“I don’t think so,” Russ said. His voice, dark and heavy, made her look at him. “I think I’m the one who tipped her over. Up until this morning, she was still hoping we were going to find her husband alive. All this”-the sweep of his arm took in the barnyard, the Clows huddled together talking with one of the officers, Renee sitting in the squad car-“all this is just a massive case of denial.”
“What happened this morning?”
“I shouldn’t have just told her-I should have prepped her more. But I was afraid she’d hear about it on the news first.”
“What?”
“The divers started searching Stewart’s Pond yesterday. This morning, I got the call. They found human remains.”
Chapter 32
We were on our way over there when I got your stealth call,” Russ said. “Emil Dvorak should already be there.” The county medical examiner. So Allan Rouse really was dead. Russ glanced across the street, to where Kevin Flynn and Lyle MacAuley were questioning the Clows. “As soon as Kevin’s finished up, I’m headed for Stewart’s Pond.”
“I’ll take you,” Clare said.
Russ’s mouth twitched. “Oh, you will, will you?”
She looked at the outline of Mrs. Rouse in the car. Clare sighed. “I suppose I ought to go sit with Mrs. Rouse and see if I can help her in any way.”
“No,” he said, “I don’t suppose you ought to do that.” When she looked sharply at him, he said, “Let her simmer down, Clare. I want her in the right state of mind when Lyle interrogates her.”
“What’s going to happen to her?”
He leaned forward into his crutches. “Pointing a gun at people and threatening them is a felony. We in the law enforcement field frown upon it.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes. You know what I mean. She’s no criminal. She just went over the edge because of what happened to her husband.”
He lifted his chin toward where the Clows stood, Debba rocking Skylar, Whitley hugging her grandmother tight. “What would you have said about her if she had hurt one of those kids, Clare?”
She looked down. The tips of his crutches were sinking into the wet soil, crushing the withered grass. Her own boots were splattered with mud drying into pale dirty streaks.
“Right,” he said.
“I should see if there’s anything I can do for them.”
“Stop trying to help people for five minutes. What were you doing here, anyway?”
“Remember Dr. Stillman, who set your leg? The one who was the third-generation doctor?” He nodded. “He loaned me some of his grandfather’s personal journals. There’s all this stuff about the diphtheria outbreak in 1924, including an entry about the Ketchem children dying. I wanted Debba to read it. To get another perspective on vaccinations.” She stuffed her hands into her skirt pockets. “Same thing that Allan Rouse was trying to do, I guess. I thought maybe words would have a bigger effect than the old tombstones.” She looked at him looking at her. “What?”
“Nothin’,” he said, his mouth crooked. A movement across the road caught his eye. “Let’s get Kevin over here to take your statement. Kevin!”
She followed Russ back to his pickup, and she leaned against the bed giving her statement to Officer Flynn while his chief half sat, half stood against the passenger seat, resting his leg.
When she retrieved Dr. Stillman’s journal from Debba, she gave her a quick, fierce hug and said, “We’ll talk about this later, right?” Debba nodded, her lashes still wet with tears, Skylar still rocking and rocking in her arms. Clare dropped her voice, mock-confidential. “And I promise I won’t tell anyone about your torrid affair with Dr. Rouse.”
Debba gasped, blinked, and then started to laugh. She laughed and laughed until Lyle MacAuley and her mother both stared. She laughed until Skylar, serious faced, reached up and touched her cheek. “Funny Mama,” he said. “Funny.”
“What was that all about?” Russ asked her as she placed Dr. Stillman’s diary in the front seat of her car.
“Laughing in the face of adversity,” she said. She chucked the car door shut. “So, am I going to take you up to Stewart’s Pond, or not?” Ignoring the voice of her grandmother, who was saying, Nice girls don’t extend invitations, they accept them. Ignoring the voice of MSgt. Ashley “Hardball” Wright, who was reminding her, A smart soldier does not deliberately put himself in harm’s way. A giddy fearlessness was fizzing through her veins, and at that moment she was perfectly willing to do something that would probably turn out to be a big mistake.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Yes, which is why we need to get moving right now.”
He glanced over at Kevin, who was dragging a ladder out of the barn. She couldn’t figure out what he and Deputy Chief MacAuley were doing until she saw the jackknife and evidence bag in Lyle’s hand. Apparently Mrs. Rouse’s shot had gone into the barn’s clapboard front. “Kevin,” Russ shouted. The young officer stopped. “Reverend Fergusson is going to take me up to Stewart’s Pond so I can catch up with the M.E. You drive her car up there and meet me as soon as you guys are done.”
Kevin nodded. Lyle MacAuley gave them a long look before turning back to the ladder.
“Hope you don’t mind driving my truck,” Russ said, “because there’s no way I’m going to try to wedge myself into that little skateboard of yours.”
They jounced out of the Clows’ drive, Clare climbing the gears as they drove up out of the valley until they were flying along a good fifteen miles an hour above the speed limit.
“Hello,” Russ said. “Don’t make me give you a ticket in my own truck.”
“You can’t,” she said. “You don’t have the little ticket book.”
“Damn.” He flipped open his glove compartment. “I knew there was something I forgot.”
She laughed.
“Ah,” he said. “I see my mistake now.”
“What?”
“I thought I was getting into the truck with the Reverend Clare Fergusson. But no, it’s actually Captain Fergusson, the terror of Fort Rucker.”
She grinned at him. “It feels like that, yeah. Like I could get this machine airborne if I just hit…”
“Escape velocity?”
“Yeah.”
He leaned back into his seat in a kind of studied nonchalance. “It’s amazing how weightless you can feel once a gun’s not pointed to your head anymore.”
She laughed.
“You are, without a doubt, the damndest priest I’ve ever met.”
“I worry about that.” She slowed as they approached an intersection. “I’m not so sure I’m really cut out for parish life. Doing good is one thing. Being good is a lot harder.”
“What would you be doing if you weren’t rector of St. Alban’s?” There was a tone to his voice she couldn’t name, but she couldn’t spare a glance at him as she swung onto Route 9.
“I don’t know. I could re-up as a chaplain, but I think I’m too old for the army now. No, not too old. Too…” she thought about it. “I’ve lost a lot of my ability to fit in and follow orders.”
He laughed. “I find it hard to imagine you ever had much of that ability.”
“There ya go.” She shifted up. “I’d probably go for some sort of missionary work. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, that sort of thing. Doing something to ease somebody else’s life-that’s always seemed like the point, to me.”
“What about flying? You know, quitting the priesthood entirely. There have to be a lot of opportunities for someone with your experience.”
She laughed. “You can’t quit the priesthood. I mean, yeah, you can not work as a priest. You can get kicked out of your bishop’s diocese. But ordination is forever. Like baptism. You can’t take it back.” She glanced across the cab at him. “How about you?”
“How about me, what?”
“What would you be doing if you weren’t nailing down that chair at the police station?”