Burn Out
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Pronzini-Muller Family Trust
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group, USA
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New York, NY 10017
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First eBook Edition: October 2008
ISBN: 978-0-446-54301-9
Contents
Sharon McCone Mysteries By Marcia Muller
Chapter 2: Wednesday OCTOBER 24 to Monday OCTOBER 29
Chapter 4: Wednesday OCTOBER 31
Chapter 5: Thursday NOVEMBER 1
Chapter 7: Saturday NOVEMBER 3
Chapter 10: Tuesday NOVEMBER 6
Chapter 11: Wednesday NOVEMBER 7
Chapter 12: Thursday NOVEMBER 8
Chapter 14: Saturday NOVEMBER 10
Chapter 15: Sunday NOVEMBER 11
Chapter 16: Monday NOVEMBER 12
Chapter 17: Tuesday NOVEMBER 13
Chapter 18: Wednesday NOVEMBER 14
Chapter 19: Thursday NOVEMBER 15
Chapter 20: Friday NOVEMBER 16
Chapter 21: Saturday NOVEMBER 17
Chapter 22: Thursday NOVEMBER 22
S
HARON
M
CCONE
M
YSTERIES
B
Y
M
ARCIA
M
ULLER
THE EVER-RUNNING MAN
VANISHING POINT
THE DANGEROUS HOUR
DEAD MIDNIGHT
LISTEN TO THE SILENCE
A WALK THROUGH THE FIRE
WHILE OTHER PEOPLE SLEEP
BOTH ENDS OF THE NIGHT
THE BROKEN PROMISE LAND
A WILD AND LONELY PLACE
TILL THE BUTCHERS CUT HIM DOWN
WOLF IN THE SHADOWS
PENNIES ON A DEAD WOMAN’S EYES
WHERE ECHOES LIVE
TROPHIES AND DEAD THINGS
THE SHAPE OF DREAD
THERE’S SOMETHING IN A SUNDAY
EYE OF THE STORM
THERE’S NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF
DOUBLE (With Bill Pronzini)
LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR WILLIE
GAMES TO KEEP THE DARK AWAY
THE CHESHIRE CAT’S EYE
ASK THE CARDS A QUESTION
EDWIN OF THE IRON SHOES
N
ONSERIES
CAPE PERDIDO
CYANIDE WELLS
POINT DECEPTION
For Melissa Meith and Mike White:
Friends through both the good times and the bad.
Thanks to:
Marcie Galick, good friend to horses—and to me.
Bill, my first editor and best friend.
Les Pockell—your suggestions were right on.
Celia Johnson—yours, too.
I sat on the bluff’s edge, facing southeast, where a newly risen full moon cast a shimmery path over the waters of Tufa Lake. To my right, the towering peaks of Yosemite had disappeared into purple darkness. Here in the high desert the evening cooled quickly this time of year, but I’d prepared for it, appropriating a shearling jacket several sizes too big for me from the closet at the ranch house. As I’d appropriated it every night since I’d come up here from the city ten days ago.
Behind me, my husband Hy’s twenty-year-old horse, Lear Jet—an ironic name for the red dun gelding, which had never willingly picked up the pace in its life—whickered. I hadn’t ridden a horse in more than a decade. Pretty much disliked the creatures, in fact. Lear Jet was big—about fifteen hands and twelve hundred pounds—with a white star on his forehead and a white snip on his nose. He didn’t like me any more than I liked him. Every chance he got he’d lean hard on me, try to stomp my feet, bare his yellow teeth and snort.
I wasn’t riding the creature for pleasure but in response to a challenge from Hy’s ranch manager, Ramon Perez, who lived on the property and tended Lear Jet and the small herd of sheep Hy kept.
I sat watching the water as the moon rose higher. No longer visible by night or day were the brownish-white towers of calcified vegetation—tufa—that gave the lake its name. Years ago, the siphoning off of feeder streams for drought-stricken southern California had caused the lake’s level gradually to sink and reveal the underwater towers; the brine shrimp that inhabited it and the waterfowl that fed on them had seemed doomed. But they were saved by the efforts of a coalition of conservationists, headed by Hy, and now the streams flowed freely, the lake teemed with life.
I wished I were so alive, but all I felt was burned out and hollow inside.
Last February I’d escaped death by mere seconds when a building where Hy and I had been temporarily living blew up—one of a series of bombings directed at the security company in which he was a partner. I’d solved the case of the Ever-Running Man, as the bomber had been called, but the fear and nightmares lingered; the grinding day-to-day effort of managing a growing investigative agency had sucked my spirit dry. Throughout spring and summer depression dragged me down. I’d tried coping with it myself, eventually resorted to antidepressants, and, when the pills hadn’t worked, consulted a therapist. Therapy didn’t work, either; I’m a private person, and I found myself lying to the doctor whenever she probed too close to the root causes of my condition.
Severe depression is like being at the bottom of a deep, dark pit: you want to put your feet and your hands against the walls and, squirming like an overturned spider, crawl up into the sunlight. Only when you try you find you can’t move your limbs. I dreamed of being in that pit night after night. Finally, at Hy’s urging, I’d come to the ranch for a change of pace—rather than the more familiar environs at Touchstone, our place on the Mendocino Coast. I’d planned to rest, regain my perspective, and rethink my future.
Well, everything but the rest part had so far eluded me.
That
I managed just fine, sometimes sleeping twelve to fourteen hours at a stretch. It wasn’t good, and I knew it.
I also knew the choice of this spot on the bluff that I returned to night after night wasn’t good, but here I sat again. It was the place Hy had come the night his first wife, Julie Spaulding, died of a long, debilitating illness. He’d told me how the sunset had flared above the Sierras, then died on the water. . . .
You’re not coming here tomorrow, McCone. It just depresses you more. Get on with figuring out your life.
Behind me, Lear Jet snorted impatiently. He wanted his alfalfa.
“Okay, you smelly old thing,” I called and got to my feet. “I’m coming.”
The horse, of course, was obstinate. He turned his back on me and tried to pull the reins loose from where I’d tied them to a tree root. I took the reins myself, but when I tried to mount him he sidestepped. I hung on, got my left foot in the stirrup, and threw my right leg over his back. Before I could locate the other stirrup, he began walking; I clung to the pommel until my foot was secure. Then he stopped.
I clicked my heels authoritatively against his sides.
He snorted and put his head down.
“Look, you miserable bag of bones, I’m not in the mood for your antics!” I clicked my heels harder.
Lear Jet took off at a sudden wild run across the mesa.
I lost both stirrups, yanking hard on the reins. “Slow down, dammit!”
And he did—jerking to a dead stop. I flew from the saddle over his lowered head and landed on my butt in an area of soft dried grass.
As the horse turned away and trotted toward the stables, I could have sworn I heard him snicker.
I wasn’t hurt, although I’d probably be sore in the morning, but I stayed where I was for a while, lying on my back, my knees bent upward, cursing Lear Jet and watching the emerging stars.
What
else
could go wrong today? That morning I’d nicked myself with a kitchen knife; been snappish for no reason with my office manager, Ted Smalley, who was holding down the fort back in the city; been even more snappish when my sister Charlene, who lived in the LA area, called to see how I was doing.
That afternoon Citibank’s fraud division called to tell me someone was using my MasterCard to make Internet purchases; they’d frozen the account and a new card would have to be issued. I should have been grateful to them for spotting the problem within hours, but instead I grumbled at the representative about the inconvenience of having to change the number on all my automatic payments. Then I called my nephew and agency computer expert, Mick Savage, and asked him to find out who’d made the charges; he could work faster than Citibank, who were bound to have more important cases on their hands than mine. When he said he was swamped, and why not let the bank handle it, I yelled at him and hung up. Then I slept the rest of the afternoon.
Now I’d been thrown by a horrible, hateful horse.
Well, at least you’re not having a bad hair day
, my inner voice said.
“Shut up,” I said. “It’s not funny.”
Now I was losing my sense of humor! I’d always depended on it to get me through the rough patches, but it was fading along with everything else.
I got up, brushing dried grass from my pants and hair, and started toward the house. The moon and starlight showed me the way, and eventually I found a familiar well-traveled path.
A bobbing light was coming toward me, I saw then. “Sharon?” Ramon Perez’s voice called.
“I’m here.”
“Lear came back to the stable without you. I thought I’d better mount a search.”
“The son of a bitch threw me.”
“Are you all right?” I’d come into the circle of Ramon’s flashlight, and he frowned as he looked me up and down.
“I’ll live.”
Ramon Perez was a Northern Paiute, a tribe closely associated and often confused with my own forebears, the Shoshone. A stocky, weathered man in his late forties who spoke little but always had gentle hands for animals and a kind smile for humans. He’d opened up some to me since I told him I’d discovered I was adopted and a full-blooded Indian; since then we’d spent a good bit of time discussing his and my tribes’ commonalities and differences.
Which was what had started this horse thing.
We’d been sitting on bales of hay in the stable two nights ago when Ramon said, “You really should learn to ride.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Your people are good with horses. They acquired them, I think from the Apaches, in the seventeen-hundreds. Earlier than my people.”
“Well then, I’m a piss-poor Shoshone. I took riding lessons in my mid-twenties and did okay, but I quit because I discovered I hate the critters.”
Ramon shook his head. “You just don’t understand them, is all. What you need to do is show them that you’re in control, and that you respect them. Then comes the love.”
I eyed him skeptically.
“Take Lear out tomorrow morning.”
I shrugged.
“Dare you.”
“Oh, Ramon, come on. . . .”
“Double-dare you.”
Ah, the games of our childhood . . .
“Double-dog-dare you.”
“You’re on.”
The next morning I’d shown up at nine for my ride. Lear raised his lip in a sneer while Ramon helped me adjust the saddle, bridle, and stirrups, but otherwise he’d walked peaceably enough around the nearby meadow. When I unsaddled him he twitched his tail impatiently.
“Ride him tonight,” Ramon suggested. “Let him get used to you. I’ve seen you walking on the mesa; let him take you there.”
I sighed, “Okay. But isn’t it dangerous to ride at twilight?”
He laughed. “Horse knows every inch of this ranch. He’ll get you there and back just fine. Bring him a piece of carrot as a reward.”
Lear had given me a disdainful look and tried to nip my fingers when he took the carrot, but otherwise the ride had gone well. And then tonight . . .
I took Ramon’s arm as we started walking back toward the cluster of ranch buildings. “Lear’s not getting the carrot I brought for him.”
“No, he shouldn’t. He knows he acted out.”
“And I’m not riding him again.”
Ramon was silent for a moment, and then he said softly, “We’ll see.”
Ten minutes later I let myself into the house through the door to the mudroom, hung the jacket on a peg, and went into the kitchen. It felt like stepping back into the fifties: black-and-white linoleum floor, yellow Formica countertops, old fridge and stove, porcelain sink, enameled cabinets with scalloped bottoms. A chrome-and-Formica table—yellow, with chairs upholstered in red vinyl—stood in a breakfast nook. I liked the kitchen and the fact that neither Hy nor Julie had attempted to remodel it. It spoke to me of continuity and an acceptance of the past.
