“I never said I liked Geoff Burns,” she said, grinning.
“Too bad it wasn’t McWhorter,” he said. “He made such a satisfying heavy.” She nodded. “Too bad it isn’t like ninety percent of murders,” he continued, “where the husband or the wife or the friend is standing there with the weapon in hand when the cops arrive, saying, ‘But I didn’t mean to do it!’ ”
Headlights gleamed at the entrance to the parking lot. A small car crept in, tires churning against the snow. The black Honda Civic pulled in a few spaces away from the pickup. Its interior light flashed weakly as someone opened and shut the door. Russ could barely make out the figure struggling up the sidewalk through the screen of heavy snow, something sizable clutched in her arms. He and Clare both opened their doors, the contrast between the almost too-warm cab and the bone-chilling wind taking his breath away for a moment. He could hear the noise Clare made as her stupid little indoor boots sank into five inches of fresh snow.
“Kristen?” he called.
She whirled, bringing her fist up. Her keys stuck up between her fingers like stubby claws. She held a bulky knapsack against her chest.
Russ raised his hands. “It’s me, Chief Van Alstyne. Reverend Fergusson is with me.”
“What? What’s going on? Is it Katie’s baby?”
“We need to talk to you. May we come in?”
Under her black knit cap, Kristen looked at them suspiciously. “Okay.” She waded through the snow drifting across her walkway and unlocked the town house door. She kicked her boots against the side of the door to knock off the snow. Russ and Clare followed suit. Inside, they all crammed together on a tiny patch of tile, trying to wrestle off jackets and tug off boots without spreading any more snow than necessary onto the pale green wall-to-wall carpet.
Kristen’s place was not what he’d expected from her all-black wardrobe and gothic hair. Instead of vinyl upholstery and posters of thrash groups on the walls, she had import-shop bamboo furniture in white with flowery pastel fabric. Reproductions of gauzy paintings of ballerinas hung over shelves filled with thin paperbacks and stuffed animals. The room of a young girl. One more thing Darrell McWhorter had taken away from her.
“What are you doing out here so late?” Kristen asked, dropping the knapsack on a glass-topped coffee table. “Is there news on Katie’s case?”
Clare looked at him as if to say, okay, how do you do this? Damned if he knew. Your father’s had his brains blown out tonight. And by the way, did you do it? If she didn’t have anything to do with McWhorter’s murder, he was going to start to look like her personal angel of death. First her sister, then her dad. “Where’ve you been for the last few hours, Kristen?” he asked.
She raked her hand through her ink-black hair, ruffling it upwards. “I went out for some ’za with my friends tonight after class. I’m studying for my CPA at WCCC.” At Clare’s raised eyebrows, she explained, “The community college.” Russ suspected Clare had been reacting to the idea of Kristen as an accountant rather than puzzling over the acronym. “Look,” Kristen said, “Will you please tell me what all this is about?”
The college class and the pizza joint should be easy to check out. “How long did it take you from the time you left the pizza place to the time you arrived here?” he said.
Her face shifted, from annoyed and curious to alarmed and cautious. “Maybe half an hour,” she said. “Has something happened?”
Clare stepped close to Kristen and laid a hand on the girl’s arm. “Kristen, your father was found dead tonight. He’s been murdered. If you know anything about it, please tell us.” She cut to the chase as quick as any cop he’d ever seen. Somehow, he’d thought a priest would be more . . . euphemistic.
Kristen gaped. “He’s dead?” she asked in a shrill voice. Then she burst into tears.
CHAPTER 16
Russ felt like he was in a rerun of a bad television show. Kristen, sobbing and bleeding out her makeup, Clare holding the girl’s hand . . . if he wasn’t so goddamn tired he’d swear it was Monday morning instead of the middle of Wednesday night.
“Why’s she broken up over this guy?” he half-whispered to Clare.
She glared at him from over Kristen’s shoulder. “She’s not broken up like she was for Katie, for heaven’s sake. She’s angry.”
Kristen wailed. “Now I’ll never get a chance to tell him what I thought of him!” She sucked air in great noisy gulps. “Now I’ll never know about Katie!”
“If your father killed her, Kristen, he’s already paid for it. And if he didn’t, we’ll find who did. I promise you.” He watched Clare rock the girl in her arms and wondered if she would come to distance herself more from the people she wanted to help. She was going to crash and burn in a few years if she kept wading right in and feeling all this personally.
She met his gaze and he saw how tired she was, smudgy dark circles under her eyes, the fine lines on either side of her mouth noticeable. “Kristen,” she said, “do you have any idea who your father was meeting tonight? Do you have any ideas who might have killed him?” Russ wasn’t entirely convinced Kristen was innocent, for all that her tears might be real. But until her alibi checked out one way or another, he’d go with it.
Kristen shook her head. “I told you, I haven’t spoken to him since I left home. I got an unlisted number so he can’t call me. I was working up the nerve to call him and Mom about Katie’s funeral.” She jerked her head up, blinking swollen eyes at Clare. “Oh, God, now I’m going to have to make arrangements for him, too! Mom won’t be able to handle it.” She closed her hands over her face and wept, frustrated, angry tears that even Russ, who had learned to ignore crying from witnesses, could recognize.
“I can help you,” Clare said, rubbing her hands briskly along Kristen’s upper arms. “I can help.”
Kristen shook her head, dumb animal grief, over and over. “All I wanted was some peace to bury my sister in. Now he’s even taken that, the bastard. Why couldn’t he leave me and my sister alone. My sisterrrr . . .”
Russ mumbled his excuses and went into the kitchen to look for a telephone and to escape the pain and anger ricocheting through the living room. He suppressed a twinge of guilt at letting Clare take on all the burden of dealing with the girl. There wasn’t anything useful to be had out of her, not tonight, and maybe a priest was what she needed now, anyway.
He dialed the station first, and when the message to dial 911 clicked on, he hung up and called the Glens Falls dispatcher. She had the number of the detective in Albany who had been sent out with the black and white to Katie’s former home. In Albany, they got cell phones. Better pension plans, too, he’d bet.
Two rings and a brisk, feminine voice answered, “Ramirez here.”
“Uh . . . Detective Ramirez?”
“The one and only.”
“Detective, this is Chief Van Alstyne, from Millers Kill. I understand you’re assisting with a murder we’ve had up here.”
“Chief Van Alstyne. Yeah, I spoke with your man, what’s his name? Doofee?”
“Durkee,” he said. She owed him that for his obvious surprise at hearing a woman’s voice.
“We got a unit here right after we got your message, but your man had already been and gone.”
Russ slapped the receiver against his thigh and swore quietly. He jerked the phone back up to his ear in time to hear Detective Ramirez say, “. . . identified himself to the girl as your decedent’s father.”
“There’s a witness?”
“For what it’s worth. We’ve got her downtown with an artist right now, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. She’s eighteen, she’d had a few beers earlier in the evening, and she thinks everyone over the age of twenty-eight is, and I quote, a wrinkly.”