John Saul (4 page)

All he had to do was speak to an animal, or lay a gentle hand on it, and—

A wracking sob clutching at her chest, Audrey Wilkenson struggled to her feet and staggered to the door. It seemed to take forever, and with every step, her anguish built inside her. Then she was out of the barn, and a howl of grief erupted from her, bursting from her throat to shatter the quiet of the gathering evening.

Across the field, just emerging from the woods with his fishing pole slung over his right shoulder and his tackle box in his left hand, Joey Wilkenson stopped short as his mother’s agonized cry rolled over him. At his knees, the German shepherd that was his constant companion laid his ears back and pressed his body against Joey’s legs as if to protect his master from whatever creature had uttered the unearthly sound. A second later Audrey cried out again, this time shouting for help. Finally, Joey Wilkenson came to life.

“Go on, Storm,” he commanded the dog. “Go get her!”

Obeying his master instantly, the big dog shot forward, flying away from Joey to race across the field toward Audrey, who had sunk to her knees, her face covered with her hands as she gave in to the grief that overwhelmed her.

Only when the big dog had thrown himself onto his mother, eagerly licking her face as he tried to soothe her, did Joey break into a run, loping easily across the field with the grace of a wild animal. And as an animal would have, he stopped short when he was still a few yards away from her, a sudden wariness making him hesitate.

Joey said nothing at all as Audrey brokenly told him what had happened. He listened in silence as he absorbed her words, and understood only one thing.

His father would never beat him again.

* * *

Though it seemed like an eternity, only an hour and a half had passed since Audrey Wilkenson’s discovery of her husband’s body. Now she sat in the tack room, staring straight ahead, the words of the people around her penetrating her consciousness in broken fragments.

“Somethin’ musta spooked her …”

“Don’t make sense …”

“Sheika’s not the kinda horse to …”

“Can’t believe it—not Ted.”

But it
was
Ted.

She would never forget the deathly gray of Joey’s face as she’d told him what had happened, nor the dark curtain that had closed over his emotions as he listened expressionlessly to what had befallen his father. When her words finally failed her, he’d turned and started toward the barn, as if unwilling to accept the truth unless he had seen for himself what had happened.

“D-Don’t,” she’d whispered, her voice hoarse. “Don’t go in, Joey. Find Bill Sikes.” Joey had hesitated, and Audrey had managed to speak again. “Just go get Sikes, Joey. There’s nothing you can do in there.”

Her son’s eyes had fixed on her, but then he’d turned away and continued walking toward the barn. Only when he was at the half-open door was Audrey finally able to drag herself once more to her feet and return to the barn to pull her oddly silent son into her arms.

“Come on,” she’d whispered to him, turning him away from his father’s still body. “We have to get help, Joey. We can’t just stay in here.”

Almost in a trance, she’d led Joey back to the house and called Bill Sikes, who was in his cabin a quarter of a mile away. The Custer County sheriff’s office was located in Challis, more than seventy miles away, but the deputy’s office was closer, in Sugarloaf, and the deputy, Rick Martin, like everyone in town, was a friend. Rick would know what to do.

“There’s been an accident,” Audrey said when Martin’s voice came on the line. “It’s Ted.”

She couldn’t remember much after that, except that within a few minutes the police car arrived, and an ambulance,
and then the yard between the house and the barn had begun to fill up as word spread through the valley of what had happened.

It was Rick Martin who had led her to the tack room, Joey’s hand clutched in hers, and told her to stay there.

“I can’t keep folks away from you in the house, Audrey,” he said gently. “Better if you’re down here. No one’ll come through unless you say the word.”

Audrey nodded mutely, sank down onto the sagging leather sofa that was the tack room’s main piece of furniture, and waited, Joey sitting silently next to her.

She did her best to answer questions, but was unable to tell Rick Martin any more than he’d been able to see for himself.

Half an hour ago, after they’d taken pictures from every imaginable angle, Ted’s body had been placed in the ambulance and taken away.

And now, at last, Rick Martin was crouched on the floor in front of her.

“Audrey?” he said, his voice barely penetrating the mist that seemed to be closing around her mind. “Can I talk to you, Aud?”

Talk to me? What could he possibly say? Ted’s dead. He’s dead, and nothing can bring him back to life.

She felt a wave of panic well up in her.

What am I going to do? What am I going to do without him?

She wanted to throw herself into someone’s arms—

—wanted to scream out the anguish she was feeling—

—wanted to let herself die, to give up her life to the grief that held her in an iron grip, choking her.

Help me, Ted! Please help me!

Though no sound escaped her lips, the plea echoed in her mind.

And one word emerged out of the confusion that engulfed her.

Joey.

An image of her son rose out of Audrey Wilkenson’s roiling emotions, and abruptly her mind cleared.

She took a deep breath, then sat up straight, focusing on
the deputy’s concerned face. “What happened, Rick?” she asked, her voice calm and clear. “Do you have any idea?”

Martin shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “From what I can see, he was mucking out Sheika’s stall, and he must have parked the horse in the wash stall till he was done. Something must have spooked the horse, and when Ted tried to calm her down, Sheika must have reared up, knocked him over, then come down on his head. An accident, pure and simple.”

Audrey felt another wave of emotion rise up inside her, but firmly held it in check.

“What could have spooked Sheika?” she asked.

Rick Martin shrugged. “Don’t know. Could have been anything, could have been nothing at all. For all I know, a rat could have run through, or an owl dropped down from the rafters. You know horses. Practically anything can do it, if it takes ’em by surprise.”

Audrey’s head moved in silent acceptance of the deputy’s words; then: “What about Sheika? Has anyone found her yet?”

“Not yet. I got a couple of guys out looking, but she could be anywhere. When we find her …” His voice trailed off, and his gaze shifted momentarily to Joey, who was still perched stiffly next to his mother.

“You’ll shoot her, won’t you?” Joey demanded.

Rick Martin’s tongue ran nervously over his lower lip. “I’m afraid we don’t have much choice, Joey,” he said. “She—”

“She didn’t do it on purpose!” Joey flared. He jumped to his feet, his dark eyes fixing angrily on the deputy, his dark hair falling over his forehead, making him look much younger than his thirteen years. “Maybe it wasn’t her fault! Maybe someone came into the barn and spooked her on purpose! You can’t kill her! You can’t!” Turning, he bolted out of the tack room, leaving his mother and the deputy staring helplessly after him.

“I’m sorry, Audrey,” Rick Martin said into the silence that followed Joey’s abrupt departure. “I didn’t handle that very well.”

Sighing, Audrey pulled herself to her feet. “It’s all right,
Rick. You know how Joey is. He’s always had this thing with animals. Even when he was at his worst, he always got along with them.”

“Like Ted,” Rick said, then wished he could retract the words as he saw the stricken look on Audrey’s face. “I—I’m sorry, that was—”

But Audrey shook her head. “It’s all right. But it’s not like Ted at all. It’s different. Ted could always keep the horses calm, but with Joey it’s always been something else. Sometimes it’s almost as if he can communicate with them.”

Rick Martin shifted his weight uncomfortably, knowing there was nothing more he could do at the ranch right now, but not certain that Audrey should be left alone. “I got rid of everybody but Bill Sikes. Figured you can call anyone you want, but right now you don’t need the place cluttered up with everyone in town.” When Audrey made no reply, he went on, “Or I can call Gillie, if you’d like. I mean, I’m on shift this evening, so she could come up here and just sort of keep you company.”

“That’s nice of you, Rick,” Audrey replied. “But I think for tonight, Joey and I might do better by ourselves.”

Holding Rick’s arm, she let him lead her out of the tack room and back through the barn, where she carefully avoided looking at the spot where she’d found her husband’s body less than two hours earlier. Bill Sikes was still there, doing his best to settle the two horses who were still in their stalls.

“I’ll take care of everything, Mrs. Wilkenson,” Bill Sikes said as she passed. “You just try to get some rest, okay? That was the hardest thing after Minnie died—tryin’ to sleep.”

Audrey paused, smiling at the caretaker. His weathered face made him look older than his sixty years, but his wiry body still held the strength of a man twenty years younger. “Thank you, Bill. It’ll be all right. Somehow, we’ll all get through this.”

“We will,” Sikes assured her. “You need anything tonight, you call me. You never know what’s wandering
around here at night. And I got a bad feelin’ lately, like there’s somethin’ up there in the mountains, watchin’ us.”

Audrey shivered even as she tried to reject Sikes’s words. “I’m sure I’ll be just fine,” she said, lending her words more conviction than she truly felt.

“Okay,” Sikes sighed, knowing it was useless to argue with her. “But you call me if you want. Anytime at all.”

“I promise,” Audrey said, though even as she spoke the words, she knew that she wouldn’t call him.

Tonight, after Joey had gone to sleep, she would sit alone in the den that had been Ted’s favorite room, trying to come to grips with what had happened and to figure out how she was going to get through the rest of her life without him.

Live without him.

It was a concept she had never considered since the moment she’d met Ted. Not even when the … problems had begun.

Now, for the first time, she was going to have to think about it.

She had no choice.

The ten o’clock news was over. As she clicked the television in the den off, Audrey realized she hadn’t heard a single word of it. Through the entire half hour, she had sat staring numbly at the screen, vaguely aware of the images of the pretty blond woman and the plastic man who were reading from the TelePrompTers, but not absorbing so much as a syllable of what they had been saying.

Exhaustion had overcome her. She swung her legs up onto the couch, closing her eyes for a moment in a vain hope that she might drift off to sleep.

But all that came were images of Ted.

Working in the forest, his shirt off, his muscular body glistening with sweat.

Galloping across the field astride Sheika, gracefully soaring over the jumps they had set up when they thought they might get serious about riding.

Sitting in the easy chair next to the sofa, a book open in
his lap, as he had almost every evening since they’d built the house.

And then another image of Ted came into her mind.

An image of her husband striking her son.

It had only happened once. Just once, she told herself. But that once was too much. She could still remember the horror and shock of it. Two years ago, almost exactly.

The moment Joey had come downstairs for breakfast, they had known that one of his strange moods had come over him. He was silent, barely responding even when she spoke directly to him, and after breakfast he had simply disappeared, going off with Storm to wander in the woods. He didn’t return until thirty minutes after the sun had set, by which time Audrey had been seriously worried.

That evening, Ted had taken Joey out to the barn and beaten him with his belt. It stunned Audrey, and when she saw the look in Joey’s eyes when he came back to the house, her heart had nearly broken.

“I won’t tolerate it anymore,” Ted had told her. “He doesn’t have the right to go off without a word to either one of us, and he’s been coddled about it long enough.”

“But he’s only a little boy!” she’d protested.

“He’s not that little anymore,” Ted had said, his voice taking on an unfamiliar harshness. “He’s old enough to take some responsibility for his actions!”

“But to whip him …”

Ted’s eyes had darkened. “A couple of smacks won’t hurt him, Audrey.”

But it hadn’t been “a couple of smacks.” It had been a series of angry red welts across her son’s back and buttocks, which Joey had done his best to conceal from her.

Just once, she repeated to herself now, just once. But she could not still the thought that kept creeping back into her mind.

Had there been other times?

Times that she didn’t know about? How many times might Ted have taken Joey out to the barn and—

Audrey forcibly banished the image from her mind, the wounds of Ted’s death still too fresh. It seemed wrong even
to think about the faults her almost perfect husband had exhibited during the last couple of years.

Go to bed, she told herself. If you sit here, you’ll wind up crying all night, and you still have a son who needs you. You cannot simply curl up and die, no matter how much you want to!

Determinedly, she planted her feet on the floor, then stood up and moved swiftly around the large room, switching off the lamps and locking the outside door.

Against what?

That was something else that had only begun over the last couple of years: a sense, once in a while at night, that there was something outside the house. Something they could never quite see, could never quite be certain was even there. And yet both she and Ted had begun to lock the house up at night. Now, she followed the habit they’d both established, moving through the rooms, locking every door and latching every window.