The Stars Shine Bright (54 page)

“What's wrong?” Ortiz said.

I turned around.

“We need an ambulance.” I pointed to the open trailer.

Ashley was still there, waiting.

Scared out of her mind.

“You'd better call a bomb squad too,” I said.

Chapter Sixty-Two

T
he next day, Dr. Norbert greeted me in his office. He wore his unguent smile, and it told me that nobody from the Bureau had remembered to call the shrink. Let him know it was now Game Over. An understandable oversight. I'd kept Jack busy. And last night's events buried him in paperwork.

“Raleigh, you look tired.” Freud settled into his comfortable chair. “Is something bothering you?”

“Something's always bothering me. That's how I'm built.”

“I suspect that's true. Please, have a seat.”

“No thanks. I just stopped by to let you know I quit.”

He looked at me for a moment. “You quit . . . our sessions?”

I shook my head.

“The undercover assignment?”

“Nope.”

“Your job.” Not a question. A statement. Shocked.

“Effective immediately. I would've called you, but I had some loose ends to tie up.”

“This is deeply troubling.”

“Not really.”

Dr. Norbert frowned. “Sudden decisions aren't healthy for someone like you. You see the world as either-or. You're not dealing with—”

“But I feel better.”

“That will pass.”

Maybe. But sometimes reality was either-or. Lies or truth. Hell or heaven. Life or death.

“Please, Raleigh, I would like you to sit down.” The doctor adjusted his posture, ready to make all things relative again. “If you insist on quitting your job, the least I can do is help you gain some closure.”

“I have closure.”

It came last night. When Ortiz showed up bossing grown men twice her size. Closure came when Ortiz gave me her pocketknife to cut the duct tape around Ashley's wrists. And her ankles. And when I gently removed the tape from her mouth. The tape was wet with tears. I felt closure when Ortiz stomped away with the officers, taking the three suspects into custody, and I led Ashley out of the trailer. She was trembling. And people were yelling, far away, over by the yurts. I walked Ashley in the other direction, toward the field where the stranger disappeared. In the distance two horses stood watching. Moonlight and shadow. That eerie sixth sense of animals.

“Brent's the father?” I asked.

She wiped her eyes. Nodding.

“How long have you two known each other?” I asked.

It was a trick question. And unfair, perhaps, right then. But I needed to know if she was honest. Truth, or more lies.

“I met him after my mom died.” She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her own body. “I got sent to foster care. But at least the place had horses.” She gazed at the animals watching us. She lowered her voice, as if she didn't want them to hear. “Brent was in the same place as me. I always had such a crush on him. He was so good with horses. But he never looked twice at me. Then a couple years ago I came out here to see some old friends. Brent was here working on the ranch. For Paul.” She looked at me. “You must know Paul.”

I nodded.

“And then Brent asked me if I could get him a job at Emerald Meadows. I was so happy. The horses needed him. Doc Madison's burned out. Everybody knows it.”

“When did the romance start?”

She looked at me. New tears hovered. “He would sneak into my room. In the barn? It was fun.” She looked away. “I was always careful. You know, with birth control. My mom drilled it into me before she died.”

“But you forgot.”

She shook her head. The long blond hair looked white in the moonlight. “I actually decided I didn't really like him. He was different from what I thought. Mean. Really mean. So finally I told him, I don't want to see you anymore. Not like, you know . . .” Her voice trailed off into the dark.

I didn't want to hear the rest.

“He showed up at my room, acting weird. I thought he was drunk. But now I don't know. He raped me. And then I found out I was pregnant.” She clutched her sides. “He said, Get an abortion. That's what Fauna always did.”

“Who's Fauna?”

“His girlfriend, she lives here. But she's really sick. Cancer. Brent told me the baby was evil. And I was evil for keeping it.” Her hands shifted to her stomach. “Yesterday he came into my room and said I had to choose. Get rid of the baby, or something bad would happen to Cuppa Joe.” Her voice trembled. “He was crazy. Scary crazy. I said I needed some time to think about it. I went to the showers, and then you came and said Cuppa Joe was gone.”

“Ashley, I don't want to scare you. But he's got something called radiation poisoning. It affects the brain. People can get paranoid.”

“That's it, that's what he was. Paranoid. I asked him, after SunTzu died, what happened. He told me he couldn't talk. He said the police were watching him.” She waited for me to say something. Her face was as pale as the moon. “He said you were a cop.”

“He set that fire, in Solo's stable?”

She was quiet.

“Ashley.”

“It didn't seem possible. But after SunTzu was . . .”

“Gone.”

She nodded. “I started remembering stuff. Things he said.”

“Such as?”

“After that fire. I got our horses out. And I saw them dragging you away. I ran back. There was Solo. Her leg.
Broken
. Brent came to put her down. But he was cold about it. I said something, and he just stared at me. Then he said, ‘Sacrifices have to be made.' I thought he was threatening me, about the baby. But after SunTzu . . . that's when I started to realize. He'd changed. Totally changed.”

Not totally, I thought. Brent Roth was a killer. Of people. The radiation poisoning only extended his deadly intent. Suddenly one sick horse could be ‘sacrificed' to the greater cause. The same way he sacrificed people's lives for animals. All for the greater good. But now I realized something else. Why the horses at Emerald Downs were getting sick. Cooper's mud laced with selenium and trace radioactive minerals wasn't good. But the real problem was the contaminated man administering shots. Petting noses. His sweating hands palpitating their abdomens—transferring Americum 241 straight into their systems. Horses were sensitive creatures. High-strung thoroughbreds even more so.

“Brent's job was to take care of the winning horses?” I asked.

“Well, yeah.” She shrugged. “Doc Madison, being the vet, he's got the big stuff. Torn ligaments. Surgery. The winners are pretty healthy. Brent could do most of what they needed.”

It might have looked like race fixing. But it wasn't.

I glanced back at the trailers, past the yurts. Another red light was swirling down the driveway. The ambulance. I led her back toward the commotion. She didn't resist. She followed orders. That was Ashley. The obedient girl. Compliant. Always thinking of the horses. And Thor had played her like a broken pony.

“What about Uncle Sal?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“What's his relationship to Paul Handler?”

“Same as with all of us. He helps him.”

“Helps him how?”

She shrugged. “I don't know, whatever he needs. That's the thing nobody understands. Uncle Sal's a big softy. He likes helping people. Paul's sort of like that too. Most of the time. He tries to help people.”

“People like Brent?”

“Well, not really. They always kinda hated each other.”

We were beside the trailer. The doors were still open and the shadows from the moonlight fell inside. The tubing still looked like a snake.

“I think Brent really wanted to hurt Paul,” she said. “He didn't like him breeding racehorses. I should have thought about that when he asked me to get him a job. Because it was all fake. He just wanted to hurt people. Especially Paul. That's why he kidnapped Cuppa Joe.”

“Do you know what happened to the horse?”

“Yes.” She sighed, relieved. “I saw him. They hid me in the back barn. Paul never goes in there. But I saw Cuppa Joe.”

When we walked up to the ambulance, Ortiz was still barking commands. I saw hunched shoulders in three different cruisers. Bo's dreadlocks looked matted under the dome light. I held Ashley's elbow and explained as much as I could to the ambulance guys. Radiation. Pregnancy. Specialist needed. They looked baffled. I wrote down my phone number and told them to give it to the doctor. I was expecting a call sometime today.

“Raleigh,” said Dr. Norbert, “your sudden decision is dangerous. I don't think you understand what I mean by closure.”

But I did understand. Our visits had revealed his handiwork. Dr. Norbert specialized in pulling things apart, then patching them up with the crude repair work of psychology alone. But I needed healing. Spiritual. Supernatural. The closure that came with the knowledge that despite my wicked heart, it was finished. And I was loved.

“Thanks for the offer,” I said. “What I really need is to see my mother. Her dog's in the car.”

The glasses glinted.

“Please,” I said. “For her?”

The recreation room on Ward Three was a cavernous space. At one end, a middle-aged woman played at a craft table. But all the other patients were on the other side, filling three couches that faced a large television. On the screen a couple was dancing a rumba. The woman wore a red-sequined dress, sparkling like polished rubies. My mother sat on the first couch. Enraptured by the dance. I held Madame in my arms, waiting.

“Nadine,” said the nurse.

She rose automatically, like somebody answering a ringing telephone. She wore blue slippers. They were soiled around the edges and slid over the floor with a hushing sound, some sad whisper of separation. My throat squeezed closed, so tightly it seemed to strangle me from the inside. Madame's tail thumped against my side. It hurt from last night's kick. But not as much as the ache in my heart.

My mother looked up. Her startle reflex was delayed, thick, far away. “Raleigh?”

The gray stripe in her hair looked even wider. And her porcelain skin seemed like crepe, dehydrated. Medicated. But under the glassy gaze, I saw her. There. Deep down inside. The real Nadine Shaw Harmon. The woman who went to Pentecostal tent revivals wearing toreador pants and stiletto heels. Who sang off-key hymns and shook her hand and made music with her bangled wrists, ever thankful. She was there. Deep inside. The woman who loved me.

I lifted Madame. The words had to be pushed out. “She misses you.”

She opened her arms, holding the dog like an infant. The glassy eyes returned to me. She tilted her head.

“Are you . . . all right?”

My throat was completely closed. No words would come out. I glanced behind her, to the television. Another woman was dancing now. Only she was sashaying in reverse. Her gold lamé dress flying the wrong way around her legs. Somebody was rewinding the tape but the couch sitters watched, thrilled, as if backward was just as good as forward. Why not, I decided. Some things did run backward and forward. Even names.

Roth. Spelled backward:
Thor
.

My mother pet the dog and shifted so she could see the backward dance. When it ended, a commercial came on. Some pharmaceutical ad. But the talking man didn't hold the patients' attention. One by one they stood and wandered over. An assortment of sorrow and psychological distance and childlike wonderment. They formed a line to pet Madame, as if waiting for their meds, and my mother introduced them formally. Using the dog's entire name. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. Years ago she had plucked that name from thin air. Not really understanding its implications, but liking the sound of it. Regal, imperious, fitting the dog. Words meant things to my mother. She was wired for words.