Point of Origin

'He's that way.'

She pointed, without slowing down.

'And while you're at it, Black Lace doesn't seem to be feeling so hot,' she added, and I realized she thought I was a veterinarian.

Marino and I turned a corner to find Dorr on a stool, with a large white mare's right front hoof clamped firmly between his knees. He was bald, with massive shoulders and arms, and wore a leather farrier's apron that looked like baggy chaps. He was sweating profusely and covered with dirt as he yanked nails out of an aluminum shoe.

'Howdy,' he said to us as the horse laid her ears back.

'Good afternoon, Mr Dorr. I'm Dr Scarpetta and this is Captain Pete Marino,' I said. 'Your wife told me I might find you here.'

He glanced up at us.

'Folks just call me Hughey, 'cause that's my name. You a vet?'

'No, no, I'm a medical examiner. Captain Marino and I are involved with the Warrenton case.'

His eyes darkened as he tossed the old shoe to one side. He snatched a curved knife out of a pocket in his apron and began trimming the frog until marbled white hoof showed underneath. An embedded rock kicked out a spark.

'Whoever did that ought to be shot,' he said, grabbing nippers from another pocket and trimming the hoof wall all the way around.

'We're doing everything we can to find out what happened,' Marino let him know.

'My part in it is to identify the woman who died in the fire,' I explained, 'and get a better idea of exactly what happened to her.'

'For starters,' Marino said, 'why that lady was in his house.'

'I heard about that. Strange,' Dorr answered.

Now he was using a rasp as the mare irritably drew her lips back.

'Don't know why anybody should have been in his house,' he said.

'As I understand it, you had just been on his farm several days earlier?' Marino went on, scribbling in a notepad.

'The fire was Saturday night,' Dorr said.

He began cleaning the bottom of the hoof with a wire brush.

'I was there the better part of Thursday. Everything was just business as usual. I shoed eight of his horses and took care of one that had white line disease, where bacteria gets inside the hoof wall. Painted it with formaldehyde - something I guess you know all about,' he said to me.

He lowered the right leg and picked up the left, and the mare jerked a little and swished her tail. Dorr tapped her nose.

'That's to give her something to think about,' he explained to us. 'She's having a bad day. They're nothing more than little children, will test you any way they can. And you think they love you, and all they want is food.'

The mare rolled her eyes and showed her teeth as the farrier yanked out more nails, working with amazing speed that never slowed as he talked.

'Were you ever there when Sparkes had a young woman visiting?' I asked. 'She was tall and very beautiful with long blond hair.'

'Nope. Usually when I showed up, we spent our time with the horses. He'd help out any way he could, was absolutely nuts about them.'

He picked up the hoof knife again.

'All these stories about how much he ran around,' Dorr went on. 'I never saw it. He's always seemed like a kind of lonely guy, which surprised me at first because of who he is.'

'How long have you worked for him?' Marino asked, shifting his position in a way that signaled he was taking charge.

'Going on six years,' Dorr said, grabbing the rasp. 'A couple times a month.'

'When you saw him that Thursday, did he mention anything to you about going out of the country?'

'Oh sure. That's why I came when I did. He was leaving the next day for London, and since his ranch hand had quit, Sparkes had no one else to be there when I came around.'

'It appears that the victim was driving an old blue Mercedes. Did you ever see a car like that on his ranch?'

Dorr pushed himself back on his low wooden stool, scooting the shoeing box with him. He picked up a hind leg.

'I don't remember ever seeing a car like that.'

He tossed aside another horseshoe.

'But nope. Can't say I remember the one you just described. Now whoa.'

He steadied the horse by placing his hand on her rump.

'She's got bad feet,' he let us know.

'What's her name?' I asked.

'Molly Brown.'

'You don't sound as if you're from around here,' I said.

'Born and raised in South Florida.'

'So was I. Miami,' I said.

'Now that's so far south it's South America.'

12

A BEAGLE HAD trotted in and was snuffling around the hay-strewn floor, going after hoof shavings. Molly Brown daintily perched her other hind leg on the hoof stand as if about to be treated to a manicure in a salon.

'Hughey,' I said, 'there are circumstances about this fire that raise many, many questions. There's a body, yet no one was supposed to have been inside Sparkes's house. The woman who died is my responsibility, and I want to do absolutely everything I can to find out why she was there and why she didn't get out when the fire started. You may have been the last person to visit the farm before the fire, and I'm asking you to search your memory and see if there's anything - absolutely anything - that might have struck you as unusual that day.'

'Right,' Marino said. 'For example, did it appear that Sparkes might have been having a private, personal conversation on the phone? You get any idea that he might have been expecting company? You ever heard him mention the name Claire Rawley?'

Dorr got up and patted the mare on her rump again, while my instincts kept me far out of the reach of her powerful hind legs. The beagle bayed at me as if suddenly I were a complete stranger.

'Come here, little fella.'

I bent down and held out my hand.

'Dr Scarpetta, I can tell you trust Molly Brown, and she can tell. As for you' - he nodded at Marino - 'you're scared of 'em, and they can sense that. Just letting you know.'

Dorr walked off, and we followed him. Marino clung to the wall as he walked behind a horse that was at least fourteen hands high. The farrier went around a corner to where his truck was parked. It was a red pickup, customized with a forge in back that burned propane gas. He turned a knob and a blue flame popped up.

'Since her feet aren't so great, I have to draw clips on shoes to make them fit. Kind of like orthotics for humans,' he commented, gripping an aluminum shoe in tongs and holding it in the fire.

'I give it a count of fifty unless the forge's warmed up,' he went on as I smelled heating metal. 'Otherwise I go to thirty. There's no color change in aluminum, so I just warm it a bit to make it malleable.'

He carried the shoe to the anvil and punched holes. He fashioned clips and hammered them flat. To take off sharp edges he used a grinder, which sounded like a loud Stryker saw. Dorr seemed to be using his trade to stall us, to buy himself time to ponder or perhaps work his way around what we wanted to know. I had no doubt that he was fiercely loyal to Kenneth Sparkes.

'At the very least,' I said to him, 'this lady's family has a right to know. I need to notify them about her death, and I can't do that until I am certain who she is. And they're going to ask me what happened to her. I need to know that.'

But he had nothing to say, and we followed him back to Molly Brown. She had defecated and stepped in it, and he irritably swept manure away with a worn-out broom while the beagle wandered around.

'You know, the horse's biggest defense is flight,' Dorr finally spoke again as he secured a front leg between his knees. 'All he wants is to get away, no matter how much you think he loves you.'

He drove nails through the shoe, bending points down as they went through the outside wall of the hoof.

'People aren't all that different, if you corner them,' he added.

'I hope I'm not making you feel cornered,' I said as I kneaded the beagle behind his ears.

Dorr bent the sharp ends of the nails over with a clincher and rasped them smooth, once again taking his time to answer me.