Reining in Murder

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Table of Contents

W
EE
H
OURS
O
F
M
ONDAY
M
ORNING
, F
EBRUARY
22
^ND

She awoke suddenly out of a troubled sleep. The silence within her small bedroom felt deafening.

From across the hall in the kitchen, the Seth Thomas clock bonged the quarter hour. Annie Carson looked up. It was 3:15, a time all smart horsewomen should be asleep.

The clock that marked each quarter hour in slow, sonorous tones was a comfort. The vibrate mode on her cell phone was nothing but an irritant.

“Hell's bells.” Annie sighed and picked up the offending item. She glanced at the caller ID and swung her legs out of bed. She knew she was going to get dressed, and warmly, too.

“Top o' the morning to you, Annie,” came the voice on the other end. “We've got a live one on Highway 3, Milepost 11. Near rollover with a horse trailer.”

Annie cringed. “How's the horse, Dan?”

“Scared. But no broken bones or blood—I think. It's a miracle, but he seems to have survived the crash. Can't say the same for the driver.”

“I'll be there as soon as I can throw on some clothes.”

“Appreciate that.” Dan clicked off.

“And by the way,” Annie said to the dead connection, “it's not the top o' the morning. It's the middle of the freakin' night.”

Dan Stetson—aptly named, since his head was about as big as a ten-gallon hat—was the local sheriff in Suwana County. Annie was used to getting calls in the middle of the night from Dan, so it didn't take her long to pull on her work clothes, fire up her F250 with the three-stall horse trailer attached, and gulp down a cup of reheated coffee while she waited for the rig to warm up. She nodded to Wolf, a mangy Blue Heeler who had thoughtfully placed himself in front of the kitchen door in case Annie forgot he existed. He trotted behind her into the frigid air and leapt, in a single graceful bound, onto the back of the truck and into his open crate.

It might have been late February, but on the Olympic Peninsula the thermometer still dropped into the twenties at night, so
layering,
the euphemistic word Northwesterners used to describe heaping on silk underwear, insulated jeans, and a trio of ratty old Scandinavian sweaters, was still the current fashion trend in the dead of night. Annie double-checked her brake lights on the trailer and glanced up at the gun rack behind her. There was her trusty Winchester .30-30, never used on a human—yet.

Annie eased out the clutch, turned on the defroster full blast, and drove slowly to her property gate. She gazed in her rearview mirror for a few brief seconds to imagine her small herd of horses asleep in their stalls. Only Trotter, the donkey, who usually had more sense than the rest of them, was jogging back and forth against the paddock line, plaintively braying his displeasure at her departure.

“Don't worry, you old jackass,” she muttered. “I'll be back in time to feed you.”

The metal farm gate, as usual, was gaping open at the top of her driveway, and Annie cursed herself for once more failing to secure her property before retiring. At forty-three, she wasn't quite as spry as she'd been at thirty, capable of running an ax murderer off the farm if she'd ever encountered one. But after a lifetime of scrimping and careful saving, she just couldn't convince herself to spend the money on an electric gate, which would have made life immeasurably easier and safer.

Milepost 11 on Highway 3 was only three miles away, but it took Annie a cautious five minutes to navigate it. Fog patches unexpectedly appeared before her, spreading a thick gray spell across the road. Just past Milepost 10, the eeriness vanished. The roadway ahead of her was lit up like the Fourth of July, the whirling strobes and headlights from half of the Sheriff's Office patrol squad staked out in a semicircle in the middle of the highway. Glints of steel shimmered off the berm on the north side of the road. Even with all the traffic, Annie saw in an instant what had occurred.

A long double line of heavy skid marks swerved to the ditch off the right side of the road. At the end sat a Chevy Silverado, its rear end ridiculously suspended in midair. The vehicle apparently had caromed off the road, hit the steel-post fence beyond the ditch, and bounced back to rest. Meanwhile, the horse rig, a gooseneck two-horse slant load, was twisting perilously to the left, held up by only one wheel.

In the center of the semicircle of black-and-whites, Annie noticed an ambulance from the local medical clinic, its back doors ominously gaping open, waiting to receive the body. Two EMTs peered into the Silverado on the driver's side, while another tried to wrench open the battered passenger door, which gave no signs of cooperating. No doubt they were figuring how best to extract the driver, Annie thought. Outside the action sat the prized fire truck from the volunteer unit in nearby Oyster Bay. The two local boys inside the cab looked transparently disappointed that their services would not be needed. Annie had encountered these boys before on similar calls, and unabashedly liked them for their willingness to come out in the dead of night to deal with misery and tragedy on the local highways and farms. She suspected they liked her, too, possibly for the same reasons. That, and the fact that Annie paid one of them handsomely twice a year to shear her sheep.

Annie brought her Ford and trailer to a crawl on the right shoulder of the road. Before she could turn off the engine, Dan Stetson was beside her window, gesturing her to crank it down. Dan looked distraught—not a good sign. He was also eager to talk.

“Don't know what exactly happened here, Annie,” he said, slightly out of breath. “It's the damnedest thing. Truck suddenly swerves off to the right, jackknifes, and the trailer almost overturns. Neighbors back there”—Dan pointed somewhere in the distance—“hear the sound of the truck's crashing into their fence line and are on the phone pronto. We get out here, and there's a horse—who seems to be okay,” Dan said in response to Annie's panic-stricken look. “I got to tell you, Annie, our in-transit time was one of our personal best, but nothing could have saved this guy. We found him slumped dead over his air bag, which we assume inflated as soon as he hit the Truebloods' fence posts.” Dan pointed in the direction of the truck. “Didn't have a chance. Just glad we could save the nag.”

Annie's eyes followed Dan's outstretched hand.

“Let me park my rig and join you,” she said. Carefully noting where technicians had staked out the road, she eased her truck and trailer onto an unused portion of the shoulder. She could sense, rather than see, Wolf's excitement from his vantage point in the truck bed.

“Okay, buddy. But don't go messing up any of the accident scene.”

She unhooked the carrier, and Wolf obediently bounded out to join his mistress on the ground. They walked over to Dan, who now was scratching his considerable head.

“Interesting that the horse survived, but not the driver,” Dan continued. He looked at Annie, as if he expected her to give the definitive answer. Instead, she just stared back at him
.
The fact was she hadn't the slightest idea why the accident had occurred, although she'd never give him the satisfaction of telling him so.

“Seat belt on?” was her only comment.

“Yup.”

“What about the horse?”

“He's out of the trailer, and Tony's handling him, just there, beyond the fence line.” Dan pointed again.

Annie inwardly sighed a breath of relief. If Deputy Tony Elizalde had control over the animal, all would be well. Tony had grown up with parents who worked at a local racetrack, and had it not been for a conscientious high-school counselor, chances are Tony would have entered the same trade—grooming, washing, and cleaning stalls. Instead, Tony went to college, took the test to become a deputy in the local county Sheriff's Office, passed with flying colors, and now was one of the steadiest members of the police team. He also knew horses front ways, sideways, and backward. If the horse that had tumbled on its side was now in Tony's care, Annie was content.

She glanced over to the left side of the road and saw Tony trying to calm a strikingly tall bay covered in sweat and skittishly dancing around him. Annie turned her mind to the more immediate problem.

“Who's the owner?”

“Who do you think, Annie?” Dan replied. “You're looking at $50,000 worth of horseflesh over there. Who in this godforsaken county can afford the care and feeding that nag requires?”

Annie's shoulders slumped. Who indeed. Hilda Colbert, that's who. Annie hated her. Well, to be honest, she didn't hate her; she just hated the way she treated her horses. Hilda was a relative newcomer to the area, a California transplant who had made millions in the software industry and now fully indulged her passion for raising and riding hunter jumpers and thoroughbreds. Although Annie wasn't sure it was a passion for horses or just a passion for control. She'd seen the way Hilda acted around her champion equines and it wasn't pretty. In fact, the only thing pretty around Hilda was the state-of-the-art riding complex she'd constructed in the valley. It truly was a thing of beauty. But inside were housed eighteen neurotic, overwrought horses that didn't know which command to follow any time Hilda was on one of their backs.

“I don't suppose you've called her,” Annie said glumly.

Dan snorted. “Hell, no! I'm not waking up the queen. That's your job.”

Annie sighed. “Who's the deceased? One of Hilda's underpaid minions?”

“Nope. A guy out of Wyoming. Professional hauler. Can't understand why he swerved, though. You'd think he'd know better than to try to clear a deer.”

“So that's what you think?” Annie asked. “Just one of your typical caught-in-the-headlight accidents?”

“Won't know until the State Patrol gets here with the Total Station. But offhand, I can't think of any other reason. It's a straight stretch of road. Unless, of course, he had a heart attack or something.”

Annie squinted through the blazing circle of lights and silently agreed. There was no good reason for anyone to go off the road here. “Odor of intoxicants?” she asked.

“Nope. Unless you count the distinctive odor of Calvin Klein.”

Annie laughed. “Maybe he had a hot date with Hilda.”

“I hope not. I had to break the news to his wife just a few minutes ago. Doubt she would have been very happy to know hubby was on his way to a dalliance.”

Annie realized that to outsiders her banter might have been off-putting, but after working with Dan on a dozen or more accident scenes involving horses, she had picked up the gallows humor so often adopted by law enforcement as a way to cope with sudden death. But Dan's remark brought her back to reality. A man had died, his wife was now a widow, and the valuable horse he'd been transporting needed comfort and a warm stable.

“Keep me posted, will you, Dan?”

“Will do.” Just then, Dan's radio squawked, and she heard him revert to his professional parlance.

The thoroughbred was a magnificent creature—sixteen hands or more, Annie guessed, with classic bay markings. Annie walked over to Tony, who stood beside the shuddering horse, stroking its neck and whispering sweet nothings. At least the horse wasn't moving its feet anymore. Annie extended her hand to the bay's nose by way of introduction. The horse nuzzled back, licking the salt and dirt off her hand.

“Aren't you a handsome fellow?” she whispered to him.

“He sure is,” said Deputy Elizalde. Tony clearly was in love. It would be hard not to fall in love with this horse; he had pedigree written all over him, and his elegance, despite his nervousness, permeated the air.

“Well, time to get him back in a trailer,” Annie said. “This could be tricky.” She reluctantly withdrew her now-very-clean hand and walked back to her truck, where Wolf jumped into the driver's seat as soon as Annie cracked the door.

“You're too young to drive,” Annie told him, and Wolf agreeably relinquished his spot for the passenger side.

Horses like terra firma, and convincing them to step onto a springy surface that moves can be a hard sell. This thoroughbred, Annie realized, probably had been loaded into a trailer dozens of times and was used to the experience. Nonetheless, it had just survived a terrifying encounter and emerged from a twisted crate of steel that must now be perceived as a claustrophobic nightmare. Horses remember through their senses, particularly visually, and Annie was afraid just the sight of her trailer would turn this proud animal into a quivering beast with one thought: to bolt, rear, strike out, and do anything but get back into the box that an hour ago had threatened its survival.

Annie backed up her trailer fifty feet away from the fence line. She made sure there was hay in the feeder and added a couple of carrots for good measure. With one eye on the bay at all times, she quietly swung open the hinges that unlocked the back doors.

Deputy Elizalde slowly slid his hand up the lead line and started the walk over. Annie watched the bay skitter its way through the blinking lights of the patrol vehicles, its eyes white with fright. Tony was doing a good job, Annie noticed—he had his hand solidly on the lead rope but wasn't gripping it so tightly that the bay felt it had its head in a noose. In her sleep-deprived state, Annie lazily began to think that everything was actually going to go all right.

She was wrong.