by Sasscer Hill
I liked this man, but did I need to get involved? Especially now? Besides, I had questions about him. Like how did he make a living rescuing animals? Did he have some ulterior motive? And when had I become so cynical?
A gust of wind swept rain into my face. I wheeled and hurried back inside.
When I walked into the kitchen, cookie crumbs littered the table and Patrick and Jilly were reading their fortunes. They set the tiny papers down without comment.
“Maybe things can get back to normal now,” Patrick said. “Jilly, you’ve learned your lesson, right?”
She rolled her eyes.
“I want you to concentrate on school and getting those grades back up,” he said.
Patrick, leave it alone.
“Fia and I will be checking to make sure you’re at school when you’re supposed to be.”
I hate being volunteered for things. He’d always pulled this crap.
“No more with the class cutting, Jilly,” he continued, oblivious to the rebellion building on his daughter’s face.
“May I be excused?”
“No, you may not. You can sit there and listen for a change. It’s about time—”
“Patrick,” I said. “I have to head north tomorrow.”
“What?” he asked.
Jilly’s eyes widened. “No, you can’t.”
“I have to. I’ve been offered a new job.”
“Can’t it wait?” Patrick sounded almost desperate.
“I’m sorry, but it can’t.” I glanced at Jilly.
She narrowed her eyes and glared at me.
“But I’ll be back in about two weeks.”
“Two weeks? I don’t believe you. You’re just like Mom. You won’t come back.” She pushed back from the table so violently her chair crashed to the floor. She kicked it three feet across the tile and ran from the room.
“That went well,” I said, reaching for my fortune cookie.
“How can you joke about this?”
“Would you rather see me cry?” I broke open the cookie and read the little slip of paper. “A journey awaits you. Beware of danger.”
“Lovely,” I said, and bit into the cookie.
* * *
In the morning, Jilly was quiet and distant as Patrick rushed off for an early closing on a house he’d sold.
“Let me drive you to school,” I said.
“I can take the bus.”
“I know that, but this way I can see you for a little longer. Once I drop you off, I’m getting on Ninety-five.”
“Whatever.”
It was as close to a yes as I was going to get.
The Mini was loaded for my trip north and she had to hold her backpack on her lap with my tote bag. The sun was out, but a few drops of water still glistened on the hood of the car as we drove out.
It had rained hard all night, and I wondered if the chickens and geese near Flamingo Road were wading through standing water in their pen. The pigs could drown for all I cared, but they were probably wallowing happily in goat remains.
The image forced a little sound of disgust from me.
“What?” Jilly asked, as I turned onto the county road.
“I was thinking about yesterday.”
“That was so wild.” Her face brightened with excitement.
“And dangerous.”
She responded with an eye roll.
“Your school is off Griffin Road, right.”
“Yeah.”
I swung onto Griffin and headed east. “What else do you love?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“You love horses. You like sapphires. How about music, boys, movies, that kind of stuff?”
In my peripheral vision, she was giving me a look. “I like Zanin.”
I almost snapped at her. Almost said, “Forget it,” but she’d already stiffened, anticipating my angry response. So instead, I asked, “Why?”
She blinked, then stared at her lap. “He’s like this iconic hero, the way he rescues animals. And he’s cute.”
Three cars ahead, a school bus stopped to pick up some kids and the traffic ground to a halt. Jilly raised her eyes to mine. “I know he’s too old for me.” She dropped her gaze and shrugged. “Besides, he likes you.”
“Me?”
“Oh, puh-leeze. I saw the way he kissed you yesterday.”
“You did?”
“Everybody did.”
“That was just a show for those thugs,” I said.
“Not the second time.”
This kid didn’t miss anything. I closed my eyes and remembered the pressure of Zanin’s hard body against mine.
“You’re blushing, Aunt Fia.”
“What are you?” I asked, returning my attention to the road. “A detective?”
“I’d … I’d like to be,” she said.
The red lights ceased flashing on the school bus, the little stop sign folded back, and the traffic rolled forward. I glanced at Jilly.
Her eyes were wide and her mouth formed an O, as if her declaration surprised her.
“You wanna be a cop?”
“I think … yeah. I’d like to be in law enforcement.”
Patrick was going to love this. “Mull it over a little,” I said. “If you decide you really mean it, I’ll help you in any way I can.”
A few minutes later I pulled up in front of her school. She gave me a quick hug, hopped out of the car, and disappeared into a wild herd of teenagers. For a moment I understood Patrick’s fear and frustration.
I swung out of the school drive and turned the Mini toward 95. I wasn’t looking forward to the cold north of Baltimore, but that was the least of my problems.
What were my chances of making it with the TRPB?
12
I stayed in a cheap motel in South Carolina that night, and continued north early the next morning. When I climbed out of the car just outside Richmond, a cloud bank was forming to the north. An icy breeze whirled past, hurrying me into the Love’s Travel Stop for hot coffee and a snack.
Back on the road, I zigged east off 95 onto 301 north, quite pleased with myself for avoiding 95 into D.C. and the Washington and Baltimore beltways, which I’ve always believed should be pictured in the dictionary under “traveler’s worst nightmare.”
By the time I found a place to park on Fulton Street in Baltimore, sleet and freezing rain had crusted over part of my windshield. By the time I dragged my bag and laptop inside my building, I was shivering. After lugging the stuff upstairs, I stopped dead when I saw the door to my apartment. It was open.
I snatched the gun from my tote bag, dropping everything else on the landing. I listened. Nothing. I kicked the door wide open and stared. Though my apartment was tiny, someone could be hiding behind the kitchen counter, in the bathroom, or bedroom. I darted inside, did a fast search, and found no one.
But they’d been after something. My drawers and cabinets were pulled open and stuff was strewn on the floor. I couldn’t imagine what they’d been looking for. My two most valuable possessions were my gun and my car. The gun was always with me and the Mini didn’t fit in a drawer.
Unless they’d been looking for a computer, which I didn’t have. Damn it.
I cranked up the heat on the wall thermostat and called the police station. I may be out of favor with IAD, but I still had friends at Mount Street. The station sent two people right over from crime scene to dust for fingerprints.
A small guy with a pockmarked face came in first when I opened my door. I didn’t know him, but was glad to see the tall, full-bodied figure of Barbara Symesky behind him. She’d worked a number of crimes scenes I’d called in, and we’d occasionally gone out for coffee and burgers together. She’d been the one to tell me about Luis Valera’s police record.
The two agents got to work, and a while later Barbara said, “You know how it works, Fia. It will take a while to get the print results, but I’ll call you.”
“Thanks,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck wher
e my knot buddies were blooming again. “Nothing seems to be missing.”
The guy with the bad face said, “You think this has something to do with that guy you killed?”
“No.” Did it? “Probably just someone looking for drug money.”
He gave me a skeptical look. “People looking for a fix don’t usually bother with gloves.”
“He’s right,” Barbara said. “What about a computer?”
“Laptop,” I said, pointing to the case still on the floor.
She stared at me for a beat. “You need anything, Fia, you call me. Right?”
“Sure.”
“Wait a minute,” the guy said. “Is this yours?” He was leaning over near my TV couch, staring at something on the floor. Using tweezers, he picked up a small orange bead.
“No,” I said, “that’s not mine.” But something about the bead made me think of Shyra Darnell.
“I’ll take it to the lab,” he said. “See if they can get anything off it.” He dropped the bead into a plastic evidence bag.
They packed up and started to leave. Barbara’s hand was on my doorknob when I said, “There is one thing.”
“What?” she asked.
“I’d appreciate any information you could find on the victim from that night. The woman who disappeared, Shyra Darnell.”
“You got it,” Barbara said.
I thanked them, and after they left, I went to work cleaning up the mess from the intruder and the fingerprint dust. By the time I finished, I had as much strength as a dust rag. I pulled a pizza from the freezer and slid it into the microwave. As the machine clicked and whirred, I remembered the microwave in Shyra’s room at Pimlico.
In my mind, I inventoried the scant belongings in her tiny room. I closed my eyes, concentrated, and saw the altar. And the strings of beads around the necks of those porcelain saints. I couldn’t recall their color.
Why would Shyra have come to my apartment?
13
A week later, at Fair Hill’s training track, Rosario Jones gave me a leg up on the big gray mare, Luceta. By now, my muscles had finally stopped screaming though those first few days I’d galloped horses, I’d been so cold, stiff, and sore I hadn’t been sure I’d make it.
Regular doses of ibuprofen and late-afternoon toddies of hot tea with lemon, honey, and bourbon had been my best friends.
Rosario, a jockey-turned-trainer, studied me from beneath the fur trapper’s hat he wore every day. He had a full salt-and-pepper beard, and with the fur upholstery on his head, he reminded me of a lop-eared rabbit. I knew his mother was Mexican and figured it was his Latino half that needed the hat to ward off the biting wind.
He favored hunter green and a bright rose red for his stable colors. His buckets, wire gates, and tack boxes were all done in the dark green. The flashy rose color lit up his horses’ blankets and stable bandages, the color incongruous in the gray, frigid landscape.
The TRPB had sent me to him, informing me I’d work for him as an exercise rider. After two weeks at Fair Hill, I’d be going with him to Gulfstream. I’d had one conversation with the whiskered trainer behind closed doors. After that, my connection to the agency was never mentioned.
Rosario’s glance as I sat on Luceta was thoughtful. “This horse is gonna be a bit fresher than what I’ve thrown at you so far. She’s only about six weeks out from racing.” So far, Rosario had only given me older horses coming off layups. Those animals had been seasoned and fairly quiet. With Luceta under me, I felt the power and eagerness of youth.
A blast of icy wind rushed down the aisle, blowing wisps of hay, a candy wrapper, and an almost empty container of poultice with it. Luceta snorted, raised her front legs into the air, and tried to bolt down the barn’s dirt aisle. She rushed forward a few steps before I got her under control. Instead of trying to turn or stop her, I let her walk on.
I called back to Rosario, “I’ll just give her a turn around the barn.”
“Good idea,” he said. “And hold on to that martingale.”
I glanced down at the mare’s withers. Instinctively, I’d already hooked one finger securely into the leather martingale that circled the filly’s neck. I was glad that old habits die hard. If the mare reared up, that hold on the martingale could keep me from going off backwards.
Luceta and I completed one circuit along the dirt aisle that ran outside the stalls of the rectangular barn. Rosario watched as we returned.
“You think you can two-minute lick her a mile?”
Either the horse wasn’t very valuable, or Rosario had more faith in me than I did. Letting someone who hadn’t regularly galloped horses take one for a two-minute lick was risky. At thirty miles an hour she could run off. I might not be fit enough to stop her.
“Sure,” I said.
“Then jog her to the mile pole and break her off.”
“Okay.”
I took a mental deep breath and urged Luceta along the trail that led from Rosario’s barn to the big Fair Hill Training Center track. The mare’s head came up when she stepped onto the dirt where Kentucky Derby winners like Animal Kingdom and Barbaro had trained.
I eased her into a jog and felt her muscles pumping with blood, saw her veins pop out on her neck as her immense cardiovascular system fired up. Racehorses always seem to know when you mean business.
As Luceta reached the mile pole, I sat lower in the saddle, picked up the reins, and chirped once. She took off, and I steadied her to the quick rhythm of a two-minute lick.
The wind tore at my face mask and goggles as we whipped down the backstretch. Into the turn, the wind hit the right side of my face, burning it with cold. As we rolled into the stretch the gusts blew us along from behind like Luceta was a sailboat and I was her mast.
When we hit the wire, I stood in the stirrups and slowly eased her speed to a canter, then a jog. I knew I was grinning like a fool. I’d forgotten the amazing high that hits me when I let a horse cruise and discover we function as a single entity.
Rosario stood at the gap in the rail to the barn path. He glanced at the stopwatch in his hand and nodded approvingly. “You’ve got a good clock in your head.”
“Thanks,” I said, enjoying the warm steam rising off Luceta’s body. It was so cold at Fair Hill, even the manure in the stalls was half frozen. The warm, horsey smell reaching my nostrils from Luceta was wonderful.
“I don’t know what you’re grinning about. You’ve got five more horses to get out this morning.” But Rosario was smiling.
Later I downed a cheese sandwich in my room on the backside, changed clothes, and walked over to the TRPB offices housed in a large stone and wood building that overlooked the training track’s first turn. I liked the building’s steeply pitched roof and the numerous plate-glass windows that made for a sunny interior. Since they keep the front door locked, I headed around to the back and used a card key to gain entrance.
I’d looked up the history of the bureau and discovered FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, an avid racing fan, had a hand in forming the TRPB back in 1946. Spencer J. Drayton, formerly an FBI agent and administrative assistant to Hoover, had been selected to head the new organization. Apparently Drayton had modeled the TRPB along the lines of the FBI and brought in several FBI colleagues to assist him. I didn’t see myself fitting in all that well with the strict bureaucratic codes of the FBI and hoped the organization had lightened up somewhat since 1946.
Inside, I walked down a long hall with offices on either side and stopped at the room I supposedly shared with an agent who’d been out in the field since before I arrived. If it hadn’t been for the framed pictures of him, his wife, and his kid, I might have doubted he existed. His phone never rang, and his in-box was empty.
Mine wasn’t. A handwritten note rested on the papers I’d accumulated from my afternoon studies with an agent named Brian who was teaching me the ins and outs of the TRPB. The note was from Jamieson: See me as soon as you get in.
I’d learned that everyone who’d be
en at the bureau a while called Gunford Jamieson “Gunny.” I planned to stick with “Mr. Jamieson” for the immediate future.
I hung my anorak on the coat hook and hurried to his office. I hadn’t spoken directly with him since I’d arrived and was a little anxious about our first meeting.
When I stepped inside, he fixed cop eyes on me and pointed his pen at the chair facing his desk.
“Sit.”
“Yes, sir.” Resisting a nervous urge to run my fingers through my short hair, I sat. Miraculous second chances don’t come often, and I was determined this one would work.
Jamieson twirled his pen. “You know I’m sending you to Gulfstream.”
I nodded, once again considering my good fortune. Gulfstream Park was a beautiful track, a winter mecca for horse racing fans. The big weekends at this tropical track attracted the finest horses, best trainers, top jockeys, and big money.
My new boss opened a folder on his desk and studied the contents a minute. I noticed an economy-sized bottle of Pepcid Complete on his desk. The faint scent of my father’s aftershave drifted past when he tapped his pen on the file.
“I want you to keep an eye on a trainer named Michael Serpentino. He heads up a racing syndicate called BetBig.” He paused a few beats. “You don’t know anyone down at Gulfstream in Florida, do you?”
“No, sir. Not anyone that would recognize me now. My dad only trained horses in Maryland and I lost weight after he…” Jamieson had to know my father had been murdered. But he couldn’t know how my world had stopped, hadn’t seen that moment of rage and grief when I smashed the china horse my father had given me and chopped off my long dark hair. “Anyway … my looks have changed.”
The cop look eased. “I hear the riding is going well?”
“Yes, sir.”
His gaze dropped as he hesitated a moment. “You should think about…”
I leaned forward. “Yes?”
“Never mind.”
I watched his cop face slide back into place.
“I’m sending you down next week. You’ll be working as an exercise rider for Rosario. You two will be in the same barn as Serpentino. You’ll need to stay under the radar, keep your TRPB ID hidden. Rosario knows nothing about Serpentino. Keep him out of this.”