Full Mortality (8 page)
Had there been a noise, or only a sharp echo from a fading dream? My eyes cracked open, slid to the clock. Three-forty
A.M.
Too early to rise, but I could tell my brain was in full gear and on some level, disturbed. Memories of my last visit to Gilded Cage poured into my head. Finding an athlete with so much ability and heart, dead at the hands of a human. Though not my horse, her death had instilled me with a sense of guilt. Maybe I’d just go early and check on Hellish.
An odd connection to Hellish had driven me to rescue her from slaughter. Now her welfare lay in my hands. Though way too early to head for the track, some unknown fear for Hellish pushed me from my bed and into my riding clothes.
Outside the chill of a changing season tightened the air, bringing on a shiver. I buttoned my jean jacket, realizing Labor Day had come and gone, taking the August heat with it. The parking lot pavement glistened with dew. Drops of condensation clouded the Toyota windshield. l hit the wiper button, water sluicing left and right.
Ten minutes later I drove into the backstretch and slowed down to say good morning to Thelma, the security woman who stepped out of the guard house at the stable gate.
“Nikki, you’re here early,” she said.
“Couldn’t sleep. Wanted to check on a new horse, maybe organize Ravinsky’s tack room.”
“You go, girl.” She grinned at me, teeth white against her brown face. “And when you’re done you can go on over to my house and organize there.”
Waving, I drove into the dark, anxiety hurrying me to Ravinsky’s barn. Devoid of the bustling activity that would gear up in an hour, the grounds were silent and deserted as I left the Toyota on the dirt apron. To the west, dim clouds riding the horizon shifted to gun-metal gray. In the barn, I flipped the light switch outside Hellish’s stall. She was fine. What had spooked me so?
The warm, soothing scent of horses filled the building, and down the long shedrow glossy heads contentedly tugged bites of hay from rope nets that hung outside each stall. The speckled Bantam rooster who ruled the stable flew down from his roost in the rafters and scratched in the dirt for grain. Two hens, still perched above, craned their necks, beady eyes watching to see if he got lucky.
Hellish had about emptied her hay net, so I walked to the end of the barn and around to the opposite side, heading for the room where Jim stored hay. This side of the building faced Bill Burke’s barn. The darkness hid details, but Burke always kept a neat shedrow, his red buckets and feed tubs clean, his aisle way raked clean and smooth.
Since meeting the widow LeGrange and Clay in the Jockey Club, I’d noticed a number of race entries Burke had made for her. I still hadn’t seen her sparkly diamonds around, but she had four or five horses over there and a couple of ’em were pretty good. Did Janet still cling to Clay’s flattering ways? Did he deliver more than just compliments?
An odd popping noise sounded from Burke’s barn, and my body stilled, the only things moving, my heart and the hairs on the back of my neck. My eyes and ears strained, and I thought I heard the sound of a sliding barn door, though the one opposite me remained motionless. I heard several anxious whinnies and a commotion of hooves. Sounded like horses over there were whirling about in their stalls.
My frozen stance broke. I ran across the pavement between the barns, tripping over a coiled hose, before falling against the sliding door with a loud crash. I rubbed a smarting elbow, then hauled the door open and stood listening, but only heard the sounds of nervous animals. The horses halfway down the shedrow appeared the most disturbed. The harsh crack as an animal kicked the wall almost stopped my heart. I darted down the aisle, pausing outside a stall where a horse stood bug-eyed. Two doors down an animal spun, then snorted. But the space between them was quiet.
A dark premonition washed over me. My fingers stiff, and awkward, searched the wood wall between doors for a metal connector box. I hit a switch and light flickered on, while my hands fumbled with the stall latch. I swung the door open and stepped inside. A bay horse lay lifeless in the middle of the stall, lit by a single, naked ceiling bulb.
Sinking to my knees, my fingers reached for his head. An eye devoid of expression stared at the ceiling. I pressed my hand against his neck where the head joined. The skin was almost cold.
Oh God, not again
.
My eyes focused on another object behind the horse. A man sat on the floor, leaning against the back wall. My breath sucked in.
“Are you okay?” I stood, shaky legs carrying me forward. Recognition prickled me. “Dennis?”
He couldn’t answer. A small hole darkened Dennis’s forehead, a trickle of blood dripped down his face and leaked onto his blue denim shirt. On the wood boards above his head, a thick smear of red, as if he’d slid down the wall and left a trail behind. His eyes were wide but unseeing.
Heat welled up in me, yet I felt clammy. Then the blood smell reached me, and I stumbled sideways and threw up in the straw. Agitation spurred me to leave, to get out. Something whitish in the straw next to Dennis caught my peripheral vision. I tried to observe, and not see Dennis. A plastic syringe, like the ones I’d used that morning. I moved toward it, then got smart. I wasn’t going to touch anything, didn’t need my prints on any of this. I whirled to escape and shrieked.
A man stood outside the stall. He spoke, his voice sharp and authoritative. “Stay where you are, Latrelle.” Fred Rockston, the security guard who’d been around the night Gildy died, who’d been with Beamfelter when he’d questioned me in Jim’s office. Now he’d found me with something way worse than another dead horse — he’d found me with a corpse.
He told me to stand against the wall, not to move. He sidestepped the horse, took a good look at Dennis, and his face paled. I feared he’d lose his cookies, too, but he was made of tougher stuff than me. He pulled out his radio, called in to the security office, told them to get somebody over here, call an ambulance, call the Anne Arundel County cops. He took me out, told me to sit on a nearby bale of hay and stay put. He paced, I waited, then the parade started. Track security guards came pounding down the shedrow, sirens wailed, blue lights flashed, and beat cops arrived, their radios squawking and hissing. More revolving lights reflected on the walls as an ambulance pulled up outside.
Queasy and fighting a growing headache, I dropped my head in my hands. My fight with Dennis at Shepherds Town. Who knew about that? Oh, Christ, who didn’t? Had Dennis killed the horse, or had he surprised the killer and paid with his life? No, he wouldn’t be in this barn unless here to do the horse. He’d never think twice about killing a horse for money. Who’d shot Dennis?
Hard fingers gripped my shoulder. A tall, thick-necked black man in a gray suit removed his hand, straightened up and flashed a badge.
“Are you Ms. Latrelle?” His voice was rich and deep.
When I nodded, he said he was with Anne Arundel homicide. His face, as he stared at me, wore a jaded expression, like I was just another bad incident on a long warped road. No one had ever looked at me like this before, and I started to get scared. He said his name was Trent Curtis and introduced the shorter blond guy who stood behind him as Charlie Wells. Wells wore small rimless glasses, a drab blue suit, and a tie with tiny guns and handcuffs printed on it. His expression suggested he might still believe in innocence, and laugh lines cradled his mouth.
“Miss Latrelle?” Curtis asked.
“Yes.”
“We need you to come into the Anne Arundel CID. We’d like to ask you some questions”
“What’s a CID?” I asked.
“Criminal Investigation Division,” Wells said.
I had nothing to hide and said I’d go.
A small commotion down the shedrow drew our attention. Bill Burke’s foreman with a beat cop, probably arguing that he had to start the morning training, take care of his horses. Then I saw Lorna Doone edge past them and come hurriedly in my direction. A cop stopped her before she reached me. My gaze skidded to the blond-haired detective, Wells. “Please, she’s my friend, can I talk to her?”
He considered my request, then said, “She can stand here.” He indicated a spot to his side. “You can talk. Make it brief.”
Lorna got as close as she dared, her eyes cutting from the cop to me and back again. “Dudarina, you all right?”
“Yeah. But I’m going to have to go with these detectives.”
“Why?” Her voice held a strained quality, but she threw the detectives a defiant glare. “You didn’t do anything, right?”
“Of course not. I said I’d answer their questions.” Lorna’s expression suggested she’d sidestepped into a scary mental place, but then I wasn’t doing so well myself. “Listen to me Lorna, I need you to tell Jim what’s going on, and ask Ramon to feed Hellish. Okay?”
Lorna snapped to attention. “Like, consider it done.” She paused, shooting a worried glance at the two detectives. “Where are you taking her?”
“Crownsville CID,” Wells said, eying Lorna’s blue Pegasus tattoo.
“So, can I pick her up later?” Lorna put the question to Wells. Apparently neither of us wanted to deal with the cynical-eyed Curtis.
“It’s up to you, Ms. Latrelle.” When I nodded, he said, “You need directions?”
Lorna sighed. ”I know where it is.”
She did?
“You hang tough, Nikki,” Lorna said. “I’ll call, see when I can pick you up.” With that she turned and sped away like she couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Curtis and Wells closed in around me, and I lurched to my feet.
Curtis stepped a little closer, his eyes unreadable. “Would you remove your jacket? I’ll carry it for you. We’re going to take you now.”
Wordlessly, I took off my coat and placed it in Wells’s outstretched hand. A beat cop stepped into the stall that crawled with crime-scene technicians and came out with a bag. My jacket disappeared inside, and the detectives ushered me into the back seat of an unmarked Crown Victoria. The engine turned over, and we drove away from Burke’s barn.
Outside the cruiser’s windows the familiar and normal world slipped away from me.
The detectives stayed quiet. Curtis drove, his wide gold wedding band glinting at me from his left hand on the steering wheel. The hair on the back if his head was trimmed neat and close. Wells had a bald spot beginning to show. Focusing on these little details kept me from shrieking and wrestling with the door handles. They hadn’t put me in handcuffs, but they’d probably locked the doors.
The roads we traveled grew more narrow and closed in with gloomy trees. Why hadn’t we just gone somewhere in Laurel? Where was Crownsville, anyway?
“Excuse me,” I said. “Is it much farther?”
“Right up there,” Wells said, pointing to the right.
We turned onto a narrow paved road. A selection of winding, circuitous lanes led to various brick buildings that looked like a campus, or perhaps an institution built early in the 1900s. We passed a building with a sign that read “Second Genesis.” I knew what that was, a drug rehab with a tough reputation. We pulled into the lot of the brick building next door. A portico crowned the front entrance. Thin white columns supported its roof. The detectives got me out of the car, past the columns and up to an ugly gray metal door with a sign that said, “Ring intercom after 4:00
P. M.
” Inside, a pleasant lady who looked like someone’s mom sat behind a bulletproof shield like a bank teller. Some reception. We passed her and came to another locked door, where Curtis used a keycard to gain entrance.
I guess I’d expected a crowded bullpen, ringing phones, desks heaped with files and littered with empty pizza boxes and discarded coffee cups. Instead, the area was spacious, neat and quiet, with pastel mint walls and soft, mottled-green carpeting. Probably trying to keep us criminals calm. I was looking around when we made a right turn, and found myself in a small room with two chairs and a table. Wells closed the door and left me in there with Curtis. Adrenalin surged through me, making my heart pound. A little late for the flight-or-fight reaction.
Wells came back with some cans of Coke, and they remained polite as they had me walk through everything that happened that morning.
“Tell us about your relationship with Dennis O’Brien.” Curtis set down his Coke can. His big fingers had left impressions on the red-and-silver design.
I told them about the Shepherds Town altercation. If they didn’t already know, they’d find out. I told them about the Dark Mountain horses, about seeing Dennis with Clements, and I mentioned Jack Farino. Their interest level in my different bits of information was impossible to gauge. They had the cop-face down pretty good.
“There were a lot of people who didn’t like Dennis,” I said. “Probably people who had more than one run-in. A guy at Shepherds Town, Will Marshall, mentioned Dennis was already in some kind of trouble. Marhall’s a jockey. You could ask him.”
Curtis’s gaze remained impassive. Wells let me have a raised brow and wrote down Marshall’s name in his notebook.
After an hour or so their questions wound down. Wells said he’d called an evidence tech from the state crime lab to do some testing. Unlike the questioning, the testing didn’t appear to be optional.
“Such as what?”
“Fingerprints, gunshot residue,” Curtis answered before he abruptly followed Wells out of the room and closed the door on me.
I had nothing to worry about, right? I hadn’t touched anything, never even saw the gun. They’d left me in their interrogation room with a can of Coke and a little one-way mirror in the wall over my head. I thought about making faces at it but decided that was probably a bad idea.
A while later the technician arrived. He had a kit with him and pulled out some paper stubs that had sticky backs like you’d see on postage stamps or labels. He peeled off the slick cover and pressed the sticky part on my left palm. Another stub went for the back, then two more snooped along the sides of my hand. He finished up the right hand, then took my fingerprints.
“You know,” I said, “everybody with any kind of license at the racetrack already has their fingerprints on file with the Maryland Racing Commission.”
“We like to be thorough,” he said, giving me a hard look.
“Right.”
He left, I waited a while, then Wells brought in a document with my earlier words typed onto the paper. I read the statement carefully, signed it,and Wells said I could go.
“Your girlfriend, Miss Doone? She called, she’s on her way.”
Wells took me through the locked corridor,and suddenly I was set loose outside the gray metal door. I took a breath and sagged, realizing I’d been running on nerves and fear.
I looked around the grounds. The scattered group of buildings had a weird, disjointed feeling about them. Odd that Lorna knew the location of the county’s Criminal Investigation Division. Maybe she’d lost someone in her family to violence or she had a brother who’d gone wrong. The CID and Second Genesis crowned a tall hill. Another brick building with a flat roof and darker bricks lay behind them, down the slope. Its sign read “Mary E. Moss Academy.” What kind of an academy sits behind a drug-rehab center and a CID? I was doing it again, focusing on small questions instead of looking at the big ones, like who’d killed O’Brien and what was going to happen to me?
I heard a car engine and spied Lorna’s battered red Jetta laboring up the hill. She waved at me and stopped the car at the curb next to me.
Cranking her window down, she said, “Nikki, dude, hop in. Let’s blast you outta here. This place creeps me out.”
My sentiments exactly. I climbed in, and the Jetta started rolling before I’d shut the door. Lorna was wearing a purple-and-orange tie-dyed T-shirt under a leather jacket. She’d added a purple streak to her red hair since I last saw her, and her face wore a defiant expression.
“Dudarina, how’d it go? They don’t think you snuffed Dennis, do they?”
“It went okay. I don’t know what they think.” She didn’t need to know the sorry details. Lorna might be a good buddy, but she’d probably find it irresistible to repeat everything I said to anyone who’d listen. I was under a dark cloud and needed to be careful.
“Everybody’s like, wow, they’ve arrested Nikki.”
“I have not been arrested.” Fear made my voice spark with anger.
“Hey, like, chill out.” She raised a placating hand. “Listen, I know evil, and you ain’t it. I told everyone no way you did anything like that.”
We both took in a little air and stayed quiet for a moment, while the hillside with its brick buildings faded into the distance.
“Thanks for picking me up, Lorna.” I threw her a smile that felt lame. “How’d you know where the CID is anyway?”
“Oh, that whole place is like my, what do you call it, alma mother.”
“Mater, alma mater,” I corrected.
“Whatever. What I’m saying is, I went to school there.”
What, for classes in crime? “What school, Lorna?”
Lorna didn’t reply as we drove on a road called Generals Highway. She appeared to be concentrating on her driving. The Jetta sped downhill to a stoplight and there before us loomed the Annapolis Mall.
“Listen,” Lorna said. “I’m starving. What say we get a pizza? They sell beer, too. Buy me a beer, and I’ll tell you about my alma whatever.”
The thought of pizza made me almost dizzy with hunger. The dash clock read almost noon, and as much as I wanted to get back to Laurel and Hellish, I wanted to run away. Time out with food and beverage felt like a reprieve, even if only temporary.
We found the restaurant close to the Annapolis Nordstrom’s and slid into a booth that was butted up against plate glass, overlooking the mall corridor. Had it only been five days since I’d shopped with Carla? She’d left a message on my phone asking how my night with Clay turned out. I needed to call her. And tell her what? That I was being questioned regarding a murder?
“Like, earth to Nikki.”
I focused on Lorna and realized a waitress had appeared. They both stared at me. Lorna was waving her hand slowly before my face.
“Right.” Acting normal seemed problematic, but I gave it my best shot. “Can I have a large coffee and a double shot of Bailey’s Irish?”
“Sure,” the waitress answered, perky and smiling. Probably figuring a big tip might follow the double Bailey’s. Lorna ordered us a specialty pizza and a beer for herself.
The restaurant’s noisy crowd competed with the pop music pouring from overhead speakers. A brigade of young mothers wielding double and triple baby strollers rolled into the restaurant choking the aisle ways. Several of their offspring did their best to pierce my eardrums with those high-pitched shrieks they like to practice. Teenaged girls wearing incredibly low slung jeans and skimpy tops tried not to look self-conscious and failed. Men in business suits concentrated fiercely on their food, and frumpy women shoppers in sweats and comfortable shoes pointedly ignored a table of thin females in killer makeup and salon hair.
No one openly stared at Lorna’s purple hair, body piercing, or blue tattoo. “So Lorna, you want to tell me about going to school at the CID?”
Lorna shrugged. “I got in some trouble in elementary school, lifted some stuff at a store. Used to get in fights with girls in my class. I was what they called a ‘troubled teen.’ They sent me to the Mary E. Moss Academy. It was that building down the hill, behind the CID?”
I nodded at Lorna. “Those buildings did look like an old campus.”
“Used to be an insane asylum.”
Nice. “So how was Mary Moss?”
“Grades nine through twelve. There were about 50 of us. We used to say anybody badder ’n us was behind bars. I met some rough dudes in that place, turned me on to crack cocaine, so I ended up graduating into Second Genesis.”
My surprise must have shown on my face. I thought I’d had it bad.
Lorna put up that placating hand again. “Hey, Nikki, it’s cool. Second Genesis was a bitch, but it straightened me out, helped me get the job at Laurel when I said horses were all I’d ever wanted. The track was pretty cool, except that Offenbach guy, works for the racing commission. He’s a mean dude.”
“The commission cop?” I’d heard he was like a Gestapo agent.
“Yeah, him.”
Would he be on
my
case?
“So,” Lorna said, studying a blue horsehead ring on her right hand, “they gave me this provisional license, found a trainer who was willing to take me on. Tested me for drugs. A lot. If I hadn’t come up clean, Offenbach would’ve busted me, had the stewards rule me off. I’ve been clean for three years.” She sounded proud.
The waitress appeared with Lorna’s beer and my drink. Should she be having a beer? I figured she knew what she was doing. I grabbed the tall glass cup filled with coffee, slugged it with Bailey’s and took a long swallow. Caffeine, sugar, and whiskey coursed into my system. No wonder people became addicted.
Lorna suddenly appeared dubious. “So are you gonna, like . . . not associate with me anymore?”
“Lorna, I was a runaway, used to steal food. I just never got caught.”
“Awesome.”
Our pizza came, its thin caramelized crust spread with warm goat cheese, field greens and grilled chicken. Large flakes of Parmesan decorated the top. Neither of us said anything for a while.
When our plates were empty, I felt more like myself, less like an escaped convict. Curious about Lorna’s name, I said, “So are you named after a Nabisco cookie?”
Lorna pushed her plate aside, put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “My Mom read some book about this princess. Think it was a romance with Scottish knights and stuff. Since she’d married a Doone, she couldn’t help herself. Named me Lorna, after the princess.”
I wondered if Nabisco would introduce the companion cookie, a chocolate shortbread, call it Scottish Knights? Where was my head? “Right,” I said. “But I think Lorna Doone was actually a character from an English romance, set in the 17th century.”
Lorna took a swallow of beer and gave me a suspicious look. “How do you do you know all this stuff? You have a pretty fancy education for a runaway. In fact, sometimes you sound like these girls at Mary Moss, tossed out of those la-di-da private schools.”
I told her about my stint at Miss Potter’s School for girls. How I’d been exposed to Muffies and Bitsies with their affectations and polished voices.
“They had summer reading lists,” I explained. “I think one girl felt sorry for me. She gave me her books that first summer. When I read them all, she gave me more.”
“So Lorna Doone was on her list?”
“Yeah. I love books. They’re a wonderful escape, a way to turn off the bad times.”
Lorna drained her beer. “There’s a bookstore down the hall. You might want to buy some books.”