In the Bleak Midwinter

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.”

Russ laughed in spite of himself.

“The description we have so far is average height, average weight, no discernible identifying features except for a bushy mustache, which may be fake, and that he was one of the previously mentioned ‘wrinklies.’ ”

Geoff Burns was what, forty? forty-two? Certainly would look like a wrinkly to Emily Colbaum or one of her housemates. And “average” would describe him to a T, until he opened his mouth. Russ sighed. “So, what did the perp do at the house?”

“According to the witness, there had been a call earlier from someone identifying himself as the murder victim’s father. Said he was coming down to get some of the girl’s things. This guy shows up around nine-thirty, goes to her room, and comes back out ten or fifteen minutes later with a backpack. It’s hard to tell at this point if the room was left messy or if he tossed it. We’re hoping for prints, of course.”

“I know this is a long shot, but do you have any idea what he took from the room?”

“Something that could fit into a student backpack?” Ramirez snorted. “Sorry, Chief. Could be almost anything. Was your girl into drugs?”