The Stars Shine Bright

by Sibella Giorello

  “You saw them collecting it?”

  “Most of it.” I didn’t tell him about SunTzu’s fall or his subsequent death, because that information could influence his investigation. He could always read something in the newspaper, but then he would be making his own connections. I described the evidence collection because Mr. Yuck’s tearing it out of the soil would be pertinent to his forensics. While I spoke, I tapped my index finger on the bag, feeling the funnel cones. Each one was about 3 millimeters wide. When I picked up a second bag, the tape completely covered the tubing, including the funnel cones.

  “Did they happen to mark where these sections were on the track?”

  Tom picked up a clipboard and lifted the paperwork, scanning it. “Not that I can see. No sketches, no measurements.”

  “I’d like you to check the open cones for any chemical residues. Or remnants of an object. Friction marks, striations.”

  “Projectile?”

  “Not sure. You’ll want to see the video, showing the first race. Did they send that?”

  “No.”

  I didn’t blame the Auburn cops. Few local police departments were trained to collect forensic evidence. Again, a funding issue. Again, justice and politics.

  But Tom walked to the phone on the wall and tapped four numbers, asking for a sergeant by name and for a video copy of the first race. He also recommended the Auburn police return to the track with a metal detector. “Run it over the soil where you guys collected this tube.” He cupped his hand over the receiver. “Anything else?”

  “Tell them to hurry,” I said. “The grooming equipment goes back out there tomorrow at 4:00 a.m. The horses start running at five.”

  As he gave the instructions, I picked up the bag again. To my naked eye, the tape’s cotton threading reminded me of what the grooms wound over the horses’ forelegs. I’d seen Juan wrap it over his clay poultices too. And before the races, to protect the delicate leg bones from the metal horseshoes. The tape usually matched a barn’s color. But I couldn’t recall seeing any barn with brown silks.

  Tom hung up.

  I said, “Tell me what you think about the tape.”

  He glanced at his watch. “I was hoping to get the threads-per-inch count done tonight. Tomorrow I’ll start testing the adhesion. Unfortunately, this stuff doesn’t look like a specialty tape.”

  Meaning: the forensics trail had many paths. A tape’s thread count and the composition of its threads—cotton, polyester, nylon, and blends of everything, in varying degrees—helped track down the manufacturer. Even more helpful was a microanalysis of the adhesion’s chemical compounds, further narrowing down the manufacturer. But this tape looked almost generic, which meant a number of companies could have made it and distributed it to every hardware store in America. It would be hard to prove where it came from unless we hit the holy grail and found the exact roll used. Matching the end tears was almost as good as DNA. And any jury could grasp such an elementary concept.

  But when I lifted another bag, squinting, I saw the tape’s ends were cut clean. Sliced, not torn.

  “Rats,” I said. “How about looking for fingerprints in the adhesion? Tests for saliva residue?”

  “I wrote it down. But I don’t see the tape as the big hurdle.” He pulled on fresh gloves and reached over the large bags for a smaller one. Three objects were inside, each shaped like a masonry brick. They were brown, covered with the same tape, and when Tom turned the bag over, to show me a section where the tape had been pulled away, I saw a band of copper. And the word Duracell.

  “Whoever built this is no idiot,” he said. “It’s nine-volt batteries, bundled together, and all different brands. The collection report says these were attached to the tubing. It’s some kind of power source.” He handed me the bag. “I did a quick calculation by square inch and area. Thirty-four batteries in each brick. About a hundred total.”

  I turned the bag. The dried soil rolled across the plastic, sounding like some kind of mocking hiss. “Nine-volt batteries won’t narrow things down.”

  “Right. Panasonic, Energizer, Duracell.”

  Forensically speaking, lithium nine-volt batteries were almost untraceable. They were sold in almost every store, from gas stations to groceries to warehouses like Sam’s Club. I felt my hope diminishing, staring at the careful architecture. The batteries were stacked as straight as Legos, each side aligned perfectly before being taped together. Somebody created one giant battery, and it was a patient experiment for evil purposes.

  “They’re almost compulsively constructed,” I said. “A perfectionist?”

  Tom was writing something on the clipboard, checking his watch again. “What’s your time frame for this?”

  I tried not to sigh, setting down the bag. “Can you expedite this?”

  “Reason?”

  “The thoroughbred racing season ends in six days.”

  “I can try.” He gave a conciliatory smile. “I already put in the DNA request. I’ll start arguing with them first thing in the morning.”

  I nodded, but felt the whole case galloping away. The forensics could stretch out for months. And OPR wouldn’t wait. Not for something that could help me explain myself.

  Tom was eyeing me. “You look like you could use some cheering up. Want to come to the game? With the way the Mariners are playing, there should be plenty of tickets available. A summer night at Safeco Field? There’s nothing else like it.”

  “Thanks.” I tried to smile. “I’ve already got plans.”

  “Hot date, huh?”

  Now the sigh came, and it was heavy.

  “No,” I said, “it’s more like a long, cold shower.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The sinking sun pushed copper swords through gunmetal clouds, and the Ghost glowed down the highway. To my right, across Puget Sound, a mountain range that earned its name, Olympic, stood like a geologic chorus, the bright glaciers singing with the light’s close of day. I was born a Virginian and I loved that state, but the Old Dominion’s natural charms were the kind that worked into the heart over time, over many seasons. Washington’s landscape, like Alaska’s, was blunt-force gorgeousness. The views stole human breath. And made me wonder if I’d ever look at the Blue Ridge Mountains the same way again.

  But when I pulled into Fort Steilacoom State Park, I felt almost forlorn. It was just past 7:00 p.m., and the softball fields were empty and puddled. The park’s rust-painted exhibition barns waited for something to happen. At a split-rail fence, I turned down a gravel service road. It was lined with green hedges, and a graveyard was laid out to my right. Up ahead a muscular man was leaning on the fence rail, stretching his quad muscles. He wore black nylon running shorts and a black singlet. The Jeep parked behind him was also black, but I decided the picture still wasn’t complete. Climbing out of the car, I placed an imaginary black hat on my nemesis, Special Agent Jack Stephanson.

  “You had me worried for a minute,” he said. “Thought you wouldn’t show up.”

  “I can always change my mind.”

  “And the shrink can always notify OPR. And OPR can always recommend immediate dismissal.”

  I stepped over the fence’s low rails, moving into the cemetery. The ground was spongy, more moss than grass.

  “Harmon,” he said, following me. “Just take it one appointment at a time.”

  I kneeled down and picked a pinecone off a flat headstone. Eroded and gray, the eight-inch rectangle of cheap granite was sinking into the moss. The FBI approved this cemetery for our face-to-face debriefs because it appeared safe. We were twenty-five miles from the track, and a high hedge shielded us from the road. At six-three, Jack could stretch, peering over the hedge, but the sad fact was nobody ever came to visit these graves. Directly across the road was the largest psychiatric hospital west of the Mississippi. Western State opened in 1871 and started burying dead patients in this plot of land soon after. The graves were marked with numbers. No names. There were hundreds of them. My mother
was now a patient in that hospital. And the FBI, in its brutal benevolence, had decided the most “convenient” way for me to get my shrink appointments while undercover was for me to see the same psychiatrist who was treating my mother.

  “He gives me the creeps,” I said.

  “He’s a head shrinker,” Jack said. “I’d worry if you liked him.”

  “I know he’s sending his notes to OPR.”

  “Probably.” Jack was silent for a long moment. “Don’t worry about the undercover repercussions. If she changes her mind, I’ll figure out a way to deal with it.”

  It would have been easy to act like I didn’t know what he meant. But pretense only delayed the inevitable. “Thanks. But she’s still refusing.”

  My mother, according to the shrink’s clinical diagnosis, was a paranoid schizophrenic. Growing up, I just thought she was eccentric. Strange and wonderful, and the South was full of people like that. But the shrink was telling me my family was “in denial” and had too many “defense mechanisms.” In our minds, all we knew was love and God. Yes, she sometimes got ideas about people following her, or somebody trying to poison our water or steal our mail. Bad days, certainly. But they were always bookended by great days. And David Harmon. My dad devoted himself to making his wife feel loved and secure. When they married, I was five years old; he adopted me and my sister, Helen. He was the only dad I ever knew, and he was the greatest father on earth. But the plaster started to crack when he was murdered. My mother and I limped along under the falling debris until this summer, until the cruise from hell. Somebody told her my secret; somebody thought she should know that her daughter worked for the FBI. I had kept that from her, trying to protect her fragile mind. But when she learned that I worked for the people who wire-tapped and monitored people and kept files on suspicious citizens—and that I’d lied to her about it—her mind couldn’t handle it. In the ship’s chapel, praying to a God who seemed very far away, my mother suffered a full psychotic break. She refused to see me now.

  I stood and walked across the mossy grass, snapping off the pinecone’s brown claws. The graves were in no particular order. No. 1178 was next to No. 1209, which was next to No. 554.

  Jack said, “Give me the rundown. For the 302.”

  Facts only. I described the death of SunTzu and how Mr. Yuck discovered the black tubing. I told him about the battery-operated contraption that was now in the lab, and as I spoke, I tried to ignore a persistent little thought camping in the back of my mind. Given this same situation, DeMott would’ve pressed me to talk about my feelings concerning my mom. He’d ask too many questions and then get upset when I had no answers. And if I changed the subject, he’d accuse me of shutting him out. Which meant I could feel guilty on top of already feeling sad.

  “Wait a minute,” Jack said. “You’re saying some kind of poisoned dart shot out of that tube? And it hit the horse?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to get into the lab. Whoever set up that tubing mechanism is smart. Really smart. The problem is, between the DNA backlog and the generic nature of the physical evidence, the evil genius might get away with it.”

  On the other side of the hedge, a car splashed through a puddle. I kneeled down again, gazing at No. 329. Jack stretched and looked over the top of the bushes.

  “Stay down,” he said. “Can’t tell.”

  Weather and time had eroded the headstone. A lacework of pale green lichen was growing into the engraved numbers, as if trying to obliterate the person again. No name in life, no number in death. I scratched at the fungus, ripping it off the granite. After several moments, I realized Jack was still standing there. I looked up, but his gaze had shifted. He was staring across the cemetery’s hummocky field toward some spindly pines that looked equally abandoned. I knew this expression on his face. When his eyes turned aquamarine. I waited, feeling something like a moth flutter inside my chest. I tried to kill it.

  “It doesn’t fit,” he said.

  “What doesn’t?”

  “This gizmo you’re talking about. Fixing races is one thing. But you’re describing murder. Premeditated murder. Maybe even chemical warfare.”

  “It fits,” I said. “Somebody lit a fire to kill a horse.”

  He turned, staring at me now. “Maybe you were just collateral damage?”

  “That’s what I told you, remember? In the hospital?”

  But he wasn’t listening. His eyes were still focused on some inward idea. “We should ask Lutini to do a profile.”

  Lucia Lutini. I stared at the gravestone. Lutini was the person I wanted to be my case agent. Let it go.

  “One more detail,” I said. “Sal Gagliardo’s horse was slightly affected by the bad start. Cuppa Joe. He balked before he ran. He was the favorite. But only placed.”

  “Fits the pattern.”

  “Giddyup.”

  “And his horse wasn’t seriously injured?”

  “No. Neither was the second horse. Just Eleanor’s.”

  “Gagliardo’s horse being part of this is a great cover,” Jack said. “Makes it look like he didn’t have motive.”

  “Right. And the guy who runs the start bet on that horse. What if he looked the other way while it was being set up?” I thought back to Harrold’s nervousness and the way Sal Gag stared at him. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not: Harrold was high-strung, and Sal Gagliardo didn’t look at anyone with much warmth.

  “Time?” Jack asked.

  I checked my watch. Freud in ten minutes. I stood, feeling dizzy walking back to the Ghost. Jack stepped over the fence ahead of me and opened the car door.

  “This thing suits you,” he said. “You realize that?”

  I sat down, and he closed the door. But the window was open and the air suddenly smelled of pine and earth. I gazed at the ground, searching for conifers. But I knew that wasn’t it. Jack. He had a deep green scent. Woodsy and warm. Sun on evergreens.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I was just thinking about how much money I would’ve won if the horse had come through.”

  “Harmon, it’s Monopoly money.”

  I turned the key. The Ghost gave an impressive growl. But Jack didn’t step back. Instead he leaned down into the window. “Do me a favor?” he said.

  I felt a cynical smile tugging at my mouth. I should’ve known. “Do you a favor because you delivered some food I never asked for?”

  “No,” he said calmly. “I told you, Harmon. You don’t owe me.”

  The heat flushed up my throat, burning into my cheeks. My comment sounded rude, out of line. “Okay, then what?”

  “Don’t hand him any ammo.”

  “Who?”

  “The shrink,” he said. “Don’t let that guy have one bit of your true self. Understand?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Every time I walked into Western State Hospital I felt another layer of duality falling over my life. Outside, summer burst with color and vitality. But this place was darker than the deepest cave. The gothic architecture divided sunshine into tiny rays, a light too fractured to penetrate the diamond-shaped window panes and too cold to warm the pervasive atmosphere of trouble. Making my way down the second-floor hallway toward an arched doorway, I could hear laughter on the floor above. But it had no humor. Cheerless and remote, it sounded like mirth raised like a weapon, trying to deflect a wicked opponent.

  I looked at my watch. Three seconds before 8:00 p.m. I knocked on his door.

  Dr. Nathan Norbert might have seemed at home at the track, standing among the jockeys. He was about two inches over five feet, wearing creased blue jeans and a monogrammed button-down shirt, tucked in. We’d already had two visits during my first weekend at the track, and I’d never seen him without a colorful tie that looked like some conversation starter. Or Rorschach test. Today a bunch of pandas were cavorting on the blue silk—dancing? fighting? copulating? His brown hair sprouted from a tightly lined forehead, and rimless glasses almost concealed the expression in his
eyes. His clipped beard tried to disguise a lantern jaw. And failed.

  “Ah, Raleigh,” he said. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  If only, I thought, walking into his office. If only you were the type who wondered. But Dr. Nathan Norbert was a clinical critic. He diagnosed, contained, cataloged. When I had told him how much my parents loved each other, he gave me a new word for it: “codependent.”

  I sat on the long brown couch that reminded me of a coffin while Freud lowered himself to his big chair that was placed to the side. He positioned the notepad on his knee and wrote something across the top of the page. Maybe noting that I showed up. Or that there was a scowl on my face. But I couldn’t see the words because Freud kept his leg elevated, just so, tipping the pad away from my prying eyes.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  My palms were sweating. And I couldn’t wipe them off because this was enemy territory. One vulnerable gesture, the predator would pounce.

  “I’m fine.” I smiled. “You?”

  “You missed our last appointment.”

  “Short visit to the hospital.”

  He stroked the beard. For Freud, the gesture was the equivalent of yelling, What?

  He said, “You didn’t call to tell me.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  He adjusted his position. The chair was one of those back-saving numbers, with heavily padded leather. The chair for people who sat around all day sticking their fingers in other people’s business.

  He said, “I did receive a message from your case agent. Something about an injury.”

  “Just a few bruised ribs.”

  He waited.

  “Sort of painful.”

  Waiting, waiting.

  “I’m a little sore,” I added, hoping to score points for vulnerability. “And I would rather be resting, but I didn’t want to miss another visit.”

  He wrote something on the pad and I slid my palms over my jeans, pretending to adjust the sleeves of my jean jacket. When he turned his head, watching my movement, I smiled and glanced around his office, pretending to admire the place. The old wooden moldings were almost black with age, and the bookshelves swallowed most of the wall space. One window faced Steilacoom Boulevard. The diamond-paned glass was embedded with chicken wire. Iron bars over that, soldered together. No jumping allowed.