The Stars Shine Bright (42 page)

“Highly abrasive, somewhat corrosive, and conducts electricity when wet and won't dissolve in water.”

The monitor screen kicked up a colored bar code. Ready to cooperate with the SEM.

“And the gas?”

“Shreds the magma, shatters the rock, fuels the flow.” I tapped the computer's mouse, feeling an odd tingle in my fingertips. This moment, this threshold to new knowledge, had more adrenaline than the races at Emerald Meadows. Those races ended. These only launched more.

“Name one famous pyroclastic ash flow.”

I watched the screen. Silica appeared first, in high concentrations. “Peter, if this is about the job, I don't want it.”

“Pompeii.”

“Preschoolers can name Pompeii.”

“What about Pelée?”

“Killed thirty thousand people.”

“What year?”

I leaned into the screen. Aluminum had overtaken silica. “Pelée blew in nineteen hundred and one.”

“Nineteen-oh-two,” he corrected. “Gallop ahead seventy-eight years, what do you get?”

Seventy-eight plus two was . . . “Mount St. Helens.” I clicked Print with the mouse. “Why do you want to know about St. Helens?”

“I was curious whether a Southern gal such as yourself knows anything about Northwest geology.”

I looked up. He had removed the posters and now stood at the counter, looking at my soil samples in the Petri dishes.

“Some of that was raked off a barn floor,” I said, “if you're thinking about tasting it.”

All the barn detritus also meant the test would take time. The samples had to be cleaned first. And I didn't have time for that.

I pulled the colored bar graph from the printer. Handler's clay had extremely high concentrations of three elements: aluminum and silica and selenium. The SEM also detected the same trace radioactive elements. Identical. Not luck. Not even probability.

Rosser walked over. “What do you got?”

“Provenance on that gray clay.”

He grinned. “Puts a spur under your saddle, don't it?”

Chapter Forty-Five

O
n my way back from Spokane, I only made it halfway. Taking the exit for downtown Ellensburg, I parked the Ghost on West Third. The afternoon temperature was in the high 80s, and when I carried Madame into the Old Mill, nobody batted eye, not even when I placed her in the shopping cart.

I bought Milk-Bones for her fast-food breath, then picked out a pair of black gardening gloves for me. A set of pruning shears, one spade, and a compact but powerful flashlight. In the clothing department, I found black running shorts and a black T-shirt with gray lettering that said
Rodeo Girl
. Keds, in black, were going for $9.99. The checkout clerk threw in a baseball cap that advertised the store. It was black too.

Down the road, I got a room at the Thunderbird Motel. When I asked for a midnight wakeup call, the clerk looked at me funny. I parked the Ghost directly outside my first-floor room and changed into the shorts, T-shirt, and cheap tennies. Madame and I ran to the campus of Central Washington University where the leafy elms drooped in the late August heat. I made eight laps around the college track while Madame rested under the bleachers in the shade. And I prayed for protection. Both for tonight and for tomorrow morning when I would be sitting in the SAC's office.

Back at the motel, I called for an extra-large pizza and jumped into the shower. I washed the Rodeo Girl T-shirt in the sink with a bar of soap and laid it over the air-conditioning unit, hoping it would dry by midnight. When the pizza arrived, Madame and I sat on the double bed. She wagged her tail through my extended grace, where I added another request: wisdom. Tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Wisdom.

We ate pizza topped with everything but the kitchen sink and watched old cable crime shows. I explained to Madame that none of it resembled real life. But the joke was on me when an actor walked onscreen wearing a seersucker blazer. His Southern accent was soft. I watched his every move. A calm actor. Nothing superfluous. Sensible and kind.

When my cell phone started doo-dahing, I knew it wasn't him. That stuff only happened on television.

“Where are you?” Jack asked.

I gazed around the room. Pizza, shared with a dog. Bad crime TV. Staring at an actor like a jilted teenager.

“Nowhere,” I said. “I'm nowhere.”

“I can always ping that phone's GPS.”

“Go ahead. It'll come up nowhere.”

“What were you doing at the crime lab?”

I gave him the background again on the selenium and trace radioactive elements, the mud poultices that were actually poisoning the horses. “That mud comes from Handler's land. Eleanor's trainer, Bill Cooper, brings it in.”

“You're sure?”

“Sure enough. And Cooper has refused to tell anyone where the mud comes from.” The facts were lining up like dominoes. But I couldn't find the first tile, the original that set the others falling. “Anything on the background checks?”

“I haven't had a chance.”

“What if I told you I found the same clay in the room of Sal Gag's groom? On shoes way too big for her?”

“I'd want you to explain it for me,” he said.

“All roads keep leading back to Handler and his Dark Horse Ranch. All that's missing is why. If the suits haul me in tomorrow, we might never know.”

“You must have some theories,” Jack said.

The TV show had ended. I was trying to catch the credits, to find the name of the actor who resembled DeMott. But I missed it. And the next show was some reality TV spectacle. Emaciated women with pneumatic breasts and too much makeup yelling at each other. They were probably supposed to be beautiful, but they reminded me of crazy men in raincoats, flashing their privates—exhibitionists without conscience or shame. Madame rolled over on her back.

“I can come up with a bunch of theories. Handler knows that soil's poisonous, and he's getting paid to sabotage a barn that competes with Abbondanza. But why would he steal their horse? The horse he sold to Sal Gag. See what I mean?”

He said nothing. I clicked through the channels, pausing on a cooking show with some large cleavers and angry chefs.

“Harmon?”

I kept clicking. What TV needed was more shows with real guns. And people who knew how to fire them. “I'm here.”

“Can I make a suggestion?”

“Just one.”

“You only need one,” he said. “Don't do anything impulsive.”

I glanced at the black shirt hanging over the air conditioner. “What do you mean by ‘impulsive'?”

“Sudden, rash. The stuff Raleigh Harmon does when she's backed into a corner. You want evidence, but—”

“But nothing. OPR will have me sitting at a desk for five years if I can't prove anything.”

“There's an open desk by me.”

“Ever wonder why?”

“Once. But then I realized the problem.”

“Really.”

“Yes. Most people can't handle being that close to somebody this awesome.”

“I hear Freud is taking patients.”

“Listen to me, Harmon. Don't do anything that'll get you in more trouble.”

I stared at the shirt. “I just need to check one thing.”

“Harmon . . .”

“The kidnapper's note said forty-eight hours. That was about thirty hours ago. So instead of lecturing me, Jack, how about running a deeper check on Handler? Or Ashley Trenner?”

The phone crackled with what sounded like a sigh.

“One last thing,” he said. “And if you repeat it during the meeting, I'll deny it. But don't ever change. No matter what they say.”

He hung up, and I stared at the TV screen for several minutes. But my eyes were blind to the images, and when I clicked it off, Madame rolled over again, groaning softly. Satiated with pizza. I turned out the light and pulled the covers up close.

My wake-up call was in three hours.

Chapter Forty-Six

W
e pulled out of the Thunderbird Motel twenty minutes past midnight. The sky held a bright half-moon and a symphony of shimmering stars. I drove south on Interstate 82 and drank coffee while Madame continued sleeping. When the Ghost floated into the small town of Selah, Madame woke up and nudged her nose under my right elbow, climbing into my lap.

I followed the same curving road beside the Yakima River. But this time I turned on Clover Road. A gravel lane, it ran alongside the river opposite Handler's property. When I cut my headlights, the moon flashed on the river, silver as liquid mercury. The car bumped over thirsty tree roots under a stand of elms. When I got out, Madame jumped out too, sniffing the ground and leaving her mark on the gnarled tree roots.

I pulled my hair into a ponytail and tugged on the black baseball cap. My cell phone was on silent ring, but I clicked to the camera feature, then clipped it to the black running shorts. The spade's concave blade fit against the small of my back. I pulled on the gardening gloves and picked up the pruning shears and flashlight. Madame looked like a gray fox in the moonlight. Her ears were pricked for threats.

“Psst.” I clicked the flashlight.

She looked at me.

I pointed at the open car door. “Get in.”

She jumped over the tree roots and disappeared into the dark.

“I'm serious,” I hissed. “Get over here.”

Each time I found her she darted away. I tried to keep the flashlight down, sweeping the beam back and forth, trying to track her. The hair on my neck was prickling. I imagined every threat, from rattlesnakes to night-hunting rednecks. Walking back to the car, I stood by the open door. From the dog's perspective, she had a point. Long drives, hot weather. Confined to a car and a motel room. Now the air had finally cooled, and I was making her stay in the car.

I shut the long white door.

The dog trotted out of the trees.

“Fine.” I pointed the flashlight. Her black eyes were shining with victory. “Don't run off again. I mean it.”

I hid the car key under the bumper and then we jogged down the gravel road. She stayed six inches off my left ankle and I hoped we looked legit: a woman and her dog taking an early-morning run. Very early. But so what. I faced forward and listened to the river murmuring beside us. When we reached the barbed wire fence that the juvenile delinquents had slipped through, I paused, pretending to stretch out my legs. The pooled river water was as gray as the mud on the sandbar. I kneeled by the fence post, waiting. Madame was close enough to touch but kept circling, sniffing the ground. There was a bold green scent like eucalyptus in the air, and the barbed wire's knots reminded me of Handler's piercings. Spikes that served a similar purpose: Keep out. No trespassing. The former foster kid didn't want anyone coming through the window to his soul.

I pulled her close. Even with cotton gloves I could feel her fur raised stiff between her shoulders.

“Good girl.” I set her down on the other side of the barbed wire. “Stay.”

I managed to work my arms and torso through the middle space, but one of the spikes grabbed the back of my shirt. I reached behind, tugging. The cotton ripped.

“Rats.”

I jogged to Handler's property. Madame stayed in front of me. In a half crouch I dragged the flashlight's handle across the ground. Each time I hit something solid, I clicked on the light on. Mostly I found clumps of desert grass and sage. But at the base of the hill I found a dark spot. Wet. I pulled out the spade and dug through the gritty soil, feeling the cool, buried earth. The irrigation tube wasn't difficult to reach. It looked like a fat snake under the flashlight.

Madame leaned over the hole I made, panting.

“Almost done.” I laid the spade against the small of my back, then opened the pruning shears. The jaws bit the tube but the first squeeze didn't cut the plastic. It was durable, strong enough to withstand the temperature fluctuations of the desert. I crimped down again, using both hands, and felt the upper side pop. Water leaked out. I snipped through the bottom half, then opened the jaws again and bit down three inches away from the first cut. Madame growled. I looked up.

The horse looked ethereal, lustrous in the moonlight. It walked around the base of the hill, followed by two more horses. I could hear their hooves striking the rocks. Like the sound of pool balls clicking against each other. Madame gave another growl.

“Hang on.” I squeezed the shears. “I'm almost done.”

The shears bit through the line's top half. I squeezed again. And looked up. The world was painted with chiaroscuro light. All quartz-colored shadows and charcoal lines, the ashen hues of the horse in front. Madame took one step forward. The sheers bit the tube. I grabbed the section from the hole, stuffing it into my waist band. Then I lunged for the dog.