In the Bleak Midwinter (3 page)

Russ shook his head, laughing. “Okay, okay. Sorry.” He shifted the cruiser into gear and eased it out of the hospital parking lot onto Burgoyne Avenue. Nearing midnight on a Monday, there was hardly any traffic on the normally busy road.

Reverend Fergusson shifted in her seat, exclaiming briefly when she hit a particularly cold spot. “You were telling me you were born and raised right here…”

“Oh, yeah,” he sighed. “Probably would have gotten a job at the mill and never left town. But I got out of high school in ’sixty-nine and my number came up in the Instant Loser Lottery. Next thing I knew, it was good-bye New York State, hello Southeast Asia.”

He checked the gauge on the heater. “Turned out the army and I made a pretty good match. We went from Vietnam to the Gulf together.” He switched the blower to high and the interior began to warm up. “After I retired,”—no need to go into detail about that phase of his life—“I decided the time was right to finally come home. The old chief was retiring, and they needed someone with experience who wanted to live the quiet life up here in Washington county. It’s a good outfit, eight officers and four part-timers, and I liked they way everyone worked together. My wife, Linda, loved the idea of us finally settling down somewhere other than a big city or busy post”—well, that was half-true, she
had
wanted him to settle down—“and she likes being so close to my mother and my sister.” Now that was a whopper. But it was the party line, and he stuck to it. “So that’s how I wound up back in my old home town a quarter-century after I left.”

“Does your wife work?”

“Oh, yeah.” He swung into the right-hand lane and turned onto Morningside Drive. The lights from the new Wal-Mart turned the night sodium orange. “She has her own business, making custom curtains. It’s been more successful than either of us imagined.” He slowed, checking out the cars in the parking lot. He didn’t like all-night stores, they were targets for trouble. “She’s getting into mail orders now, says she wants to make up a whole catalogue. It’s great, it’s been really just great.”

“Sounds like she found her vocation. Good for her. It can be hard for some military families to readjust to civilian life. You two have any kids?”

“No,” he said. “What’s your story? You came from Virginia originally?”

“Born and bred in a small town outside of Norfolk,” she said. “My family owns a charter and commercial air business. I had always thought I wanted to be part of it someday, so after college, I joined the army as a helo jock. The military is still the best way to train for a career as a pilot, you know. And the army was putting on a big push to get female recruits into non-traditional fields. I was the only woman in my unit.”

“Must have been tough,” he said. Now that he thought about it, she did seem less like a bible-tosser and more like the type to be dropping arms in an LZ.

“At times, yeah. It was good though.” Taking his eyes off the road for a second, he could see a one-sided smile flash across her face. “But, as it turned out, I had to put my piloting plans aside when I was called to the priesthood. I went back to Virginia to go to seminary, which was really good for my parents.”

Russ didn’t want to get into the murky mystical depths of how someone was “called to the priesthood.” “How’d you wind up here?” he asked.

“I spent a summer as an assistant curate in the Berkshires. I had never been in this part of the country before, and I just fell in love with it. I started looking for a position somewhere in New England, and when St. Alban’s came open, I thought, well, it’s only a half-hour drive from Vermont…”

“Ah ha,” Russ said. “So you haven’t experienced a North-country winter yet.” The light at the intersection with Radcliff Street turned red, and he pumped his brakes to avoid skidding on the icy spots.

“Therein lies the rub, as they say. My internship ran from May through September, so I was a little unprepared for six inches of snow before the end of November. I’ve only been here for three weeks, so I’m not exactly acclimated yet. I do have a coat, though. But when I stumbled over the baby, I was on my way out for a run.”

He looked at her again. She was obviously fit, but she wasn’t a big woman, scarcely up to his shoulder standing. “Just because this is a small city and we look like Bedford Falls from
It’s a Wonderful Life
, don’t be fooled into thinking bad things can’t happen here. They can, and do, so watch where you run if you’re out at night alone.”

She waved a hand, unconcerned. “I can take care of myself,” she said.

“Lemme guess, you know karate, you’re trained in the art of self-defense…”

“Nothing formal. But the army made sure I could break somebody’s arm if I needed to.”

The light turned green. He rolled onto Radcliff, causing an ancient Chevy Nova that had been barreling down the street to brake hard in an attempt to get under the thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit. “Lemme tell you, Reverend, somebody tries to mug you, they aren’t gonna get close enough for you to break their arm. Every ass—uh, jerk on the streets today’s got a gun. Even up here. They come up outta New York City, just like the drugs do.”

He glanced at her when he made a left turn onto Main. She was studying the peaceful storefronts and frowning, absently rubbing her forearm with one long-fingered hand. “Is that a big problem in Millers Kill? Drugs?” she asked.

Russ sighed. He knew when he was being side-stepped. “Not too bad, no. Alcohol is the number one drug of choice up here, like you’ll find in a lot of rural areas. My biggest single crime problem is domestic violence, and nine times out of ten there’s alcohol involved.”

He pulled the cruiser up in front of the station. “I’ll leave the car running for you,” he said. “Be back in a minute.” He grabbed the box and took off through the icy air, bounding up the stairs two at a time. There was nobody at the front desk at this hour. Instead, he loped into the dispatch room, where Harlene was just pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Harlene, you good lookin’ woman!” he said. Harlene was some ten years his elder, a big, square woman with an uncannily organized mind and a photographic memory of every highway, lane, and dirt road in three counties.

“One of these days, I’m going to slap you with a sexual harassment lawsuit,” she said, hefting herself into her chair and curling her headset over her springy gray hair.

“And let Harold know how much fun you’re having over here? No way.” Her husband Harold had recently retired, and was riding Harlene pretty hard to quit work and stay at home with him. “I’m gonna lock this into evidence,” Russ said, waggling the box. “Will you leave a note for Phil to get on it first thing in the morning? Prints, hairs, anything he can come up with.”

Harlene peered at the cardboard. “You want him to send it on to the state if nothing pans out?”

“No. No need to spend the money. This is that abandoned baby Mark called in. More likely than not the mother’ll surface within a week or so. You know how these things run.”

Harlene nodded. The teenager wound up in the hospital with post-partum complications. Or she broke down and told a friend, who told another, until there wasn’t any secret anymore.

“Okay, Chief, you got it.” She pointed to the coffeemaker. “Just brewed a fresh pot,” she said.

“Gotta haul it,” Russ said, stuffing the ends of his scarf back into his jacket. “I’m giving the priest who found the baby a ride back to St. Alban’s rectory.”

“You and a priest.” Harlene snorted. “I’d give good money to hear how that conversation goes.”

“Actually,” Russ said, enjoying his moment as much as Mark had his, “She’s very easy to talk to. She’s old army, too.”

Harlene was gratifyingly surprised. “Well! Didn’t know they could
have
women priests.” She looked into the middle distance for a moment. “Ask her what she thinks of my sexual harassment suit,” she said.

Russ bit back a laugh and grabbed the locker key off the hook on the wall. He clattered downstairs and unlocked the evidence cage, tagging the box and scribbling his entry information in the dog-eared log-book. Within two minutes he was running back upstairs, shouting a good-night to Harlene, and out the front door again.

When he got into the cruiser, Reverend Fergusson jerked her hand away from the radio. “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t resist. I wanted to see if it sounded like it does on all those television shows.”

“And?” Russ said, backing the car out of his parking spot.

“And it sounds like the state police have wa-a-a-ay too much time on their hands,” she said. “One guy was going on and on about some fishing tournament he’d gone to. It sounded more like
Bassmasters
than
Dragnet
.”

They both laughed. “Yeah, well…” Russ said. “Mondays are the quietest night of the week. You come cruising with me on Friday, then you’ll really hear something.”

She pinned him with those clear hazel eyes. “Could I?”

Startled, he almost ran a red light. He looked at her. “Reverend, why on earth would you want to do something like that?” he said.

“Because I want to get a feel for the problems of Millers Kill that I won’t get in a vestry reception,” she said. “Because I need to figure out what kind of outreach ministry my church ought to be doing, instead of just what my parishioners feel comfortable doing right now. And because,” she grinned, a reckless, one-sided grin that made him think she must be mistaken about a priestly calling, “I’m a recovering adrenaline addict. Who hasn’t had a fix in a while. Green light.”

“Huh.” He drove on. “Doesn’t your church have a mass or whatever it is on Fridays? I recall seeing cars there in the evening. And besides, I’m out pretty late. Don’t you, I dunno, get up early to pray or something?”

She made an amused sound in the back of her throat. “Saturday’s a day off for me. At least, it’s supposed to be. So I can sleep in. If worse comes to worse, I can double up. Praise God while I’m making pancakes, thank the Lord while I’m doing the week’s shopping.” She began to sing almost inaudibly, “And He walks with me, and He talks with me…”

“Uh-huh. I may not know much about religion, but I can tell when I’m being sold a bill of goods.”

“So can I come?”

How do I get myself into these situations
? he thought. “Okay, yeah,” he said finally. “But you do what I say, when I say it, and if I decide for whatever reason that it’s not safe, you get left behind. No arguments.”

“Do I strike you as the argumentative type?” she asked. He snorted. Along Church Street, the municipal Christmas decorations had been hung on the lampposts. Same fuzzy plastic candy canes and reindeer that had been there when he was a kid. Same fake greenery around the poles, same fat outdoor bulbs. He wondered where they got replacements from. No way anyone was still making lights like that. He turned onto Elm. The rectory was a pretty Dutch Colonial from the turn of the century.

“Here it is, on the left.”

“Nice,” Russ said, parking in the drive. “Bet you’ve got great woodwork in there.”

The priest groaned. “I can’t tell,” she said. “The place is all over boxes, most of ’em completely unlabeled, so I have no idea what’s in there. I have some I filled before my last posting to Fort Rucker and haven’t unpacked in seven years. They could contain anything from ’eighties-style miniskirts to relics of the True Cross for all I can remember. Somehow, there always seems to be something more interesting to do than unpacking and housecleaning…”

He slung his arm over the seat and turned toward her. “You gotta get one of those ladies’ committees over to do their thing. Have you set up and sparkling in no time.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “And they’d do a great job, too. But you know, you get the place clean and organized at the start and forever after, whenever one of my parishioners came over for a visit, they’d be thinking, My! She certainly didn’t keep this up very well!” She looked up the drive to her house, smiling a little. “Ah, it’s just the new-posting blues. A new town, all new faces. It can get…”

“Lonely.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in companionable silence, not in any hurry to end the ride.

The radio squawked. “Ten-fifty-seven, this is Ten-fifty. I’ve got an accident reported out on Route Thirty-Five, at mile fifteen.”

Russ clicked in the mike. “Ten-fifty, this is Ten-fifty-seven. Acknowledged. I’m rolling to Route Thirty-Five, mile fifteen.” He spread his hands apologetically. “Duty calls. Good-night, Reverend Fergusson.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, call me Clare.” She opened her door and slid out, leaning down to keep him in view.

“Clare,” he said. “And you can call me Chief.” She laughed loudly. “No, no, call me Russ. After all, if we’re going to be partners next Friday…”

She nodded. “I’ll be there. Russ. Good night, now.” She slammed the door. He waited until she had reached her front door and let herself in. Without keys. He made a mental note to get on her about that come Friday. He backed out of her drive and hit his lights, unaccountably smiling all the way to Route Thirty-Five.

The girl unlocked the deadbolt and turned the latch. It was cold in the kitchen, but then again, she had been desperately cold all night long. A light had been left on for her in the hall. She walked to the stairs and tried to remember what she was supposed to be doing. Concentrate. Upstairs. She hefted her overnight bag and gasped as a cramping pain shot through her abdomen. She stopped, pressed her fist against her belly. Nothing to worry about. It was normal. The book had said it was normal to have cramps for several days afterwards.

She picked up her bag again and trudged up the bare wooden stairway. In the upstairs hall, she stared stupidly at the closed doors. Everything was totally foreign to her. Her breasts were aching and damp. She shut her eyes and breathed in deeply, and when she looked again, she saw her own bedroom door in front of her.

Inside, she dropped her luggage and sagged onto the bed. The springs creaked loudly. “Mmmm,” came a voice from the other side of the room. “Katie, is that you? Geez, it’s late.”

“Yeah, Emily,” she whispered. “It’s me.” From across the street, she heard a dog barking and barking. It would go on for an hour or more some nights, a frustrated sheepdog chained to a barren circle of dirt.