All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (44 page)

Tyrone pried the coffee mug from Jackson's hands and set it aside.

"I better attend to a few changes," he mused.

He turned and slapped Jackson hard across the face. But Jackson scarcely felt it, his jaw might have been anesthetized.

"Can you tell me where Beau Bradwin is? Pay attention here to me. Don't go noddin' off now." He smote Jackson again, opening the cut on his chin. Tyrone stepped back with a grimace of displeasure, not liking blood. Jackson's mouth hung open.

"Don't know," he said dully. His eyes closed, eyelids twitching.

Tyrone flexed his hand. "Maybe you do, maybe you don't. I can take care of Beau, I reckon. That is, if the Ai-da Wédo don't want him. Meantime, the problem is, what do I do about you?"

He stood there a while longer, pondering this problem. Then he opened the door of his office, looked out into the unlit church. He left the door ajar and returned to Jackson.

A little blood had seeped from under the bandage and was running down his throat. Jackson was no longer conscious.

Tyrone put his arms around Jackson, wincing at the pain in his broken finger. He lifted Jackson from the chair, standing him uncertainly on his feet. Then Tyrone loaded Jackson across his back in a fireman's carry, and lugged him out of the office.

T
he rain had caught Nhora several hundred yards short of the railroad spur, and by the time she had Rowdy Boy under cover of the large platform roof they were both soaked, isolated, as if on a fragile raft at sea. Nhora stayed close to the stallion to keep him calm as lightning seared the sky almost continuously. She was deafened, mindless, scared to the marrow. But her emotions soon carried her beyond fright, to a state of savage, luminous exhilaration.

And with it, discontent; as if the several sexual episodes with Jackson had failed to take the edge off her prodigious, long-suppressed appetite.

She had nothing to dry the horse with, so she sluiced rain water from his body with her hands, transmitting her own passion, feeling powerful tremors that urged her on until she ached to mount him again, differently, grip him from all sides until his trembling surges gave relief to them both. She fingered the protruding cock, drawing it out to an awesome, length, making him dance and leap. She knew the stallion could kill her at any moment, and her excitement was maddening.

Groaning incoherently, she forced him to ejaculate. And as his sperm gushed over her body Nhora turned her face to the stand-out vein in the pulsating belly and bit it.

Rowdy Boy screamed and whirled, slamming her to the floor of the platform; his flashing iron hooves missed her head by an inch. He jumped from the platform into the driving rain, blood flowing from the severed vein. He reared, still screaming, as lightning exploded in his face, and toppled over backward. Nhora groggily raised her head and stared at him. Rowdy Boy thrashed in the mud and regained his feet, but his strength seemed almost gone. He stood there, head down and shaking, then trotted off a little way. He began to wobble, like a newborn colt, then to go in circles. And then he fell down dead.

Nhora rose, rocked by spasms, the blood of the stallion still warm on her lower lip. She began to tear at the buttons of her gingham shirt, shredding the material, freeing her breasts. She turned and went haltingly toward the railroad car, stopped in her tracks every so often by vivid slashes of pain in her belly. As she struggled to breathe her tongue began to flicker between parted teeth. Her eyes were wide and flat and ghostly dull.

As she pulled herself up the steps to the vestibule of the car, lightning struck the cupola of the platform, and the concussion jolted through her. It also brought on the regular, rhythmical contractions she'd been expecting.

Gasping, bare-breasted, Nhora threw open the door to Boss's darkened stateroom and collapsed on the carpet. She had barely enough strength, between periodic cramps, to take off the boots and jodhpurs and throw them aside.

Now naked, she lay back, knees up, clasping her belly, tongue still darting in and out of her mouth, curiously elongated, almost faster than the eye could follow. Rain drummed the roof. She rolled her head from side to side, insensate, groaning, laboring, giving birth again.

S
itting up in the Boss-bed, in the Boss-room, he had worked on the cutting edge of Champ's trophy saber for nearly half an hour, pausing repeatedly to test its keenness, which never satisfied him. Now his hands and wrists were tired. Aunt Cary Gene had turned on a lamp by the bed. She sat praying over her Bible. He was aware of the rain, the artificial dusk, and of other things in the air as night hurried down on them too quickly, things too vague to be named, but portentous.

At last he put the saber aside, knowing it was a good edge, the best he could do given the quality of the steel he had to work with, but an edge not worthy of the task. He needed a magical sharpness, or he would fail.

Hackaliah came into the room empty-handed, smudges of attic dirt on his gray jacket, his forehead beaded with perspiration. Their eyes met. Hackaliah's palsied head trembled restlessly.

"No, suh," he said. "I know it was up there. But there ain't no sign of it now."

"But I
need
it, Hackaliah."

Hackaliah reached for his handkerchief. "Maybe Miss Nhora knows what become of your saber."

"But she wouldn't be any help to us now, would she?"

"No, suh. Not likely." Hackaliah stopped mopping his brow and looked at the gleaming sword in the Boss-bed. He appeared to be sick with apprehension, half-hypnotized. The sword was slowly raised, and rotated in the light. Aunt Clary Gene, struck by a gleam from the blade, lifted her head and joined in their communion.

"We'll make do then, Hackaliah. We'll just have to make do."

J
ackson awoke in near-darkness, a taste of ashes in his mouth. Distantly, he heard the rain. His heartbeat was running away, nearly to the point of fibrillation. His arms and legs twitched spasmodically, and he felt oppressed by dread, weighted down as if he had been prematurely thrust into his grave. He cried out in horror and fell struggling off a narrow cot, a heavy dark blanket tangled around him like some primordial vine.

In the dark he stood, shedding the blanket, still palpitating but encouraged by his sudden release from the fear of dying. He took a step and bumped his head against a furnace duct. He leaned on the cold furnace. There was a rectangular window off to his left, lit by a gray rain light that barely penetrated the low furnace room. He wondered where he was, and where he'd come from. His chin and jaw hurt. He tried again to concentrate, to draw an inference of location from his seamy surroundings. But he had no useful memory, just disconnected flashes of driving hectically along the back roads of Dasharoons pursuing Nhora, almost catching up to her, then losing her in a lashing rainstorm.

Had he been drinking? It was an odd sort of hung-over feeling, without the sere bad-tasting thrushy mouth and pounding head. His heartbeat had slowed but he felt cold and wan, barely able to take a step. He could use a stimulant of some kind from his medical stores—he knew then, a piece of time falling into place, what he'd been up to, where he was going. Perhaps he was at the clinic already, but why in the cellar?

There had to be a light. He took shuffling steps, hands raised, batting around in the air until he encountered the dangling cord of a fixture. He yanked it and was half-paralyzed by the glare for a few moments.

A better look at his surroundings didn't tell him much. Some sort of meager accommodations for the janitor. A half-empty coil bin. What appeared to be a damaged bench or church pew against one wall. Then steps going up. He crossed the rickety steps and went up them hesitantly, slow dreaming steps. Turned the knob on the door. Opened it and saw Jesus, suffering on the old rugged Cross. A stained clerestory window. Several bowed, gray-textured Negro heads.

But Tyrone wasn't there and he felt mildly embarrassed, looking into the cozy office. Too cozy, he realized he must have fallen asleep while having a cup of coffee. Tyrone had kindly taken the hot coffee from his hands before he spilled it all in his lap. And that was the last thing he could recall. So Tyrone had led him down to the basement, to the janitor's cot, and he had slept it off.

Slept what off? And what time was it now? The cracked crystal of his watch caught the waning light: ten past eight. And still raining very hard.

He got quite wet going out to the car because he still couldn't move very fast. His medical bag was on the seat beside him. He cracked an ampule of smelling salts, which nearly blew the top of his head off. But he felt sufficiently revived to find his way to Flax and Dakin's.

Flax was still there, working in his study. He looked up in surprise when Jackson appeared in the doorway.

"Even', doctor. I called the house a little while ago, but they said they hadn't seen you most of the day."

"What's the matter?"

"I had a very disturbin' report from the state pathology lab." He reached for the pad on which he had made notes, flipped over a page.

"It appears Nancy Bradwin may have been poisoned."

"What type of poison?"

"They ain't said yet. But a little smidge of the deceased's liver injected into a laboratory rabbit killed it in exactly nine seconds."

"My God," Jackson said, and he took a chair. Flax gave him a concerned glance and slid open a desk drawer, producing a bottle of Canadian Club and two glasses.

"Touch of the blended might do us both good right now."

"Thank you. Have you notified Everett Wilkes?"

"Not yet. Hoping to get your reaction first."

"An extremely toxic substance."

"Works faster than strychnine. Maybe you have some idea what it could be. The lab boys don't find it in their books."

Jackson sipped his whiskey, cursing the coldness and lassitude that continued to grip him.

"In Africa, where I grew up, the Negroes are familiar with a variety of poisons we know nothing about. The venom of the mamba is one of the fastest-acting paralytics known; the juice from the leaves of a rather common shrub, in contact with the skin, causes agony and leaves no trace, not even a blister."

"Nancy Baldwin wasn't bit by no snake."

"I know that," Jackson said, but he was uneasy. He downed the remainder of the whiskey, and felt a little better. "I need medicine for Champ. I thought—"

Flax handed over the keys to the clinic; "Help yourself to whatever you want, doctor." He drummed his fingers on the desktop, reached for the telephone. "I better notify the proper authorities. I don't know what Sheriff Gaines will want to do about this. Since Nancy died in Kezar County, he don't have jurisdiction."

"I'm a little worried about Champ, so—"

"Goodbye, doctor. Thanks for droppin' by."

The rain had slackened but seemed to be good for the rest of the night. It was stuffy inside the clinic, he had trouble getting his breath, particularly when he crossed the foyer where Dr. Henry Talmadge had hanged himself. Echoes, shadows, haunting emanations plagued him. Why had Talmadge done it? For a few terrible moments he was absolutely certain that his own life depended on the answer to that question. But no one alive could tell him.

The whiskey had worn off and he was shaking again, so badly that he dropped ampules as he was restocking his medical bag from the clinic's pharmacy. He locked the drug cabinet and paused on his way out, studying the gleam of surgical tools in a glass-front case. On impulse he took several items he had little use for in day-to-day practice, including a small bone saw.

The telephone in the doctor's office was connected. A maid at Dasharoons answered, and told him that Nhora wasn't there.

"She
must be
there!" Jackson shouted, his heart beating wildly. "I left her hours ago. She must be back by now."

"No, suh. I'm sorry."

"Well, then, for God's sake go and look for her. She was riding—the horse—an accident—look for her!"

He hung up, feeling chilled and beginning to sweat again. The flow of blood to his head was so constricted he was afraid of fainting. He sat down heavily and fumbled in his bag. A whiff of amyl nitrite brought relief. But then he began to cry uncontrollably, afraid for Nhora, afraid for them both.

Abruptly his crying stopped; a premonition seized him. He rushed to the filing cabinet and pulled open a drawer, began going through the B files. Baldwin . . . Bates . . . Bradwin, Nhora.

The file on Nhora Bradwin was empty. But Talmadge, shortly before he died, had done a series of tests—
he took strands of my hair and even nail clippings for analysis, can you imagine?
—the results should have been in her file.

"Lookin' for this, doc?"

Jackson turned, involuntarily slamming the heavy wooden drawer shut, just missing a couple of fingers. Early Boy Hodges stood dripping in the doorway, wearing a rain poncho and slouch hat. In one hand he held a revolver. In the other, a sheaf of papers.

"I took these reports out some time ago. Didn't want 'em to disappear. I figured they could be valuable."

"Where did you come from?" Jackson asked.