'Hello? Gracie?'
Robert Maclean paused in the passageway by the back door, holding two large bags of groceries. There was no reply and he went through into the kitchen and dumped the bags on the table.
He always liked to get the weekend food in before Annie arrived. If he didn't, they would have to go to the supermarket together and would end up spending an hour there while Annie pondered the fine distinctions between various brands. It never failed to astound him how someone who every moment of her working life made snap decisions, committing thousands, even millions of dollars, could at weekends spend ten minutes wondering which kind of pesto sauce to buy. It also cost a lot more than if he shopped alone, because Annie usually failed to reach any final decision over which brand was best and they'd end up buying all three.
The downside of doing it alone was of course the inevitable criticism he would face for buying the wrong things. But in the lawyerly manner which he applied to all areas of his life, Robert had weighed both sides of this issue and shopping without his wife emerged the clear winner.
Grace's note lay by the phone, where she had left it. Robert looked at his watch. It was only a little after ten and he could understand the two girls wanting to spend longer out on a morning like this. He pushed the playback button on the answering machine, took off his parka and started to put away the groceries. There were two messages. The first, from Annie, made him smile. She must have called right after he'd left for the supermarket. Time he was up, indeed. The second was from Mrs Dyer up at the stables. All she said was would they please call her. But something in her voice made Robert go cold.
The helicopter hung there for a while above the river, taking in the scene, then dipped its nose and lifted up over the woods, filling the valley with the deep, reverberating thud of its blades. The pilot looked down to one side as he circled again. There were ambulances, police cars and rescue squad vehicles down there, red lights flashing, all parked in fan formation in the field beside the massive jackknifed truck. They had marked out where they wanted the helicopter to land and a cop was making big, unnecessary arm signals.
It had taken just ten minutes for them to fly down from Albany and the paramedics had worked all the way, going through routine checks of the equipment. Now they were ready and watched silently over the pilot's shoulder as he circled and made his approach. The sun flashed briefly on the river as the helicopter followed its own shadow in over the police roadblock and over a red four-wheel-drive car also making its way toward the scene of the wreck.
Through the window of the police car, Wayne Tanner watched the helicopter hover above the landing spot and gently lower itself, whipping up a blizzard around the head of the cop who was directing it in.
Wayne was in the front passenger seat with a blanket over his shoulders, holding a cup of something hot he hadn't yet tasted. He could make no more sense of all the activity going on outside than he could of the harsh, intermittent babble of the police radio beside him. His shoulder ached and there was a small cut on his hand that the ambulance woman had insisted on bandaging extravagantly. It hadn't needed it. It was as if she didn't want him, surrounded by such carnage, to feel left out.
Wayne could see Koopman, the young deputy sheriff whose car he was sitting in, over by the truck talking to the rescue-squad people. Nearby, leaning on the hood of a rusted pale blue pickup and listening in, was the little hunter guy in the fur hat who had raised the alarm. He'd been up in the woods, heard the crash and gone straight down to the mill where they called the sheriff's office. When Koopman arrived, Wayne was sitting in the snow out in the field. The deputy was just a kid and had clearly never seen a wreck this bad before, but he'd handled things well and even looked disappointed when Wayne told him he'd already put out a call on channel nine of his CB. That was the channel monitored by the state police and minutes later they started to arrive. Now the place was swarming with them and Koopman looked a little put out that it wasn't his show anymore.
On the snow beneath the truck, Wayne could see the reflected glare of the oxyacetylene blowtorches that the rescue-squad guys were using to cut through the tangled wreck of the trailer and the turbines. He looked away, fighting the memory of those long minutes after the jackknife finished.
He hadn't heard it right away. Garth Brooks was singing on regardless on the tape machine and Wayne had been so stunned at his own survival that he was unsure if it was he or his ghost climbing down from the cab. There were blue jays squawking in the trees and at first he thought this other noise came from them too. But it was too desperate, too insistent, a kind of sustained, tortured shrieking and Wayne realized it was the horse dying in the closed jackknife and he'd clamped his hands to his ears and run away into the field.
They'd already told him one of the girls was still alive and he could see the paramedics at work around her stretcher, getting her ready for the helicopter. One of them was pressing a mask over her face and another had his arms up high, holding two plastic bags of fluid that were connected by tubes to her arms. The body of the other girl had already been flown out.
A red four-wheeler had just pulled up and Wayne watched a big bearded man get out and take a black bag out of the back. He slung it over a shoulder and made his way toward Koopman who turned to greet him. They talked for a few minutes then Koopman led him out of sight behind the truck where the blowtorchers were at work. When they reappeared, the bearded guy looked grim. They went over to talk to the little hunter guy who listened, nodded and got what looked like a rifle bag out of the cab of his pickup. Now all three of them were heading over toward Wayne. Koopman opened the car door.
'You okay?'
'Yeah, I'm okay.'
Koopman nodded toward the bearded guy.
'Mr Logan here is a veterinarian. We need to find that other horse.'
Now that the door was open Wayne could hear the roar of the blowtorches. It made him feel sick.
'Any idea which way it went?'
'No sir. Sure don't think he could've gotten far.'
'Okay.' Koopman put a hand on Wayne's shoulder. 'We'll be getting you out of here soon, okay?'
Wayne nodded. Koopman shut the door. They stood there talking outside the car but Wayne couldn't hear what they said. Beyond them, the helicopter was lifting off, taking the girl away. Someone's hat blew off in the blizzard. But Wayne saw none of this. All he saw was the bloodfoam mouth of the horse and its eyes staring at him over a jagged edge of windshield as they would stare at him in his dreams for a long time to come.
'We've got him, haven't we?'
Annie was standing by her desk, looking over Don Farlow's shoulder as he sat reading the contract. He didn't answer, just lifted a sandy eyebrow, finishing the page.
'We have,' Annie said. 'I know we have.'
Farlow put the contract down on his lap.
'Yes, I think we have.'
'Ha!' Annie raised a fist and walked across the office to pour herself another cup of coffee.
They had been there half an hour. She'd caught a cab down to Forty-third and Seventh, got stuck in the traffic and walked the last two blocks. New York drivers were coping with the snow in the way they knew best, blaring their horns and yelling at, each other. Farlow was already there in her office! and had the coffee on. She liked the way he made himself at home.