by Kit Ehrman
Chapter 4
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak.
He, however, continued. "A white or off-white pickup, pulling a dark-colored horse trailer, was seen in the vicinity around the time we estimate the owner was abducted. A month later, two boys were hiking a trail that parallels the western bank of the Patuxent when they discovered the partially-buried body of a white male. He was later identified as the farm's owner. Before he died, he had been beaten and," he paused, still watching me, "his wrists had been bound with baling twine. It was still on what was left of the body."
I leaned my head against the side window and closed my eyes. A humming noise filled my ears, and I felt as if I were sinking, the blackness behind my eyelids spiraling out of control.
"Mr. Cline . . . you okay?"
I swallowed. My throat was dry. My tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I opened my eyes. "Yeah, sure," I mumbled. "How the hell do you think I am?" I couldn't keep the anger out of my voice. Or was it fear?
He didn't say anything, just looked at me with that damn uninformative expression of his, and I wondered if anything rattled him.
I shifted in my seat and stared out the window. A dozen riders were circling their horses, waiting to go inside for their lesson. Behind us, the sun cast long shadows down the lane. The light had an orangish late-afternoon quality to it. Voices drifted on the cold air while some of the horses, impatient to be going, blew down their noses and pawed the ground. Farther down the lane, the barns looked warm and inviting . . . and safe.
He cleared his throat. "So, now you see why it's important that you carefully think through everything that happened, every detail."
"I already have." I rubbed my face. "I didn't see enough or hear enough to be a threat to them. They took me anyway, and I learned more because of it." Though what good it would do, I couldn't imagine. "Once I was out of the trailer, I could see them better. The leader had light brown hair, maybe blond." I licked my lips and turned to face him. "So, if they wanted to kill me," I paused and hoped he couldn't hear the tremor in my voice, "why didn't they just do it here, on the farm? When I was out?"
He closed his notebook and slid the pencil through the channel formed by the spiraled metal wire. "These guys are smart. In the first place, their timing would have been perfect if you hadn't interrupted them. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn't have been disturbed. In the first incident, in Carroll County, it was just pure luck that we got a description of the truck and trailer, as vague as it is. Howard got zilch when they canvassed this neighborhood. Montgomery County didn't do any better at the location where you escaped. Whatever they used to hit you with, they took with them. They didn't leave fingerprints. The ground was too frozen for tire tracks. You saw how careful they were after you got away from them. That's rare. I'm surprised they didn't double back after they lost you in the woods."
I groaned.
Ralston compressed his lips and studied me with an otherwise dispassionate expression. "And what do you think would have happened Saturday morning, when the rest of the employees arrived to find seven horses missing and you nowhere to be found?"
I looked at him and didn't think I liked the implication.
"Your boss and fellow employees might have been certain you had nothing to do with it," he said. "But sure as I'm sitting here, the police would've been looking for a suspect, not a body. If these guys were really smart, they would have gotten rid of your truck. Then you would have been on top of our list, without question. Not until the connection was made between the two cases, would we seriously have considered that you'd been abducted, and by that time, we would've been lucky to find your body. In the other case, we never found the murder scene. We were damn lucky to find the body, and after a month's exposure in the heat and humidity we had last summer, much of the forensic evidence had been destroyed."
I shifted in my seat. Such a casual discussion of inhumanity was more than a little unsettling.
Ralston reached inside his jacket. "Here's my card. Call me if you think of anything else, no matter how insignificant."
He dropped the gear into reverse, and as I put my hand on the door latch, it occurred to me that they had tried to move my truck. I told him how Marty had found it. That they must have been unsuccessful because the starter was acting up. That I was certain I hadn't left the door open, which had drained the battery. I refrained from telling him about Marty's hot-wiring capabilities.
He tossed his notebook into the briefcase and lowered the lid but left it unlatched. "You need to be careful when you come here outside normal business hours."
"Why?" It came out high-pitched. I cleared my throat. "Why would they come back?"
"I doubt they will. As long as they stay smart they won't, but . . ."
"But what?"
He shrugged. "Just a thought."
"Oh, great." I shoved his card into my jeans pocket. "Who was the man who was, eh . . . killed?"
"James Peters. Ever heard of him?"
I shook my head.
"He and his wife owned and operated a horse farm. Hunter's Ridge. He went out to check on a sick horse and never came back."
I climbed out of the car and watched Ralston drive off. With him went any confidence I'd been able to scrape together in the past week.
The lane was deserted now. All the horses had gone inside for their lesson, out of the wind, out of the cold. The glare from the sodium vapors was taking over in the fading daylight, and after the warmth of the car, the air felt bitterly cold. I pulled my collar up around my neck, got back on the tractor, and drove to the implement building on auto pilot.
I parked next to the manure spreader and didn't bother unhitching the drag. Someone else could do it in the morning. I stopped alongside Dave's workbench and smoothed my fingers across the expertly-sanded wood. The sweet aroma of freshly-cut lumber still hung in the air.
He never came back.
My legs buckled, and I collapsed onto Dave's chair. I wrapped my arms around my waist and hunched forward to keep from shaking. I felt like I had when I was a kid. Felt as helpless and as scared and alone as I had the day my old man dropped me off at a dude ranch in West Virginia a week after my eleventh birthday. I'd stayed the entire summer. Learned more about horses than I'd thought possible, and that seemed to piss off my father even more. The following year, I'd gone off to soccer camp, then lacrosse. Being on my own like that, I'd learned how to take care of myself. By the time I was thirteen, I had grown used to the routine. Actually looked forward to it. Hell, it was better than staying at home with him, with them, where I wasn't wanted, both of them too caught up in their own lives to parent.
I'd thought I could handle anything. Until now.
After a while, I squinted at my watch and waited for the numbers to come into focus. I was late for evening feeding. I wiped my face, blew my nose, and hoped no one had missed me. As I hurried down the rutted lane, I saw that the horses had already been brought in for the night. The winter day had come to an end.
Marty was standing in the middle of the feed room, staring at the cart. He turned with a start when I walked through the doorway. "Where the hell've you been? I was I' ready to grain the horses myself."
"I'll do it."
"Good. I don't know how you stand it. All those damn supplements." He squinted at me. "Hey, you don't look so good, Steve. You comin' down with somethin'?"
"No, I'm fine." I rubbed my face. "Any problems this afternoon?"
"Nope. Everything's done. Was that a cop you were talking to?"
"Uh-huh."
"What'd he want?"
I glanced at Marty then looked down at the feed cart. "Nothing much."
When I said nothing further, Marty said, "Well, seein' as you're gonna do the feeding, can I leave now?"
"Sure . . . have a good night."
"I always do. Jessica's off," he added with a grin that could only be described as wicked.
I chuckled. Marty had the pursuit of h
appiness down to an art form. The pursuit of sex, more like.
"You sure you're all right, Steve?"
I told him to get the hell out before his girlfriend found a replacement and watched as he strolled out of the feed room, whistling under his breath.
