shameful as wearing your pants inside your boots, asking somebody how big their spread is, or pissing on the floor of the Alamo.
The only good thing about the fall and the excruciating pain in my foot was that it cleared my head enough to think about what I was going to do now that the bay was hightailing it north across the hardpan range and disappearing into the darkness. I watched the stirrups bouncing off the horse’s sides in a comical interpretation of a TV western and allowed my head to fall back on the crusted snow. “Damn.”
The hammer of the. 45 was digging into my back, and I started to roll over, when another streak of pain ran up from my right foot. My eyes watered with the hurt, and I wiped at them.
It was then that I saw something at the far edge of the circle. It was something dark and big, and it was rapidly moving my way. I thought it was the owl again, even though it was the wrong color and didn’t seem to be flying, and figured maybe he thought he’d found a culinary bonanza.
I tried to raise my head, but the pain in my cheekbone made it hard, so I just watched as the big creature stamped the ground and rushed forward to snake out its long neck and snap at my head with huge clacking teeth.
Pain be damned, I yanked back and looked up at a thousand pounds of unrivaled fury. It was a horse, but only in the sense that the headless horseman’s horse was a horse. I could hear the clanking of chains where the thing had come unfettered from hell, and I expected fire to blow from its nostrils at any moment.
Unable to move any farther, I lay there on my back and watched as the black beast reared on its hind legs and crashed its hooves to the ground only inches from my foot; it stamped at me over and over again.
I had found Wahoo Sue.
I discovered a reserve I didn’t know I had and dragged myself back on my elbows as the horse screamed at me and whinnied and snapped the air in an attempt to get free from the nylon halter around her head. She was close enough that I could see where it had rubbed her raw and where the dried blood had stained her dark face. The harness was connected to a heavy, rusted logging chain that was in turn connected to a rock in the middle of the circle, and the length of links had torn and chafed the chest, barrel, and rump of the tortured animal.
October 26: four days earlier, afternoon.
Mary Barsad’s hands had come up again, and she had tried to aim an imaginary rifle despite the restraints at her wrists.
“His voice kept telling me to do it, and when I looked at his body lying there on the bed it was as if I already had shot him. It was as if the blood was already there, that I’d already shot him, but the voice was telling me to do it again.”
I moved to my right, placed my hands on the foot rail of the hospital bed, and looked into her face. “You fired the rifle?”
Tears spilled from her lower lids and highlighted her high cheekbones. “Yes.”
“How many times?”
Her head went back as if she’d been struck and then stayed at that odd angle. “Three times.”
I don’t think the expression on my face changed, but the facts had. “Three times.”
“Yes.”
Wade Barsad had been shot six times.
She turned her head toward the light. “He said that he deserved it, said that he deserved to die.”
“Wade.”
“Yes.”
This time she didn’t move. “But the voice that told me to kill him-it was Wade’s.”
October 31, 2:30 A.M.
“She likes you.”
The voice came from the darkness to my left. I could see his outline as I lurched up on one elbow, but I was still having trouble focusing. “How can you tell?”
“ ’Cause she would have killed you if she didn’t. Okey?”
I stared into the darkness. He had come closer, and I could see his shape more clearly. I’d figured it out, but now that I heard the hard nasal voice like flat stones falling and the signature word, it was confirmed.
“How are you, Wade?”
He laughed. “I knew you’d find out; it was just a question of when.” The horse strained against the chain, but this time she directed her fierce aggression toward him. He walked closer but was careful to stay outside of the circle where Wahoo Sue had licked the snow and nibbled everything else in a desperate attempt to stay alive. “She doesn’t like me much, but then the feeling’s mutual.” He squatted down in the running shoes and was holding a roll of duct tape. “Just out of curiosity, when did you know it was me?”
My head slipped to one side, and I could just make out his face. From the photographs I’d seen, it was indeed Wade Barsad. I flexed my foot and caught my breath again as the pain clamped inside my boot-broken, no doubt about it. “Meadowlarks.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Despite the pain, the horse, and the appearance of Wade Barsad, I had to fight against a mounting exhaustion and mumbled. “Meadowlarks.”
He smiled and made a sucking sound with his teeth. “I’m still not following you.” He reached out and shook my shoulder. “Hang in there, Sheriff, I’ve been dying to have this conversation.”
“Different song.”
Wahoo Sue continued to stamp at him, but since he was the one who had staked her, he knew her range. “What?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and I think I was drooling. I tried to wiggle my foot again in an attempt to wake up, but the pain had subsided to a throbbing, and my eyes started to close. “The eastern meadowlark has a song that’s different from the western one.”
He stared at me. “So?”
I tried to concentrate, but my neck muscles had dissolved somehow. “On the phone… Supposed to be your brother back in Ohio, but I heard a western meadowlark.”
He sat back on his ankles. “You’re shitting me. On the cell phone?”
“Yep.”
He was laughing again and leaned back to sit beside me. “Okey, so you’re John J. Audubon.”
I lay back, thinking that it might be my only chance to keep my sidearm, and stared into the heavily clouded sky. “It was your brother, the dentist, in the house-burned up.”
He nodded. “I was getting pressure from my old business associates, and the FBI wanted all of the names and account numbers that I’d written down in exchange for further protection, so I decided to do away with Wade Barsad. I got my brother to fake the dental records for a cut of the insurance money, but I needed a body. Unfortunately for him, it turned out to be his.”
“You walked Mary through it, while she was on the pills-”
“You know, I was worried about the mob and worried about the FBI, but then you showed up and I don’t even know your name. After I saw you with Vanskike and the boy, I figured I’d better dope you up before taking you on, that’s why I didn’t just wait for you at the trailer.”
“Hershel.”
He nodded again. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want to kill him, but he ran. And let me tell you, he was some kind of fast when he got going. I had to throw a bullet into him to stop him, and then I thought that I wouldn’t want him to suffer.” Barsad laughed and looked at the horse, whose chains clanked against her efforts to get to him. “So, I finished the job.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the 9 mm semiautomatic. “And now I have to shoot you and make it look like you shot him, and do something with the kid and try to find my missing kite, and I don’t have time for all this.”
His voice touched something off in Wahoo Sue, and she stamped at him again. I turned from the horse and could feel my eyes getting a little wobbly. “Sorry to inconvenience you.”
“Yeah.”
“The boy.”
He gestured with his chin. “He’s in the truck with an old friend of yours.”
“Dog?”
