Chapter One
The instant he stepped inside the dark barn, Joe Welch
knew he'd found the source of his urgent sense that
something was wrong.
Someone was in the barn. Someone who had no business being
there. The thoroughbreds were restless, moving agitatedly
about in their stalls, not quiet like they should be so
late at night. One -- he thought it was Suleimann --
whinnied to him softly. There was an indefinable heaviness
in the air: the weight of an unseen presence. He could
feel it, tangible as the scent of smoke that still
lingered outside from the burning of a pile of brush that
afternoon.
Standing in the rectangle of moonlight that streamed
through the wide door he had just rolled partly open,
squinting down the long row of stalls, Joe searched the
shadows for an intruder. At the same time, his fingers
slid along the sanded-smooth planks, groping for the light
switch. He found it, flipped it -- and nothing happened.
Figured. The lights were out, which wasn't all that
unusual. The wind had been up earlier, and sometimes, out
here in the county, that was all it took to knock down a
power line. Or maybe a fuse was blown. That happened
sometimes too, when too many lights were turned on at
once. Lots of lights were on up at the Big House tonight;
he'd seen them as he'd walked across the field. So it was
probably a fuse.
Damn.
His gaze continued to search the darkness as his hand
dropped to his side. After a moment he found what he was
seeking: a darker, denser, human-shaped shadow that seemed
to be sitting on the soft raked sawdust of the floor. The
figure's back rested against the left-side wall. Its legs
were stretched straight out in front of it, solid black
logs against the pale umber of the sawdust. In the
darkness, Joe might have missed it entirely, except that
it was the one shadow that remained motionless amid all
the other shadows that shifted and danced just beyond the
reach of the moonlight.
Suleimann -- he was sure it was the big roan now -- called
to him again, anxiously.
"You there! Identify yourself, please!" His challenge was
peremptory, but not altogether rude, on the off-chance
that it might be his employer or one of his employer's
guests sitting there on the ground.
No answer. No movement. Nothing.
Joe took a deep breath, steadying himself as his muscles
tensed. Billionaires and their pals didn't sit in barn
shavings as a general rule, so he thought he could pretty
much rule out that possibility. Which left -- what? A
couple of these horses had been purchased just a few
months before at Keeneland's July sale for around a
million dollars each, the rest were more or less valuable
to some degree, and an intruder presented a host of
possibilities, none of them good.
As he prepared himself to scare or beat the bejesus out of
whoever had invaded his barn, Joe suddenly recognized,
along with the expected smells of hay and manure and sweet
feed and horse, the unmistakable odor of sour mash. It
slid up his nostrils and down his throat, and left a
distinct taste on his tongue. A taste that, over the
years, he had come to know and hate.
His tension dissipated as anger and frustration took its
place.
"Pop?" The smell was a dead giveaway. Who else was it
likely to be at this time of night but his dad, drunk as a
skunk as he was always swearing he would never be again?
When liquored up, Cary Welch sometimes visited
Whistledown's barn, imagining that he was the big-time
thoroughbred trainer he had been once, instead of a
drunken has-been with a damaged reputation that no owner
would let within spitting distance of his horses.
Including Charles Haywood, Joe's primary employer and
owner of Whistledown Farm, whose barn and horses these
were.
No answer except another agitated whinny from Suleimann
and the restless stomping of hooves. Still the sitting
figure didn't move. But there was no mistaking that smell.
"Damn it, Pop, you got no business in this barn when
you've been drinking, and you damned well know it! I
oughta kick your scrawny ass from here to Sunday and back!"
The shadow didn't so much as twitch, didn't respond in any
way. Had his father passed out?
Swearing loudly, Joe headed toward the motionless figure.
Horses snorted and nickered at him from both sides as they
came to the fronts of their stalls en masse.
"You think I don't see you? I see you plain as day, you
old fart." His booted feet were surprisingly loud as they
stomped through the sawdust. The shadow -- his father --
remained as still as a rabbit in the open with a dog
nosing about. "I'm telling you right now, I don't need
this crap."
It was shortly after one a.m. on a frostbitten Thursday in
early October. Joe had gone to bed at eleven, just like
always. He'd even fallen asleep, dead to the world as soon
as his head touched his pillow, just like always. But he'd
woken with a start at 12:38 a.m., according to the glowing
green numbers on his bedside clock. He never woke in the
middle of the night anymore -- a long day of hard,
physical work was, he'd found, the ultimate cure for
insomnia -- but tonight he had. Groggy, cross, filled with
an indefinable sense of unease, he'd made the most obvious
mental connection: something was up with his kids. Rising,
pulling on the jeans and flannel shirt he'd left draped
over the chair in the corner of his small bedroom, he'd
padded barefoot out into the old farmhouse's drafty
upstairs hall to check on them.
Jen's room, right across the hall from his own, was his
first stop. Poking his head inside without turning on the
light, he discovered his eleven-year-old daughter sleeping
soundly on her side facing the door. Her knees were drawn
up almost to her slight chest beneath the tattered red and
blue, horse-appliquéd quilt that she loved. Her short,
feathery brown hair was fanned out over her pillow. One
small hand cushioned her tanned cheek. Ruffles, the fat
beagle mix that was Jen's constant companion, lay on her
back at Jen's feet, all four legs up in the air, her long
black ears spread out on either side of her. Unlike Jen,
she was snoring lustily. She roused herself enough to open
one brown eye and blink at him.
Joe made a face at himself as he closed the door again. No
trouble here. Not that he had expected any. Not really.
Jen had never caused him any trouble in her life that he
could remember. If occasionally the thought occurred that
she was her mother's daughter, Joe put it out of his mind.
It was he who had the raising of her, not Laura. Laura was
long gone.
Josh and Eli were a different story. The room they shared
was half a dozen steps down the hall, just past the
bathroom. One of them was the more likely cause for this
gut-sense he had that something was amiss. Not that they
were bad boys -- they weren't -- but they were boys, and
as such no strangers to mischief. He opened their door,
looked inside, and discovered sixteen-year-old Eli, still
clad in jeans and a T-shirt, fast asleep, sprawled on his
back on the rumpled twin bed. His feet in their once white
but now laundered-to-gray athletic socks extended past the
end of the mattress by a good three inches, one arm
trailed off the side of the bed, and headphones were
clamped to his ears. Eli was almost as tall as Joe's own
six-foot-three, with a lanky frame that had not yet
started to fill out. His mouth was open slightly as he
snored, and a textbook of some kind -- algebra, probably,
he'd said he had a major test tomorrow -- lay open on his
chest. Against the far wall, fourteen-year-old Josh's bed
was rumpled but empty.
Ah-hah, Joe thought, congratulating himself on his finely
tuned parental radar. Years of being both father and
mother to this trio had rendered him acutely sensitive to
his children. If Josh was up and about at this time of
night, secure in the knowledge that his old man usually
slept like a rock, he was about to get one heck of a
surprise.
The lamp on the battered oak nightstand between the twin
beds was on. The volume on the stereo beside the lamp had
to be cranked up high, because, despite the headphones,
Joe could hear the whine of tinny guitar riffs and the
rhythmic thump of a driving bass.
As he'd said to Eli on countless occasions, maybe he'd do
better in his classes if he just once tried studying
without the stereo blasting his eardrums into the next
state. Of course, Eli claimed that the music helped him
concentrate. Not that he could prove it by his grades.
Mouth twisting wryly, Joe stepped into the room and
removed the book from Eli's chest. Closing it, he put it
on the nightstand and turned off the stereo. Lifting the
headphones from his son's head -- Eli never so much as
twitched -- he put those on the nightstand, too, switched
off the lamp, and left the room, closing the door behind
him.
Now, where was Josh?
As soon as Joe started down the steep, narrow staircase
that led to the bottom floor, he heard the TV. A gentle
bluish glow illuminated the arch that led into the living
room and turned the well-worn floorboards at the base of
the steps a weird shade of brownish purple. Frowning, Joe
stepped into the patch of purple and looked left, into the
living room. The TV was on, volume low, tuned to what
looked like one of the Terminator movies. Still dressed in
the ratty gray sweater and faded jeans he had worn to
school, Josh lay on his back on the couch, his black head
pillowed on the comfortably worn, brown-tweed arm as he
followed the action on the screen.
"Hey, buddy, why aren't you in bed?" Joe asked gruffly,
moving into the room, relieved to find his most trouble-
prone child no farther afield than this.
Josh twisted around to look at him.
"Eli's got to have the light on so he can study." Josh's
voice was bitter in the way of put-upon younger brothers
everywhere.
"Bummer." Joe crossed to the TV and turned it off, then
looked back at Josh. "Eli's asleep. Go up to bed. You've
got school tomorrow."
"Dad! That was Arnold!" Josh protested, sitting up. At
about five-eight and thin as a blade of grass, he still
had a lot of growing to do. He ran his fingers over the
short stubble of his severely crew-cut hair in
frustration. The hairstyle, Joe thought, was Josh's
attempt to make himself look as unlike Eli as possible,
which was hard when the brothers bore so close a
resemblance. Josh frequently teased Eli about what Josh
mockingly called his older brother's long, beautiful hair.
Eli was vain about his nape-length, slightly wavy black
locks, and such brotherly attempts at humor were generally
not well received.
"Too bad. It's almost one o'clock. Go to bed."
"Can't I please watch the rest of it?" Josh's blue eyes
were pleading as he looked up at Joe, and there was a
wheedling note in his voice.
"Nope. Go to bed. Right now," Joe said, unmoved.
"Please?"
"You heard me." Josh was the one who could be counted on
to test the boundaries of his patience every step of the
way, Joe reflected. Sometimes when he had to tell Josh
something fifty times before he was obeyed Joe found
himself one deep breath away from making his point with a
swift kick to the boy's butt, but underneath he understood
his second son's need to assert his individuality. Just as
he understood his need to differentiate himself from his
older, and to Josh's eyes, more accomplished brother.
"If you'd make Eli turn out the light at a decent time,
I'd be asleep right now. But no, you never make Eli do
anything." Josh's voice was sullen.
"Joshua. Go to bed." Crossing his arms over his chest, Joe
mentally counted to ten.
Josh looked at him, and Joe looked levelly back. Josh
snorted with disgust, stood up, and shuffled from the
room, the too-long legs of his baggy jeans dusting the
floor as he went.
After watching his son disappear up the stairs, Joe shook
his head, then turned slowly around in the dark living
room.
The kids were fine, it seemed. Had he heard something,
then, the TV maybe or some other noise Josh had made, that
had been out of the ordinary enough to wake him up?
Maybe. Probably. But while he was up, it wouldn't hurt to
check on the horses. He was almost as attuned to them as
he was to his kids.
Horses were his livelihood, and his passion. He bred them,
trained them, cared for them. His own, in the shabby,
black-painted barn out back, for love and what he could
wrest out of the business, and, for a steady paycheck,
those of Charles Haywood, in the immaculate, twin-gabled
white barn up the hill.
Listening with half an ear to the noises Josh made getting
ready for bed upstairs -- toilet flushing, sink running,
floor creaking, the opening and closing of doors -- Joe
moved from the living room to the hall and then to the
kitchen at the rear of the house. Sitting down in one of
the sturdy, white-painted kitchen chairs, he thrust his
bare feet into the lace-up brown work boots he had left
just inside the back door, tied them, and stood up.
Grabbing his University of Kentucky Wildcat blue nylon
parka from the coatrack, he let himself out the back door,
locked it behind him, and headed across the cold-crisped
grass for his barn.
It was a beautiful night, bright and clear, colder than
usual for October, which was generally mild in Kentucky.
Overhead dozens of stars twinkled in a midnight blue sky.
The moon lacked only a sliver of being full, and shone
round and white as a car's headlight, illuminating the
gently rolling countryside with its scattering of houses,
barns, four-board fences, and two-lane roads.
His thirty-three acres marched alongside Haywood's six
hundred and seventeen, but because his acreage had once
been part of the Whistledown Farm property -- the
manager's house, to be precise -- the two barns were
within easy walking distance of each other. His, on the
little rise behind his own house, and Whistledown's, atop
a bigger hill and separated from his property by a single
black-painted fence, were no more than half a dozen acres
apart.
As he approached his barn, the triangular-shaped pond to
the right shone black in the moonlight, reflecting the
night sky as faithfully as a mirror. The covered training
ring, a three-quarters-of-a-mile indoor oval that allowed
him to work his horses in inclement weather, sat silent
and deserted at a little distance to the rear, looking for
all the world like a long, curved, black-painted train
tunnel. Beyond the ring, an owl hooted in the woods
bordering the back of the property, and from some greater
distance still a coyote howled. Near the edge of the
woods, just visible as a solid dark block against the
variegated charcoal of the timber, stood his father's
small log cabin. The lights were out. No surprise there.
Like himself, his widowed father was a horseman, which
meant he was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of guy.
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.
Copyright © 2000 by Karen Robards