Chapter One

1

La Bon Chance Farms was the oldest horse farm still operating in North Georgia.

Tucked away in a private pocket of countryside forty miles north of downtown Atlanta, the riding stable was an oasis of winding trails, peekaboo ponds and rolling pastures along the banks of the Chattahoochee.

Until two years ago, the farm had been the headquarters of the regional fox-hunting brigade, but the encroaching tract-house developments and strip malls had prompted the pony clubs and hunt clubs to relocate fifty miles away, outside of Athens. Bon Chance stood alone now, a relic of the times when Atlanta was known more for its Southern charm than its episodes of road-rage and killer crime rate.

White-slat fences crisscrossed the farm’s five hundred acres of pastures, woods and river front, separating mares from geldings, polo fields from hacking trails, pasture from woods. A thin electrified wire threaded the top of the fences to discourage cribbing from some of the more bored inmates.

Barb-wire fencing, normally never used around horses, was used at Bon Chance on certain spots along the Chattahoochee River where the riding trails wandered too close to the water’s edge. The banks were steep and pitched. A horse or two had fallen over.

 

"Jilly! Is this yours? I found it in the manure pile in the east pasture."

A tall woman, blonde and tan, strode up to the tie-up pole under a cluster of birch trees, waving a tattered riding crop. The woman, large-bottomed, with a cheerful face, wore expensive, if dirty, cotton riding breeches and a silk blouse open at the throat. She marched in dusty black riding boots to where a small, petite woman with dark hair stood next to a saddled mixed-breed Clydesdale.

"You're kidding,” the smaller woman said, slapping a long-nailed hand to her hip and giving the Clydesdale’s bridle a snappish tug. “Someone threw my crop in the shit-hole?"

Margo Sherman, barn manager at Bon Chance Farm, held out the crop to Jilly.

"Well, I don't know if anyone threw--"

"Don't be stupid, Margo! How do you think the damn thing got there?" Jilly Travers did not reach for the proffered crop. "Someone threw it there."

"Well, look, do you want it or not?"

Behind them, a pair of riders emerged from the main barn leading their mounts. The two approaching women were dressed in boots and breeches with their black velvet riding caps and shoulder-length blonde hair pulled back to reveal ears studded with small pearls.

"Ready, Jilly?" One of them called out. "Hey, Margo! Thanks for feeding Zanzibar for me the other day."

Margo smiled at the woman and wagged the crop in her direction.

"No problem, Portia," she said weakly. Her eyes returned to Jilly Travers' darkening face.

Portia mounted her dark bay gelding and flexed her gloved fingers against the reins.

"Jilly, I asked you if--"

"I heard you, Portia, darling," Jilly spat out, giving her horse’s cavesson another unkind jerk. "I was just getting something straight with Margo here."

"What's the problem?" The other woman, Tess Andersen, spoke as she led her horse to where Margo and Jilly were standing.

"Well," Margo started, "I found this crop out in the eastern pasture--”

"My crop," Jilly hissed, turning her back on them to position her foot in her stirrup.

"Yes, well," Margo smiled hesitantly at Tess and Portia. "It's kind of messed up now."

Jilly swung up into her saddle.

"It's been in the shit-hole for two weeks. I don't suppose you two know anything about it?" She stared at the two women.

Portia looked at the crop in Margo's hand. Tess jerked her head in Jilly's direction.

"What are you saying?” Tess asked. “You think one of us stole your crop?"

Jilly twisted the reins across her horse's neck and the animal turned away from the group. "What? You dear girls? What a thing to think." Jilly scowled at them from her saddle, her hands twitching against the reins.

"Oh, for heaven's sake." Tess swung up on her horse, stamping now in impatience. "What's the stupid thing cost? Twenty bucks?"

Portia twisted in her saddle and glared down at Margo.

"What's she saying? Is she saying we threw her crop in a pile of shit?"

"Forget it, Portia," Tess said. "She doesn't know what she's saying."

"I know more than you'd like me to know, darling Tess." Jilly's color seemed to fade a bit and another smile came to her lips. "I know that much."

"Look," Tess smacked a hand against her thigh. "Do you want to ride today, or not? Because I can do some ring work just as well. In fact, I probably should, so if you don't want--"

"On such a beautiful day? I would be heartbroken.” Jilly smiled nastily then shook her head as Margo tried to hand her the crop. She held up a small child's bat and showed it to the barn manager. "I've got one, don't I, darling? It wouldn't make sense to ride with two, now, would it?"

"Don't be such a bitch, Jilly." Tess touched her horse's sides with her calves and she moved forward, away from the group. "You might end up ruining what should be a very pleasant hack."

 

2

Kathy Sue squinted at her notes and took a shallow breath and held it. The client had been very rude that morning, ruder even than usual. She flushed to remember the way he looked at her. Undressing her mentally and then casting her aside, untried. She reddened furiously and tried to read her shakily scribbled notes.

Her brief relief at not having to make the visit with Jilly was annihilated by the damage that Jilly had obviously performed on her visit to the man the day before.

Why does the bitch hate me? Kathy Sue wondered in hurt amazement. She reached nervously for her cigarettes and lit one up, watching the tip shake as she did so. No opportunity to humiliate her was left unexplored by Jilly Travers. And, as senior account executive, the opportunities were many.

Kathy Sue had been writing ad copy for Ryan, Davis and Shue for three years. Three years ago, she'd broken out of the in-house public relations department of a local hardware store chain, and made it to the big time: a real advertising agency. At first, the principals had loved her, treated her like family. Her then art director--an old geezer without an ounce of spite or competitiveness in his whole gangly, frail body--had helped train her in the business. The clients respected her, requested her presence at all the fact-finding meetings, and sent her nut and toffee baskets at Christmas. She had loved her job.

And then Jilly Travers came on board.

She came one year ago. With her saber-like painted talons, her waist-length dark hair, swinging provocatively as she moved down the halls, Jilly enticed clients and principals, junior art directors and portly media directors alike. She was beautiful and she was vicious. Her beauty was small and delicate. Her viciousness--considered an unexpected bonus in the business world of advertising--was rotund and deliberate.

Kathy Sue had good reasons to fear Jilly Travers. With Kathy Sue's plump figure, country-girl earnestness and eager smile, she was an irresistible target for derision. It was easy enough for Jilly to make Kathy Sue look incompetent in front of the principals. All she had to do was "forget" to give all the client information to Kathy Sue for a new ad, or perhaps to indulge in some ugly pillow-talk with any one of the three agency bosses.

Kathy Sue pushed her notes away and stared at her computer terminal. It had been months since anyone in the office had asked her to lunch or even dropped in to talk with her about anything besides work. She shifted in her chair and felt her plump thighs rub together uncomfortably.

Recently, Jilly hadn't been satisfied with merely orchestrating the destruction of Kathy Sue's career in-house. She had expanded her campaign to include the agency’s client roster.

To one client, Jilly hinted that Kathy Sue was wildly promiscuous. Kathy Sue knew about the insinuations but felt powerless to defend herself to the client.

How to address it? And when? While they were all huddled around a new concept pitch? When they were in the boardroom enjoying a celebratory drink together?

Kathy Sue just didn’t have the opportunities that Jilly did to speak privately to their clients. As a result, she sat, mortified and ashamed through meeting after meeting while the client watched her and leered. And while Jilly smiled. To another client--a man who had originally been fond of Kathy Sue as their copywriter--Jilly dropped the notion that Kathy Sue was lesbian and fiercely, if covertly, anti-male.

All in all, Kathy Sue had good reasons to fear Jilly Travers. And to hate her.

 

3

The sparrows skimmed the rafters, like the Blue Angels doing show-maneuvers, then settled in a flutter of brown and pale fluff around a pile of horse manure near the mouth of the lower barn.

Margo stood in the tacking-up area of the barn, watching the birds and filling in the creases of a leather halter with a lathering of saddle soap, rubbing it into the leather with firm strokes.

The afternoon darkened with threat of rain and she felt annoyed that the ride after her chores would probably not be possible. She found herself resenting the easy schedules most of her boarders enjoyed. If they weren't high-powered professionals with imminently flexible time tables, they were the non-working wives of high-powered professionals--with a limitless supply of beautiful mornings and sunny afternoons for riding or tennis or facials. She looked at the gleaming brass buckle on the halter she held. And most of them didn't clean their own tack either.

"Hey, Margo, check it out!"

Margo looked up from her work and blinked into the brightness as it pierced the stable entrance. She could discern the stark silhouette of someone approaching.

"What is it?" she called, her face frowning in the harsh light.

"Best-Boy just came back at a gallop without Travers."

The figure moved into the barn and suddenly her features developed before Margo's eyes. It was one of the pasture boarders. Elise or Elaine something. She had a mixed breed gelding in the west pasture that she didn't show or hunt but just sort of "pleasure rode." Whatever that was.

"What do you mean...'without Travers'?" Margo worked the soap into the halter a little harder.

The boarder approached and Margo could see that she held a green nylon halter. The girl was probably still in her teens.

"A couple of us are gonna go out and look for her. It'll take her an hour to walk back, at least. And it's gonna rain. Wanna come?"

"Where's Best-Boy now?" Margo knitted her eyebrows in a mask of concern. "Have you checked him out? Scratches or scrapes...?"

"Jessie caught him and threw him in the north paddock, tack and all." The girl shrugged her thin shoulders. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt with scuffed brown paddock boots. "Anyway, you coming? Jessie said we could bring Tucker for Jilly to ride back on."

"Look, I'm not sure this posse is really necessary. Jilly's with Portia Stephens and Tess Andersen. They ought--"

"Man, Margo, I thought Jessie told you. The girl began to retreat into the bright glare of the barn’s entrance. “Portia and Tess came back forty minutes ago--"

"What?" Margo dropped the halter in the sawdust and then stooped to recover it.

"Yeah, Jessie said they told her they'd had a fight or something and left her out there."

"I see." Margo stared past the girl into the quickly dimming light of the afternoon outside. "And where are Portia and Tess now?" she asked.

The girl shrugged.

"I think Jessie said they went home already,” she said. “Yeah, it'd been nice if they could help, huh?" She waved. "I'm tacking up Tucker, okay? We'll leave in five minutes if you want to come." She disappeared.

Margo held the leather halter tightly in her hands and stared after her.

 

4

The smell of the barn rose up from the straw-strewn floor: a combination of oily leather tack, manure, sweet feed and the sugary muskiness of the horses themselves.

Fulton County Senior Homicide Detective Jack Burton leaned against one of the stalls at the opening of the barn, having carefully avoided one of the ubiquitous brown piles that scattered the pathway, and surveyed the entire length of the barn with his flint-gray eyes. Fifteen box stalls on each side of the barn, most with long, curious noses poking out of them.

The Fulton County Police Department had gotten the call late that afternoon from someone at the Bon Chance Riding Stables in North Fulton County. Woman, presumed thrown from her horse on a ride in the woods, now missing. A search of the trail by the barn manager and a two others showed no sign of the woman but ample signs of a struggle. There was blood everywhere, on trees, rocks, the ground. The victim's blouse was found blood-sodden and rolled up under a rock, as if in a pathetic attempt to hide what could not possibly be hidden: someone had died there. Violently.

Now, hours later, in a gentle but quickly erasing rain, county forensics combed the area--ragged with tall pines, shrub and rocky trails-- while medics waited on-site in the relative warmth of their ambulance.

Burton watched a pair of barn sparrows bathe in a mud puddle by the barn’s entrance. Black face, black bib...buffy breast, brown back stripes. Pine Woods sparrows, he wondered? Aren’t they a little too far south? He listened to the soft nickering of the horses in their stalls as they munched noisily on the remnants of their dinners. As he listened to the horses eat and watched the sparrows, he wondered if he were feeling a little saved or a little mad.

"Noisy little buggers, aren't they?"

Jack's back stiffened. Lately, his partner, David Kazmaroff, had taken to sprinkling English expressions in his usually thickly Southern-accented dialogue. Burton had been convinced he did it solely to annoy him, but it was possible, he supposed, that Kazmaroff had begun the habit as a result of his bizarre attempt to become the last bonafide, living Yuppie of the nineties.

Just when everyone else wants to bury their BMWs and pasta makers and start cleaning up the environment, this moron wants to interrogate child molesters using an English accent.

Dave Kazmaroff had jumped at the chance to work on this case, Burton knew. Bon Chance Farm was the headquarters of the Atlanta Polo Club. Burton knew that if there was anything Kazmaroff, with his Ralph Lauren shirts and Armani jackets, wanted most to be associated with --it was "the sport of Kings."

"Okay, so who's on our list?" Burton sighed heavily, his pleasure in the barn spoiled by his partner's presence.

Kazmaroff shifted his weight and leaned against the stall next to Burton. He flipped open his notebook, his brow puckered in concentration.

"The barn manager lives on the property," he said. "A Margo Sherman. She's the one who called the police and did the first search. Surprised she's not here to meet us."

"Who else?"

"Well, there's the two girls who had the fight and left her out there. They don't live here, of course."

"Of course." Burton turned back toward the dozing horses in their stalls. "Who else lives on the property?" he asked.

Dave checked his small spiral notebook again.

"The manager, Margo, a stable groom, name of Jessie Parker, and a grounds man..."

"Grounds man?" Burton looked back at Kazmaroff. "You mean, like a gardener?"

Kazmaroff smiled thinly at his partner, showing big, straight teeth.

"I imagine he tends the polo fields," he said pleasantly. "Name's Bill Lint." He snapped the notebook shut with a quick flip of his wrist and the horse in the stall nearest to him started abruptly, its eyes white and wide for a moment before relaxing again. "That's all I know," he said, unaware of the animal's reaction.

Burton turned away again to hide his agitation while taking refuge in the sounds of the big, sleepy beasts tucked into their stalls for the night.

"Well," he said tightly. "Then let's find Miss Sherman, shall we?" He turned to make his way out of the warm barn when a figure emerged from the barn's tack room and storage area.

"That won't be necessary," a husky voice said. "I'm Margo Sherman." The woman was big, Burton noted. And quiet. He wondered how long she had been in the tack room listening.

"Blimey! You startled me," Dave said as he slapped a meaty hand to his heart and grinned at her.

It was all Burton could do not to imbed a stiff right in the man's solar plexus.

Blimey?

Instead, he concentrated on the woman.

"Detective Jack Burton," he said, showing his I.D. "This is my partner, Detective Kazmaroff."

She nodded at both of them and rubbed her hands across the thighs of her no-longer clean riding breeches.

"I've got an office here," she said. "We could talk there."

Burton smiled professionally at her.

"Lead on," he said.

 

Margo Sherman sat opposite the detectives in her cramped office, crowded by towering horse show trophies, clumps of multi-colored prize ribbons that draped the walls, and a couple of saddles perched on wooden saddle rests. Her desk was an untidy pile of vet bills, farrier notes and equine medical manuals. The place smelled of leather and sweet grain and Burton found himself quite comfortable in the setting.

Margo stirred up three cups of instant coffee in chipped and broken-handled mugs, then sat waiting for the detectives’ questions.

"I can't believe this is happening," she said, pushing a shock of her long brown hair from her too-tan face. "I mean, Jilly's a good rider, you know? And Best-Boy--that's her horse--Best-Boy..." She looked helplessly at the two detectives. "...is such a good horse," she finished lamely.

Kazmaroff opened his notebook and bent his leg up over his knee. He leaned forward and Burton could see the impression of a medallion of some kind under his knit shirt. The only thing he lacks for oiliness, Burton thought, trying not to look at him, was a gold tooth.

"Is Mrs. Travers married?" Kazmaroff asked.

"Uh, she was." Margo's eyes flitted to a framed picture on the wall of a line of horses and riders, obviously taken at some horse show. "She's divorced. Has a son," she added.

Kazmaroff cocked an eyebrow.

Margo bit her lip.

"This is really unbelievable," she said. "I can't imagine where she...what could've happened to her." She looked at Burton. "Do you think she's dead?"

He watched her eyes.

"It doesn't look good," he said. "How old is her son?"

"Oh, he doesn't live with her." She picked up her cooling coffee and took a sip. "He's, like, eighteen or something. And they weren't very close."

"Oh?" Kazmaroff encouraged her with a smile.

"I mean, I got the impression that they weren't, you know?" She spoke hurriedly, putting her coffee down on the desk. "I mean, Jilly complained about him a lot, you know? Like they weren't..." She looked unhappily at Burton. "...weren't very close."

"What can you tell us about the two women who rode out with Ms. Travers?" Burton asked. His smile seemed frozen in place now.

She took a big breath. This was obviously the question she had been waiting for.

"Tess Andersen and Portia Stephens," she said. "They're, like, best friends, right? Always out here together."

"Friends of Jilly Travers?" Kazmaroff asked.

Margo licked her lips and glanced again at the photo over her desk. Burton noticed.

"Well, I guess," she said slowly. "I don't know. They were always kind of sniping at each other, you know?"

"Sniping?" Burton prompted.

"Well, not so much Portia. She's pretty easy to get along with. I guess mostly just Jilly and Tess. I'm not sure why they rode together so much."

"But they did?"

"Oh, yes, quite a lot." Margo took a big breath. "Do you think they had anything to do with this?"

"What do you think, Miss Sherman?"

"God, I don't know what to think." Her lips trembled and Burton thought she might be on the verge of an emotional outburst but she seemed to restrain herself. "I like Tess a lot. I suppose I consider her a friend of sorts."

"Of sorts."

"Well, I mean, I do work here and all. It's not like we live in the same circle. But when she's here she always treats me..." Margo looked as if she wished she hadn't begun this line of thought. "...you know, quite well."

"Not like the hired help, in other words?" Kazmaroff's voice boomed out jovially and Burton found himself surprised and grateful for his partner's open and cheery slamming of the hammer on the nail's head.

"That's pretty...pretty rude, isn't it?" she said, looking at Burton in dismay as if asking for his support. "I do a job here, that's right." Her face flushed darkly. "That doesn't make me some dirty stable hand or something...I...my relationship with Tess is based on..." She looked around her office as if looking for the words among her trophies. "...on mutual respect. She doesn't fly in here and ask me to fetch her horse from the pasture for her or mend her tack or deal with the farrier for her. I mean, she respects the value of my time."

"But you do muck out her horse's stall?" Burton asked.

"I don't, personally, no," she responded hotly.

"Did Jilly Travers ask you to do things for her?" Burton touched one of the trophies on the shelf nearest to him. It had been dusted recently.

"From time to time." Margo wrung her hands. "That's not unusual, you know. Most of the boarders...some of them need things and I am the barn manager."

"Lot of great trophies you got here." Kazmaroff stood up and swept his hand in a wide arc at them all. "You win all these?"

Margo nodded.

"Did people like Mrs. Travers?" he asked her as he held a trophy up to his face and squinted to read the inscription.

"Fairly well," she said, watching him.

"Did you like her?"

"Well enough. Look, am I suspect or something?" Her voice had become shrill and she was now wringing her long fingers in front of her.

Burton exchanged a look with Kazmaroff, amazed at the lack of friction he normally felt with him during a questioning.

"We're just collecting information, Miss Sherman," Burton said quietly moving to his feet. "It's not pleasant, but it does take awhile, I'm afraid. We'll probably have to spend some time here."

Margo nodded and stole another glance at the picture across from her desk. She looked totally miserable.

"Of course," she said.

 

5

The clearing was not large. It huddled in the center of a group of spindly but towering Georgia pines. A mass of grass and weeds, twitching in the softly falling rain, sat in forlorn bunches along the perimeter marking the borders of the crime scene.

Burton and Kazmaroff parked their car alongside the coroner's wagon, three police cruisers, and two dark-colored vans, belonging to the photographer and forensic specialists. Kazmaroff tossed a cigarette butt into the night as they stepped out of the car. A tall, barrel-chested man with sandy-blond hair and pale green eyes, he was considered by most women to be good looking, and downright hunk material by the precinct’s secretaries. A faint, jagged scar across his right eyebrow did little to diminish the assessment.

He pointed at the mess of muddy tire tracks around them.

"You're not thinking what I'm thinking, are you?" he asked in a disgusted grunt.

Burton noted the tracks and shook his head. "They wouldn't be so stupid." He looked up at the darkening sky and flipped his collar back against the light rain which ran like cold flecks of rice down his neck. "God, I hope they wouldn't be so stupid."

They entered the clearing, the opening in the dense brush surrounding it had been hacked considerably wider since the first police cruiser had been called to the scene nearly six hours ago.

"Jesus! Is there anything they didn't drive over, park on, or rip through? Who was first on the scene?" Kazmaroff said in disgust.

Burton slid a little in the dense mud as he trudged ahead of Kazmaroff. A hundred yards away, he heard the burping of police radios and the drift of voices on the wind.

Beyond the perimeter of yellow banner guard tape corralling the clearing, a makeshift tent had been pitched against the drizzle. In the fading light, Burton could make out the standing silhouette of Jim Merritt, the medical examiner. Not much to do without a body, Burton thought grimly as he and Kazmaroff approached. Two uniformed officers stood outside the tent while a photographer set up his camera for pictures of every angle of the scene. A fifth man emerged from a wall of honeysuckle and jasmine bushes clutching a video camera. Both photographers were draped in county-issue ponchos.

A mild scent of iron fillings and wet fur filled Burton’s nostrils and he steeled himself not to hold his breath. The whole point, he reminded himself, was to experience it all, notice it all.

"Smells like a massacre's worth of blood," Kazmaroff said, sniffing, still struggling up the slippery path behind Burton. "Smells like half a platoon died here."

More Iraqi war references. Did he never let up?

The two detectives stopped at the tent opening where Merritt waited with the two police officers. Without bothering to greet them, Burton jerked his head toward the path they'd just left.

"Which one of you guys was the first on the scene this afternoon?" He knew his admonishment was going to sound limp--after all, this was the second visit he and Kazmaroff had made to the crime scene.

"Frikens, sir," the youngest-looking cop said and stiffened as he did so, almost coming to attention. He was fair and pink-faced. Burton softened a little.

"And where is Frikens?" Kazmaroff wiped the rain from his face and ducked under the eaves of the tent.

"He had to leave." The man’s eyes never left Burton.

He may be green but he knows which superior to keep his eyes on.

"Did anyone check tire tracks off the main road into this place?" he asked with a sigh.

"Tire tracks?"

"Yeah, you know, on the ground we're all using for a parking lot? Tire tracks?"

The young cop swallowed and allowed his eyes to flicker toward the direction where he knew the police cars and vans were parked.

"I...I'm not sure, sir."

The weariness came back to Burton and he gently pushed past the man. "Check it out," he said as he entered the tent.

Kazmaroff and the medical examiner followed him inside. Burton walked to a small table stacked with styrofoam cups and two large thermoses of coffee. He poured himself a cup. He didn't offer to do the same for Kazmaroff, who waited patiently to pour his own.

Jim Merritt, the medical examiner, blocked the opening of the tent with his body. He was a large man, tall and fat, his bulk quivering under his thin polo shirt. His eyes were sharp but kind, and his upper lip stuck out over the bottom lip, reminding Burton of a petulant bird's beak. Jim was a jovial soul, good at what he did, and generally pleasant to have around.

“Where’s the police agent?” Burton asked. “What’s his name?”

“Darwin,” Merritt answered. “He’s out there somewhere. They've combed for the last six hours," he said. "Still nothing."

"Have they stopped for the day?" Burton turned with his steaming cup, and squinted in the man's direction.

"It's raining, Jack," Merritt said. "Been raining for nearly an hour now. It won't stop any time soon."

"What did we get?" Kazmaroff spoke over his shoulder as he tipped the coffee into his cup, its fragrance mercifully blotting out the stale air of the tent.

Merritt shrugged and half turned to open the tent flap and peer out.

"Lots of blood," he said. "We should at least be able to match it to the alleged victim’s blood-type."

"But...?" Kazmaroff prompted.

"Would help to have a body," Merritt said turning back to face Kazmaroff. "Or something." He shrugged. "Teeth, hair, a body limb..."

"Anything else?" Burton interrupted.

"Darwin checked the bushes, twigs, kindling, insects, scratches on trees, depressed areas in the grass--seems the clearing also serves as a deer bedding ground--we found some animal spoor and tiny bones..."

"And there's nothing." Burton said. He took a long sip of his coffee and stared out the opening into the darkening landscape. A pair of juncos seemed to stare down at him from the limb of an ancient magnolia tree. They tittered briefly.

"Oh, there's a lot of blood," Merritt said softly. "There's blood on the ground, on the bushes, on a tree or two. One of my men found a few drops in her horse's hair."

"How about an escape route?" Kazmaroff's voice seemed to boom out and suck up all the air in the tent. Burton began to feel too warm. "Figure out how the bastard got away?"

Merritt shrugged.

"The assumption at this point is that he left the way he came."

"Which was?"

"Probably from the road." Merritt nodded toward the path the two detectives had just walked up. "But you'll need to talk to Darwin about that." He smiled. "Or better yet, officers, check it out yourselves. It's a very tight circle of shrubbery and trees. He'd have to be half rabbit to have come any other way."

"Barn manager says riders come through this trail all the time."

"There's no evidence the guy was on horseback."

"No evidence he wasn't," Kazmaroff said smugly.

"You gotta scenario, Dave?" Burton said, turning to his partner.

"Yeah, okay," Kazmaroff said, puffing his chest out an inch. "How about this? How about the three girls fight, one of 'em or both of 'em kills the Travers girl..."

"From horseback?" Burton sipped his coffee and glanced at Merritt's slowly grinning face as they both listened.

"Okay, they got off their horses. Okay? On their horses, off their horses...the point is..."

"Jesus, Dave, the point is, how did they dispose of the body if they're all on horseback?" Burton shook his head and turned back to the medical examiner.

"I'm just saying, there's more than one way outta this clearing," Kazmaroff said, frowning.

"That's true," Burton said. He nodded as he spoke and tossed his empty cup into a paper bag. "But nobody heard a helicopter land and we've found no evidence of a tunnel, so I'm afraid we're--"

"Oh, give it a rest, man." The fury in Kazmaroff's voice was real and it was sudden.

"Let's all give it a rest," Merritt said, trying to gloss over the moment between the two men. "It's been a long hard afternoon and it looks like it's all coming to nothing." He waved a hand at the falling rain.

Burton avoided looking at Kazmaroff, concentrating, instead, on watching the rain as if the body might somehow be hidden up in the branches of the trees. "What about the dogs?” he asked calmly. “When are they coming?”

Merritt shrugged and Burton turned his body a few inches towards Kazmaroff.

“The guy said he’d get here as soon as he could,” Kazmaroff said. “Tonight, some time.”

“All this blood...the murder weapon has to be a knife, or a pick-axe or something, right?" he said to no one in particular.

"My guess is a very large knife."

The voice was attached to a slim African-American male who spoke as he pushed the flap back on the tent.

“Gus Darwin,” he said, shaking hands with both detectives. "We haven't found anything yet but obviously some major arteries or veins were cut." He turned again to survey the clearing, thick with cloudy shadows.

"Any sign of the body being dragged away?" Burton asked.

"No, and that’s really strange, you know?” Darwin said. “No dragging marks, no blood leading off to someplace. The path to the road? Not a drop, not a hair."

"That you could find," Kazmaroff said.

Burton looked at Kazmaroff and gave him a sour look.

"That is correct, Detective Kazmaroff," Darwin said cheerfully. "Any coffee left? And although it's true that, technically, my job involves collecting and recording evidence of the site and the corpus, as it were--which investigating officers have not yet provided for me," he said, smiling pointedly at Kazmaroff, "I did while away some time here this pleasant afternoon helping out the searchers--"

"Look, man, I'm sorry, I--"

"--and I must report that, you're right, there was no trace of body or murder weapon to be found." He paused. "Except for, of course, the footprint."

Burton and Kazmaroff both looked up at once.

"I didn't mention the footprint?" Darwin smiled enigmatically. "There were several, of course, there would have to be, wouldn't there?" He moved outside and they followed. The rain was harder now coming down in a gentle but insistent flow.

"There'd been an attempt to obfuscate,” Darwin continued. “See? It looks too deliberate, all this scraping...like it was done with the side of a boot or something." He pointed to a small cordoned off area on the ground, now only recognizable as a four foot by five foot patch of mud. "So I guess you guys will be determining whether or not this indicates if there had been a struggle, or not. There are really no direct signs leading to it..."

"But you got a print?" Kazmaroff interrupted, spilling his coffee on his hand as he attempted to pull his shirt collar against the rain.

"Quite a good one, actually," Darwin said happily. "I’ll transport the cast back to the lab to have a shoe track made of it." He shrugged. "It's something," he said.

Burton watched the photographers wrap up their expensive equipment and hurry down the pathway to their waiting vans. He and Kazmaroff would need to coordinate with them later on, pick up the finished prints, cart the forty or so paper boxes of twigs and blood-splotched leaves and dirt clods back to the police lab, send a sketcher back out at first light. Had Kazmaroff gotten the names of all the boarders? He glanced at his watch. A little after seven and they still had to visit Jilly Traver's condo tonight.

"It's great," he said absently. "A print is really great."

Normally, he knew, the first twenty-four hours in a case were the most critical in establishing clues and identifying physical evidence. He looked at the scene around him and watched the grass and bushes as they turned into black murky shadows in the downpour. Then, he turned, with the others, to the protection of the tent.