Hoofprints (Gail McCarthy series) Read online

  My mind jumped chaotically. The silent room was grotesquely unreal, as if I were trapped in an old black-and-white science fiction movie. I forced myself to think. Gritting my teeth, I bent down and touched Cindy's arm, choosing the inside of the wrist, pressing the cold, rubbery flesh just long enough to be sure, to know that there was nothing I could do. Shuddering, I stepped around her, carefully avoiding the blood on the floor, and did the same for Ed. Then I walked across the room to the phone, noticing with surprise that my hand was steady as I punched the numbers.

  The operator's voice was brisk. "Nine one one."

  "I need police, sheriffs, whoever, to come to one two eight Rose Avenue." My own voice sounded absurdly calm-the voice I used to reassure clients who called in frantic emergencies at 2:00 A.M.

  "And what is the nature of the problem?"

  "The two people who live here have been murdered."

  The words weren't right, or maybe there were no right words. Keeping my voice composed and my eyes on the kitchen counter, I answered some more questions and hung up the phone.

  When I turned back toward the room, the dead bodies hit me like a punch in the solar plexus. I had seen death before, I had caused it myself, plenty of times, when I put animals out of their pain, but this violent human death was blindly, all too personally final. I stared at what had been Cindy and Ed. Their bodies sprawled on the floor, empty as bags of old clothes. A coppery sweet scent seemed to emanate from the dark bloody patches. Something rose in my throat and I jerked my eyes away. I wanted out of that room.

  Half-walking, half-running on unsteady legs, I pushed through the house, sharply aware of all the rooms where he, she, whoever had done this, could be, might be, waiting. My heart was thudding as I reached the back door, my hands fumbling for the knob, and I yelped, scared out of whatever composure I had left, when a knock reverberated on the other side of the door, right at the level of my face.

  The police-it had to be the police. Hands shaking, I pulled the door open, to find a man staring at me. Not the police. A man, with an odd look on his face that I couldn't fathom, standing in Ed and Cindy's garage. I took a step backward. "Who are you?" I demanded with all the iron I could muster.

  He looked as surprised as I felt. His mouth dropped open, and he mumbled some words I couldn't catch. At least he didn't seem to pose an immediate threat; he was obviously as alarmed as I and was backing away. With a shock, I realized I recognized him.

  Vacant round blue eyes, snub-nosed boyish face, tightly curled blond hair-he was one of the regular Santa Cruz street people; I called him "the Walker." Unlike most of them, he always looked clean, and I never saw him pushing a shopping cart full of cans or carrying armloads of junk. He just walked. I'd seen him dozens of times, all over town, walking and talking to himself.

  Maybe the recognition on my face alarmed him. Suddenly, for no reason that I could see, he turned and ran out of the garage. I stood where I was as if frozen, replaying his expression in my mind. Startled-like a wild animal. He reminded me of surprising a buck in the woods. He had the same look-distant and wary, almost otherworldly, and in the split second before he knows you for a human, not unfriendly.

  TWO

  No one was in sight when I walked out of the garage. The Walker seemed to have vanished into thin air. Plumber neighed at me; a human being emerging from the house looked promising to him. I could hear sirens in the distance as I went into the feed room, got a flake of hay, and put it in his manger. By the time I walked back out of the barn the sirens were close, coming down Rose Avenue.

  I stood by my truck as the two sheriff's cars pulled into the driveway. They'd turned off the noise, but the red lights were flashing and the four uniformed sheriff's officers got out of the cars fast. I half-expected them to pull their guns and yell, Freeze. Instead, the oldest one, a man with a square chin and some gray in his hair, walked up to me and said, "We were called out here on a possible homicide?"

  It took a few minutes of explaining on my part and checking on theirs, but when they figured out it wasn't just a possible homicide but a definite double murder, they worked fast. In no time at all, it seemed, there were half a dozen cars in the driveway, and a full dozen men, in uni­form and out of it, walking in and out of the house. That was all I got to see of police procedure, because I was kept politely but firmly from leaving my position out in the driveway. I was watched by a man who struck me as too young to be carrying a gun; he seemed to devote all his en­ergy to holding his face and body as stiffly as possible.

  "Is it all right if I call my office and cancel my appointments?" I asked him.

  He swiveled a severe glance my way.

  "I'm a vet. I can call in on the two-way radio in my

  truck."

  "All right," he said, and positioned himself where he could hear my conversation with the office. I canceled all my appointments for that day, not knowing what would happen. Then we waited.

  Eventually another car pulled into the driveway and two plainclothes people got out. The short female figure looked familiar-blond hair in a wavy bob, neat olive green wool suit, an air of cool self-possession.

  "Oh, no," I muttered.

  The woman was Detective Jeri Ward, who had investi­gated the murder of my friend Casey Brooks last fall. I'd gotten involved in the investigation and Detective Ward had not been happy about it-not at all. In fact, I was pretty sure Detective Ward thought I was a first-class pain in the butt.

  "Hello, Dr. McCarthy." Her greeting was carefully civil.

  "Hello, Detective Ward."

  "I hear you found some more bodies."

  A sudden vivid picture of the bodies I'd found-Cindy and her husband---choked back any snappy reply I might have made.

  "Would you care to come down and give us a statement?" It might be phrased as a request, but I knew perfectly well it wasn't. Without pausing for an answer she went on briskly: "I need to go inside and have a look at things. If you'll wait here, I'll be out in a minute."

  Leaning on my pickup, I waited. The young sheriff's deputy watched me out of the comers of his eyes, keeping his face turned rigidly away. Time crawled. I got in the truck and rubbed Blue's head awhile, adjusted both windows so he'd have plenty of air, and told him I'd be back soon. He cocked an ear and curled up a little more comfortably. Blue was old and stiff enough that he preferred to sleep in the truck unless there was something interesting to do-attack a bigger, younger dog maybe.

  As I watched various official-looking people arrive and leave from my vantage point in the driveway, I thought about the man I'd seen in Cindy's garage; what in the world had the Walker been doing there? Santa Cruz was a mecca for the homeless; they thronged the city itself, particularly Pacific Avenue and the downtown area, where they mingled indistinguishably with the students from the local university. Mild climate and the liberal atmosphere that had dominated Santa Cruz since the university was opened drew them, and they presented a problem that the city had, as yet, been unable to deal with very effectively. Shelters affiliated with churches and staffed by volunteers were still the main coping mechanism, though it was hard to see just what else could be usefully done to help that large proportion of street people affected with some type of mental illness-victims of the Reagan administration's wholesale shutdown of government care.

  The Walker didn't really fit the street person mold, though. For one thing, he always looked clean-shaven and neatly dressed; for another, I usually saw him over in this area. Rose Avenue, where I stood, is on the outskirts of Capitola, a high-dollar little resort city on the beach, which fancies itself another Catalina and is as conservative in its leanings as Santa Cruz is liberal. Capitola is the hangout of upwardly mobile young stockbrokers and lawyers; it runs to expensive clothing stores, Yuppie bars, and pricey restaurants. The street people in general avoid Capitola-perhaps they find the atmosphere not to their taste-and the Walker was unique in that he was a regular feature here.

  What could he have been doing in Cindy
's garage, though, knocking on her door? Did she know him? Did Ed know him? Could he possibly have killed them? Somehow I didn't believe it. The expression in his eyes had not been that of a killer. It had been too innocent, too startled.

  When Detective Ward reemerged from the house, a good half hour later, I'd had plenty of time to speculate on who might have killed Cindy and Ed, if the Walker hadn't. I can't say I thought of anything useful.

  Jeri Ward ushered me briskly into the passenger seat of a dark green sheriff's car without a word. Once she was driving toward Santa Cruz, though, she seemed to unbend a trifle.

  "Did you know them?" Her voice held a hesitant sympathy.

  "A little. I've been over to their house for dinner, a couple of parties. Cindy was a client of mine." I felt reluctant to pose as a grief-stricken friend, as our relationship had been casual at best.

  "Do you know anything about them?"

  "Well, Ed was a Whitney. One of the Whitneys."

  "As in Whitney-Kraus. That's what his paperwork suggested." She made a slight reflexive negative motion with her chin and was abruptly silent.

  I could guess what she was thinking. Whitney-Kraus was one of the larger software firms in Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz County's miniature version of the Silicon Valley, and the Whitney family was one of Santa Cruz's wealthiest families. The phenomenon of their recently acquired millions was closely linked to the incredible population growth Santa Cruz County had experienced in the twenty or so years since I was a child. At that time the county was mostly rural, and Santa Cruz was a sleepy little resort city that came to life only in the summer, when a constant stream of tourists poured in from the San Francisco Bay Area bound for the beaches and Boardwalk.

  Even during my high school years, though, the writing was on the wall, as the Santa Clara Valley became the heavily industrialized and even more heavily populated Silicon Valley. Santa Cruz, a mere twenty minutes away via that very torturously winding Highway 17 that had taken my parents' lives, became home to ever-increasing numbers of commuters. Developers had had a field day, and the Whitneys, major landowners in what was once the one-store town of Scotts Valley, had sold large portions of their land for housing tracts and commercial buildings and started their own highly successful computer software firm on the remaining piece. From their point of view it was doubtless a real Cinderella story. But there were lots of longtime locals like myself who were deeply saddened at the changes in the county; many of the fields and farms I remembered, including my childhood home, were now ugly suburban neighborhoods.

  Jerking my mind away from the ever-sore subject of Santa Cruz's continual growth, I asked Detective Ward, "Do you think the Whitneys will make this difficult?"

  She shrugged noncommittally; still, it was the most human gesture I'd seen her make yet.

  "I think Ed was more or less estranged from his family," I offered tentatively. "He didn't work in the business; in fact, as far as I know, he didn't do anything but play."

  She didn't reply, just fixed her eyes firmly on the road; I decided it was time to shut up. When we pulled into the parking lot of the county building and got out of the car, she asked me to come with her in a formal tone that made me think she regretted her departure from routine.

  After I was established, more or less comfortably, in one of those neutral-looking waiting rooms, or conference rooms, with plastic chairs and industrial carpet, she left me. I had a paper cup of lousy coffee that a receptionist-type deputy had given me, and I sipped it. Patience, I told myself. In ten minutes, or close enough, the door was pushed open again and a short, fat, balding man in a suit came through it. Detective Ward was behind him. They seated themselves on the other side of the long table in the middle of the room, and Detective Ward put a tape recorder on the table and clicked it on.

  The short man said, "I'm Detective Reeder. Detective Ward says she knows you. We need to ask you a few questions."

  "Okay."

  "Your name?"

  "Gail McCarthy."

  We went through my address, phone number, and occupation. Then he asked me, "What were you doing at One twenty-eight Rose Avenue?"

  "I had an appointment with Cindy Whitney, to worm and give shots to her horse, Plumber."

  "What time was the appointment for?”

  "Eight o'clock."

  We went through it all step by step. The short, fat detective was as impersonal as a machine. I explained how I had looked around the barn, knocked at the house, had a cup of coffee, and gone back to the house and looked in the garage.

  "Why did you do that?" he wanted to know.

  "I don't know," I said truthfully. "It didn't seem right. The paper was still in the driveway; the horse wasn't fed. I had a funny feeling about it. When I saw the cars in the garage ..." I spread my hands and shrugged. "I can't say I guessed anything like the truth. I suppose I was afraid that Cindy was sick or incapacitated in some way."

  "What did you do next?"

  "I went in the house." I paused, and the detective looked at me. "I ought to explain, I guess, that I knew Ed and Cindy socially as well as professionally. I'd been over to their house a couple of times."

  The detective nodded. I told him how I found the bodies. He questioned me closely about where I had walked, what I had touched. I was able, I thought, to recount every step exactly.

  "I called nine one one; then I left the house."

  I hesitated. Only I could link the Walker to these murders, and I had an inward conviction, maybe unreasonable, that he hadn't done them. I wasn't sure who he was or where he came from-he didn't look as if he slept under a bridge-but in his constant walking and talking were the obvious signs of a mental disorder, and he, like many of the other street people, aroused my sympathy. Suppressing a feeling of guilt, I went on. "There was a man in the garage, knocking on the back door, when I opened it."

  "Did you recognize him?"

  "I've seen him walking around town before. He's got curly blond hair; in his thirties, I'd say. Sort of a young face. I'd know him if I saw him."

  "All right. What did this man do?"

  "He ran away. I said, 'Who are you?' and he looked at me and ran off." I wasn't sure if it was my imagination, but I thought Reeder grew more focused suddenly. His face stayed impassive, but something in his posture, maybe his eyes, reminded me of an Airedale spotting a mouse behind the feed sacks. Then it vanished.

  Finishing my story with the arrival of the sheriff's cars, I sat quietly in my chair, wondering if I was done. Detective Reeder looked down, then back up into my face. I was getting to know his eyes. Brown, a little bloodshot, with pouchy bags under them, like fat men have. "Did you know Cindy Whitney well?" His voice was neutral.

  I tried to answer the question honestly. "Not really. I'd been around her maybe thirty times in all, counting professional calls and running in to her at her trainer's barn and at horse shows. We were friendly."

  "What was she like?"

  "Outgoing-her main interest was horses. Definitely an extrovert, very social. She and Ed gave a lot of parties; it's my impression they were a part of Santa Cruz society, whatever that means these days. Cindy and I weren't close. She liked me, I think, because I was young, single, and a horse vet; I was the type of person she liked to know. She would have said we were friends." Inside I felt a little uncomfortable, as though I had betrayed Cindy.

  "What about the husband?"

  "Ed. I knew him even less than I knew her. She was the one that had the horse; he wasn't involved with it. He could be kind of abrasive."

  The detective pounced on this. His voice didn't change, and the tired-looking brown eyes stayed droopy, but I could feel his mind pouncing. "What do you mean by abrasive?"

  "He liked you to know he had a lot of money."

  Reeder kept his eyes on my face, and I could see I was expected to continue.

  "I'm not sure how to put this. As I say, I didn't know him very well, but he seemed to be the typical spoiled rich kid who's busy trying to impress
everyone all the time. He had the Ferrari, the beautiful blond wife, the extravagant lifestyle. He liked to mention he'd flown to Aspen last weekend in his best buddy's Learjet. That sort of thing. His attitude toward Cindy, too-sort of casual possession, as if she were an object he'd bought and paid for-it was irritating. I didn't find him an appealing person."

  Reeder nodded impassively. "Do you know anyone who might have wished to harm them?"

  "No."

  "Think about it," the detective repeated. The pouches under his eyes tightened as he narrowed his focus at me. "Don't forget, they were murdered."

  "I don't know of anyone who had a reason to kill Ed and Cindy Whitney. I liked Cindy; as far as I know, everyone else did, too. I didn't know them well enough to be aware of any enemies they might have had."

  Reeder sat silently for a minute. "Where were you last night?"

  "I saw two emergencies and got home around midnight. The last time I could prove where I was would be about eleven-forty, when I left the second case." I gave him the names and addresses of the people involved.

  "You live alone?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "Would any of your neighbors have seen you come in?"

  "It's possible." I gave him their names and addresses.

  "All right," he said. "That's all for now. You'll be in town this week, Dr. McCarthy?"

  "Yes."

  He nodded. "Thank you for your time."