a million times.
If I had only stayed in the loft that February night. An hour earlier, an hour later, would have made all the difference in the world. Harrison might still have targeted Foxdale, but he wouldn't have cared about me. Wouldn't have become fixated.
My lungs felt as if they had collapsed into a tight ball in the center of my chest.
Ralston straightened and walked around the room. He looked at the IV bag, the monitors mounted on a trolley, the curtains that provided privacy. He briefly looked at my chart, then he dragged a chair closer to the bed and sat down. Light brown bristles darkened his chin, and his eyes were bloodshot behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
'Are you up to giving me a statement,' he said, 'start to finish?'
I nodded.
He had a tape recorder with him that I hadn't noticed. He checked the cassette and switched it on. 'Did you see who shot Richard Harper?'
'Yes.' My voice was hoarse. 'Harrison did.'
'Which one?'
'Oh, John.'
He hesitated. 'Do you know which one of them killed the guard?'
'No. Harrison,' I shook my head, 'I mean, John Harrison said that Robby cut the guard's throat.' I swallowed. 'Any word on Robby, yet?'
'No. His car's been recovered. The Virginia State Police found it disabled on 211, just west of Warrenton. What happened after you went to your friend's house?'
I told Ralston about the phone call and the rest of it, and when I was finished, I was exhausted. 'I was thinking,' I said. 'Something Mrs. Peters mentioned. I think her husband reported Harrison. Maybe to the AHSA or-'
'The what?' Ralston said.
'American Horse Show Association. Maybe Harrison was scamming insurance companies, too, and Peters caught on. Or maybe Peters reported him to the Humane Society.' I told him what Nick had said about Harrison whipping a horse.
Ralston scribbled the information down and closed his notebook. 'I'll let you get some rest.'
'Wait,' I said as he turned to leave. 'Did the horse make it back okay?'
He shook his head. 'He slipped as he turned onto Rocky Ford and broke his hip. Had to be destroyed.'
'Damn,' I mumbled.
'I'm sorry, Steve.' Ralston turned toward the door and said, more to himself than to me, 'About everything.'
The door swung shut and, in a moment, the resultant current of air swirl across my skin. I stared at the faded pattern in the curtain and remembered the thrill I'd felt when Chase had caught sight of that white, picket fence. I thought about the joy I'd felt flowing from his mind when faced with a fence and the torment he'd lived with otherwise. A sad, screwed up horse.
I leaned back on the pillow. More than anything, I wanted to go back to sleep. But Harrison kept getting in the way, and a hundred other things I would have just as soon forgotten.
On the sidewalk that night, as I had lain against the cold block wall, I had looked at Harrison's face after he'd died. His mouth had hung slackly open, his eyes staring blankly toward the sky. Raindrops fell on his face and trickled into his mouth, but what I remembered most was that his expression had been one of pure astonishment. His sick, perverted mind had driven him to take that last, his final, risk.
The next day, they removed another tube and moved me into a regular room. I pressed them about a release date, but they said it was still too soon to tell, so instead, I wondered when they would allow visitors. Rachel in particular.
My next visitor was not Rachel, however, but Detective Ralston.
He snagged a chair and dragged it over to the bed. 'You're looking a damn sight better than the last time I saw you.'
'Yeah. I can hardly wait to get out of here.'
'Your doctor says you're doing well, all things considered.'
'Did he say when I'd be getting out?'
He chuckled. 'No. Dorsett's out of ICU.'
'I know. When they wheeled him down the hall, they let him stop in for a minute.'
Ralston swung the chair around backward and straddled it. 'The investigation's moving along nicely. Besides what happened at Foxdale, we've linked John Harrison to the murder of James Peters and to your abduction in February. It's also looking good for connecting him with the murders of David Rowe and Larry Jacob, the two I mentioned the other night.'
I shut my mouth with a snap. 'How'd you do that?'
'When we searched their farm, we found some interesting things. Your wallet, for one. The older brother, John, kept something from each victim in a bedroom dresser.'
'Jesus.' I swallowed and closed my eyes. 'What about Pennsylvania?'
'The boyfriend confessed. They'd been arguing all weekend, and apparently it escalated into a physical confrontation. He struck her hard enough that it killed her. Afterwards, he remembered reading about the Peter's case in the newspaper and pretended his girlfriend was victim number two.'
'What about the stolen horses?' I said.
'There wasn't a theft. They'd sold the horses a month earlier, and apparently that's what they were arguing about.' Ralston pulled a plastic evidence bag out of his jacket pocket and tossed it on the bed. 'You might be interested in this.'
Inside was an envelope addressed to my Post Office box and a wrinkled sheet of white, lined paper. I smoothed the plastic on my thigh, flattened the paper with my fingers, and squinted at the small script. Although the note was unsigned, whoever had written it had identified John Harrison as someone who used a rig that matched the description of the one I'd been looking for. I looked up at Ralston.
'It came in yesterday's mail,' he said. 'We impounded the truck owned by T amp;T Industries and compared the tire tread with the casts taken in the Rowe case.' Ralston smiled briefly. 'They matched.'
'Good.'
'As soon as we confronted Timbrook with that bit of information, we couldn't shut him up. It seems that John Harrison had tipped him off about the Peters farm being for sale, but he had no idea Harrison had been involved in Peters disappearance and death. Because the land butted up against Piney Run Park, T amp;T Industries made more on the deal than they'd expected, so Timbrook actively began pursuing land bordering the state park system.'
'Which led him to the Ritter farm,' I said.
Ralston nodded. 'That deal went through smoothly, but Timbrook was greedy. Like you suspected, when he couldn't persuade Foxdale's owner to sell, he asked John and Robert to make trouble for the farm, but he swears up, down, and sideways that he never meant for anyone to get hurt.'
I handed the letter back to Ralston and thought about Elsa. Had she known what was going on? Was that why she had warned me about Robby?
'And you were right about something else. 'June of last year, Peters reported Harrison to the Montgomery County Humane Society for cruelty.'
'God.' After a while, I said, 'How could it happen? How could two people become so… twisted?'
Detective Ralston rubbed his chin. There was more color to his face, and he was freshly shaven. He wasn't wearing the wire-rims of the day before, and I wondered if he wore contacts. 'Maybe they learned by example. The father's done time for sexual battery, assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault. Right now, he's in for statutory rape. John had a few minor brushes with the law when he was younger, all misdemeanors-'
'He got smarter.'
'What? Oh, yeah. Robert managed to stay clean until now.'
