Dark Horse

by J. Carson Black

  She hadn’t been pregnant at all.

  Lucy shoplifted from local stores and manipulated other children into stealing, too. In fact, they were usually the ones to get in trouble.

  Lucy had a crush on one of the boys at school, but he dated a pretty cheerleader named Ashley Snipes. Ashley Snipes swore that Lucy was following her around and giving her the “evil eye.” She even claimed that Lucy had killed her puppy. At the time, the accusation seemed fanciful, but something had happened to make an A student like Ashley fail her courses and lose weight. Finally, her parents took her out of school. The following day, Lucy asked Ashley’s boyfriend to take her to the prom. Ashley’s parents complained that Lucy had been persecuting their daughter in order to go to the prom with her boyfriend, and since they had been on the school board, the counselor was called in to talk to Lucy.

  “There was so much trouble that the school paid for a psychiatric evaluation—and I’m telling you, they don’t put out money unless there’s a reason.”

  Rita asked her what was in the evaluation.

  “It was sealed. I wasn’t allowed to see it, but I know my DSM IV.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s the book on abnormal psychology. There’s no doubt in my mind that Lucy suffers from Antisocial Personality Disorder, The layman’s term for it is sociopath. She fits the profile like a glove.”

  Rita’s blood froze. “Sociopath?”

  “I’ve done a lot of reading up on the subject—I’m this close to getting into the doctorate program at the University of Arizona, so I know my stuff—not all sociopaths are killers. They’re just . . . well, it’s as if there’s something missing. They feel no remorse for their actions. They don’t have empathy for other people. Con men are almost always sociopaths. They’re users.”

  Users. Well, Lucy had certainly used her!

  “Manipulators. Lying is as natural as breathing to a sociopath. They don’t care if they get caught in the lie a few minutes later, it doesn’t mean anything to them. They can be charming, but sooner or later, people begin to sense there’s something not quite right about them. Sociopaths try to be like other people, emulate what they see, but it never quite works.”

  That was Lucy. Sometimes, when Rita talked to Lucy, she had the oddest impression she was looking into a distorted mirror.

  Sociopaths, Margaret Whiting said, manifested their unusual behavior early on. Girls somewhat later than boys. Boys were more overtly dangerous. Fighting, abusing drugs, starting fires, maiming or killing animals, lying, and stealing were all signs of a possible Antisocial Personality Disorder.

  The counselor went on to tell her that Lucy hadn’t shown any signs of being dangerous, but she thought that it would be an “unrewarding relationship” at best. “You can’t change a sociopath. There really isn’t any hope. She won’t love you like a normal child would, and I’m afraid that taking on responsibility for someone like that would only frustrate you. I felt I ought to warn you, even though by doing so, I’m skating on ethical ice. Please don’t tell anyone I told you. It could mean my job.”

  Rita had been stunned. But when she’d given it time to sink in, she realized that Ms. Whiting’s assessment of Lucy was right on target.

  And so last night, when Lucy had prattled on about how happy she’d be when Clay married Rita and the adoption went through, Rita had humored her.

  “Now that Daddy’s gone, you won’t have any trouble adopting me, will you?” Lucy had asked her. “If you’re married to Clay, it won’t be hard at all.”

  No remorse. The girl acted as if she didn’t give a damn that her father had burned to death.

  Rita had answered her carefully. “I shouldn’t imagine we’d have any trouble, assuming Clay and I get married.” That was her out. Let Lucy blame the whole tiling on Clay; he was strong enough to handle it. She wanted out, but she had to be careful. Looking at her beautiful Himalayan cat, Rita thought of Ashley Snipe’s puppy and shivered.

  She needed time to figure out how to get out of this without angering Lucy. She needed to talk to Clay. He would know what to do.

  Rita tried the racetrack again. Clay didn’t answer his page. Maybe Lucy hadn’t lied after all. Maybe Clay was up on the mountain. Why else would Dakota be there?

  Rita decided she’d better go up to Sierra Blanca, just in case. She left a message on Clay’s answering machine and headed for the door.

  She was almost to the garage when she realized she’d have to rent a car.

  FORTY-NINE

  “What happened?” Dakota asked Lucy as they jounced down the rutted dirt road.

  “I told you. He fell.”

  “He was hiking? Today?” Clay wouldn’t have gone hiking up on Sierra Blanca on All American Day. “I thought you told Rita he was in a car wreck.”

  “I said he was in a wreck. A rock fall. He fell a long way. Here we are.” Lucy stopped the vehicle abruptly. She got out and followed a wide path leading into the forest.

  “Where’s the ambulance?”

  “They’re already down there. Come on.”

  Hugging herself against a chill that seemed to come from within, Dakota followed Lucy through the tall meadow grass. They followed the slope down between black trunks of ponderosa pine until they reached an outcropping of lichen-carpeted granite. Lucy clambered up one rock that rose up from the forest floor like a whale’s back.

  Dakota saw no car tracks. Heard nothing but the breeze soughing through the pines, high up. Her uneasiness increased. What game was Lucy playing? “Come on, Lucy,” she said in as stern a voice as she could summon. “What’s going on?”

  Lucy stood on the rock, her breath coming in ragged gasps. “We’ve got to hurry.”

  “No.”

  Lucy stared at her, and then her eyes filled up with tears.

  “Dakota, what’s wrong with you? You’ve gotta come. He told me he had to see you. I promised him.” She swiped at her nose. “Please?”

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “There’s another way down,” Lucy said through strangling tears. “The ambulance followed the road—they’re down there now. Come on, we gotta hurry, before they take him out. He might not make it. That’s what I’m scared of. I promised him you’d come—please?”

  He might not make it.

  Lucy’s tears had to be real. Dakota felt the void open up beneath her, the boundless fear. Lucy looked so forlorn, standing there. Forlorn and frightened and desperate. He might not make it.

  Dakota climbed up the rock. It must be an overlook, because Lucy was staring down. Cautiously, Dakota walked to the edge.

  Expecting to see ambulances and police cars like matchbox toys down in the canyon, her thoughts were wiped clean of her agony for Clay in an instant. There was nothing there. Nothing but forest. A steep drop-off studded with sharp boulders and choked by ferns and blackjack pine.

  Relief drenched her, followed by a deeper, more visceral fear as all the pieces fell into place. Lucy had lured her here.

  Her mind exploded with the image of the headlights at the White Sands, the rifle report—

  The command from her brain took its time, wending its way in agonizingly slow motion through all the checkpoints, the misfiring synapses, past the drumroll of her heart, all the way to her legs but at last they tensed, the balls of her feet prepared to push away from the rock, to run—

  Air displacement behind her. She spun around just as Lucy’s hands shot out and shoved her, hard.

  “He’s down there,” Lucy said, as her hands came into contact with Dakota’s chest.

  FIFTY

  The more Rita thought about it, the more certain she became that Lucy was indeed dangerous.

  As she drove, she thought back to her confrontation with Eddie Dejarlais. He’d come by yesterday, swaggering up to her place as if he owned it. He had the nerve to try to see Lucy, even though he was the one who had taken her to that bar and gotten them both arrested. Rita told him Lucy wasn’t a
round, and that even if she was, he couldn’t see her anymore.

  “It’s a free country,” he’d replied, narrowing his mean, little eyes. “You ask her. She wants to see me. Can’t get enough of me, as a matter of fact.”

  “Get off my property.”

  “You think she’s such a good girl,” he jeered. “The night her dad kicked off, she couldn’t get enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was her idea to go to the bar. She said she wanted to celebrate—”

  “Celebrate?”

  “Yeah. She woke me up and, boy, was she hot. A little wildcat in bed.” He paused to let that one sink in. ‘Then she got me to take her to the bar. Ordered champagne.”

  “Champagne.”

  “‘Cause she was celebrating. She said all her problems were over, and we’d be hearing about it soon.”

  We’d be hearing about it soon.

  The conversation hadn’t meant much at the time, but now Rita saw it in a different light.

  What had Lucy been celebrating? Jerry Tanner’s death? Steering with her left hand, she fumbled in her purse for her Mace.

  Derek Blue looked at his notes from Ken Daltry’s visit. If “she” was Lucy, why would Jerry Tanner talk about blackmailing his own daughter?

  Derek doodled on the pad, drawing a caricature of Jerry in his beat-up truck, a fifth of Southern Comfort dangling from one arm as he held it out like a turn signal. Derek had gone to art school before he’d decided on becoming a law officer, but now he confined his art to doodling. He was quite pleased with his artistic rendition—the Southern Comfort in Jerry’s outstretched hand looked real enough to drink.

  Those kids had been so sure that the truck had been used in the McAllister homicide, but he’d dismissed it because Jerry had the perfect alibi. Tanner was too drunk to drive, and his daughter had driven him home that night. Derek had accepted Jerry’s alibi at face value.

  But what if he looked at it another way?

  On an impulse, he erased Jerry Tanner, and drew in a plump teenager with pixie hair instead. He put Jerry in the passenger seat. Staring glassily ahead. The more he drew, the more it made sense.

  Ken had told him that Jerry had been taken for a ride—wait—a joy ride.

  Kids took joy rides. They stole people’s cars, and they drove around for kicks.

  “Good God,” he breathed. She’d run down Coke McAllister with her father passed out in the truck—or at least she’d thought he was passed out.

  She was either very smart or very stupid.

  He picked up the phone and called the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.

  Dakota lost her balance. She tried to throw herself sideways, but it was too late. Pitching over backward, she experienced in slow motion the sensation of flying, and before she reached the violent thump at the end, there burst through her mind all the car crashes she’d ever seen in the movies, only her disbelieving brain told her this time it was her, she was the body hurtling through space like a missile and hitting the ground with bone-jamming force.

  Dazed and bruised, her mind registered the hit, the rock ramming into her side, and then she bounced up again and flipped over, crashing shoulder first through the brush and ferns before coming to a sliding stop against the rough bark of a tree in the canyon.

  Her side was bleeding, so were her hands, there was a throbbing in her shoulder and one foot, but essentially she was all right, unless something had happened inside.

  “Dakota?” Lucy called from above.

  Dakota tried to appear motionless. Maybe Lucy would go away.

  No such luck. She heard the trickle and slide of rocks as Lucy started down the hill.

  Clay walked back from Dakota’s barn the third time that day, wondering what the hell was going on. Ernesto, in the process of scraping the excess water off Shameless after her bath, told Clay he hadn’t seen her.

  After lunch Clay had tried to reach her at home, but she wasn’t there either. It was going on two thirty and the All American would be run around four. She should be at the stable.

  She should be with him. This was the biggest day of her life, and he wanted to share it with her.

  He had her paged, but there was no answer. Stifling his frustration and the first small beginnings of worry, he went back to his own barn.

  Dakota felt Lucy’s shadow on her back, but kept herself from flinching.

  “I know you’re alive,” Lucy said in a conversational tone. “I can see you breathing.”

  Dakota heard Lucy’s boots scuff the ground as the teenager shifted her stance. Turning her face to the side, Dakota saw Lucy standing above her, arms upraised, holding a rock the size of a watermelon. Poised to drop it on Dakota’s skull.

  Instinct made Dakota twist away, just as the rock crashed onto the stone where her head had been. She scrabbled through the choking ferns, trying to get enough purchase to rise to her feet.

  Lucy reached her just as she stood up, just as she put her weight down on her right foot and felt the excruciating pain arrow up her ankle.

  She couldn’t run. Her ankle was broken. Lucy bulled into her, knocking her to the ground. Her head cracked against another rock, she felt the warm ooze of blood. Stunned, she watched as Lucy bent to pick up the rock again.

  “Tell me why!” Dakota gasped. “At least tell me why!”

  Lucy considered her, then let the rock drop. Brushed her hands on her jeans. “You promise you won’t try to run?”

  “I promise.”

  “You’re not going anywhere. Your ankle’s broken.”

  “You’re right. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Lucy sat down on a boulder. “It’s not like I want to kill you. I just have to.”

  The pain in her ankle was making her dizzy. She didn’t know if she was hearing right. She was sweating from the pain. “Why . . .” she felt herself slipping out of consciousness, brought herself back with gritted teeth. “Why do you have to?”

  “Rita says if Clay marries her she’ll adopt me. You’re in the way.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  Lucy stared at her a moment, as if gauging her true feelings. “All right. I want revenge.”

  “Revenge? For what?”

  “Because you fired me.” Her voice was flat. “You kept Ernesto, even though I took better care of Shameless, and you didn’t let me stay in the cabin—that reminds me. Do you still have that lamp, the one with the stagecoach base?”

  “Yes.” This had to be a dream.

  “It’s so cool. Do you mind if I have it? You won’t need it.”

  “I’ll tell you what, you can have your old job back.”

  “Why would I want a piss-poor job like that? I’ve already got everything I want. But I’d kind of like the cabin. It was nice there, those summers Coke let us stay. You should have hired Dad. It’s your fault, Dakota. I gave you plenty of chances.”

  Dakota tried to hold on to the thread of reason. “Did you kill Coke?”

  “Daddy ran him down in the road like a dog. I was there, though.”

  “It was Jerry.” She was really fading now.

  Lucy took a stick and drew on the ground. “Maybe Rita and Clay will buy the cabin when they adopt me. How much do you think it’ll sell for?”

  “Clay won’t marry Rita.”

  “He will if you’re dead.”

  “You really meant it, didn’t you? You’re going to kill me because Clay loves me?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Suddenly Lucy looked worried. “Don’t you think it will work?”

  Dakota almost laughed aloud. What was Lucy doing, asking her advice regarding her own murder? “No. It won’t work. Clay won’t marry Rita, not even if you kill me. He doesn’t love her.”

  Lucy looked angry. Her face wavered in and out. “You’re just trying to trick me.”

  “It’s true.” Dakota drifted.

  Awhile later, when the pain drew her back to consciousness, she was surprised to realize she was still alive. Lucy
was flinging rocks at trees.

  “Did you see that? Bull’s-eye! I’m a good shot, too.”

  “What are you waiting for?” Dakota asked.

  Lucy came over and hunkered down beside her. “I wanted to ask you something.” She looked completely innocent, her eyes bright with hope. “Did you ever think of adopting me? I know you liked me, and you felt sorry because of my rotten childhood—I heard you talking to Clay about it. That’s why I didn’t kill Shameless when Dad asked me to, because I thought you and Clay would be my family.”

  “We talked about it,” Dakota lied.

  “If I’d met you earlier I wouldn’t have had to kill Coke.”

  This was crazy. Was she still alive or had she gone to some weird place suspended between heaven and earth, where the inmates were all insane? “I thought you said your father killed Coke.”

  “Nope,” Lucy said proudly, sitting on a tall rock and swinging her legs. She looked like any teenager on a picnic. “I did. I ran him down in the truck. It took some good driving, let me tell you.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I almost wiped out on that turn, though. It sure was a close call.” She sighed, her face softly reminiscent.

  “Why’d you kill him?”

  “Because,” Lucy said.

  “Stop playing games!” The pain was getting to her.

  “He was going to the sheriff. He had proof that Dad was hurting his horses. Dad said that if he was in jail, I’d get thrown out on the street. I’d have to live out of garbage cans. Of course, that was bullshit. It wouldn’t have been that bad, but I’d have to get a job—a real one, not just taking care of horses. At McDonald’s or something. Yuck!”

  “So you killed my father because he might have gone to the sheriff, and they might have had enough evidence to put your dad in jail, and you might have to go to work? That’s why you killed my father?”

  “Isn’t that a good reason?” Unsure of herself again. Dakota noticed that Lucy was watching her for cues.