A Fountain Filled With Blood

“No!” she said, and immediately regretted denying it so fervently. “What I mean is, my sex life is private.” Bensen looked very interested. She felt her cheeks getting pink. “That is, if I had a sex life. Which I don’t. I’m practicing celibacy.”

“You any good at it?” Coppela asked.

“I hate to interrupt this fascinating conversation, but I need to ask Mr. MacPherson to spend a little time with Ms. Nguyen from the district attorney’s office.” Clare spun around and discovered she had been right to expect the police to be here. Chief Van Alstyne was standing in the doorway, eyebrows raised. He looked at Todd. “She’s going to show you some photos for possible IDs.” He speared the Adirondack Pride pair with a look and gestured toward the door. Clare waited until they had cleared the room before she left, passing a petite woman lugging photo albums on the way.

She waited outside the door, hoping to catch him when they were done. She was surprised when he emerged alone only a few minutes later. “Did he make an identification that quickly?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No, I just made the introductions. We don’t handle the actual viewing. Someone from the DA’s office who doesn’t know who we’ve tapped shows the pictures. That way, the guy’s lawyer can’t get the ID thrown out because maybe a cop breathed a little too hard when the victim pointed to the right one.”

“Do you have the Elliott guy from the construction job?”

He looked up and down the hall, as if someone might be listening in. Except for an elderly man shuffling along with his IV bag on a pole, they were alone. “Yeah.” He shifted his shoulder and winced. “He’s in custody. He gave up the two guys he says did the jobs with him. One’s a loser named Colvin; we’re trying to track him down through his girlfriend. The other’s more interesting.” He cupped her elbow in his hand and led her farther away from MacPherson’s door. “According to McKinley, the ring-leader was a guy named Chris Dessaint. He’s a guy with a job and a short list, the kind of arrests that happen when you’re young and stupid and get drunk Saturday nights. He and McKinley were up to Lake George a couple of weeks ago and they beat up some gay tourist.”

Clare winced. Suddenly, she felt a lot more sympathy for the Adirondack Pride team.

“Then Chris comes back to McKinley and—get this—says there’s money in beating up gays.”

“What? But Dr. Dvorak wasn’t robbed.”

“Not that kind of money. Payroll. Someone was passing along money and drugs in exchange for assaults on homosexuals.”

“You’re kidding. That’s weird.” She looked up at him. “You think there’s some sort of supremacy group going on? A militia?”

“I’ve never heard of them paying a bunch of losers to front them. They usually manage to recruit their own losers.”

The door to MacPherson’s room swung open. Ms. Nguyen stepped into the hall. “He’s done,” she said, passing them on her way to the elevator. “You can question him now.”

“Be right there,” Russ said. He looked at Clare. “This stays between you and me, right? Even if you get outraged by the injustice of life, et cetera.”

She crossed her heart. “Even if.” He glanced toward the door and she suddenly wanted, more than anything, to keep him there for a few minutes longer. Just because talking with him was easier than talking with anyone else. “Have you seen your mother? I took the dogs back. She seemed pretty cheerful about the arrest and all.”

“Not yet. I’m going over there Friday to do some work on the porch. Or at least that’s the excuse. Mostly, I’m going over for dinner and the game. Linda’s redecorating the living room this weekend, and I need to be out of the way Friday. I can’t stand tripping over ladders and breathing paint fumes.”

“Your living room? Was that the room with the comfy chairs?” Clare had been to his house last winter—once. “But it was so pretty. I liked it.”

“Me, too.”

Trish MacPherson stuck her head out the door. “Chief? Are you—”

“I’m coming,” he said. He paused before entering the room, his hand on the edge of the door. He looked at Clare. “Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“Are you any good at that celibacy thing?”

Chapter Twenty

The first thing that struck Lawrence Robinson was the quarreling of crows. A quarrel of crows—wasn’t that what they were called? “Hey, Donna,” he called back to his wife, who was methodically tramping up the steep trail behind him. “What’s the collective noun for crows?”

She stopped beside him, breathing hard, and pushed her auburn hair out of her eyes. He handed her his water bottle. Two week’s hiking in the Adirondacks had been his idea for their summer break from Cornell, and he was grateful she was being such a good sport about it. Alternating camp nights with bed-and-breakfast stays had been her idea. It meant they never got very far into the wilderness, but the promise of a good mattress and a shower every other night kept Donna gamely walking forward.