“Ah!” said Polijn, hefting the statue as she turned to look around the big room.
“What you hold there is no more than an amulet,” he went on. “It is exposed to view only when Our Lord’s Horse has died. Each time it has been exposed, a new horse has arrived to take the place of the old.” Polijn nodded and relinquished the statue as Anderal held out his hands. “It is an honor, of course,” she said, “to have brought you Our Lord’s Horse. But now I’d better go. Without Our Lord’s Horse, I’ll have to walk, and there’s need of speed. It is the duke’s horse, and I’d best be gone before he...”
“We—” the abbot coughed to draw her attention, which was on the open stable door “—have a private room, lad, for those who bring us Our Lord’s Horse.”
Polijn looked at him and raised one eyebrow. The abbot went on. “It sometimes takes a while for the former owner to become accustomed to the honor. Horses have come to us by irregular means in the past. It is not our business to question that part of it, but it is also a matter of service to be sure that no harm comes to those who have had the glory of bringing us Our Lord’s Horse.”
Polijn understood. She had only to wait in this secret room until the duke had come and gone. Dirklad and Carasta would be spending the whole night at the crossroads, as befitted their new royal status, and surely they would be taken back to the duke’s for more celebration at dawn. Even the goblin would have to rest after all this, which meant that if she set out at first light, she could get at least a day’s head start.
She looked up at Anderal. “The procession is not far behind me,” she said. “If you could... ouch!”
She rubbed the spot where the horse had nipped her. Anderal chuckled. “No doubt that passes for civility where he comes from. He’s Rossacottan, you see.”
“No doubt,” said Polijn. She returned this show of affection in Rossacottan hand signals the abbot fortunately did not understand, and then followed Anderal out of the stable.
Why the Breadman Died
by Clyde Haywood
Maybe the killer thought that by the time the bread truck went off the road through a guard rail, flipped over a few times to land on its back at the foot of the mountain, and burned, nobody would notice that the driver had a hole in him the size of a .30-.30 bullet. But the truck didn’t burn. Maybe it would have worked that way anyway if somebody less observant or less conscientious had been the first officer on the scene. But Bud Davis got there first, and Bud faithfully accompanied the body down to the little morgue at Gibson County Hospital. There he stayed and watched while Doc Killian started working on it. It was Bud, not Doc, who first saw the oval hole in the breadman’s forehead when Doc washed the poor guy’s shattered face. Then Bud and Doc took Doc’s camera and magnifying glass and some surgical probes and worked out a trajectory establishing that the bullet had come from far above.
Doc tracked the wound down through the breadman’s brain, then his neck, then on down into his torso, where he finally pulled out of a rib a chunk of lead not nearly as mangled as Bud had been afraid it might be. Bud sent the lead down to the state ballistics lab in Raleigh by code three courier. Next, even before he talked to the sheriff, he phoned Roger Dale Fornby to tell him what had happened. Roger Dale had just walked into his office when the call came in. As soon as Bud hung up, Roger Dale called the FBI’s state headquarters down in Charlotte and asked for Jack Maloney.
“Hey, bossman,” Fornby greeted his long-suffering supervisor. “The new chief deputy sheriff in Gibson County just rang up and said there’s been a murder up in the west end of the county.”
“I take it you think this has something to do with you and me,” Maloney answered.
“Well, yeah,” Fornby drawled. “You know how murders are. If we don’t solve it right away, it might be weeks and weeks before we get it sorted out. So I thought I’d get right over there and help them. If you need me, you could get me through the sheriff’s office and their radios and all.”
“Roger Dale,” Maloney told him, “just because an FBI agent has been in a resident agency in a small town for several years, that doesn’t make him part of the local police. The sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer in Gibson County, not you.”
“I know, bossman,” Roger Dale said, “but with the sheriff and the chief deputy both being brand new, they’re going to need some assistance.”
“If I remember correctly,” his supervisor said, “that ‘new’ chief deputy was a regular deputy for three years, and a criminal investigator in the army before that. And didn’t you just last year talk me into getting him one of those local law enforcement courses at the Bureau Academy?”
“Yeah, I did. But, see, this would give us a real good chance to see how well they trained him. And that new sheriff is as green as a weed.”
Maloney resolved to be firm with Fornby this time. “Roger. You spend way too much time on local law enforcement assistance. There is plenty of federal crime for two resident agents, and you’re the only one assigned there right now. Unless this murder happened on federal land or we’ve got some other kind of federal jurisdiction, it’s the sheriff’s case, not yours.”
Roger Dale sighed. “Then I guess we’re out of luck, bossman. Davis says this victim was shot from high above out on Blacksnake Road. There ain’t nothing uphill from that road but the Blue Ridge Parkway and some other National Park land that goes with it. With UNSUB shooting from federal land, it looks like we’ve got federal jurisdiction.”
Maloney fell quiet for several seconds the way he always did while he accepted the fact that Roger Dale was going to do anyway whatever his supervisor didn’t want him to. “We’ll open a file on it,” he said at last. “You’ll keep us posted on what you’re doing?”
“I’ll do her,” Roger agreed.
“Good luck,” the supervisor signed off.
Fornby hurried to the sheriff’s office. On the way he rehearsed several versions of what he would say when he saw the sheriff. That is, he planned how he would offer his help without sounding like the S.O.B. from the FBI who thinks he knows more than the locals, even though he knew that’s exactly what he was.
“Sheriff Taylor,” he began as he hustled into the office where the sheriff and Davis were talking, “I just heard what happened. If the killer was on park land and the victim wasn’t, then both of us could have jurisdiction. I thought maybe it would be more efficient if we both worked on one investigation instead of falling all over each other.”
The sheriff nodded. “And besides, Bud called and asked you to run things because both of you figure you’ve been investigating crime in this county for years and I’m just a politician who happened to be in the right place with the right pull when this office came up vacant in the middle of a term. And anyway, neither one of you men really believes a woman can handle this job, but you think I’ll take bossing better from you than from my own deputy.”
Since Davis worked for her, he was in no position to say much of anything. Fornby thought of a couple of good responses but decided after an embarrassed pause that the truth would probably do better.
“Well, I guess that’s pretty much the facts except for that part about a woman not being able to do the job. What do you say? Can we work it together?” he asked.
The sheriff responded as calmly as before. “Yes, we can.” She placed a decided emphasis on the “we.”
“I mean,” she went on, “we can all investigate it together. I suspect that you were about to suggest that I stay here and pretend to supervise while you and Bud go out and really investigate. I promised the county commissioners when I bullied them into making me interim sheriff that I would learn the criminal side of the job. I mean to do just that. When I’ve learned how it’s done in the field, that will be the time to start supervising. For now, my secretary can cover the phone. You fellows are going to teach me how to investigate.”