by Ann Self
“Oh God...oh God!” She yanked herself back to the bars, pressing her face against the cool metal for reassurance, her heart hammering against the boards. Her feet were dangerously near the edge of the square opening, pitched high over the cellar floor below. She gasped and cried out, and this set the horses into a loud keening. After pulling herself together, Jane carefully side-stepped back down the stall fronts, hand over hand on the bars. After five stalls, she bent down to tap the floor to be sure she was past the hole and on solid planks. Then she ran towards the faint light, terrified of the black floor beneath her, certain that each step would be on air that would pitch her into the cellar.
When she reached the hallway intersection, she grabbed a metal grain scoop out of the feedroom to smash a pane of glass in Sam’s door, then put a hand through to unlock it. She turned on every light in the office. On a shelf over the file cabinets, she yanked a powerful spotlight of its charging base. Slipping and crunching through glass, she raced back around the corner to the entrance to the south wing. Jane snapped the lamp on and aimed it in, holding the spotlight grip in two hands like a gun. She advanced slowly forward, the light pooling and spilling along the rough-planked floor until it found what she feared seeing: the open trap door. It was folded back, revealing a square in the floor as black as midnight, like a dark sea floating in the middle of heavy floor planks.
“BILL!” she shrieked, but heard nothing, other than more nervous whinnying. Her heart was now going like a trip hammer and the beam of light shivered in her hands. She didn’t want to move forward towards that black hole, but her feet were taking her there, reluctantly propelled.
“REGGIE!” she yelled back over her shoulder, but still there was no response. She stepped up to the gaping black hole and the first kiss of the spotlight illuminated ancient wood floor joists and lacy cobwebs that held the shells of long-dead insects. The horrid musty smell made her want to cut and run, but she gripped the spotlight in mounting terror and let the blinding fan of light spill far down into the hole of the “cave”. The five-million candlepower halogen light splashed on the dead face of Bill Welch, sprawled fifteen feet below, his body impaled on steel spears that were used to pierce bales of hay. Extra baling spears that were usually stored against a wall—only now they were on the cellar floor with their points facing upward under the trapdoor.
“Oh...God...no...”
The Vet would have nothing to say to Jane that night. His eyes were open, seeing nothing; the side of his face badly scraped where it connected on the edge of the barn floor when his last step was not a wooden plank but black air. His stethoscope still hung around his neck, his shirt stained bright red. A medical case was broken open, and the contents strewn all over the cellar floor, mingling with the glistening pools of blood. A small cell phone with an integral pen-light lay nearby; the tiny light that had led him straight to the box with the switch and—when he failed to look down—right into the black hole of death.
Scream after sobbing scream ripped from Jane’s throat as she stood frozen in position, unable to move or take the beam off the gruesome sight. Yet no one came. Even when she screamed again for Reggie no help materialized; only the horses answered with their own screams. It seemed she was entirely alone in this big house of horrors with a dead—horribly dead body.
Jane started to cry and shake violently, nearly dropping the spotlight into the cellar. She shut her eyes to wipe out the sight, but then feared she would end up in the musty grave herself, dropping fifteen feet below to join the Doctor on the rack of vicious steel spears. Her head was growing fuzzy and she was close to losing consciousness. She took the light off his body and ran it around the stalls. She began to back away slowly, one step at a time. The mammoth building was breathing again; a whale’s belly of moist, dark air. She heard the snap of a floor plank and swung the beam up to the ceiling. The light played over huge wooden support timbers and old cobwebs that fluttered on air currents, looking like lace curtains in a ghost town. The blinding rays of quartz halogen light raced into the triangular holes over the stalls, sucked up into the darkness. She told herself there was nothing up there but the hayloft. Dizziness and vertigo flirted with her vision again, so she stopped looking up and lowered the beam and swept it behind her in wide arcs, half expecting the dark square in the floor to be inching forward to snare her feet.
Nothing. Nobody. The dark hole that had gobbled up Bill remained in place, perhaps satisfied with one victim for the moment. All she could see was an empty barn, except for the disembodied glowing retinas of horses cowering in their stalls. Again, she felt the centipede-like sensation on her limbs, back and neck. Her feet finally freed themselves from their nightmare sluggishness and she ran back to the intersecting hallway. Setting the spotlight down, she dashed for Reggie’s door and pounded on it again, screaming at the top of her lungs.
He didn’t answer, so she kicked the door open with her boots, splintering the cheap casing. The light was still on and he was slumped fully dressed in his chair by the window. Jane clasped both hands to her face and screamed again, but this time Reggie roused. “Reggie!” She ran to him and fell at his feet, clutching the arms of his chair. “Reggie, wake up! There’s been a terrible accident!”
He came to slowly, and seemed disoriented.
“Jane...what? Why are you here...what time is it?”
“It’s after eleven at night! Why are you sleeping in your chair?” she gasped hysterically.
Reggie reached for a coffee mug fallen by the side of the chair. He stared at it groggily and then his bleary eyes tried to pull Jane in focus.
“I’m wondering the same thing...”
SEVEN
The sky was ink-black over the estate; the peeping of wood frogs and crickets echoing into the night. Acres of dark pastures were covered in heavy dew and silhouettes of giant trees were still and listening. Several birds huddled quietly waiting for dawn, perched on a gnarled tree on top of a knoll. They were lined up like clothespins on a horizontal limb. At one o’clock in the morning there was no hint of sun on the horizon of Springhill—dawn still hours away—but the monstrous barn was lit up like a Christmas tree and busy as an ant hill.
A swarm of emergency vehicles littered the stableyard, sprouting bobbing antennas like a pack of metallic insects, engines idling in a noisy hum and radios chirping. The police cruiser’s alley-lights punched holes in the night and lightbars popped red, white and blue like some bad-news holiday display. Parked near the vet’s forlorn pickup truck was a cumbersome van with the legend CRIME SCENE SERVICES, a coroner’s wagon, a boxy ambulance, three cruisers with the legend Southbrook Police splashed on the sides, two State Police cruisers, and a dark, unmarked Crown Vic. Yellow police tape streamed across the entrance to the south wing, the cellar entrance and the damaged doorway of Reggie’s room. Even the coffee pot was tagged. Uniformed local police and State Police, and two State Police detectives in plain clothes strolled the barn. The area was also crawling with dark jackets imprinted with STATE POLICE, as the Crime Scene Services unit searched the barn and stableyard with flashlights and cameras. Short, brilliant bursts of light strobed from the interior of the huge cellar as a camera froze the gruesome sight there for eternity.
The night air was turning sharply cooler by the minute, a signal that a weather change was finally coming. As temperatures plummeted, the wood frogs and crickets went silent and the condensed breath of officers combing the outside area was backlit by strong artificial light. The barn staff and Lucinda were sitting around Sam’s office, all having been questioned briefly by local police—the first law enforcement to arrive on the estate. After police determined the death was extremely suspicious and that Reggie had been drugged, the Southbrook patrolmen were quickly followed by the ambulance, uniformed State Police, and two State Police Homicide Detectives. Even the Southbrook Chief of Police made a brief appearance when he was made aware of a homicide at a high profile location.
Such strange activity and break in
routine had made the broodmares nervous, and some of them were dashing in frantic circles frightening their foals. Sam stood in the center hallway arguing with a local officer about letting Dylan go into the hayloft to push some hay down to help calm them. “No one has to walk in the crime scene,” he explained. “Dylan just has to throw the hay down in the mangers through openings in the loft floor.”
State Police Detective Dwight Westerlund, or “Westy” as he was known in the department, interrupted them while he was walking and securing the crime scene, talking into a two-way radio. He clicked off the radio and put a halt to their argument, telling them he wanted to take a look at the upper floors before “anyone fed anything to anything”. The tall imposing homicide detective had a heavier detective accompanying him. Westerlund commandeered Sam to escort him and his shorter, wider partner through the upper floors. Sam made sure to point out the triangular openings in the hayloft floor every fourteen feet, to prevent any member of the police department from taking the fast way down and ending up dangling from a mare’s hay rack. Although, Sam decided, the second much heavier detective probably wouldn’t fit—he’d barely made it up the circular staircase and was still wheezing. After the guided tour, Sam left them to their work and returned to the first floor of the barn to join the crew sitting around in his office.
Jane was huddled in the office chair, trying to stop the shivers quaking her body. She and Reggie had rung up Sam and Dylan, and then dialed 911. The uniformed patrol officers got there shortly after Sam, who lived only two minutes from the barn. Lucinda leaned against the map behind Jane with her arms crossed tightly around her body, clutching a pack of cigarettes. She told the police she had been jolted awake by the sound of sirens, and drove to the barn when she saw flashing lights streaking across the estate.
Dylan was sprawled on the rickety captain’s chair, tipped back against the windowsill. He was snoozing, with one arm draped over his eyes to keep out the annoying flashing lights. Reggie sat on Old Ugly, leaning forward and resting his face on joined hands; recovering from what they suspected was drugged coffee. Lars, who also followed the patrol cars to the barn after opening the gate for them, paced around the office fully turned out in the tweeds and breeches as if it was the middle of the day instead of after midnight. His arms were folded contemplatively and he was shaking his head and muttering to himself.
Sam looked stressed and tired as he walked into the office, his yellow hair flattened and unruly. His boots crunched on some left-over glass and he brushed it aside with the broom that was still leaning by the door. He flashed a wary, hollow-eyed glance at Lars and Jane as he approached the snoozing Dylan and prodded the bottom of his shoe with a cowboy boot. “Hey, sleeping beauty. The detective’s going to let you up in the loft in a few minutes.”
Dylan crashed his chair down to a landing, and stretched and yawned. He had on a fresh MIAMI HURRICANES sweatshirt and clean Levis, but he looked like a poster child for bedheads. “What in hell could he be looking for up there?”
“Beats me.” Sam waved away Jane’s offer to give him back his chair; he was too wired to sit. He walked back and forth for a minute, trying to come to grips with such a monstrous interruption of routine, and finally just stood in the middle of the office with his feet braced apart and his arms folded. Overhead, they could hear the random footsteps of men combing through the storage area directly above the office.
Fifteen minutes later, Detective Westerlund came breezing through the office door with more attitude than the Grand Pooh Bah himself. The short, chubby detective followed in his wake. Denizens of the knotty pine office—sprinkled around the room over the thrift-shop furniture—eyed the two detectives like a pack of strange dogs.
Jane scrutinized the tall detective. He was a lanky, athletic six-foot-plus, somewhere in his mid-thirties, with a disciplined fitness that screamed military background. His silvery ash-blond hair was cut as close to the scalp as possible. A chiseled wedge of brow bone held silver flecked eyebrows, and his forehead and cheekbones could have been swacked by an adze from rough lumber. He had deep lines around a mouth that was surprisingly generous for such a tough face.
Westerlund set his two-way police radio on the file cabinet and took stock of the office; he had been initially briefed on the circumstances of the death by local police. Sharp cop-eyes as sandy colored as his hair darted over the wary faces inhabiting the room.
Jane knew without a doubt this man was going to be obnoxious.
The homicide detective turned his attention to Sam, who was still standing near the desk with his arms folded. “She the one who found the body?” he asked, nodding in Jane’s direction.
“Yes,” Sam twisted toward Jane to answer, “this is Jane Husted, our show rider and trainer. Jane...Detective Westerlund.”
Westerlund squinted at the dark-haired female sitting behind the desk, ignoring the polite introduction. Then he glanced at the tiny blonde leaning on the wall map behind her and made his immediate on-the-spot assessment. He was pretty good at sizing up people instantly, although he prided himself on keeping an open mind. Rich brat horsy types, he decided. This was going to be entertaining. He continued his mental cataloging as he paced in a small circle: Daddy or hubby spoils them rotten. Never did an honest days work in their lives. Insolent child-women playing all day with their pets, and now someone is dead and the big bad world is here to beard them in their den.
Jane made no response to the introduction either, as she did some sizing up herself. She watched the detective shift his eyes back and forth between herself and Lucinda and read his mind easily. Going straight for the hackneyed stereotypical, she guessed. The spoiled, over-privileged women playing with horses thing. Although in Lucinda’s case it carried some weight.
Westerlund brushed an idle look back over Jane, catching her studied gaze, as he pulled a battered black notebook out of his suitcoat. He took another casual sweep of the other occupants, frowning at the smirk on Dylan’s face.
Jane continued surveying Westerlund’s appearance. She thought his navy off-the-rack polyester suitcoat looked a little used, but at least the khaki trousers were new and up to date. The skinny tie looked like it had seen several rotations of being in and out of style.
Westerlund looked at Dylan, who was watching him as if he was an alien from Mars. “And you are...?” the detective demanded..
“Dylan Ripley...stableboy,” he announced, sounding like he had just answered Bond, James Bond. His silky hair was scrambled in all directions, and a few wisps stood straight up, as if searching for something.
“You the guy that drives around the farm equipment in the cellar?”
“That would be me.”
“Can he feed the mares now?” Sam asked, as he still stood near the desk.
“Yes, but only the hay. No one goes near the crime scene until it’s released…”
“No problem. Go ahead Dylan.” Sam sat on the arm of the old love seat, nervously rotating his thumbs into a blur.
“Make sure you wait around for an interview.” Westerlund warned.
“Roger dodger…” Dylan scratched his head, yawned, and then schlepped out, weaving around people and old furniture. He raked both hands through his hair in a feeble combing attempt.
Westerlund stepped back and hung a wry look on Dylan as he passed, then placed his open notebook on one of the tall file cabinets, casually leaning an elbow on the cabinet as he perused notes. The other chubby detective gave Dylan a withering glare, which had zero effect on the intended victim. Water off a duck’s back. The wide detective sniffed with disdain, crossed the room, and lowered his weight into the Captain’s chair Dylan had just vacated. All the glued joints and spindle stretchers screamed and groaned, as he sat and rapidly chewed gum with the desperation of a former smoker. Jane pictured the chair coming up with him when he stood.
Reggie sighed and leaned back in the over-stuffed wing chair to observe the tall detective. Lars was now gazing out a window next to Lucinda, watch
ing flashlights in the dark and looking deep in thought, as if wondering what he’d gotten himself into. Wondering how fast he could get a flight home to Europe.
Detective Westerlund raked shrewd eyes over Lucinda. Earlier, when he was checking the loft, Sam had told him the owner’s daughter was all gold curls and toothpick bones. “Are you Lucinda Whitbeck?” he asked.
“Yes.” Her face was white as paper, and her hair was an untamed explosion of yellow ringlets. The fluorescent lights made big gray unflattering circles under her eyes. No one bothered to turn off the lights that Sam hated—murder somehow made people crave bright lights. The brighter the better.
Lucinda fumbled a cigarette out of its pack, setting the pack on the desk and reaching in her jeans for a silver lighter.
“Your parents own this...estate?” Westerlund began the interrogation.
A flame shot out of the lighter and Lucinda sucked on the cigarette. She snapped the device shut, shoving it back in her jean pocket. Smoking in the barn was strictly forbidden, but that didn’t stop Lucinda. Rules were for the little people. She removed the cigarette from her mouth and exhaled. “Yes, they do,” she answered in a swirling fog.
