Cutter (Gail McCarthy Mystery series)

by Laura Crum

  "We have information that Casey Brooks called this number the night before he was killed," I said pompously. "Could you explain your relationship with him and what you spoke about that night, please?"

  Sandy Barnwell snorted. "My relationship with Casey? I didn't have one."

  "You knew him?"

  "Of course I knew him. Everybody in the cutting horse business knew Casey. He was a real good hand."

  Mouthing the last sentence with her as she spoke it, I cut in, "You're in the cutting horse business?"

  "I train horses-cutting horses, mostly. I thought you knew, or why would you call me?"

  "Would you please tell me everything you know about Casey Brooks, especially his last phone call to you?" The bureaucratic style-we don't answer questions, we ask them-was almost fun, I thought, if you were on the dishing-out rather than the receiving end.

  "I don't know much." Sandy Barnwell's voice was crisp. I tried to conjure up a face to fit the voice, but nothing came to mind.

  "I saw Casey at the shows, that was about it," she went on. "We said hello to each other. We weren't particularly friendly, mostly because of Will."

  "Will George?"

  "Yes." The voice sounded surprised again, having supposed total ignorance on my part by now. "Will's a good friend of mine; I started out working for him and he's helped me a lot. Will and Casey were in some kind of pissing contest, and Casey figured I'd take Will's part. Anyway, what he called me about was the colt that won the West Coast Futurity. He was interested in buying him for a client, he said."

  Casey, I guessed, had done a bit of ad-libbing, too.

  "He wanted to know what I knew about him," Sandy Barnwell went on, "which wasn't really anything. Casey said he called me because he saw the tape of the finals and saw I was turning back for Will."

  Bingo. Now I could put a face to the name-the female turnback rider on the tape-dark blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail under a white straw hat, middle thirties, a face that had looked more than tough enough to compete with the boys and win. Sandy Barnwell.

  "I couldn't tell him anything about the horse," she said, "but one of the kids that works for Will-Tammy Hart-has an aunt that rides with me. I gave Casey the aunt's phone number, told him to get Tammy's phone number from her."

  Cutting horses were a small world, I thought; everybody knew everybody else. Casey had counted on that when he'd started calling.

  Sandy Barnwell had nothing more to add, and the next phone number proved to be the aunt, as I had expected. I gave her my Detective Ward imitation, which I was finding handy, and confirmed Tammy Hart's phone number-the next number on the list.

  A male voice answered the phone. Yes, Tammy was at home. After a moment a young female voice came on the line with a tentative "Hello."

  Launching into the Detective Ward spiel, I quickly reduced Tammy Hart's reticence into an overawed eagerness to cooperate. Yes, Casey had called her about the horse, yes, she knew the horse, yes, she'd told him who'd ridden it for Will. And yes, Will hadn't ridden the horse at all, that she knew of. He'd just gotten on it at the Futurity.

  That was the gist of her information. Hanging up thoughtfully, I dialed the next number on the list. No answer. No one home. But there had, I saw, been someone home the night Casey had called. The bill showed three minutes' worth of conversation.

  Dialing again, I got two rings and then a tape. "You've reached Will George." I hung up the phone. Casey, it seemed, had talked to Will for five minutes or so, according to the phone bill.

  The last number got me another recording, which announced that I had reached R & R Enterprises and Resavich Farms and that they were closed at the moment. I listened to the beep which preceded the message portion of the tape and wondered why Casey had tried to call Ken at his business. The phone bill showed that in all probability Casey had gotten the message machine, too-only one minute's worth of phone time was spent. Why not call Ken at home?

  Looking up from the bill, I stared at the blank, black square of window glass, toward where I knew Ken's house sat, lightless in the night. Maybe Ken hadn't been home that evening, either.

  A shiver rippled down my spine. Suddenly the blackness outside the window made me uneasy. There I sat in the light, framed for anyone to see who was out there, lurking. Who would be out there lurking, I admonished myself, but the answer was unfortunately easy. Whoever had killed Casey. And "whoever" had a face now. Or at least I thought so. I thought I knew what Casey knew, what had gotten him killed.

  And it had never occurred to me, I realized, with my unease turning to genuine fear, that it could get me killed, too. Why in the world hadn't it struck me that if someone had killed Casey, that same someone would desperately want Casey's death to be left an accident, would not want any amateur detectives nosing around stirring things up.

  Intentions of waiting for Melissa vanishing into thin air, I got up abruptly, almost lunging away from the suddenly ominous window. I made for the door at a half run, wanting out, wanting home, wanting safety. I wished desperately for my gun, which was in my house, in its locked drawer; I seldom carried it, and it had never occurred to me until this moment to be afraid of Casey's unknown assailant-to be honest, I had never, until now, been completely sure that Casey had been murdered.

  Virtually holding my breath, I cautiously opened the door of the mobile. No sound, no motion, no car but my own truck in the driveway, illuminated faintly by the light pouring out of the living-room window. I headed toward it, looking over my shoulder every other step. No one. No hurrying footsteps. Nothing.

  I scrambled into the cab, locked the doors behind me and let out a breath. Safe, so far. I longed for Blue's comforting presence, even if he would have been less than useful as a defense system, but he too was at home, left in his yard with its comfortable doghouse.

  Smooth, reassuring engine noise as I turned the key; I relaxed a hair and pulled out of the driveway with my jangling nerves starting to quiet. Indian Gulch Ranch lay under somber, unrelieved blackness all around me. A moonless night-ideal cover for would-be assassins.

  The thought made me drive faster, and I pulled out onto Spring Valley Road with a deep sigh of relief. I kept up the speed, heading down the long grade the locals called Guadalupe at a good, brisk fifty miles an hour, driving toward the lights of civilization, of help and safety.

  Trouble, when it came, seemed at first innocuous-a steady clunking noise somewhere in the front of the truck. The noise persisted, and, fearing a flat, I pulled to the side of the road, cursing. I did not want to change a tire alone in the darkness. Not now. Not tonight.

  A flashlight inspection revealed nothing. All the tires looked fine. I kicked them in turn; none was flat. Jumping back in the truck quickly, I thought that whatever it was would keep until I got to Watsonville.

  Wrong. The clunking grew louder and I slowed to a cautious thirty-and suddenly things started happening fast.

  The front end of the truck shook violently, and the right side seemed to drop out from under me. Barely a glimpse in the peripheral glow of the headlights, one of my wheels bounced toward the verge of the road, and the truck was sliding hard to the right. Gripping the steering wheel, I strained uselessly to correct it-dark trees flashed surrealistically by the windows. Another moment of violent, disconnected movement, like nothing so much as one of those whirling, eggbeater type rides at the county fair-too rapid for fear-and everything came to a halt with a loud, solid, bone-jerking crash.

  For a long moment I wasn't sure of anything-where I was, if I was hurt, if I was upside-down or right-side-up. Gradually I realized the truck was tipped to the right at a sharp angle, just off the side of the road. I was still in the driver's seat, more or less, and looking out the passenger window I could see branches and part of the trunk of a largish pine tree, a pine tree that appeared to be preventing the truck from rolling down what I remembered as a long, steep hillside.

  The thought galvanized me back to life. Wiggling my toes and fingers, th
en my arms and legs, I took brief stock. It looked as though my knee had gone through the dash. The windshield was shattered, and I had a cut on my forehead that was dripping blood down my face, but there was nothing else wrong with my body that I could tell.

  The truck was another matter. The driver's side door was undamaged and opened easily to allow me to negotiate with some caution a considerable drop to ground level. Once out, I stood there on the shoulder of the road, staring. The truck had slammed into the pine tree half sideways, half straight, and the general effect had been to crumple and twist the front end and cab pretty completely. One headlight and the taillights still glowed, showing that the right-hand side of the pickup was a mass of mangled sheet metal. I could see that a low-growing, stubbed-off limb of the pine tree had shattered the windshield, and thanked God it hadn't been my head. The cut on my forehead, I thought, swiping at the blood with the back of my hand, was probably just from the flying glass.

  Surprisingly I felt no pain at all, though the smashed hole in the dash indicated that my knee should be hurting like hell. Adrenaline is a very effective painkiller. I peered past the crumpled wreck of the truck to the dark void of steep hillside beyond, and wondered if my wheel was lying down there somewhere, hundreds of feet below. Wondered if my truck would have been lying next to it, in a considerably more crumpled state, if it weren't for the pine tree.

  Strange thought. I felt disoriented, as if reality had suddenly shifted and changed under my feet; the world looked dreamlike. I'd felt much the same after the massive shock wave of the Lorna Prieta earthquake; nothing seemed real. I was aware of the black night around me, the silence, a slight wind muttering in the branches of the pine tree that had saved my life. Spring Valley was not a well-traveled road, but someone, I thought vaguely, should come along. Surely I wouldn't have to walk to Watsonville.

  With that dismal thought came the glow of headlights behind me, winding down the hill, and my heart lifted. I waved an arm hopefully and the vehicle obligingly slowed and pulled in. I was walking toward it when I recognized the truck.

  In a sick rush all my fear returned; I remembered Casey Brooks and the thoughts that the crash had driven out of my mind and saw, in the glow of the headlights, that the figure getting out of the truck was carrying a tire iron. A helpful, normal-looking tire iron, suddenly spelling disaster.

  A wild glance showed no other cars in sight. I turned to run, to put the truck between us, to dive into the scrub, to get away somehow, and knew with awful certainty that it was too late. Hard running footsteps behind me, a grunting breath-I jumped sideways desperately and felt something hit my head. There was a rushing in my ears, and blackness.

  Chapter NINETEEN

  I came to consciousness slowly. For a long time I was aware only of pain, and not of myself as a person, suffering it. Only an endless thudding pain, simple uninvolved reality. Everything was black.

  A long, long time before pain in blackness resolved itself into where-am-I type consciousness. Finally, I knew that I was lying face down with my hands behind my back in an uncomfortable position. I tried to move them and couldn't do it. Slowly I realized they were tied together. As were my feet. More slow minutes passed while I figured out the absolute blackness was due to a blindfold over my eyes. There was a gag in my mouth. I was, in fact, tied up like a victim in a melodrama. I had no idea where.

  Little by little I remembered what had led up to this situation, and the pounding pain in my head was gradually superseded by a heart-stopping anxiety. My assailant meant to kill me, I was sure of it. Why I hadn't been bashed on the head and left in my truck, I had no idea. My death, as even I could see, was clearly necessary.

  Fighting to turn my thoughts away from that dry-mouthed, fearful certainty, I noticed dully that my face was pressed against something that prickled. I turned my head from side to side. The green, sweet smell was familiar. Alfalfa hay. I was lying on hay. That meant a barn, probably. With that thought, the little noises that I'd only been vaguely aware of resolved themselves into the occasional creak and rustle of an old building, probably full of rats. All else was quiet.

  I listened a long time, straining to hear some other sound, but there was nothing. I was tied up in a hay barn, then, with no livestock in it, probably. I couldn't hear any activity going on anywhere around it, either.

  But why? Why put me anywhere at all? Why not just kill me and leave me with the truck, a nice, simple accident victim.

  Thinking about that took my mind off the pain in my head for a while. Time passed. I lay there and breathed in the smell of alfalfa. My head throbbed, drowning out the dull aches in various other parts of my body. I began to wonder just how long I was to be left like this. No one, surely, would abandon me this way to suffer until I died of starvation.

  The thought of it prickled the hairs on the back of my neck in an onslaught of primitive dread. I would not, I told myself, lie here tamely and wait for it to happen. I would not. My mind whimpered that I hurt, that I was cold and impossibly tired and I felt completely helpless. That was no good.

  Think, Gail.

  Slowly and carefully I explored with my hands the rope that tied them together. Good strong nylon rope, securely knotted. The rope was not so tight that it cut into my wrists, but it was snug. Though I spent a long while trying, I couldn't wriggle or twist my hands out.

  I gave it a rest. I was getting colder by the minute and though the throbbing in my head was, if anything, becoming a little more bearable, the cold was intensifying the aches in my body. My arms and shoulders, particularly, were starting to angrily protest their uncomfortable position, and my knee was shouting at me.

  I could not, I told myself fiercely, just lie here and wait to die. If I couldn't get my hands free, what could I do? I wondered if I could stand up. My feet were tied tightly, crossed at the ankles. I tried to get up on them, but every time I got farther than my knees I fell. The falls sent waves of pain like electric shocks to my already aching brain. Not good.

  I could roll over, maybe. I tried it. By jerking and twisting I could flop over, all right, like a fish out of water. The pain it caused my shoulders and head and knee left me gasping.

  Remembering the heavy blow that had landed on my skull, I wondered if I was concussed. Thought of the quiet and rest prescribed for concussions and decided it didn't much matter. I had to get out of here, wherever here was, if I was to have any future at all.

  I rolled over again. And again. I began to sweat. The pain when I jerked and twisted and thumped against the ground grew in intensity. My shoulders screamed. My knee felt as big as a football. I rolled again, cursing steadily, finding words I never thought I'd have a use for.

  After a dozen or so rolls I lay still. I didn't think I could face another one. My face was pressed into the alfalfa-sweet green dust in my nose. I ached and throbbed and started to shiver again. One thing about the rolling, it kept away the cold.

  My mind drifted. Lonny-he was out of town. No reason for him to worry if he couldn't reach me. I was often out on call; he would simply assume that was the case. Bret would think I was with Lonny, if he noticed my absence at all. If, in fact, he was still staying at my house. No way of knowing.

  My house. I thought of its simple comforts-warmth, food, a soft bed-and tears swam into my eyes. I would never undervalue those things again. That is if I lived through this, which seemed unlikely. No one, I faced the fact, would come looking for me tonight. If it was still tonight. I had no idea how long I'd been unconscious.

  Gathering myself, I tensed my muscles. I would not give up. There was no point in giving up. I rolled. Rolling made my shoulders shriek, jerked my head into throbbing life. I bit the gag in my mouth and rolled again. Another thing about it, when I rolled I didn't worry about being killed; I hurt too much to worry.

  I rolled again. Sometime, somewhere, I had to hit something. The wall of the barn, if I was right. A wall I could rub against. I was not, I could not be, on some endless plain of hay, in some ete
rnal limbo. Eventually, I had to hit a wall. I rolled.

  Another roll. And another. I had to rest. I lay and sweated and wondered if I had any more left in me. Wondered about strength and weakness. I'd always thought I was strong, but I'd never imagined facing a test like this. I didn't feel strong now; I felt weak and helpless. I longed for some Sir Galahad to gallop to my rescue like a maiden in a story. Unfortunately, I couldn't see that it was likely to happen. I had to find the strength to reach that wall. I rolled again.

  I rolled five more times. On the fifth roll I hit the wall. I lay there with my cheek against it for a long time, not thinking at all.

  Eventually the cold twitched my mind back in gear. The one who had left me here could be corning back any time. Now that I had the possible means at hand to save myself there was no excuse to lie waiting to be killed.

  I rubbed the side of my face against the wall. Rough, splintery boards that caught on the cloth tied around my eyes. I needed something that would catch more. Wiggling along the wall, I kept rubbing at the boards. After a while, I found what I'd been looking for. A nice sharp nail sticking out of a board. It dragged at my blindfold when I rubbed against it.

  I rubbed. Pushed. Pulled. Occasionally, I'd miss my aim or push too hard and drive splinters or the nail into my face. I kept rubbing and pushing. There was a warm feeling on my cheek.

  Slowly one corner of the blindfold worked its way down, then another. I fought with it and scraped at it and it came free suddenly, slipping over my nose.

  It took me a minute to realize it had come off because the darkness seemed as absolute without it as with it. I rolled my head around, but I couldn't make out any shapes. No sunlight or moonlight leaked into my prison. It had been a moonless night, I remembered, when I'd left Indian Gulch Ranch.

  Was it even the same night? A sudden panic rushed over me. I had no idea-no way of telling. I could have been out cold for days; I could be anywhere. In a barn somewhere in Nevada, maybe. Was I even on the earth, was life, as I understood it, still the same?