Point of Origin

'Whoa,' he said to Molly Brown, and the smell of metal and manure was heavy on the air. 'Point is,' he went on as he tapped the rounding hammer, 'you two walking in here and thinking I'll trust you just like that is no different than your thinking you could shoe this horse.'

'I don't blame you for feeling like that,' I said.

'No way I could shoe that horse,' Marino said. 'No way I'd want to, either.'

'They can pick you up by the teeth and throw you. They paw, cow kick, slap their tail in your eyes. It better'd be plain as day who's in charge, or you're in for a world of trouble.'

Dorr straightened up, rubbing his lower back. He returned to his forge to fire another shoe.

'Look, Hughey,' Marino said as we followed. 'I'm asking you to help because I think you want to. You cared about those horses. You gotta care that someone's dead.'

The farrier dug in a compartment on the side of his truck. He pulled out a new shoe and grabbed it with tongs.

'All I can do is give you my private theory.'

He held the shoe in the forge's flame.

'I'm all ears,' Marino said.

'I think it was a professional hit and that the woman was part of it but for some reason didn't get out.'

'So you're saying she was an arsonist.'

'Maybe one of them. But she got the short end of the stick.'

'What makes you think that?' I asked.

Dorr clamped the warm shoe into a foot vice.

'You know, Mr Sparkes's lifestyle pisses off a lot of people, especially your Nazi types,' he answered.

'I'm still not clear why you think the woman had anything to do with it,' Marino said.

Dorr paused to stretch his back. He rotated his head and his neck cracked.

'Maybe whoever did it didn't know he was leaving town. They needed a girl to get him to open his door - maybe even a girl he had a past with.'

Marino and I let him talk.

'He's not the kind of guy to turn someone he knew away from his door. In fact, in my opinion he's always been too laid back and nice for his own damn good.'

The grinding and hammering punctuated the farrier's anger, and the shoe seemed to hiss a soft warning as Dorr dipped it in a bucket of water. He said nothing to us as he returned to Molly Brown, seating himself on the stool again. He began trying on the new shoe, rasping away an edge and pulling out the hammer. The mare was fidgety, but mostly she seemed bored.

'I may as well tell you another thing that in my mind fits with my theory,' he said as he worked. 'While I was on his farm that Thursday, this same damn helicopter kept flying overhead. It's not like they do crop dusting around there, so Mr Sparkes and I couldn't figure if it was lost or having a problem and looking for a place to land. It buzzed around for maybe fifteen minutes and then took off to the north.'

'What color was it?' I asked as I recalled the one that had circled the fire scene when I was there.

'White. Looked like a white dragonfly.'

'Like a little piston-engine chopper?' Marino asked.

'I don't know much about whirlybirds, but yup, it was small. A two-seater, my guess is, with no number painted on it. Kind of makes you wonder, now, doesn't it? Like maybe somebody doing a little surveillance from the air?'

The beagle's eyes were half shut and his head was on my shoe.

'And you've never seen that helicopter around his farm before?' Marino asked, and I could tell he remembered the white helicopter, too, but didn't want to seem especially interested.

'No sir. Warrenton's not a fan of helicopters. They spook the horses.'

'There's an air park, flying circus, a bunch of private air strips in the area,' Marino added.

Dorr got up again.

'I've put two and two together for you the best I can,' he said.

He grabbed a bandanna out of a back pocket and mopped his face.

'I've told you all I know. Damn. I'm sore all over.'

'One last thing,' Marino said. 'Sparkes is an important, busy man. He must've used helicopters now and then. To get to the airport, for example, since his farm was sort of out in the middle of nowhere.'

'Sure, they've landed on his farm,' Dorr said.

He gave Marino a lingering look that was filled with suspicion.

'Anything like the white one you saw?' Marino then asked.

'I already told you I've never seen it before.'

Dorr stared at us while Molly Brown jerked against her halter and bared long stained teeth.

'And I'll tell you another thing,' Dorr said. 'If you're out to railroad Mr Sparkes, don't bother poking your nose around me again.'

'We're not out to railroad anyone,' Marino said, and he was getting defiant, too. 'Just looking for the truth. Like they say, it speaks for itself.'

'That would be nice for a change,' Dorr said.

I drove home deeply troubled as I tried to sort through what I knew and what had been said. Marino had few comments, and the closer we got to Richmond, the darker his mood. As we pulled into his driveway, his pager beeped.

'The helicopter ain't fitting with nothing,' he said as I parked behind his truck. 'And maybe it has nothing to do with nothing.'

There was always that possibility.

'Now what the hell is this?'

He held up his pager and read the display.

'Shit. Looks like something's up. Maybe you better come in.'

It was not often that I was inside Marino's house, and it seemed that the last time was during the holidays when I had stopped by with home-baked bread and a container of my special stew. Of course, his outlandish decorations had been up then, and even the inside of his house was strung with lights and crowded with an overburdened tree. I remembered an electric train whirring in circles along its tracks, going around and around a Christmas town dusted with snow. Marino had made eggnog with one hundred proof Virginia Lightning moonshine, and quite frankly, I should not have driven home.

Now his home seemed dim and bare, with its shag-carpeted living room centered by his favorite reclining chair. It was true the mantle over his fireplace was lined with various bowling trophies he had won over the years, and yes, the big-screen television was his nicest piece of furniture. I accompanied him to the kitchen and scanned the greasy stovetop and overflowing garbage can and sink. I turned on hot water and ran it through a sponge, then I began wiping up what I could while he dialed the phone.

'You don't need to do that,' he whispered to me.

'Someone has to.'

'Yo,' he said into the receiver. 'Marino here. What's up?'

He listened for a long, tense time, his brow furrowed and his face turning a deeper red. I started on the dishes, and there were plenty of them.

'So how closely do they check?' Marino asked. 'No, I mean, do they make sure someone's in their seat? Oh, they do? And we know they did it this time? Yeah, right. No one remembers. The whole friggin' world's full of people who don't remember shit. That and they didn't see a thing, right?'

I rinsed glasses carefully and set them on a towel to drain.

'I agree the luggage thing raises a question,' he went on.

I used the last of Marino's dishwashing liquid and had to resort to a dried-out bar of soap I found under the sink.

'While you're at it,' he was saying, 'how 'bout seeing what you can find out about a white helicopter that was flying around Sparkes's farm.' He paused, then said, 'Maybe before, and definitely after because I saw it with my own two eyes when we were at the scene.'

Marino listened some more as I started on the silverware, and to my amazement he said, 'Before I hang up, you want to say hi to your aunt?'

My hands went still as I stared at him.

'Here.'

He handed me the phone.

'Aunt Kay?'

Lucy sounded as surprised as I was.

'What are you doing in Marino's house?' she asked.

'Cleaning.'

'What?'

'Is everything all right?' I asked her.

'Marino will fill you in. I'll check out the white bird. It had to get fuel from somewhere. Maybe filed a flight plan with FSS in Leesburg, but somehow I doubt it. Gotta go.'