Dead Silence

14

I waded through the grass, then cleaned my glasses before taking a close look. Big horse, with a back as long and broad as a couch. His coat was the same dappled gray as the horse in the painting of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, on his gelding, Traveller.

A backhoe would have to be brought in-no problem punching through the frozen ground or digging a hole big enough for more than just the horse.

Alacazar-Alacazam had been shot at least twice. There was a pock hole the size of a quarter on the rib cage, another on the neck just below the ear. Blood had coagulated into patches of ragged amber, a carpet of red on the bloated belly, probably because the bullet had punctured a lung.

Otherwise, the body was unmarked. The mane was articulately braided, as was a portion of the tail. The horse had been recently shod, the farrier’s nails still shiny.

I had more questions now but waited for Gardiner to finish talking about the horse’s stud fee. “A hundred thousand dollars a shot,” he said, sounding proud and giving it a bawdy edge as if he’d been in on the fun. But there wasn’t much fun involved because the horse was so valuable. His owners seldom allowed natural cover. When they did allow it, Cazzy and the mare were released into a padded stall floored with rubber brick. Video cameras recorded it all.

I said, “It looks like he was ready for a show: the braids, fresh shoes. Or was he always groomed this way?”

“One of the summer girls who takes lessons does the braiding. Cazzy enjoyed the attention, and it was good practice for her. He wasn’t scheduled for another show until spring.”

All outsiders were summer people, I realized, even if they lived in the Hamptons year-round. The potential for resentment on both sides was implicit.

Gardiner resumed talking with Tomlinson as I circled the body. My wild-tempered uncle, Tucker Gatrell, had kept horses. Preferred his gelding, Roscoe, over a pickup truck for short trips. I had mucked enough stalls and done enough riding to distrust the animals-they were moody and manipulative-especially stallions. But I could also appreciate the marvel that is a horse with superb conformation. I had never seen one as heavily muscled or as well proportioned.

There was no bridle or saddle to hang on to. I couldn’t have handled a stallion like this, never mind trying to make him jump a fence. I paused, waiting to ask another question, then realized that Gardiner was in the process of answering it.

“The thing about jumping horses is, they don’t jump fences just to jump. It doesn’t come natural, not like deer or dogs. If there’s no rider, something’s gotta be chasing ’em. Or scaring the hell out of ’em. Fire a gun a couple of times and even a great one like Cazzy would jump. That’s what I think happened. Some of those rich city assholes got drunk and came out here because I was uptown.” The man’s voice faltered, getting emotional.

Sudderram risked another question. “But you don’t know for sure someone wasn’t riding him. You said that earlier.”

“Yeah, but I also told you it weren’t that missing kid. A fourteen-year-old boy that had never ridden Cazzy? I doubt if you remember what else I said.”

“Mr. Gardiner pointed out that the horse isn’t saddled,” Sudderram told Tomlinson. “There’s no bridle, no way to control him.”

Gardiner was nodding. “It would take one hell of a horseman to take Cazzy over a four-rail fence bareback. At night? A stranger? If it was your boy who did that, find him and bring him to me. I’ll buy him a milkshake, give him a full-time job and ask him to teach me a few things.”

The trainer picked up the blanket he’d been carrying and walked to the fence. “You gentlemen are done here. At least I am. We’re flyin’ in the company vet to do an autopsy, but until Cazzy’s buried he’s gonna at least be covered with some respect.”

Once again, I kicked at the frozen ground, before saying, “Buried where?”

“Right here where he lived. Where you think?”

Before I could press, Tomlinson said, “They don’t get a solid freeze on the East End. It’s because of the ocean, like Fred mentioned.”

Sudderram caught my eye, both of us now possibly thinking the same thing: In the Hamptons, the kidnappers could either dig their own hole or have a hole dug.

The trainer had ducked through the fence but stopped to look at Tomlinson, his eyes making notations, taking his time as if evaluating something at an auction. “You from around here?”

“Not really. I was one of the summer people.”

“But you was here year-round.”

“When I was young.”

“You got a familiar look to you. They was all hippies, the summer kids back awhile. But there’s somethin’ about your face. You do any riding?”

“I was more the surfer type.”

“I could swear I’ve seen you… Tom? The name, too. Tom… Thomas…” The man was thinking about it. “You have an older brother?”

Tomlinson shifted his feet and pulled the sports coat around him. “Nope. An only child. Lived here a couple of years.”

Despite the fake name, it was odd to hear the most honest man I’d ever met lie. I knew that Tomlinson had a brother, an opium addict who lived in the Far East, if he was still alive.

“Rich, I suppose. Maybe you know the man owns this place. Nelson Myles? He was one of the rich kids back then. Now he’s richer. Like most of ’em, he heads for Florida before the first snow. Palm Beach, used to be, but now Sarasota.”

“I remember the Myles place. It was more like a castle, but closer to Montauk.”

“Only closer,” Gardiner said, “if you lived that direction,” which had some kind of meaning. I could read Tomlinson’s gentle nod.

The trainer stared for another long second, more interested in what he was seeing than what he was hearing. Finally, he said, “The boy I’m thinkin’ of had a similar name to Thomas but short hair. The same bony kind of Jesus face and eyes.”

Tomlinson laughed as he blew into his hands. “I was just telling Dr. Ford, I’m no saint.”

Gardiner didn’t smile. “This boy weren’t either. Fifteen, twenty years ago, a local girl disappeared. Found her blood and panties. The one who did it was a rich kid, too, big mansion on the dunes. His parents shipped him back to college before the cops could prove anything.”

Tomlinson crossed his arms for warmth and appeared to settle into himself as Sudderram said, “We’re going to check along the perimeter of the fence, then the road… if that’s okay with you, Mr. Gardiner.”

Gardiner didn’t look at me as he brushed past. He opened the blanket to cover his horse. “You’re the FBI, do whatever you damn well please. But get that vehicle with the Red Sox sticker off my drive, you don’t mind.”

On an overpass, a quarter mile from the trainer’s house, Sudderram showed us where police had found fresh tire tracks, a ball of duct tape, then a lug wrench at the bottom of a hill.

A stain on the wrench had tested positive for human blood. They were still waiting to hear from Oklahoma and Minnesota about the Indian kid’s blood type. The agency had also collected hair samples from Guttersen’s home to compare DNA with hair on the wrench, possibly on the tape.

A search team with dogs had been here earlier. Sudderram said he didn’t expect to find anything new but wanted us to have a look.

Tomlinson’s focus was still inward but in a different way, as I watched him go down the hill, moving sideways because it was steep. Psychic mode, I had seen it before.

Paranormal powers or not, he is a fastidious observer, with a knack for making intuitive leaps that are nonlinear, empathic, from illogical effect to logical cause. He can arrive at conclusions that for most require a methodical process of assembly, myself included.

There are times I don’t take him seriously, but neither do I discount what he says. More than once, I’ve experimented with his methods without telling him. Admit it and I would’ve been bombarded with theories on Universal Streaming, “remote viewing.” It is impossible to function when someone is yammering away with step-by-step instructions on how to let go, to empty your mind.

He had repeated the basics more than enough. Objects are electrically charged. Events create electromagnetic patterns similar to shadows. Observe with eyes closed. To perceive, cease projecting. Feel, don’t think.

Absurd in many ways, but I’m aware that absurd beliefs are sometimes anchored in undiscovered fact. A hundred years ago, doctors were convinced swamp air was poisonous, long before mosquitoes were proven to carry the malaria virus.

As Sudderram worked the edge of the road, walking toward Gardiner’s place, I stood on the hill near the tire tracks. I accepted the premise that the boy and his Cuban abductors had been here and tried it Tomlinson’s way.

Will Chaser would have been in the back of a truck, or a car trunk, or beneath a blanket in the backseat. It would have been dark. The car stopped for a reason, then hurried off for a reason: tire tracks and duct tape had been left on the road. A bloodied wrench nearby. The Cuban Program produced three bona fide monsters, Malvados, but they were also pros. They wouldn’t have made stupid mistakes.

I interrupted myself. Realized my brain was plodding along, projecting a scaffolding of probabilities instead of perceiving-typical.

Screw it.

Tomlinson was Tomlinson. I was me, a cognitive plodder like most people.

I angled down the hill just to see what there was to see, testing bits of scaffolding as I went, discarding most pieces, accepting a few.

A bloodstained wrench. Left by the Cubans, it meant Will Chaser was dead. If the kid had escaped, he wouldn’t have stuck around to do battle using a tire iron. Anyone in their right mind would have run and kept running.

Dead, yes. Logical.

What wasn’t logical was the Cubans leaving behind the murder weapon. I had witnessed their articulate abduction. More likely, some local guy had knocked part of a knuckle off while changing a tire and thrown the damn wrench in a rage.

I was near the fence. I knelt and picked up a baseball-sized rock, intending to see if I could lob it to the road. For some reason, I stopped. Stood there feeling the weight of the rock, its mineral density. Smooth, river-sculpted.

I studied the rock for no particular reason. Brown rock, a glacial oval. One point was stained black: earth tannin, I guessed. Or…

I was cleaning my glasses when Sudderram called, “Have you gentlemen seen enough? They spent three hours here.”

The search team, he meant.

I looked from the rock to the road as a bit of scaffolding returned to my mind for review. If left by the kidnappers, did a bloody wrench guarantee the Indian kid was dead? Will Chaser was different, I had been told. Handled anger differently: He’s so silent!

Maybe the teen had attacked one of the Cubans. The interrogator nicknamed Farfel had to be in his late fifties. Hump looked a lot younger, Harrington had said, a giant. Even so… The kid had a temper. Maybe he’d gotten so mad that he couldn’t stop himself. Possibly got some solid licks in before he ran.

I bounced the rock in my hand, thinking about it. Imagined the kid with the wrench in his hand, hammering at some hulking guy POWs had called Hump; the guy spinning, trying to get away, before the kid lunged toward the fence, possibly injured-the size difference made it likely-then ran for the barn because horses were familiar. The only home a kid like Will Chaser had ever known…

Wasting time, Ford. It’s a Tomlinson fantasy.

I realized I was playing a game. I was seeing what I wanted to believe. Astrologers and Tarot-card frauds made their living playing the same game.

I dropped the rock in the weeds. I returned to the car.