Comes a Horseman (5 page)

With glass in hand, he breathed deeply and took step number one of the first 184.

THE CLOCK'S shrill alarm cut through the haze in his head, jolting him upright. Eyes closed, he reached for it, but it wasn't there. The noise stopped anyway. This puzzled him for about a millisecond. Before his addled brain could drift back to oblivion, it shrilled again. It was on his chest. No, in his shirt pocket. And it wasn't the alarm clock; it was his cell phone. He frantically dug it out of the pocket and opened his eyes. He was in the living room, sprawled on the sofa. It was still dark outside, but the moonlight, which earlier had given the sheers a silvery radiance, was gone. The house seemed preternaturally dark, an unlit stage awaiting the day's first flip of a switch.

Brady glared at the phone's glowing screen. The words seemed indistinct, the screen's illumination too bright. He closed one eye and brought it closer to his face. He made out the name Alicia Wagner and her cell phone number. He hit a button.

“Hello?” he said, trying to sound as though his tongue hadn't doubled in size and grown hair. Silence. “Hello?”

He looked at the phone. He'd hit the wrong button, cutting off the incoming call.
Figures
. His head rotated on creaking tendons to see the crystal drinking glass, nearly full, perched on one of the sofa's fat leather arms. He wasn't sure what number refill that was, but he felt confident he'd gone past four fingers. He jumped when the phone in his hand rang again. Concentrating, he punched the answer key and repeated his greeting.

“Did you hang up on me?” Alicia's voice battered against his eardrum.

“Whaddaya mean?” He managed to sound more indignant than befuddled.

“I must have hit a dead pocket. Cell phones. Did I wake you? Stupid question. I hope I didn't wake Zach.”

She was in one of her excited states, which were always work-induced. Something was happening.

“What time is it?”

“Uhhhh . . . 1:10. My time. Ten after three for you.”

Brady moved the phone from his ear and pushed the button that lowered its volume. When he put it back to his ear, she was saying, “. . . believe it? So soon?”

“What's so soon?”

“Brady! Where are you? I just said
he struck again
! It's been only
two days
since the last one. Hold on—”

He heard a horn blare and what may have been tires squealing.

“Alicia . . . ?”

She came back on without a hitch. “The one before that was four days. If this guy's pattern is accelerating . . . I don't want to think about the implications.”

“Where are you?”

“On my way to the scene, where you should be! Listen, you have to get out here
now
.”

“My ticket—”

“Is no good. You were going to fly into Denver, right? Then drive up to Ft. Collins? Change it to Colorado Springs, and then drive north to the next town. Hold on.”

The rustle of paper. Maps, Brady presumed. His mind was clearing. One dose of Alicia had that effect.

“
Two
towns,” she said. “Palmer Lake. Wait a minute. When will you get here?”

“If there's a flight, and I leave home in an hour—”

“You're right, you'll get here too late. Seven hours at the soonest. The locals are waiting for me at the scene, and they're not happy about it. What else is new, right? Anyway, I gotta dive in as soon as I get there. Call me when you land, and I'll guide you in.”

“How did you—”

There was an electronic click.

That was Alicia: what else was there to say? He supposed the call could have consisted of a single line: “Get here now, then call me.” Good thing she was feeling talkative. In the state he was in, he probably would have chalked up the words to a dream and gone back to sleep. But encountering her for longer than a few moments was like slamming down a triple shot of espresso.

He rubbed his face with both palms. Even the sandpaper scrape of his whiskers sounded loud.

This isn't good,
he thought for the umpteenth time. He envisioned himself in ten years: fifty pounds heavier, cheeks and nose mottled with rosacea, hiding the boozing but not its effects, barely getting by at the Bureau on luck and sympathy. Worse, Zach would hate him by then—for all the missed baseball games, the times the boy had to be responsible because his old man wasn't, the lost weekends and years. It would not come to that, but, he reminded himself, it
could
.

He had no intention of throwing away everything else he had because the most precious thing in his life had been stolen from him. But for the first time, he truly understood why tragedies catapulted some people into a watery abyss of bitterness and despair, a Mariana Trench of hopelessness. No one who had not been there could grasp the appeal of that abyss, the way being there seemed to atone for not dying too; the numbness it offered to replace the pain; the feeling that by wallowing there you were shaking a fist, however pathetically, at the cold, uncaring world. Maybe that explained the booze and the decidedly unwholesome turn his vocabulary had taken lately: he was dipping his toe into the abyss, checking it out.

Come on in! The water's fine!

Thank God for Zach. Without him Brady would have plunged in a long time ago. But not before hunting down the scum who'd plowed into his jogging wife, his “I'll just run to the park and be back before breakfast” wife. Not before hunting him down and blowing his brains out . . .

He shook his head vigorously, as if trying to dislodge a parasite that was burrowing into his scalp.

Focusing his thoughts on a cold shower, he lifted himself off the sofa. Then crumpled back onto it. The Alicia Espresso Machine was fine for prying open welded eyelids and jump-starting the synapses, but it was going to take more than that to shake off the lingering ghost of Jim Beam. He remembered a Red Bull energy drink in the fridge. That would be a good start. He hoisted himself up and, teetering only slightly, headed for the kitchen.

“ZACHARY?”

Brady gently shook the sleeping boy. Zach tried to roll away, but Brady pulled him back. His eyes fluttered into a squinting gaze, though the only light came in dimly from the hall. He smiled.

“You smell good,” he said.

Brady had showered and shaved and spent extra time scrubbing the alcoholic film from his teeth. He had given his body a squirt of Lagerfeld Photo, which Zachary had given him for Christmas two years before.

“Thanks.” He brushed the hair back from his son's face. “It's not time to get up yet, but I have to go. Miss Wagner called.”

Zach came more fully awake. “Did he do it again? He killed again?”

“Yes, and now's the best chance we have to learn more about him.”

“Evidence collected in the first twenty-four hours after a crime can make or break the case,” Zach said matter-of-factly.

“That's right.”

The boy thought for a moment, then he hardened his face and looked deep into his father's eyes. “Catch him.”

Brady nodded. There were dual purposes to that goal: to make the world better by eliminating a worm that was chomping his evil way through it, and to make his parting from Zach worthwhile by accomplishing something good. These two motivations appeared as one, but to a boy and his departing father, they were as distinct as the love for family is from the love for friends.

They kissed and hugged. Then Brady leaned down to the foot of the bed and pushed his face into Coco's fur.

“You take care of Zachary now,” he told the dog, who immediately rolled onto his back to get his belly scratched. Brady complied. “You hear me? Got your first-aid kit and cell phone, Coco?”

Zach grinned.

Brady rose. “I'm confident you're in good hands . . . uh, paws. Mrs. Pringle will be here in a few minutes, but with Coco's skills, maybe I should tell her never mind.”

“Yeah!”

Brady snapped his attention back to the dog. “What's that?” he said. He leaned in close to hear some whispered doggie secrets. Coco pawed at him for more loving, and Brady nodded. “You don't say?”

To Zach he said, “Coco wants Mrs. Pringle to stay. Says she showers him with tummy rubs and beef chews when you're at school.”

Zach gave in. “Okay, she can stay, but only as long as Coco says so.”

“Deal.” They high-fived, and Brady saluted as he went over the threshold and shut the door.

In the hallway, he leaned heavily against the wall. He'd done his duty; he'd left on the right note. But, man, his head
throbbed
.

5

I
n a dark ocean of pines and aspens, the lights pulsed like a lost vessel. Red chased blue and blue chased red along dense walls of bark and needles. The light bar on one of the three patrol cars was canted, which put its rotating beams into a diagonal trajectory that Alicia Wagner found a bit dizzying. She slowed her rental car and took in the scene: a string of cruisers and unmarked cars aligned on the left side of the narrow lane, broken only by the entrance to a long unpaved driveway; one officer standing guard at the drive, his butt half-on, half-off the trunk of the nearest vehicle and a cigarette between his fingers, forgotten as he scowled at her windshield; neighbors from unseen houses milling around fifty yards up the lane, curious and uneasy.

She reversed, then pulled in behind the last car, a beige sedan with federal government plates. As she got out, the loose red dirt under her feet gave way, and she had to jump into a three-foot-deep drainage ditch to keep from falling. At least it was dry. Then she thought about snakes and scrambled up the embankment, grabbing hold of her car's rear bumper. All of it reminded her of the backwoods parties where she had learned to drink and decipher male intentions—except for the strobing colors. Those always came later, closer to dawn.

She pulled a spherical leather case from the trunk and set it on the ground, then hefted out a heavy valise and slung its strap over her shoulder. It dug in and made her blouse pucker and pull. She slammed the trunk lid and, case in hand, headed for the drive entrance and the young man in the gray uniform of an El Paso County deputy.

When he saw her trudging toward him, he slid his buttock off the car and adjusted his utility belt. He took a hard pull at the cigarette. As she drew closer, his lips slowly bent into a crooked smile, smoke drifting from it, as though his mouth had been freshly formed with a laser.

Alicia had been told she was pretty enough times to believe it, though in her experience pretty attracted more demons than angels. Five feet six, with oversized green eyes, full lips, and a small nose that turned up at the tip. Straight blonde hair swept across her forehead and fell to her shoulders. One long-forgotten boyfriend had told her that, except for her coloring, she was Ariel from
The Little Mermaid
come to life. In high school, she had stopped using makeup to lure male attention. Now she applied it sparingly simply to feel more feminine. God knew she had “more boy than girl inside of her,” as her father would proclaim at discovering a frog in her socks drawer or a sharply worded letter from a teacher.

She had never
felt
like a boy, as far as she knew. She had played with Barbies and an Easy-Bake Oven; she liked to wear dresses; she teared up at chick flicks and felt a yearning deep inside at the sound of a baby's cry. But she also had kept an army of G.I. Joes to defend her Barbies; she favored distressed bomber jackets when the weather turned bitter; she liked
Terminator 3
and was as gung ho about catching the bad guys as any boxer-shorts-wearing he-man in the Bureau. To her eternal surprise, it was this last characteristic that seemed to irritate the Bureau brass the most. Heaven forbid she should do her job better than Mr. Testosterone did his.

She focused on the gravel driveway that apparently led to the crime scene and didn't slow her pace as she approached the deputy. Without a word, he blocked her path with his arm. She turned toward him and noticed it wasn't her Disney-sculpted face the deputy was appraising, but her chest. To the dismay of her teenage self and the gratitude of her current self,
busty
was a word that no truthful person would ever apply to her. Even so, this jerk was
leering
, almost challenging her to confront him. She centered her gaze on his crotch and said, “Special Agent Alicia Wagner, FBI.”