Joe could picture the boy in his room above the barn, rising from bed to look out his windows into the woods, maybe a rifle already propped by his side, a gun that Max had trained him to use carefully and with skill.
Billy was fourteen, a member of Max’s young police cadets. He had lived with the Harpers since he was twelve, since his grandmother died. He could use a firearm as well as Charlie. But just the two of them, on that large piece of land, might not be enough.
But, Joe thought, if that was Nevin there in the woods, if he was hurt bad enough to need to rest, maybe he’d soon be gone. He’d sure not stay around the chief’s place long, not with possible murder and burglary raps hanging over him. Three hundred thousand dollars had vanished in that last robbery, and plenty more from earlier thefts. To say nothing of whatever Varney had stolen. Joe Grey didn’t trust those Luther sons any more than Max did—he sure didn’t trust them after they nearly killed their own father.
Still on the highway, far ahead they could hear the Harpers’ two big dogs barking. Charlie dimmed their lights, as did the squad car behind them. She looked over at Joe. “Too bad you can’t handle a shotgun.”
“I never tried. But it’s amazing what some cats can do . . . Wait, slow down . . .” She slowed. “There’s the car, sticking out between the trees . . .”
She moved on. “Get in the backseat, on the floor.” He did as he was told just as her phone rang again. She hit the speaker but kept moving.
Billy said, “He’s in the stable, right below me.” The dogs were barking so loud they could hardly hear Billy. They heard a horse scream. Billy said, “I’m going down.” Before Charlie could stop him the phone went dead. She punched in the one digit for McFarland, and repeated Billy’s message.
Joe said, “You still have that black stallion, that boarder? Isn’t his stall back there?”
“We have, yes. Last stall. Max is sending him away in the morning, before he hurts someone. He was gentle as pie when the man’s wife brought him in, they hauled him down from San Andreas so she could ride in the hunter trials at Pebble Beach, they’re waiting for a stall there. I expect the folks at Pebble aren’t anxious to have him, though they do have several women grooms. His owner said he hates men, that he can be vicious around men. Once he’s moved over there, the woman is planning to take care of him herself.” She looked over at Joe. “What’s on your mind? What are you thinking?”
Joe looked at her innocently, gave her a sly tomcat smile, and said nothing.
She said, “He was barred from the racetrack because he bucked off the male jockeys. Max is sure that when they brought him in, they had him on drugs, to quiet him—so we wouldn’t know how mean he can be. When the ACE or whatever it was wore off, that stud turned crazy. She showed me how to handle him. I laid down the law to Max and Billy: he’s off limits to them both, and I’m real careful with him.” She turned into the long drive slowly, as quietly as she could on the gravel. She pulled up to the stable, to the big, sliding front entry, which was closed tight. She parked in front of it; the squad car pulled up next to her.
At the sound of her car, the dogs in the barn had gone quiet. They heard a tortured moan, from a man, at the back of the stable. The stallion screamed, a startled, angry retort, and they could hear water running, the hard hissing of a hose. The dogs started barking again. Charlie got out and slid open the big front doors just enough for a person to slip through, the deputies behind her. She looked back at McFarland, he always made her feel more comfortable.
“Whatever happens in there, Jimmie, stay out of reach of that stallion, he’s crazy mean, he’d kill a man.” The two officers looked skeptical, then looked at each other with an amused hope. And they sure weren’t bothered by the dogs, who were leaping at the stall and barking. The officers knew them and had played with them both. Charlie looked around for Joe Grey, who had already fled the car. She didn’t see him but she knew he’d be watching. Her concerned and searching glance told him to keep out of the way—as if he needed telling.
At the far end of the stables, those sliding doors were closed, too. Along the alleyway, all the stall doors were closed, Dutch doors with heavy wood below, strong woven wire forming the upper half. The doors on the far side of the stalls stood open to paddocks, to vast fences seven feet tall with hotwire at the top to discourage the occasional cougar. The stallion was in the last stall, charging the closed door, fussing and screaming, snorting as if he were drowning. Billy stood at the closed stall door with a big, heavy hose, squirting a powerful stream through the screen into the horse’s face. Nevin lay at the far end of the stall, curled up, bleeding and groaning and covering his head as if the stud were still attacking.
Billy wielded the hose like a rifle, making the stallion back away from the man.
Encouraged by Billy’s attack, Joe Grey left the tack room where he’d taken refuge, crossed the wide alleyway, and jumped on McFarland’s shoulder for a better view. Jimmie gave him a sidelong glance, half a stern cop look, half amusement as Joe sat working out the scenario of what had happened.
Nevin must have slipped in the back stable doors. The dogs were watching silently from the shadows, as they usually did. When he slid the doors closed thinking he was alone, they attacked him. He wrenched open the nearest stall door, squeezed through, and shut it in their faces. Maybe he didn’t think a horse was in there, or think that it might be mean. He knew only the horses his father had had, and they’d all been gentle. Joe watched Billy wield the hose like a fireman until they could see he was getting tired.
Crowley moved up to take it from him, but Charlie slipped in past him. She took the hose from Billy, getting herself drenched, and held the power steady in the stallion’s face. She heard Jimmie latch the gate behind her but she knew he was holding the lock for her quick escape. She drove the stallion back and back into the empty corner, working close to him, strong squirts in his nose and ears making him duck away. She reached and pushed open the paddock door, then changed position with the hose, driving him through the opening. “Get out,” she yelled. “Get out now, you son of a bitch.”
Hearing a woman’s angry voice confused him, women didn’t treat him like this; he stared at her, reared, struck at her twice but she backed away: he missed her and, avoiding the fury of the hose again, he spun and raced for the paddock. Charlie locked the door behind him. No one had paid any attention to Nevin. When the medics’ van came screaming, Officer Crowley slid the front doors wide to let them in; and Joe Grey curled more comfortably across McFarland’s shoulder; he watched Nevin look up in gratitude for medical help—and in cold fear at being surrounded, at being trapped by the law.
14
If those hours at the Harpers’ ranch were terrifying to Nevin Luther, those same hours for Mindy, with Grandpa Zeb at the hospital, were nearly as frightening—as X-rays were done, and tests in strange machines, as some of the kinder technicians let her watch the scans; and later as diagnoses were pronounced by an array of doctors. Max Harper had given permission for her to stay through it all; Ryan sat with her, holding her close.