Yes, Clay had found his peace: the valley, the friendship, a marriage and child, and faith. Happiness was too elusive; it depended on external factors, but peace could exist even in the depths of trouble. That was what Clay now wanted to cling to: peace, even in the chaos of this situation.
The telephone rang. Clay had the receiver to his ear before it rang again.
“Mr. Garner?” The voice was unfamiliar.
“Yes.”
“We need you over at the Evans ranch. Frank, he’s” – the voice faltered – “he’s been killed. And there ain’t yet been no sign of Rooster.”
6:38 a.m.
The boy approached the couch, holding two baseball gloves. Not that he expected much, but it was still worth a try. He raised his voice to be heard above the crowd’s roar on the television. “Mommy said maybe we could play catch.”
“Mommy, Mommy.” It was a mimic of the boy’s voice. “You’re nearly eight, kid. Quit talking like a baby,”
The man tilted a can of beer up to his mouth. “Get another thing straight. l didn’t marry your old lady. She married me. In other words, I set the rules. Just ’cause she says something don’t mean it’s gonna happen.”
He gestured at the television set with his can of beer. “No way I’m leaving. Extra innings.”
“Maybe after?” the boy tried.
“Not a chance. I got to catch up on some sleep. I work hard all week supporting you and your old lady. l deserve a good rest.”
He drained the beer in a final gulp. “Get me another can from the fridge, will ya?"
The boy brought back another beer, which the man accepted without taking his eyes off the game. The boy waited, not sure what he was waiting for.
“Hey,” the man finally said, “make your own fun. Scram before I give you one upside the head.”
The boy returned the baseball gloves to his bedroom. He pulled his collection of horror comics out from under the bed and flipped through, pausing at each new torture scene and taking satisfaction in imagining his stepdad the recipient of boiling oil, poison-tipped daggers, or the guillotine blade.
An hour later, the boy left his bedroom. He heard giggles from the couch. His mother had returned from shopping for groceries. He avoided the living room. He hated seeing his stepfather with his hands on his mother. The boy moved through the kitchen, quietly closed the back door behind him, and sat on the porch.
He closed his eyes, savoring one of his favorite scenes in the comic book. A woman, bound on a table, in ripped clothing, was about to be skinned alive. The man with the knife above her had such pleasure on his face, the woman such terror. And she was as helpless as he was powerful.
The squawking of magpies caused the boy to open his eyes again. A skinny gray cat had entered the back yard, and the birds were crying angry alarm at its presence.
He watched the cat. He recognized it as belonging to Mr. Watson, the neighbor who yelled at any kids stepping onto his property. The cat slinked through the bushes at the fence then darted into the open door that led into the garage.
It gave the boy an idea. He stood, ran to the garage, and pulled the door shut. Now the cat was trapped.
After that, the boy took his time. He didn’t have to worry about anybody in the house asking him questions. They never did. He stole back into the house and tiptoed into the basement workshop. He had a list in his mind of the items he would need: First of all, garden gloves because the cat would most certainly scratch and bite; then fishing line; hedge clippers; and solvent. Chemicals might be fun for experimenting. It would be interesting to see what solvent did to a cat’s eyes. Yes, chemicals...
The Watcher wore a longhaired wig and a baseball cap. He doubted anyone would notice him this early, but caution had kept him hunting for decades, and in going for the ultimate prey, he wasn’t about to relax his vigilance.
As he walked up the sidewalk to the front of Kelsie’s condo, the Watcher squeezed his left arm against his ribs, holding a Ziploc bag in place hidden beneath his jacket. Inside it was a cloth soaked in ether, the fumes contained by the plastic.
Over the years, the Watcher had searched for the perfect chemical. At his best, of course, he had no need for help, using conversation and seduction to get his victim to a place where they had no possible escape.
Occasionally, however, he did need his victims to be unconscious. He’d tried benzene, which had the advantage of being pleasant smelling and a gas at room temperature. Used in motor fuels and as a solvent, it was readily available and nearly instant in effect. Unfortunately, more often than not, it caused vomiting, and once, before he had understood dosage well enough, it had led to a fatal heart attack.
The Watcher liked Veronal. As a barbiturate, it was easy to slip into a drink. It produced unconsciousness instantly. It was difficult to obtain without prescription, though, and the Watcher did not like any paper trails that might lead back to him.
Once he’d even tried carbon tetrachloride because he knew it attacked the central nervous system, and, as he’d found, it did work. The drawbacks were its slowness and unpredictability.
In the end, he always came back to the good old standby, ether, also called chloroform, He’d first used it on Kelsie the summer she turned sixteen. All it had taken was an ether-soaked cloth over her mouth while she slept. She hadn’t awakened or kicked – that’s how quickly it worked. Yes, it had been a juvenile prank, using lipstick to write “I Love You” across her forehead, but then, he’d just been learning about the uses of the power of life and death.
The only drawback the Watcher had ever found with ether was uncontrolled hypothermia, something he had not anticipated until later research showed him it was a genetic response that occurred in about 10 percent of the general population. It had happened to a college student, driving her temperature up over 110 degrees, and she had died long before she could be any use to him. Because of that incident, he’d begun his experimentation to find something perfect; in the end, he decided he’d take the one in ten risk that ether presented.
Fortunately, he knew Kelsie would not have that genetic response. She’d survived the lipstick night with no ill effects. He could use it on her again. And he was ready.
He’d rigged, as usual, a facecloth so that it was almost like a surgeon’s mask, with strings attached to each end. The facecloth was damp with ether; the large Ziploc bag kept it ready. His much-practiced procedure was simple: Drop the cloth in front of the victim’s face over her mouth and nose, pull tight on the straps, and knot them quickly, then step back and wait to catch her as she fell.
He mentally rehearsed his actions as he advanced on the condo, thinking through the layout of the place, knowing the only real danger would be if she managed to get to a telephone behind a locked door before he chased her down.
He checked his watch – it was 6:40 a.m. She might still be sleeping. Or in the bathroom getting ready for her punctual 7:45 arrival at the office. Or in the kitchen sipping on coffee. He had no way of guessing. Because of the daylight, she didn’t need to turn on any lights in the condo.
She’d returned from the ranch two hours earlier. He knew that because he had been waiting and watching. Upon her arrival, the bedroom light had gone on then off. She’d gone to bed, probably hoping to rest for a few hours until daybreak.
It was an easy deduction that she’d spent the entire night with her husband.
She’d been warned against that. It drove the Watcher mad to think that she might share herself with another man. Now she would pay. He had not planned to take her this early, but it enraged him to think of her with her husband. It had always enraged him. Before he’d been helpless to do anything about it. Now...
Now she would pay the price. Her car was waiting in the garage of the condo. It would be a simple matter to load her unseen into her trunk and drive the car away.
The excitement of it, after years of planning for this moment, easily washed away any exhaustion he felt from the activities that had kept
him up the entire night.
The Watcher opened the front door with his key. He pushed the door open slowly and listened.
Faintly, he heard running water inside. She was in the shower.
Perfect, he thought. Absolutely perfect.
6:48 a.m.
“Clay Garner,” Clay said, introducing himself to the man in the green John Deere cap standing at the front of the Evans house. He was a thin man with a wizened face, smoking a cigarette, drawing deep drags then nervously flicking the cigarette to get rid of the ashes that never had a chance to accumulate.
“Jess Higgins. I’m the one who called you.”
“How about the sheriff?”
Behind them, near a few pickup trucks, gathered in a group of about a dozen, were other ranch hands, speaking in low whispers. Johnny Samson and his grandfather had joined the group, and they stood watching with their hands in their pockets.
Clouds had moved in over the valley. Low rain clouds, gray like the grittiness Clay felt in his soul.
“I called him, all right,” Higgins said. Wind gusts lifted the strands of hair that curled out from beneath his cap. “Right after I called you. He ought to be here sometime soon.”
“Who’s been inside the house?”
“Just me,” the man said. "And I swear on a stack of Bibles I didn’t do nothing. I walked in the kitchen door, looking for Rooster on account of he was supposed to be down at the shed to help me vaccinate some steers. And there he was. Dead. The old man, I mean.”
“Take your work boots off,” Clay said.
“My boots?”
“You’ll be doing yourself a big favor.” Clay didn’t bother explaining that if this ranch hand had contaminated the crime scene, at least they’d be able to match any debris and trace evidence to his boots. “Take them off and tie the laces together. Leave them hanging over the top of the railing there.”
The ranch hand was too scared to question Clay further. When the boots were in place, Clay continued.
“Just Old Man Evans dead?”
“That’s all I seen. Sitting in the chair with his head tilted back unnatural. I’ll be having nightmares, it was so unnatural. With a wide-open, big smile across his throat and a big puddle of blood on the floor. When I saw that, I backed out in a hurry.”
“Where’d you call from?” The less time this ranch hand had spent in the house the better.
“A phone down at the barn.”
“You didn’t go anywhere else in the house?”
“Nope. Too scared. Just stepped into the kitchen, saw him on the chair, and high-tailed it back out again.”
“Any sign of Roaster?” Clay asked.
“None. You think he’s dead too?”
"Hard to say.” Clay was torn about what to do. He was not an investigating officer. Although he knew enough not to disturb anything at the crime scene, he still didn’t want to enter the house. First, it would rankle the sheriff. More important, it might compromise any evidence found at the scene. A good defense attorney could successfully argue the evidence inadmissible, based on an unauthorized civilian, who may or may not have distorted the findings.
Clay was patient too. Chances were the sheriff would invite him in and at the least share whatever he learned. Waiting another twenty minutes or so wouldn’t make any difference to Clay. Twenty minutes would make a difference, though, if Rooster was somewhere else in the house, alive and in urgent need of medical help. Clay hated to think of his neighbor dying while friends and ranch hands waited outside. Yes, it was unlikely. If Rooster had been attacked, he was probably long dead, like his father. But if there was just the slightest chance...
Clay headed toward the back of the house. “I’d like you to come with me," Clay said to the ranch hand. “In fact, I’d like you to stand just inside the door and watch me.” A witness, Clay hoped, would take care of any defense attorney who might try to say Clay introduced false evidence to the scene.
“You sure?” Higgins said. “My stomach ain’t the strongest and –”
“Just watch to make sure I go straight through the kitchen. Then you can stare at your socks for all I care.” The man nodded. Stocking-footed, he started to follow Clay.
“And if the sheriff gets here, let him know I went inside to look for Rooster. I won’t be long.”
“Leave the cigarette outside,” Clay said as they reached the kitchen porch. He wanted this scene as pure as possible. Forensics had improved dramatically over the past ten years. Sometimes the crime was solved before the investigators took the last photographs.
Clay half-ran from room to room. There was no sign of Rooster. On his way back through the kitchen, Clay stopped for a full ten-count and studied the situation, trying to see it the way the murderer had seen it in leaving.
As the ranch hand had described, old Frank Evans was in a kitchen chair, throat severed so deep his head was tilted back.
Clay shivered. The tang of blood was like a kick in the stomach. It took effort not to look away. He’d been out of this for six years and was glad to be affected. One of the main reasons he had retired was because he’d become too detached from his victims, he’d become numb to almost all his emotions. Finally, he had decided life was too short to become a robot.
But now, even though he was feeling emotions, he knew they would only get in the way. He took a calming breath and pushed his feelings aside, stepping back into his past where dead bodies were merely pieces of meat.
Mentally he began to catalog what he observed. Nothing else seemed to be disturbed or out of place. That told Clay something. Whoever killed Evans had not been searching for anything or had had enough time to search carefully; whoever killed Evans had been able to do it without a struggle.
No trails of blood led to the chair. It was safe to assume Evans had not been killed elsewhere and dragged to the chair. Instead, he’d been sitting there. The killer probably stood behind Evans, grabbed his hair, pulled the head back, and slashed with a knife. The autopsy would show whether the killer was left-handed or right-handed; it would also show the type of knife blade used. The killer was a strong man; a human throat and cartilage were tougher than most realized.
If the killer stood behind Evans’s chair, either he had managed to sneak up or Evans knew him and had no reason to expect the assault. Clay would have to ask if the old man had been hard of hearing, which would have made it easier for someone to enter the kitchen without his knowing.
The blood at the base of the chair had stopped spreading, stopped dripping from Evans’s soaked shirt. That told Clay the murder had happened earlier rather than later. Again, he could rely on forensics to help him there.
Clay saw one more thing of interest – real interest. He saw a boot-print in the edge of the pool of blood and more bootprints leading away, getting fainter with each succeeding step.
Clay squatted and with his hands above a bootprint, roughly measured the length.
He rose again and met Jess Higgins at the kitchen door. “Go and get your boots,” Clay said. Higgins didn’t ask why; he just rounded the house and returned a few moments later, carrying the boots. He handed them to Clay.
Clay didn’t need to measure the ranch hand’s boots against his earlier estimation. He merely lifted the boot and checked the soles for blood. There was none.
The footprints posed some interesting questions, Clay thought. If those were the killer’s prints in the blood, why had he waited so long after slashing the rancher’s throat? The blood needed time to reach the floor and form a puddle. The killer should have been long out of the kitchen by then. Had the killer waited beside the dead man, searching through the rancher’s pockets or perhaps admiring his handiwork? Or had the killer returned after going through the rest of the house?
Or, if those weren’t the killer’s footprints in the blood, why hadn’t that person called for help? Why had that person disappeared, and who was he or she?
Clay had a hunch. Most ranchers left their dirty shoes and boots on
mats on the back porch, and the Evanses were no exception. He bent down and began examining the various types of footwear on the porch – from rubber boots to workboots to sneakers, and all soiled with mud and manure. There were only two sizes. Since only Frank and Rooster lived in the ranch house, Clay knew it was an easy conclusion that only their footwear was on the porch.
What disturbed him most was the fact that of the two distinctive sizes, one seemed to match the size of the bloody bootprint in the kitchen. The bootprint matched the size of Rooster’s boots. And Rooster was missing.
Clay hoped it was a coincidence.
7:45 a.m.
Kelsie felt her head pressing against something hard and a sharp pain against her ribs. Her neck was bent, her feet tucked beneath her thighs, her hands stuck together and fingers numb. She heard a wind rush, a rumbling, a high-pitched hum of...
Kelsie tried to piece all of it together. Her eyes had watered badly, gumming the eyelids, and she blinked to try to focus. There was a crack of light above her in the darkness.
High-pitched hum of... tires.
She was in the trunk of a car, moving along a road at high speed.
Gradually it began to make sense. Her head was against the spare tire. She’d been folded, legs bent beneath her, neck twisted forward. Her ankles and wrists were bound – it felt like tape. The loss of circulation hurt her fingers. The sharp pain in her ribs was...
She shifted, trying to relieve the pressure. The pain ceased. She’d been thrown on top of a briefcase. Her briefcase? That meant she was probably in her BMW. She’d been exhausted upon arriving at the apartment and had stumbled in without removing it from the trunk.
Then, with an intake of breath, she remembered.
Her bathroom. She’d been in the bathroom. She'd just gotten out of the shower and was toweling herself dry. She heard a slight sound behind her and had begun to turn her head. She’d glimpsed a figure in the fogged mirror but had seen no more. A wet cloth had been put over her face. She’d gasped with horror, instinctively pulling in a lungful of air against the cloth that she thought was meant to smother her. Then blackness.
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