Just after 2:30 that rainy morning, Doyle was awakened from one of his rare dreamless sleeps by the sound of the phone near his bed. As he reached for the receiver in the dark, the thought flashed to mind that never in his life had he ever answered a phone call in this section of the night that signaled good news.
“Jack,” he heard Caroline’s voice saying, speaking low so as not to awaken her children, “Jack, I’m terribly sorry to call you at his hour. But,” Doyle heard her whisper urgently, “Aldous has gone out, and not come back, Jack. I think he went on one of his late-night inspection tours. I was reading in bed, and I barely heard the front door open and close. He said nothing before he left.”
“How long ago?”
“More than a half-hour. He never takes that long usually. And I just rang his cell phone but there’s no answer. Jack, could I ask you to go and take a look for him?”
“No problem,” said Doyle. “I’m sure nothing’s wrong,” he added, wishing that he felt a bit more confident of what he’d told her, “but I’ll go right out. We’ll be back soon,” he assured Caroline before hanging up. He slipped on his jeans and boots, reached for yesterday’s T-shirt, and was out the door in his poncho a minute later. Before he started down the cottage steps, however, he turned back, went inside and grabbed the heavy flashlight he kept in a pantry cupboard. It was the only weapon-like object he owned. He hoped he’d need it only for its illuminating powers.
Doyle trotted through the rain to the stallion barn and entered through its open door. The horses stirred and shifted noisily in the darkness. Doyle felt for a light switch to the right of the door. Unable to locate it, he switched on the flashlight, then the lights. Moving forward slowly he approached the body centered on the barn floor with horrified disbelief.
The right side of Bolger’s head was so swollen and disfigured Jack briefly thought it was another man, one he did not know. But then he recognized the New Zealander’s blood-spattered windbreaker, the one with the Willowdale Farm logo, and his eyes fastened on the distinctive white-blond hair turned dark by the pool of cranial blood in which it lay.
But he could see Bolger’s chest heaving. He was alive. Then Doyle’s gaze fell on Bolger’s legs. Both knee caps were grotesquely inverted. A shard of bone projected through the torn khaki pants over the left knee. Doyle involuntarily retched.
The physical violence Doyle had known in his life was confined to the boxing ring, both during his fighting days and in the time since, when he still followed the only sport that had ever really appealed to him. He had seen men drubbed, noses smashed, eyes swollen shut. Doyle was familiar with such evidence of pain inflicted and suffered. But he’d never witnessed the results of such explosive brutality as he was looking at here, in the Willowdale stallion barn, as he looked down at Aldous Bolger.
After flashing the light through the barn, Doyle sensed no danger. He knew he was alone with the horses, that whoever had done this was gone.
Doyle shook his head as if to clear it. He rubbed a hand over his eyes that were now filled with tears of rage and sorrow at the horrible sight in front of him. He heard the shuffling feet of the nearby horses, huge, confined beasts terrified by what had unfolded before them.
Then he turned and ran to summon help, dreading the impending moment when he would have to knock on Caroline’s door.