Breakaway (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (26 page)

Obediently, I took a sip. Jeri waited for several minutes while I absorbed coffee, then said gently, "I take it Nicole Devereaux was the other victim you wouldn't tell me about."

"Yes." Jeri sighed. "She was strangled. We think she must have come on him just as he was, uh, about to begin." She winced. "There was no semen on the mare, but the woman had been raped-after she was strangled, we think."

"Maybe," Jeri said. "Maybe not. This sort of sexual crime becomes compulsive. The perpetrator has to repeat the act. At a certain point in the process, he'll take any kind of risk. We run into this all the time with rapists."

"That's what he is now-a rapist," I said.

"And a murderer. And it is the same person," Jeri said. "The semen we found on the woman matched the semen we found on Kristin Griffith's horse. It's the same man."

"What about the other murder?" I asked.

"There's nothing conclusive there," she said. "No fingerprints anywhere, and since no one was interested in the horse angle at the time, nobody knows if a horse was abused. The woman wasn't raped."

"He was hired about the same time I was, and he's been steadily promoted ahead of me, due, in my opinion, to the fact that he's a man and I'm a woman. In any case, he technically outranks me, and he doesn't like me. Once again, in my opinion, because I'm a woman. He's in charge of the Nicole Devereaux murder investigation, and when we both discovered the overlap between my investigation and his, he asked that I be removed from the investigation. And that's what the lieutenant did."

I still stared at her blankly.

"Gender issues are very much alive in the sheriff's department," she said, answering the question I hadn't asked. "Don't you find that in your line of work?"

"Sometimes," I said.

"It becomes more obvious when you're dealing with a hierarchy. My current boss is not keen on female detectives. He pretty much sides with Matt Johnson against me, every time."

"You'll need to go down and give them a statement today," she said. "And you'll have to tell them what you know about the previous occasions at Nicole Devereaux's."

I plodded out the door and down to the barn, wondering vaguely what was going on with me. My reactions seemed to be those of a withdrawn child. I didn't understand myself, couldn't explain myself to myself. But then, I didn't try much. I didn't want to think.

Once in clean clothes, with my hair brushed and my face washed, I accepted another cup of coffee and a couple of pieces of toast from Jeri and followed her obediently out to the green sheriff's sedan.

TWENTY-SIX

The whole statement process took about two hours. I survived. Somehow I managed to answer questions while keeping my mind blank. I didn't think; I didn't feel. I stayed numb.

Jeri drove me home with the concerned look in her eyes more pronounced than ever. As I climbed out of her car she made me promise to call a friend when I went in the house. I agreed that I would.

Once inside and with the door safely shut against the world, I ignored the phone. Instead, I settled myself at one end of the couch and stared out the windows. I had no idea if I'd ever move again.

All I wanted to do was sit and be quiet. Not think, not talk. Most particularly, not feel. I had the sense that a huge weight was poised above me, ready to crush me if I made the slightest wrong move. The safest thing was to hold still and be numb.

In another fifteen minutes she was sitting next to me on the couch, wearing the same concerned look Jeri Ward had worn. Somehow one glance at me seemed sufficient to provoke this instant worry.

"And I'm going away, too." Kris grimaced. "I'm afraid every night now, staying in my own house, and Jo doesn't even want to come there any more. She's afraid, too. And after this ... well, I just need to get out of here. It was the same guy, wasn't it?"

Kris shot me another concerned look. "I was going to ask if you could feed Dixie; the woman who boards Rebby doesn't want any mares in that field. She thinks they'll make the geldings fight. But I'll try to find someone else."

"I can do it," I said.

"Gail, you've got enough to deal with."

"I can feed your horse," I said. "I have to go to work. I have to live my life, Kris. Feeding your horse is no big deal. You know I have to keep going."

Kris was quiet. "That's true," she said at last. "All right, if you want to. The key's where it always was."

Kris stayed for another hour, carefully not talking about Nico or the murder, until she finally ran out of innocuous conversation and I ran out of monosyllabic replies. When she left, Kris looked even more worried. Nothing I said seemed to reassure her.

Roey jumped up next to me and curled herself next to my thigh. I sat in the corner and stared out the windows. The fog was clearing. Faint sunlight lit the low hills.

Four hours later the fog crawled back in, long white fingers creeping over the pines and eucalyptus. Still I sat. I wasn't hungry; I wasn't thirsty. I could not fathom my strange state.

Three more hours and dusk darkened the foggy sky. My back ached from sitting. I could hear Plumber nicker. Reluctantly and stiffly, I pushed myself up off the couch. The animals needed to be fed, even if I didn't.

I made my way through the evening chores, doing what was necessary by rote. Nothing seemed real, nothing had any meaning. Not Plumber's bright, inquiring eye nor Gunner's out-thrust muzzle. Not the red-tail hawk watching me from the pine snag on the ridge nor the apricot-colored rose Francesca, in full and glorious bloom along the grape stake fence. Nothing touched me, nothing moved me. I felt nothing.

Only the sense of an immense weight hovering above me, ready to cut loose. I kept my mind still; even my movements were slow and cautious. I did not want to tip the balance.

Chores done, I made my sluggish way up the hill to the house, Roey frisking alongside of me. Even her exuberance was unsettling. I shut her in the pen and fed her and went back to sit on the couch.

Some hours later I was still sitting there in the darkness when my pager buzzed. It took me a minute to comprehend the noise. I'd more or less forgotten that I was a vet, that I was, in fact, on call. With infinite slowness, or so it seemed, the thoughts sorted themselves out. I turned the pager off and called the answering service.

I hung up the phone and tried to gather myself together. I had to get up and go be a vet. A competent professional on whom lives depended. It seemed impossible, but I had to.

Getting up off the couch itself seemed beyond me. I needed a mental whip to scourge my unwilling body, but my mind was limp as cooked pasta. There was simply nothing there to drive with. Reaching deeper, I found the still, small core of will.

You must, I told myself, and I got up. My legs felt as shaky as my brain, but I walked out to the truck. It wasn't until I was rolling down the driveway that I remembered I hadn't eaten anything since the two pieces of toast Jeri had made for me this morning. No wonder I felt weak. Oh well. Nothing for it now.

I drove the short stretch to the Bishop Ranch resolutely not thinking about how I would deal with a difficult case. I did not think about anything, just kept the truck on the dark road and my mind blank. It seemed the only possible way to exist.

All was quiet at the Bishop Ranch. The three-quarter moon had risen above the ridgeline and its gray-silver light mingled with the orangey glow from the low pressure lights that were scattered about the barnyard, showing me the old buildings and corrals. A few vehicles were parked here and there, but I didn't see any people. The horses visible in a shed row off to my right all had their heads down, munching hay.

Automatically, I looked toward Clay's house. Both his truck and the new sports car were visible in the driveway, and lights were on in the windows. The big white truck with BISHOP RANCH painted on the doors-the truck Bart usually drove-was parked near the main ranch house. Lights were on in the windows there, too. But still, no people apparent.

I shrugged and got my flashlight out of the truck. The big barn was to my left, and this was where the client was supposed to meet me. I headed in that direction.

No doubt the barn had lights, but I didn't know where they were. Using my flashlight, I searched for a switch near the door, but found nothing. I shone the beam down the barn aisle but could see nothing-no human beings, anyway, just the occasional horse face looking over a stall door. Perhaps the colicked horse was at the other end. I started walking.

The flashlight beam showed me quiet horses in their stalls; the shadowy cavern of the big barn stretched away around and above me. An owl hooted softly somewhere up in the beams; I could hear the rustles and thuds of horses moving, the steady chomp, chomp of horses eating. That was it. No one hailed me, there were no lights, no sound of a disturbance.