At Risk

by Kit Ehrman

  * * *

  I spent Thursday night sitting on a hay bale in a school pony's stall. The brown mare had colicked late in the afternoon, and when a dose of Banamine hadn't set her right, I'd called Greg.

  He had gone over her vitals, pumped mineral oil into her stomach, and instructed me to watch her overnight in case she got worse.

  So far, she hadn't, and by two in the morning, she was dozing in her stall with her head lowered, eyes half-closed, ears at half-mast. I stretched, then leaned against the stall's rough wooden planks and closed my eyes. The crickets and tree frogs had quit their singing sometime earlier, and the barn was deeply quiet.

  As dawn approached, I watched the sky lighten. By the time the rafters glowed red, touched by the nearly horizontal sunlight cutting through the windows, the mare was nosing around her stall, searching out stray wisps of hay. I got to work, and Ralston caught me in the middle of morning turnouts. Mrs. Hill hadn't come in yet, so we went into the office.

  "Did you arrest him?" I said.

  Ralston smiled, I assumed, at my naiveté and shook his head. He closed the door and crossed his arms over his chest. "He's on a fishing trip in West Virginia."

  "What?"

  "Relax. It was prearranged. I don't think he's running yet. I talked to his neighbor. The guy feeds Drake's cattle when he's away which, according to him, is most weekends of the year. Drake's got a girlfriend in West Virginia, and when he isn't up north, he's training."

  "Training?"

  "Yeah. He's with the Guard.

  "When's he due back?"

  "Monday. I'm on my way to see his C.O. now. What were you wearing when they put you in the trailer?"

  I thought back. "Jeans, T-shirt, a flannel shirt, boots--"

  Ralston held out his hand. "I mean, do you remember specifically which flannel shirt? And can I have it?"

  "Well, no. I was hypothermic, and my clothes were wet. The medics cut them off, and when I got them back, I threw them away."

  "Damn."

  "You found something?" I said.

  Ralston shook his head. "It'll be weeks before results come back from the lab, but I needed your clothing so they can try to match it with any fibers they do find." He rubbed his face. "What about a coat?"

  I nodded. "I still have that."

  Ralston lowered his hand and looked at me with interest.

  "And it's got a fleece collar."

  "Perfect," he said. "When can I have it?"

  "Now. I'll go get it."

  "I'll drive," he said.

  Ralston pulled out onto Rocky Ford. "I've been thinking about what I said yesterday, about your contaminating the scene. I think we still have a chance, even though we messed up."

  I noticed his use of "we" but didn't comment on it. "How?"

  "Let's say the techs find a couple of strands of hair they can prove came from you. The defense will say their presence has nothing to do with any alleged abduction back in February. Well, there's this forensics guy in Anchorage who performed an experiment that demonstrates the gradual deterioration of hair left in the environment. In that case, it was the opposite scenario he had to prove, but that doesn't matter."

  "How do you mean?"

  Ralston slowed the Ford as he approached the sharp curve at the entrance to the future housing development. "In that case, the defendant was accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend in her apartment. Forensics found hair and other fibers that linked him to the scene on the bed where the woman was strangled, in the bathroom, in the living room carpet. He used to live there, so the defense simply claimed that any of his hair found in the apartment was old."

  "Makes sense."

  "Yeah," Ralston said. "He swore up and down that he hadn't been there for at least three months, but ultimately, that claim was his downfall because, while they were waiting to go to the trial, this forensics guy vacuumed his house every day with one of the special vacuums they use at crime scenes--"

  "The murder scene?"

  "No. His house."

  "I bet his wife loved that," I said.

  "Yeah, I imagine so." Ralston yawned. "Anyway, he demonstrated how hair deteriorates over time but is still identifiable. So, from any given sample, he could show which hairs had been in the environment for an extended period of time and which hairs had been newly shed. He proved that some of the defendant's hairs found at the crime scene were fresh."

  Ralston took off his sunglasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look at it the other way around. We can prove that any older hairs of yours have been in the trailer long enough to substantiate the claim that you were in that trailer two months ago as well as the other day."

  "And if they find fibers from my coat, which I obviously didn't wear Tuesday, that'll help."

  Ralston nodded.

  I thought about the condition of the trailer and the fact that it had been forked out at least once since the theft. "What are the chances of forensics finding anything?"

  "Not as bad as you might think. The overall lack of cleanliness might actually work in our favor. It's when the bad guys get out a hose and vacuum that it gets tough."

  "What about James Peters?"

  "I'm hoping we'll get something there, too. It's a crap shoot. You just hope you get something good." Ralston looked at me a little longer than was prudent for the narrow back road we were traveling. "Kind of an unusual job for someone with your background, isn't it?" he said.

  I shrugged.

  "I'd've figured you for Notre Dame or Harvard or Yale." He paused for emphasis. "Or even Johns Hopkins."

  I shifted in my seat. "Done your homework, I see." When he didn't respond, I said, "I took a break from school and got a job here because I thought the idea of working with horses would be fun."

  What I hadn't counted on was the old man kicking me out. Out of his house and out of his life, each of us waiting for the other to change his mind.

  I sighed. "For a while, anyway."

  Ralston accelerated into a curve. "But you stayed."

  I adjusted the sun visor. "I kind of got caught up in it. I don't know. I like it a hell of a lot more than sitting in some lecture hall." I rubbed my eyes and said, "Do you think whoever stole the horses has someone inside Foxdale?"

  "Hard to tell. Why?"

  "Just wondered. One of our trainers got fired Friday. Whitcombe. The one I told you about before, who showed up with an expensive saddle right after the tack theft. He has a brand new Mustang convertible, too." And a baldheaded friend who resembled a eunuch, but I didn't tell him that.

  "He inherited a chunk of change a while back, from an aunt," Ralston said, "but some family members contested the will. The ruling went in his favor. He received a check sometime in February. More than enough to cover that new saddle and a Mustang."

  "Well then, that explains that. And maybe it explains his mood, too. He's always been . . . difficult, but in the last three or four months, he's been downright obnoxious."

  "Money or love. Does it every time," Ralston said. "Know anything about his love life?"

  "No," I said, "I do not."

  The detective grinned, and I realized he must have known about, or at least suspected, Whitcombe's sexual preference.

  "One of the other employees," I said, "Brian Denning. There's something up with him, isn't there?"

  "He's in the system."

  "What for?"

  "Residential burglary, theft from a motor vehicle, DUI. He's on probation for another eight months.

  "What's that entail?"

  "Besides keeping his nose clean, staying off the booze, and holding a job, he's gotta attend A.A. and submit to drug testing. And he can't miss a meeting with his PO."

  I pointed to a mailbox up ahead. "Turn in there."

  I retrieved my coat, and Ralston lowered it into a plastic trash bag and sealed it shut with tape. He then rested a pad on the hood of his car and filled out a label which he pressed down across the bag's seam like a seal. "What about a hat? Gloves?"


  I shook my head. I hadn't seen them since that night. Ralston handed me a receipt for the coat and dropped me off at Foxdale. I watched him back down the lane and hoped that something good would come from my screw-up.