A Fountain Filled With Blood

He joined in on her “Amen.” It seemed like the polite thing to do. She stilled for a moment, then pivoted. She squinted. Facing the candles as she had been, the rest of the church must have looked pitch-black.

“It’s me,” he said, stepping up to the first cloth-covered altar.

“Russ?” She sounded as if this were the last place on the planet she would expect to find him. “What are you doing here? I mean”—she glided down the steps from the high altar, her robes lending a sober grace to her usually athletic movements—“I would have thought you’d be at the station.”

“I’m not on call,” he said. “I wasn’t actually scheduled for duty today.” He shrugged. “But you know. Murder knows no overtime, or something like that.”

“But didn’t they call you on the radio? Earlier today, at the construction site, I found out—well, I wanted to tell you in person, so I left you that note, but then after I got home, I figured it was irresponsible to wait, so I called the station and spoke to Officer MacAuley—that is, Deputy Chief—”

“I know who he is, Clare. Get to the point.”

She grinned. “The man who owned the red truck. I told him I knew who he was.”

Chapter Sixteen

It was faster to call the station from Clare’s office than to retrace his steps and use the radio in his car. She had shown him to her desk and then excused herself to change out of her vestments. He was talking to Lyle MacAuley when she slipped quietly back into the office.

“We ran the registration, and sure enough, it’s a ’ninety-four Chevy pickup, registered to one Elliott McKinley. He’s got a few arrests on his sheet: one obstructing, a couple drunk and disorderlies, never anything that went anywhere. He pled out to everything. Eric remembered him from his last arrest, which was about two years back. He thinks this guy is a hanger-on. He was one of half a dozen guys: Eric and Noble and Nathan Bougeron—you remember Bougeron, right?”

Russ did. He was one of the several promising young officers who had headed south to the state troopers’ barracks in Loudonville during the five years Russ had been chief of the department. He’d worry that there was something wrong with his style of management, except every one of them had cited the same reason for leaving: better pay and more chances for advancement.

“Anyway, they broke up a fight outside the Dew Drop Inn. McKinley got picked up for obstructing, along with everyone else. But get this—he was there with Arnie Rider, who was the one who had started the fight.”

“Hold on. Is this the same Arnie Rider—”

“Who’s doing twenty years in Comstock for stabbing Chhouk, that Cambodian immigrant, yep. Get this. The Dew Drop brawl was a week before the stabbing. According to McKinley’s sheet, he was brought in and questioned about the Chhouk murder, but he didn’t turn anything useful.”

“Do you have McKinley?”

“Not yet. Eric and I went over in civvies right after Reverend Fergusson called. He lives in a rooming house on Raceway Street, down past the mills. No truck in sight, and there’s no parking provided by the landlord, so he would have had to keep it on the street. It must be stashed somewhere. He wasn’t home, and the landlord didn’t know when he’d be in. Eric’s there now on stakeout, waiting for him to show up.”

“I’ll bet whoever is holding that truck is up to his eyeballs in it.”

“I’ll take that bet.”

“Can we ID any known associates?”

“The rest of the crew who was picked up two years ago at the Dew Drop. I did a quick look at their rap sheets, but none of ’em look particularly promising. I didn’t want to start picking people up for questioning and scare off McKinley. Especially since there’ve got to be others involved.”

“No, you did good, Lyle. This is exactly the way I would have set it up. As long as we don’t shake the bushes too much, he’ll come home. And then we grab him. I want to be ready to move fast on any names he turns. If we need to, we’ll call up a few of the part-timers to cover patrol.”

“You know that’ll involve—”

“Overtime, yeah. I’m sure the Board of Aldermen will eventually have my—” Russ glanced over his shoulder, remembering Clare in the nick of time. She had settled into one of two leather chairs placed in front of the empty fire-place. “My feet to the fire. You can reach me at St. Alban’s if anything happens in the next few minutes. Then I’ll cruise over to the station before going home.”

“When are you going to get a cell phone like the rest of the world? Docs get ’em. Vets get ’em. Even Lithuanians and Letts get ’em.”

“Don’t quit your day job, Lyle. Bye.”