A Fountain Filled With Blood

A cluster of woman runners walked by him, evidently not worried about the day’s unseasonably cool temperatures. They were wearing what looked like neon-colored body paint and shoes that must have cost more than his first car. “Whatever happened to running in baggy shorts and T-shirts?” he asked Kevin.

The juniormost officer was grinning at a trio of giggling girls. Russ pegged them as coeds who had been hiking on the Appalachian Trail, from their chunky boots and serious backpacks. “Huh?” he said without turning away from the girls.

“Never mind. Just wondering when Lycra became the national fabric.” On the other hand, he thought, his attention riveted by one woman bending way over to retie her laces, there was something to be said for Lycra. He hadn’t seen that much of Linda until after they were married.

The radio crackled inside the cruiser. “Fifteen fifty-seven, this is Dispatch.” Harlene, their most experienced dispatcher, had volunteered to work this holiday, even though she would have had it off, due to rotation and seniority. He was grateful. No matter how crazy it got, nothing could flap Harlene.

Tearing his eyes away from the scenery, he leaned in and unhooked the mike. “Dispatch, this is fifteen fifty-seven.”

“I wanted to let you know Noble’s in position for traffic control by the bridge and Paul is at the intersection of Main and Canal. Kevin’s going to stay with you in Riverside Park, right?”

“That’s right. It looks like they’ll be starting in about fifteen minutes. They’re trying to get the runners in position.”

“How’s it looking?”

Another woman runner paused, frowning, and reached inside her sports bra to redistribute the load. It must have been one of those high-performance sports bras, because it had a lot to contain.

“Everything looks real good here,” he said truthfully. “Hey, you heard the latest weather yet?”

“It’s supposed to hold off raining until tonight,” Harlene said. “I heard from the fire department. They’re assuming the fireworks will go on as planned, nine o’clock or so. Whoops! Lyle’s on the line; I gotta go. Dispatch out.” The radio crackled off.

He replaced the mike. A gust of wind reminded him to shrug on the windbreaker he had been holding. The wind made the banner stretched across the entrance to the park billow like a spinnaker sail. MILLERS KILL THIRD ANNUAL INDEPENDENCE DAY 10K, it read; BWI Development logos were prominently displayed on each side. To call it “annual” was something of an exaggeration, since the first one had taken place five years ago. The event’s organizers—a hard-core group of runners who also got up a trip to the New York Marathon every year—had had difficulties finding sponsors over the years. The last race, two years back, had been sponsored by an Adirondack dot-com company that went belly-up six months later. This year, they had latched onto BWI, which was splashing out a lot on the event: big booths piled with free oranges, bananas, and energy bars, fancy bottled water, T-shirts for volunteers and competitors.

Riverside Park was a broad swath of green undulating along a twisty stretch of the river between two now-abandoned mills. When serious construction had begun in the early nineteenth century, some entrepreneur had snatched up the land in the hopes of developing it at a great profit. Unfortunately for him, he had failed to account for the fact that the water-powered mills of the time needed long, straight riverbanks. The land escheated to the town for failure to pay taxes and had been a park ever since. Russ suspected the mill workers who had once picnicked here would have laughed themselves sick at the sight of their descendants crowding together for a chance to run six miles in a circle to get a T-shirt.

BWI had sent some of their construction workers to build a platform stand near the riverbank. The mayor, a few members of the running club, and a well-polished man in a pressed polo shirt and khakis, whom Russ pegged as Ingraham, were taking up the space now. Later on, it would be a stage for local bands to play on until the nine o’clock fireworks—if the rain held off. Russ looked up at the sky again. The wind pushing the storm clouds forward seemed to bring the mountains themselves closer, their color an intense green-blue, the texture of spreading leaf and spiky pine picked out in a way you never saw when the day was hot and sunny.

Kevin Flynn’s voice broke into Russ’s musing. “Hi, Reverend Fergusson. You running today?”

He looked over the roof of the cruiser. Clare, kitted out in baggy shorts and a ratty gray army T-shirt, was smiling bemusedly at Flynn. “Yes, I am, Officer Flynn. You have a sharp eye.” She grinned at Russ. “You ought to get the chief to make you a detective.”

“Nah,” the oblivious Flynn said. “You have to have more than one year’s experience.”

“I’m surprised to see you here,” Russ said. “It being a Sunday and all.”