Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers (23 page)

"Don't know," he said. "They came so fast I didn't have time to look. I thought it was from the house, but . . . I was too busy diving into that water." He shivered, remembering how cold it was.

From the springhouse, which was about fifty feet down the hill from the main lawn, we had a clear view of the old barn area and all the outbuildings closer into the house, such as the smokehouse. I cast the two shepherds out on a big loop to see if they cut the dog scent between the outbuildings and the house, but they didn't seem to react. Then I sent them out toward the barns in an expanding loop, looking for any trails coming from that direction. I hoped there weren't any more wells out there along that farm road leading to the back buildings.

It was a clear, sunny morning with a promise of some heat later
on. I asked Tony to check the close-in buildings one by one, especially to see if the fire pit in the smokehouse had been disturbed. I went toward the back, passing the stone bench next to the sundial. I had my SIG out, and Tony had his Glock. I wasn't really expecting trouble, either human or canine, but it was better to be ready. Then I realized I hadn't reloaded since last night when I fired those four rounds. I stopped, extracted that magazine, and replaced it with my spare. I made a mental note to clean the weapon once I got back to the cottage. This was no time to be sloppy about my firearms.

I checked the two barns that faced the house. I'd aimed low last night, mostly to ensure I didn't send 230-grain bullets out into the night and injure some fisherman out on the river. The barn on the right had the ancient farm machinery parked inside, on mostly flattened tires. I recognized some of it, but not much. I found what looked like a fresh bullet hole on the back wall, round on the entry side, splintered on my side. The boards were old and dry as paper. Then both Kitty and Frick barked.

I turned around and saw them backing away from the other barn. Kitty was growling, but Frick was more upset than alerted, based on her body language. I moved carefully across the barnyard road to the nearest edge of the barn, SIG at the ready. Both dogs were staring inside. Kitty was showing impressive hackles, and Frick had her ears flattened. I waited for a moment to see what, if anything, would happen. Tony was not visible, and I didn't want to call out.

Finally I crouched low and swung around the corner of the barn pointing the gun where I was looking. Inside this barn there were five bays, separated by steel farm gates. The first and nearest bay held a moldering stack of hay or straw. The one next to that contained an antique tractor that was a solid mass of rust. The dogs were looking into the third bay.

"If somebody's in there, I need to see you right now," I called.

No response. Kitty barked again. It was an impatient bark, not a warning. As in, get over here.

I stood back up and walked across the front of the first two bays, stopping at the edge of the third. This one was a workshop with several benches, vises, a table saw, a drill press, and the body of a woman sitting up against the back wall on an overturned wooden crate. She had a big hole just under her left cheekbone and a small lake of blood between her legs.

I called for Tony, and he heard me on the third try from inside the smokehouse. I walked over to the body, careful where I put my feet. I knelt down in front of her to feel for a pulse, but it was pretty clear she was gone. There was the one black entry wound, extensive bleeding from the mouth, and a skin bulge high on the other side of her head where the bullet had almost exited.

She was just sitting there, with a surprised expression on her face. There was a scoped hunting rifle on the ground next to her, but her hands were empty and her fingers curled in, as if she'd been holding it when she was shot. I could not guess her age, but her face was leathery and seamed with too many years of cigarettes, whiskey, and hard, lean living. She could have been anywhere from fifty to sixty-five. She was wearing a long-sleeved tan Carhartt shirt, tight faded jeans, and plain cowboy boots. She had a utility hunting belt that carried a small canteen, some ammunition pouches, a first aid kit, and a fair-sized knife. Tony arrived.

"Whoa," he said.

"You got your phone?"

He did.

"Call 911, report a shooting with one fatality. Tell 'em who you are, and our location behind the big house."

"Shit, boss--you do this last night?"

"Sure looks like it," I said. "I was firing low to keep the rounds down, and I fired into these barns. She must have been hiding in here."

"With a thirty-aught and a shooting hole," he said, pointing to a hole
in the back wall I hadn't noticed. It had been recently gouged out, based on the splinters on the ground. "Not your basic peeping Tammy."

"Make the call," I said, standing up. "We need to back out of their scene."

We sat on the front porch of the house while the incident response team did their thing back in the barn. Tony had stayed with them; the sheriff and I plus one detective had gone to the house so I could make a statement. The detective had produced a recorder and had me sign the appropriate warnings and waivers, and then I told them the entire history of this mess from the day that the first shot had come through my window back in Summerfield.

The detective asked an occasional question for clarification but otherwise simply let me tell it. The sheriff sat there in a rocking chair with his head resting on his left hand and his eyes closed. He looked asleep, but I knew he wasn't. When I was done, the sheriff looked over at the detective, who nodded, then turned off the recorder and got up to take a smoke break out on the front lawn.

"You've closed on this property?" he asked.

"Not yet. Waiting on the title search and a survey."

"So, technically, you're not the owner."

I nodded again. He sat there for a long minute, staring out at the front lawn. The shepherds were on the porch with us, watching. I felt this cold pool of guilt growing in my belly. I've shot people before, but always in the course of a hot pursuit or a gunfight. There's always a sense of revulsion when you see the results, but it's usually tempered by the knowledge that you're standing and the other guy isn't, which typically isn't what he intended. This was different.

"I can play this a coupla different ways," he said finally, "but, on the face of it, before any forensic reports are made, the county prosecutor is probably going to charge you with reckless endangerment and involuntary manslaughter, for starters."

I couldn't think of anything constructive to say.

"I mean," he said, "you don't own the property. You have been threatened with murder. You were searching the grounds for intruders. There were intruders, at least in the form of two killer Dobes, who attacked one of your helpers in the night. You fired four rounds as a distraction, and one by terrible chance caught the human intruder, who was armed with a long-range rifle, in the head. Serious gray area there."

"Except she's dead with a bullet in the head."

"Yup."

"Anybody recognize her?"

"There was no ID on the body, and the guys are still sifting the scene. Unlike on TV, that's gonna take all day, maybe two. Coroner says time of death corresponds to when you fired those rounds, more or less."

I sighed. "I feel like shit," I said. "Seeing her there, looking so damned surprised. Maybe she was part of this, maybe not, but this was an accident."

"Copy that," he said. "Which is why I'm not hauling your troublesome ass downtown to the hoosegow. Lemme talk to the county ADA after we get that statement transcribed. I'll call you in later today to sign it, and then maybe we'll know more from the scene."

"Seems pretty cut and dried to me," I said.

"I know," he said, "but we have to dot the
i
's, cross the
t
's. We're a small operation out here, but we do know how to do this."

"Never thought you didn't," I said. "Dammit. All I was trying to do was make some noise, maybe spook one of 'em."

"Worked," he said.

"We'll need that weapon," the deputy called from the front lawn.

Carol Pollard showed up at the cottage at two thirty, sans restoration expert, which was just as well. A deputy at the end of the driveway
diverted her to the cottage. She asked what had happened. I gave it to her in highly abbreviated form, and she was clearly taken aback.

"You're saying you shot randomly into the barns to make someone move and hit this woman in the head?"

"Looks that way," I replied. "Nobody else was shooting last night."

She sat down on the couch and rubbed her cheeks. Tony came in then and reported that crime lab people had been called out from Triboro to assist their country brethren. "It'll be a while before they close it up over there."

"Find anything newsworthy?"

He shrugged. "They wouldn't tell me shit, which is as it should be. You have to go in?'

"Just to sign my statement," I said. "At least that's where we stand so far. The sheriff's on my side, but the lawyers may view it differently."

"Lawyers view everything differently," he said. "I'll stick around, get you some bail if it breaks that way."

"Bail?" Carol said.

"I'm an ex-cop, Carol," I said. "They have to be very careful about what they let me do and not do. If you shoot someone in this county, and the routine procedure is to lock up the shooter until they have a clear picture of what happened, they'll have to lock me up."

"Oh, great," she said. "But it was an accident."

"Maybe it was, maybe not. I did aim at those barns. I wasn't trying to hit anyone, but I was trying to hit the barns. It's not like I dropped my SIG and it just went off."

She told me her restoration expert had forgotten the appointment and gone to the beach. "Par for the course in this business," she said. "Plus, he's almost seventy."

"Just as well," I said. "That project may go on indefinite hold."

In fact, I was wrong about that. Tony and I sat around the cottage after Carol left and tried to figure out who the victim was and what she'd been doing there. Tony asked if I wanted something to eat, but
I declined. My stomach already had a rock in it. You fire a bullet, be it from a rifle or a pistol, and you're supposed to think about all the possible targets downrange. I knew that.

I went out to the porch to drown my sorrows in some early Scotch. My cell went off. It was Sheriff Walker.

"Need me to come in?" I said, wondering if I was over the limit to drive.

"We have preliminary results," he said, "thanks in part to the forensics crew up from Manceford County. Those guys are pretty good."

"She's dead, right?"

He grunted, not amused. "Yes, she's dead. Single bullet wound to the head. Time of death estimated to be coincident to your little hide-and-seek exercise last night. Plus, we have an ID, from AFIS of all places."

"She was in the system?"

"Yup. One Elizabeth Craney. Know her?"

"Nope."

"Charlotte cops do. Biker connections. One DUI, a couple of drunk and disorderlies, and one conviction for assault with a deadly weapon, namely a Doberman, which resulted in a year in jail and a euthanized Doberman. Apparently some of the meth mobsters are into having savage dogs around, and she was the supplier, as well as the duty punch for a crew over in Charlotte."

"She looked the type," I said. "Dried up and used up."

"Yes, she did. Here's the important part: You didn't do it."

I sat up in my chair. "I didn't?"

"Not unless you went behind the barn, pulled out a silenced Glock nine, tapped her on the shoulder, waited for her to turn around, knelt down, and shot her in the face. You do all that?"

"Nope."

"Right. Your weapon squares with the four holes we found in the buildings, plus one intact round retrieved by the squad from a support pole. Our guys noticed the angle of her wound, couple of other
inconsistencies, said you didn't do it. I waited for the Manceford forensics crew to have a second look. They came up with the same thing. She was shot by someone standing behind her, and probably by someone for whom or with whom she was working, in that there were no signs of a struggle or an attempt to avoid the hit."

"Wow."

"Feel better?"

"Much."

"Thought you might. Take the weekend off. Come see me Monday morning, with your sidekicks, human and otherwise."

"Sounds like changed circumstances to me."

"There's good news and bad news," he said. "The good news is you now are going to have some official help with your stalker."

"The bad news?"

"You now are going to have some official help with your stalker."

"Meaning we're gonna do it your way."

"Bingo."

"That actually sounds good to me, Sheriff."

"You don't have a reputation for being much of a team player, Lieutenant."

"That was then. I'm older and wiser now."

"For now, I'll believe half of that. See you Monday."

I put a call in to Carol Pollard and told her my good news. She was very relieved. She'd made it clear before that she didn't have a problem with my shooting someone who was laid up in a back barn with a rifle at night, but she knew that the legal hassle would be onerous. I told her that the restoration project was still on hold until we resolved this problem, and she understood. She invited me to come over to her place later and said she'd burn something in the kitchen for me.