Full Cry

CHAPTER 8

“Those High Holy Days take it right out of me.” Sister leaned over the counter at her equine vet’s office. “Wish you’d come on out sometime.”

The assistant, Val, a trail rider, shook her head. “You all are crazy.”

“It helps.” She rolled her fingertips on top of the counter—one, two, three, four—a habit of hers when she was trying to set something in her mind. “If the weather holds, how about if I bring that mare down next Wednesday?”

Val checked the computer screen. “That’s fine. I’ll tell Anne.”

Anne Bonda, the vet, had a flourishing practice, although her clinic was located a little out of the way in Monroe, Virginia.

Sister had delivered many a foal in her time, but Anne had delivered thousands. If something were to go wrong, having the vet attending was far preferable to calling in the middle of a snowy night and asking for help. Yes, it might add a thousand dollars to the vet bill, but a healthy baby was worth it.

Sister bred for stamina, bone, and brain. She pored over thoroughbred pedigrees, studied stallions and their get. She needed the old, staying blood, blood now woefully out of fashion.

Rally, this particular mare, carried Stage Door Johnnie blood, blood for the long haul, and she’d been bred to an extremely beautiful son of Polish Navy, called Prussian Blue, standing in Maryland.

This year she’d bred three mares. Secretary’s Shorthand didn’t catch, a bitter disappointment since she was an old granddaughter of Secretariat. When an ultrasound was done on Shorthand, an embryo couldn’t be observed. Curtains Up, Sister’s other mare, was bred to an interesting, tough horse named Arroamanches. She took. You just never knew with mares.

Driving home, she noticed a line of Princess trees bordering a pasture. The dried fruits hung on the tree along with spring’s fat buds. The force of life may be sleeping, but is ever present. Four months from now, on some warm April day, huge clusters of lavender flowers would cover the tree, bringing a smile to all who beheld such beauty.

Thanks to traffic on Route 29, a highway she hated, she arrived at the Augusta Cooperative an hour later.

She pushed open the glass doors and called to Georgia at the cash register, “Forgot birdseed last week.”

“You just wanted an excuse to see me,” Georgia drolly replied.

“There’s truth to that. This is Gossip Central.”

“We have hot competition in the country club and Roger’s Corner,” Georgia fired back.

“Different kind of gossip,” Sister replied.

Georgia wrinkled her nose. “Not as wild.”

“All those Episcopalians.” She hoisted a twenty-fivepound bag of birdseed on the counter. “I say that being one.”

“You’re the exception that proves the rule.” Georgia, whose lipstick snuck up into the cracks of her upper lip, winked.

“An exceptional exception.” Sheriff Ben Sidell emerged from an aisle. He pushed a big wire cart, filled with a plumbing snake, bags of dog and cat food, a fifty-pound salt block, plus other items tucked between and behind the big ones.

“I didn’t recognize you there for a minute without your uniform and out of your riding clothes,” Sister said.

“Did you notice me with the Hilltoppers yesterday?”

“I did, and I’m so glad you’re sticking to your riding lessons.”

He leaned over the handle of the cart. “I had no idea there was so much to foxhunting. People see riders in their scarlet coats, ‘What a bunch of snobs,’ they think. Not like that at all. I’m trying to hang on my horse, my wonderful Nonni, but every now and then, I’ll notice something, like when the temperature changes, everything changes with it.”

“You’re observant. Professional training,” Sister complimented him. “Strange things happen. For instance, the prevailing wisdom is that only gray foxes climb trees, and yet I have seen a red do it. That isn’t supposed to happen.” She played with the signet ring on her little finger. “Fortunately, for us, foxes don’t read books about how they’re supposed to behave.”

Ben smirked. “Be better off if people threw the books out as well. Everyone spouts watered-down psychology, another form of excusing bad behavior. Every criminal was abused. Well, I’d better stop before I—”

“Don’t. I’m interested. You know more about this than we do. I’ve always thought that some people were born bad. We can’t rehabilitate them.” Georgia looked at him.

Ben ran a hand through his close-cropped black hair. “There is not one doubt in my mind that there is such a thing as a criminal mind. Some people are born psychopaths, sociopaths, or just plain liars. Men born with an extra Y chromosome usually wind up in prison, usually can’t control their violent impulses.”

“Ben,” Sister’s deep, pleasing voice contained a hopeful note, “surely some men in prison really are there because of circumstances, something as mundane as falling in with the wrong crowd as a kid.”

Turning his brown eyes to look into hers, she was startled for a moment at their clarity and depth. “There are. Things happen. People can be in the wrong place at the wrong time or make a stupid decision, but I’m ready to go to bat and say that ninety percent of the men in prison are either of low normal intelligence or truly criminal. You can’t fix them. Can’t fix a child molester.”

“I got a fix for them.” Georgia pushed her eyeglasses on top of her abundant, colored hair.

“Yeah, well, I’m with you, Georgia,” Ben said, “but the laws don’t allow that.”

“What about rapists?” Sister was curious since she had so little contact with or knowledge about criminals or the prison system.

“Much more difficult.” Ben moved his cart back so another customer could pass. “There is an awful lot of debate in law enforcement concerning when rape becomes rape.”

“If she says no, it’s rape.” This seemed perfectly clear to Georgia.

Sister nodded. “But men are raised to believe that when a woman says maybe, it means yes, and when she says no, she means maybe. Whether we like it or not, there are an awful lot of women out there who use sex as a weapon. Sooner or later, some of them pay for that.”

“Yes, but it’s often the wrong woman.” Georgia nailed that one.

“This culture is still so dishonest and foolish about sex,” mused Sister. “I’m surprised we don’t have more damage than we do in the form of rapes and murders. It’s twisted.”

Ben blinked. He hadn’t expected to hear that from Sister, even though he knew she wasn’t a narrow-minded woman. “Twisted?”

“Ben, sex is used to sell everything except caskets. Every single day Americans are fed images of sexual content allied to commercial purpose. Popular music is one long note of masturbation; excuse me for being blunt. At the same time, young people are counseled not to engage in sex. Women are told no, no, no, and young men are given a mixed message. Twisted like a pretzel.”

“Hmm.” Georgia turned this over in her mind. “What you said about criminals, that people are born that way, Sheriff, do you think that’s true about alcoholics?”

“Yes.” Ben replied without hesitation.

Sister joined in. “I say yes, too, but what makes that dicey is no one puts a gun to your head and says ‘Drink.’ There is a matter of choice.”

“Make mine a margarita.” Georgia started whistling a Jimmy Buffet song.

“Interesting question.” Ben watched a customer load up his Volvo. “About drunks.”

“Runs in my family,” Georgia stated flatly.

Sister smiled at Georgia. “I expect it runs in most everyone’s family.”

“The Sidells have contributed their share of alcoholics to the nation,” Ben said ruefully.

Georgia put her pencil back behind her ear. “What do you think about those two guys poisoned down at the train station?”

Ben sighed. “They’ll drink anything. Sterno, rubbing alcohol. I doubt they tasted anything in their bottle—if it was murder, I mean. At this point, we don’t know if their deaths were a mistake or intentional. Those fellas won’t stay at the Salvation Army. And the nights when both men died, it was bitterly cold, down in the teens. They don’t feel the cold. If they don’t die of alcohol poisoning, they freeze to death. We’ll round them up and throw them in jail, but you’ll recall the weather was filthy. I had on duty every officer because of wrecks. That was a real department test.”

“You know, I never heard the names of the men who died,” Sister said.

“We’re trying to find next of kin.”

“Sam Lorillard might know. He used to be one of them,” Sister suggested.

“You can tell us, Sheriff. My folks have been here since the earth was cooling and Sister, too. We might know.”

“Anthony Tolliver and Mitchell Banachek.”

“Dear God,” Sister exclaimed, “what a sad end for Anthony. I can’t believe it.”

As they stared at her, she added, “We went from grade school through high school together. I adored him.”

“Awful.” Georgia frowned.

“An awful waste.” Sister sighed, remembering a high-spirited, green-eyed kid with gangly limbs.

“Do you know his people?” Ben inquired.

“They’ve all passed away. He was an only child. If there’s distant kin in other parts, I never heard of them.”

“Mmm, well—” Ben folded his arms across his chest. “—another expense for the county.”

Georgia’s eyes widened. “You mean to bury him?” When Ben nodded in affirmation, she blurted out, “Can’t the medical school use his body?”

“I’ll inquire,” Ben replied.

“Don’t. I’ll take care of this. Let me know when I can claim the body.”

“Sister, that’s extremely generous.”

“Let’s hope he’s in a better place now.” She paused, then said, “There but for the grace of God. We’re lucky. Anthony wasn’t.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I look over schoolmates and friends, as I’m sure you all do, and most people stayed on track. Some surprise you by becoming a great success, and others, like Anthony, surprise you by becoming a great failure. He had everything going for him. I’m sorry you didn’t know him then.”

“I’ll get everything squared away for you.” Ben glanced at the floor, then up into her luminous eyes.

“Sister, could he have cured himself? I mean, do you believe in rehabilitation?” Georgia asked earnestly.

“Actually, I don’t.” She paused for a moment. “But I do believe in redemption.”

“What’s the difference?” Georgia asked as she checked out work gloves, lead ropes, and a big can of Hooflex for a customer.

“Rehabilitation comes from outside the person. That’s why it doesn’t work,” Sister clarified. “People are forced into programs whether they’re alcoholic or in a crumbling marriage or whatever. You know what I mean. There’s a huge industry in America now for the purpose of getting people to improve themselves or stop destructive habits. Redemption comes from within. If you want to save yourself, you can and you will. Of course, prayer helps.”

“Put that way, I see your point.” Ben inclined his head slightly.

“To change the subject—” Sister waited until the customer had left the store. “—if you find that Mitch, too, drank or ate poison, then we might have someone who thinks they’re cleaning up the town by killing the drunks.”

“That’s terrible!” Georgia’s hand flew to her mouth.

Ben quietly replied, “The thought had occurred to me.”

“Well, if it turns out that way, I give you fair warning. If I find that sorry son of a bitch, I’ll kill him myself.”

Georgia and Ben were surprised at the comment, the steely tone in Sister’s voice.

She even surprised herself.