"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."