Night Mares in the Hamptons (26 page)

I did, and he yelled, “Got him. Now we can pick him up. Threats, extortion, obstruction of justice, possession of stolen property. Hell, we'll get him on animal cruelty if nothing else.”

“What about a warrant?”

“We don't need one if we see a crime being committed. Or a citizen in danger. After last night, every person in this town is in danger and I have the right—no, the duty—to go check up on every one of them. We'll worry about the technicalities later. Half an hour. At the ranch. I'll bring Big Eddie and Ranger.”

With the chief there, we wouldn't need Kelvin or K2, thank goodness. Uncle Henry wasn't the best truth-seer, but he'd be good enough to deal with Snake's lies.

Ty was already calling Connor, telling him to meet us there. I flew up the stairs to get dressed, but I could hear his sharp intake of breath behind me. I guess I forgot I couldn't hold the cell phone, the land phone, and the blanket all at once. I winked at him and ran faster. I threw on some jeans and a T-shirt without bothering to check for ticks the way everyone out here knew to do. God knew I could be crawling with them after a night in the grass, on and off that blanket. Where we were going there'd only be more. I was not going to think about what else was in the grass at the ranch.

Susan said she'd make coffee and find some food for us to take. She had to stay behind to help Grandma Eve and get some rest before work tonight. Her parents were already in town, checking Aunt Jasmine's school for vandalism.

I shouted down a plea for Susan to put the dogs out and throw some kibble in their dishes.

Ty went out with the dogs to gather up that can of oats, just in case.

Poor Little Red was upset at being left again. I picked him up for a quick cuddle, telling him how much I loved him and he had to be brave and defend the house and the big dogs and I'd be back soon. He bit my ear.

We were off.

Ty drove. Fast. I called out the turns, hanging onto the door, hanging onto the coffee mugs, trying not to think about H'tah, ticks in sensitive places, bad cooking, or the grim look on Ty's face.

We saw flashing lights ahead and Ty sped up to follow the chief's car and the K-9 unit. Connor on the motor bike fell in behind the caravan. Uncle Henry did not use his sirens, I guess so Snake wouldn't have warning. According to Susan, the sirens had sounded all night, so no one would think anything of one more. Maybe Uncle Henry didn't want to add to the town's jittery nerves or wake up anyone who'd finally gone to sleep. I didn't know; we hadn't heard the fire whistle, the ambulances, or the police sirens. Maybe they were on the other side of town. Or the horse-calling chant was too loud. That must be it.

As we drove, I did notice a car tilted into the ditch at the side of a road, a tree with its bark half scraped off, lawns with tire tracks cut into them, smashed mailboxes everywhere. Hell had come to Paumanok Harbor all right. I prayed it was over.

We all parked in the overgrown drive for what had been the ranch's main house. Snake's rusted old Dodge pickup wasn't in sight, not where it had been yesterday. With him gone, our search would be easier, if not as legal, maybe.

Uncle Henry dragged himself out of his seat and leaned against the car door, looking at the burned-out foundation, the brush and bramble where the lawns and fields used to be, the falling down bunkhouse and stable. “Damn shame about this. I used to come help exercise the horses years back. Couldn't ask for a better job for a kid.” Then he looked out at the bay glittering in the sunshine, Gardiner's Island in the distance. “But it's one hell of a place to put a house. Prettiest view around.”

He looked over at me and Ty. “Unlike the two of you.”

Ty's split lip was swollen and raw looking, and my cheeks were chafed raw from his beard. My earlobe had tooth marks on it. The chief held up a hand to stop whatever I was going to say, something like the dog ate my homework.

“No, I don't want to hear. You'd only lie, and you know that gives me indigestion.” He took a roll of antacid tablets from his shirt pocket and put one in his mouth. “Can't say hearing the truth would make me any happier.”

Big Eddie let Ranger out of the back of his police car and told him to go find something. The shepherd lay down in the shade of the car and closed his eyes.

“Hey, Fred, you here?” Big Eddie called out.

“His truck's gone, dickhead. What do you think, he lent it to someone? Snake has no friends.” That was from Baitfish Barry, the cop who'd been driving the chief. We were all standing upwind from him. “He's not here, so let's find the horse before Snake gets back.”

The chief sighed and started pointing. “Barry, you go over there and see where the power line goes. Willow says there's a single light in a wood cell. Eddie, you start sniffing at the bunkhouse. You”—meaning me—“use your head to think about the colt and where he might be.”

Ty headed for the stable where we'd looked yesterday. Connor and the chief followed him.

I stayed by the cars a minute, trying to listen for H'tah. Then I tried talking to him in my mind. I used my sketch pad to draw a willow tree on a hill. “That's me. I'm here. Where are you?”

I didn't hear anything but the men calling to each other, so I headed in their direction. They were in the dark stable now, where I had no desire to go. I circled the outside, looking up to see if I spotted an extension cord. And tripped over Fred Sinese. And six mostly dead snakes.

I screamed loud enough to wake the dead, but not Fred Sinese.

My father warned me. Bad view. Don't look. Not Bayview, not don't cook. I'd never cook again. Never eat again. Not after rushing away and puking up the muffin Susan had given me, the coffee, last night's cookies, and half my stomach lining, it felt like.

Ty was at my side, holding me up while I retched until my gut ached and my throat was raw. Then he handed me a handkerchief—the guy really was prepared—and brushed my hair back from my sweaty cheeks.

Big Eddie brought over a bottle of water, his own complexion tinged with green. He went back to where the others were huddled around the body.

Ty turned me to face the other way. “You shouldn't have seen that.”

“You think?” I knew this wasn't the place for sarcasm, so I apologized and changed the subject. “Did the snakes kill him? Or the mares? Or did his liver just give out?”

It was the chief who came over to me, patting my back, and said, “Looks like everyone had a go at him. He's all swelled up from the snakebites, even if they're not poisonous. The dead snakes have hoof marks on them, but no telling if Sinese was already gone by then. What got him first, I'd guess, is the bullet hole.”

“He committed suicide?” Maybe that was better than dying of cirrhosis. Definitely better than dying of snakebites, to my way of thinking.

“He got shot in the back of his head. Execution style.”

While I was trying to make sense of that, the chief started calling his office, sending for the coroner, a medical examiner, and the county homicide unit. Then Big Eddie yelled to the chief from inside the stable. “I smell a horse. Snake. And snow.”

I shook my aching head. Snow was another of my father's wacky warnings. It was about seventy-five degrees out.

Baitfish Barry thought Big Eddie was just as crazy. “Give us a break, Pinocchio. It's July.”

“Not that kind of snow. Cocaine. A lot of it.”

“Holy shit. We'll have the Feds here, no matter what.”

“Shut up and find it,” the chief ordered.

“No, find if the horse is still here!”

Connor called out, “I see where Sinese kept something. I can't tell yet if it's the dope or the horse. It looks like he put a fake wall up in one of the loose boxes, then piled old crates in front of the new door so it looked like the rest of the stall was filled with garbage. The door's partly opened today, but I missed it entirely yesterday.”

Because I hadn't gone into the stable to call to H'tah. I went in now, leaning on Ty. We waited while Connor finished pulling boxes away from stall number six. I thought about the scrap of paper Mrs. Merriwether had given me. A nine, damn it. Only it wasn't a nine. It was a six upside down. We could have had H'tah out of here yesterday. Damn, damn, damn.

Sure enough, when Connor pulled the door fully open, we saw a pile of straw, a rubber bucket with water, and a dead snake.

Ty pulled me closer. “The mares got him out. He's safe.”

The chief and his men started yelling. Eddie's nose had led them back outside to an old abandoned well, so overgrown you could have tripped over its rotten wood cover and fallen in without ever knowing it was there. Uncle Henry was cursing, Big Eddie was yelling at Fishbait that if he hadn't been standing so close stinking like a sardine, they'd know about the snakes. Rattlers, by god.

Then they started shooting.

Ty pulled me away again. He couldn't do anything about the continued gunfire. “That's an old smuggler's trick, putting a rattler on top of the stash. Who's going to put their hand in there to see what the snake's sleeping on?”

I couldn't take any more. I went and sat next to Ranger in the good, clean sun. H'tah was safe, that was all that mattered. Unless the Paumanok Harbor police killed each other.

T
HEY DIDN'T FIND THE DRUGS, THE COLT, the gun, or Snake's truck. Not even with the squads of detectives on the scene. Before the outsiders got there, we all decided not to mention the magic in the night mares, just talk about stray white horses, a stolen foal, Snake's extortion. We knew not to mention Big Eddie's nose. If they ever solved the drug case, old Ranger was in line for another commendation. As for the chaos in Paumanok Harbor, everyone knew the region was subject to odd sun spot emissions, weird fault lines, and mass hysteria. Uncle Henry swallowed the whole roll of antacid tablets and started on another.

The detective who interviewed me wanted to know if Snake had attacked me, I looked so battered. Then he wanted me to describe discovering Snake's body, which I couldn't do without gagging, so I just pointed. He could go look himself. I knew the image was burned into my memory forever, but maybe these homicide cops were tougher, having seen so much.

Nope. I could hear one of them retching, messing up the crime scene more. A couple of others hurried past me, rushing for the bathroom in the bunkhouse or into the bushes. “Beware of more snakes,” I called out to them. “And ticks. And poison ivy.” I knew I was sounding like my father, but they all thought I was crazy already, looking for a horse no one had seen, so what were a few cautionary warnings?

After Connor, Ty, and I gave our accounts of events, we were free to go but not to leave town. Which meant Ty'd be here a few more days at least. I was too drained to be happy about that, or sad he'd be gone soon afterward.

Connor rode the motorcycle back to Rosehill to wait for Ty to drop me off, leaving Ty and me alone. We didn't talk on the ride back to my place, though, having speculated endlessly while we waited for our turns to give our statements. The detectives wanted to separate us so our information wouldn't be contaminated, but the chief spoke to them, so I could keep leaning on Ty's shoulder until it was my time to talk about the phone calls and our visit here yesterday. I stayed leaning on the ride home.

We all needed showers, food, rest. I needed to check on my grandmother and Doc, so we all met at the big house in an hour. I brought Little Red, to appease the Pomeranian and to aggravate my grandmother. Grandma Eve fed us anyway and put something in our iced tea that settled my stomach, if not my nerves. Susan was baking brownies, which smelled wonderful.

Doc looked older than yesterday. Connor stayed far away from him, not shaking hands or sitting close around the kitchen table when we sat to tell our stories again, this time without leaving stuff out.

First they explained what happened to them last night.

After watching the fields for hours, my grandmother and her old friend went to bed. I didn't ask whose bed; they didn't tell. They were awakened by a scream—that might have been me—and a wave of emotion so overwhelming, so frightening, so enraging, that Grandma started throwing her pots and pans around, to drown out the sound in her head. When that didn't work, she found herself mixing up a potion that could have poisoned half the town if it got in the public water works.

She was still shaking her head. “Me, who's sworn never to do harm.”

Doc couldn't project calm or reassurance, not to her, not to the source of the emotional turbulence. He tried and tried, but never found enough of his own inner peace to spread to Eve or the others. The failure, the desperation, the knowing his best all-out effort was never good enough, had him feeling weak, clammy-skinned. He and Grandma had a flaming battle about calling the ambulance, and settled on her driving him to the emergency clinic.