The Stars Shine Bright

by Sibella Giorello

  “Washington’s got a passel of radioactive deposits.” He carried the metal containers to the stainless counter. “I keep samples for comparison purposes.”

  “Wrapped in lead blankets.”

  “I look stupid to you?” he asked.

  “You ate that clay.”

  As if to say touché, the SEM pinged. The scan was complete and the bar graph looked like a rigid rainbow, each color representing another element. The “unknowns” were there, but with high levels of aluminum and silica. The kaolinite, I decided, the aluminum silicate minerals. I read down the rest of the list.

  “Selenium,” I called out to Rosser. “In high concentrations, right behind aluminum and silica.”

  “Check the periodic table.”

  “Come on, just tell me.”

  “I’ll give you a hint. Arsenic’s neighbor.”

  Arsenic was number 33 on the periodic table. “Thirty-two or thirty-four?”

  “Four,” he called out. “And sometimes as poisonous as its neighbor.”

  “Good thing you ate two servings.” I walked over to a bookcase across from the SEM and used both hands to pull out the monstrous Kerr’s Optical Mineralogy. The definitive source, Kerr’s described more than five hundred different minerals. The tome was my personal manual when I worked in the FBI’s mineralogy lab, and the pages of clear photographs felt as familiar as a family album.

  Selenium’s periodic table symbol was Se, and Kerr’s described it as a grayish-purple semimetal. Selenium often formed poorly shaped crystals but sometimes appeared as tiny acicular—hair-like—structures. The mineral was used in glassmaking, paint pigments, and photovoltaics. When I suddenly heard a series of distinctive rolling clicks, I looked up from the book.

  Rosser was waving the small instrument over the clay. The closer it came to the soil, the louder and quicker the clicks. Click-click-clickclickclickclick. Radiation detector.

  I said, “The clay is used for therapeutic purposes.”

  “Where—death row?”

  I went back to Kerr’s. The notes mentioned selenium’s toxicity but without much detail. I walked over to another computer, set aside from the exam equipment. Rosser told me the lab’s security code and I logged onto the Internet. After several Google queries, I had some basic information. Selenium was necessary for good health, but in high concentrations the mineral was toxic. In humans, symptoms of selenium poisoning included weak and/or rapid pulse, labored breathing, bloating, abdominal pain, and dilated pupils. In animals, the symptoms were about the same, and included a stiff gait. North and South Dakota had soils that carried naturally heavy concentrations of selenium, and in that area pastured animals were known to accidentally poison themselves by eating too many field-grown grains. However, it was difficult for farmers to catch the toxicity early because symptoms were vague—stomach problems, difficulty breathing, disorientation . . . symptoms that sounded eerily similar to “Emerald Fever.”

  I turned to Rosser. He was placing the radioactive materials back inside the metal boxes, covering them with the lead apron.

  “Any chance you get provenance,” I said, “before you ride off into the sunset?”

  “It’s that serious?”

  I stared at the screen. Most people recovered from selenium poisoning, the article said. There was an antidote, which was easy to administer.

  But animals were another matter. Particularly horses. There was no antidote. Every incident of selenium poisoning was fatal.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s that serious.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Ghost demanded speed, ripping across that flood-scoured bedrock all the way back to Seattle. Traveling this fast, this effortlessly, was a total thrill. Maybe close to what it felt like to ride a thoroughbred down the track, surpassing human limitation, melding with the wind.

  I downshifted over Snoqualmie Pass and floated across the Cascades into evergreens that unfurled as rich as emeralds. When I-90 came to an end in the city, I followed the curve of road toward the saltwater basin cupping pieces of the Pacific Ocean. I parked in an alley off South Jackson, thanked the car for a truly marvelous ride, and walked over to an unmarked metal door. Lucia Lutini was waiting.

  The official profiler for the Seattle field office was long-limbed with olive skin. In winter she wore cashmere and merino wools; in summer the finest linens. Tonight her skirt looked spun from sun-bleached Tuscan fibers.

  “Fair warning,” she said as I walked through the door. “My sister showed up.”

  We passed a dishwashing station with an industrial sink and nozzle that snaked from the ceiling. In the kitchen, her father, Donato, stood at a blackened grill. He was short, powerfully built, and wore a white chef ’s jacket. A young woman stood next to him, stout with curly black hair. I drew a deep breath, smelling sautéed garlic. Simmering tomato sauce. Pork browned, seasoned with soft green sage and fennel. My mouth watered.

  “I no wanna say it again!” Donato yelled. His Italian-immigrant English swooped like vines, every syllable swinging to the next. “You make-a me say it again!”

  The young woman had olive-toned skin like Lucia, but she was even prettier. “Papa,” she said, “you can stop. I get it.”

  “You no get it! You got a head like a rock. I’m a-telling you, no oregano in the sauce!”

  “I just said it could use a little.”

  “Thirty-seven years!” His arms shot up. “I run this place thirty-seven years. You see me askin’ you for a recipe?”

  Lucia grabbed my sleeve, tugging. I followed her along the outer wall, past the work island and pot rack. My eyelids were almost fluttering with the scent of meat falling off its bone.

  “You might want to try adding some oregano,” the woman said.

  “Merone!” His fingers gathered on his thumbs, his wrists circling the air. “You wanna know why you got no husband? Because you no listen!”

  Lucia opened the door to the janitor’s closet and pushed me inside, closing the door behind us. She leaned her back against it and sighed. But the argument pushed through the door.

  “Your sister, she knows how to listen.”

  “Lucia? She’s an old maid.”

  “But she no want to ruin my red sauce.”

  “Ruin it? All right. That’s it. Where’s the oregano?”

  I heard a Vesuvius-like eruption of Italian from Donato, punctuated by banging pots and yelling from the young woman. Lucia’s eyes were closed. I watched her clavicle rising and falling with each breath, the delicate bones as symmetrical as a bridge span.

  “Is this a bad time?” I asked.

  She opened her eyes. They were sloe eyes, large and brown.

  “No,” she said. “Papa will be glad to see you. The problem is Giuliana. My sister. She’s unemployed. Again. But now she’s decided Papa needs her help. Believe me, that kind of help will send him to an early grave.”

  Donato’s restaurant was a literal hole in the wall. No tables, no chairs. But the line for lunch circled the block Monday through Friday. The window closed for the weekends, and Friday nights the Lutini family gathered here for a meal. Lucia had extended an open invitation after she chose Raleigh David’s wardrobe piece by piece from Nordstrom’s flagship store a few blocks north of here.

  She turned over an empty bucket, offering me a seat. But I remained standing after the long drive.

  “I heard about the fire,” she said, sitting on the bucket. The contrast only made her look more elegant. “I’m glad you survived, of course. But I worried. The smoke must have ruined your clothes.”

  “I was wearing my own jeans and boots.”

  She pointed at my purse. “So what is that?”

  I looked down at the bag. “Nothing.”

  She leaned forward and swiped her finger over the gold Coach emblem. “That’s . . . dirt.”

  “Mud, actually.”

  “Raleigh, the handbag is not a backpack.”

  “I’ll clean it. Saddle soap—I hear i
t works on anything.”

  She sighed. “It was too much to hope for.”

  “What was?”

  “I was hoping Raleigh David would rub off on you. But I should know better. People don’t change from the outside. Proceed.”

  “What do you remember about Bill Cooper, the trainer?”

  “Forty-eight. Married once. Divorced. Sporadic child support. Employed by Eleanor Anderson for, what, a year?”

  “Little over.”

  The woman was a computer. Which was why I came here tonight. Well, one reason. She listened carefully as I described the buried tube, the battery bricks, and the state lab’s forensics. “Cooper uses clay poultices to soothe the horses’ aching muscles. But I just found out it has at least three poisonous substances. Selenium, uranium, and thorium. And Cooper won’t tell anyone where he gets the mud.”

  “You think he’s poisoning the horses on purpose?”

  “I can’t prove his intentions right now. But the minerals wouldn’t show up in any blood tests. Not unless the tester knew to look for them specifically.”

  “Clever,” she said. “Very clever.”

  “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  She dangled a leather sandal from her foot, thinking a moment before speaking. “Eleanor pays him for wins, I’m sure. A percentage of the purse is fairly standard for good trainers. So if he’s poisoning the horses, that means somebody is paying him more to lose. Do any funding sources come to mind?”

  This morning, when Mr. Yuck inspected the barns, Cooper was warning someone on his cell phone. “Five minutes,” he said. Yuck’s next stop was Abbondanza. “Sal Gagliardo, maybe. The bookie. But Sal Gag’s horse was involved in the starting gate fiasco.”

  “You’re committing an error in logic. Don’t assume the mud and this tubular mechanism are related.” She bobbed the sandal on the end of her foot. “Unless . . .”

  I waited. The woman could read motive like a spreadsheet.

  “It was raining that day. Am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if the substance sprayed from the tube dissolved in water? Or blended with the turf?”

  “Like the clay.” I thought of the soil suspended inside the beaker of water. “And if a horse was already suffering from mineral poisoning, one small projectile of uranium or thorium—”

  “Carried quickly by the adrenaline, which would be coursing through the animal’s circulatory system prior to a race—”

  “And then shock,” I said. “Shock would send more adrenaline into the bloodstream.” I told her how SunTzu’s heart gave out in the medical clinic, and how the vet tried to resuscitate him.

  “One problem.” She reached down, tugging the sandal back on her painted toes. “This Bill Cooper sounded rather crass on paper. Is he clever enough to carry out this hypothetical scenario?”

  “From what I saw this morning, he’s ruthless and devious.” I described the way Cooper plucked Ashley from the ruins of Abbondanza. “He convinced her it was for her benefit. The whole thing happened quickly, but it was as if Cooper already had a plan.”

  Lucia smiled. It was the sly and quiet smile of Mona Lisa, with the gravitas of understanding the criminal mind. “You would like me to do a deeper background check?”

  “Could you, please?”

  “If you apologize for ruining that beautiful handbag.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She reached for the shelves behind her. They held gallon cans of olive oil and a pencil that dangled from a string. Tearing paper from what appeared to be a shopping list, she wrote something quickly. “You will want another favor.”

  “Not right now.”

  “Are you sure?” She smiled again, but another expression was playing in her sloe eyes. Like a cat who had cornered a mouse and was playing with it. “Wouldn’t you like me to steal your photo from Jack’s desk?”

  My photo. Jack’s desk. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You’re not in the office these days.”

  “You never forget anything.”

  “That is true.” The corners of her mouth lifted again. “I was being disingenuous.”

  “Or worse.”

  “I presume this picture was taken on that cruise to Alaska. I can see mountains in the background.” She folded the scrap of paper. “But perhaps you two went on another trip?”

  “Lucia, nothing’s going on. You know that.”

  “Of course.”

  Yet she continued to smile. And I felt heat coming up my throat.

  I said, “Get it over with. Tell me.”

  “Well, it’s interesting from a profiling standpoint.”

  “From a profiling standpoint, Jack’s insane. We know that.”

  “Ah, but this particular photograph has an intriguing quality.”

  My face felt hot, like it was the color of Donato’s tomato sauce. And I couldn’t seem to make it stop. When did Jack take a picture of me?

  “You remember his desk,” Lucia said. “That display of girlfriends, each of questionable reputation?”

  Jack’s photo harem was a running joke inside the Violent Crimes unit. Nobody knew if the women were his dates or his suspects.

  “They’re gone,” she said. “Every one. Now there is only a picture of you.”

  I lifted my left hand, brandishing my ring finger. “Engaged. Remember?”

  “Oh, but of course.” She stood and opened the door. Smiling. “Shall we eat?”

  Her sister, Giuliana, was standing at the stove. She lifted a ladle from a sauce pan and sipped. “Oregano,” she said. “I was right.”

  Donato wasn’t there to hear her. Standing by the alley door, he greeted the crowd of family streaming inside. I saw Lucia’s elderly uncle, his withered posture curling him like a violin scroll. And two couples with seven children between them, all under the age of ten. Donato followed them back into the kitchen. When he saw me, he exclaimed, gave me a hug, and introduced me to everyone. Lucia’s friend Raleigh. That was all. Just Raleigh. The uncle grunted and took the only seat in the house, a kitchen stool with a kick-step, while everyone else stood around the big island, talking loudly beneath a copper cloud of cooking pots, their voices saying nothing important but each word delivered with great emphasis, bouncing off the metal above us. Our meal was dished out on the same paper plates that the customers got, while Donato and Giuliana relaunched their argument. The children ran to the service window to play restaurant—girls served food; boys pretended to eat—except for one plump boy also called Donato. He stood beside his grandfather at the stove, listening to the old man ladle out cooking advice.

  “First a-thing,” Donato said. “You no listen to the women, capiche?”

  I lifted my paper plate. The roasted tomato sauce had a silken texture. It bathed a glistening brown sausage bedded on a crusty roll with sautéed peppers and onions. I closed my eyes to give thanks and listened to the music of the people around me. My first bite sent garlic waltzing across my tongue, pirouetting with the sage, while the slow-roasted pork and beef stepped forward, luxuriating on my palate until fennel took its final bow.

  I almost gasped, giving thanks again.

  Donato served me a second sandwich. My paper plate and napkin looked like a crime scene. Lucia remained pristine, without a speck of red sauce anywhere on her linen clothing. And all the while, the happy cacophony continued. Mothers yelled at the kids, husbands yelled at the wives for yelling at the kids, and the kids yelled back that it was all unfair. I drew a deep breath and continued eating.

  “Ey, Raleigh.” Donato’s face seemed to glow with joy. “You like-a my food?”

  I could only nod.

  And later that night, as I sat outside on the condo porch, I was still trying to find the words. In the sky above, the Summer Triangle was blinking into view–Altair, Deneb, Vega—and my eyes felt tired, almost gritty from so much driving. But when Polaris peeked out, I recalled a summer night long ago, when a thunderstorm knocked
out Richmond’s electrical power. My dad never wasted opportunity. He led me outside for the blackout so we could name the stars. Dippers—Ursa Major, Ursa Minor—and Orion with his belt and sword. And this same Summer Triangle that was also known as the Swan, Lyre, and Eagle. It was a good memory, but I started to feel cold and went back inside. I walked through the sleek and empty rooms that belonged to a woman who didn’t exist, and climbed into her fresh, anonymous bed in a room where an air conditioner sucked dry every trace of warmth. And for hours I tossed and turned. Too many thoughts were flitting through my mind, and finally I rolled over and turned on the bedside lamp. The red leather book waited. But tonight I could only flutter the pages, too tired to choose, and wishing that whatever wisdom I needed would simply appear and mend the ache inside my heart. The pain. It went far beyond the usual hurt. Past the grief of missing my dad. My mom’s condition. The situation with DeMott. And yet I couldn’t name it until Proverbs rustled into view. Suddenly I recalled all the good food and bickering inside that kitchen, all the echoes of children at play and heated arguments. My heart ached because open rebukes were better than hidden loves. Because wounds from a friend were more faithful than the profuse kisses of an enemy. Because this night had glimmered with the tight entropy, the skimming blows, the eruptions that came from long-simmering resentments.

  The needles born for our souls.

  It was family.

  And I had none.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Saturday morning I woke early. While the coffee brewed, I picked through Raleigh David’s junk mail and listened to the messages on her answering machine, a litany of political pleas and lies recorded yesterday. By the fifth call, from a candidate who could only lift his stature by vilifying his opponent, I reached over to hit Stop.

  But the sixth message began, “It’s me.”

  I stared at the machine.

  “Delta Airlines says Madame can stay under my seat, in a cage,” DeMott said. “Here’s our flight number.”

  I grabbed a pen and scrawled the number across a political flyer.

  “The flight’s scheduled to arrive at one in the afternoon, but since we’re changing planes in Atlanta, thunderstorms might delay the flight. Be sure to check the arrival time before you drive to the airport.”