"They'll want him straight to the cardiac cath lab. Any next of kin?" Duane asked.
"Oh, my Lord, his grandkids." Clare looked at Elizabeth. "I don't even know how to reach Hadley."
"You go get the children," Elizabeth said. "I'll follow the ambulance to the hospital."
"Good." Clare didn't wait to see the paramedics remove Mr. Hadley. She dashed back to her office and grabbed her coat and keys. "Lois," she yelled, "call the police station and see if they can pass on a message to Hadley Knox." She stopped in the door of the main office, shrugging into her coat. "Mr. Hadley's had a heart attack. He's headed for Glens Falls. I'm picking up her kids and bringing them back here."
"I'm on it." Lois reached for the phone.
As Clare slopped across the tiny parking lot, wet from the melt of the last stubborn snow piles, she heard the ambulance siren rise like a screaming bird into the air. Lord, be with them, she prayed. Be with us all.
II
Hadley picked a fuzz ball off her wool skirt. It was an old A-line, left behind in the closet of her grandfather's house from a Christmas visit. She had needed something to go to Midnight Mass in, and back then she had enough money to buy something she was only going to use once. Well, she'd gotten her dollar's worth from it now. She had worn it on every job interview in the past two months. Too bad the only thing it had gotten her were a few long looks at her legs.
The man scrutinizing her paperwork had certainly checked her out, coming up the hallway to the squad room and going toward his desk at the far end of the room. She hoped it was because he was a cop and not because he was going to be trouble. She eyeballed his desk. A mug with a bunch of pens. A brass nameplate: LYLE MACAULEY, DEPUTY CHIEF. No pictures of the wife. Not that that always meant anything.
Being a good-looking woman in a male-dominated field was tricky. She had always been able to handle her co-workers okay, but catching the eye of a superior meant trouble for everybody. There wasn't going to be any privacy here; it looked like everyone on the force worked out of this room. Five desks, a bunch of chairs, and a big old wooden table. File cabinets, whiteboard, and maps squeezed in between tall, elegant windows from another age. We're not in California anymore, Toto.
"You've got great scores here." Lyle MacAuley held up the results from her NYS Police Test.
"Thanks." She shifted in her sturdy metal seat.
"And your scores from the California Department of Corrections are good, too. You worked for them two years?"
"Three." She knew what was coming next. "I got laid off in a budget cutback. If you look on my résumé, you'll see my supervisor is one of my references."
"Mm." He glanced at the paper on his desk. He had bristly gray hair and bushy eyebrows that looked like they came out of a Halloween disguise kit. "You have a gap of almost two years between the end of your DOC job and now."
"I was a stay-at-home mom for a while." She had been a frantic paddling-to-keep-their-heads-above-water mom. The crap jobs she had been forced to take-scooping ice cream, handing out brochures, walking around in high heels and a bathing suit at a car dealership-weren't worth putting down on paper.
"How come you're applying for a position as a patrolman? I mean, patrol officer. I'd've thought you'd be looking for a job with the New York DOC. The pay's better."
She shook her head. "The nearest correctional facility they're hiring women guards for is Dannemora. I need to stay in this area."
"Because of the kids?"
She shrugged.
"Look, I'm not supposed to ask this, so if you get pissed off you can report me to the EEOC, but have you thought about what you, a single woman, are going to do about your kids? We can't guarantee mommy hours, you know."
He was right. He wasn't supposed to ask her this, and it did piss her off. She tried to keep it from showing in her voice. "We're living with my grandfather, Glenn Hadley. He has a part-time job with flexible hours."
The deputy chief slitted his eyes. Hadley could almost see a list of names clicking through his mind. He might look like an over-the-hill hayseed, but she suspected it wouldn't do to underestimate MacAuley's smarts. She wondered if the illegal question was just another kind of test.
"Glenn Hadley." His eyes popped open. "Works at St. Alban's?"
"Yeah. He's the sexton. That's what they call the custodian there."
"Don't mention that when you talk to the chief."
The surge of hope-she was going to talk to the chief! She was a serious candidate!-almost made her ignore MacAuley's weird advice. Almost.
"What, that granddad's a janitor?"
"Just don't mention St. Alban's or anything to do with it."
She frowned. "He doesn't have something against Christians or something, does he? Because I'm not super devoted or anything, but I do go to church."
"No, no, no, nothing like that." MacAuley compressed his lips. Thought for a moment. "The chief lost his wife this past January."
"I'd heard that."
"He was… with the minister of St. Alban's when it happened. Not with her like there was anything funny going on," he added, so quickly she couldn't help but think there must have, in fact, been something funny going on. "It's just that he feels if he hadn't been with Clare-with Reverend Fergusson-he could have saved his wife. So now, being reminded of her bothers him. Being reminded of Clare. Reverend Fergusson. You understand?"
"Uh-huh," she said, not understanding. Not caring. "I won't mention St. Alban's."
"Okay." He shoved his chair back. Stood up. "Let's go see the chief."
Hadley stood, working her face into the right expression. Ready, willing, and eager. Not desperate. She couldn't afford to look desperate. The prisons were out of commuting range. The private security firms had turned her down. There were only a handful of places where a high school grad could make a decent living, and not one of them was hiring. If she couldn't land this, it was going to be waitressing in Lake George or Saratoga, living off tips and praying nobody got sick or broke a leg. The MKPD had dental. Dental! It had been more than two years since she and the kids had seen a dentist.
MacAuley led her down a short hall, through the dispatcher's station, and rapped on a door with a pebbled glass window and CHIEF RUSSELL VAN ALSTYNE painted in gold. "C'min," a voice said.
She followed MacAuley into a messy office, heaps of magazines and papers piled on a battered credenza, the walls covered with posters and bulletins and a huge map of the tricounty area. A leggy philodendron was dying atop two old file cabinets.