Paradise County (3 page)

When he wasn’t drinking, that is.

Joe stepped inside his barn, flipped on the light—an evenly spaced lineup of cheap fluorescent fixtures overhead, not fancy but adequate for the job—and looked around. Silver Wonder came to the front of her stall, blinking and snorting a soft question. Drago and Timber Country were next, thrusting their heads out of the open top of the Dutch-style stall doors, looking at him curiously. Down the row, more horses, some his, some boarded, popped their heads out. They knew the schedule as well as he did, and plainly wondered what had brought him to their domicile in the middle of the night.

“Everything okay, girl?” Joe walked over to Silver Wonder and rubbed her well-shaped head. The ten-year-old brood mare nudged him, wanting a treat, and he felt around in his coat pocket for a peppermint. Silver Wonder loved peppermint.

Unwrapping it, he held it out to the petite gray. She took the candy between velvet lips, drew it into her mouth, then chomped contentedly. The scent of peppermint filled the air as he made a quick circuit around the stalls. Built in a rectangle, the barn housed approximately forty horses in two rows with stalls facing each other on each side, an office area at the front, and an open area at the rear. The utilitarian layout provided what amounted to a small track around an indoor core of stalls and tack rooms so that the horses could be cooled out indoors when necessary.

It was obvious from the demeanor of the horses that there was no problem here.

“All right, go back to sleep.” Ending up back where he had started, Joe patted Silver Wonder’s neck affectionately, resisted her nudging hints for another peppermint, and left the barn.

Probably Josh being up was the only thing out of the ordinary on this starlit night. This was Simpsonville, Kentucky, after all. Population 907. The heart of the horse country that was Shelby County. Paradise County, the locals called it for the beauty of the landscape and the tranquility of the lifestyle. Crime was so rare here as to be almost nonexistent.

Yet Joe had felt strongly that something was wrong. And, he realized, he still did.

He would check on the Whistledown horses, then walk once around his dad’s house before turning in again.

It was a simple matter to scale the fence. Actually, he did it an average of a dozen times a day. A boot on the lowest board, a leg flung over, and it was done. He climbed the hill to the accompaniment of his own crunching footsteps and the more distant sounds of nocturnal creatures going about their business. On the horizon, silhouetted against a stand of tall oaks, Whistledown, Haywood’s white antebellum mansion, glowed softly in the yellow shimmer of its outside security lights. With Mr. Haywood and a party of friends in residence for the Keeneland races, the usually empty house was lit up like a Christmas tree. Diffused light glowed through the curtains at a dozen windows. Four cars were parked in the long driveway that most of the year held none.

Must be something to be so rich that a place like Whistledown was used for only about six weeks a year, mainly during the spring and fall Keeneland races, Joe mused. Horses were nothing more than an expensive hobby to Charles Haywood, and Whistledown Farm was only one of about a dozen properties he owned. Of course, Joe was sure the guy had problems,
everybody
had problems, but with money like that how bad could they be?

He’d
like to try a few of the problems that came with being richer than hell, instead of constantly worrying about covering expenses. The most important things in his life—his kids and his horses—both required a lot of outlay without any guarantee of a return.

Unlike his own admittedly shabby barn, Whistledown’s was shiny with new white paint, two stories tall, and embellished with the twin scarlet cupolas that were the farm’s trademark. Reaching the door, Joe unlatched it, rolled it open, and stepped inside.

Moments later he went stomping furiously down the length of the barn, the smell of whiskey drawing him like a beacon, cursing and ready, willing, and able to put the fear of God into his dad.

His patience was at an end. Six weeks ago, after Joe had hauled him out of Shelby County High School’s kickoff basketball game, where Cary had seriously embarrassed Eli, who was a starting forward, and his other grandkids by bellowing the school fight song from the middle of the basketball court at halftime, Cary had sworn never to touch another drop of booze as long as he lived.

Yeah, right, Joe thought. He had heard that song before, more times than he cared to count. They all had. But this was the last straw. His dad knew—
knew
—that he wasn’t allowed near the horses if he’d been drinking. Especially the Whistledown horses. Especially with Charles Haywood in residence.

It was so dark that it was difficult to be certain, but the motionless figure seemed unaware of him as Joe stopped no more than a yard away and stared hard at it. A flicker of doubt assailed him: maybe it wasn’t his dad after all. The man looked too big, too burly, but then maybe the dark was deceptive. Suddenly, the only thing he was sure of—fairly sure of—was that whoever it was, was a man. Shoes, pants, the individual’s sheer size—all looked masculine. Legs thrust stiffly out in front of him, the guy was sitting on the ground, head turned a little away, arms hanging at his sides, hands resting palms up on the ground. Joe thought his eyes were closed. Again, it was too dark to be sure, but he thought he would have seen a gleam of reflected light or something if the guy was looking at him.

“Pop?” he said, although he was almost positive now that the sitting figure was not his father. He caught a whiff of another smell foreign to the barn. It was sharper and more acrid, if not as familiar, as the booze. His voice hardened, sharpened. “All right, get up!”

The man didn’t move.

The reddish-brown sawdust looked almost black in the darkness. But all around the man’s right side, in a circular shape that seemed to be spreading even as Joe stared at it, was a deeper, denser blackness, an oily-looking blackness… .

Joe’s eyes narrowed as he strained to see through the darkness. Moving nearer, crouching, he laid a wary hand on the man’s shoulder. It was solid and resilient—but, like the man, totally unresponsive.

“Hey,” Joe said, gripping the shoulder and shaking it. Then, louder: “Hey, you!”

The man’s head flopped forward, and then his torso slumped bonelessly away from Joe, his leather coat making a slithering sound as it moved over the wood. He ended up bent sideways at the waist, limp as a rag doll, his head resting at the outermost edge of the oily-looking circle.

That posture was definitely not natural, Joe thought. The man had to be dead drunk—or dead.

Oh Jesus.
Dead.

All around him now horses stomped and snorted and called in a constant, agitated chorus. He could feel their nervousness, their recognition that something was wrong in their world. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he felt it too: the sensation he had first experienced upon entering the barn. The best way he knew to describe it was the weight of another presence. Glancing swiftly over his shoulder only to see nothing but shadows and moonlight and the bobbing heads of horses behind him, it occurred to him just how very isolated the barn was.

There was a movie Eli liked. Joe couldn’t remember the name of it right off the top of his head, but the tag line went something like this: In space they can’t hear you scream.

That about summed up how he felt as he crouched there in the dark beside the slumped, motionless figure. He felt the touch of invisible eyes like icy fingers on his skin, and glanced around again. He could see nothing but the horses, and the shadows, and the moonlight pouring through the door. But a sudden fierce certainty that he was not alone seized him.

“Who’s there?” he called sharply.

There was no reply. Had he really expected that there would be? Mouth compressing, he turned his attention back to the man before him. Touching the oily sawdust he discovered, as he had suspected, that whatever had discolored it was sticky and wet—and warm.

Blood. The sharp, rotting-meat stench of it was unmistakable as he held his fingers beneath his nose.

“Jesus Christ,” Joe said aloud, wiping his fingers on the sawdust to clean them. Then he reached for the man’s neck, feeling for the carotid artery, for a pulse. Nothing, though the flesh was warm. At the same time he leaned over the still figure, squinting at the shadowed features.

By that time, his eyes were as adjusted to the dark as they were going to get. He could not see everything—small details escaped him, and colors—but he could see some things. Like the fact that the guy’s eyes were definitely closed, and his mouth was open, with a black froth that could only be blood bubbling up from inside.

Charles Haywood.
Joe took a deep, shaken breath as he recognized his employer. There was a blackened hole about the size of a dime in his left temple, a growing circle of blood-soaked sawdust around the right side of his upper body—and a handgun lying not six inches from his left hand.

What he had smelled along with the booze was the acrid scent of a recently fired gun, Joe realized. Haywood had been shot dead.

Two

T
he predator watched hungrily from the shadows. He could still smell the blood, feel the warmth of it on his fingers, taste the saltiness of it on his tongue, imagine the rich, deep claret of the life force draining from his victim’s body. But it left him empty rather than satisfied, like inhaling the scent of a meal cooking without being able to consume the meal itself. This taking had been unplanned, an act of necessity rather than pleasure.

But it had awakened his craving for pleasure.

Speculatively he eyed the man crouched beside his prey. It was dark, and they were alone—but no. Caution raised its head. He had been doing this for years, preying on the unsuspecting, taking them swiftly and silently in the night to a place where their screams could not be heard, where he could play and indulge himself and enjoy their pain and terror at his leisure. This man was handsome, with good features and smooth, unblemished skin, but he was not the right type: he would be only marginally more satisfying than the first, if indeed he could be taken at all.

Youth and beauty were what he craved.

The predator slipped swiftly and silently out of the barn. Bent low, hugging the black shadow of the fence, he skirted the fields to where he
had left his vehicle hidden from view. He was panting and sweating by the time he slid into the driver’s seat, because he was a big man and a little out of shape, and because he had not quenched the thirst for excitement aroused by the ultimately unsatisfying kill.

He wanted more. He needed more. He had to have more. His need was as clamorous as an addict’s for a drug. He could not wait.

He had not come out tonight prepared to take prey, but no matter, he thought as he started his specially modified Chevy Blazer and pulled out onto U.S. 60 with a swish of tires. Prey was easy to come by if you knew what you were doing, and he did. The interstate was just about five miles up the road, and on the interstate, so closely situated to his home that it almost had to be fate, was a rest stop. Sometimes he thought of himself as a spider, a big hairy spider on the prowl in search of a meal. The rest stop was part of his network of webs. In time of need, he could almost always find something appetizing at the rest stop.

As he drove he cracked open the window, breathing in the cold air, the scents of passing farms and animals. Now that the hunt was on, he felt more alive than he did at any other time. His senses were sharpened; the familiar euphoria made him smile, and turn on the radio to his favorite, golden-oldies station. The Stones’ “Satisfaction” was playing. The appropriateness of it was not lost on him, and his smile broadened.

He would have satisfaction soon.

The two-lane country road was lightly traveled at this time of night; his headlights swept across rolling fields and black board fences, illuminating an occasional horse or cow grazing near a fence bordering the road. It was after midnight. The county was, to all intents and purposes, asleep. He knew it well: he had been born and raised here. Sometimes it amused him, to think how safe and secure his neighbors felt slumbering in their beds. He had lived among them for almost his entire life, and yet they had no idea that he even existed. There was a dark underbelly to their beloved Paradise County, and none of them—well, none of them except those he took—would ever know.

He turned right, pulled out onto the interstate, and traveled east for about three miles until he reached the rest stop. Easing off the road, he
checked out the cars parked in front of the rest area as he drove slowly past the brick building that housed the rest rooms and vending machines. There were two, a black Camry and a blue minivan. A family of a mother, father, and two groggy-looking children were heading away from the van toward the rest rooms on either side of the dimly lit building. They didn’t interest him.

At the far side of the rest stop he drove off the pavement and into the surrounding wooded area that was a favorite haunt of local deer hunters. There he parked. Getting out of the SUV, he went around to the back and extracted his folding motorized scooter from the cargo area in the rear. Later he would use it to return to his car, but for now he pushed it silently in front of him as he walked back toward the building. The funny thing was, the scooter never seemed to raise any red flags in the minds of the few who saw it. It looked as innocuous as a child’s toy, and he, big man that he was, looked comically harmless riding it.