At the station, Russ escorted Wesley into the interrogation room and latched the door behind him. “I’m going to make a pot of coffee,” he said to Clare. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a cup right now.”
“Please. What happens now?”
“I already talked with Kaminsky last night, so he’ll be expecting my call. He’s going to be here to listen in to the questioning. I want to charge this kid some bad, but I want it to stick.” He squinted into the distance. “We’ll need a cross-jurisdiction warrant to search his room at the Academy. And I want his truck . . .”
Clare cut him off. “Can I speak with him now? Not as part of this, but as priest to parishioner?”
Russ frowned. “You just met him this morning. How much of a pastoral relationship can you have?”
“That’s not the point, Russ. I want to help him if I can. He’s obviously very troubled.”
“He’s very troubled because he carefully planned and executed two cold-blooded murders and now I’ve caught his ass, excuse my French. And let’s not forget he would have done the same to you if you hadn’t escaped him. Jesu—um Crow, Clare, you’d try to make excuses for Charles Manson!”
“I’m not making excuses for anything he may have done.” She crossed her arms. “No one is beyond forgiveness, Russ. Or beyond asking for forgiveness. I have to believe that.”
He pulled off his glasses and polished them on his shirt front. “I don’t even know why you’re here. After I speak with Kaminsky, I want you to take my truck and go home.” He rapped on the door to the interrogation room. “Wesley? Reverend Clare here would like to speak with you as your—” he glanced at Clare, “—spiritual advisor. You want to talk with her?”
There was a pause. “I guess so. Okay.”
Russ unlatched the door. “There’s an alarm buzzer on the wall. If he makes any moves on you, use it. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Clare nodded. The room was a smaller version of the meeting room, albeit without windows. Heavy, well-worn wooden table and chairs, tired institutional green walls. She had thought there would be one of those two-way mirrors like in the movies, but it looked like the Millers Kill police department wasn’t quite up to cinematic standards yet.
Wesley was standing at the far end of the room, his back against the wall, his eyes shadowed and suspicious. She tugged at a chair. It was bolted to the floor. She sat down and propped her chin in her hand. “I’m the one who found Cody, you know.”
Wesley looked at his boots. “Yeah, I know.” He darted a glance at her. “My dad says you’ve been working hard to see that the Burnses get to adopt him.”
She nodded. “You could help with that. As his father, you can authorize a legal adoption just by signing over the papers. They wouldn’t have to wait and wonder the way they are doing now.”
He brushed the speckled vinyl floor with the toe of his boot. “I guess we never realized that you couldn’t just give away a baby. I didn’t mean to have them wait. We just—it was easier to not think about it. The fact that there was a baby on the way. We never exactly planned any of it.”
“What about the motel? The fake I.D.? That must have taken some planning.”
“I already had an old I.D. I had doctored up so I could, um, get into bars.” He looked at the wall opposite him. “I met her at her school—she had her roommate’s car—and we stopped at the first place that was open. We weren’t even sure if she was going to have the baby then or not. She’d been having those, you know, fake contractions.” He tilted his head back. “It all seemed so unreal. Being there, the baby, everything. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were. Without our parents finding out.”
“Why did you leave the baby at the church instead of at the Burnses’ house?”
“They weren’t home when we drove by. Then I remembered my parents talking about the reception for the new priest that night. We figured somebody would find the baby and read the note and hand him over to the Burnses. Pretty dumb, huh?”
She bit her lower lip. “It wasn’t the smartest thing, no.”
He glanced at her. “Hey, do you think if I help the Burnses adopt the baby quickly, it’ll help me with the cops?”
“I don’t think so. It might help you with your own conscience, though.”
He dropped into a chair opposite her. “What we’re talking about here, you can’t tell that to anyone, right?”
“No, I can’t. What we say here is just between you and me and God.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Wesley . . .”
“Reverend, I didn’t kill her. Or her rotten father. And it’s been driving me crazy, because I don’t know who could have done it. She was so . . . she was so special. Sweet. Funny. She didn’t like me because of my family or my car. She didn’t care if I got into student council or West Point. She liked me because of who I was. Not who I was supposed to be. You know?” He rubbed his hands back and forth against the tabletop. “I didn’t want to have a baby. And I didn’t want to get married. But it wasn’t her, it was just . . . it was too soon. You know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t think she really wanted to get married and keep the baby, either. She sent me a long e-mail about how she did, after we had both gotten back to school, but I don’t think it was something she had thought out. My dad said that after-pregnancy hormones can make a woman kind of crazy, and if I just let it be for awhile, she’d realize that rushing into marriage would be a bad idea.”
“Your dad said that?”
“Yeah. I figured, if she really couldn’t stand not having the baby, I could transfer from the Academy to SUNY Albany. Forget the whole military thing and go for a business degree, something so I could support them as soon as I graduated. But I didn’t know how I’d swing it financially.” He looked up at her. “You don’t have to pay to go to West Point, you know, so I didn’t have anything saved. I didn’t know if my parents could help us out. I wanted to talk about it with Dad before I suggested it to Katie.”
She took a slow, deep breath to keep her voice even. “You offered to leave West Point? You spoke with your father before Katie was killed?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to let him know how bad I screwed up, but I had to. I mean, if we had taken Cody back and gotten married, Katie would have had to drop out if she joined me at the Academy. Lose her scholarship. That would have been a total waste. She was so smart. God, I can’t believe she’s actually dead.” Wesley buried his face in his hands.
Clare sucked in air and held her breath for a moment. “Wes? This is going to sound strange, but can I touch the back of your head?”
He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “Uh . . . this isn’t some sort of faith-healing thing, is it?”
“No.” She rose partway from her chair, extending her arm toward his close-cropped hair. “May I?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
She ran her hand lightly over the crown and back of his skull, then pressed more firmly with her fingers. Nothing. No bump, no swelling, no soft spot. “Does this hurt anywhere?”
“No. What are you doing, Reverend?”
“Feeling my way toward the truth.” She sank into her chair again. “You weren’t out in the woods last night trying to kill me.”
He reared back. “Are you crazy? Of course I wasn’t out trying to kill you. I wasn’t trying to kill anyone! I was in my dorm room, studying.”
“What time did your dad pick you up to bring you home?”
“Early this morning. There must have been a dozen guys who saw me there last night, in my room, in the hall, in the john. You can ask them. I wasn’t out trying to kill anyone. I’m not a killer!”
Clare looked at her hands, flat on the table. She flipped them over and studied her palms. “Anyone can be a killer, Wes. All it takes is the right training. And enough motivation.” She blew out her breath. “Could your father access your e-mail account?”
“Huh? Not my account at the Academy. He could send stuff from my old address at home, he knew my password for that.” Clare stood, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why? What the hell does this have to do with—” his face changed suddenly.
“Your father,” she said.
“No,” he said.
She felt as if she had just flown into a strong thermal and gained a thousand feet of altitude in a few seconds. Dizzy. Disoriented. From where she was now, everything was the same, but everything looked different. “Your father, Wesley.” She looked down at the young man. His face was a mask of absolute denial. “Your father is so proud of you. And so determined that you go to West Point and have a brilliant military career. What wouldn’t he do to protect you from ‘ruining your life’ with some white-trash girl and her baby?”
“No,” he said.
“He must have contacted her and invited her to Millers Kill. Maybe he tried to bribe her into forgetting about you and Cody first. But that didn’t work. He wouldn’t have known that that wouldn’t work with someone like Katie. So he got rid of the problem another way.”
“No!”
She paced around the table, talking as much to herself as to Wesley. “We assumed that Darrell McWhorter threatened to blackmail Cody’s father. But why go to a kid in college when you can tap into so much more money from his dad?” She leaned over the table. “He saw you two together, didn’t he? Darrell.”
Wesley hesitated, then nodded. “I drove her home from the library late once. She used to have me leave her at the intersection, but it was dark and starting to snow, so I took her right to her apartment house instead. She was always scared that her dad would find out about us. He was just getting back from a bar or something that night, and got a real good look at me.” He leaned back in his chair and scrubbed at his face with his hands. “Katie said he asked her a lot of questions about me, but she convinced him I was just a guy in her study group.”
“Darrell was smarter than any of us gave him credit for. As soon as he saw your family photo on the parish bulletin board, he put all the pieces together. When he called your father, they must have agreed to ride down to Albany to get any incriminating stuff left in Katie’s room as part of the deal. And when your father saw his chance to get rid of Darrell, he acted quickly and decisively.” She straightened. “Wesley, your father’s been methodically removing every person who might interfere with you becoming the fifth generation of Fowlers to graduate from West Point.”
“This is insane. My dad wouldn’t kill anybody! And if he’s willing to do anything to protect me, why the hell wouldn’t he confess instead of letting the cops cart me off to jail?”
“Your dad could kill somebody, Wes. He’s done it before, lots of times. It’s just not in the line of duty this time.” She paused. “Or maybe for him it is.” She crossed her arms and blew out a frustrated breath. “But you’re right, it doesn’t make sense that he’d let you be convicted of—” her stomach clenched into a tight ball. “Oh, my God. The baby.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“The baby, Wes, the baby! The one you told him you were ready to raise as a single father? The baby who is the root of all his troubles? Oh, holy God, I told him where to find him. I told him.” She slammed her palm against the alarm button, setting off an electronic siren that made the edge of her back teeth ache.
The door rattled and then Russ was inside the room, crouching low, his gun drilled at Wesley. “Down on the floor! Now!” Wesley fell out of his chair, flat and spread-eagled. Russ didn’t look away from him. “Clare? Are you okay?”
The siren made it impossible to talk. “Yes!” she shouted. “I just needed to get out of the room!”
“What?” Russ straightened and stalked over to the alarm. He twisted a knob. It fell silent, leaving sound-echos ringing in her ears. “What the hell did you mean, setting off an alarm just to get out? You don’t move until I say you do, mister!” He swiveled his gun back toward Wesley, who had levered himself up on his arms.
Clare opened her mouth to tell Russ everything, then shut it again. What we say here is just between you and me and God. Priestly confidence. Her throat and chest felt as if they would burst with her discovery. A discovery she couldn’t share with anyone. She groaned.
“Clare?”
“Give me your truck keys. Now.”
“What’s—”
“Now, Russ!” He fished his keys out of his pocket.
“I’m going to Deborah McDonald’s house out on Aubry Road near the intersection of old Route One Hundred.” She jabbed a finger at Wesley. “You! Tell the chief everything!” She pelted through the door before Russ could stop her with any more unanswerable questions.
After her speedy little MG, driving Russ’s pickup felt like piloting a C-130 Hercules transport down the runway. She rolled over the corner curb getting out of the parking lot and nearly sideswiped a carload of Christmas shoppers. Fortunately, the route to Deborah McDonald’s was mostly through countryside. As soon as she hit the town limits, she tromped on the accelerator. “Let’s see how fast you can go, big guy,” she said to the speedometer. She knew her way from Millers Kill to both the Fowlers’ and the McDonalds’, but she had no idea how long it might take Vaughn Fowler to get from his place to Cody’s foster mother’s. She pressed harder on the gas pedal. Maybe she was wrong, and she’d find the baby napping peacefully. Maybe the McDonalds were out shopping. Maybe Wesley’s father was too busy rousting out a lawyer on a Sunday afternoon to think of Cody. Maybe.
Just past the turnoff from old Route 100, she went over the ridge and around the corner way too fast, overcorrected, and would have hit an Explorer heading up the hill if it hadn’t slid into the shoulder. Its horn blared as she went past, her heart beating out of her chest. The next corner she took slow and safe, cresting the top carefully until the valley stretched out before her like a Christmas card. Everything looked peaceful in the McDonalds’ yard as she pulled in.
As she jumped down from the truck, the front door flew open to reveal Deborah McDonald. Today’s sweatshirt pictured two kittens playing with mistletoe. “Oh, my goodness,” Deborah said, “you’re that lady priest. Are you with the family? Do you know where he’s gone?”
Clare’s skin prickled. “What’s happened, Mrs. McDonald?”
“I just had a visit from Cody’s grandfather. At least, he said he was Cody’s grandfather. He knew who Angela Dunkling was—”
“What happened?”
“He was with the baby in the living room while I went to get some pictures, and when I came back, they were gone! I wasn’t sure what to do. I was about to call the folks at DHS . . .”
Clare took the front steps two at a time. “You need to call the police. Tell them Vaughn Fowler has the baby. What was he driving?”
“A big, blue sport-utility truck.”
The Explorer! “Tell them he’s in a dark blue Ford Explorer. I passed him on the curve before this. I didn’t notice the driver.” God had better forgive her for being such an idiot, because she wasn’t about to. She swung around to dash down the steps again.
“Wait! Where are you going? Where did he take Cody?”
Clare closed her eyes. Where. “Let me use your phone for one moment before you call the police,” she said.
Deborah McDonald pointed through the door. Clare strode through the living room, snatched up the receiver and dialed Information for the Fowler’s number, which she punched in before the electronic voice was finished with the last digit.
The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Clare thought she might scream.
“Hello?” It was Edith Fowler.
“Mrs. Fowler, this is Clare Fergusson. Do you know where your husband is?”
“He’s not here, Reverend. He asked me to call our lawyer and left right after you did. Why? Nothing’s happened to Wes, has it?”
“No, no. Did Vaughn have his gun with him?”
“His gun?”
“Is there any way to check? Please, it’s important.”
“Why on earth—”
“Please! It’s important.”
“Let me look in the gun case . . .” over the phone, Clare could hear the sounds of a door opening and shutting. “I’m right here in his study. His rifles are all here, but his Colt is missing.”
Clare would have bet a year’s salary the Colt was buried in a snowdrift somewhere on Tenant Mountain. “Listen, Mrs. Fowler. I’m calling from Cody’s foster mother’s house. Your husband has taken the baby. If he comes back home or contacts you, try to keep him calm and get the baby away from him. Let the police know right away.”
It was so silent Clare thought for a moment the line had gone dead. “I understand,” Edith Fowler said finally. “I will.”
Clare rang off and headed back outside. Vaughn Fowler was unarmed. But she couldn’t shake the conviction that he meant to dispose of Cody once and for all.
“Did she know where he went?” Deborah McDonald asked as Clare hauled herself into the truck’s cab.
Where would he go? Where, when it was so easy to kill an infant? Clare pressed her fingers to her forehead. When you are threatened and on the run, you will tend to return to the same base of operations, “Hardball” Wright drawled. If not to the same spot, then to the same sort of terrain. Remember that. The enemy will. She opened her eyes. “I think he’s headed for the river. The trail from Payson’s Park or the old railroad bridge. I’m going to head there. Let the police know.” If Russ had any better ideas, he could chase after them without her. She ground the gears and backed out of the driveway, catching the McDonald’s mailbox with the rear bumper and setting it swinging wildly.
Traffic through the north end of town was agonizingly slow, but she didn’t know any other way toward where she and Russ had discovered Katie’s body. She swung onto the Cossayaharie road, Route 137, driving carefully, tamping down the urge to go faster and faster, afraid she might miss the turnoff to the park.
She nearly did miss it, mistaking the newly plowed entrance for a driveway. At the last moment, she turned the truck into a frame-shuddering turn and rolled down the lane toward the parking area. The county plow had cleared a large U out of the fresh snow before heading back to the main road. She couldn’t tell from where she sat if there were tracks heading down the trail. Leaving the truck running, she jumped from the cab and ran to the edge of the parking lot. Behind the ridge of snow thrown up by the plow, the trail leading down to the kill was unbroken by footprints or tire tracks. “Vaughn Fowler,” she hissed from between clenched teeth, “where are you?”