Monday, November 10, 2003
Ashland, Oregon
For Detective Winston Radhauser, there was something melancholy about a full moon on autumn nights in southern Oregon. Unable to sleep, he slipped into a pair of old jeans and a western shirt, and, as usual, pulled three carrots from the mudroom refrigerator and stuck them in his back pocket. It was 1:30 a.m. On nights like this, he often exhausted himself with an after-midnight ride on his stallion, Ameer.
The moon hung like a silver wafer, casting its eerie, gray light over everything. It was the type of night when strange things happened and he understood the need to be careful. Horses, especially Arabians, often spooked during a full moon when even their shadows grew longer.
This melancholy feeling always found him during the second week of November when the last remnants of the big leaf maples hung, golden and precarious, on mostly barren limbs. A time when migrating raptors no longer littered the afternoon sky, and summer birdsong had transitioned into silence.
As he walked down the gravel driveway towards the barn, he sucked in a deep breath of crisp air and the delicate, yet fermented, fragrance the ground exuded. Dried leaves crunched beneath his cowboy boots. With a deep sigh, he pushed open the barn doors and inhaled the sweet scents of molasses, alfalfa, and the cedar shavings they used as bedding for their stalls. These were the smells of the life he’d made with Gracie and their four children.
His cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and hurried out of the barn, not wanting to wake Katelyn, the 19-year-old they’d hired to live with them and help Gracie with both the children and the horses.
Damn. It was Hazel from Dispatch. At 1:30 a.m., this could only be bad news. “Radhauser,” he answered. “What’s up?”
“I just got a call from the 911 operator,” she said. “A nurse at Ashland Hospital phoned it in. The son of an ICU patient is claiming someone murdered his father.”
He took a step back. Murder in the ICU. How likely was that? It sounded like an Agatha Christie mystery. “You mean someone pulled the plug on an already brain-dead patient?”
“It could be as simple or complicated as that. But I have no more details,” Hazel said. “Only that the son is causing quite the scene. I wanted to call Perkins or Sullivan to check things out first, but Chief Murphy was here when the call came in. He wants you on it.”
Oh great. Felix Murphy—one of the biggest pains in the ass in the world. The one time in over a decade the boss appears at the station in the middle of the night and it had to be this one. “I’m on my way.”
Radhauser returned to the barn, left a note on the chalkboard for Gracie, jerked the carrots from his back pocket and gave them to Ameer. “I’m sorry, boy. Maybe we’ll get that ride in later.” He stroked the stallion’s long neck, then closed the barn doors as quietly as he could, got into his Crown Vic, and headed towards Ashland Hospital.
As soon as he pulled into the parking lot, his hands began shaking. He slammed his palms against the steering wheel. Don’t go there.
But it was too late, and, once again, caught him off guard. Fourteen years had passed since the car accident killed his first wife and their thirteen-year-old son.
