The Kill (3 page)

W
infield Smith braked at the sight of the string of taillights, easing the truck and utility trailer to a crawl. He spotted a road crew about twenty cars ahead and saw a worker clad in a yellow rain poncho twirl a sign, switching the display from a red STOP to an orange SLOW.

The line of vehicles crept forward, but when Smitty was one car from the work crew, the worker twirled the sign to STOP again.
Didn’t that just figure?
Margaret and Richard were probably already at Longmeadow, cooling their heels, waiting for him to arrive with the Gator so they could get to work. The paving project had been under way for almost two weeks and the traffic snarl had delayed him on his way to Longmeadow more than once. He knew if he blamed his tardiness today on the paving Richard would commiserate with him, but Margaret would probably just give him that look of hers and tell him he should have left earlier. And she was right. There was no excuse for it. He was the huntsman, and the huntsman shouldn’t keep the master waiting.

Smitty blew out a sigh. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he eyed a handful of workers shooting the breeze next to a nearby asphalt truck. Taxpayer dollars hard at work.

There was a lull in the flow after a dozen or so cars snaked through the work zone and the worker spun the sign back around, waving the first car forward. Smitty nosed his truck into the oncoming lane, but as he hit the gas a hefty man clutching a two-way radio shot into the lane and jerked a hand up to stop him. The man’s face reddened as he shouted something at the worker directing traffic flow.

Smitty hunched his shoulders and raised his hands at the man.
Now what?

The man wagged his head, muttering, as he strode over to Smitty’s truck. Smitty lowered the window, blinking as the mist coated his eyelashes.

“Sorry about that,” the man said, eyeing Smitty from beneath his rain hood. “Dumb kid saw a lull in the traffic so he went ahead and waved you on without waiting for the go-ahead from the other end.” He yanked a shoulder at the work site and Smitty saw two approaching vehicles. The car that had been in front of him in line eased onto the shoulder to allow them to pass.

“Looks like you got yourself a long day ahead of you,” Smitty said.

The man snorted. “You got that right. The worker who normally mans the sign didn’t show up today so this kid’s filling in. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.”

The two cars rolled by and he patted Smitty’s door. “Okay, you’re good to go.”

“Have yourself a good one,” Smitty said, raising the window. Loose bits of fresh asphalt pinged beneath the truck as he eased through the work area. On the other side, he waved at a second flagman and punched the accelerator. He was no longer tardy now, he was downright late.

He rounded the bend just before the entrance to Longmeadow and sped past a rusted blue sedan parked on the shoulder with a white rag hanging off its gas cap. As he cleared the gates to the racecourse and began to bounce along the gravel road, someone tooted a horn behind him. Smitty shot a glance at the rearview mirror and saw Thompson James’s Ford Explorer. He braked to a stop and lowered his window as Thompson swerved onto the grass and pulled even with him.

“Morning, Thompson. Glad to see you made it. Margaret told me you weren’t going to be able to join the work party today.”

“I wasn’t. I was on my way to the office when I got an emergency dispatch for this location, so I turned around.”

In addition to being treasurer of the hunt, Thompson was a member of the volunteer rescue squad. Smitty saw the whirl of flashing blue lights on the windshield of the SUV. He frowned. “Here? What’s the emergency?”

“There’s a gunshot victim. That’s all I know from the dispatch.” Thompson jerked his head toward the rise to his left. “In the stewards’ stand.”

“Good God almighty.”

A
bigale was photographing troops near the encampment when an incoming artillery shell shrieked through the afternoon sky. Before she could dive for cover, the shell blasted into the ridge to her right. The concussion slammed her to the ground. She hugged the craggy terrain for a moment, unsure whether another round from the Taliban would follow, then gingerly pushed herself up and checked to make sure she wasn’t bleeding. Her body ached as if she’d been sucker-punched by a giant fist, but nothing seemed broken. She searched for Joe, saw him writhing on the ground twenty feet away, clutching his calf through blood-soaked khakis. She scrambled over, reaching him just as a medic did.

The medic peeled back Joe’s pant leg. “You’ve got a shrapnel wound!” He shouted to be heard as the Allied troops fired back with their own artillery.

“Bloody hell!” Joe screamed. “It feels like it blew off half my fucking leg.”

“You’ll be okay,” the medic said.

Someone yelled for the medic, pointing to a soldier who was down.

“Go on. That soldier looks worse off. I can bandage his leg,” Abigale said.

“Thanks.” The medic threw a handful of supplies at her. “I’ll send someone over to help move him.”

Joe moaned as Abigale pressed a wad of surgical pads to the angry wound. His bearded face twisted into a grimace, narrow lips stretched tight with pain. “Jesus fucking Christ, Portmann. Take it easy.”

She grabbed his hand and jammed it against the dressing. “Hold this. Tight. You need to put pressure on it to stop the bleeding.”

“I hope the hell you know what you’re doing.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve wrapped horses’ legs a hundred times.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better? I’m not a fucking horse!”

She smiled, hurriedly wound gauze around Joe’s leg, and tied it off as two soldiers hauled him away to the medical tent.

Another shell whistled toward the ridge and Abigale ran for the nearby trench, where she huddled with several of her colleagues to wait out the artillery fight. They joked, trying to make light of the situation.

“Joe’s probably happier than hell he took some shrapnel so he’ll get a chopper ride out of here,” Alex, an AP photographer, said. “He’s been working to come up with an exit strategy since the minute he jumped off that goddamned horse. He told me he’d stay here until the spring thaw if he had to.”

“The horse saved Joe’s bacon more than once,” Abigale said. “He’s lucky the horse didn’t send him sailing over the cliff, the way he was jerking on its mouth.”

Alex reached over and gave Abigale’s ponytail a playful tug. “Isn’t that just like our girl, standing up for the underdog.”

“Trust me, Joe was the underdog, not the horse.”

A crusty veteran from
The Daily Telegraph
plucked a flask from his pocket and sucked down a swallow. “Neither wind nor rain nor dark of night—nor a bloody horse—shall keep us from a story,” he said, raising the flask in a toast.

Abigale smiled absently, cradling her camera in her hands. The recent blasts of outgoing fire had gone unanswered. She eyed the faded sky. Was it safe to leave the trench?

“Look at Abigale…” The Brit’s eyes watered as he choked his way through a raspy smoker’s cough. “She’s just itching to get back out there and risk having her lovely arse blown off.”

“Maybe you should take a page from her playbook, old chap,” Alex said, grinning. “Abigale didn’t win herself a Pulitzer by hunkering down in a trench.”

M
argaret shifted against the wooden bench on the mid-level deck of the stewards’ stand and pulled the blanket tighter around her, vaguely aware of the disagreeable smell of wet wool, the scratch of the fabric against the back of her neck. Duchess stirred at her feet, stood, circled, then lay down again, snorting a sigh as she rested her head on Margaret’s boots.

The stench of blood hung in Margaret’s nostrils. Her eyes stole back to the floorboards of the deck above her and her stomach heaved. She took slow breaths, determined not to vomit again. Nausea rose, then settled back down with a shudder.

Footsteps clopped up the stairs toward her. It was Thompson James and the balding, round-faced deputy who’d been so kind when he’d questioned her earlier. She stood to meet them, a blast of wind coating her face with a chilly mist. Duchess scrambled to her feet and settled protectively against Margaret’s leg.

Thompson’s eyes darted anxiously beneath the brim of a baseball cap, snaking from Margaret to the deck above. “God, Margaret, I can’t believe this. What happened? Are you okay?”

She let the blanket slide from her shoulders and held it out toward the deputy. “I’m okay, but I need to get out of here.”

“Of course,” Thompson said, nodding. “We can sit in the ambulance. It will be warm in there.”

Margaret saw Thompson’s gaze drift to her outstretched hand, no doubt taking in the noticeable tremble. She shoved the blanket at the deputy. “Nonsense. I don’t need an ambulance, Thompson. I just can’t sit here any longer.”

“Sure. I understand.”

“Come on, Duchess.” Margaret nudged the dog with her knee as she slipped between Thompson and the deputy and grabbed the stair railing, concentrating on sidestepping race programs as she picked her way down the stairs.

A small group was swarming around the ambulance and sheriff’s cars. Several brown-uniformed sheriff deputies. A handful of rescue workers. A Virginia state trooper, his rain poncho gusting in the breeze. A two-way radio crackled from one of the cars.

Rain plastered Margaret’s hair as she stepped out from the stewards’ stand and she realized she’d lost her rain hat somewhere. She turned her collar up against the bone-chilling trickles dribbling down her neck.

Through the blur of activity she spotted Smitty. He faced away from her, huddled in conversation with Carol Simpson, the head of the rescue squad, and one of the deputies, his hands flying here and there as he spoke.

She weaved her way through the group to Smitty and put a hand on his shoulder. He spun around, his distress visible in the twist of his mouth, the stubborn thrust of his jaw. “What in God’s name is going on, Margaret? They’re telling me Richard got shot, but won’t tell me a goddamned thing beyond that.” He pawed at the tweed cap on his head, wagged a hand toward Carol. “Carol here let Thompson up in the stand, I guess because he’s an EMT, but won’t let me get within ten yards of there. Never mind that I’ve known Richard for north of twenty-five years. That—”

“Smitty.” Margaret looked him in the eye. “Richard’s dead.”

Smitty sagged as if someone had let the air out of him. The tip of his nose reddened and he sucked the inside of one cheek, making a popping noise with his lips as he blew out a breath. “What in God’s name happened?”

She glanced at Thompson and the deputy as they approached, feeling fat raindrops mix with tears on her cheeks. “I don’t know. Richard was dead when I found him.”

“But Carol said Richard got shot. Who shot him? Was it an accident?”

The round-faced deputy stepped forward. “We’re treating it as a criminal homicide.”

“A homicide!”

“Richard’s wallet is missing,” Margaret said. “So is his watch.”

Smitty frowned. “Are you thinking a robbery gone bad or something?”