Chapter 18

 

I mucked out the newborn's stall, then ran through the motions of my first barn check. Afterwards, I could only be certain that none of the mares were in labor. The other details I usually paid attention to were lost to a haze of jumbled thoughts and the anger that thrummed through my veins.

I left barn six, paused at the mouth of Stone Manor, and cut the engine. The Chevy's hinges creaked as I climbed out and eased the door back until it settled against the frame. Behind me, barns one through six stretched down both sides of the private road, evenly spaced long bands of white where the aisle lights shone through the stall windows. Dusk-to-dawn lights cast circular pools of light on the ground in front of each barn, outlining a fence in one place, an expanse of frost-coated grass in another. Beyond their reach, the terrain slipped into a darkness so black and deep you couldn't see where ground ended and sky began.

Most nights, once my eyes adjusted to the dark, the sky held more light than I would have thought, but tonight, a heavy blanket of cloud blotted out the stars. It absorbed the night sounds, except for the rush of a raw wind that funneled down the eastern slope of the mountains. Even the sporadic traffic that normally punctuated the night had dropped off.

I looked past the lake and the clinic and studied the Nashes' house. The windows were dark. An orange light burned in the bank barn's forebay, and a dusk-to-dawn light in the barn's peak bathed the back of the house in a soft glow.

The night's overriding darkness was at once a blessing and a hindrance. Normally, a casual glance out a window would unlikely spot me, but tonight, I'd be forced to rely on a flashlight to see where I was going. I checked my watch. Four-thirty-five. That gave me twenty-five minutes to work with. With luck, the Nashes were asleep, and I'd have nothing to worry about. I considered approaching the house on foot, but that would take too long.

I rolled down the windows and pulled onto Bear Wallow. Once I'd driven past the clinic, I cut the headlights and throttled the truck down to a crawl. Couldn't see a damn thing. Couldn't see the edge of the road or the curve that loomed ahead. I flicked on the parking lights, and that worked. When I eased onto the gravel drive, stones popped under the tires, sounding like artillery fire in the night. I cringed. Logic told me that the mansion's foot-thick stone walls would block out the noise, but the adrenaline humming through my veins tightened my fingers on the steering wheel and clenched the muscles in my jaw.

Okay, Cline. Take it easy. I had an easy out if caught. But if I found something in the bank barn that no one wanted uncovered, something Bruce had seen, then all bets were off.

I stopped before I reached the end of the hedge that lined the drive and shut off the engine. The wind rustled the bare branches and whistled through the boughs in a stand of pine trees to my right. I inched the door open, and the hinges creaked and groaned.

The cold air tore the heat away from my body, but my skin felt clammy beneath my jacket. I cut around the Chevy's hood and kept to the grass. When I'd walked far enough, I glanced at the back of the house and was relieved to see that all the rooms that faced the barn were dark. One of those windows opened into Jenny's bedroom, and I hoped she was sleeping soundly, dreaming of her ponies or whatever eight-year-old girls dreamt about.

I clamped my hand over the flashlight's lens, switched it on, and spread my fingers. A narrow beam stretched into the darkness. I skirted around the parking lot that served the four-car garage. Then I continued past the bank barn, keeping beyond the range of the light that shone from the forebay where the bulk of the barn's massive second level extended well past the foundation wall. It formed a substantial overhang and protected the wide opening that accessed the lower level where Jenny's ponies would have been stalled. The doorway loomed like the entrance to a bottomless cave.

I planned on checking the lower level but had no intention of crossing the lot where the horse trailer had sat the last time I'd been there. Instead, I continued straight back, got my bearings, and doubled back, approaching the barn from the rear.

An earthen ramp led up to the wide wagon door on the barn's second level. Since I was out of sight of the house, I slipped my fingers off the front of the flashlight and raised the lens until the light centered on the heavy wooden door. As I walked up the ramp, adrenaline coiled through my muscles until they felt like springs that had been wound too tight.

The flashlight's beam stretched toward the barn's peak, bringing the weather-roughened planks into sharp relief as I tugged on the metal handle. The wheels squealed in the rusty track above my head. I shoved the door open and squeezed inside.

When I pointed the Mag toward the rafters, the darkness swallowed the cone of light before it reached the ridge beam. The barn reminded me of a cathedral with its high walls and gracefully arched roof. I moved deeper into the barn as a gust of wind pressed against the west wall. A sudden shower of dust and flecks of old hay drifted through the shaft of light. Straw and grit crunched under my boots as I crossed over to a haymow. Approximately four hundred bales had been stacked to the left of the wagon door, although I imagined the barn could hold twenty-thousand more. A new lawn tractor and assorted junk cluttered the open space in the middle of the barn. Parts to an old swing set, a push lawnmower, a stepladder, wooden wine barrels, a tin wash tub. As I turned to leave, the light glinted off something shiny nestled among a stack of paper bags. I refocused the light and realized what they'd once held.

Concrete.

One of the bag's plastic inner liners had been exposed, and I realized that that's what had caught my attention. I counted sixteen bags. Not enough for a big job . . . like Jenny's wash rack, but a helluva lot of concrete, nonetheless.

I started toward the door and stopped suddenly. Flailed my arms to keep my balance. A trapdoor gaped open at my feet. I backed up, squatted at the edge, and peered down into an empty stall. I raised the light and saw what I'd missed earlier. An entire stretch of floor, running perpendicular to the central axis of the barn, contained trap doors that lined up with stalls on the ground level. Another line of doors ran along the length of the west wall.

I stepped back outside, scrambled off the edge of the earthen ramp, and rounded the corner of the barn. I walked straight into the forebay like I had every right to be there and entered the lower level with apprehension raising the hairs on the back of my neck. I'd never liked bank barns. Their design was more suited for cattle than horses, and they were too dark and airless for my taste. The concrete floor and stone walls were cold and damp, and as I stood under the low ceiling, I had a sense of the weight of the upper barn pushing down on the joists above my head.

The wide doorway accessed a large common area. To my left, a couple tons of straw bales were stacked on wood pallets. I stepped deeper into the barn. The stalls to my right stretched down to the far corner then continued along the west wall, forming an L-shaped area. There were eleven stalls in all. I crossed over and stood in the open doorway of the last stall. The floor was bare concrete, covered with thick rubber mats, and the rough fieldstone wall along the back was laced with cobwebs. The stall partitions were constructed with ancient two-inch thick oak boards that ended a foot short of the joists. Instead of the usual metal grillwork, chain link fence enclosed the upper portion of the stall fronts. The setup was serviceable but not ideal. For one thing, if a horse reared, he'd knock himself out on the low ceiling.

An open space to the left of the stalls served as a grooming area. Empty bridle hooks and blanket bars and saddle racks lined the back wall. A tack truck sat beneath them, and everything was covered with a layer of dust. Everything but the trunk.

When I crossed over to open the lid, my boot knocked into something hard and metallic. I lowered the light and centered the beam on an old combination lock. I picked it up. The dial was busted. I laid it back on the floor and peered in the trunk. Other than a rusted hoof pick, the trunk was empty.

A narrow wooden door was set into the stone wall at the end of the row of stalls. I pressed down on a lever that ran through a hole in the door, and the latch rattled as it slipped out of its catch. The door swung outward. I slipped outside and stood in a grassy area on the western side of the barn. Except for blinking red lights on the radio towers that crossed the mountains, the horizon was without definition.

I shone the light at the ground. The wind rustled the coarse dried grass, and it crackled under my feet as I crossed over to a low wall on my right. It rose to waist height and formed a cylinder approximately four feet in diameter. As I rested my hand on the edge and peered inside, I realized it was an old-fashioned cistern. The walls were six inches thick and rough like sandpaper. I raised my flashlight, and the light pooled on the well's floor two-and-a-half feet below the rim. The concrete was new, as white as bone and impossibly smooth. Smooth except for some letters scrawled in the center.

Someone had scratched TINSLE in crude block letters in the center of the cistern with a stick that lay half-frozen in a paper-thin layer of ice that remained at the base of the wall.

Tinsle? She'd spelled it wrong, but one of Jenny's ponies was named Tinsel. An image of her, doubled over the wall with a tree branch gripped in her fingers, filled my mind. She'd written her pony's name in the fresh concrete. I pictured the empty bags lying on the barn floor, and as I considered the timing, a dread as cold and gripping as the wind channeling down the mountains froze in my lungs and pushed against my chest.

I prayed to God I was wrong.

The barn seemed darker than before, more threatening, when I went back inside. The latch rattled into place, and I headed to the exit with a fresh burst of adrenaline squeezing my heart. There had to be a simple, harmless explanation. Maybe they'd decided to raise the floor of the cistern in case Jenny fell in. At a depth of less than three feet, she could easily climb out. But, damn it. Sixteen bags? How much difference would they have made compared to the original height? Not much, I suspected, but sixteen bags would have been enough to cover something. Like a body.

I clamped my fingers over the Mag's lens as I stepped into the forebay.

A shaft of light streaked in front of my face. "What are you doing?"

I spun to my right, brought up my hands, and centered my light on Victor's face. "Jesus. You scared the shit out of me."

Victor grinned as I lowered the Mag. "So I see."

I sucked in a lungful of air. "I thought I saw movement back here. A light where there normally isn't one, but it looks like I was wrong."

He crossed his arms over his chest, and the beam from his flashlight shot into the night sky. He wore thin plaid pajamas and a velvet robe with satin trim, and he'd stuck his bare feet into a pair of slippers. "Should we look around together?"

"No. I already did, and everything's quiet."

Victor nodded. He turned toward the house, then glanced over his shoulder, waiting for me to follow. "A trailer's coming up from Florida Saturday, so if you see activity around here, it's probably them."

"Okay."

He gestured to my truck. "Why'd you park down the drive?"

He'd said it casually, and I wondered if I'd just imagined the hint of suspicion that seemed to strain his vocal chords. "I didn't want to wake you," I said as we entered the parking area adjacent to the garage.

He paused at the sidewalk that led to the back door. "Have any foals tonight?"

"Maddie did."

"Which mare?"

"A gray in barn two, next to Sumthingelse. I don't remember her name."

He nodded, said goodnight, then crossed over to the back porch. As the screen door creaked shut, I figured my reasoning had gone off course somewhere, and the combination of a dark night and unsettled dreams and an overactive imagination had undermined my ability to think.

* * *

Jenny and Dr. Nash arrived at the clinic promptly at six-thirty Thursday morning. I'd been watching for them, but when they both went directly into the office, I settled back into my chair and opened a can of Coke. I ate a slice of cold pizza and felt tired to the bone. The morning had lightened to a dreary gray, and as I sat there, wondering how the day would play out, it began to rain. A few scattered drops spit against the glass. At noon, I would head over to the police department, and not knowing what to expect had me edgy.

I wheeled the chair I was sitting in across the floor until I could see the office door; then I opened a pack of butterscotch Tastykakes. I'd finished one when Jenny bee-bopped out of the office and headed for the clinic. She peered through the Plexiglass and signaled that I should join her.

I stepped into the aisle.

Jenny flapped her hand toward the door. "Mom says I can't go inside when the crew starts coming in, and since one of them is sitting outside, I thought I'd better stay out here," she said as she eyed the last Tastykake.

I looked down the aisle and saw Paul's car parked out front. He sat behind the wheel like a lump of stone with his head turned so he could stare into the barn.

Jenny started toward the stallions' stalls. "You have a foal last night?"

"No," I said as I walked alongside her, "but Maddie did."

Jenny squinched her nose at the mention of Maddie's name. "Are you done with them?"

"Yeah. The colt's nursed, and they're both doing well."

She paused in front of Order of Command's stall. "Darn."

I frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Mom said I can't keep dragging you all over the place to see the foals every morning, unless you still had work to do."

I smiled.

She pointed at the butterscotch krimpet. "Can I have one?"

"Sure, if you think it'll be okay with your mom."

"She won't care." Jenny licked her lips then carefully peeled the cellophane off the cake's icing. "These are my favorite."

"Mine, too."

The stud's ears flicked at the sound of the crinkling plastic. He neighed and stepped forward, canted his head for a better look between the bars.

Jenny's eyes sparkled as she bit into the krimpet with the concentration of a connoisseur. She chewed and swallowed and examined the cake before she took another bite.

"Jenny, when did you write Tinsel's name in the concrete in the cistern?"

"Cistern?" she mumbled around a mouthful of cake.

"The well behind the bank barn."

"Oh." She curled her finger around a film of icing, scooped it out of the corner of the wrapper, and popped it in her mouth. "Right after they moved my ponies."

I looked up when someone entered the barn. Victor Nash watched us as he strolled toward the clinic door.

"Remember, Steve?" she said as I glanced at her father. "I thought Dad was going to build me a wash rack but he filled in the well, instead."

Victor paused at the clinic door, fifteen feet farther down the aisle. Her back was to him, and I hoped like hell he hadn't heard what she'd said. He frowned at his daughter. "Jenny, what are you doing?"

She spun around and held up the wrapper. "Steve let me have a Tastykake."

He looked past his daughter, and his gaze locked on my face. "Go into the office, Jenny." His gaze lowered to his daughter when she didn't move. "Go ahead."

"Awh, Dad." The books and pencil case jiggled in her backpack as she strode down the aisle.

I opened my mouth to apologize, but Victor was already slipping into the clinic.

As the door clicked shut, Paul Genoa strolled into the barn with his fists jammed in his pockets. He took his time, scuffing his feet on the asphalt. His shoulders were hunched forward under his parka, and he never once looked in my direction. He followed Victor into the clinic.

I sat on a hay bale and drank my Coke and didn't go inside because I didn't trust myself in the same room with the asshole.

By six-fifty, most of the personnel had straggled in from the parking lot. Frank Wissel stepped out of his cramped room and yawned before taking his time feeding the studs. When he headed for the clinic, I stood and followed him. The door swung open as we reached it, and Victor indicated that I should follow him as he stepped into the aisle. He walked toward the parking lot and paused alongside the open area where they bred the horses.

"Look, Steve, it's not that I don't trust you, but Deirdre would flip if she knew Jenny had accepted food from one of the crew."

"I'm sorry about that, sir."

Victor grinned. "She has a way of getting what she wants. Takes after her mother." He shook his head. "Women. They have a talent for convincing us that we're the ones in charge, and all the while, they're pulling invisible strings that we're oblivious to."

I smiled.

"Ah, but you're too young." His eyes sparkled. "You get to be my age, especially if you have a daughter, you'll see what I mean." Victor glanced over my shoulder when the clinic door opened, and the crew spilled out into the aisle. "Next time, just tell her no."

"Yes, sir."

He nodded, then wound his way through the stream of employees as he approached the office.

Frank Wissel paused alongside me. "Cline, you're with Paul, Ronnie, and Ben. The three of you will be working with Dr. Nash."

I nodded and caught Genoa's smirk as he hovered behind Wissel.

Frank's gaze flicked over Ronnie's dreadlocks as he handed him a list. "Dr. Nash is getting an early start this morning, so get going."

As Frank headed for the office, I pulled the farm truck's keys out of my pocket and handed them to Ronnie. "You can drive. I have to leave on time today, so I'm taking my truck."

Paul stirred behind Ronnie. "Got a date, Cline?"

"No. But you might."

"Huh?" He narrowed his eyes. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

I didn't want to get into it with him, not then. But I'd been thinking about Maddie's swollen, bloody eye all morning long, and the temptation was just too much. "You might want to check with your health care provider, schedule an appointment for yourself, because I have a feeling you're gonna need it."

Both Ronnie and Ben followed the exchange with their heads swiveling back and forth like they were watching a tennis match. Ronnie's mouth hung open, and his eyes widened when Paul stepped toward me. He moved like a bull with his head jutted forward on his thick neck and his beefy shoulders hunched aggressively under the parka. His arms swayed away from his body as he clenched his hands into fists.

He got in my face. "Is that a threat, Cline?"

"Sounds like one to me."

The office door creaked open as Paul raised his hands. Dr. Nash's voice drifted into the aisle. "No, Jenny. You stay with Daddy."

I shifted my gaze past Genoa. Jenny must have been standing behind Elaine's desk as her mother blew her a kiss.

Genoa whispered "prick" half under his breath and moved away as Dr. Nash stepped into the aisle and frowned. "Something wrong, gentlemen?"

No one answered. Ronnie scuffed his feet as Ben studied his shoes. Dr. Nash scrunched her eyebrows together and pursed her lips as her gaze lighted on my face. "Steve, come with me."

"Yes, ma'am." I started after her and caught sight of Paul in my peripheral vision, mimicking me as he mouthed yes, ma'am.

While Ronnie and Ben prepared to cover the ultrasound machine with plastic, I followed Dr. Nash into the clinic and helped load the cart with speculums and gauze rolls and boxes of gloves and liters of sterile saline solution.

"So," Dr. Nash said. "What's going on?"

I hesitated. I supposed she'd find out about Paul soon enough, but before she did, I wanted the opportunity to get back at him. "A misunderstanding," I said and left it at that.

She looked past me and stretched her arm toward the counter on my right. "Hand me that box, will you, Steve?"

I pivoted and spied a clear plastic box lined with compartments containing needles and syringes and drug vials. I held the box out to her as the heater above our heads vibrated to life.

A few strands of her fine brown hair swept across her forehead. She brushed them from her eyes with long slender fingers. Her pale skin was flawless. She wore no makeup or jewelry, except for a pair of thin gold hoop earrings; yet, even dressed in navy coveralls and leather boots, she looked elegant and incredibly sexy. And each day, when I punched out at noon, she somehow managed to emerge from a morning of palpations and minor surgeries and ultrasound scans looking as neat as when she'd set out.

Dr. Nash squatted and arranged balloon catheters and several packets of surgical tools that had been run through the autoclave on the lower shelf. When someone tapped lightly on the door, she smiled softly. "That would be Jenny."

Jenny hung onto the doorknob as the door swung inward. Her fingernails were done in a pink polish that matched the ribbon woven down the seam of her jeans. She wore a yellow rain slicker and pink and purple tennis shoes. "Mom?"

"Uh-huh?"

Amusement lit up Victor's eyes as he stepped silently behind his daughter.

"Can I go with you this morning? Please? If you start in two, I'll be able to see the newborn."

Dr. Nash didn't rise to her feet but twisted at the waist and watched her daughter step closer. She rested one knee on the floor, and as Jenny stood in front of her, their heights matched. With their fine silky hair, straight eyebrows, and light complexions, mother and daughter looked very much alike.

She smoothed Jenny's bangs off her forehead. "I'm scheduled to start in one today. You know that."

"Can't Steve take me?" Jenny said.

Dr. Nash glanced at me, then looked at her watch. "No. I need him with me. Besides, you only have twenty minutes."

"So?" Her voice was a soft whine.

Dr. Nash smiled. "If you want, you can come with us, but you'll have to wait until after school to see the foal."

"See what I mean?" Victor said to me from the doorway. "They're born knowing how to get what they want."

"Can't I just stay home today?" Jenny ignored her dad, but Deirdre raised her eyebrows and looked at both of us before she rose to her feet.

She moved like a dancer, fluid and lithe, and I wondered what she was like in bed. One thought led to another, and I pictured her in bed with me. She sighed, and I took it that she'd heard Jenny's request more times than she cared to admit. She turned her gaze my way, and I was thankful she couldn't read my mind.

"Take the cart out, and we'll meet you in one."

"Yes, ma'am."

Ronnie and Ben were set up, and I'd just offloaded the cart and wheeled it into position alongside the stocks when they arrived. On the drive over, sleet had begun to mix with the rain, and it clattered on the metal roof above our heads as Jenny drifted down the aisle. She paused at each stall door and rose on tiptoe so she could peer through the grill.

Paul led the first mare into the stocks. I latched the gate, but when I reached over to lift the mare's tail out of the way, Dr. Nash touched my arm, and the sensation sizzled in my blood.

"Wrap the tail head, Steve. She's getting a uterine lavage, and I don't want any stray hairs getting in the way."

"A what?"

"A lavage. I have to flush her uterus with sterile saline solution."

I ripped open a packet of gauze and wrapped the mare's tail while Dr. Nash gloved up and prepared the tubing she'd be using. Jenny wandered back down the barn and stood next to me, and after Paul applied a twitch to the mare's nose, Dr. Nash inserted the tube and flushed the mare's uterus with copious amounts of fluid. She went through two liters and was twisting the cap off the third when she glanced at her watch.

"Oh, Jenny. You're going to miss your bus. Ronnie, switch places with Steve." She looked at me. "Would you mind driving her back to the clinic?"

"No, ma'am."

Ronnie slipped behind me and grabbed the mare's tail, but as Jenny and I reached the doorway, the school bus sped past the clinic driveway with the strobe light on its roof slicing through the icy rain. It slowed as it entered the curve in front of the Nashes' house, then picked up speed and headed west on Bear Wallow.

"Oh, oh," Jenny whispered.

We turned around as Dr. Nash looked over her shoulder. "Don't tell me?"

"Sorry, Mom."

"Uh." She spun around and bent to her work. The liquid that squirted down the mare's legs had changed from amber to clear.

Jenny glanced at me before approaching her mother.

"Can I stay home now?"

I grinned, and Dr. Nash shot me an annoyed glance. "No. I'll take you as soon as I finish this mare. The four of you," she said to Paul and me, "grab some tools and go help the crew in two muck out until I get back." She tore off her gloves, and when she heard Ben leading a mare down the aisle, she yelled to him to put her back.

Jenny tugged at her mother's overalls. "But, Mom. I'll be early."

Dr. Nash glanced at her watch. "Not by much, and you can use the extra time going over your spelling." She ticked off a notation on her list and smiled softly when Jenny sighed in disgust.

I unwound the gauze as they headed for the exit. Beyond the doorway, the little Spyder glistened under a layer of rainwater that had beaded on the sleek finish.

As I walked toward the storage area at the back of the barn, Paul and the mare cut into the aisle behind me. Her unshod hooves sounded hollow on the asphalt, and the sound had been something I'd had to adapt to. In the past, the horses I'd worked with had been shod, and although I hadn't been consciously aware of it, I'd grown into the habit of evaluating whether their shoes were snug or loose or under-run based solely on the sound they made striking the asphalt.

I'd almost reached the end of the aisle when the mare's pace quickened. A sharp crack sounded, followed by a yell. The mare's hooves scrabbled across the ground.

Before I could turn, she careened into my back.

The collision lifted me off my feet. I slammed against a post. The hard edge caught my shoulder, and the impact rattled my teeth.

I bounced off the wood and bounced again when I hit the asphalt.

Paul was still yelling, and as I lifted my chin off the ground, the mare's tail swooshed in front of my face. She skittered around, and her hind hoof came down on my back, then slipped down my ribcage and wedged between my side and arm before she snatched it up. She lunged forward and caught the back of my thigh with a shuddering blow.

Her hooves clattered across the ground as Paul yelled at her to quit. She strained at the end of her lead, and when I saw she was coming around again, I covered my head with my arms.

She knew exactly where I was this time and scrambled in an effort to avoid me. Her hooves scraped past, then clattered to the ground, and I realized she'd jumped right over me.

I lunged forward, or tried to. My left arm had gone numb, and it wasn't until that moment that I heard Ronnie and Ben screaming at Genoa to stop.