The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  Had Jamal misheard Kroll’s conversation in the stable hall? I didn’t see why the boy would make something like that up.

  “And you believe these records?” I said. “From what I hear about Wilson Kroll, I don’t think he’s above doctoring his books if it served his purpose.”

  “Be that as it may,” Wise said, “there’s no proof.”

  Wise looked like he wanted to say more on the subject, but didn’t.

  “Who are you?” he asked, instead.

  I didn’t think he’d forgotten my name. “I told you,” I said, “I’m a friend of the Johnson family. I played college football with the older brother, and he asked me to look into Jamal’s disappearance. I gave him my word I would. Being that he’s paralyzed and bedridden, he can’t do it himself.”

  “I get it that you’re a good friend, and a bit of a boy scout,” Wise said. “That’s not what I’m asking you. I want to know what you are. Are you a lawyer, a policeman, or a private investigator or something?”

  “I’m an investigative journalist and writer with an Atlanta sports magazine,” I said.

  He sat nodding his head slowly. “That makes sense,” he said. “You don’t ask questions like just a family friend. Am I going to see my name in print somewhere?"

  “My interest is to try to find Jamal Johnson and clear his name,” I said. “If that makes a story, then I will write it. I won’t lie about that. But, I won’t repeat anything you say to me, or use your name as a source, unless I get your permission first.”

  Wise continued to study me, as if he was making up his mind about me.

  “I’m going to share something with you,” he finally said, “and trust you to keep your mouth shut about where you got it.”

  “You have my word,” I said.

  “I hope so, because I may be corrupting my investigation, not to mention that I could get fired for it.”

  He went over to a pea green metal file cabinet against a wall, took out a thick file, and brought it over.

  “These are Wilson Kroll’s business records,” he said, and removed a small stack of letter-size papers from the top of the file and handed them to me. “I’ve compiled a chronological list of all of Emperor’s stud service transactions for the last year. Take a quick look at them and tell me if anything unusual jumps out at you.”

  “Mr. Wise, I’m just an ex-jock writer. Examining business records is not—”

  “Humor me,” Wise said.

  I removed the metal clamp that held the papers together, placed them on my knee and began to study them, one by one. Wise sat quietly and watched me.

  There were a half-dozen pages filled with one-line entries; each entry numbered and dated. The date was followed by what I assumed was the name of the mare receiving Emperor’s services—unless there were humans in the world with names like Lucy’s Revenge or Miss Prickly Pear. Next was the owner’s name, address, and stable name—if there was one. Capping off each entry were one of three words written in capital letters: FRESH, FROZEN or CHILLED, followed by the words PAID or NO-CHG.

  I looked up at Mr. Wise and said, “I assume the words fresh, frozen, and chilled don’t refer to the romantic temperament of the mare at the time of the mating.”

  Wise gave me a look that said he didn’t appreciate my attempt at humor.

  “There are three kinds of semen presentation in the mating of horses,” he said, “fresh, chilled, and frozen. Each is different in quality and method.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “I must have missed that in semen class.”

  “Just scan through the entries,” Wise said, “and pay close attention to those three words. Then tell me what you see.”

  I did as he asked. It would be easier if he’d just tell me, but it was obviously something he wanted me to find by myself.

  I examined the pages, and when I finished, I said, “For the first five pages, the entries are split between fresh, chilled and frozen, with most of them fresh. The last page, there are no fresh listings at all, only chilled and frozen, about half and half.”

  “Excellent, Mr. Bragg.” Wise smiled for the first time since I’d met him.

  “But I still don’t know what any of it means.”

  “I will tell you,” he said. “Each of the three semen presentations, fresh, chilled, and frozen, has to be weighed against the reproductive weaknesses of the mare or stallion. They each have different success rates of impregnating a mare. Fresh semen is by far the best, but collection —which refers to the ejaculation of the semen from the stallion—can't be transported and must be used immediately, with the mare and stallion at the same location simultaneously for insemination. It would be the preferred method by any mare owner willing to pay Emperor’s price, and they are usually there to see and participate in the process. A fresh semen mating undergoes minimum or no processing and always has the highest fertility. It's longer-lasting once inseminated, the inseminated mare requires less frequent veterinary checks prior to conception, and it's usually the least expensive method.”

  “What about au naturel insemination?” I asked. “Didn’t old Emperor ever get to do the dirty one-on-one with a pretty little mare?”

  “Natural mating is becoming rare these days. At least in this country. Artificial insemination is actually safer than live breeding. It helps avoid harmful bacteria, bites, and injuries. Especially if you’ve got a rowdy stallion, as they tell me Emperor was.”

  “How is frozen and chilled semen any different, outside of the obvious indications of the descriptive names?”

  “Frozen semen is the least preferred,” he went on, “and is actually the most expensive process. Its only advantage is that frozen in liquid nitrogen tanks can preserve the semen for years, even long after the Stallion is dead. It can be ready and on hand whenever needed. You just ship it in special transporters, known as dry nitrogen shippers and can deliver it worldwide. The mare owners must thaw it themselves, which can often create further problems with the semen’s success rate if he—or she—doesn’t know what they’re doing.

  “So, Emperor could have become a eunuch, and Kroll could still sell his semen if he collected and froze it before the horse started shooting blanks? Don’t these last records suggest that?”

  “If it weren’t for the chilled semen procedures,” Wise said.

  “What’s the difference between chilled and frozen other than the temperature?” I asked.

  “The rate of success with chilled semen isn’t as high as fresh, but it’s better than frozen,” Wise said. “It’s the chilled semen listings that prove Emperor was not infertile. Chilled semen must be inseminated into the mare artificially within 24 to 30 hours after collection. It’s simply chilled long enough to ship it to mare owners overnight, by a carrier or post service using Styrofoam boxes or something called an Equitainer, made especially for this process. Chilled semen is closer to fresh semen than frozen, but like frozen, the mare doesn’t have to be transported to Kroll’s stables for the insemination. The mare’s owner can handle that part in their own stable.”

  “So, if I’m hearing you correctly,” I said, “any breeder paying top dollar for a stud like Emperor would want to go the best and most preferred route, which is fresh semen. Yet, no one in the last few months did it.”

  “Yes. That and the unusually large number of frozen semen procedures are what surprised me when I saw these records,” Mr. Wise said.

  I looked back at Wise’s chronology, thumbing to the last page. The last chilled listing occurred only two days before someone shot Emperor. If these records were correct, then Emperor was firing live ammo right up to the end. Which would throw a monkey wrench into my infertility theory. But I wasn’t buying Kroll’s records just yet. I got the feeling that neither was Brandon Wise.

  “You suspect Kroll’s records are as hinky as I do,” I said.

  Wise didn’t speak. He just looked at me and nodded.

  “So, if Jamal Johnson is right and Emperor did become infertile, how do you fig
ure it?”

  He gave it some thought before answering. “Kroll may be thawing his frozen semen and shipping it as chilled, he finally said, “or he’s passing off another horse’s semen as Emperor’s.”

  “Even with what little I know about the man, I wouldn’t put anything past him,” I said.

  “What I don’t know is why he would do it. I’ve checked his finances, and he’s worth over a hundred million dollars. He could get sued or even go to jail for this. While Emperor’s stud-fees are substantial, it’s still a paltry sum compared to what Kroll’s worth. Why risk it?”

  “Funny you would ask that,” I said. “Yesterday, I asked a very wealthy friend of mine that very question. She said the wealthy are a dissatisfied bunch. They worry about money as much as everyone else. There’s always a need for more. If you’ve got a hundred million, a hundred and fifty million would be better.”

  Wise looked at me like he was trying hard to comprehend what I’d just said. Like me, he was probably struggling with the idea of anyone being unsatisfied with a hundred million dollars.

  “My friend said that some college did a study on the super-rich, and that’s what they found,” I said.

  “Kroll’s veterinarian would have to be a part of any fraud,” Wise said. “He would have to falsify documentation and contracts.”

  “Who is his vet?”

  A man named Sam Squires. He works exclusively for Wilson Kroll.”

  “Is that common?” I asked. “A vet with one patient?”

  “Well, Kroll has more than one horse, but usually it’s stables a lot bigger than Kroll’s that have their own personal vet,” he said.

  “Kroll risks lawsuits and possible jail to make a few more bucks on his stud fees on the one hand,” I said, “and he pays a full-time vet on the other. Go figure.

  I looked back at “Kroll’s records again. “What are the entries marked ‘NO-CHG?’” Were these customers who got a freebie?”

  “No,” he said. “Those are the matings that didn’t achieve results for one reason or another. It’s usually the mare’s fault, and it’s hard to prove, but most stud services either don’t charge when that happens, refund the money, or offer a second mating.”

  “Have you asked Mr. Kroll about any of this?” I asked.

  “Mr. Kroll is a difficult man to talk to,” Wise said. “He takes umbrage at any question concerning his business. I’ve decided to wait until I know more before I approach him again. He merely says it’s the ambiguity of the business, and that he can’t control his client’s preference in mating methods. The next ten matings could all be fresh ones, he says. You never know.”

  “Do you buy that?”

  “Up to a point. But it just smells wrong. He has a horse syndicate, with investors, and if he’s neglecting to push the fresh semen procedure, then he’s cutting down on potential profits, which doesn’t seem like a good way to keep his investor’s ROI up.”

  “What is a horse syndicate?” I asked.

  “It’s an investment scheme fairly common among horse breeders and race horse owners. Kroll has built his syndicate around Emperor and its offspring. You buy into it for a percentage of ownership and share the profits. I understand his investors are friends from up north who have invested several million dollars in it.”

  I wondered if those friends were the Cleveland mobsters Natasha told me about. “It wouldn’t be much of an investment if Emperor suddenly went infertile, would it?” I said.

  “No, it would tank, and the investors would lose their money—or at least, cease to earn money on the investment,” Wise said.

  “I guess that wouldn’t make the investors too happy, would it? Maybe Kroll feels like he has no choice but to continue selling the stud service of an infertile horse to keep the idea of a fertile Emperor alive. That is, until he could arrange to have it killed, blame it on a disgruntled employee so he could collect your insurance money, and split it with the investors to keep them placated.”

  Wise studied me for what seemed like an inordinate amount of time.

  “You have a devious mind, Mr. Bragg,” he finally said. “But it still seems like a huge risk. Why wouldn’t he just give them their money back? He can afford it.”

  “Pride, saving face, reputation, greed, who knows? Rich people don’t get richer by creating bad investments. So, what’s your plan going forward?” I asked.

  “I need some hard proof,” he said. “Now that you’ve brought up the infertility issue, I want to see how many mare owners will agree to DNA tests on the foals from these latest ‘chilled semen’ procedures to prove it was Emperor who truly sired them. The horse is registered by ASHA, the American Saddlebred Horse Association, and I can get its DNA from them to compare to one of these new foals. That would settle the infertility thing, one way or the other. If more than one test doesn’t match, Kroll will have a hard time claiming it was all just a mix-up in shipping and sending another stallion’s semen was just an honest mistake.”

  “What about stable hands? I understand Kroll has several of them. Are they worth talking to?”

  “Undocumented workers. They hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. In fact, they can barely speak at all, if you’re expecting English. I tried, but they aren’t talking,” Wise said. “They’re either loyal to Kroll, afraid of deportation, or afraid of him. If charges were brought, they might loosen their tongues, but until that happens, it’s a waste of time talking to them.”

  “There’s Kroll’s veterinarian,” I said. “What was his name? Sam Squires? I can take a run at him. Maybe he doesn’t have as much reason as Wilson Kroll to keep quiet about this. Maybe if he knows we’re on to them, he’ll turn on Kroll to save himself. I can probably help you get the DNA samples, too, if any of Kroll’s clients these last few months were local.”

  “That would be great,” he said, “but we need to be quick about it. I can’t stall Kroll for long. He already has his lawyer calling me.”

  He sat and studied me.

  “Do you know where this boy, Jamal Johnson, is?” he asked.

  “I have a pretty good idea,” I said.

  “Then why not turn him up and ask him what he knows. And why he ran. If he’s innocent, then he can help clear himself.”

  “I don’t think he can do that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I think he’s dead.”

  Wise couldn’t hide his surprise.

  “Are you suggesting Wilson Kroll has anything to do with that?” he asked.

  “Perhaps,” I said. “If the boy didn’t shoot the horse and didn’t run away, then it’s the most reasonable assumption to make.”

  “Even if the kid’s dead, it doesn’t mean someone murdered him,” Wise offered. “He could have had an accident. Overdosed on drugs. Skinny-dipped in the lake and drowned. Whatever.”

  “Could be, but I don’t think so.”

  Wise looked at me. “Your ‘gut’ again?”

  I nodded.

  He took the pages of Kroll’s business chronology from me and went out of his office. I heard a copy machine at work somewhere.

  He came back in about five minutes, handed me the copies, and said, “Remember, not a word about me giving you this.”

  “It’s our secret,” I said, shook his hand, and with a promise to find out whatever I could from my end, I gave him one of my cards, and headed to Pickens County and Kelly.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Kelly was in the kitchen when I walked into her house. She was tossing a salad, with a colander of steaming pasta draining in the sink. Something thick and red and bubbling was in a pan on the stove, and the smell of toasting garlic bread came from the oven.

  “The hunter, home from the hill,” I said and gave her a long wet kiss.

  “That’s the first time anyone’s ever greeted me with a line off a tombstone,” she said.

  “It’s from a poem or an old song, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “It eventually became a song, but i
t’s a phrase from a Robert Louis Stevenson poem, and the epitaph on his grave.”

  “Remind me never to play Trivia with you,” I said.

  “Can you take the bread out of the oven and put it on the table, and open that bottle of wine over there?”

  I did as she asked, uncorked the Chianti and poured us both a glass. There was a flower arrangement on the table with candelabra lighting. She caught me smiling at her.

  “What?” she said

  “Very romantic,” I said, gesturing to the table.

  “I plan on seducing you.”

  “And I plan on letting you.”

  She brought over the bowl of tossed salad and another with the pasta, which I recognized as her penne with chicken and spicy vodka tomato cream sauce—one of her best recipes.

  “Conversation first,” she said and sat down. I sat down across from her.

  “How did it go with Natasha today? she asked.

  “She’s everything you said she was, and she seems to have her finger on the pulse of all that’s going on over there.”

  “But did you like her?”

  “What’s not to like? She’s smart, has a face like a movie star, a body that would stop traffic, and more money than Lady Gaga.”

  “Sorry I asked,” Kelly said and laughed. “Did you learn anything about Jamal Johnson?”

  “Enough to get me started.” Jamal Johnson would probably never be seen alive again, but Kelly probably already suspected that. I just didn’t want to talk about that right now. It wouldn’t serve as very good foreplay, seeing as how she was in a romantic mood.

  “I talked to Jamal’s mom,” I said, “his best friend, his girlfriend, and the deputy who’s working the case. Three and a half of them don’t believe Jamal shot the horse, or ran away because of it.”

  “Three and a half?”

  “The cop is sticking to his evidence, but I think he has doubts.”

  “What about the boyfriend-girlfriend charade with Natasha?” she asked. “Is that working?”

  “The idea still seems silly to me,” I said, “but if it gets me in with the horse and trust-fund crowd, then I’ll go along with it. From what Natasha says, they’re very clannish.”