Circle of Influence (A Zoe Chambers Mystery) (32 page)

THIRTY-ONE

Pete passed an unfamiliar car edged off the lane several yards from the barn and parked next to Zoe’s truck. The Chevy’s driver’s-side door stood open. But no Zoe. As he stepped away from his car, the sharp crack of a gunshot shattered the country stillness, followed by a shriek.

He ducked behind the pickup’s open door. With one hand, he released his sidearm from its holster. Something on the ground caught his eye. A smashed cell phone. Zoe’s? In an instant, every sense became sharper. Details leapt into his consciousness. He focused on the barn, the smaller door, flanked by two larger ones. The light seeping out beneath them and through the windows along the side of the building. He watched for any hint of a shadow indicating movement inside.

He listened, too far away to hear clearly. The sound of a car passing on the road below made the effort even more difficult. But he thought he made out the rustling of movement. And perhaps…sobbing?

He punched 9-1-1 into his cell phone.

God, was he too late?

“Shots fired,” he rasped when the operator picked up. “Vance Township Officer needs assistance. Kroll farm on Route 15. At the barn.”

He hung up.

Where was Zoe? Was she hurt? Or worse?

He knew damned well he should wait for back up. He also knew there wasn’t time. In a crouch, he picked his way across the gravel to the barn. The metal sheeting would do squat to stop a bullet. Don’t think about it. He pressed his shoulder into the edge of the doorway and reached out, pounding on the door. “This is the police. Throw out your weapon and come out with your hands where I can see them.” He hunkered down and moved back, sighting his weapon on the doorway.

“Pete.” It was Zoe’s voice that called to him. “Help us! He’s unarmed.” Her voice sounded odd. Strained. Was she being forced at gunpoint to lure him in?

Pete stepped again to the side of the door, this time testing the knob. It offered no resistance. He swung the door wide and stepped into the opening, his weapon in front of him.

The scene before him made him lower it.

Zoe knelt over Matt Doaks who was moaning and squirming. Zoe’s hands were pressed against his blood-soaked thigh. Next to them lay a motionless Allison covered with a dusty horse blanket.

“Call an ambulance,” Zoe shouted at him. “Two patients. Tell them to call in Life Flight. And expedite it.”

Already, sirens wailed in the distance. Pete redialed the emergency operations center and added the request for a medical response.

“Where’s the gun?” he said.

She tipped her head. “I kicked it over there.” Then she nodded toward Allison. “And the knife is there, next to her.”

“Knife?”

“It’s a long story. I’m sure I’ll have to repeat it a few dozen times.”

“So give me the short version for now.”

“Matt killed Ted.”

“I know.”

She looked up at him. “You
know
?”

“Well, I pretty much figured it out before I headed over.”

“He’s been supplying Allison with drugs, too. And I’m fairly certain he was the one who administered the fatal stab wound to Jerry McBirney.” She turned back to her patient, bearing down on the wound. “That’s what happened, isn’t it, tough guy?”

Doaks yelped. Pete bent over him. The punk looked as though he was on the verge of bursting into tears. A thought occurred to him. “Hey, Doaks. How’d you get the alarm codes to my police station?”

Doaks whimpered. “Allison. She’d seen Sylvia punch them in and remembered them. Then she lifted the old lady’s key, let herself in the front door, and opened the back one for me.”

Son of a—

Pete turned back to Zoe. “But what happened here?”

“He intended on killing Allison and me,” Zoe said. “He had the gun. Allison had cut her wrists. Bad. Attempted suicide.”

Pete eyed the girl. Maybe more than just attempted.

“She dropped the knife she used, but Matt didn’t see it. I did. So when he got distracted by the car—you—I grabbed the knife and stabbed him.”

Doaks let out another girlish wail.

Pete moved to where the gun lay and leaned down to get a better look. “He had a gun and you had a knife?”

She gave him a tired grin. “I know what you’re gonna say.”

He said it anyway. “Don’t you know? Never bring a knife to a gunfight.”

“Very funny. Now take your sense of humor into the tack room and get me some bandages out of the cabinet in the corner.”

Three months later, daffodils and crocuses offered a burst of spring color at the base of the VFW’s flagpole, and the air carried a tease of warmth. Zoe stood in the sunshine, taking advantage of a night off duty and the rare rain-free day.

“Ready to play township supervisor one last time?” Rose strolled toward her.

“Oh, yeah. If I’ve learned nothing else in the last few months, I do know I never want to go into politics.” Zoe opened her arms, and her friend stepped into the quick embrace.

“That’s too bad, you know? You and Sylvia together on the board? That would bring back the entertainment value to these meetings.”

Zoe raised a hand, acknowledging Howard Rankin, who passed by the women on his way inside. Howard would no doubt keep the chairmanship. Joe Mendez, who had taken over the seat vacated by Matt Doaks, was a shoo-in to keep it when the residents voted in three weeks. And Sylvia was running for Zoe’s slot with her blessing. Funny, no one had tried to talk Zoe into putting her name on the ballot. “The world isn’t ready to handle the two of us overseeing anything. Not even a little rural government like ours.”

Rose snickered, and Zoe contemplated how glad she was to see her old friend coming back to life.

“How are the kids?”

Rose shoved her hands into her jeans pockets and lifted her face to the sun. “They’re going to be okay. Mr. Imperatore is pushing for some community service for Logan and feels the DA will go for it. All he really did was punch McBirney. Matt’s the one who stabbed him.”

Zoe breathed in the spring air and nodded.

“I hear you were in to see Allison this afternoon,” Rose said.

Zoe watched a couple of local residents wander in from the parking lot. “Yeah. She looks great.”

“Like her old self. Almost. Her hair is back to auburn. But there’s a lot of stuff going on behind her eyes. Don’t you think?”

Zoe hooked her arm through Rose’s and bumped shoulders with her. “Give her time. She’s been through hell. Matt had her completely under his spell. She’s got to learn to reclaim her power.”

Rose looked at Zoe askance. “I talked to her on the phone before I headed over here. She told me what all you said to her. Thanks.”

Zoe stared into the distance, but instead of Dillard’s boxy houses, she was seeing Allison seated in that place. They called it a treatment facility. The brightness of the room had surprised Zoe at first. She’d expected dull and gray, but that description seemed to be reserved for the patients.

They’d talked about Matt, their mutual mistake. Zoe had shared her Jerry McBirney experience with Allison. “Even though it happened all those years ago, I was still afraid of him. I believed he could still hurt me. I gave him that power over me.”

Allison had bobbed her head in understanding. “That’s how I feel. I let Matt do things. Helped him get away with…” Her eyes glistened, still not quite able to speak about the night her dad died in front of her eyes. Zoe took her hand. Allison squeezed it and went on. “I let Matt and his pills take something from me. I let Matt take
me
from me.”

Zoe cupped the girl’s face in her hand. “But you can still take
you
back. He doesn’t own you. He can’t hurt or control you anymore.”

Of course, the fact that Jerry McBirney was dead while Matt Doaks was only locked up awaiting trial didn’t help. But Allison had seemed comforted by the words.

“Good evening, ladies.” Pete’s approach interrupted Zoe’s reverie. He’d been reinstated within days of the incident in the barn, and the sight of him in his uniform stirred all Zoe’s muddled emotions. At least some things remained the same.

“Hi, Chief,” Rose said. “Come for the show?”

“What show?”

“I was just telling Zoe I wished she’d run against Mendez and stay on the board.” Rose nudged Pete with her elbow. “Don’t you think she and Sylvia would spice up the meetings again?”

Pete chuckled. “I don’t think the township could handle them both.”

“See? That’s what I told her,” Zoe said, enjoying the easy banter. “Besides, I kind of like dull supervisors’ meetings. I think the hottest topic on tonight’s agenda is Joe’s push to finally get the signage on the new highway changed.”

As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. Memories of that bitter January night silenced all three of them.

“Here comes Sylvia,” Rose said, breaking the strained hush. “Talk to you two later.”

Zoe watched her friend jog down the sidewalk toward Ted’s mother.

“How are you doing?” Pete’s voice was low enough that no one else could hear. Even though there wasn’t anyone else around.

“I’m…okay. How about you?”

He gave a noncommittal shrug. “We’ve missed you at poker.”

Zoe studied the cracked sidewalk. A bug, testing the viability of spring, explored the pebbled concrete surface.

She’d been avoiding Pete while sorting through her boatload of emotional baggage. Was she an awful person for being glad she hadn’t managed to save McBirney? Was it horrible that she felt the world benefited from his absence in it? And then there was Matt. How could she have ever been attracted to that murderous cad? Why hadn’t she seen him for what he was—both years ago when he’d poisoned her mare and more recently when he’d poisoned the soul of her best friend’s young daughter?

Plus, Zoe had heard rumors of a reconciliation between Pete and his ex-wife and been too afraid to find out what truth there was to them. She hadn’t intended to ask, even now, but heard the question come from her lips anyway. “How’s Marcy?”

Pete turned to stand shoulder-to-shoulder next to Zoe, and gazed at the same Dillard houses she’d just been looking at. His arm brushed hers. “You know she put the farm up for sale?”

“I heard.” She’d also heard Marcy had escaped litigation for stealing township funds. Something about statute of limitations.

“She’s moving.”

Did Zoe want to know? Not really. “Where?”

“Can you believe it? Back to Pittsburgh.”

Zoe choked on her surprise. Those gossip mongers at the station lied. “Wasn’t it Marcy who…”

“Wanted to move away from the city. Yeah.” He shot a quick glance at her, and she caught a glimpse of a grin. “Ironic, huh?”

But that was only half the question. “So, are you moving back, too?”

He threw his head back and laughed. A wonderful, full-bellied laugh. “No,” he said. “I’m not moving back to the city. I admit I thought about it for a while when County was having all the fun with my evidence. But I’m sorry to tell you. Vance Township is stuck with me for a police chief.”

Howard Rankin poked his head out of the VFW door. “Hey, Zoe. Are you coming? I want to get this meeting started.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Howard ducked back in. Pete caught her arm. “I’m not staying for the meeting. Somehow, I don’t think a police presence is needed here tonight.”

“Oh.” She covered the flicker of disappointment that threatened to add a whine to her voice. “Okay.”

He stepped away. Then turned back and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Poker Saturday night?”

For the first time in a very long while, Zoe managed a smile untainted by fear or doubt. “Count on it,” she said.

About Annette Dashofy

Annette Dashofy, a Pennsylvania farm gal born and bred, grew up with horses, cattle, and, yes, chickens. After high school, she spent five years as an EMT for the local ambulance service. Since then, she’s worked a variety of jobs, giving her plenty of fodder for her lifelong passion for writing. She, her husband, and their two spoiled cats live on property that was once part of her grandfather’s dairy. Her short fiction, including a 2007 Derringer nominee, has appeared in
Spinetingler
,
Mysterical-e
, and
Fish Tales: the Guppy Anthology
. Her newest short story appears in the
Lucky Charms Anthology
.

Don’t Miss the 2
nd
Book in the Series

LOST LEGACY

Annette Dashofy

A Zoe Chambers Mystery (#2)

On a sultry summer afternoon, Paramedic Zoe Chambers responds to a call and finds a farmer’s body hanging from the rafters of his hay barn. What first appears to be a suicide quickly becomes something sinister when Zoe links the victim to a pair of deaths forty-five years earlier. Her attempts to wheedle information from her mother and stepfather hit a brick wall of deception, one that brings into question everything Zoe knows about her late father, who died in a car crash when she was eight. Or did he?

Police Chief Pete Adams fears Zoe’s inquiries are setting her up for deeper heartbreak and putting her in danger. As Zoe and Pete inch closer to the truth, they discover that a missing gun links the crimes which span more than four decades. But the killer isn’t done. Two more Vance Township residents fall victim to the same gun, and when tragedy strikes too close to home, Zoe realizes her family is in the crosshairs.

Available September 2014

Visit www.henerypress.com for more details