At Risk (19 page)

"Well?" she said.

"I don't know what he told you," I tried to
keep my voice even, "but the guy I fought with hit me first. He was
bothering Mr. Sanders, and I walked over to see if I could do
anything to help. The guy was yelling obscenities, so I asked him
to leave, and that's when he hit me. So I . . . defended
myself."

She picked up a piece of hard candy and
fingered the wrapper. "Who was this person?"

"He delivers hay for Mr. Harrison."

"What?"

"He drives the hay truck for Mr. Harrison
sometimes," I said.

She swiveled around in her chair, pressed a
couple of keys on her computer keyboard, and scrolled down the
screen. When she found what she wanted, she snatched up the phone,
punched in a number--Mr. Harrison's, I presumed--and unleashed some
of her anger in his direction. More than likely, the poor guy
didn't have the foggiest idea what she was talking about.

Mrs. Hill seldom got angry, but I saw that
when she did, she didn't hold back. Personally, I was happy to be
removed from target status. She demanded he dismiss his driver. He
must have disagreed, because she said she "could be
responsible"--her exact words--"for getting a different supplier."
Here we go, I thought. Mrs. Hill listened without speaking, then
disconnected.

She looked up at me. Her face flushed as
patchy red blotches spread up her throat. "I'm sorry, Stephen. Mr.
Sanders gave me the wrong idea. I should have known you wouldn't
start anything."

"That's all right."

"No it isn't." She rubbed her forehead. "Mr.
Harrison's going to dismiss his driver. He had the nerve to say he
wasn't responsible for what his driver did when he was off. I tell
you." She slapped her palm on the desk blotter. "He can be
responsible for the type of person he employs, can't he?"

I struggled to keep a straight face. "Yes,
ma'am."

She waved me off. I cut through the lounge,
wondering what Harrison's driver and Sanders had been arguing about
and, more to the point, whether he had purposefully been trying to
get me in trouble. And if so, why?

The crew had moved on to barn B, and they
almost seemed disappointed that I hadn't gotten my butt in trouble.
Marty's opinion of Mr. Sanders was, as expected, unrepeatable. I
didn't spend much time thinking about it, or the torched jump, but
chose to think about Rachel instead.

* * *

I checked my watch. Lunch time was half over,
which explained the lack of activity on the farm. I went into the
lounge, grabbed my sandwich out of the fridge, and switched on the
television. I was still channel surfing when I heard a vehicle pull
up to the office door. The engine cut off and doors slammed. When
someone opened the door and stepped into the office, I pushed
myself off the sofa and strolled over to see who it was.

A uniformed cop and another man dressed in
ratty jeans and an Orioles warm-up jacket stood on the square of
carpet in front of Mrs. Hill's desk. They turned toward the door at
my approach.

The uniformed cop glanced at the pocket-sized
notebook he held in his palm. He was a lanky black man, a good four
inches taller than me, with close-cropped hair and a narrow
mustache. "You Stephen Cline?" he said.

"Yep." I explained about the burnt jump and
briefly described the events of the past five weeks.

He gestured to my face. "Who you tangled with
got anything to do with why we're here?"

"Nope. Someone was drunk at a party."

"Uh-huh. But not you?"

There was a look of amusement in his eyes
which negated any irritation I might have otherwise felt. I glanced
at his name tag. DORSETT was printed in all caps. "Nope. Not
me."

"Let's take a look, then."

I dropped my orange into my jacket pocket,
picked up my half-eaten sandwich, and switched off the TV. Outside,
the air smelled of rain and moist earth. The cloud base was low and
black, heavy with the threat of more rain. In the east, wispy
tendrils of cloud broke free and scuttled across the sky in a wedge
of fast-moving air.

We stood in a semi-circle around the jump. I
lowered the brim of my cap and huddled inside my jacket while
Dorsett's partner crouched down and peered at the pile of charred,
soggy wood.

I said to Dorsett, "Did Detective Ralston
send you?"

"Indirectly, through Linquist."

"When I talked to him on the phone this
morning, I thought this was the only damage on the property, but
afterwards, we found more vandalism in one of the other
buildings."

"You finished here?" Dorsett asked his
partner.

He nodded.

"Show us the way then, Cline."

"It's that building." I pointed. "Down
there."

"We'll take the car."

I climbed in the back and found it a bit like
sitting in a cage. A metal screen separated the back seat from the
front.

Officer Dorsett glanced in the rear view
mirror and laughed. "A bit unnerving back there, ain't it?" He
slowed to make the turn onto the side lane that led to the
implement building. "Every kid should take a ride in the back seat.
See what it's like."

Kid?

He parked nose to nose with the John Deere
960. They got out. I couldn't. The doors in back wouldn't open from
the inside. Dorsett and his partner stood by the car, and the black
cop was grinning.

I tried to keep a straight face. "Funny, real
funny," I said through the glass.

He unlocked the door, and we stood just
inside the building's entrance.

Dorsett whistled. "Could be worse. They
could've smashed up everything." He slid a flashlight from a loop
on his belt.

"We had to pull the muck wagon and one of the
tractors out of here this morning," I said, "so we could get some
work done. Hope that was okay."

He had angled the cone of light along the
walls and was reading the graffiti. "Do you have any enemies,
someone who hates you personally?"

"No. . . . Not really. Not like this."

"Pretty disturbing stuff," he said. "And the
guy ain't no genius either."

"You mean the 'y-o-u-r dead' bit?"

Dorsett glanced over his shoulder and
grinned. "Right-o. Can't spell, but he's sure into anatomy and
bodily functions, ain't he."

"Yeah. But most of it's physically
impossible." I watched Dorsett's partner walk back to the cruiser
and pop the trunk. "You gotta hand it to him though," I said. "He
did get a 12-letter word right."

"Probably had lots of practice. You sure this
ain't directed at you?" Dorsett had turned to face me. "It sounds
personal."

"Shit, I hope not."

He stepped closer to the wall and played the
light across the dusty ground. "We might have some footprints here,
Mark."

I edged along the 960 and stopped beside him.
Sure enough, a row of prints were distinct in the soft dirt, and
what caught my attention most was the fact that they pointed toward
the wall—consistent with someone having stood there, painting their
sick little message.

Dorsett squatted down. "Steve, these look
familiar?"

"No. They're sneakers. Everybody around here
wears boots. Especially when it's wet." I looked closer. "There
were two of them. See over there?" I pointed to a different pattern
tracked through the dirt near Dave's storage room.

"Okay," Dorsett said. "We'll take photos and
make casts of both sets."

I leaned against Dave's workbench. "Now you
just need the owners."

"Yeah, but we find 'em, we'll make the case."
He pointed to a particularly clear print of a left shoe. "See the
wear pattern in the tread on that one? There's a notch out of the
edge on the inside heel, see?"

"Uh-huh."

"We get the guy, and he's still got the
shoes, we got 'im nailed."

I sat on a row of hay and, with increasing
fascination, watched them make casts, take photographs, and dust
for prints. Maybe we were getting somewhere after all. I finished
my lunch and glanced at my watch. I was way behind schedule, and
they looked like they were going to be awhile.

I told them where they could find me and
hopped off the hay bale. "After you're done today, can we clean
up?"

"Don't see why not." He straightened up from
where he'd been working on one of the footprints, a packet of
plaster of Paris in one hand and a wooden stick in the other. "Just
to be on the safe side, though, I'll talk to Linquist and get back
to you."

I got a cup of coffee from the lounge and
wondered if a drunk gate-crasher counted as an enemy. Maybe since
I'd started checking hay shipments, he was an enemy, but he wasn't
"the" enemy. The horse theft had happened before I'd confronted
Harrison, and the burnt jump felt like the same old campaign
against Foxdale.

I cupped my fingers around the Styrofoam and
realized that the headache I'd been nursing for the last couple of
days had disappeared. Only later did I realize how easy it was to
take things for granted.

* * *

Toward the end of the day, I set my grooming
tote on the ground outside Chase's stall. As soon as the
realization that I was going to do something with him seeped into
his tiny brain, he pinned his ears flat against his head. I
unlatched his door, and he swung sideways so he could shift his
hindquarters toward me. I grabbed the noseband on his halter and
stopped him before he had the chance. He curled his neck around and
tried to sink his teeth into my arm.

"You stupid son of a bitch," I muttered. His
ear flicked at the sound of my voice.

I threaded the chain shank through his halter
and cross-tied him in the center of his stall. I hadn't groomed him
for three days, but damned if his coat didn't shine like copper. He
was one beautiful horse. Too bad his mind was screwed. He bobbed
his head as I worked the curry comb in small circles down his
neck.

"Who's this?"

I turned around. Rachel was grinning at me
through the grillwork. "Cut to the Chase," I said. "He's an open
jumper."

"Kind of nasty, isn't he?"

"Yeah. But with his talent, nobody
cares."

"Humph, poor thing. He seems so unhappy."

I snorted.

"What do you think his problem is?"

"Life."

"Steeve . . ."

I paused and considered him. Wrinkles creased
the skin around his worried eyes, and his jaw was tight with
tension. Hell. His entire body was tense.

"Damned if I know," I said. "He's hell on the
ground, totally unpredictable, but point him at a jump, and he's
one happy puppy. It's like he was born to it." I ran my hand down
his neck, and he ground his teeth. "He lives for it."

"Hum. Looks like he lives for getting a piece
of your hide between those molars of his."

"Yeah, but he can't help himself. If I
discipline him, he gets worse, he's so strung up." I sighed. "He'll
kick you as soon as look at you."

She groaned. "And you're the lucky one who
gets to do him."

"I'm the
only
one who gets to do him.
He's gotten used to me a little. I really think he hates men."

"So, why not have a girl groom him?"

"Right now, we don't have any girls on the
weekday crew. Only the weekend."

"I pity whoever rides him," Rachel said.

"Oh, he's not so bad then, 'cause he knows
he'll be jumping."

"So, did you have a nice day slopping around
in the rain and mud?" She wrapped her fingers around the metal bars
and grinned at me. She had a great smile. Straight, white teeth,
gorgeous lips, a dimple in her left cheek.

"Cute, Rachel."

"No matter how awful the weather is," she
said, "I love getting away from the office. Where I work, we don't
have any windows. None you can see out of, anyway. That's one
reason why I like riding so much, being outside and doing something
physical. Maybe that's his problem."

Maybe that was my problem. I sure wouldn't
have minded doing something physical with her.

". . . And an indoor arena makes it even
better." She reached up and worked her hair into a ponytail. "Where
I boarded last, the footing was lousy most of the year. The ground
was either frozen, sloppy with mud, or dry and hard as rock. I
couldn't work on anything consistently."

I knocked the curry against the wall and
dislodged a build-up of dirt. "Do you show?"

"Only at local shows. And when I can bum a
ride off someone Well, I'd better get going. I left Koby tacked up
in his stall." She adjusted a pair of headphones over her ears.
"Music helps me concentrate," she said when she noticed me watching
her.

From what I'd seen, she didn't need help in
that department. She tuned out everything when she rode. I, on the
other hand, was thoroughly distracted by her and found
concentrating on anything else difficult when she was around.

After I transferred Chase into Anne's capable
hands, I grained the horses, then went in search of Rachel. She had
finished cooling out her horse and was in the tack room. I leaned
against the locker next to hers and watched her stow her gear. Her
face was damp with sweat, and loose wisps of hair clung to the back
of her neck. She bent over and rifled through the clutter in the
back of her locker. Her britches clung tightly to the full curves
and narrow crease of her backside, and there was a nice gap between
her thighs. I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her. Wanted to
feel her body against mine. She squatted back on her haunches and
looked up at me. A quizzical expression crossed her face, and I
supposed I must have appeared odd just standing there.

I rubbed my face and relaxed the muscles in
my jaw. "Is Thursday still good for you?"

"Yes." She stood up. "I think so. Where were
you just now?"

"Wanting to kiss you," I said.

"Oh." She turned her back to me and slid the
lock through the clasp on her locker, then pushed the shaft down
into the housing and spun the dial. Strange, even ordinary,
everyday things could be exceedingly sexual.