The Stars Shine Bright (51 page)

“You ask for a favor,” he said, “and then doubt my skills?”

“I don't doubt your skills,” I said. “I doubt that this guy left any trail.”

Chapter Fifty-Six

T
he vet's heap-on-wheels wasn't parked outside the medical clinic. And the main door was locked. I pressed the buzzer three times, then cupped my hands over the sidelight window. It was dark inside.

I walked down the side of the building, over an apron of rounded pea gravel. By the back door, two galvanized tin boxes waited, marked for laboratory pickups. Both boxes were locked. Farther down the back side, I saw two blue tarps. Under the first, I found an assortment of mechanical parts—pulley, chains, plastic rings. Replacement parts, it looked like, for the ceiling contraption that carried SunTzu to the exam table. I felt nauseous, remembering that morning. That strange, wet morning. It came back with vivid details. Ashley's sodden hair and loving words, murmured into the horse's ear. And Brent. I thought about his arrival at the track. The vet radioed him. Searching. He was late coming, and then he ignored the jockey lying broken on the ground. But something tingled on the back of my neck. Brent's priority—and only concern—was the horse. Not the human being.

I lifted the second tarp.

There were three oil drums, just like the one Junior used to hide his joint. Each was marked with spray paint—
Paper
,
Glass
,
Plastic
. The paper recycling didn't look that different from the mess blanketing the vet's van and office, and the drum marked
Glass
held brown and green bottles with their labels dutifully removed. But the third drum, labeled
Plastic
, was almost empty. A half-dozen empty Gatorade bottles sat on the bottom. The clear plastic milky with age.

I turned a slow circle. Junior was insisting Brent wanted the smoke detectors disposed of properly. In recycling bins. If some Gatorade bottles later covered a bunch of plastic disks, who would have noticed? Not the vet, who left himself Post-it notes to remember his own glasses. And blue tarp had covered the drums, protection from the rain. Sixty yards to my right, the barns sat perpendicular to the medical clinic. But only the backs were visible. I couldn't see any stables. Only one thing was certain. My first impression of Wertzer was dead-on. That guy was a bloodhound, an investigator who scoured a place for the smallest fire hazards. I imagined him finding this oil drum full of paper, sitting directly under a wooden building. Then discovering smoke detectors. He never would have imagined they were kept to make a dirty bomb.

But I might have missed it too. I couldn't understand why, after I renounced lying, God would send Felicia Kunkel. All her whining and complaining seemed like punishment.

But I was wrong.

There was no such thing as luck. And there were no coincidences. And all things worked together for good . . .

Including Felicia's sores.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

T
he vet's fire-hazard-on-wheels was abandoned between two hot walkers. The back hatch door was lifted like a sail, and the sweating horses were eyeing it like it might bite them.

I followed a Hansel-and-Gretel-like trail of torn bottle wrappers and plastic caps into the next barn. At the far end of the gallery, I saw Claire Manchester. She stood with her muscular arms crossed over her thin chest, and with her hollow cheekbones she reminded me of a pirate's flag. Skull and crossbones. The impression grew stronger when she opened her mouth.

“Back off,” she said. “He's not done with my horses.”

“I was looking for Brent.”

“So am I. I'm going to kill him.”

“Pardon?”

“I scratched two races today. All because the boy wonder never showed up. We're going through Lasix like water.”

The old vet lumbered from a stall. He held empty syringes in one liver-spotted hand. But he kept his other hand out, against the wall. Like Eleanor, he struggled to walk over the uneven sawdust floor. And when he saw me, his face sagged.

“You too?” he said.

“I can wait.”

“You've got no choice.” He pulled a piece of paper from the chest pocket of his plaid shirt, squinting at the scribbled words. “I've got four more barns ahead of you.”

“And you're not done here,” Claire said. “Olive Lamp needs Banamine for that colic.
If
it's even colic.”

He sighed. “You want a blood test?”

“Blood test!” Her hands flew out, landing on her bony hips. Elbows akimbo. “Enough with the blood tests. They're all negative, but I still have to pay the bill. No wonder that zit-faced assistant went into hiding.”

The vet nodded. He nodded like a man habituated to a nagging wife. She kept after him as he walked down the gallery and didn't stop until he had turned into another stall. Then she spun toward me, continuing the diatribe.

“I'm going broke.” She raised her voice, calling to the vet. “The vet bills alone are bankrupting me!”

When the vet came out of the stall, his walk picked up a sudden quick cadence. I followed him down the gallery, fleeing Claire's fury, but he didn't seem to notice me. He was patting his shirt, his pants. He climbed into his van, and the busted shocks dropped four inches. Then he started patting again, the same places he patted before. I climbed into the passenger seat, onto the newspapers. He looked over at me. He seemed distracted.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

“Can't find my glasses,” he said.

I pointed.

He reached up, patting his head. “Oh. Thanks.”

“No problem. Where's Brent?”

He turned the key and chunked the gearshift into reverse, turning around in his seat to look out the rear hatch, which was still up. As he passed the hot walker, the horses rattled their heads, shaking the leashes.

I tried again. “Is Brent around?”

“Two days left in the season and he calls in sick. I told him this would happen.”

“What kind of sick?”

“Stomach bug. That kid pushes himself too hard.” He shoved the gear into drive. “I told him to take a break. Did he listen? Now I've got to take his rounds.”

The wind rushed through our open windows and blew out the back. With one hand on the wheel, the vet tried to read the slip of paper.

“Have you ever looked into those recycling bins behind the medical clinic?”

“Just what I need.” He racked the gearshift and got out. The shocks sprung up.

“Pardon?”

“Just what I need.” He walked to the back. “Another woman telling me what I'm doing wrong. Okay, it's a mess. Who cares? Find somebody else to pick on. I'm an old man.”

He grabbed the rope handle and yanked. The drawer squeaked out.

“I'm not concerned about the mess,” I said. “I want to know why Brent stored the smoke detectors back there.”

He rummaged through the white boxes, tearing them open and throwing the litter over his shoulder. “What?”

“Smoke detectors. Taken out of the barns. After the renovation.”

“Yeah, scared the horses. So what?”

“Brent kept them.”

He hesitated. Then returned the bottles inside the boxes, marked Rx. Time was moving away from me, I could feel it. Forty-eight hours were gone. And the track only had forty-eight hours left in the season. I started with the missing Americum 241, because he was a doctor. Every doctor understood nuclear radiation. And I kept talking while he removed the small glass vials. But he didn't seem to be listening.

“Have you ever seen someone with radiation poisoning?” I asked. “It starts out looking like acne. Then it gets worse. The sores get bigger. They start weeping.”

He waved the scrap of paper as if swatting a fly. “I don't have time for this.”

He shoved the drawer closed and started for the next barn.

I called out to his back, “You were right about the Glock.”

He stopped.

“My name is Raleigh Harmon.”

He turned around.

“I came here to work undercover for the FBI. Eleanor thought there was some race fixing. But that wasn't it. And I'm no longer working for the FBI. I quit.”

He looked down at the notes in his hand, walked back to the van, and yanked open a different drawer. This time he lifted his chin to read through his bifocals. Despite every molecule inside me screaming for action, I waited. Some people couldn't be pushed. I stood listening to the breeze coming down the backstretch. It smelled of horse and hay and manure. I could hear the newspapers, rustling like sighs inside the van. And suddenly they told me what was wrong. This van. That office. He took comfort in a certain amount of messiness. The man made nests. He brooded and hunkered down and he didn't like change. For almost fifty years he'd managed to keep his peace among these competitive and restless people. And here I came, full of lies and uncomfortable questions, and he was no dummy. He recognized the Glock for what it was.

“I'm sure you've wondered about him,” I said. “Beyond his working too hard.”

He continued to read the notes. Or pretend to. “You lied to me.”

“I'm sorry. But now I'm telling you the truth. The season might end with a bang. Literally.”

“What's that supposed to mean”

“When Americum 241 gets airborne, it's deadly. And I think that contraption under the starting gate was just a trial run.”

He reached up suddenly, grabbing the back hatch. I jumped back. He slammed it down. “And you expect me to believe Brent had something to do with that?”

“Think about something. When SunTzu and the jockey went down, where was he? You kept yelling into the radio, telling him to get to the track. He showed up last.”

Two grooms walked from the barn. They glanced at the vet, taking us in. They were speaking to each other in Spanish, walking to the hot walkers. The vet watched them unsnap the bridles.

“Did you hire Brent?”

“The girl came to me. She said her friend needed a job.”

“What girl?” But I felt a knot in my stomach.

“Ashley. She told me he was a good worker. And cheap.” He turned to me, his old Celtic face sagging again. “You know what it's like, trying to find somebody who'll take orders from me?”

“Did he always have that acne?”

The vet looked down at his hands. He stared at the vials, as if he'd already forgotten what they were for. “No,” he said. “He looked bad. I told him to take some days off. Go get some sleep.”

“Where does he live?”

“Here.”

“Where?”

“In the clinic.”

“He's living in the clinic?”

“I did the same thing, saving money for vet school. And he was helping me out. He took my night calls.”

I remember my visit to the vet's office. Brent came in, looking sickly and tired. But if he lived there . . .

“Doc Madison?”
A voice crackled from inside the van.
“Doc? You there?”

The vet opened the passenger side door and dug through the trash on the floor until he found the radio.

“I'm here,” he said. “Who's this?”

“Petey Smith, Barn Two. We're waiting for Brent to come—”

“You ever hear the phrase ‘hold your horses'? I'm moving as fast as I can.”

Petey Smith started to complain. The vet dropped the radio into the front pocket of his pants. Petey was still talking when he slammed the door and headed for the barn.

I felt like a puppy running after him. “Is Brent in the clinic now?”

“No. His brother picked him up.”

“Where's his brother live?”

“How should I know?” He turned left, moving under the eaves. “Somewhere over the pass.”

“Yakima?”

The vet stopped.

“Or maybe Selah,” I said.

The radio crackled again.

“Doc, hey, Doc!”

The vet pulled the radio from his pocket slowly, but he twisted the volume all the way down.

As if he couldn't bear to hear any more.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

T
he safest place to make a phone call seemed to be the Quarterchute. Even the old guys had shuffled for home. Two janitors remained, one wiping down the tables while the other swabbed the floor with a mop, moving in rhythm to some Tex-Mex music that lilted from a boom box on the counter.

I walked over to the betting window in the far back and hit speed dial. Jack answered on the first ring.

“Brent Roth,” I said. “He's building a dirty bomb.”

“Harmon, I still have a job. And I want to keep it.”

“The guy called in sick. His
brother
came and got him. Guess where the brother lives? Selah. That's Handler's ranch.”