Dark Horse

by J. Carson Black

  There weren’t many copying machines in Sonoita, but after asking around at the businesses that had them, Dakota and Clay realized that it would be impossible to find out who had sent her the note. Anyone with a nickel could use a photocopy machine. The Arizona Daily Star was sold outside several establishments.

  The note had come from an inkjet printer. The message appeared to have been pasted to the newspaper photo and photocopied along with it.

  Dakota could think of a couple of people who might do something like this. Jerry Tanner, for one. Rita. The look on her face that night at Er Pastaro . . . for one moment, Dakota had seen through the mask to the pure hatred underneath.

  She had no idea if either one of them would carry it any further. Tanner seemed like a coward—a petty, whining tyrant who had been ineffectual all his life. But maybe she shouldn’t underestimate him. Ineffectual whiners were forever shooting up post offices.

  Coke had fired Tanner. Someone had sabotaged Black Oak, to the point of getting Coke into trouble with the stewards at Los Alamitos.

  “I’ll drop you at the track, if that’s all right,” Clay said, interrupting her thoughts.

  She nodded, still thinking about Coke. They bumped over the dirt weal cut into the hillside, and Clay stopped before Shameless’s stall.

  Dakota reached for the door handle. “Thanks—”

  She felt his hand on her arm, gentle but solid, pulling her around to face him.

  His eyes looked like the midnight sky on a desert night. There was a challenge in them. He leaned forward, as if he wanted to say something important. Then suddenly his mouth came down on hers. The pressure of his lips was brief, tantalizing—completely unexpected—and she reacted instinctively. Her own mouth parted without asking her, and the kiss deepened.

  They fit perfectly, as she knew they would.

  Dakota was seized by an anguish so sweet she thought it would topple her from sanity. And her heart—

  Her heart.

  The ache wouldn’t go away.

  When they finally came up for breath, Dakota was seriously shaken.

  Clay’s hand caressed her cheek, caught a sheaf of her blond hair in his fingers. The sadness in his expression made her heart lurch. It told her what she didn’t want to know, that the kiss was finishing old business, not starting new. She looked away.

  “I had to do that,” Clay said.

  “Okay,” she said, knowing that she sounded stupid, that her voice strained. He knew how much she cared, he must have always known . . .

  She opened the truck door, jumped out, and walked toward the barn as steadily as she could. She heard him put the truck in gear and drive away.

  FOURTEEN

  Dakota decided to pretend that Clay had never kissed her. She was friendly when they met. Even though she was aware that his gaze lingered a little too long at times, Dakota gave him no encouragement.

  She tried not to think about the note, although unconsciously, Dakota found herself waiting for something else to happen. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her. Sometimes as she went through her daily business, the hairs on the back of her neck rose and she was certain someone was following her—but when she turned around, no one was there.

  A couple of times at the farm, Dan sneaked up on her and spoke in her ear, making her jump. He’d always walked as quietly as an Apache, but Dakota wondered if he got some pleasure out of scaring her.

  One day she came out of the El Prado mall and saw a flier on her windshield. Her heart sped up, and blood pounded in her ears. She walked slowly toward her truck, morbidly drawn by the fluttering piece of paper. Swallowing, Dakota pulled it out from under the wiper and closed her eyes. She should crumple it into a ball and throw it away. She shouldn’t let this person, whoever he was, terrorize her.

  But she couldn’t stop herself. She had to know. Taking a deep breath, Dakota looked.

  Relief bombarded her. She leaned against the truck, weak- kneed. The flier announced that a new real estate company had moved to Sonoita.

  As the first week came to a close, the note seemed less disturbing, more of a joke. Sometimes she wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing. She had a lot of other things to think about, like Shameless’s training.

  The month flew by. Dakota watched as her dark filly galloped a mile, then moved up to a mile and a half, then two miles. Shameless was building lean muscle mass. She looked athletic, and brimmed with energy, jumping and kicking out for the pure joy of it. Even now, she could gallop a mile and a half without breathing hard. Shameless would soon be dead fit.

  Dakota had given up the pretense of looking for a trainer. She’d condition the filly first, then find one in time for the Futurity trials.

  She’d found a regular rider for Shameless. Dakota wanted one person to ride Shameless every time, so that he would become familiar with her and be able to sense if anything was wrong. She’d watched the exercise riders every morning, and decided that the best person for Shameless was the nephew of Raul Acevedo, a respected trainer in Sonoita. Ernesto Acevedo couldn’t be more than eighteen, but he had worked with his uncle’s racehorses all his life. He wanted to be a jockey. He had the hands, the ability to rate a horse, the courage, the reflexes, but he was just a little larger than most jockeys. She thought he’d make a good trainer. His instincts were so good. He was always there, like a shadow, doing things before she told him. Because he spoke little English and her Spanish left a lot to be desired, he would point at things and then hold up his hands as if in a question. She was getting adept at communicating with him.

  She would take him to Ruidoso with her. Although he had grown up in one of those isolated pockets of Arizona where the Mexican population spoke their native tongue exclusively, Ernesto was a US citizen, for which Dakota was grateful. At least she wouldn’t have to contend with Immigration.

  And then there was Lucy. Dakota didn’t really need her—not with Ernesto right there, willing to do any chore. Lucy cleaned Tyke’s and Shameless’s stalls. She also helped ready Shameless for her gallops, but Dakota found herself resenting losing that time she used to spend alone with the filly. Grooming Shameless, bandaging her legs, bathing her, walking her—these simple actions helped Dakota figure out how the animal was doing mentally and physically. But now here was Lucy, brushing the horse because she had to earn her paycheck.

  What I need is a bigger racing stable. Just to accommodate the help. How did she get herself into this?

  It was a relief to Dakota when other trainers began to ask Ernesto to ride for them. At least he wasn’t always hovering around, trying to please. Shortly after that, one of Clay’s grooms quit, and Dakota sent Lucy over to his stable to work on five of his horses. That helped, but the girl always managed to finish up Clay’s horses in record time and be back at the Black Oak barn, hanging around.

  If Dakota didn’t know any better, she’d think that Lucy had a crush on her. Sometimes she’d look up from bandaging the filly’s legs to see Lucy standing there, an odd look on her face, as if she wanted to talk to Dakota, but couldn’t screw up the courage. Maybe the girl was just lonely.

  At the end of March Dakota flew out to LA for a second audition. The producer seemed to like her, but you never knew about these things. She stayed around for a while, thinking there might be a callback.

  She felt so damn restless. Her mind kept wandering back to Sonoita. The farrier was coming out to shoe the filly; Dakota wished she could be there. Ernesto was good with her, though. There was nothing to worry about.

  By Sunday night, Dakota was beginning to feel like an outsider. As if she were just putting in time here, waiting to go back to Sonoita and continue her life. Her friends were furiously scrambling to keep up with the LA scene, going to parties and being seen, dwelling with desperate hope on the offhand remarks of the power people. All Dakota wanted to talk about was the filly. How Shameless was slowly building up to racing condition, how in the course of her gallop next week, Ernesto would
ask her to run a short distance—just a quick blowout. Pretty soon, the filly would have to be schooled in the gate, relearn all her baby lessons, break and work in company. But Dakota knew her friends wouldn’t be interested.

  Feeling homesick, she called Dan to ask about Shameless. She should have known better. He made no effort to cover his disappointment. “You’re coming back then?”

  “Is that all right with you?”

  “I just work here.” She could almost see him shrug those huge, stooped shoulders. And the sullen look on his face.

  Annoyed, Dakota said, “You gave me all the files except the ones on the mares we kept. I’d like to see them.”

  There was a pause on the line. “Okay.”

  “Thanks.” She hung up. Why did he dislike her so much? Well, he was right about one thing. He did just work there. And she was going home, whether he liked it or not.

  On Monday, she visited her mother and stepfather in Laguna Beach. Eileen hectored her to stay in LA, but David thought the change would do her good. She gave her neighbor all her plants, called the post office to arrange for her mail to be forwarded to Black Oak, and flew back to Tucson, where she’d left her SUV in the long-term parking lot.

  Her cat, Refrigerator, came with her, yowling all the way from Tucson to Sonoita in her cat carrier.

  It was a beautiful drive. As they reached the pass, the sky blushed a pretty, apricot color, gradating to turquoise and then to deep violet-blue. Stars appeared, welcoming her: tiny glittering pinpricks. In the dying rays of the sun, the grass had changed from flaxen, to fiery orange, to ash gray. Big-hipped junipers looked as if they were on the verge of waddling down the hills toward the road, eager to tell her their secrets.

  Back at home, she closed off the den and let Refrigerator out of her carrier. As the cat patrolled the perimeter, sniffing suspiciously at every piece of furniture in the room, Dakota noticed the blinking light on her answering machine.

  Briefly, her pulse sped up. Maybe it was Clay, welcoming her back.

  She pressed the playback button.

  The malevolent voice oozed out of the speaker, loud and muffled at the same time.

  “Take a look at your broodmares.”

  A cold needle of fear thrust into her heart as she heard the click of the receiver, followed by a dial tone.

  FIFTEEN

  She ran to the first broodmare barn, dreading what she would find. The night was cold now, and the wind raked at her face, her clothing. Her feet felt numb. She ran flat out, holding her gun close to her side, her heart going like a freight train.

  It can happen to anyone. Somebody had threatened her, and she hadn’t taken it seriously. She’d written it off as some crank. And now, just like her father, the horses—the innocents—had paid for her folly.

  As she ran, her tortured thoughts ran alongside her like Anne Coe’s canine companions. She pictured in her mind’s eye a mare, lying on her side in a stall, dead. Or maybe she was still alive, in agony, her leg broken.

  How many? All of them?

  Breathing hard, she reached the first barn. Her hand fumbled for the light switch. Goddamn it, where was it?

  Light bathed the barn. Dakota ran to the first stall. Her breath caught in her throat, suspended.

  The light from the aisle seeped into the gloom, but Dakota heard rather than saw the movement within. A velvety nose poked over the stall door. She exhaled in relief.

  At least one of them was safe.

  She ran to the next, and the next, her heart starring to hammer more rhythmically. All of them were all right.

  All right.

  But the other barn—

  “What’s going on?” Dan Bolin appeared at the doorway, looking as if she’d awakened him, even though it couldn’t be later than eight o’clock.

  “We’ve got to check the other broodmare barn!” she said, running past him.

  The second broodmare barn was a more modern structure, which housed the best of the outside mares. As Dakota ran, she prayed. Please let them be like the others. Please, God, please don’t let them be dead.

  They were the good ones. The expensive ones. If someone wanted to hurt Black Oak, they would be the target. She tried to block out the vision of dead mares, their beauty and grace gone, but couldn’t. Could only say over and over: please God.

  Dan reached the barn before her, and once again, the glare of the overhead light yellowed the night.

  Her gaze swept the aisle.

  Inquisitive heads poked over the stall doors, ears pricked forward. All but in three of the stalls. In those, the square above the door was empty, opening into darkness.

  Relief vied with dread as Dakota approached one of those stalls. She prepared herself for the worst. If there was slaughter, it had not been wholesale. Only three of them, she told herself, only three, but she knew that the number meant nothing. The last stall on the left belonged to Bar Counsel, a bay mare with the sweetest face on earth. Big doe eyes, so trusting and gentle. It was her first year as a broodmare.

  Dakota’s head pounded. She reached the stall, gripped the steel guard wrapped over the top, prayed.

  Bar Counsel stood in the corner, dozing.

  Run Bambi Run. Stall eight. She, too, was fine.

  One more. Is She Cereus. Dan called her the PMS Queen. This mare hated people, hated her stall, hated her food, hated her water bucket—

  The sorrel mare lay on her side.

  Dead?

  Is She Cereus lifted her head, then grunted as she struggled to her feet. Her nostrils wrinkled as if she smelled something bad. Her ears flew back. Head snaking from side to side, she scrunched her lip into her trademark sour leer.

  “Don’t change a thing,” Dakota babbled. “You’re beautiful just the way you are.”

  “What’s going on?” Dan yelled.

  Feeling suddenly foolish, Dakota told him.

  “Who would do that?” Dan’s eyes were the color of Wedgwood blue in his long face. She’d never noticed before. He towered over her, ponderous in his big denim jacket.

  Dakota said, “I don’t know.”

  “Well, the mares are all right. I checked ‘em myself two hours ago.”

  “Maybe it was just a crank call.” Dakota sensed that Is She Cereus was about to take a piece out of her. She stepped back, out of reach, and said, “Oh, no you don’t! I’m not on the menu.”

  Is She Cereus turned her back on them.

  Horrified, Dakota uttered a half gasp, half shriek.

  The mare’s tail had been hacked off.

  SIXTEEN

  Dan came up beside Dakota. “Good God.”

  “Did you cut it for some reason?”

  “Why would I do something like that? She’s not my horse.”

  The mare swung her head around and aimed a nip at him. “No wonder she’s spitting fire,” he said. “Look at her mane.”

  Dakota stared at the ragged hatchet job the clippers had made of it. The mare had lost her mane and most of her tail,

  “You didn’t do this?”

  “You think I’m crazy?” Dan shook his head. “The owner’s gonna be pissed about this.”

  “Her tail isn’t hurt, is it?”

  He went into the stall and felt along the mare’s tail. “It’s cut just below the bone and muscle,” he said, obviously relieved.

  At least she wasn’t hurt. Stunned, Dakota tried to remember the words on the answering machine. Couldn’t. She looked in the neighboring stall and saw with horror that this mare’s mane had been roached, too. Her tail was hacked off just below the bone, identical to Cereus’s.

  Eight of the twenty mares had been butchered this way— the most valuable ones. Someone had come onto Black Oak and done this to the broodmares, and she hadn’t even known. Her fingers curled tighter around the gun, and she hugged herself against the coldness that came from within. “You say you checked on them two hours ago?”

  Dan emerged from the stall, dodging Cereus’s teeth. ‘They were fine. I wou
ld have noticed, if they looked like this.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “I was taking a nap. One of our mares is really close to foaling, so I planned to stay up tonight.”

  “What about Marcie?”

  “She had the night off.”

  “Why would anyone do a thing like this? What would it accomplish?”

  Dan shrugged. “Maybe someone doesn’t like you.”

  She shot a glance at him, but he just looked thoughtful.

  “Can you imagine how mad the owners will be?” he asked. “It’ll take months to grow those manes out. They’ll be stickin’ up like one of those punk rockers,” the stud manager said morosely.

  “You think anyone might withdraw his mare?”

  Dan shrugged. “Could be. They couldn’t think much of our security.”

  “Damn!” Dakota kicked the raked dirt.

  Raked dirt.

  There hadn’t been any footprints. Whoever had done this had had the time and presence of mind to rake after himself. She glanced into the stall. Snarls of black hair matted the sawdust. He wasn’t so neat with the horses. She sighed. “I guess we’d better clean out these stalls. You don’t think any of these mares are hurt, do you?”

  He grunted. “Just their feelings.”

  It was the first time Dakota had ever heard him joke.

  “You know how horses hate the sound of electric clippers.” He stepped back into Cereus’s stall and peered at her legs. “If any of ‘em got scraped up, it’d be her.” The mare lashed out, and he dodged her expertly. “She whacked herself on her hind fetlock, probably kicking out. I’ll treat the cut, if the bitch’ll let me.”

  As he started for the tack room, Dakota called to him. “What possible good could this do anyone?”

  “Who knows, when you’re dealin’ with a psycho?”

  A different sheriff’s deputy came and took the report. He told them there was nothing he could do. “Probably a crank.”

  Dakota took a deep breath to stifle her anger. “Can’t you put a trace on my phone?”