It was ending as it had begun – a farm at dusk, horses in paddocks under a violet autumn sky.
She had come to bring the Kidgwicks a gold necklace Mickey had found when they drained the pond, a necklace that Sonora thought might have belonged to their daughter. No one was there. There was a ‘for sale’ sign at the end of the road – the Kidgwicks were moving on.
Joelle’s mother was going to be a trump on the witness stand. She’d taken her daughter’s body home to Seattle, had faced Chauncey with a steely-eyed look that had Security searching the woman’s purse with the utmost of care. Sonora had given her copies of the journals, the originals held in evidence.
Mary Claire had gone home to a mother so overwhelmed she could barely speak. They were still looking for Kippie’s parents.
It was the apple juice that had saved Mary Claire and Kippie, apple juice laced with sleeping pills to make them drowsy, to smooth their way. The drugs had slowed their metabolism, reduced their intake of oxygen, kept them alive.
Chauncey had parked them in the garage, given them presents to open and play with while they waited for his supposed return, put a tape in the car, Sleeping Beauty, still in the slot when Mickey took the car apart.
Sonora had borne the brunt of a thousand and one dominatrix jokes, and now had a collection of dog-collars left anonymously on her desk.
Sundance had been returned to her grateful owners, and Hal had read them the Riot Act, till their gratitude was gone. Under his careful supervision, the mare had picked up weight by the time the truck arrived to ship her home to a farm in Nashville, Tennessee.
Their undercover investigation blown, TRC had decided to press charges against Donna Delaney and Vivian and Cliff Bisky. Sonora was not optimistic, but she wished them well.
She walked up the drive, moving slowly, her speed these days, looking out over the fields.
That she was the incidental cause of Dixon Chauncey’s maiming would haunt her – not because she felt guilt, but because she did not. She knew in her heart that she could have brought the dogs down, or at least tried.
Chauncey would now show a face to the world that was a jigsaw of misplaced features and thick, ropy scar tissue, a face that brought a rush of revulsion and pity, his voice, hoarse and high-pitched, an obvious effort from vocal cords damaged beyond repair. He could now effect the instant sympathy that he had spent a lifetime trying to achieve.
The prosecutor’s office was asking for the death penalty, a proceeding Sonora could have stopped with a word. She wondered if she owed him that, in exchange for the maiming. The prosecutor, eager to secure information from Chauncey about other children, unaccounted for, had been willing to make a deal with Chauncey’s lawyer, until Crick, with Sonora’s cooperation, assured him that they could get whatever information they needed from him without resorting to deals. The prosecutor, in the midst of a public thirst for blood, had agreed.
Sonora stopped to rest, thinking that her job had made her hard. She had a new and uneasy self-awareness when she was home, helping Heather with the impossible math, dealing curfews and making moment-to-moment decisions with Tim – do I punish, do I give this freedom, do I handle this latest transgression with a laugh in lieu of a frown? In some strange way, the awareness of her hard edges gave her a new perspective, an easier attitude, an inner knowledge that these were small matters, in the scheme of all things evil, and the cloud of anger over minor annoyances was refusing to rise these days.
Before, she might have sold that new horse of hers. Now she had no hesitation in keeping it.
She looked at the necklace in her hands. She wanted no reminders. She would have liked to have tossed it back into the pond but her side was dealing agony now, and she very much wanted to go home.
Sonora paused at the top of the road. The house with the back porch was empty, the porch swing gone. There was no one in sight, just cows, and horses on the horizon.
She looked over her shoulder, tossed the necklace behind her, looked away, and then back again.
She squinted, wondering if she saw what she thought she saw, there by the pond – a boy and a girl, slender and young. Likely it was nothing more than a trick of the dusky light, the distance, the sunset glare in her eyes, and wishful thinking.
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1
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When it was all over, or as over as such a thing can be, Sonora could look back and pinpoint the precise moment when everything went wrong. There were times that she wanted to blame the case, times she thought that if she and Sam had not been on call that summer-soft night in March, things would be different, things would not have gotten so out of hand.
And other times she thought, no, she had handled other cases, some as bad, if not worse. The problem, maybe, was her. Maybe she was vulnerable then. Or maybe it wasn’t her, who the hell knew, because life, when you come right down to it, life is a journey. You put one foot in front of the other and you choose a path, and stuff happens, good, bad, there aren’t any guarantees. It’s just a journey. A trip you’ve got to take.
Starting, as it often does in police work, with the ring of the phone.
She had dreamed the night before, a premonition, maybe, of something evil and old as original sin. But when the phone rang, Sonora, deep in a book, had forgotten the dream. She was tucked up on the couch reading The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer, the smell of pork roast baking in a mustard-barbecue sauce warming the kitchen. She had cooked. A miraculous event. Clampett, the three-legged dog, lay in front of the stove, guarding the roast, all one hundred and six blond pounds of him.
The roast was safe.
Heather, sixth grade, and Tim, newly seventeen, were watching television, reruns of Home Improvement. The Simpsons up next.
No doubt they had homework. Sonora had looked up from her book twenty minutes ago at Tim, propped on couch pillows that trailed clumps of foam like popcorn, and Heather, legs dangling over a beanbag chair they’d bought at a garage sale for her birthday, and had chosen peace and quiet over proper parenting.
It was a good decision. A moment that came and went like such moments do, you could no more keep it than you could hold water in your hand.
She put the book down, not wanting to let go of the story, thinking it was past time to put together a salad. She got up to turn the rice down and saw that Tim was handing her the portable.
“For you,” he said.
She was not sure who was more surprised. She leaned up against the countertop, nudged Clampett with a toe. He gave her a doggie smile. Drool had puddled on the floor. A tribute to her cooking.
“Blair,” she said.
“Sonora?”
“Sam. Darlin’. Haven’t seen you for a whole two hours.”
“You want me to pick you up in the company car, or you going to meet me there?”
Something in his voice. “Where is there, Sam?”
“You’ll never find it. Let me come get you.”
“What we got?”
His tone went flat. “Home invasion.”
Sonora put the phone down. Looked at the kids, who watched her. Seasoned cop kids. They knew something was up.
“Going to work?” Tim asked. She had only a sliver of his attention. Knew he would be on the phone the minute she walked out the door.
“Yeah,” she said. “Eat without me, and be sure to leave the kitchen clean. You hear me, Tim?”
He nodded.
“Can I paint my toenails?” Heather asked.
“In the bathroom, not in here.” Not that it mattered, except on principle. Sonora glanced at the couc
h. Dusty rose, cushions stained with ink, coated in dog hair.
She got her purse. Turned off the TV. The children gave her looks drenched with annoyance.
“Go ahead and have your supper. Make a little plate of roast for Clampett. Heather, you take care of that.” She knew Tim would forget. “And keep the doors locked. Did you hear me?”
Tim nodded. “Eat and lock up. You load your gun, Mom?”
“Sam’s picking me up, I’ll do it in the car.”
“Turn the TV back on,” he said.
“Turn it on yourself.”
She grabbed her all-purpose black blazer and the tie she had draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, retied her left Reebok, and she was out the door, standing in the twilight, waiting for Sam.
2
Home invasion. It was the kind of call Sonora dreaded, the kind of call no homicide cop, no matter how experienced or jaded, could approach without a flutter of dread; unhappy butterflies low in the belly.
She stood to one side of the porch, just at the edge of her garage. One of her neighbors pulled into the driveway across the street, raised a cautious hand. In a community of young families, all couples with small children, a widowed homicide cop with teenagers was an object of dread and fascination. She could not blame them. Teenage boys with loud bass throbbing from car speakers used to make her nervous, before she got one of her very own.
Sam hadn’t given her the address of the call, but it would be a house just like that one across the street, just like the one next door.
Some cops made fun of John Q. Public for his naïveté, scorned parents who did not see a pedophile on every corner (fewer and fewer every day), people who could not fully comprehend the concept of two-legged evil. Sonora knew this copper’s disdain was nothing less than envy.
She never told anyone, not even Sam, how routinely she hit that book of mug shots, known child molesters who stalked the streets of Cincinnati. There were times of great private embarrassment when she saw a familiar face, say, in Dairy Mart, or taking the kids to Graeters. And she’d be unable to remember if the familiarity of that face came from a chance meeting at a PTA Open Parent Night or a mug shot of a guy in and out of jail for raping eight-year-olds.
She glanced over her shoulder at her own house, curtains still open in the living-room window, Heather curled up on the couch, Tim pacing the hallway, talking on the phone. It seemed so bright inside, cozy, as sunlight drained away and motes of darkness grew thick in the air.
She felt off, somehow. Maybe it was just the sense she had, looking into that living-room window, that her babies were growing up and away, that dawning knowledge you gain as you get older that life cannot be static, that everything changes just as you manage to take hold, and you have to let go, whether you want to or not.
She had a peculiar feeling, like homesickness, only she didn’t know where home was. She pressed into the warm scratchy brick front of her house, looked down the road. The gold Taurus crept around the street corner and turned into her driveway, car lights milky in the dusk. She could barely make Sam out, there behind the wheel of the car.
She did not move. She had a bad feeling, like if she didn’t turn around and go back inside the house, make some kind of excuse—she was sick, something, anything—that if she didn’t she would go and come back and things would be different. Nothing would ever be the same.
She sensed, rather than saw, Sam looking at her. Listened to the engine idling. Knew Sam was wondering why she did not leave the hard comfort of faded red brick against her back. Sonora slung her purse over her left shoulder, the weight of the Beretta soft on her hip, and went to work.
3
“It’s in Olden,” Sam told her, something like regret in his voice. His clothes looked tired—khakis wrinkled at the waist and knee, tie knot slipping, blue cotton shirt billowing from the waistband, collar unbuttoned and loose. He had run a comb through his hair, straight, brown, and baby fine, parted to one side, slipping over one eye. He was past the need for a shave.
Sonora frowned, mind suddenly flooded with dream images from the night before. Peculiar things, dreams, wild animals of the mind. Try to force them and they would hide and disappear. But relax, let them come forward on their own, and your conscious thoughts would be inundated with images, feelings, and memories, as if dreams had to be coaxed out when you were not looking, as if they had to choose the time and place.
She had dreamed of her brother, Stuart, dead now these last four years—had it been so long? He had died at the hand of a small blond sociopath who had been playing games of death with Sonora. Hazard of the profession, but it was not supposed to spill over on the family, inept evil that would not stay in the lines, and it had taken her brother.
The grief thing. Business as usual.
“Sonora? You okay over there?”
It was not normal for the two of them to be so quiet. Sonora gave him a sideways look, wondered if he was fighting with his wife again or just tired.
“Sam, do you dream much?”
He looked at her. “Do I dream?”
“Yeah. Dream.”
That he was not surprised or perturbed by her question was a sure sign that they had been working together too long.
“Only when I have hot peppers on my pizza. Or if I eat chili.”
“Chili makes you dream?”
“Among other things.” He turned the Taurus into the entrance of a new subdivision, passing a small pond. “This is it. This is Olden.”
So many things Sonora saw here, senses raw, hair stirring on the back of her neck, that cop instinct and edginess keeping her alert. “Pretty here” was all she said.
Sam nodded. “I got a cousin lives two streets over.”
“Really?” Sonora said.
“No, I made it up.”
“Like you’re going to make up a cousin?”
“Lives two streets over, on Canasta.” Sam eased his foot over the brakes, bringing the Taurus almost to a stop, to let five ducks cross the road to the water. Sonora had never noticed before how they scrambled over curbs, pulling themselves up with their neck muscles.
Sam checked his rearview mirror. Turned on his left indicator. “You know this area?”
“Nope.”
“You will.”
Streetlights, halogens, cast a muted aura over fledgling trees, concrete curbs that were white and crisp, houses trim with new paint and shiny siding—all the chirp and promise of raw wood and new construction.
Today was the third in a trio of sweet-summery days, winter hopefully no more than memory. The novelty of sunshine brought people out of their houses. A man in loose green scrubs walked a chesty golden retriever beside a woman pushing a dark blue stroller. The lawn of the house on the corner of Trevillain and Olong had been mowed for the first time of the season, and a spray of freshly clipped grass fanned up and down the edges of the sidewalk. The front-porch light was on, though it was sandy-dusk out and light enough to see. Three children in corduroys and sweatshirts rolled over the newly trimmed grass down the small hill. The air was just going crisp and chill. Tomorrow the children would wake up with raw throats.
Sam turned right and the neighborhood changed, houses smaller, trees larger, providing actual shade, everything well kept, lawns edged, landscaping minimal but precise. The cars in these driveways ranged in age from three years to twelve, not so many four-wheel drives and imports, just solid Ford Probes and Crown Victorias, with the occasional Firebird or Trans Am that bespoke a teenage population.
Someone had called the fire department. People were heading down the sidewalk, a few clutching the hands of children, looks of easy curiosity that made Sonora sure they were drawn by the crowd and ignorant of realities.
Two paramedic units flanked the fire truck, lights flashing, crews standing close together, talking, smoking.
“No survivors,” Sonora said.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My than
ks to George Smock, horse educator, who has the rare and priceless ability to teach people and horses to work together, for advice and suggestions, and, incidentally, for helping with my own Hell Z Poppin, Empress and Cracker Jack. Any mistakes I made are most entirely my own.
To Sue Mardis, wife of Sergeant Roy Mardis, Lexington Kentucky Police Department, who died in the line of duty working one of his dogs to bring in a killer. My thanks to you for sharing your knowledge of Roy’s groundbreaking work with bloodhounds.
To Sandy and Boyd Haley of Naibara Arabians, for spending an afternoon answering my questions, and talking horse. Many thanks for your hospitality.
To Kay Campbell and Amy Wilson for research assistance, conversations on plot, and backup at the barn during those moment of adrenalin rush at the paddock gates when the horses come thundering in. The jury is still out on which of us can climb a fence faster.
To Benji McEachin, who throws a wonderful dinner party.
To Lynn Hanna and Eileen Dryer for expertise in things medical.
To Jackie Cantor at Delacorte, who gets it.
To the gang at Hodder & Stoughton, George, and Phil and Stewart and Carrie and Camilla and Georgina, and Breda, and all of the fabulous sales reps. You guys really know how to throw a book tour.
And always to the usual crew, Matt Bialer, Maya Perez, Stephanie, Marcy, Jim Lyon, Steve and Cindy Sawyer, and the world’s best kids, Alan, Laurel, and Rachel.
About the Author
Lynn Hightower grew up in the South and graduated from the University of Kentucky, where she studied creative writing with Wendell Berry and earned a journalism degree. She is the author of ten novels, including two mystery series, one featuring homicide detective Sonora Blair and the other featuring private investigator Lena Padgett. Flashpoint, the first Sonora Blair mystery, was a New York Times Notable Book. Satan’s Lambs, the first Lena Padget mystery, won the Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel. Hightower has also written the Elaki series of futuristic police procedurals, which begins with Alien Blues.
Hightower’s novels, which have been translated into seven foreign languages, have appeared on the Times (London) bestseller list and have been nominated for the Kentucky Literary Award, the Kentucky Librarians First Choice Award, and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She teaches at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where she was named Creative Writing Instructor of the Year in 2012. The author lives with her husband in Kentucky.
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