Neil McMahon - Lone Creek

"I went home, alone," Laurie said. "Then later that night-someone set fire to Sinclair's stables."

"Jesus," I said. That was a variation I hadn't heard before. "Were there horses inside?"

"Whoever did it let them out first, thank God. It was still horrible." She breathed in deeply again. "There were people who thought it was me."

I listened, numb with astonishment, as she talked on. Her enraged lover, Teague, had gone to the police with the story of their fight. Laurie was known to be hot-tempered, and he suggested that she had set the fire to get back at him for cheating. It didn't help that she'd been drinking and that no one had seen her after she left the bar. But that was all there was, a vague cloud of suspicion. It was essentially unthinkable that a young gentlewoman in a wealthy Virginia enclave could do something like that, and family and friends were supportive.

So was Wesley Balcomb. He came to see her immediately after news of the fire broke and checked on her every few days, making it clear that his shoulder was available to lean on again-and even hinting that he had connections who could work behind the scenes if she ran into trouble.

That trouble wasn't long in coming. About two weeks later, the woman Teague had been dallying with, a barroom pickup from a nearby town, called Laurie. She'd worked up her nerve enough in the interim to threaten blackmail. She claimed that when Teague had gone running to fight the fire, she'd looked out a window and seen Laurie driving away. Her price for silence was a hundred thousand dollars.

Laurie was distraught. She had no way to prove her innocence. At the very least, her reputation would be tarnished forever. She had no one to turn to, either-her lover was an enemy now and she couldn't bear dragging her family into a nightmare of police, lawyers, and media.

She was putting together the money when Balcomb stopped by-a sympathetic, powerful figure who knew how to handle situations like this. She confided in him. He assured her that he would take care of it. She agreed, insisting that she didn't want anyone hurt, just scared into backing off.

Laurie never heard from the woman again. It seemed that she left the area abruptly.

Now Laurie both owed Balcomb and had reason to fear him. He traded on that to insinuate himself firmly into her life, and soon started talking marriage.

"I guess I'd known he must want something in return, but I never dreamed it would be that," she said. "I put him off as long as I could. But he's very good at playing on people's weaknesses, and I was a mess."

All had gone smoothly enough at first. Balcomb's charm burgeoned with his newfound stature, along with the family purse strings being cut loose. Their lavish lifestyle stood in for love. But now she started to learn that her husband was a lousy businessman. He ignored sound advice, made disastrous decisions, and refused to back down. The worse things got, the more stubborn and arrogant he became, until her angry family and trustees cut him off. He treated Laurie more and more coldly, almost to the point of menace.

Then the real ugliness started. The remains of a woman were discovered in a nearby river and identified as those of the would-be blackmailer. The police learned that just before her disappearance, she had done some barroom boasting about getting a large chunk of cash just for making a phone call.

The raw truth hit Laurie fast. Balcomb had set the whole thing up in order to gain control over her and her fortune. He'd seen his chance when he'd found her drinking that night, gotten someone to light the fire, bribed the woman to make the threat-and then removed it.

"I thought my heart was going to stop," Laurie said. Her voice had dropped to where I was having trouble hearing her over the engine's noise. "All I could think was, he'd promised he wouldn't hurt her but then he'd had her killed. Except really, it was me that had her killed."

She'd been alone in their house when she realized this. She'd thrown some things into a suitcase and left, to try to cope with these new demons. The only thing she was sure of was that she was done with him. At first she drove aimlessly, but then she turned west toward Kentucky and a place called Avondale Farm, a renowned thoroughbred center where she'd gone to riding camp as a girl-following an instinct to go where she'd once been safe and happy. She got a room at a nearby bed-and-breakfast and spent the next day wandering around Avondale, trying to lose herself in the beauty of the place and its graceful animals.

But she had thoughtlessly paid for her lodging and meals with credit cards.

Late that afternoon, while she was walking in a secluded area of the grounds, she heard a rustling behind her. Before she could turn, a stunning blow between her shoulder blades sent her stumbling through a gap in a hedge. A second blow knocked her flat on her face. The force felt electric rather than just blunt, maybe coming from a Taser. A knee pressed into her back, a forearm clamped around her throat, and she felt a sting in her arm. After a few seconds she couldn't move, although she stayed dimly conscious and she could still feel. She had probably been injected with something like Valium or Versed. A man carried her to the trunk of a car. He was wearing a golf shirt and pleated slacks, like he'd just come off the links. His face was as bland and ordinary as a concrete sidewalk.

John Doe.

He drove for a length of time she couldn't estimate, then opened the trunk again. The surroundings were silent and she could see treetops overhead. He pushed up her blouse, took out a small vial of clear liquid, and spilled a few drops onto her right breast. They burned like red-hot iron. He watched for a couple of minutes while she silently screamed and struggled feebly to move. Then he did the same to her other breast.

After that he set the vial in front of her face and left her alone for some time. She waited in terror, certain that he'd continue the torture and leave her dead in this forsaken spot.

But he closed the trunk's lid, drove back to where he'd found her, and left her lying hidden behind the hedge. Before much longer, she was able to move again. She managed to get to her inn. Next morning she went back to the husband who'd had this done to her and swore she'd never leave him again.

Laurie uncapped the brandy bottle and tipped it high, draining it. The glisten in her eyes spilled out onto her cheeks. I pulled off the road into one of the bleak fields and held her, wishing to Christ I'd known that story earlier today when Madbird and I had taken John Doe into the woods.

We drove on south to Great Falls, stopping at a big Safeway emporium to buy a gourmet picnic of fresh sourdough bread, pate, cheeses, and wine; and then at a liquor store where I replaced the bottle of Knob Creek bourbon I'd given Doug Wills. My pocket was fat with the roll of hundred-dollar bills that Madbird had given me, and I didn't see any reason to save for the future.

Then we went looking for a room. Great Falls was a fair-size place, with more than twice the population of Helena and plenty of motels. I didn't want to risk using my ID, but I was sure that a woman like Laurie, flashing fifty thousand dollars worth of jewelry, could float a story about losing her purse but having enough cash to pay for the night. The first place she tried, a new-looking Best Western on the Tenth Avenue strip, was happy to oblige. She registered under a phony name and let me in through a back entrance.

She ran a bath while I poured drinks, sauvignon blanc for her, whiskey on the rocks for me. When I took the wine to her, she was just stepping into the steaming tub. She knelt slowly, holding the sides, then sat back and slid forward up to her neck, with a little "oof." She accepted the glass with a radiant smile. I lingered for another moment. There was something very special about watching a lovely woman luxuriate in a bathtub. I hadn't done it in a long time. It was worth the wait.