“Honestly?” Karen stepped away from the body. “I suppose it was a matter of respect. His behavior toward me after our night together could only be described as…forced civility.”
“At least he was civil.”
“Oh yes, the ever-polite southern boy. All, excuse-me-ma’am, to your face and a womanizing sleeze-ball just below the surface.”
“I’m surprised you wanted any part of him.”
“Frankly, so am I. The second time we slept together was only because I showed up at his condo wearing nothing under my raincoat. Afterwards he gave me some lame excuse to get rid of me. Said he was having dinner with his sister. Please.”
“It was the truth. He was meeting me later that night.”
“Well, let’s just say, he never got the chance to reject me again.”
Mia tried not to think about the words, about the truth of how her brother died.
“What about Carol?” she asked.
Karen made a sour face. “Carol was an idiot. After Dave died she decided she was in love with him after all. You can trust me on this, death makes some people considerably more attractive.”
“She was onto you, wasn’t she? She accused you?”
“Actually, she accused Trish. So see? Yours wasn’t a totally crazy theory. Except of course, it was wrong. Trish was probably the only woman besides you who Dave didn’t sleep with. When Trish told me what happened, I assured her I would make sure Carol never bothered her again.”
“So you went to Carol’s house.”
“Whereupon the stupid bitch promptly switched her accusation from Trish to me!”
“How did you get her to take the Ecstasy?”
“I told her to calm down. She was being irrational and I offered her a glass of water.” She shrugged. “She drank it down like I was a friend or something. It was so easy.”
“But why kill her?” Maybe she wouldn’t need to run after all. She couldn’t see any weapon on Karen, certainly not a gun or a knife. Maybe she could reason with her? No, she could see that wouldn’t work. Maybe if she taunted her? Didn’t that work on TV?
“You think I wanted to? Up until then I wasn’t on anybody’s radar. Carol told me Dave hinted to her that we had slept together. Hinted in a very mean way.”
“So she and Dave had a good laugh about what a crap lover you were and you threw a tantrum and killed both of them.”
“It’s more complicated than that.” Karen said, her eyes narrowing to slits as she watched Mia.
“Actually, I don’t think it is. And because you worked on both Dave and Carol’s cases as the ME, the cops are not even looking in your direction. Better yet, you were on the scene to doctor tox screens and sabotage evidence.”
Karen laughed. “It was almost too easy.”
“What about Jack?”
The smile fell from Karen’s face. “What about him?”
“Are you giving him the two-dates-and-you’re-out ultimatum? You going to kill him too if he rejects you again?”
“What makes you think he’s ever rejected me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just things he says about you. The times he sees it’s you calling and lets it go to voice mail. Little things.”
“I have been a valuable source of information to Jack and I doubt he has ever screened my calls. You don’t need to worry about me and Jack. We’ll be living together before the year is out.”
“What you said right there makes me think you probably have a good chance with an insanity defense. He says you dress like a man.”
“He never said that.”
“You’re right. I think it was more like ‘she dresses like a man dressing like a woman to look like a man.’”
“You know you’re not leaving here alive.”
“I know I’m not accepting any drinks from you.”
Karen held up a plastic syringe and removed the cap on the needle deftly with one hand. “Not a problem,” she said.
“Someone saw you come here.”
“Nobody who’s alive to testify.”
“Your car tracks.”
“Sorry, sweetie. I didn’t drive. I have a horse at Shakerag. He’s ground tied over in the back field. Why do you think I had Trish suggest this place? It’s covered with horse tracks. I know the forensics abilities of the Atlanta PD. They have trouble matching car tracks. They’ll never be able to handle hoof prints.”
“How are they going to make sense of two dead bodies?”
“Easy.” Karen pointed to the corpse. “You killed Homer here while you were high, then realized what you’d done and killed yourself.”
“Jack won’t believe that for a minute. That I took a bus to the exurbs to get high, killed some homeless guy, and then committed suicide? No one will believe it.”
“They believed it about Dave. If you hadn’t stumbled into Carol’s house when you did, they’d have believed it about her, too. Real life isn’t like CSI, sweetie. Half the time we don’t run the necessary labs because it’s too expensive and takes too long. Half the time it’s just some piece of vermin like this guy here who nobody cares about anyway.”
Karen positioned herself between Mia and the widest avenue around the church to the front drive, blocking Mia’s exit route. “They’ll find your body and figure ‘well, she always was a little nuts.’ Even Jack will think that. I’ll bet he tells you he never met anyone like you, doesn’t he? What he means by that is, sweetie, is he never met anybody as crazy.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he doesn’t grieve too long.”
Mia grabbed up a brick as Karen charged her and flung it in her direction. Because she didn’t have time to cock her arm back the brick only lobbed softly at her target, but the time it took Karen to dodge it gave Mia a few precious seconds.
It went against instinct for Mia to turn away from the front of the church and the road that led to safety and people, but with Karen blocking her path she had no choice. She ran toward the pasture behind the church, her eyes searching desperately for something, anything, she could use as a weapon.
“It’s useless, Mia,” Karen yelled, her voice coming from just a few yards behind Mia. “You can’t get away.”
Expecting to feel the needle lance into her from behind at any moment, Mia snatched up a thin board from the ground. Splinters stabbed into the palm of her hand, and she flung the wood behind her without looking. She heard a thud and a grunt and used the small victory as momentum to push her toward the pasture.
The metal gate, the only part of the barrier not studded with barbwire, was directly in front of her now, latched but not locked. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have time to unlatch it anyway. As soon as she reached it, she climbed two rungs and vaulted over the top feeling a vibrating shock course up her arms from the countless past riders who’d touched it.
Mia knew it would only take Karen seconds to follow her through the gate and she also knew that the field led to ten miles of empty grassland until it reached the Chattahoochee River. This close to Thanksgiving, there would be no riders in the pasture.
Mia landed on the other side of the gate with a thud and lost precious seconds scrambling back to her feet. On the other side of the gate was a small copse of bushes and saplings before the terrain opened up to the undulating, exposed pasture. Even in the cold, beads of sweat formed on her top lip and she could feel her sides heaving with exertion.
“Nowhere to run, Mia,” Karen called. Mia detected anger in her voice now as if Karen hadn’t expected for this to take so long. “You’ll wear out long before you reach help. And I’ll be right behind you.”
Mia grabbed up a handful of rocks and pebbles as she got to her feet and clenched them in her sweaty hands. She didn’t dare take the time to turn and fire them off. If she missed or didn’t do enough damage, she’d be face-to-face with her.
Breaking through the mass of bushes, she ran smack into the solid brown mass of a standing draft horse. The animal shied
away and squealed in shock and Mia saw the whites of his eyes widen with fear. He must be twenty hands high, she thought. The stirrups on his saddle were threaded all the way up and with short, jerky movements, she reached for the one closest to her and yanked it down. He swiveled away from her when she touched him but didn’t run. His reins were looped over his head and trailing on the ground.
What was it Karen said? Her horse was ground tied?
Over her shoulder she heard the chain on the gate rattle as Karen opted to go through it instead of climbing it.
Mia grabbed the loose reins and flung them over the horse’s head. She had never been so close to a horse this large. A single miss-step from one of his monstrous feet would cripple her instantly.
She didn’t have time to think about that now. Even pulled all the way down, the stirrup was still as high as her chin and there was no time to look for a mounting stone. Twisting her fingers in the horse’s mane, she backed up as far as she could while still keeping a grip on him and, using every ounce of her fear and desperation to fuel her effort, ran at him in a two-step vault, swinging her right leg up and catching her foot in the stirrup.
Her foot jabbed him sharply in the side and he jerked violently, but by then her fingers were wound into his mane and he couldn’t shake her loose. She hauled herself up until she was balanced in the stirrup and waited until he settled. She finished the arc of her leg as it swung across the saddle and found the other stirrup just as Karen broke through the copse.
Mia felt the power coil beneath her as if it were coming from her own body. When her legs and thighs closed around him, she and the giant animal fused as one. And when she realized she wasn’t afraid any more she felt him calm beneath her as he sensed her control.
No, she wasn’t afraid.
She was effing furious.
Gathering the reins firmly in both hands, she turned the horse’s head toward Karen and watched her back up, her eyes watching the animal’s massive, prancing feet.
“Come on, Doc,” Mia said, biting off every word. “Just remember if you stick the horse instead, I’m pretty sure this is gonna end with me grinding your face in the dirt.”
She watched Karen hesitate, shifting the needle to a stabbing position in her hand as she eyed Mia on the prancing horse.
“Oh, did I mention the other option?” Mia said, taking the end of the reins and slapping them hard against the jumpy animal’s shoulder while she dug her heels into his sides. The horse bolted—two tons of controlled, nearly hysterical energy—straight for Karen.
Mia heard her shriek and try to dodge out of the way, too intent on avoiding the monster bearing down on her to aim for an exposed thigh as they passed. Mia jerked the horse’s head severely back in the direction they came and he swiveled on two legs to obey her. She held him in check and could feel him gathering his strength beneath her—ready to erupt into a rear at any moment.
She envisioned him lifting his front feet off the ground, pawing the air as she urged him forward in midflight—to come down hard on the woman standing before them. It was as if he saw it, too. Slowly, deliberately, he raised up on his back legs and Mia dropped the reins to grab his mane and hug his neck as the seat of the saddle dropped away from her. She never even had to touch him with her heels. He just knew. She’d already told him what she wanted.
“Mia, no!”
The voice came out of the mist of her frenzied intent like a rocket blazing across the sky. She closed her thighs around the animal’s sides and felt him drop back gently to the ground. She was suddenly aware of the faint wail in the distance of police car sirens growing louder and louder.
Karen stood in front of her, the needle gone from her hand. Mia walked the horse a few yards away, while the animal stamped his feet and shook his head in frustration. Jack ran from the direction of the gate, his hands outstretched and holding a gun so that both women could see. But he was pointing it at Karen.
“Hands above your head, Karen,” he shouted. “Mia, you okay up there?”
Through the thin veil of trees, Mia saw glimpses of four police cruisers pulling up onto the grass and gravel in front of the True Way Baptist Church. At the same time, she smelled the wood smoke from someone’s fireplace and felt the late autumn sun returning to warm her back.
She leaned down and stroked the horse’s neck and, after giving one last shiver that rippled out from where she touched him, he calmed beneath her touch.
I’m okay, she thought. I finally really am.
21
It was well past dark when Jack finally drove her back to town. The elation of having identified—and survived—Dave’s killer seeped away like the last rays of light over the little one-steeple church. Without asking her, he drove to a hamburger drive-through and ordered two double cheeseburgers, fries, and Cokes.
Mia couldn’t believe how hungry she was and what a genius Jack was for knowing it.
“Dave and I were always starving when we cracked a case,” he said as he bit into one of the burgers. They sat with the car heater on in the parking lot of the restaurant.
“Did you always load up on burgers and fries?” Mia couldn’t remember tasting anything as perfectly delicious as the burger in her hands.
“We did. We’d get so caught up in the puzzle and going down all the rabbit holes and dead ends—especially when we got close at the end—we’d forget about eating and then when it was over we’d be starving.”
“Working with my brother wasn’t always horrible,” Mia said.
“No.” They ate in silence for a moment. “In fact, Maxwell was right. There’s no way we could’ve been as successful as we were if we didn’t mesh well together.” He lifted up the bag of fries. “Right down to the brand of grease we loved.” He laughed. “This was as close as I could get to The Varsity. That was usually where we ended up.”
“So what happened?”
He pushed his burger away and looked at her and she could see he wanted to talk but he also didn’t want to. She waited.
“I found out something a few days ago,” he said, “when I was at Diane’s house. I guess I shouldn’t say I found out because it was more like it presented itself to me. I can’t explain it. You know how sometimes your mind is putting things together and you don’t realize it until bingo! There’s this fully formed thought in your head?”
“Kind of.”
“Seven years ago, I was in Iraq,” he said, looking now out of the car window into the night. “I was in a platoon with five other guys. We were the Band of Brothers, you know?”
He rubbed his eyes and picked up his burger but put it back down. “One night, we were out on patrol and one of the guys…” He cleared his throat. “We called him Beaner. All of us had nicknames. Anyway, one night we were going out and Beaner told us orders came down and we needed to change the coordinates of our meet-up that night.”
Mia put her hand on his knee.
“We hit the IED full on. Because I was sitting with Beaner in the back, we were thrown clear.”
“Oh, Jack…”
“Two of the guys were killed outright. Davey and Fatso. Davey had been driving. He wasn’t twenty years old. Fatso was a new father. Ketchum lost a leg. Grub and Marley got PTSD so bad from the incident that both of them are sitting in VA hospitals right now afraid to walk down the hall by themselves.”
“But you and Beaner were unharmed?”
Burton looked at her. “Well, yes and no. I called it in. Beaner just kind of sat there, stunned. I had to physically drag him under the truck in case there were snipers in place to mop up the aftermath.”
He ran a hand over his face. “I can still hear Ketchum screaming, honest to God.”
“Did you ever find out why Beaner changed the coordinates?”
He nodded. “Yeah. He didn’t want to go by a section on the grid where there was this girl he was screwing. Seems he’d gotten her pregnant and made some promises. Fill in the blanks.”
“Where is he now?”
/> Burton gave a mirthless laugh. “You’re not going to believe this. He got testicular cancer four months later and was gone two months after that.”
Mia took his hand. “There’s a reason you’re telling me this story now,” she said.
He nodded, not looking at her. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “I swear I never realized it before, but turns out your brother and Beaner were…a lot alike. Same height, same build, same coloring and they acted alike, too. I saw a group photo with Beaner last week at Diane’s and for a minute I thought it was Dave.”
Mia didn’t speak and Burton looked at her. “I hated Dave for no good reason other than I couldn’t connect the dots on a guy I thought committed the worst crime in the world and then got off the hook.”
“Well, he did die.”
“I know. There’s that. I’m not sure Dave and I would ever have been friends. But I hung something on him that didn’t belong there. And he didn’t deserve it.”
Mia squeezed his hand. “I forgive you, Jack,” she said. “And I know if Dave were here, he would too.”
He looked at her and she watched his face soften as if he could feel the absolution touch him. “Thanks, Mia,” he said. “On top of it all, it was through Dave that I found you and that amazes me every day.”
Mia turned her face away so that he wouldn’t see her smile. They ate quietly for a moment.
“Oh!” she said suddenly. “I have news. My mom is dating Bill Maxwell. She doesn’t think I know.”
“Your mom and Maxwell?” Jack frowned as if trying to visualize it.
“I know. Pretty weird, huh? I caught the tail end of a phone conversation between them.”
“How long has it been going on?”
Mia shrugged. “I have no idea.” She wiped her fingers with one of the paper napkins. “But while we’re being all contrite here,” she said. “I want to formally apologize for giving you the slip this morning.”
“My fault,” he said. “If I’d’ve trusted you more, you wouldn’t have kept the call from Trish a secret from me.”
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