Chapter 6
Hadley Knox’s car was in the rectory driveway behind Russ’s.
When Clare entered the kitchen, the smell of red meat and garlic rolled off the oven, a Russ special.
Her preference was for mostly vegetarian dishes, but she wasn’t going to complain as long as she didn’t have to cook. “Hi!” she called. “I’m home!”
“We’re in here!” Russ’s voice was muffled.
She followed it through the living room, which still had zero Christmas decorations up, and she’d better start thinking about that, and into their never-used dining room.
For her first two years in the rectory, she’d used the space as storage, because, she had discovered, she had more invitations to eat out than she could deal with.
Through sheer dread of her mother seeing stacks of cardboard boxes instead of a dining set, she’d cleaned the room out and furnished it with a secondhand table and chairs before the first parental visit to meet Russ.
They still never used the space for eating, because at some point in the past one of her predecessors had walled up the door between the dining room and the kitchen behind it, meaning any food had to circulate through the long living room before arriving.
Clare wasn’t wild about the idea of cold dishes warming or hot dishes cooling, and she really didn’t like the prospect of having to pop up and trot the long way around any time someone had forgotten the salt and pepper.
Russ seemed to have turned the place into a conference room; he was sitting with Hadley Knox, papers spread across the table as if it were tax time. Ethan was sitting on his ExerSaucer, gumming a zwieback. He looked … sticky.
“Hey, darlin’.” Russ had his glasses off so he could read. Hadley, engrossed in something on her laptop, wiggled her fingers vaguely.
“Hey.” She crossed around the end of the table to drop a kiss on his head. “How did the trip to Baldwinsville go?”
He seesawed his hand.
“What are you two working on? The finding Kevin project?”
Russ grunted. “I wouldn’t describe it as a project, exactly.”
“The finding Kevin campaign? The Kevin quest?”
Hadley looked up from the laptop. “Doesn’t that make Flynn the One Ring or a dragon or something?”
“There was the quest for the Holy Grail.”
Russ cracked his knuckles. “Let’s not get too carried away. Right now, it’s looking like he threw all his camping gear in his truck and took off. His dad is calling as many of Kevin’s friends as he has a number for, asking if the kid had any particular place he liked to go to.”
Clare’s amusement shriveled up. “But he’s been missing for two months.”
Hadley’s lips flattened as she returned to the laptop.
Russ didn’t have to spell it out—if Kevin had been out in the wilderness for two months, chances were good rangers would be recovering a body, not finding a disoriented camper.
Clare thought of Kevin the first time she had met him, barely out of his teens and so eager to be helpful he almost trembled when he got the chance.
She had seen him grow up right in front of her.
“No.” Her voice was louder than she had planned.
She softened it. “I refuse to believe Kevin Flynn fell into a ravine or got caught in a deadfall. He’s too smart. ”
“I agree. Which is why we’re going over this.” Russ gestured toward the paper piles.
Clare leaned onto the table to see. “E-ZPass statements?”
“It’s not great, but it enables us to see where he was getting on and off the Thruway.”
“Okay…”
“The Thruway’s the fastest way to go east–west in New York State.
From B’ville, if he was headed to the western region of the Park, he would have gotten off at a Syracuse exit and headed north toward the Watertown area.
If he was headed toward the eastern side of the Park, or back home to Millers Kill, he’d have exited around Amsterdam and taken Route Sixty-seven—” He broke off when he saw her face.
“I’m sorry. I guess I still don’t know much New York geography unless it’s up and down the Northway.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, the least efficient way to go from Baldwinsville to anywhere we think he might have been is through Albany.”
“And he’s been going to Albany.”
Hadley held up a piece of paper that looked like … Yep, it was a credit card statement, just like the ones Clare got electronically. “He was visiting Albany lots. Buying gas and food and here’s one,” she pointed to another paper, “for the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza.”
“Which is in Albany?”
“That’s right.”
“Could he have a girlfriend there? Someone you could get in touch with?”
Russ spread his hands. “It’s possible. But if so, she’s paying her own way for everything, because the meal charges are things like seven seventy-two at McDonald’s. And no one would take a date to a bookstore.”
Hadley rolled her eyes. “Flynn would.”
Russ gestured toward her, as if to grant her the point. “As near as we can tell, the day after Kevin’s last contact with anyone, he drove to Albany. He put gas in his truck, bought something at the Best Buy, and then, poof, he disappears. No further tolls, no charges, nothing.”
Rather than looking daunted, Hadley smiled triumphantly.
“And I have a theory. He was working undercover this past summer for the state’s domestic terrorism task force.
He was on loan from Syracuse, right? But the task force is run from Albany.
It’s managed by the investigations division of the state’s attorney general. ”
“Ah,” Clare said.
“She’s a smart one,” Russ agreed.
“So he’s … still working for the task force? He’s undercover again? Why wouldn’t the Syracuse PD know that at least, even if they couldn’t share the details?”
“I don’t know,” Hadley admitted. “Maybe he’s on super-double-secret probation? Or maybe they told him their HR department would take care of all the details with Syracuse, and they screwed something up?”
Clare made a face. “If the bureaucracy in the attorney general’s office is anything like the military, I can one hundred percent envision that as a possibility.”
“I’m going to call them tomorrow and see what they can tell us about Kevin.” Russ put his glasses back on. “At the very least, I may find someone who’s been in contact with the kid. Since his friends and Syracuse coworkers aren’t panning out.”
“I thought you couldn’t ask questions now you’re not drawing a salary as a cop?”
“Hah. Syracuse PD is different—we have to deal with them occasionally. I’m not sure the AG’s department even knows there’s a town called Millers Kill up here. I’m damn sure they don’t care who’s running the show.”
“The chief is back, and you’re gonna get in trouble,” Hadley sang. Clare chimed in, “Hey la, hey la, the chief is back!”
Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. “I am not the chief.” He frowned. “But I am starting to get very interested in what’s going on here.”