“Boss?” Betty’s voice rose.
“Take Edward. Go to the Bleeding Rock. Retrace our steps that way. You’ll come out at the coop. Maybe he came a cropper at the coop.”
“Okay.”
“Ask Ken and Tedi to drive along Soldier Road. He might be walking on the road.”
“Where are you going?”
“Cornfield and all around the base of Hangman’s Ridge. If we don’t find him in an hour I’m calling Ben Sidell. In fact, tell the others to take their cell phones. If no one finds Ralph, call me on my cell in one hour.”
“Roger.”
“Oh. Jennifer and Sari want to help. Do you mind?”
“No.”
“Good. I’ll put them in the orchard and tell them to follow hound tracks backward to the cornfield in case Ralph tracked hounds.” She hoped the tracks hadn’t completely washed away.
“Okay.”
“One hour.”
“Right.” Betty hung up and gave the others Sister’s orders.
They threw on Barbour coats or Gore-Tex jackets and hurried out of the house.
Sister scribbled her cell phone number on a pad and handed it to Jennifer.“Call us. We’ll be in the cornfields and then around the bottom of Hangman’s Ridge. If you don’t find anything when you finally reach the cornfield, come straight back to the barn. Don’t leave the barn until you hear from me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jennifer said.
With that, Sister and Shaker hopped into the truck. They parked and combed the cornfields, rain pouring down, fog as dense as ever, but found nothing unusual.
Then they climbed back into the truck, mud caked on their boots, every new step seemingly heavier than the last, and they checked the base of the ridge. The rain had washed away any tracks.
“We might as well go to the top of the ridge. At least we can drive up,” Sister said, water running off her coat and onto the floor.
“Why would he go up there? Even in the fog he’d know Hangman’s Ridge. He’d have to have climbed up,” Shaker sensibly said.
“That’s true, but maybe he rode up to get his bearings and try to find the farm road. We don’t know where he parted company with Trooper. He could have covered a lot of ground and he could have suffered a concussion and been disoriented.”
“We’ve tried everything else,” Shaker agreed. He kept the headlights on low since high beams would only reflect back off the fog, making vision even worse. “Can’t see a bloody thing!”
“Drive along the flat part. At least to the tree.”
“Christ, in this stuff we’ll probably run into it.” He crept ahead.
The great gnarled shape hove into view, silvery fog sliding over branches.
Not until they were almost right up to the tree did they see Ralph flat on his back.
Shaker braked. Both he and Sister bolted out of the truck.
“Oh no.” Sister covered her face for a second. Ralph had been shot right between the eyes.
Shaker knelt down to feel for a pulse. Sister knelt on the other side of Ralph’s body. She, too, touched his neck.
“Warm. He can’t have been dead long,” she said.
“We heard the shot.”
“Oh, Shaker, if only we knew what he knew.”
“If we knew what he knew, we’d be dead, too.”
Sister, a surge of fury running through her, cried,“Why didn’t he tell us!”
“Because he knew he’d be killed.” Shaker held up his hands in a gesture of defeat.
She stood up.“Goddamn whoever killed him!”
CHAPTER 29
The horses calling over the pastures told the hounds what had happened. The news passed from animal to animal. Domesticated animals wished to protect their humans.
The wild animals, with the exception of the foxes, generally didn’t care what humans did to one another. Sister took care of the foxes, and they wished no harm to come to her.
Athena, Bitsy, and Inky sat protected under a heavy canopy of oak leaves.
“The killer’s come out of his lair,”Bitsy said. She had grown fond of some of the humans.
“Bad enough Nola was killed. Bad enough,”Inky repeated to herself.
Athena turned her head upside down, then right side up.“Cold-blooded. If we hadn’t sheltered in the Bancrofts’ barn we’d know who shot Ralph.”
“The humans won’t figure it out, will they?”Bitsy worried.
Athena breathed in, her huge chest expanding outward, parting her feathers enough to show the beautiful shaded variations underneath.“This is bad. Very bad.When a killer breaks cover like this he’s both ruthlessand now reckless.”
“What about Sister? Is she safe?”
“Who knows?”Bitsy shrugged.“Any human who getsin the way is in danger, I would guess.”
“Pity you foxes can’t lead the killer to his death. Itwould be a fitting end,”Athena said.
“A lot of things happen during a hunt. Maybe we willget our chance,”Inky said,“if we can find out who it is.”
“Well, this is certainly a hunt. If a mouse sits stock-still, I might miss him. But if he moves, then I’ve got achance. This human is moving.”Athena blinked.“Hereally has broken cover.”
“But he’s foiling his scent,”Inky said.
“He’ll make a mistake. He’ll come into view. I justhope the next human who flushes him out is ready.”
CHAPTER 30
For some people, Ralph’s end came as a relief. Eager for tidy answers, they assumed he had killed Nola and Guy and had finally, undone by the unearthing of the dead, shot himself. The fact that no gun had been found did not disturb their desire for an easy answer. Then, too, most suicides don’t shoot themselvesbetween the eyes.
Others, no less eager for answers but less inclined to take the easy way out, wondered what Ralph could have done to provoke such a violent end.
Sister felt a sense of foreboding; an evil had been unleashed. Then she realized the evil had always been with them, they’d just chosen not to notice.
She and Shaker sat on that ridge for two full hours. First came the sheriff and his crew, then the Rescue Squad to remove the body once it had been photographed, examined, and finally released.
The kids waited back at the stable as they were told. Sister informed them they’d found Ralph. She spared them the details. When she and Shaker finally returned to the farm, they discovered the girls had done all their chores.
Raleigh and Rooster stuck to Sister’s side likes burrs.
The rain continued, but the fog started thinning out. An oppressive mugginess made it hard to breathe, and even though the temperature remained tolerable, the closeness of the air felt like a shroud.
As they lacked a kennelman, Sister and Shaker were responsible for the job of cleaning the kennels after a hunt. Tired but usually happy from the day’s hunt, they tackled this with the help of a couple of cups of black coffee. Today the girls had given them an unexpected respite. When Betty returned to pick up Jennifer and Sari, Sister insisted on giving the girls each a fifty-dollar bonus. Betty didn’t protest. She was too shaken up by Ralph’s murder.
The outdoor runs glistened in the downpour. The indoor runs and pens had been powerwashed. Each of the raised sleeping beds was filled with fresh, soft sawdust chips.
The hounds were snuggled down in their cozy beds, sleeping after a good hunt. They had enjoyed having the two young women fuss over them.
After the girls left, Sister and Shaker sat down in the kennel office. They’d told everything they could think of to Ben Sidell, but they hadn’t had a chance to talk to each other. Given the swift shock of it, they found they hadn’t much to say to each other immediately.
“Hell of a note.” Shaker wiped his face with a towel.
“It’s not a sight I’ll soon forget.” She took the towel from him and wiped her own face and hands. “If only I’d led the field back to the Bancrofts’.”
“Sister, you couldn’t have seen any more than Edward did. Fog was thick. Cut it with a knife.”
“My ears are more educated.”
“True, but you’d have been up ahead. Ralph was in the back. Once it stops raining we can go back to the coop. Maybe we’ll find something on the ground, but it would appear he left the coop and rode to the ridge.”