The Payback Man (10 page)

Not tonight. She simply could not face any more stirring of her emotions. She slid them into her bag, leaned back in Sarah’s comfortable chair, clicked off the desk lamp and composed herself for sleep, hoping the telephone wouldn’t ring.

If not for the dogs, she would have been forced to read the files tonight.

Why had she ever promised Ernest Portree she would?

W
HEN SHE CHECKED THE DOGS
at dawn, she found Mac Thorn crouched beside the brindle female. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Prognosis?”

“Touch and go.” Mac stood. “If the antibiotics kill the infection, she’s got a chance. Want a cup of coffee?”

“No thanks. I’m off home and to bed for a few hours. Did you get any sleep?”

“Yeah, but I woke up early.”

Eleanor looked at the cages. Several of the less-injured animals were already standing in their cages and wagging their tails. She fought tears. Even after the horrors that had been inflicted on them by human beings, still they forgave. Still they offered affection.

“You know there’s never been a case of attack on a human being by a purebred Staffordshire bull terrier or an
American bull terrier from a reputable breeder?” Mac said. He worked his index finger through the bars of the nearest cage and was rewarded not with an angry bite, but with a gentle lick.

Eleanor nodded. It was almost more than she could bear.

“Before they got popular,” Mac continued, “reputable breeders culled any puppy that showed aggression toward human beings. Then, God help them, they got ‘discovered.’ Now trash and criminals breed crazy half-breeds to even crazier half-breeds, cage ’em, starve ’em, mistreat ’em, and then they’re surprised when the dogs act crazy.”

“You think these poor things can be rehabilitated?”

“Some of them.” He pulled himself up and leaned against the pipe fence that surrounded the cattle pen. “You said the prison wanted to start a rehabilitation program for dogs. Why not start with these?”

“Oh, no.” Eleanor shook her head vehemently. “I think the warden and the board were talking about abused dogs, or abandoned ones.”

“What do you call what’s been done to these if not abuse?”

“Can you see the publicity if we turned over a bunch of pit bulls trained to fight to a bunch of convicts? Get real, Mac.”

“Look at them, Eleanor. They have an infinite capacity to forgive the human race, which I, for one, neither understand nor agree with. It’ll be a while before any of them is healthy enough to release. I’d prefer not to save their lives only to have to euthanize them later. Let’s see how they progress.”

“Okay. But I don’t think sending them to the prison is the way to go.”

She left Mac sitting in the wood shavings in the cattle pen outside the cages and talking to the dogs as though they could understand him.

Maybe they could.

S
HE SLEPT UNTIL NEARLY NOON
, then put on fresh jeans.

Precious brought over lunch, and together she and Eleanor unpacked boxes, hung pictures, put books on bookshelves and china in cupboards all afternoon.

At four o’clock Precious shut the kitchen cabinet on the last of the glassware. “There. Looks like somebody lives here now.”

“I’m whipped and I know you are. I can’t thank you enough. What say I take you out and buy you a steak?”

“How about tomorrow night?” Precious slid her rump onto the bar stool in front of the breakfast bar and began to rub her calves. “I actually have a kind of date tonight. Just a movie with one of the COs. Want to come along?”

“On your date? Good grief, no! I’m going to soak in a hot tub, call in to check on the dogs and go to bed early. I’m working at the clinic all day tomorrow.”

“Woman, do you never take a whole day off?”

“I’d rather work. Keeps my mind occupied.”

Eleanor said goodbye to Precious, fixed a sandwich, called the clinic, watched the news on television and ignored the file folders on the dining-room table every time she walked past them.

Finally she could think of no more excuses. “Oh, heck,” she said. “Can’t be all that bad.”

She opened Big’s file expecting to find out he’d been caught drunk and disorderly or joyriding in somebody’s car.

He was serving three to five years for assault with the intention to create grievous bodily harm.

Big? Bodily harm? No way!

She read on. He’d gotten into a fight in the parking lot of a roadhouse outside of Mission, Tennessee, at two o’clock in the morning. He’d broken the other guy’s arm in four places. Not simple fractures. Compound with bone displacement. And dislocated the shoulder as well.

Eleanor sat back in her chair. Big must have been so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing. He’d been ar
rested at his mother’s house two days later “without incident.” That meant he hadn’t resisted. He was probably ashamed of himself at that point and horrified at the damage he’d done.

She’d get his side of the story. He would tell the truth as he knew it. He didn’t seem capable of lying.

She slid Steve’s file to the bottom once more and picked up the file on Sweet Daddy—Elroy Long.

There were no photos in any of the files, and from what Eleanor read in Sweet Daddy’s file, she was grateful. Elroy Long had taken a switchblade to one Tanitha Smith. She had spent six weeks in the hospital, had required more than a hundred stitches and had undergone five reconstructive surgeries to repair the damage to her face.

Eleanor shivered and went to get herself a cup of hot chocolate. She’d seen the flash of anger in Elroy’s eyes when she’d forced him to go back to work with bandaged hands. Not a man she’d ever want to be alone with. She wondered again whether she should dump him from her team.

It wasn’t that simple. He could make life hell for the remaining members if he were culled. And she might get somebody worse in his place.

For the moment she’d keep an eye on him and endure him. But if he ever raised a hand to Selma, to her or even to one of the other team members, she’d throw him off the team in a heartbeat. Perhaps she should tell him that privately.

She opened Robert Dalrymple’s file with trepidation. At this point she wouldn’t have been surprised to find he’d blown up a building or massacred an entire gang.

But Robert was strictly small-time. Raised in the country in North Mississippi, apparently he’d come to the big city and gotten mixed up with some lower-level gang wannabes, dealt a little dope and been sentenced under the mandatory drug-sentencing laws. He’d never been accused of violence. Raoul Torres had stapled a handwritten note on
the top of the file. “This guy is salvageable. He really loves his family, and they are there for him.”

The only file left was the one on Steve Chadwick.

He’d been sentenced to a minimum of six and a maximum of twelve years for voluntary manslaughter in the death of his wife, Chelsea Wadsworth Chadwick. According to the file, she had died of a single stab wound to the chest that penetrated her aorta and caused almost instant death. There was no struggle, no defense wounds.

Why only voluntary manslaughter? Why wasn’t Steve sitting on death row? No doubt the prosecution had settled for voluntary manslaughter only because they couldn’t make a case for first-degree murder. Why couldn’t they?

Her hands shook so hard she couldn’t close the folder. Ernest Portree hadn’t been lying. Steve was a convicted killer. And a single stab wound didn’t seem like an accident.

She couldn’t conceive of Steve’s using a knife to kill. He was no Sweet Daddy. He might hit someone his own size who threatened him or someone close to him. He wouldn’t hit a woman. Certainly not his wife.

Or could he? How much did she really know about him? How certain was she that her instincts were correct and not governed by her hormones?

Raoul Torres had warned her. Everybody had warned her. Even Steve himself had warned her that he was just like the others.

The files contained only facts, not the reality behind them. She could ask Big Little to tell her why he had broken a man’s arm.

Did she dare ask Steve Chadwick why he had killed his wife?

B
Y THE TIME
Eleanor got home from Creature Comfort at around four Sunday afternoon, the work she’d done that day was a blur. Frightening to think that she’d treated animals on autopilot, but obviously she had.

The brindle female was improving. Miraculously so far none of the other wounded dogs had died.

Rick had been annoyed when he’d discovered she’d offered the clients a free visit to the clinic. “Listen, we’re making money now, but we’re not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot,” he’d grumbled. “And who exactly is going to pick up the tab for those dogs in the holding pens? Not the jackasses who trained them, that’s for sure. Last I heard, they hadn’t even been caught.”

“Mac says the Humane Society is picking up the tab, but it’s probably going to take them a couple of months to pay. He says we ought to cut them a little slack. After all, they only brought us the worst cases. The others went straight to animal control.”

“And God knows where after that.” Rick knew his position was weakened, because everyone, Eleanor included, understood perfectly well that he would never have turned those dogs away, even if nobody ever paid a cent for their care.

Most were still too sick to be bathed. Tomorrow would tell the tale.

Eleanor wouldn’t be there. Monday was C day at the prison—cattle buying and transporting. Since Sarah Scott would be too busy at the clinic to be spared, Eleanor would
be buying the stock with only J. K. Sanders, the prison board member who had offered to help.

She prayed she wouldn’t make a total idiot of herself.

She was completely preoccupied when she climbed out of her truck in her driveway. It was twilight, and she’d left the porch light on in case she didn’t make it home before dark. As she walked up her porch stairs, a voice behind her called, “Hey, sweet cheeks, how’s about you and me share a little cold beer?”

Her immediate reaction was to check next door for Precious Simpson’s car. It wasn’t there. Nor were any lights showing in the two cottages past Mike Newman’s.

She slowed her breathing and wished she had that whip and chair. She pasted the coolest possible look on her face—her duchess face—and turned around. “I wish you’d stop jumping out at me, Mr. Newman.”

“Why, you gonna shoot me?” Snicker. He had taken a couple of paces toward her. The long-necked bottle in his hand was obviously not his first. “Would that be neighborly?”

“No, but it might happen nonetheless. I prefer that even neighbors call first before they drop by. Tonight I am extremely busy and very tired. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go in.” She didn’t want to turn her back on him. The stupid grin was still pasted on his face, but there was no smile in his eyes.

He glanced around. He obviously knew they were alone. Suddenly the mask dropped. “Listen, you arrogant bitch—”

“No, you listen. I’ve alerted Warden Portree and several other members of the administration about you. You come around here again uninvited, and I’ll have you up on harassment charges so fast your union rep won’t have time to get there before they fire you. Now please leave.”

She reached into her pocket and saw that he jumped, startled, as though she might pull out a gun. Unfortunately,
it was only her cell phone, but for the first time in her life she wished she was carrying a weapon.

She had no idea whether he would have carried things any further, because headlights turned into the lane in front of the cottages. Mike blinked, turned, shielded his eyes with his free hand.

“Go home,” she said coldly. “Don’t come back.”

“I’ll have plenty of time to see you, sweet cheeks, when I’m back guarding you and your fancy-assed cowherders.”

He swaggered off toward the big blue SUV that turned into a driveway two doors down from his cottage.

“Over my dead body,” Eleanor whispered. She was shaking, wet with perspiration, and frankly scared out of her wits. All she could think of was that Steve would have made short work of the man if he’d been there. So, for that matter, would Gil and Big. Things had come to a pretty pass when the inmates had to protect her from the people that were assigned to protect her from
them.

She had planned to finish unpacking, break down the boxes and take them out to the back of her truck so that she could put them in the Dumpster on her way to the barn in the morning. But now she didn’t want to leave the house. Lard Ass Newman was turning her into a prisoner in her own house.

“G
OD
A
’MIGHTY
, they’re the biggest dad-blasted cows I ever saw,” Slow Rise said.

The rest of Eleanor’s team stood outside the stock trailer in which J. K. Sanders’s friend had brought the cows. A dozen of the finest Beefmaster cows, four with calves at foot, three heavily pregnant, and five ready to be bred.

“Wait’ll you see Marcus Aurelius IV of Duntreith,” Eleanor said with a smile.

“Who’s that?” Gil asked.

“Our new bull. He’s still young and needs to fill out
some, but we already weighed him in at twenty-two hundred pounds.”

Gil whistled.

“You ain’t gettin’ me in the same county with no bull that size, no, sir you ain’t,” Sweet Daddy said, shaking his head back and forth.

Eleanor turned to him. “Unfortunately Duntreith farms has kindly offered us a bonus.”

“Why unfortunately?” Steve asked. He had climbed onto the side of the trailer to get a better view, and now hung one-handed to look down at Eleanor.

“It’s like an ad I once saw advertising one pony for fifty dollars and two ponies for twenty-five dollars,” Eleanor said.

Slow Rise chuckled. “I’ve had me a couple of ponies like that—damn near had to pay somebody to take ’em off you.”

“Well, since Mr. Duntreith kindly donated both the stock trailer and half of the cows, and gave us a real break on Marcus Aurelius, we couldn’t very well refuse to accept his gift.” She waited a beat. “We are going to be the proud recipients of three female buffalo and one longhorn steer.”

Slow Rise sneered at Sweet Daddy. “You think these things is big, wait’ll you see them buffalo. How the hell we gonna keep ’em in a pasture, Doc?”

“We spend the next two days reinforcing the fencing in the side paddock and pray,” Eleanor said. “I managed to persuade him we couldn’t possibly handle them until next week.”

J. K. Sanders swung out and stood with one immaculately booted foot on the bottom step of the truck. “Can’t look a gift horse, and all that stuff, Doc. Larry Duntreith ought to get here middle of the afternoon with Marcus. I won’t be bringing you my horses until tomorrow. You got stalls for ’em?”

“Three, right?” Eleanor asked.

“Yeah. And tack. The saddles are pretty old, but they’re still serviceable.”

“We’ll have everything ready tomorrow when you come, including space for the tack in my office.”

“Door got a lock on it?”

“A very good one.”

“Yeah,” Gil said dryly. “We installed it ourselves, didn’t we, boys? Cut the keys, too.”

J.K. looked at Gil narrowly and scowled. He apparently didn’t enjoy jokes at his expense.

“It’s secure,” Eleanor said, and shook her head at Gil. He raised his eyebrows in a “Who, me?” gesture.

“If y’all are through funning, how about we unload these ladies into the pasture?” J.K. said.

Big and Robert stood silent and wide-eyed. Eleanor noticed that Selma stayed as far back as she could.

“Okay, J.K., back ’er up into the pasture so we can open the gates. Chadwick, can you and Slow Rise handle unloading?” Eleanor asked.

He nodded and gave her a quirky smile as he dropped to the ground from his perch. He moved with the easy grace of a man who was comfortable in his body. Unfortunately, Eleanor wasn’t comfortable watching him, not with the connection that seemed to hold even when they weren’t speaking directly to each other, or even when they weren’t
looking
at each other.

She was constantly physically aware of his presence, knew the compass point at which he stood, and like a needle that pointed north, she found herself gravitating toward that point automatically.

She had to try consciously not to address every remark to him. As a matter of fact, she was trying not to say anything to him that wasn’t a direct order. Let Ernest Portree make something of
that.

The others hung over the newly mended pasture fence while Steve and Slow Rise opened the gates and prodded the cows and their calves down the ramp and into their
new home. There was much lowing, some bellowing, and a great deal of jostling before they were all on firm ground.

Slow Rise stood back with his hands on his hips. “My, my, but ain’t they pretty things. When we gonna start taking ’em to some stock shows, Doc? Winning a few prizes?”

“When we’re ready.” And when the prison establishment decided it could trust prisoners to take care of their cows at a county fair and not run off to drink and gamble—or try to escape. That might not be for a while, if ever.

Steve propped himself easily against the side of the trailer and watched the cows wander off to investigate their new home. The autumn sun stroked his brown hair with red-gold, and his face and arms had lost the prison pallor already after less than a week in the sun. He looked as comfortable among the animals as Slow Rise and J.K.

He’s a murderer.
Eleanor tried to repeat the words in her mind like a mantra, but they didn’t stick. Not when he smiled that gentle lopsided smile at her, not when his eyes crinkled at the corners that way.

“Man has a great butt,” Selma whispered.

Eleanor jumped. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Baloney. Woman would have to be dead not to appreciate those buns, not to mention the bulge on the front…”

Eleanor felt her face flame.

“Look all you like, Doc. Just don’t let him get close enough to touch—not your body, and definitely not your heart. You could get hurt real bad. I’d hate to see that happen to a nice lady like you.”

Eleanor felt her anger flare, then subside just as quickly. “You’re right, Selma.”

“You need to find somebody decent, honey, not some con.”

“I had somebody decent, Selma. I guess that’s all I’m entitled to this go-around. The last thing I want is to get mixed up in something that’d cause me more heartache.”

“Or headaches, and that man is a migraine waiting to happen, if you get my drift. He’s not like the others.”

“How so?”

“Most of them fight being in prison at first, then they kind of relax. Even if they swear they’re innocent, they act like ‘okay, you got me.’ Not Chadwick. He never gives any trouble, does what he’s told, but part of him isn’t really here.”

“Doc?”

“Yes, Big?” Eleanor turned from Selma, but had trouble tearing her mind away from Selma’s words.

“Can I go into the pasture with the little calves?”

“Of course. Just don’t leave the gate open.”

“No, ma’am.”

Robert followed him, sticking as close to Big as possible—using the huge man body as a shield, Eleanor thought—and after him trudged Gil. The only person who didn’t want to be enclosed with large bovines was Sweet Daddy. He was obviously terrified, but swaggering around as though he had more important things to do than play with calves.

The moment Big shut the gate, she asked Selma, “What does it mean? Steve’s attitude?”

“No idea. Makes him more dangerous, I guess. Too smart. Shoot, those calves are cute little devils, aren’t they?”

“Oh, heck, Selma, let’s go in, too,” Eleanor said. “Just don’t fall over that shotgun.”

Despite her mantra, Eleanor gravitated at once to where Steve still leaned against the side of the stock trailer with his arms folded across his chest.

“Watch Big,” he said. “I think he has a gift with animals.”

“I think so, too. There’s something about people like Big that animals tune in to.”

“I had a groom like that,” Steve said absently. “He’d had a bad fall as a child. The horses watched out for him
like a mother bear with a cub. But me—they’d just as soon run over me as not.”

Eleanor looked up at him. This was the first bit of personal information he’d given out. Horses? Plural? And a groom? She felt her hair rise at the back of her neck. Was that why he needed the two million dollars Ernest Portree said he’d killed for? So he could maintain a lifestyle that included horses?

“What? What did I say?”

Eleanor could have sworn she hadn’t moved or shown any change in her body language, but Steve apparently knew instantly that the emotional distance between them had increased. She shook her head. “Nothing. You must have done a considerable amount more riding than you intimated. Quarter horses? Jumpers?”

“Polo ponies. Please don’t mention it to the others.” He walked off with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his back straighter than she had seen it.

M
ARCUS
A
URELIUS
IV of Duntreith came out of his trailer like a sleek red tank—a diesel that smoked and tried to mow down everything in its path. The trailer had been unloaded on the far side of the barn in the bull paddock, far enough away from the cows that Marcus could neither see nor smell them in anything less than a southerly gale. He was bellowing when he arrived and continued to bellow as he trotted around his paddock.

At the first touch of the electric fence he jumped back, snorted twice, stuck his nose against it a second time, repeated the snorts, then regarded it with a baleful brown eye. In succession he tried another side of his enclosure to see if it too would shock him. When it did, he moved around to the next until he’d circumnavigated the enclosure. Apparently satisfied he wasn’t going anywhere he trotted off to the center, put his head down and began to graze.

“Good bull,” Eleanor said approvingly. “Very sensible. Thinks on his feet.”

“Probably smarter than most of
us,
” Slow Rise said. “When we gonna start collectin’ him?”

“Collectin’? Whaddaya mean?” Robert asked. He couldn’t take his eyes off the bull.

“Well, son, it’s like this. See, a bull don’t have to go to the ladies no more. That’s old-fashioned. His sperm gets
collected
coupla of times a week, and each time he makes about a hundred of what they call
straws.
One straw will take care of getting one cow pregnant. Freeze it, it’s good for years. Sell a good bull at ten bucks or more a straw.”