Breakaway (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (17 page)

"How was he?" I teased her.

She shrugged. "It never happened," she said. "He sort of backed off at the last minute. If you want my guess, I think he's impotent."

We all absorbed that.

"It would explain why the pursuit is the big deal to him," I agreed.

"And why I get such a creepy feeling from him," Caroline added. "The guy must be totally sexually frustrated."

We all nodded sagely. As women of roughly forty, we'd all been around the block enough times to be familiar with the emotional problems triggered in men by any kind of impotence, however temporary. Guys just did not deal well with this situation.

"I don't know how you'd discourage him," Kris volunteered. "Maybe you should go out with him a few times. Then he'd let you alone."

We ended up eating at the bar, sharing several salads and appetizers, which made a lovely meal. Caroline chatted to us occasionally throughout, though the subjects of Warren and Clay were tacitly avoided. When we left the bar, an hour later, Kris and I told her good-bye.

I felt a twinge of the old depression as she dropped me off at my empty house. It was becoming harder and harder for me to enjoy my solitude; sadness seemed to creep in the moment I was alone, these days.

I walked the dog and fed her and the other animals. I'd just begun stripping off my clothes when the phone rang.

"Hello," I said dully.

"Gail, please, come quick, oh hurry, my God, it's Jo." It was Kris, or I thought it was Kris. Her voice was very nearly incoherent.

FOURTEEN

Kris's house, when I got there, was not the scene of full-blown disaster I expected. No ambulances in sight. The lights were on, though, and I lost no time running to the front door.

"Kris!" I yelled, as I opened it.

"Here," came the response.

Kris and Jo were sitting together on the couch, Kris's arm around her daughter. In my first glance I registered that Jo looked basically okay-awake, alert, not bloody.

"What happened?" I demanded.

Mother and daughter stared at me blankly. Kris's face was as pale as Jo's, and neither seemed to know what to say. I squatted on the floor next to them. "What happened?" I asked, more gently.

"I'm not sure, not really." Jo looked down at her hands. She was a sweet child, and despite turning thirteen this year, had not yet acquired the rebellious insolence typical of adolescents. Her long, silky blond hair, very like her mother's, was tied back in a simple ponytail, she wore a baggy T-shirt and jeans, and I had never seen her use makeup. Her quite pretty face still held a candid, childlike expression. Perhaps, given Kris's current lifestyle, this somewhat tenacious attachment to childhood was Jo's form of rebellion. Whatever the cause, Jo was a remarkably easy teenager to get along with, and I liked her very much.

"Do you remember anything that happened, sweetheart?" I asked.

"A little," she said. "I was here in the house, watching TV, and I heard Dixie neigh. She doesn't usually neigh at night, so I thought it was kind of weird. Then I heard more neighing, so I thought I should go see if something was wrong. I got a flashlight, and I turned the outside lights on and I went out to the barn. Then," she stopped and looked at her mother, "I don't really know what happened. Something hit me I think. All I remember is waking up with Mom bending over me."

Kris nodded, looking, if anything, more scared than Jo.

"I came home, walked in the house, called Jo's name, and didn't see her. I could see that the barn lights were on, so I went out the back door and started out there. That's when I saw Jo. She was lying outside the barn, face down. I can tell you, Gail, I panicked pretty bad."

Kris stroked her daughter's hair gently. "I bent down and turned her over and she woke up. After I figured out that she was basically okay, nothing broken or anything, I brought her back in here and called you."

"How about her head?" I asked.

"There's a big lump and some swelling," Kris said.

"You should have a doctor look at her, in case of concussion." I peered into Jo's face. "Her eyes look all right. She's probably not concussed. " I thought a minute. "Stay here," I said. "I want to go have a look at the barn."

"Gail," Kris said nervously. "What if he's still out there?"

"He won't be. First you came home, then I drove up. Whoever it was, he's long gone."

Brave words. Still, I went out to my truck first and got Roey out of the cab. She was a friendly dog and would probably not recognize an intruder as an enemy; still, with her more acute senses, she would spot a stranger in the night sooner than I, and would no doubt run up to him, barking and wagging her tail.

However, Roey ran about the barnyard, sniffing happily, and showed no signs of spotting anything. I waited awhile; nothing happened. I couldn't see Dixie in her corral. The barn was brightly lit; after a minute, I stepped inside.

For a second I stared, not really comprehending what I was seeing. Dixie was cross-tied in the stall; an overturned feed bucket lay on the ground behind her.

"Oh, shit," I said softly.

Dixie looked at me, calm and curious. I rubbed her forehead and walked around behind her. I lifted her tail. It was possible. Some sort of mucousy substance was smeared on her vulva.

"Shit, shit, shit," I said again. Giving the mare another pat, I shut Roey back in the truck and rejoined Kris and Jo. They still sat huddled on the couch; their faces had more color, though.

"So," I said, "if you're feeling up to it, why don't you go on down to the emergency room and get Jo checked out while I call the cops."

Two hours and a couple of phone calls later, it was midnight and Jeri Ward sat in Kris's living room. Kris and Jo had returned from the hospital; Jo was all right, they said. No concussion.

I'd achieved Jeri's presence here by a persistent refusal to speak to anyone else about "the nature of the problem," and a constant repetition of the statement that Detective Ward was already involved with the case. This wasn't, strictly speaking, true, but fortunately Jeri was on duty and eventually came on the phone line. I explained the situation briefly and got her assurance she'd be right out.

So here we all were-Kris still in her skimpy halter dress with a black sweater thrown over it, Jo in pajamas, and me in the faded sweats I'd pulled on to rush over here. Jeri Ward, in contrast, wore dark blue slacks with a clean line and a tweed jacket in shades of blue and cream. Very simple, very classy.

Kris said hesitantly, "Can we keep this out of the papers?"

"You can have my word that I won't say anything to them," Jeri said crisply. "I can't answer for more than that."

"I understand." Kris hesitated. "Can you get any fingerprints or anything-out at the barn?"

"My techs are working on it now," Jeri said. "Also, we'll do a semen analysis. Assuming it is semen, of course."

We all looked at Jo. "Semen?" she said.

Might as well get this over with. Jo was going to find out eventually.

"Sweetheart," I said, "we think some man was, well, sexually abusing Dixie. He must have seen the lights come on and hidden, then hit you over the head and run away."

She shrugged. "I haven't run into this particular problem before. But sexual crimes are relatively common. All the way from rape, sometimes including other violence, down through stuff as innocuous as flashers and public urinators. The common thread seems to be an inability to resist the inappropriate act. The perpetrator becomes compulsive; he just has to do this one specific thing in order to be satisfied."

"I suppose most of them don't have a happy sexual life at home," I ventured.

"You'd be surprised," Jeri said. "Sometimes they do. Sometimes, in fact, they're happily married. They just work their darker impulses out in these weird ways that their spouses often doesn't know about. But most of them are, in some sense, sexually frustrated."

Kris and Jo and I were all quiet. I knew that our minds were following the same trail. Who was the strangely twisted human being who had done this thing?

Jeri Ward looked at me. "Gail, you told me about this before. When you checked my horse. Was the other incident here?"

"No." I looked warningly at Kris. "I really can't tell you," I said to Jeri. "I promised I wouldn't."

"She was about two-thirds of the way from the house to the barn where I found her," Kris interjected. "She couldn't have seen into the stall from there."

"But you heard the horse?" Jeri asked.

"Not when I was outside." Jo paused. "I heard neighing when I was in the house, and then it stopped and I went back to watching TV. Then I heard more neighing. That's when I decided to go outside and check."

"Did the horse sound upset?" Jeri asked.

"No." Jo hesitated. "No, not really." She thought a moment, looking confused. "It was weird, though. That's the reason I went to see. That neighing."

"What about it, honey?" Kris said gently.

Jo looked doubtful. "At first it just sounded like Dixie neighing. And then, later," she looked at Jeri Ward, "it didn't sound right."

"No." Jo shook her head and looked at me, then back to Jeri. "I don't think it was Dixie. I think it was another horse."

"Another horse?" Jeri sounded confused. "How could you tell?"

"I wasn't really sure." Jo still looked doubtful. "It just didn't sound like Dixie's voice. I mean, at first it did, and then it didn't. I thought maybe another horse had gotten loose and was out there."

Jeri still looked as if she wasn't sure how to take this.

"I could tell if I heard a horse neighing in my barnyard that wasn't one of my two," I volunteered.

"For sure?" Jeri asked. "No, not for sure. But if you've owned a horse for a long time, their voices become very distinct to you. I can tell Gunner's nicker from Plumber's quite easily. Still, once in a while, just like people, they won't sound like themselves."

Jo nodded at this. "That's what I mean," she said. "I wasn't sure, and I thought it just didn't sound like Dixie. At first, when I heard her neigh, it did sound like her. I wondered what she was neighing for; she doesn't do that very often. Then I heard this other neighing, and I thought maybe there was a horse out there and Dixie was neighing at it. That's when I went out to check."

We all took that in.

"Is there any likelihood that you would have a loose horse running around here?" Jeri asked Kris.

Kris shrugged. "It's possible. There are a lot of horses in Harkins Valley. But we're almost a mile from the closest place that has any."