She moved to Windstar’s stall and looked in at him. The water bucket was full. He had plenty of hay. But his feed pan was empty.
“So have you had your supper yet or not?”
He gazed at her with his soft brown eyes, wisps of hay sticking from between his lips.
“You’d lie to me anyway, and say you hadn’t just to get more.” Zoe reached in and stroked his face.
“I fed him.”
Zoe wheeled to find Allison standing in the doorway to the feed room. An oversized black bomber jacket draped from her narrow shoulders. The sleeves swallowed up her arms, hanging well below her fingertips. Her skin appeared gray and her eyes dull and sunken in. With her stringy black hair framing an expressionless face, the teen looked like an extra in a zombie movie.
Zoe grabbed the teenager’s shoulders. “How did you get here? Are you okay?”
Allison’s gaze didn’t meet Zoe’s eye. “I hitchhiked. Like Logan. But don’t be mad. I got everyone in and fed them. All by myself.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Water. Hay. And grain. I followed the chart about who gets what. Did I do okay, Aunt Zoe?”
“You did great, sweetie.” Zoe bent down, trying to place her face in Allison’s line of vision. But the girl still stared blankly downward.
“Good. I wanted to get one thing right before…”
Zoe caught the girl’s face between her gloved hands and leaned in until their noses almost touched. “Allison. Are you all right? Allison?”
Something hit the ground with a soft thud. The teen swayed and crumpled into Zoe.
“Allison?” Zoe wrapped her arms around the girl and was thrown off balance. Zoe managed to break the girl’s fall as they tumbled to the dirt. “Allison!”
“I’ve screwed up everything.” The girl’s voice was so weak Zoe doubted she’d have heard her if she hadn’t been cradling her in her arms. “Tell Mom I’m so sorry.”
“Allison, what’s wrong with you?” Kneeling in the dirt, Zoe repositioned the girl’s left arm that had twisted awkwardly in the collapse. That was when Zoe noticed a dark splotch on her brown gloves. She tugged one off and touched it with her cold, bare finger. The finger came away red and sticky.
Zoe ripped her other glove off and began a frantic search of Allison’s limp body. Her scalp and neck were fine. Zoe unzipped the too-big jacket. When she grabbed the cuff of the sleeve to pull it off, the fabric was warm and sickly wet to the touch. Skinning the coat from Allison’s arm revealed ugly red gouges across a dainty wrist.
Zoe spotted the knife—one usually kept in the tack room for cutting open bales of hay or bags of feed—lying on the ground next to her. That’s what she’d heard hit the ground before Allison toppled.
“My God. What the hell have you done?” Zoe whispered between chattering teeth. She yanked the second sleeve off to find more gashes, deep enough to reveal tendons. Blood streamed from both of Allison’s wrists, forming puddles in the dirt.
The girl met Zoe’s gaze. Her face contorted. “I’m sorry.” Her frail voice broke in a sob. “It’s all my fault.” She squeezed her eyes shut, and tears trickled down her cheeks. “Daddy. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault he’s dead.” Her voice deteriorated into disjointed mumbling. “Awful…Logan…stabbed…McBirney…”
The girl was making no sense. Zoe quelled her desire to ask questions and instead, shushed her. She needed to get help and to stop the bleeding. “You lie still,” she told Allison as she edged her knees out from under the girl’s head and lowered her to the ground. “I’ll be right back.”
Zoe leapt to her feet and dug in her pocket for her cell phone. Nothing. She checked the other pocket and came up empty. Crap. It was in her truck on charge. She sprinted to the phone by the entrance and snatched the receiver from the hook. The familiar hum of a dial tone was noticeably absent. The lines were still down. One more thing to thank Matt Doaks for.
The call to 9-1-1 would have to wait.
She darted into the feed room. From a metal cabinet in the corner, she gathered a box of sterile gauze pads, a roll of cotton and two rolls of Vet Wrap, tossing everything into an empty bucket. On her way back to Allison, she grabbed a wool horse blanket and a pair of splint boots.
Dropping to her knees beside the girl, Zoe set the bucket to the side and covered Allison with the wool blanket, leaving her lower arms exposed. She examined both wrists. The slash on the left one looked deeper, so she started with it.
“Allison? Try to stay awake, okay?” Zoe ripped open several packets of gauze four-by-fours and slapped them on the gouged flesh, then covered them with a layer of cotton. “Talk to me. You said Logan stabbed McBirney?”
Allison’s eyes opened, rolled back, then focused. “No. Not Logan. Me. I stabbed him. And Matt.”
“You stabbed Matt?” Pressing hard with one hand to quell the bleeding, Zoe grabbed a Vet Wrap with the other, tearing into the packaging with her teeth.
“No.” Allison closed her eyes. Took a breath. “Matt stabbed him. Then I stabbed him. I killed him.”
Zoe anchored an end of the self-sticking bandage with her thumb and began winding it around Allison’s wrist and forearm the same way her mind struggled to wind around the idea of what these grown men had done to Rose’s kids. As her hands did the work, her mind clicked back to Doc’s autopsy report on McBirney.
Only the one wound penetrated deep enough to be fatal—the one that punctured the lung. The other three attempts hit the scapula and exhibited more tearing, but caused no significant damage.
Would Allison have the strength to stab McBirney with enough force to kill him? Zoe contemplated the girl’s thin arm as she bandaged it and decided not likely. But Matt?
Yeah.
Zoe pressed the end of the Vet Wrap in place. A dark patch of blood had already appeared through the bandaging. She picked up the stiff leather split boot and buckled it over the dressing. Ordinarily used to protect and stabilize a young horse’s fragile leg bones, the brace would also immobilize Allison’s wrist and add more pressure to the wound.
Zoe stepped over her to work on her right arm. “Allison?”
The girl gazed unfocused into the distance.
“Why did you do this to yourself?”
Her lower lip quivered. “Matt. I thought he loved me. He said he loved me.”
Zoe fought back a primal scream. Those pictures on the computer. Those e-mails. And years ago, the image of walking into her bedroom—hers and Matt’s—to find him with that bimbo from the Tastee Freez. A collage of perversion danced across her brain.
“I knew if I said anything to anyone, he’d get in trouble. I loved him, so I never said a word.” Allison’s sob-ravaged voice hiccupped. “He didn’t mean to kill Daddy. It was an accident. Daddy came to drag me away from him. Said Matt would go to prison. They fought. Matt tackled him and they both fell down the steps. It was—it was like Matt was riding a sled. And the sled was Daddy.” She made a sound like a laugh. Or was it a cry?
Zoe’s hands trembled as she finished buckling the splint boot over the second bandage. The visual Allison painted sickened her. She longed to scoop this child up into her arms.
Allison drew a watery breath around her tears. “And now he wants to break up with me. He didn’t say so yet, but I can tell. He’s tired of me.” She sniffed. “I love him so much. I told him I’d kill myself if he left me and he said ‘go ahead.’ He said that would solve all his problems.”
Zoe shushed her and leaned over to give her a hug without disturbing her bandaging job. “It’s okay now,” she whispered. But she knew she needed to get EMS there or it most definitely was not going to be okay. “Allison, where’s your cell phone? Is it in your coat?” Zoe didn’t wait for an answer. She grabbed the bloodied jacket and rammed her hand into one pocket. Nothing. She detected something in the second one befor
e she reached inside. But what she dug out of it wasn’t a phone. It was a bottle of pills. A match to those she’d found at Matt’s place. And it was empty.
“Allison? Did you take these? Allison?”
A faraway smile played on the girl’s lips. “Matt’s my candy man.”
Zoe swore. It wasn’t just Matt’s charm and good looks that bound the girl to him. He was supplying her with prescription painkillers. Her flu wasn’t the flu. He’d cut her off, and she’d been in withdrawal. Zoe stared at the empty bottle as one question screamed inside her brain. Was Allison overdosing in addition to bleeding out?
“Listen, sweetie, I’m going to go out to my truck for a second to get my phone. Then I’m going to call for help. I’m not going to let you die.”
“I don’t wanna die,” Allison wailed.
“I know.” Zoe rearranged the wool horse blanket so that it covered Allison’s arms and tucked it around the girl’s face and ears, too. “You stay still, okay? I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.”
Zoe jogged to the door and let herself out into the frigid cold night. She crossed her arms, tucking her bare hands under them until she reached the Chevy. The door handle was so cold it stung her fingers to touch it. She jumped up onto the seat and searched the dash for her phone. It wasn’t where she usually put it. Must have fallen off. Her fingers located the charger plug inserted into the cigarette lighter, and she reeled it in. The coiled cord bounced back at her without the weight of the cell phone on the end.
What the hell?
She leaned down to search the floor, feeling under the seat in the dark.
“Looking for this?”
Zoe banged her head on the steering wheel as she bolted upright. Standing next to her truck in the light cast by the dusk-to-dawn lamp, holding her phone in his hand, was Matt Doaks.
TWENTY-NINE
Pete placed a call to Baronick and arranged to meet him at the Monongahela County Police Headquarters. The detective was already waiting when Pete led Logan into the building.
“Didn’t waste any time getting here, did you, Wayne?” Pete said.
“Hey, you tell me you’re bringing in a fugitive, and I drop everything to accommodate you.” Baronick flashed a smile that made Pete wonder how much he’d spent on those veneers.
Beside him, Logan cringed.
“I need to talk to you a minute,” Pete told the detective.
“Sure.” Baronick waved over two uniformed officers. “Place this young man under arrest, gentlemen. Put him in the interrogation room, and I’ll be along shortly.”
Logan gave Pete a frightened, helpless look over his shoulder as the two officers ushered him away.
“Okay, Pete. What is it?”
He hadn’t told Baronick about Logan’s “confession.” The kid was underage and hadn’t had legal representation. The entire story would be thrown out of court in a heartbeat. “Tread lightly on this one. He’s a kid. A good kid. And he’s been through hell this week.”
“I hear you. But if he killed a man, I can’t look the other way.”
“I’m not suggesting you do.” A headache began to creep up the back of Pete’s skull. “Just don’t steamroll him. Now, what’s going on at Doaks’ place?”
“No sign of him yet. My men are still at his house. The eyeglass lens they found might be a match to the one missing from Ted Bassi’s frames or it may not. Even if it is, it may not be enough to get a search warrant. I need that hard drive from your girlfriend’s computer.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” If Pete could share Logan’s story, they’d have no problem obtaining a warrant. McBirney had been killed in that house. Besides, Pete wanted to see Zoe’s computer, too. He’d tried to call her from the HQ parking lot, but got no answer on her cell phone.
“That’s not what I’ve heard.” Baronick chuckled. “Anyway, I haven’t been able to reach her. I need the photos you told me about to get a warrant for Doaks’ house.”
Where are you, Zoe? “Wasn’t she at Doaks’ place when your men got there?”
The toothy grin faded. “Yeah. Those idiots sent her home. But they figured we’d be able to contact her if we needed something.”
“Keep trying.” Pete didn’t add that he would, too. “I have a stop to make first, and if you haven’t reached her by then, I’ll swing by her place on my way home.”
The glass double doors behind them whooshed open, letting in a blast of icy air and an even icier Sylvia Bassi, dragging a beefy, gray-haired man in a suit behind her.
“Where’s my grandson?” Sylvia demanded.
“He’s waiting in interrogation, Mrs. Bassi,” Baronick said. He nodded to the man beside her. “Mr. Imperatore.”
“I see you know my attorney.” Sylvia clutched her purse against her chest. Pete hoped she didn’t decide to use it as a weapon again. “He’s also my grandson’s attorney.”
“I assumed as much,” the detective said.
“And I would very much like to speak with my client, Detective Baronick.” The attorney gave one of his sleeves a tug.
“Give me a second, and I’ll take you back.” Baronick drew Pete aside. “I suppose I have you to thank for leaking the kid’s arrest to the grandmother,” he whispered.
Pete smiled. “I told you not to steamroll him. Sylvia will make sure that you don’t.”
Baronick squinted at him. “Just let me know if you hear from Zoe Chambers.”
“Will do.” Pete turned to leave, touching the brim of his ball cap and nodding at Sylvia.
She nodded back.
God help Wayne Baronick.
The half-hour drive to Vance Township from Brunswick offered Pete time to ponder recent events. Logan’s confession wasn’t the end of it. Pete thought of the old saying about the tip of the iceberg. There was a helluva lot of crap still hiding under the surface.
Starting with Ted Bassi’s killer.
Pete wasn’t willing to believe he had two totally separate homicides on his hands. If he bought into Logan’s story that he and Allison had been responsible for McBirney’s death—and the more Pete thought about it, the bigger that if became—did he still have a killer running loose? Pete could understand Logan attempting to protect his sister. But no way did that boy have a hand in killing his father.
Allison, however…
Pete shifted in the driver’s seat. He hated the idea, but something about it rang true. Allison Bassi had been acting more bizarre than usual since Ted’s death. They’d all written it off to grief. Was it something more? There was that blue fiber in McBirney’s garage that matched her school jacket. The one with the hole in it.
And, of course, there was Matt Doaks. He’d never liked the guy, but always chalked most of that up to Zoe’s past with the bastard.
Jealousy. First he’d suspected McBirney of Bassi’s murder, largely because of Marcy. Now, he was doing the same thing with Doaks because of Zoe. Baronick may have been right to take him off this case. Not that he wasn’t up to his neck in it anyway.
Where to go first? Pete wanted to talk to both Marcy and Zoe. He dug his cell phone from his coat pocket and tried Zoe’s home number only to be greeted with a busy signal. Her cell went directly to voicemail. Damn it, Zoe. Get off the phone. Well, at least she was at home.
He slowed and made a sweeping left turn off Route 15 onto Mays Road. Treacherous glossy black patches dotted the road that was more gravel than blacktop. The afternoon’s thaw made the back roads passable, if not entirely safe. At the top of the hill, he swung right onto Cowden Road and followed the ridge all the way to McBirney’s farm.
Pete had expected the long winding farm lane to be a mess without McBirney and his tractor around to plow it. Instead, the lane was clear—almost in better shape than the township road he’d driven in on.
“Chief?” Williamson said when he answered.
“What’s your twenty?” Pete said.
“I’m still hanging out at Matt Doaks’ house.”
“Anything new there?”
“No, sir. The county crime scene unit has processed outside. Now we’re waiting around for Doaks to come home. Maybe he’ll let us in without a warrant.” From the tone of Williamson’s voice, he wasn’t optimistic of that happening in this lifetime.
“Are you available, or do the county guys want you to stay put?”
“Uh, no. I’m just hanging out. What do you need, Chief?”
Pete smiled. He knew what Williamson was doing. Hoping to be present for some excitement on a long boring night. Arresting a widow probably wasn’t in the same category as waiting for a sexual perv to put in an appearance. “Head over to Jerry McBirney’s farm. I may have some work for you to do.”
“Copy, Chief. On my way.”
Pete tucked the phone back into his pocket and stepped out of his car. The porch light flipped on. Good thing he hadn’t been counting on the element of surprise. Marcy opened the door as he raised his fist to knock.
“Pete,” she said. “I wondered who was pulling in so late. I’m a little jumpy now that I’m out here all by myself.”
“You should get a dog.” Or maybe not. If she was in jail, her protection would be handled by the state.
Marcy escorted him into the kitchen. “Coffee? Or do I need to ask?” She smiled.
“Do you have any made?”
“There’s a cup or two left in the pot. It’s cold, but I can nuke it.”
“Thanks.”
While she bustled around the kitchen, pulling a mug from the cabinet, filling it from a large pot, and placing it in the microwave, Pete took a seat at the table.
Circle of Influence (A Zoe Chambers Mystery) Page 29
