Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1) (25 page)

Applegate stumbled from the barn, Alvin’s moans far behind. The cold didn’t register. The seats in his car were blocks of ice— no spring, no give, just cold. The engine turned over with a snarl.

****

The solid whack had been flesh on flesh, followed by coughing and gagging. Allison stepped back into the stall, the horse’s stiff belly wedging her against the wall. She hoped the animal didn’t spook. She stroked his flank with one hand and patted his cheek with the other.

One of the two had headed out. She recognized Bobby Alvin’s posture as much as the his voice, but the shadowy shape that drifted past, inches away, had been too tall to be Bobby.

The door slammed shut. Her adopted horse shook its head like a dog with fleas, stretched out its neck, shifted around as if to see, in the dark, what person was crowding his space without giving him the benefit of a brush. The car revved up and took off.

Allison squeezed alongside the horse to the front of the stall. Light poured from the office but it wasn’t making much of a dent in the barn’s central cavern. She waited a moment. Two. Three.

She picked up a faint scraping noise, like something being dragged, accompanied by a low moan and a wet cough. Distant and muted, but there.

And a voice. Bobby’s. She thought for a second she had badly miscalculated, that there was a third person, too.

“It’s Bobby ...”

Allison moved out into the broad open space, halfway to the office, stepping lightly. No protection. She stopped to listen.

“ ... It was him ...”

And moved closer, smack behind the open door.

“ ... Him. One of your old buddies ...”

Bobby coughed, struggled to speak.

She peered through the crack between the door and the jamb. He was on his knees, clutching the desk with one hand, propping up the telephone with the other.

“ ... The one that joined up with what’s-her-name, the animal queen ...”

Bobby’s voice shook, his tone was weak. His hand was bloody.

“Applegate ... at the barn, going through your stuff.”

Applegate?

“ ... Took off ...”

Long pause. Bobby listening, touching his jaw, making his face red.

“ ... Couple minutes ago. Didn’t have nothing when he left here ...”

Allison back-pedaled. She waited. Bobby mumbled something, cried out in pain.

She counted to twenty like a careful kindergartener, reached behind her, opened the door and slammed it shut again. Nice and loud, with purpose.

There was no decent excuse for being here. It was not her barn and it wasn’t the time of year to go chit-chatting. Casual visits were for summer on break days when the creeks gurgled and the sun baked the Flat Tops. She tried to generated extra noise as she walked, but it didn’t amount to much.

Bobby Alvin stepped out of the office, holding the door for stability.

“Hey, it’s me,” she said. “Allison.”

“Christ,” said Alvin. He turned back inside the office.

“Holy crap, are you okay?” she said. Alvin let himself collapse on the couch, a streak of blood across his cheek.

“Are you alright?” she said.

“Christ, yes,” said Alvin. “Caught me off guard.”

“Who did?”

“Better question,” said Alvin. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for someone who knows the trails south to Deep Lake, the ones that cut up over McKenna’s Ridge.”

“Christ, that’s the only way to go, on horseback anyway. The only other decent route from this end turns into all scree at the top.” The words came slow. Bobby sighed and moaned. “You’re going there now? God it hurts to talk.”

“Later today,” she said, in case he ended up seeing Bear, who was packed for nothing better than a stroll around a corral in one of those “horse ride” rip-offs by the interstate.

“You okay? Your jaw?”

He rubbed it, rolled it around and winced. She blinked and suddenly the rifles came into view.

All the rifles. In their racks.

At arm’s reach.

“I’ve gotta meet George back at his cabin,” said Alvin, standing up to leave. “We’re gonna track that pesky little mother down.”

“Who?” said Allison.

“One of his used-to-be friends.”

“I think he has more than a couple.”

“Probably true.”

He wasn’t going to say.

“Business friends?” said Allison.

“Not exactly.”

But he wanted to say. He wanted to spill it.

“Old buddy?” said Allison.

“Say ‘former.’ ”

“Not that guy who flopped over with the animal nuts?”

“Bingo,” said Alvin.

“Applegate,” said Allison, as if it was no big deal.

She kept thinking about the rifles, sneaking a glance. She wanted to avoid looking too interested, too studious.

“Surprised the heck out of me,” said Alvin.

“No shit,” said Allison. “But I thought he’s not supposed to be doing any fighting. Bad boy.”

“Guy was fucking desperate.”

Now Allison needed to drop it, before it got to be too obvious. “You don’t need help?”

“How do you tell if a jaw is broken?”

“X-rays,” said Allison. She sat down next to him. He recoiled at her closeness and sat up straight. She pressed two fingers along his chin.

“Ouch,” he said when she reached a spot near his ear. “Fuck.”

“There’s a doctor in your future,” said Allison. “Of course, there’s nothing they can do for a broken jaw other than give you a bottle of pain pills and a box of straws.”

Alvin shook his head in disgust.

“Fuck,” he said. “I’m going to get that fucker.”

“So where do I pick up the trail?”

She stood up as if to leave and hoped Alvin would take her cue. He stood too, describing where to find the trail. She half-listened, working to spot the Sako, thinking it might jump out. Alvin locked the door before she had time to spot anything useful.

He slipped the key into the saddlebag and led the way out.

“Thanks,” she said, climbing onto Bear. “Hope you find him. You really oughta get that checked out.” Alvin was headed to his pick-up.

Allison thought she heard him mumble another “fucker,” oblivious to her concern. He climbed into his truck and didn’t even look around.

She circled Bear around, listening to Alvin’s truck rumble away. On the opposite side of the barn, she tied up Bear loosely.

Key from the saddlebag, door open and she was back inside.

It took a second to lift each rifle out of the rack, drop it down and look, hoping and praying that the next one was it. She kept her ears dialed in on outside noises, anything.

She worked her way down the first rack. Nothing. She turned the corner at the wall and kept working.

Down, flip, look, return the rifle. Balancing speed with quiet.

And finally in the second row, waiting patiently for its turn, initials just as Fishy had said: S.M.

Lights off. Lock on. The horses were watching, but she was otherwise alone.

The rifle felt good in her hands as she reached the door where Bear was parked and she turned around to look things over. It was her sixth grade math teacher who made a big deal out of reading through problems twice. That’s what this was: one big word problem—things so obvious you could skip over them.

Like the key in the lock. It was still in her hand.

She propped the Sako by the door and scooted back, eyes focused on the padlock and thinking she should have kept going, what difference did it really make? The sun was up and she certainly wouldn’t be alone much longer. Why was the office so far away?

A truck came to a quick-skid stop right on cue.

Five steps from the lock, so close, her momentum and brain following through.

Why bother?

She hurled the slim slice of metal into a high-arcing orbit that carried it up to the loft above the stalls next to her. The piles of loose hay swallowed the key with a silent gulp.

She was halfway back to the rifle when the door clattered open behind her, two guys talking or arguing, the sound muffled by the size of the barn and her inability to listen for detail and run at the same time.

Allison scooped Fishy’s Sako up in her hands, the shouting growing in her head.

She worked to keep her mind from sinking into the swamp of chaos and panic, where her heart had already gone.

“Christ!” The blurt was loud, urgent.

She looked back. Alvin. And another figure next to him, extending a gun at shoulder height.

Boom
.

The bullet smacked the wood by her head and she wondered when she might first feel the pain and how bad the wound would be. She yanked on the door and ducked through.

Bear looked like an impatient dad waiting for the teenagers to come home.

Rifle in the scabbard. Ties off.

Turning Bear before she climbed up, she kicked him into gear as the door crashed open behind her.

She was already weaving Bear around trees that lined the road in the direction she didn’t want to go, away from her house. Bear was at a dead sprint before she had both boots in the stirrups.

Fishy’s rifle was in reach where she could touch it for reassurance.

Thirteen

Applegate sat on the banks of the river at the Grizzly Creek rest area, deep in the heart of the canyon. He choked and sobbed, replaying the tangle with Alvin. He half wished he had wiped out the little fucker. He should have stayed to keep looking for the rifle. So close to the rifle, so damn close. His salvation was so close. And so far away.

Earlier, he had gone out of his way to the closest spot to fill his gas tank. He used the station’s pay phone to leave an upbeat everything-is-fine message on Ellenberg’s voice mail. Said he’d be back in Denver for lunch and was sorry he’d missed a night with her.

He fidgeted in the downtown pool. He had sat in the steamier section with all the morning regulars, the locals, who avoided the mid-day tourists and late-day skiers. His puffy toes floated off in the distance through the fog. He hid his celebrity in the steam. Nobody said a lick, but he felt disoriented, constantly watching each thought.

He drove back through the canyon and spotted the rest-stop pullout, realized he needed to get his head screwed back on right before driving back. He needed to think things through as an important player in the FATE camp, not as Dean Applegate, loser.

He sat and watched the white caps churn. He stared at the cliff tops. He tried to figure out what impulse had overtaken him to mix it up with Alvin and to allow his anger to boil.

It occurred to him out of the fucking blue. The rifle was Marcovicci’s.

Fishy’s.

Why had it taken so long to realize that the rifle, if it was found and turned over, would lead straight to the guy who had been trying to get him alarmed? Fishy was the one saving his own fat-laden skin.

A smile percolated through his brain, subjecting all other clouds in his head to a bit of sunshine. Whose word against whose? Fishy would say he had sold the rifle to him. Where’s the paperwork? Fishy would say he wasn’t hunting the day Ray Stern was killed. He might have an alibi. But between naps and drinking, were the others rock sure of every single minute and who was where on the day Ray Stern strapped on his suit of felt? Applegate would say he’d gone for a hike. Besides, he was known among them as the least likely to hunt alone.

Bobby Alvin was a problem. He’d already thought of that. Alvin, at a trumped-up trial, saying Applegate had come looking for the rifle, would be a big problem. Maybe he could blame Fishy for spooking him, getting him all worked up. It sounded good in his head. It was a detail to be sorted out. There had to be a rational blip of logic that would make everything clear.

In the meantime, forget the brick wall. Think of the distant vista.

Fishy’s rifle. His initials were even on it, for Chrissakes. Applegate leaned back on the cold grass next to the river and stared up again at the steep canyon walls, flipping his mind back around to the struggles of Ellenberg’s crew to follow through on the success of their anti-hunting protest. And another idea began to grow in his head. By the time it was fully developed, he was back behind the wheel of his car and he was driving back to Denver with a growing smile on his face.

****

Allison looked behind her, straight down several hundred yards of Bear’s tracks. The grade was steep and the vegetation was thick. Somebody on horseback could easily be scampering up that section right now and she wouldn’t know it. But beyond that was a long slow incline where the trail she had followed hugged the edge of an aspen grove, surrounded on three sides by snow draped field. The field was empty.

Bear steamed hard, his chest white and wet.

She didn’t think she knew the valley any better than George Grumley. Did she have a five-minute start? Ten? They would have had to get saddles. Maybe fifteen.

Glenwood Springs was too far, in snow, on horseback. On a good day in summer, it might have been within reach. But today it was the cold woods and finding a way back home, or anywhere safe. She had no food, no water.

“Stay in your own tracks,” she told Bear, doubling-back. It was an old trick, but it might work.

The snow was light and fluffy. Bear’s first set of tracks looked more the damage from an ineffective snowplow and not the work of an animal. It would take a careful eye to see the snow had been re-churned on the double back. It was a hundred yards across the clearing and she kept Bear at the same steady gallop as the first time. But the distance could have been a mile as she kept her eye on the horizon. She expected her view to be filled at any second with Grumley or Alvin or both, a killing look on their faces.

She stopped Bear stock-still in his tracks at the base of a towering fir, the bows draped low. She walked him slowly around its base. Eight steps. Ten. Twelve. Around to the other side of the tree, tied him loosely. She dismounted and stepped her way back to the junction of Bear’s tracks, wiped out and smoothed-over the first few prints. She back-pedaled and listened for the clank of a harness, the crack of a rein. She brushed away her own tracks as she moved back. If her work paid off, the scene would look like Bear had been on a beeline to the ridge top. And by the time one or two more horses chewed up Bear’s original tracks and they realized the trail flat-out ended ...