, heaved into view around the bend, lugging a chest. “Chief Van Alstyne?” he shouted.
“Yeah, here,” Russ called. “Kevin, go on and help him with that.” Flynn loped back up the trail and took one end of the box. When they reached the chief, they dropped the chest, stenciled PROPERTY NYSP CRIME SCENE UNIT and the trooper pulled off a glove to shake hands with Russ.
“Sergeant Hayes,” he said. “How can I help you, Chief?”
“We need photos, mostly, starting here, where the tire tracks terminate,” Russ led the technician toward the site of the disturbance, careful to put his feet into his old boot prints, “and here, where she fell, or they fought, and the slope . . .” he pointed down toward where the body lay hidden. Hayes nodded. “And then let’s get her in situ as quickly as we can, so these fellows can take her over to the morgue and our doctor can take a look at her.”
They backtracked to the others. Hayes opened the crime-scene chest and began digging out lights and camera parts. Russ pulled Clare to one side. “Why don’t you take my keys and go back to the car,” he said. “At least one of us can stay warm. I’d have Kevin drive you back, but I may need him here . . .”
Clare shook her head. “I’d rather stay. At least until you bring her up. I’ll walk with her back to the ambulance.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to. I need to.”
He looked at her for a long moment. The reddish lights from the flares were like the last glorious minutes of a sunset falling across his face.
He smiled faintly. “I think I like the way you work, Reverend.” Clare shrugged one shoulder and looked away, embarrassed at getting extra credit for just doing the right thing. “Okay,” he said. “Stay back out of the way and don’t let your feet get numb.”
By the time Sergeant Hayes had photographed every mark in the snow, and the chief and Officer Flynn had gone over every branch and every tree for hairs and fibers, Clare had stomped a circle of snow into packed ice. No wonder cop shows never portrayed this part of the job. It was mind-alteringly dull to watch. If she hadn’t had to keep moving in order not to freeze, she might have fallen asleep. Hard to keep that edge of horror over the death of another human being when it was surrounded by so much tedious scutwork.
The paramedics, who had waited a lot more comfortably thanks to their arctic-weight snowsuits, skidded down the slope in a zigzag pattern, dragging the pallet behind them. Clare watched as they conferred with the police officers at the water’s edge.
“Okay,” someone said, “let’s do it.”
“One . . . two . . . three . . .” said another voice. There was a cracking sound. Someone grunted.
“Watch the water, watch the water!”
“Got ’er. Okay, okay, let go now.”
Russ detached himself from the group and hiked up the slope to Clare. The paramedics followed, with Hayes and Flynn behind them in case they slipped. The figure strapped onto the pallet looked like something out of a fairy tale, white skin and dark hair, a train of servants and attendants. The flares’ glow gave the scene an otherworldly cast.
When they reached the trail, the paramedics came close to tipping the pallet as they slipped carrying harnesses over their shoulders. “Be careful with her,” Russ snapped. Clare had been bracing herself for a disfigured death, but the body was more like a statue of a pretty, round-faced girl, asleep with her head fallen to one side. There were leaves frozen into her long hair. Clare looked at Russ. “May I touch her?” she asked.
He nodded. “Carefully. Don’t move her.” Clare made the sign of the cross on the girl’s marble forehead.
Hayes leaned over toward Russ. “Thought you said she wasn’t related to the decedent,” he whispered too loudly.
“She’s a priest,” Russ whispered back.
The state trooper looked at Clare, startled. “Ma’am?” he said. “I mean, Reverend.” Clare closed her eyes for a moment. She really, really didn’t want to do her song and dance about women priests at this point. “I’m a Christian, ma’am,” he continued, “and I’d be glad to join you in prayer.”
She looked up to meet Russ’s gaze straight on. She wasn’t going to ask permission. Their eyes locked for a moment before he nodded almost imperceptibly. “Thank you, Sergeant Hayes,” she said. She spread her arms wide across the girl’s body. “Let us pray,” she said. The men bowed their heads. “Depart, O soul, out of this world; in the name of the Creator who first made you; in the name of the Redeemer who ransomed you; in the name of the Sustainer who sanctifies you.” She laid her hand across the girl’s icy chest. “May your rest this day be in peace, and your dwelling place in the Paradise of God.”
There was a ragged chorus of “Amens.” Russ reached past one of the EMTs and pulled a blanket free from the foot of the pallet.
“Chief?” Flynn said.
Russ shook out the blanket and laid it over the girl. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s all get out of here.” Clare let Hayes and Flynn take the lead up the trail, following behind the paramedics and their burden. Russ fell into step beside her. “Don’t believe in God, you know,” he said.
“Mmmm hmmm,” she said.
“Never saw any use for organized religion, either,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“But I do believe that everybody deserves a basic respect as a human being.”
“Even the dead.”
They trudged on silently. “Maybe especially the dead,” Russ said at last.
Clare nodded. “I like the way you pray,” she said. Russ shook his head, smiling faintly. “The last thing any of us can do for the dead is to show respect.”
“No. The last thing any of us can do for the dead is give them justice.”
She breathed in sharply and scrubbed the back of her glove against the sudden prickle of tears stinging her eyes. “Yes,” she said, after she knew her voice would be steady. “You’re right. We owe the dead justice.”