No Good Deed

by Lynn Hightower

  ‘I’m coming,’ she said.

  The office door was unlocked, but stuck, and Sonora had to shove to get it open, setting off the wind chimes. She flicked a finger across the pewter horses. So much for the silent approach.

  She half expected someone to be inside, but the lights were out, and the office was silent, smelling of mold and damp. There were cobwebs in the left corner, and water stains over a picture of a white Egyptian Arabian in full costume, silver and blue tassels hanging from a blue velvet saddle cover, breastplate catching the light.

  The tile floor was liberally tracked with mud and manure, and did not look like it had been swept since Nixon was in office. There was a heavy smell of wet dog and horse manure, old oily leather.

  Sonora shut the door, pushing it closed with her butt. The office had an air of desolation, sweat, despair. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

  She paused at the opening to the smaller office where Delaney had her desk and files. The message light on the phone was bright cherry red. Number six in the digital display. The light was not blinking; someone had already picked them up.

  The chair behind the desk was huge, a battered leather throne that smelled faintly of cigars. Sonora sat down, leather cracking, swiveled from left to right. The metal squeaked softly.

  The desk was grimy. The only thing not dusty was the stack of crisp white bills on top of older, yellowed ones. Sonora flipped through. Second and third notices. Water, electric, finances right down to the nub. Just like at her house.

  Another interesting tack bill. A Corbette bridle, three hundred ninety-eight dollars, give or take change.

  But water on the verge of shut-off.

  Sonora hit the play button on the answering machine.

  Donna. This is Eunice Foster, Kelly’s mother. That girl I heard about on the news – wasn’t that at your place? It’s so terrible, I hope they find her okay. Ummm … will there still be lessons tomorrow afternoon?

  That one had come through at 10 p.m. the night before.

  … Ms Delaney, Brian Fiore, Channel Three news. We’d like to ask you a couple questions if you could give me, or my assistant, Allison Vase, a call …

  Midnight, the night before.

  Donna, this is Viv. How are you feeling this morning? I think we better talk, don’t you?

  Sonora sat forward. The call had come in at 6.47 a.m. Weird time to call, even for horse people. How are you feeling this morning?

  Viv. Vivian? Sonora looked for a Rolodex. Nothing. She opened the middle desk drawer, looking for an address book. Papers. Syringes. Pieces of metal and leather, and a tube of phenylbutazone. Horse aspirin.

  No address book. There were phone numbers taped to the wall over the desk – vet, fire, police. Farrier. Donna Delaney’s home phone in case of emergency.

  Sonora sorted through the side drawer while the other messages played.

  I bought a saddle horse named Addie’s Way from you three months ago. Did you not get my messages? We’re having a bit of trouble handling him. Actually, we’re having a lot of trouble. If you remember, we bought him for my daughter. I don’t know if we’re doing something wrong, but he doesn’t seem as bomb-proof as you described. Anyway, to tell you the truth, my daughter is too scared to even get back up on this horse. Can you please give me a call, please, as soon as possible?

  The last message concerned a child who had been bitten by a horse named Rebel, and would Donna please call back, this was the umpteenth time they’d called.

  Sonora leaned back in the chair. No doubt somebody’s attorney would be in touch.

  She glanced around the room. There were ribbons on the office wall, and faded pictures of horses clipped, groomed, and in the show arena. All the ribbons dated from the seventies, many of them faded and grimy, as if they had been stored in boxes, and moved around.

  No computer. Nothing in the side drawer but mud-stained manila folders, hand-labeled in pencil – Coggins tests, Board Agreements, Lesson Programs & Policies.

  Sonora checked her watch. Stood up. Opened the door that led into the barn. She had just a glimpse of light under the tack-room door before it went out, leaving the barn dark. All the barn doors were shut, breezeway lights off.

  Sonora stepped off the ledge into the dirt aisleway. Damp, chilly, the smell of horses, shavings and cigar. The cigar smell was fresh.

  Damn. Her gun was in her purse, locked securely in the car.

  The light had gone out as soon as she shut the office door, so whoever it was knew she was there. And whoever it was had killed the light, not wanting to be found. They’d be listening, adjusting to the dark, expecting her to do the same. Best to move quickly.

  It was not so dark she could not make her way. She moved quietly through the black gloom, tripping a little at an unexpected dip in the dirt flooring.

  The horses, alerted by the smell and soft noises, made low throaty noises. From one of the stalls came the stomp of a pawing hoof. One of the horses was banging a bucket.

  The tack room was across the aisle, to the far left of the barn, next to the mounds of cedar shavings. The sliding door was almost completely shut over the concrete lip. Was there a way out, other than through that door?

  Sonora crossed the aisleway, inhaling the aroma of cedar and cigar. Absolutely no light coming under the doorway, nothing from the two-inch crack down the side where the door was not quite shut. If there was a window, there’d be some ease of the darkness, the room would be bathed in gray gloom and there would be light.

  So, no window. Whoever was in there was trapped.

  Sonora listened. Quiet. Pictured someone else on the other side of the door, in the dark, listening too.

  She could identify herself and demand whoever it was come out.

  In her mind’s eye she saw the smashed fence, the pool of dried blood, Donna Delaney’s thick bandages that did not mask the new gap between the fingers she had left.

  She had children to raise. She’d wait it out.

  Sonora kept her breathing slow and quiet. She did not like waiting, even after all these years as a cop. Keeping still and patient was the hardest part of her job.

  She really ought to call her insurance agent and see about that twenty-year term policy the woman had been trying to sell her. If she died, the kids might want to go to college.

  Sonora glanced over one shoulder. Saw the overturned wheelbarrow, the pitchfork against the wall next to the shavings, manure clumps and bits of cedar wedged between the tines.

  She moved, soft but hurried. The noise of her feet shuffling the dirt was loud enough to be heard inside the tack room.

  She had the pitchfork in her hand when the door slid open.

  Dark inside and quiet. She squinted, noting the wooden arms bolted to the wall, draped with the dark shapes of leather saddles. Strings of reins and bridles hung from brackets, and shelves on the wall were crammed with the dim shapes of bottles, jars, hoofpicks and worn brushes. A pile of ancient blankets was stacked waist high, just inside the door.

  That it was an odd place for a stack of blankets struck her just as the pile quaked sideways and tumbled forward. A large dark shape came toward her, moving fast.

  Sonora registered the sideways fall of the blankets, a face in a ski mask, whites of the eyes weirdly circled by dark grubby knit. She swung the pitchfork and caught the man across his ribs, heard a groan and a word that sounded like guttural German.

  She’d hit him hard enough to break bone. He checked, then came at her full bore, bowling her over with blankets, bulk, using the force of her swinging pitchfork to sling her sideways.

  She lost her balance, crashing sideways into the tack room, hitting a saddle tree and going down in a tangle of leather stirrups and blankets, pulling the ski-mask man with her.

  It happened too fast. Off her feet and trying to hang on to the pitchfork. Her shoulder hit wood, head slammed into concrete, and she took it in the ribs when the man fell down on top of her.

  He smelled horsey, or
maybe it was the blankets. He reeked of cigars, old sweat and a shaving lotion she remembered from her childhood – Old Spice. Only sold at your local drug-store.

  He was punching before she caught her breath, but there were blankets between them, and they both realized at the same time that hits were useless.

  She clawed the mask, missing his eyes and ripping the soft knit sideways. It slipped, blocking his vision, giving her a glimpse of a muscled, sun-bronzed neck, a swath of flaxen hair, collar-length and shiny.

  He grabbed a set of reins, held them like a bar across her throat – fast enough that she didn’t have time to get a hand in between for protection. Her arms flailed and she grabbed something small, sharp on one end. Hoofpick. She smashed the sharp end toward his left eye socket, felt a sickening crumple, resistance, then a juicy giving-way.

  A scream and a trail of blood in her fingers.

  The pressure on her throat slackened and she clawed the reins away, took a deep gasping breath.

  She realized that he was up and off her, hand over one eye. Saw the foot – large black barn boot, caked with mud and manure. She grabbed for it, but her hands slipped off his heels and the boot came down toward her throat.

  Sonora scrambled sideways, and the boot glanced across her temple, clipping her ear, catching her hair.

  Her lip was swelling and she tasted blood. He must have grazed her face.

  He bent over her, reaching for something on the floor. Sonora caught him below the knees, shoving him off balance. Saw the gun lying on the concrete. Smith & Wesson, thirty-eight. Sam had one and he’d let her fire it several times – Southern country boys had a wealth of knowledge about weapons, pickup trucks, Rottweilers, and ways to make women smile.

  Where the hell was Sam, anyway?

  She felt strange, like she was walking around on the bottom of the ocean, like she’d taken one too many cold pills, but she kept her eye on the gun. Felt another kick, this one in the small of her back, and she smiled when she got hold of the Smith & Wesson, because she was going to shoot this sonofabitch.

  She pushed against the floor, made it to her knees, swaying forward, and her first shot caught him in the left knee, making his leg crumple, bringing him down.

  He screamed and rolled sideways. Large cherry splats of blood blossomed against the concrete. The horses began to panic and call, some of them kicking. Sonora fired again, missed, heard the bullet thunk into wood. She’d always been a lousy shot.

  He was up on his feet and galloping sideways, like a panicked crab, leg dragging and leaving a blood trail.

  Sonora heard a shout, and the aisle flooded with light and noise as the metal barn doors opened behind her. A barn cat screeched, ran across in front of her, scrambling out of the barn into the light.

  She squinted, saw the pickup parked at the dark end of the barn, took aim but did not fire. He was moving too fast, it was dark and there was too much metal for ricochet.

  He was in the truck. Must have left the keys in the ignition to get it started so fast. The barn filled with the noise of an eight-cylinder engine, and the smell of exhaust. The metallic clang of gears grinding, the engine revving as the pickup tore backwards in reverse, heading straight for her.

  ‘Watch out!’

  Someone, male, behind her, and she jumped sideways, back into the tack room, twisting her left knee, catching her balance on a tack trunk.

  She pushed off the trunk, aimed her gun. Saw a blur of motion, the pickup going by, and ran after it, stumbling on the concrete lip into the dirt, almost too soon, close to harm’s way, but in time to see the back tires, singles, not doubles. This was not a Dually, this was not the truck that had gone through the fence in the back paddock where Joelle Chauncey had disappeared.

  The pickup skidded sideways, then turned sharply out of the barn, wheels sliding in the mud.

  Leaving tracks, Sonora thought. Go to it, asshole. See you in the ER.

  The engine raced and the pickup fishtailed, got traction and tore off. Sonora heard a bump as it hit one of the potholes and just missed her car.

  No license plate. Highly illegal. She would ticket him at the first opportunity.

  Another man was running toward her, Hal McCarty, and she was aware of disappointment. So he was definitely involved.

  ‘Are you okay? You—’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here, McCarty?’ She leaned up against the wall outside the tack room. She was not feeling well and it was hard to catch her breath.

  ‘I came …’ He almost laughed, as if surprised to have to come up with a story under the circumstances. He had the well-fed and crisp look of a man who’d had a hot shower and a good breakfast, two things she resented. ‘I came to feed the horses,’ he said.

  ‘What timing. You and me both.’ She paused, breathing hard. ‘I’m taking you downtown, McCarty.’

  ‘Handcuffed if you like, but you better let me drive, while you put some ice on the side of your head. It’s already swelling up. Look, do you mind if I take that gun out of your hand?’

  Her head ached. ‘I mind very much.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘And your gun was where?’

  Crick stood over Sonora, voice low. She knew him well enough to realize that if she hadn’t looked so bad she’d be in a lot of trouble. She just didn’t know him well enough to be sure she wasn’t in a lot of trouble anyway.

  She was sitting in the cigar stink of the leather office chair, elbows on the armrests, chin in her hands. She was bent forward to take the pressure off her lower back where that sonofabitch had kicked her with his big-booted feet.

  The door from the barn blew open and Mickey came in, shaking his head.

  ‘That’s one serious looking blood trail.’

  ‘Yeah, and it was all from the other guy. Most of it anyway.’ Sam, coming in behind Mickey. ‘It’s a good shoot, sir.’

  Crick looked at him. Did not deign to mention that Sam, being her partner, might not be the most unbiased judge.

  ‘It was,’ Mickey said. Looked at Sonora. ‘Where was your gun?’

  Crick’s gaze was steady. Sonora looked at the floor. ‘In my purse.’

  ‘Which was where?’

  ‘In my car. But the car was locked.’

  Sam winced.

  ‘That keeps your weapon safe, but it doesn’t do much for you,’ Mickey said.

  ‘What brought you back in the barn?’ Crick asked.

  She looked up and saw Sam, standing behind Crick, shake his head slightly. As if she’d be stupid enough to admit she’d gone in to feed the horses.

  ‘Instinct, intuition. Being nosy,’ Sonora said.

  Sam nodded. ‘Good cop traits.’

  ‘We’ll talk later.’ From Crick. He headed into the barn, Mickey on his heels.

  Sam bent over her, muttered something about tagging along with Crick.

  Going to make sure everybody came to the right conclusion, Sonora thought, as he winked and headed out, leaving her alone with McCarty, two uniforms, and a woman from CSU who was bent over a clipboard, filling out one of the endless forms that were the curse of modern law enforcement.

  Crick would look the scene over himself, Sonora thought. She did not know what he would say to her privately, but she did know that if he agreed with Mickey he would watch her back with the Internal Affairs Division. God help her if he didn’t.

  ‘I’d be glad to run to the house and get you some ice. If you don’t want to go to a hospital. Which is where you should be.’ Hal McCarty’s voice was kind.

  The CSU woman looked up. ‘I’ll drive you,’ she said softly.

  Sonora shook her head, regretted it. ‘They’ll just sit me on a metal table for six hours till some doctor comes in and tells me I have a concussion, which is something I already know.’

  The CSU technician, a tiny redhead who, in Sonora’s memory, used to be brunette, nodded and went back to the form, which looked to be giving her trouble.

  Sonora frowned hard. Kindness w
ould undo her. It didn’t sit well to get scared shitless, kicked in the head and yelled at by the boss after being up all night.

  There had to be a reason she was in this line of work.

  She focused on McCarty, trying to come up with the right questions. ‘You say Donna Delaney called and asked you to feed the horses?’ She would get him on this one. Delaney hadn’t called anybody.

  He shifted in his seat and looked to the left. Prelude to a lie, Sonora thought.

  ‘I haven’t talked to Donna since … oh, last night. About the time you guys left.’

  He could be telling the truth, or he could know Delaney was incapacitated. ‘So what are you doing here, now, this morning?’

  He leaned forward, hands on his knees. ‘I’m here every morning. The truth is, Donna likes to sleep in. She breezes in late all the time, so I come early and help Dixon feed the horses. She knows we’re doing it, because there’s feed missing, and it pisses her off, but she won’t come out in the open and admit she isn’t going to feed them herself, so Dixon’s got her cornered. He started it. I just didn’t think he’d be up to it today.’

  ‘You’re telling me she doesn’t feed them?’

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you.’

  Sonora held her head at an angle, to ease the throb in her temple. She had touched it once, a mistake, and she was afraid to look in a mirror. The miracle of makeup was not going to help her out of this one.

  She rubbed her forehead. ‘So you just came over to feed the horses out of the goodness of your heart. And you do this every day?’

  ‘No, I told you. Dixon does it.’ His smile was sympathetic. He knew the story was weak, and he knew her head hurt.

  ‘Where did you spend the night, Mr McCarty?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Nope?’

  ‘Did you take a shower this morning?’

  ‘You working Homicide or Hygiene?’

  ‘Answer the question.’

  ‘Yeah, I took a shower.’

  ‘What did you eat for breakfast?’

  ‘Egg McMuffin.’

  ‘There isn’t a McDonald’s in five miles.’