One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (31 page)

By the time I struggled back up the hill and climbed through the wire, I was filthy and sweating like a hog in August, but the trip was worth it.

“But your staff looks carefully,” Geoff said.

“You bet we do. We are the greatest and don’t you forget it.”

“Okay, my diffident friend.”

“The two wounds started off at the same place, the same hole, so on the surface they looked like a single wound. It’s impossible, however, to see the track of a wound inside the body from outside. A tiny variation in direction or force, and bingo, two wound tracks.”

“That’s what you found.”

“Right. We noticed that the first wound—the one that actually killed him, instantly, as a matter of fact—was half an inch longer than the steel stake and much, much thinner. Also, the stake carried dirt and debris into the wound. The longer wound was free of debris. Clean as the proverbial whistle.”

“What was it?”

“Got me. Ice pick, maybe, but even that might be too thick. You know those things they stick into a cow’s stomach when it blows up with gas?”

“No, Artie,” Geoff said patiently. “Actually, my experience with gassy cows is limited.”

“Mine’s not. My granddad kept a dairy herd when I was a kid. See, a cow has more than one stomach . . .”

“Artie.”

“Oh, sorry. When one of Granddad’s cows got bloated, the vet would come over, take this long skinny needle in a plastic plunger. It’s called a trocar, my non-medical friend. He’d feel where to shove it and
blam
he’d stab the cow in the stomach. There’d be this big whoosh and the cow’s belly would go down five or six inches. Amazing.”

“So Raleigh might have been killed by an instrument that deflates a cow’s stomach?” Geoff thought of Dr. Gwen. She might practice exclusively on horses now, but she’d no doubt used a trocar in vet school. Time for another chat with the good doc. Troy could wait. Do him good to sweat a trifle.

Artie continued. “Trocars are used in laparoscopic surgery and drainage in human beings as well. You can use it to insert ports in an abdomen. Sometimes it’s got three sides. This one didn’t, if that’s what it was. I didn’t say it was definitely a trocar,” Artie said. “But something like that. If it was inside its plunger, the killer would press it against the base of the skull then drive the plunger home. Very neat. But it could also be some kind of thin knitting needle, or a special knife. Even a thin crochet hook with the hook cut off and the end sharpened. Tell you this, though. Whoever did it was either darned lucky or had at least a little medical knowledge. It went right into the brain.”

Gwen again.

“Why use the steel stake?”

“Hey, that’s your job, not mine. I’d guess the killer wanted to cover up the original wound and never thought we’d find it.”

“How much force would have been required?”

“Not much if you knew what you were doing and the victim was either unconscious or unsuspecting.”

“Any sign he was unconscious?”

“Small amount of bruising on the skull. Could have been from falling off the carriage, although it might have been enough to stun him. We did find Viagra and anti-cholesterol drugs, but no barbiturates.”

“Paralytics?”

“Ah, good old succinylcholine. Seems to be the serial killer’s drug of choice these days. Nope. No curare either. Some alcohol, but he wasn’t drunk. Far as we can tell, he was conscious. Wasn’t tied up. He was a healthy middle-aged man with a fattish heart.”

“Could you give some thought to the murder weapon, Artie? Check your medical equipment. See if something looks right, then call me back.”

“You think all I got to do is play Colonel Mustard with the Candlestick with you? I got five DBs in the morgue that need my special touch.”

“Thanks, Artie.” He hung up and dropped his head onto the back of his seat. Two wounds, two weapons. A doctor? Nurse? Vet? Knitter? He’d recheck his list of drivers at the Tollivers’ show.

Did two wounds mean two killers? Morgan and Troy, say, or Brock and Sarah Beth, or Gwen and Brock, or Dawn and Armando. No, not Armando unless he had discovered time travel. Dawn and Sarah Beth? They both had a motive to get rid of the man quickly. Maybe it was some doctor he’d totally overlooked who’d killed Raleigh for pawing his fifteen-year-old daughter or costing him a bundle in a sour deal.

He sighed and started the car. Troy could wait. At this point he needed to talk to Dr. Gwen. She hadn’t attended the funeral, but she had been at the viewing and probably considered that sufficient.

He considered calling ahead to make certain she wasn’t out on a case, then decided he’d drop in and take his chances. He wanted to see her face when he asked to check her trocars.

He was in luck.
The vet’s big mobile clinic was parked beside a red Mazda sports car and a beige Honda. He’d bet Gwen drove the Mazda. Not exactly a Lamborghini, but not cheap either. If the Honda belonged to the receptionist, then there weren’t any patients waiting. He didn’t know how many patients actually drove their horse vans over to see the doctor, but some surely must.

The bell over the door sounded when he walked in. The receptionist looked up from her desk. “Oh—Agent Wheeler, isn’t it?” She smiled that lovely smile. “Doctor’s not here.”

“Her car’s outside,” Geoff said. “So’s the van.”

“I know, but I hollered for her to say good morning when I came in and checked her office. She didn’t have any appointments scheduled for this morning. Her phone’s going straight to voice mail, but that’s what she does while she’s working somewhere. Probably an emergency. Somebody drove by and picked her up.”

“Could she be out in your paddocks?”

“I didn’t see her when I looked, but I guess so. I’ve got plenty to do getting this month’s bills out. She’s such a little bitty thing, she can hide behind a big ole draft horse and you’d never see her.” She glanced at her watch. “Lordy! I didn’t realize it’s been so long. It must really be a bad one if she hasn’t called.“

“Mind if I check?” Geoff asked.

“Sure, go on through and out the back door. I guess she could be in the hay shed. I didn’t go out there, but I called.”

There were no patients in the post-op stalls. No Gwen anywhere.

He had no reason to feel uncomfortable, but he did. His gut was nearly infallible when it came to trouble. This, he felt certain, was trouble.

He walked out into the pasture. Two horses grazed in separate paddocks. They barely lifted their heads when they saw him. Neither was large enough to hide Gwen. He walked on toward the hay shed.

The hay shed was three-sided with the open side facing east, away from the usual direction of the wind. He called for Gwen but got no reply.

He caught the first scent when he was ten feet from the shed. If the receptionist had come out to search for Gwen, she’d have smelled it too.

The odor of death was unmistakable. He told himself it was most likely a possum or even a wounded deer that had crawled into the hay shed to die.

Nonetheless, he stopped to pull on a pair of Latex gloves and set up his cell phone to take photos.

He took several shots as he moved closer to the shed. When he rounded the end, he could see that most of the winter’s hay had already been fed. All that remained were two piles of ten to twenty bales, each stacked three deep at either end of the shed. The center portion was empty.

No matter how many times he smelled death, he never got used to it and hoped he never would. He pulled out his handkerchief and covered his mouth and nose as he checked the bales at the north end of the shed—the end closest to the back door of the clinic.

They were bales of grass hay, each bale cinched neatly with two strands of orange twine.

He turned toward the stack at the far end. This was a different sort of hay—greener, made up of thicker stalks. That’s why the two piles had been separated. He thought it was alfalfa. Each bale was cinched not by twine, but by two strands of wire.

One of the wires holding the top bale together was in place. He didn’t see the other. A couple of flakes had popped loose, but not fallen totally away from the bale. As he bent over the broken bale, he caught a glimpse of blue peeking out from between the alfalfa and the south wall.

He leaned over the bale and found himself staring down into Gwen’s Standish’s eyes, already milky in death. He slid to his knees in front of the bale. Checking for a pulse would be useless, but he tried anyway, searching for a carotid pulse just above the angry red line that ran around her neck.

Whatever had strangled her was still embedded so deeply in her neck he couldn’t see what it was from the front, so he turned her head. It moved easily.

“Damn,” he whispered. At the nape of her neck he saw that two ends of steel wire had been crossed like a garrote, pulled tight, then twisted together. He’d be willing to bet it was the missing wire from the alfalfa bale.

He caught the glint of metal and saw a pair of wire cutters on the ground where Gwen might have dropped them. He laid her head down gently in the same position he’d found it. Let the crime scene techs take it from there.

He hated strangulation cases. Gwen had been an attractive woman. Strangulation destroyed all beauty and replaced it with purple skin, bulging eyes traced with broken veins and the tiny red dots, and a protruding tongue.

He flashed his penlight on her neck and saw deep scratches where she’d fought to pull the wire away. Her nails were torn and bloody, but he suspected the only DNA under them would be hers. Still, they’d check. Maybe they’d get lucky.

She was still warm. Since rigor mortis started at the extremities and worked up and in, and since her head had turned easily, she hadn’t been dead long. No ligature marks around her wrists, so she hadn’t been restrained.

He backed away before he could contaminate the scene and got as far as the bales of grass hay across the shed before he had to sit down. He knew cops who could look at a double axe murder without turning a hair. He couldn’t.

No matter what good shape Gwen was in, she maybe weighed ninety pounds. An easy target for male or female of significant size and strength.

He knew better than to argue ahead of his data, but he could visualize the scene. Gwen would have come out to feed the horses in pasture as soon as she came in this morning—probably at dawn. She’d have used wire cutters to clip one of the two wires on the alfalfa and pull it loose. That’s when the killer must have interrupted her.

She turned her back on her killer, someone she knew. If she’d been afraid, she’d have used the wire cutters as a weapon. Instead, she bent down to cut the second wire. The killer grabbed the loose wire, dropped it over her head, and pulled her back across the hay or over his knee—maybe off her feet. Strangulation took several minutes. Once she was unconscious, however, the killer could have simply twisted the ends of the wire together and left. The twist in the wire around her throat was too tight to have been done solely by hand. Her killer took time to be neat. That made his flesh crawl.

Whoever had killed her had not brought a weapon along, or had chosen not to use it. Did that mean the killer had not come to kill?

Geoff turned and walked carefully back to the clinic. The path and the floor of the hay shed were raked gravel. No footprints.

He dialed Stan Nordstrom’s direct line, told him what had happened, then went back inside to tell Gwen’s receptionist she’d have to look for a new job.

“What is it with you?”
Stan Nordstrom said. “We get our share of vehicular homicides and drug killings, but nothing like this.”