All Mortal Flesh by Julia Spencer-Fleming

it in one wet hand. “It was my dad’s.” He flipped it over. Ran his thumb across his father’s initials. “Y’know, I always thought he and my mom had a perfect marriage. It wasn’t until he was gone that I realized how much his drinking hurt her.”
    Lyle’s wary look almost made him smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to start hitting the bottle again.” The doctors who said alcoholism was partly genetic got his vote. Like his father before him, he had been a drunk. The difference was, he had managed to stop before it killed him. Thanks, in large part, to Linda.
    “Good.” Lyle opened the passenger door for him. “I’ve never seen you boozing, and I for sure don’t want to start now.”
    Russ climbed in obediently and let his deputy shut the door behind him. God, he felt wiped out. And it wasn’t even noon yet.
    Lyle took the driver’s seat and started the truck. “I’m not going to say I told you so. You know that. But goddammit, Russ, if this doesn’t show you why you ought to sit this one out, I don’t know what will.”
    “You’re right.”
    Lyle stared.
    “Didn’t expect me to agree with you, did you?”
    “No, frankly.”
    “I’m not taking myself off the case. But you were right. I was nothing but a liability in there. I think maybe I need to leave the boots-on-the-ground work to you and stick to analyzing what you and the other guys bring in.” He pressed his lips together. The next thing he had to say was hard. “If we can, I’d like to limit the number of guys we have directly investigating this lead. If it turns out there’s something to all this… stuff that Meg Tracey says. I just—I don’t want to—”
    “I understand.”
    Russ relaxed against the seat. “Thanks.” He stared out the window. House, house, farm, house. Featureless fields, corn stubble and hay roots buried beneath December’s snows. “Where are we headed?”
    “Back to the station. Look, as long as I’ve got you in a temporarily agreeable state, how ’bout you take my advice and go home for a while? You’ve had a hell of a morning.”
    Funny how his mother’s place had become “home.” He wondered if he would ever be able to live in his own house again. “The autopsy report’s coming in,” he said.
    “Dr. Dvorak won’t have anything until this afternoon at the earliest. You want to see it, right?”
    There was nothing he had ever wanted to see less. “Yeah.”
    “Then give yourself a break. Rest up, eat a meal, let your mom take care of you. You don’t want to be losing your cookies in front of the ME ’cause you’re overstressed.”
    Russ grunted. It was as close as he could get to acknowledging Lyle was right.
    “If I drop myself at the station, will you be able to drive home?” Lyle asked.
    “Yes.” Jesus, he needed to get a grip, before his men slung him in a wheel-chair and started spoon-feeding him farina.
    “Okay, then.”
    The way from the Traceys’ brought them into town on Route 117, up the hill along the river, curving by the gazebo to where Elm and 117 converged onto Church Street.
    Through the snowy silver maple trees, he could see the gray stone stronghold of St. Alban’s. She was in there, behind one of the diamond-paned windows, a block away and as far out of reach as the moon.
    On his CD player, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks was crooning,
Without you, I’m not okay, and without you, I’ve lost my way…
    If he lived through this mess, he was never listening to country music again.
     
     
     
TWELVE
     
     
    Clare Fergusson looked at the glossy pine-green door and wondered why it was that a closed door was the most frightening thing in the world. In her day, she had hauled soldiers into the open bay of her helicopter with enemy fire splattering the sands around them. She had been held at gunpoint by an angry, terrified woman. She had crawled through snake-infested swamps to prove to her survival instructor that she was as tough as any man in his