The Litter Of The Law

Pulling his veterinary truck up to the house that Sunday evening, Fair opened the truck’s door, then got out and wearily leaned against it.

Tucker, hearing the motor, dashed out the house’s animal door to greet him. “Hi, Pop. I missed you. I’m glad you’re home.”

The tall man bent down to pet the dog. “Hey, buddy.”

“You’re covered in blood and you’re sad and tired. Can I help?” Tucker implored him with her soft brown eyes.

Fair stroked the smooth head once more before standing. Taking a deep breath, he walked to the house.

In the kitchen, Harry heard his footfall but didn’t look up as she stuffed a Cornish hen. “First frost tonight, I think.”

“Feels like it.”

She turned and took in his bloodied, bedraggled appearance. “Oh, no! Honey, is the horse all right?”

He sank into a kitchen chair. “Couldn’t save her. She’d nicked her aorta. By the time Paul Diaz found her out in the pasture, she’d already lost so much blood. What a beautiful filly.” He rested his head in his hands. “The Medaglia d’Oro filly.”

“Oh, no.” Harry washed her hands. “Big Mim had such hopes for her.”

Medaglia d’Oro was a Thoroughbred stallion with a big career. Even in these hard economic times, his stud fees had been creeping up, and Big Mim had selected a mare to breed to him. He’d been siring winners on the track. The Queen of Crozet, as she was called behind her back and even to her face, had a knack for breeding, whether for steeplechasing or flat racing. It ran in her family. Her mother had it, too, and Big Mim passed it on to her daughter, Little Mim, who had recently given birth to a boy. Perhaps the magic would pass to him.

“That filly was one of the most correct horses I’ve ever seen. We all thought she was bound for greatness.”

Coming from Fair, that meant something.

“Is Big Mim okay?”

He thought a moment. “She’s a horsewoman. She accepts fate. But she’s upset. Seeing any animal you love die …” He shrugged.

Harry put her arms around him. “I know you did your best. I’m so sorry, honey.”

“The poor girl was down in the pasture. She’d lost so much blood, she couldn’t stand up, so I ran out, cleaned the wound, and she died while I was stitching her up. If she’d lived, I think we could have rolled her onto a canvas and dragged her into the barn, gotten her in a stall. I was prepared to give her massive transfusions and drip antibiotics into her. Whatever it took.”

“Big Mim would have sat up with you.” Harry warmed at the thought of the svelte septuagenarian sitting in the aisle, wrapped in a blanket.

“She would; Paul would, too. I think even Jim”—he named Big Mim’s husband, who was not a horse person—“would have taken a turn.”

“Me, too.” She kissed him. “You are such a good veterinarian. Such a good man. I love that you care.”

He kissed her hand. “Most of us do. A person should only go into medicine, veterinary or human, if they really care.”

“Well, that’s a subject for a long discussion, and my money is on the vets.” She kissed his cheek again.

“Let me get out of these clothes, shower. I’ll throw them in the washer.”

“Fair, how did it happen?”

“No idea. Honestly, honey, if I knew how half my patients did the stuff they did to themselves, I would be a genius. Horses are pretty careful animals but they can do the dumbest things sometimes, and she was young.” He smiled. “That doesn’t help.”

“Doesn’t for us either.” Harry stopped. “Except now that I am officially middle-aged, I pray the young will be a little wild, take some crazy chances, think the unthinkable.”

He stood up. “You still do. Every now and then, I really have no idea what’s going on upstairs.” He tapped his head with his forefinger.

“He’s right,” Pewter, in her kitchen bed, remarked to Mrs. Murphy, who sprawled in Tucker’s bed as the dog followed Fair out of the room.

“Poor Fair.” Mrs. Murphy ignored Pewt’s comment about Harry—not because it would start an argument, but because she knew it was true.

“Tucker will cheer him up,” said Pewter.

“We could, too,” said the tiger cat. “We could take our catnip mouse in the bedroom and throw it around. Fair always laughs when we do that.”

Pewter was firm. “I’m not getting out of this bed unless food is involved.”

“Right.” Mrs. Murphy smiled at her friend.

Harry slid the two small Cornish hens into the oven. She’d made a salad earlier. Neither she nor Fair ate heavy rich foods and this would be a good supper for them. Also, Harry lacked the time to prepare complicated meals.

The wall phone rang.

She wiped her hands on a dish towel and picked it up. “Haristeen.”

“Cooper.”

“Hey, if you haven’t eaten supper, come on back. I’ll have plenty.”

“Date tonight.”

“You stopped by here and you didn’t tell me that? I am wounded, deeply wounded,” Harry teased.

“Forgot. It’s a first date. We’ll see. I’m just glad I have a night off. I’ve worked the last three weekends.”

“The county really needs to hire more people, don’t they?”

“No money. I called to tell you, since you and Fair found him: We have an ID on the scarecrow.”

“That was fast.”

“The ring really helped, and we have super people sitting behind those computers and making calls. I don’t think people in the county have any idea how good their sheriff’s department really is.”

“It’s kind of like making a will. No one thinks about it until they have to, I guess. So?”

“Joshua Hill, graduated from Tech in 1998. Accounting major. Worked for a large firm in Richmond for four years, then hung out his own shingle in Farmville, where he quickly built up a large clientele. Unmarried. Hobbies: fly-fishing, country music concerts.”

“How did you get so much information so quickly?”

“Caitlin did,” said Coop, referring to one of the criminologists on the staff, a fantastic researcher. “She went online, got the 1998 yearbook, and started looking. Even though our victim was torn up, we had a decent description of height, weight, approximate age, and hair color, and she narrowed it down to a few possibilities. Then she started calling places where the potential matchups worked. Josh didn’t come into his office on Friday, nor did he call, which his assistant found odd but she wasn’t overly concerned. I’m going down there Tuesday. Haven’t seen Farmville in a long time, and I hear Longwood University has grown. It’s a pretty school.”

“Yes, it is.” Harry paused. “Accountants don’t get themselves murdered too often, do they?”

“No. This is a curious case.”

“Who’s the date?” Harry just had to know.

“Barry Betz, new batting coach for UVA. First year here. This guy has the sweetest smile. He lights up a room.”

“Hope it’s fun. I’d go out with him just because of his name.” Harry smiled. “Thanks for calling me.”

Fair walked in, clean, wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants. When he sat down, she told him about Josh, the dead accountant.

“Maybe he was cooking the books,” said Fair, after devouring half of the Cornish hen Harry had cooked for dinner.

“If that’s a motive, wouldn’t there be so many more dead people in America, especially in certain professions and industries?” she remarked, gazing at him across the table.

“You’ve got a point there.” Fair was feeling better and so was Tucker, wedged between his slippered feet.

“Sometimes I think about why people commit crimes, not the impulsive ones but the premeditated kind,” Harry said. “I bet once you’re free from society’s rules or an ideology, anything is possible. The world is your oyster.”

“Never thought of it that way.” He stopped for a second. “This hen is wonderful.”

“Oh, thanks. Miranda’s recipe.” Harry knew any recipe from Miranda would be delicious. “It’s kind of like offense and defense. The criminal is the offense, so that split-second advantage is his. He knows what he will do. The law has to react.”

She neglected to add that the law could only react if they knew what was going on.