Allie slowed and turned on her high beams, looking for a road that led into the woods, a place where she could stop and take remedial measures that would keep Mira from bleeding to death or dying of septicemia in the back of her car. If she was going to die, she would do so when Allie was ready, and not a second before.
The thought made her smile. Right about now, Sheppard would be returning with the teens from their little sojourn to town. It wouldn’t be long before he discovered that his life had been turned inside out like a dirty sock. Then that feeling of helplessness would seep into his bones and it would grow, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, just as her own helplessness had metastasized all these years. Payback, Sheppard. Now eat your heart out.
Chapter 3
1
Sheppard felt a strange contentment as he drove the van through the unfamiliar streets of Asheville, trying to find his way out of town and back to the farm. Ricki was curled up in the front seat, her nose tucked into her tail, dreaming whatever dogs dreamed, and in the back, Annie and Tess talked animatedly about Harry Potter’s latest adventures. Both girls had read the five books in the series at least twice and considered themselves experts on the world of wizardry. They debated the ins and outs of Quidditch, whether Dumbledore was actually 150 years old, and how badly they both wanted to visit Hogsmeade, the magical town that was the equivalent of a school field trip for the young Hogwarts wizards.
In Sheppard’s much younger days, he and his friends had spent endless hours discussing Tolkien’s Middle-earth and young Frodo’s impossible quest. He supposed every generation had certain books that shaped their lives and wondered what book it would be for Annie’s children.
Mira constantly gave him books from her store—galleys and advanced reading copies from publishers, hardbacks that were about to be remaindered, and special books that she thought he would enjoy. The books that fell into the special category covered a vast range of topics and genres, from quantum physics to metaphysics, from Harry Potter to Beatrix Potter. He read at least part of everything she passed on to him, not because he enjoyed all of it, but because he knew it was important to her.
He turned onto the narrow road that led up the mountain and eventually branched off to the dirt road that led to the Stevens’ property. The snow was coming down faster now, a messy slush that caused the van to slip and slide as it climbed. He hit the high beams, shifted into a lower gear. The van didn’t have four-wheel drive and these mountain roads had taken a toll on the engine. It squealed and strained, complaining every inch of the way.
At the top of the hill, Tess said, “Hey, they didn’t leave the porch lights on for us.”
“Maybe the power went out,” Annie said. “Because of the snow.”
“Even if it did, we have backup generators. Besides, I see lights upstairs.”
On the passenger seat Ricki suddenly sat up and whined. Sheppard wondered if she was whining because she knew she was home or for some other reason. As he pulled up in front of the rambling old farmhouse, the dog started pawing at the door, trying to dig her way out. She whined, growled, and then began to howl, a mournful sound that spooked Sheppard so deeply he told the girls to stay in the van.
Even Annie didn’t protest.
As he got out, the retriever leaped past him and loped toward the house, Sheppard hurrying along behind her, his weapon out, his mind racing. Snow stuck to his hair, his lashes, and melted against the back of his neck. The dog barked and pawed at the front door. Outside in the yard the other dogs now joined in, an agitated cacophony. He paused at the door, where Ricki now crouched, growling and snarling, ready to spring, and turned the knob slowly.
It wasn’t locked. The door swung inward.
Ricki tore inside, barking. Then the barking stopped, both inside and outside the house, and the silence was somehow worse, seeping through the dark interior like some sort of toxic gas. Sheppard paused just inside the door, listening. He heard the hum of the fridge in the kitchen, water dripping from a faucet, the click of the heater as it came on, all the small, vital heartbeats of the house. Whoever had been here was gone, he thought, and backed up to the wall and flicked the closest light switch.
The front room looked undisturbed. “Ramona?” he called. “Jerry?”
His voice echoed, the wooden floor creaked beneath his feet. He found Ricki in the kitchen, whimpering, circling Jerry, who was flat on his back, a bullet through the center of his chest. “Jesus,” Sheppard whispered, and crouched beside him.
Blood covered his chest, was smeared across his arms, his hands, his face. His eyes were wide open, his face seized up with shock, surprise. He looked like he was dressed for bed—sweatpants, T-shirt, thick socks. Sheppard knew he was dead, but touched the side of his neck just the same, hoping against hope that he might feel the faintest pulse. But there was nothing. He gently shut Jerry’s eyes. The dog pawed at Jerry’s leg and made soft, pathetic sounds that broke Sheppard’s heart.
He didn’t have to go far to find Ramona. Sprawled at the top of the stairs, she’d been shot in the back. She obviously had been running from someone and the trail of blood that led from midway up the steps to where she had finally collapsed said she had lived long enough to crawl. Sheppard moved quickly into the bedroom, where the bedside lamps were on, books lying facedown on either side of the bed, as though Jerry and Ramona had been reading when they were interrupted. He yanked two quilts off the bed and ran back into the hall. Tess and Annie must never see this, he thought, and quickly covered Ramona with one quilt, then tore down the stairs to cover Jerry with the other. Then a crushing wave of despair and terror gripped him.
Mira, in the cabin. He raced back outside, where the girls now stood by the van’s sliding doors, waiting for him, looking scared.
“In the van,” he snapped.
They scrambled back inside and Sheppard sped up the dirt road toward the cabin, his fear so extreme he couldn’t think beyond what he might find in the cabin. He couldn’t think clearly enough to answer the girls’ barrage of questions. What’s going on? Why’re the dogs howling? Where’re my parents? Where’s Ricki?
He slammed on the brakes, barked at the girls to stay inside, with the doors locked and the engine running. When he entered the cabin, his weapon was drawn. Wood crackled and hissed in the stove. A blanket lay across the recliner. Mira’s handbag hung on the back of a kitchen chair. He took in these details in a single, sweeping glance and dread rooted in his bones.
Sheppard moved carefully down the hall, into the bedroom. Nothing disturbed. The closet door stood slightly ajar and he opened it all the way with the toe of his shoe. It looked as if clothes had been grabbed in a hurry, hangers every which way, some on the floor of the closet. He and Mira had slid their suitcases under the bed after they had unpacked, but when he got down and peered under, hers was gone.
He turned slowly in place, struggling against the incomprehensible. Had she heard the shots in the house and taken off into the woods? Possible. But then why would she pause long enough to pack a bag and not take her purse?
Sheppard hurried out into the living room again. She’d been sitting in front of the stove when they had left and had moved to the recliner. That was why the blanket was there. Mira’s container of vitamin C and a bottle of water rested on the end table. He knelt and looked under the chair for her shoes.
No shoes.
He hastened back into the bedroom and checked the closet again. No shoes. She’d worn sneakers here and had complained that her feet were cold and that she needed to get a better pair of shoes for this climate. Had she brought any other shoes with her? It seemed that she had, a pair of loafers, and he went over to the closet again. Yes, okay, the loafers were hidden by a T-shirt that had slipped off a hanger.
If she had packed the bag, then it was possible she had taken one of the Stevenses’ cars and escaped in it. But their vehicles had been parked at the side of the farmhouse. The horses. Would she have ridden away on a horse, lugging her
duffel bag? The absurdity of the image drove him into the recliner, fists balled against his eyes, terror pouring through him.
His arms dropped to his sides. Think, think. He got up, paced into the kitchen, and saw Annie’s cell phone half hidden under the newspaper he’d been reading earlier. It was on, his cell number in the window, with a message that there wasn’t any signal. He quickly scrolled to the Call List menu. Mira had dialed his number at 9:03 P.M.; it was now 10:28. So all of this had happened in the last hour and a half.
But where the hell is she?
If she had run, she would have her cell phone and her handbag. He hadn’t found her cell, but he’d found her purse. Even if she had been terrified, she would have taken these two items.
Screams erupted outside and Sheppard shot to his feet and exploded out of the cabin. The van’s doors were open, the engine still idling, and in the backwash from the headlights, he saw Annie racing up the road from the stable, her hair loose, flying out behind her, screaming his name. “Come quick,” she shouted. “There’s... a… a dead man in the stable, Tess is freaking out, and the horses are going wild!”
He grabbed Annie by the shoulders. “Calm down, okay? I need for you to be calm, Annie. I need help.”
“O-o-okay,” she said breathlessly, her eyes wild. “I... the guy. . . one of the stable guys. . . he. . . he was shot in the head, Shep.”
“I want you to go up to the cabin and call 911, Annie. Can you do that for me? Give them this address. Tell them there’re multiple homicides.”
“M-m-multiple?”
“Not your mom,” he said quickly. “I think she took off, into the woods. It’s Tess’s parents, in the house. Tell them an FBI agent is on the scene, but that he needs local help. Will you do that for me?”
“Yes.”
Calmer now. Focused. She had a job to do.
“Then get back into the van.”
“Got it.”
He paused long enough to turn off the engine, but left the headlights on so that he could see. He raced toward the barn and, in his peripheral vision, caught sight of Ricki the retriever dashing through the snowfall, answering Tess’s frantic screams. Just as he reached the barn, the large black horse shot out the doors and thundered down the road. Tess stumbled out behind the horse, her face ravaged, and threw her arms around the dog, holding on as though she were drowning.
Sheppard spoke to her quietly, gently, until she stopped sobbing, then told her to go up to the cabin with the dog, where Annie was, and wait for him there. She nodded, wiped her hand across her nose, but tears still streamed down her cheeks. “Hernando,” she managed to whisper. “He’s. . . he’s down there. Dead. I... I don’t know where Miguel is.”
“Miguel is the other guy who works in the barn?”
“Hernando’s brother.”
“Okay. I’ll find him. You just wait up at the cabin with Annie and Ricki. The police are coming.”
Now that she had been given a specific task, she calmed down, just as Annie had, and loped toward the cabin with Ricki trotting alongside her. Sheppard stepped into the barn, found the wall switch, and a bright, naked bulb came on, swinging slightly in the cold air, casting erratic patches of light across the floor, the scattered hay, the open stall door. The miniature horse snorted and pawed at her stall floor and stuck her head over the top of her stall, eyeing him with considerable wariness.
The dead man—Hernando—lay on the floor, shot through the head. Sheppard stepped over him and opened the door to the tack room. There, slumped against the wall, lay another man, probably Hernando’s brother. He had fallen into a rack that had held bridles and stirrups, and some of them now lay across his thighs and were strewn around him on the floor. Blood tracked down his face from the corners of his mouth, and as Sheppard neared him, the man wheezed and coughed and his eyes fluttered open, glazed with agony.
“Ayudame, “he whispered.
“La ambulancia ya viene. “ Sheppard jerked a heavy horse blanket off the rack and covered the man’s legs with it. He unzipped his jacket halfway, exposing the dark red stain that spread across the front of his sweatshirt, then zipped it back up to keep him warm. He kept talking to him in Spanish, reassuring him that he was going to be okay, that help was coming. “ Quien hizo esto?” Who did this?
The man’s lips moved, but nothing came out. His eyes fluttered shut, then opened again, and he groaned and Sheppard repeated his question and leaned closer. The man murmured something.
“No te entiendo, “Sheppard said, and took the man’s tight hand in both of his own and told him to move his index finger if the answer was no or to blink if he didn’t know.
Was it someone he knew?
The finger moved. No.
Was it a man?
A blink: he didn’t know, probably hadn’t seen the person.
Sirens shrieked in the distance. The wind blew snow through the open barn doors, the miniature horse snorted and whinnied. Blood streamed more freely from the corners of the man’s mouth and Sheppard heard Mira’s voice in his head: They’re messengers.... Owls are thought to carry the souls of the recently deceased.
Did he hear gunshots?
The finger didn’t move. That was a yes.
How many shots? One? Two? Three?
“Tres, “he whispered.
Three.
Had he seen a car?”
“Si.” A sibilant hiss.
The man coughed and blood sprayed from his mouth. Sheppard knew he was drowning in it, that blood was filling his lungs, and that he wasn’t going to last much longer. And because he suspected the man was Mexican and because most Mexicans were Catholics, he started saying the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish, and the man died with Sheppard still holding his hand.
2
“I need to go up to the house,” Tess said softly, moving toward the cabin door, where Ricki whimpered and pawed to be let out.
“No.” Annie grabbed her arm. “Shep told us to stay here.”
Tess looked at Annie, her face ravaged. “I—I need to be with my mom and dad.”
Multiple homicides... Tess’s parents. Annie clutched her arms tightly to her body, terrified that if she moved, if she spoke, the shudders tearing through her would rip her body apart. She couldn’t get the sight of the dead man out of her mind, and the longer she stood there, doing nothing, the more vivid the image became. Now his face changed to that of Tess’s parents, then shifted again to the face of her mother. She finally pressed her fists into her eyes and struggled against the possibility that Shep had lied to her, that her mother was inside the house with Tess’s parents, lying there, bloodied, dead. And alone.
“I’m going,” Tess said, and threw open the cabin door and took off into the snowfall, Ricki racing alongside her.
Annie hesitated a moment, the image of her mother’s face burning like the sun in her head, then ran after them, her own fear shoving her forward faster, faster, until she passed Tess. Please don’t let Mom be in there.
Sirens wailed. In moments the cops would be here and if her mom was in the house, they would whisk her body away and... A sob exploded from her mouth, she pounded up the porch steps and paused at the door, her heart racing, her eyes aching from the cold.
Ricki barked and whined and pawed at the door. Annie touched the knob, but couldn’t bring herself to turn it, to open the door. Once she opened it and went inside the house, she would know for sure whether her mom was dead. As long as she didn’t open it, she wouldn’t have to know. Tess lurched to a stop behind her, breathing hard, and lunged for the door, but Annie turned quickly, blocking it with her body.
“We can’t go inside. Shep told us to stay in the cabin.”
“Get out of my way. It’s my house.”
“We can’t—”
Tess shoved her hard and hurled open the door, screaming, “Mom? Dad?”
The shudders tore through Annie again. She felt as if her bones were shattering, her organs collapsing, and she gasped and doubled over at the w
aist. Then she snapped upright and ran into the house, shouting for Tess, her eyes darting here, sweeping the front rooms for some sign of her mother.
Then Tess’s shrieks ripped apart the silence in the house, shrill, horrid sounds chopped up with panic, horror, the incomprehensible. Annie found her halfway up the stairs, cradling her dead mother’s head in her lap, and the sight of it, of Ramona Stevens’s lifeless body, filled her with such profound horror that she just stood there, staring, unable to make sense of it. Tess seemed beyond help. She wailed and shrieked and rocked her body back and forth, her hands smoothing her mother’s hair off her cheeks.
Annie broke loose from her paralysis and raced up the stairs to the second floor, shouting for her mother, praying that Shep had been telling her the truth, that her mother wasn’t here.
No one was on the second floor.
As she ran back down the stairs to check the first floor, cops suddenly poured through the front door and two of them tried to restrain her. She kicked and bit and wrenched free and made it into the kitchen, where the dog was draped over Jerry’s body, whimpering and licking his face.
“She’s not in here, Annie,” Sheppard said, hurrying over to her.
Annie spun around. ‘Then where the hell is she? We have to look for her, we have to go into the woods and search for her. She could be out there, shot and bleeding and dy-dy… “ She choked on the word, couldn’t bring herself to say dying, and then she collapsed into Sheppard’s arms, sobbing and clinging to him and he scooped her up in his arms and carried her outside.
3
Midnight. Snow blanketed the ground and the stuff was still coming down. It cast a strange and terrible silence across the farm and within that silence, Sheppard’s stomach churned.
He stood at the cabin window, Ricki the dog curled up in front of the stove, Annie asleep on the couch behind him, and Tess asleep in the bedroom, both of them knocked out by whatever a paramedic had given them. His breath fogged the glass, and every so often he ran his palm over it in tight circles, clearing a space so he could see outside.
Total Silence Page 3