by Gwen Hunter
Bump bump. Bump bump. The sound of hay shuffling. He was in the loft.
If I dropped down into the tack room, I’d have to shoot my way past the lock. Hadn’t I thought that once before? And meantime Alan would have every chance to shoot me from the loft. He could find me, even in the dark from the muzzle flash of the shotgun. . . . My two shells against his several.
Unless I could find a weapon other than the shotgun.
The plastic corner of the box storing Annie Oakley’s old corrective shoes stabbed again. Alan moved slowly. I reached back, touching the rusted metal snarled together in the bottom. How many? Six pair? Seven? Two years worth. "Ash?"
I answered with a horseshoe, tossed Frisbee fashion. It landed harmlessly on a bale of hay. I tossed another and another, hearing them land with near silence or with a hollow clatter on the loft floor. I never hit him. But it slowed him down. He made no noise during the barrage of shoes. But stayed in one place, probably tucked behind a stack of hay. And the shoes, so few, were gone. I wasn’t thinking. I’d have done better to toss the horseshoes at the light and use the baling hook on him. Nothing like hindsight to figure out how to keep myself alive. I dropped back to the straw, throat burning with tears, my cheek on my hand against the floor, my palm resting on wood. Rounded and satiny. The way a handle felt after years of use. Following the shape, I searched for the end.
"Ash." He sounded irritated again. Like someone who had just dodged a boxful of horseshoes. I breathed in the dark, hay dust filling my mouth and nostrils. "Come on. I’m gonna’ win in the end. We both know that. I told you once that I always win. Always. Remember? We were at the turkey-shoot."
My fingers slid down the handle. Farther down. Touched the shaped metal implement. Traced the tines down to their multiple sharp points. Pitchfork.
"I stood a chance of coming in second, right? Or tied with that redneck?" Alan’s voice was cajoling, insulting, his feet moving slowly in the loose hay. If he had been looking up when I threw the baling hook, then he knew where I was.
"That guy, King. He knew he was gonna’ win, remember sweetheart?"
I lifted myself up and sat in the hay. My fingers gripping, lifting the pitchfork. Turning it.
"But he never came back from a trip to his truck. And I won. That was my doing, Ash. I made sure he wouldn’t return to the turkey-shoot." He sounded amused. Infinitely confident.
His voice was closer. I pushed myself to my right knee. And then to my feet, my body bent forward in the dark, fighting for breath. The pain was growing. The burger I ate on the road burbled hot in my stomach, sour and rancid. Shivers gripped me, pulling me into a tight ball. Trying to force me into a fetal position. I fought the contracting muscles, raised myself up higher.
"And you were so happy, remember? That I won? Well, I always win. Always."
I found him, finally, as my eyes adjusted to the night. A pale shadow moving in shadows.
"And I have to win, now, Ash. All those questions you’ve been asking, all the polite queries from that nigger lawyer of yours, have my partners sweating. They’re not happy people right now. Not happy at all."
His partners? Jerel Taylor? Jerel didn’t need DavInc. Something in Alan’s words fell wrongly on my ears but there was no time to question it.
"So, I have to find the reports and the files and the metal canisters, Ashlee. You can understand that."
The openings in the hayloft floor were lined up exactly. A short row of them. One behind my heel. And another about . . . there. "Your partners . . . Jerel?" I asked, stalling again.
Alan moved closer, searching for me in the night, my clothes blending in the shadows. Closer, a step in line with the opening through which we tossed hay to the horses below. Another. Talking all the while. "No, Ash. Jerel’s just my employer. The Beck’s are my business partners, have been for years. But you don’t need to know all that Ash. You just need to give me the evidence. I know you have it, Ash. I searched the house and your cars and even this stinking barn. I’ve looked everywhere. And Monica looked again the night we ‘robbed’ the house. So, it must be in the safe. Good safe crackers are hard to find, did you know that?" he asked conversationally. "Most of them are in jail or working for themselves. And it’s practically impossible to open your safe, Ash. That’s where it all is, isn’t it? In the safe?"
I wavered, the barn floor seeming to tilt beneath me. My Monica? That Beck? I gripped the pitchfork handle.
He stepped in line with the hay drop. A dull floating shadow.
I lunged. And fell forward. Falling from my right leg to my left. Shoving the pitchfork before me. Hard.
A soft "Ooaahfnn," sounded, and my own scream as the pain shot up my leg. A savage sizzle of pure agony.
I fell forward to the hay bales. Alan fell back. Pushed by the tines of the fork, low down on his stomach. Piercing. Quick tear of cloth and the almost rubbery tear of flesh beneath. His feet scrabbling on the wood flooring. Hollow thumps. The wrench of the pitchfork jerked from my grip. The exquisite pain as I landed. Burning up and through me like a brand, searing my flesh to the bone.
Screams. The sound of gagging. Mine? His?
And the slow, silent swish of air as he fell. Landed. An echo of dead weight on wood. A dull, reverberating sound. The horses went crazy. Kicking, screaming. Beating against the wooden walls. And the higher scream of pain as one horse injured herself.
I lay there. Lost my supper in the hay. Retched for a while for good measure. My body rested on the bales, a foot or so off the ground.
And when the horses quieted, long minutes later, I eased up. My hand, pushing on the stiff hay, encountered the rounded, cool plastic of Alan’s gun butt. He’d dropped it. Clutching at the pitchfork. Trying to throw it off. Or pull it out. I slid the gun into my shirt neckline and it slid to my waistband, warm against my skin. I half-remembered to worry about the safety.
I moved to the hay drop and looked down at Mabel. She was blowing, snorting, pawing at a darker shadow in the shadows of her stall. A gleam of moonlight touched the blond of Alan’s hair. He was on the floor of the stall, unmoving and silent.
I made it to the ladder and down to the floor. Made it up the path to the house for the keys and back to the vehicles. There I rested. Cool night breezes had sprung up, soothing the sweat on my body. Chilling me in the humid heat.
The moon had risen high. Still bright. The shadows that had striped the lawn were almost gone. No longer dark slivers of blackness, they were pools beneath the trees, beneath the cars, piled against the house like heaps on the shrubbery. Hunched. Waiting.
Eventually I opened the back of the Jeep and reached inside for the red jump kit of Rescue Squad supplies strapped to the side support. Found, by feel and moonlight, the bandages, tape, scissors and Betadine. Dropped them all down the front of my T-shirt where they jumbled against the waistband of my jeans and the gun.
After a second short rest—during which the shadows began to lengthen again and the owls began to call—I opened the Volvo door and dropped the phone down my shirt front as well.
I was inordinately pleased that I was still thinking well enough to remember the phone. I left the 9mm in the glove box. "See, Jack? I didn’t have to use a gun," I whispered. And I laughed, the cackles crazy. I was shocky. Shaking and short winded. I needed help, fast.
The house looked oddly unchanged, normal and unimpressive. The air was still and unmoving, as if I had left it long ago. I limped inside. There was blood in the hallway and smeared along a wall where Alan had braced himself. Cut by broken glass. The blood-red color was drying out to a rusty brown. How long had I been in the barn?
There was no blood in the kitchen. It was bright with the light Alan had switched on when I invited him in.
I fell into the chair. Retching again. Shivering uncontrollably. My fingers were foreign-looking in the sharp light. Thin, as if they baked of moisture. White with blood loss. Gray-tinged with oxygen deprivation. Deeply ground with blood. The night Jack died my hands had
looked like this. Interesting thought. Oxygen deprivation. I was in shock. Okay. But what was I supposed to do now? The blankets were in the other room and I knew I couldn’t make it. Not now. I rested my head on my arms on the table.
The shakes passed, long minutes later. And as the shivers subsided, the pain also lessened. A long moment of . . . almost . . . peace followed. A moment when my leg ached only intermittently, rhythmically, with the throb of my heart. Between beats was icy ease. I raised my head from the table. Pulled out the hem of my T-shirt. Tugging it slowly from the waistband of my jeans. Collected the jumble of bandages and tape, scissors and phone on my bloody lap. Set them on the table. The sound of them landing on the surface was tinny and keen, my ears picking up the tenor note and missing the bass. I didn’t think that was a good sign.
Alan’s gun was among the stuff on the table. Which was really stupid. I didn’t remember putting it down inside my shirt. It could have gone off. I could have shot myself. Which struck me suddenly as hilarious. I laughed. An agonized sound like a stranger’s panicked whine. When it subsided, I looked down.
The bleeding was pretty bad. My jeans were soaked. Both legs. There was a puddle on the floor beneath my chair about the size of a dinner plate. A smaller one at my ankle. My toes were creased with dried blood and traced with fresh. One foot was black with bruising beneath the bright and rusty red.
Up high on my thigh, blood welled, thick and bright. Carefully I applied pressure to the wound and slightly above it. Blood welled out between my fingers. The pain returned with sharp heat, dimming the light in the room. But I didn’t have time to pass out. And again I laughed. The crazed sound bounced back from the walls.
I fumbled with the phone. Opened it with hands slick and nearly numb. Dialed 911.
The click as help answered. "Nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?"
"I need . . ." My voice was dry and sticky. I cleared it and tried again. "I need help."
"What’s your emergency?"
So precise. So calm and professional. No wasted words. The tone should have restored me. Should have brought all my training to the fore. Instead my hands started shaking again and I wanted to cry. Pain throbbed. Arching up my leg and down. Twisting my calf muscle into tortured knots of pain. "Hello. Can you tell me what your emergency is?"
"I’ve been shot."
"Can you give me your location?" A man’s voice. Henry. Henry Davis. I had helped train him. Good looking kid. Going to college on a tennis scholarship. "I need your location, Ma’am. You’re calling from a cell phone and I don’t—"
"It’s the old Chadwick Farm, Henry. Down to Felix’s Texaco." I was whispering, the sound of my breath like a wind in my ears. But I was so accustomed to giving directions I could do it in my sleep. "Right on Mount Zion Church Road and left into Chadwick Acres. Right onto Chadwick Farm Road." I licked my cracked lips. They tasted salty. My tongue was dry. Swollen.
"I’ve lost about two pints of blood. Maybe three. And you better send the cops, too."
"Ashlee? Is this Ashlee Davenport?" When I didn’t answer he asked again "Ash?"
I licked my lips again. "Yeah. Ash. ’ss me."
"Are you at home?"
"Yeah. Home."
"Ash, where on your body are you shot?"
"Left leg. About four inches distal from the hip. I have entrance and exit wounds on the outer portion of . . . maybe the vastis lateralis." A strange calm settled on me. A peculiar comfort derived from the detached terminology of my profession and the familiar voice on the other end of the line. "I have—" I broke off. Focused on a form standing in the doorway. Bleeding. Clothes torn. Faint stench of feces. The face of a dead man, pale, bloodied. Bruised and torn.
Alan wavered, holding the pitchfork in his left hand. He was bloody and trampled. But then he had fallen into Mabel’s stall, hadn’t he? I stretched my lips up over dry, rough teeth, grinning, though my face felt strange, muscles stiff. Mabel didn’t like men. The skin on the left side of Alan’s face was gone. Ripped away in a wide swathe as if it had been pounded off. He took a step into the room.
A wash of terror flooded through me. I set the phone down. Gently. Henry’s voice was a weak rattle from the tabletop. The terror settled out. Slipped away. I looked at the things on the table. My hand moved from the phone, shaking but careful. I was being very careful tonight, yet I’d managed to get myself shot. A weird crazy sound gurgled in my throat. I picked up the gun. Rested the weight of it on the table.
Blood on my hands made me clumsy and the gun slick. I retched. Swallowed down the taste of bile and acid. A fresh, burning tang, overpowering the taste of old blood and vomit. Everything was moving so slowly. Even the tilting room. Righting itself slowly and tilting again. I was amazed, remotely, that the dishes stayed in place in the cabinets. I blinked.
Alan’s eyes glittered, a dull menace. The holes across his lower abdomen were evenly placed, two in the right quadrant. Two in the left. A neat row of them. There was little bleeding. Just the scent of feces to tell me that I had punctured his intestines. Torn something inside. The blood came from his cut hand and his torn face. "Remember, Ash. I never lose."
He came at me. Moving slowly as if he plowed through thick oil. Turning the pitchfork in his hands. So slowly. Stumbling. Slipping in my blood. His feet leaving red smears. The bloody tines lifted toward me. The room tilted again. A faint sensation of falling.
I fired the gun. And though I knew I couldn’t have, I seemed to see the round leave the barrel. Travel through the air in slow, slow motion. And enter his body. Just below the sternum. Mid-center.
I hit the floor. The gun went off again. The shot going wild. I landed on my bad leg. The pain in the joint shot out, lightning hot, jagged. Darkness pulled me under. A slow-moving cloud of blackness, like the moon shadows outside. I wondered which would reach me first. The pain or the darkness. Before either claimed me, I saw him fall.
He landed in a long graceful tumble. Bounced slightly on the bloody floor. Settled gently, his eyes on mine.
The pitchfork fell beside him. A silent clatter. The sound buried beneath the gun blasts.
He writhed there, his face inches from mine. Curled into a tight ball. His eyes were bewildered. Confused. And though I couldn’t hear the words, I could see his lips. Read their meaning.
"I lost. I . . . I lost."
And as if we were conversing about the weather or the symphony or a new exhibit at the museum, I nodded. My cheek sliding through my blood on the floor tiles. A stately nod. Almost regal. And I watched him die.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I didn’t remember passing out. For that matter, I didn’t remember coming to. I was just suddenly aware that there were at least a hundred people in my kitchen, all shouting at the top of their lungs, tramping blood and red mud all over my once-clean kitchen floor and generally making a mess of things.
The kitchen was still tilted, the floor and walls rising on one side and falling on the other. Yet, my dishes and pots didn’t roll out of the cabinets and shelves and slam to the floor.
My next insight was pain. Waves and waves of pain up my left leg; pain crawling like angry snakes beneath my skin, fangs embedded, poison spreading. I was sure I screamed, yet the sound came out a puny moan. Someone rolled me over. Bret McDermott and Mick Ethridge knelt to either side; Mick applied pressure to my leg, Bret checked my pupils, pulse, respiration.
"Snakes," I whispered. Nausea welled in me like a strong tide. The room seemed to darken and remain that way a moment before slowly growing light again.
Bret smiled down at me. "It’s okay, Ashlee. We’re here."
The world righted again in a sickening lurch as I remembered. "Alan. . . ."
"He’s dead, Ash," Bret said gently.
"No shit, Ashlee. You blew the fu— ah, you blew him away."
I focused on Alan, face down on the floor, a pitchfork beside him. Nana stood over him, shaking her head. "I really liked that boy," she said, sounding confus
ed.
"Dantucket. Course you liked him, you ol’ fool. He jist as charmin’ as that weasel Tom Hamilton you married oncet. I done tol’ you, you ain’t never been a decent judge of character. You never be marryin’ him the first place if you listen to me."
"Shut up Moses."
"Humph."
I smiled and pushed against the floor with my elbows until Bret got the idea and propped me up. I was weak, but at least the room stayed level, and the urge to vomit faded. What was Bret doing here? And then that thought faded too.
Aunt Mosetta was sitting in a chair, wearing fuzzy red slippers and a purple chenille robe. Her hair was up in curlers, the pink foam partially hidden by a turquoise western-style bandanna. Nana was in jeans ripped up the side, her cast bright white against the blood. A plain white cotton nightgown peeked out beneath her sweatshirt and her crutches rested inches from Alan. A sheriff’s deputy asked her to wait outside, adding that this was a crime scene. Nana didn’t move. She was in her rockslide mode, her face set and hard, determined as the most stubborn mule.
The deputy, who was half Nana’s size and looked too young to be allowed out this late, searched for moral support from his fellows. Finding none, he shrugged and moved around her. There were three deputies, four or five Rescue Squad members, two uniformed EMTs bringing in a stretcher and jump kits, and sirens in the distance. "Lovely. Just lovely," I sighed.
Someone called for the coroner. I could hear the voice and the codes being requested from dispatch, but couldn’t locate the speaker. The room twirled around me and my stomach heaved threateningly.
Macon and Wicked stood to one side, Wicked with a digital video camera, the little red light steady as he filmed the action. Wicked would upload the footage to a secure link. The police would try to confiscate it if I was charged with a crime, but at least the record would exist.