Full Cry

CHAPTER 33

At five-thirty Sunday morning, the snowflakes swayed as though on invisible chains. Heavy clouds blocked the pale light of the waxing moon, this February 1.

The winter solstice was forty-one days behind this morning; roughly forty more minutes of sunlight washed over central Virginia since then. Gaining that minute of sunlight a day put more spring in Sister’s step, though she wouldn’t see any sun today.

She walked through the fresh snow, tracks beginning to fill even as she lifted her boots out of them. Raleigh and Rooster faithfully accompanied her, although both were loath to leave the warm house.

“Rooster, leave it,” Sister softly said, for she spied Inky carefully exiting the stable. She’d been eating up the gleanings, the sweet feed being a particular favorite, as well as the little candied fruits she craved. “Morning, Inky.”

Inky turned a moment, blinked, then scampered toward the kennels where the hounds slept. Occasionally, Diana would be up walking about. Inky enjoyed speaking with her. She didn’t like Rooster, though, but then he wasn’t behind a chain-link fence. Being a harrier, Rooster was keen to prove his nose could follow fox scent just as readily as rabbit.

“Bother,” Rooster complained.

“Can’t do much in the snow anyway,” Raleigh commented.

Although not a hound, Raleigh possessed a good nose, but his obligation was to protect Sister, her other animals, and her property. He took this charge quite seriously.

Most animals operate on an internal clock. Sister’s alarm sounded between five and five-thirty every morning regardless of when she crawled into bed at night. A day’s work is more easily accomplished if one has had seven or eight hours sleep, so Sister was usually in bed by ten.

She noted that Shaker’s old Jeep Wagoneer was gone. Scrupulous about Sister’s equipment, he wouldn’t use the old Chevy truck unless he asked her. As many times as she told him to take a day off, he’d be at the kennels no later than seven-thirty in the winters, usually six in the summers. He was a huntsman to the bone.

She whistled at the paddock. The horses ran up, their hoofbeats muffled in the snow. She brought Lafayette and Keepsake in, then Rickyroo and Aztec. Each had his own stall, nameplate prettily painted and fastened to its door. Then she brought in Shaker’s mounts: Gunpowder, Showboat, Hojo.

Although puffs of breath came from her mouth, the temperature hung right around forty degrees in the barn. The barn, well built and well ventilated, provided enough warmth to keep the horses happy but not enough to make them ill. Each horse had his blanket on with a thin white cotton sheet underneath, sort of an equine undershirt. Too tight a barn causes respiratory problems for horses, plus they shouldn’t be overly warm in cold weather.

Pawing, snorting, and whinnying filled the barn as Sister rolled the feed cart to each stall, sliding the scoop through the opening to dump the crimped oats with a bit of sweet feed into the bucket. Everyone received the amount appropriate to his weight and level of work. As all of these horses worked hard, they received as much high-quality hay as they wished and one or two scoops of food depending on their individual metabolisms. If an animal needed a special supplement, it was crumbled into the oats. Usually, the good grain and particularly the hay kept them tip-top. Of all that they consumed, hay was the most important. It kept the motility in their intestines. So many people—not horsemen, but horse owners—fed pellets or too much grain in the winter. Their poor animals would come down with blocked intestines.

Sister had grown up with horses and hounds. She didn’t even know what she knew, for it was like breathing to her. However, she was still willing to learn and never minded reading about hoof studies, new medications, new exercise therapies. She noted that many horsemen were fanatically resistant to new methods. She thought a lot of the new stuff bunk, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t keep abreast. Occasionally there was value in something new.

She could think in the stable better than in the kennels. With the hounds she was busy talking to them, assessing their abilities or working with them one on one. But with the horses, she could truly think. She’d adjust a blanket, check legs, listen to breathing just in case. The large animals relaxed her, their scent intoxicated her, and her love for them was unconditional. She had always loved horses, hounds, cats, and dogs more than 99 percent of the people she had met in her life. She was, however, wise enough to keep this to herself, or she thought she was. The human race is so grotesquely egocentric that any human who finds another species more worthy of affection is branded a misfit, a misanthrope, someone with intimacy issues, oh, the list went on. She paid them no mind. She knew she was closer to God when with his creatures than she ever would be with chattering people.

She needed that closeness this morning. Bouncing between elation and worry, her chores helped her concentrate.

Thinking of Gray made her smile, while the thought of the club’s troubles caused distress. The hostility between Xavier and Sam upset her. She also secretly worried about working closely with Crawford. He would not easily set aside his large ambition. She hoped he wouldn’t work to undermine Walter. The tension between Clay and Xavier was a new cause for concern, and this dreadful mess at Berry Storage made her sick. With the instinct of a good foxhunter, she knew the two deaths at the railroad station were connected with Donnie’s. She felt as though the snow was covered with tracks that ran in circles.

If Jennifer and Sari could get through the roads, they’d arrive after church to groom each horse, so she didn’t attend to that. Instead, she walked into the tack room, dogs behind her, and sat down in the old, cracked-leather wing chair, the heady fragrance of leather, liniment, and horse filling her nostrils.

With the door closed, the tack room was pleasant. Its small gas heater looked like a wood-burning stove; a glass door in front kept the fifteen-by-fifteen room toasty. In the old days, tack rooms had real wood-burning stoves, but sparks flying out of the chimneys, in a downdraft, could swirl onto the roof or find their way into haylofts. Constant vigilance and many buckets of water were necessary.

“Could I have a bone?” Raleigh asked. He’d left the house without breakfast, as had Sister.

“Me, too,” Rooster begged.

“I know, I didn’t feed anyone. I’ll make a good breakfast when we get back up to the house. Just let the horses eat, give it another half hour. I always like to see how much each has eaten. You know how fussy I am with them.” She rose from the chair, opened a midsize dark red plastic garbage can, almost a little art object in its own way, and handed each dog a large milkbone.

She sat down again, talking to them as they chewed. “Boys, I keep thinking about all this. There is such a thing as the criminal mind. I can’t say that I understand that mind, but Ben Sidell does, I’m sure. There are people born without a conscience, psychopaths, sociopaths, I don’t know all the technical terms. It boils down to a criminal brain. I don’t necessarily believe a criminal mind is an insane mind, although some are. If you think about it, every single society on earth since B.C. has faced criminal behavior and destructive people. We think we’ve advanced in our handling of it, but I think we’ve backslid, abandoned our responsibility to the law-abiding. That’s not what worries me at this moment. You see, boys, I’m thinking about Donnie, Mitch, and Anthony, especially Anthony. Three people who have died of unnatural causes in a short period of time. Three people loosely connected by work.”

Raleigh stopped chewing a minute. “I’m listening.”

“Are these deaths the work of a nutcase? I think not. What is this about? There’s no element of passion. That shows on the corpse. This is cold murder, just getting people out of the way and trying not to make too big a mess out of it. With Mitch and Anthony, it appeared natural until the autopsy. Then, the question: Is it murder? Of course it is. I think so. They were thought out. But they weren’t thought out quite well enough, were they? Could Donnie really have been stupid enough to soak the warehouse and light a match without making sure of his escape? That’s pretty stupid. This mess isn’t about love, lust, or revenge. It’s greed. So I ask you, my two friends, where is the money? Show me the money.”