A Taste of Blood and Ashes

by Jaden Terrell

  The announcer said, “Walk on!” and the riders dropped their mounts into the running walk. The head nod and overstride became more pronounced, a flat walk on overdrive. Lister’s horse, Troubadore, blew past the rest of the field with a long, ground-covering stride that must have clocked near twenty miles an hour, rear feet overstepping the front track by more than a foot. It was an impressive walk.

  I said, “Your husband’s going to win it, isn’t he?”

  She nodded, a proud smile lighting her face. “I think he’s going to take it all this time. Maybe even the Celebration in Shelbyville in a few weeks.”

  “I hear Samuel Trehorne has a good shot at it.”

  She shook her head. “Trehorne’s got a good horse, and Junior—Sam Junior, his son—can ride the hell out of anything with four legs. But Rogue’s the only one he has that’s good enough, and . . . well, I can’t see the judges giving the top honors to a horse that almost killed a man. Plus there’s been some controversy about him.”

  “What kind of controversy?”

  The announcer called for the contestants to line up in front of the judges’ stand. Lister eased his stallion into place while the champagne horse skittered sideways and finally came to a halt at the end of the row.

  Rhonda said, “A few shows back, the USDA inspectors disqualified Rogue, said there was scarring on his legs. Trehorne contested it, sent Rogue to the University of Auburn vet school for a second opinion. They said there was no scar. And Rogue passed the next three inspections, all with industry inspectors. But Trehorne won’t enter him today, because the USDA is here, and they’ll have to violate him.”

  “But if there’s no scar—”

  “They can’t say there’s no scar. He can’t be scarred one week and not the next, so they’ll fail him for sure. If they don’t, it will be like admitting their last inspector didn’t know what the hell he was doing. That’s the problem with the scar rule. Nobody can agree on what it means.”

  “How can they not agree? There’s a scar or there’s not.”

  “You said you were a horseman. You know how it is. If your horse bumps his leg on the trailer, is he scarred? Is a scratch hidden by the hair a scar? How about a bump or a row of bumps you can’t see but you can feel? How can you tell that from a little row of insect bites? Shoot, one inspector said a scar two-skin-cells thick was still a scar.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Some of these guys will call it a scar even if you’d need an electron microscope to see it.”

  “So Trehorne won’t show.”

  “Not today. But the USDA judges hardly ever come two days in a row—there’s no budget for it. They may even be gone by tonight. Then it’ll just be the industry judges, and he’ll be fine.”

  In the ring, Jim Lister took his victory lap, the blue ribbon hanging from one side of Troubadore’s bridle, then headed for the gate. The others filed in behind him, the rider of the champagne bringing up the rear. As he passed the judges, he gave them an embarrassed grin.

  I glanced back at Rhonda. “Does it scare you? I mean, there was that arson a few nights ago.”

  “Are you sure it was arson?” She looked me in the eye, her gaze clear and impossibly guileless. “You know what they say: Sometimes a fire is just a fire.”

  “Cigar. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

  “Does it matter? They both burn.” She touched the back of my hand with her fingertips, a gesture that might have been a promise or a good-bye. Then she pushed herself away from the railing as the steward opened the gate for the class to exit. “Sooner or later, everything burns.”

  8.

  I went back up and plopped into the seat beside Khanh.

  “Very dangerous,” she said again. “That woman no good for you.”

  “Don’t worry. I couldn’t afford her if I wanted to.”

  I pulled the program book out of my back pocket and ran my finger down the schedule. “None of our players are on until later this afternoon. Let’s go check out the rest of the place.”

  “Okay by me, Boss Man. I thinking a horse show gonna be interesting, but no, it all the same. Nothing but go round and round and round.”

  “You can’t be bored already,” I said. “We just got here.”

  She shrugged. “No problem. Probably, thing get exciting soon.”

  I wasn’t sure I should have brought her. She was bright and brave, and I enjoyed her company, but someone had been desperate or angry enough to set fire to a barn full of live animals. How big a stretch from that to harming one of us?

  But if something happened to me, I wanted management of Maverick Investigations to go to Khanh. Since she didn’t have her PI license, she’d have to hire someone who did, and to do that wisely, she needed to understand how it all worked. Besides, the showground and campground were crowded, and an overt attack here was a risk I didn’t think they’d take.

  Not yet, anyway.

  I was thinking about these things while part of my brain scanned the grounds for suspicious characters and the part that understood we were having a conversation put words in my mouth. I thought I was pulling it off until Khanh poked me in the side.

  I snapped into the present. “What?”

  She pointed to a booth where Zane Underwood hunched in his electric chair watching his wife, his groom, and a pair of volunteers set up the TASA booth. Carlin worked quickly and efficiently, folding T-shirts that read “Walk on—Naturally” into perfect squares, while Gerardo arranged TASA buttons and ball caps on the table, his movements awkwardly protective of his bandaged hands. The volunteers were busy organizing pamphlets, flyers, tote bags, and a stack of coffee-table books about the history of soring. A quick look at their name badges told me the plump woman with the mane of brown frizz was Maggie James, the wiry blonde Sue Blankenship. Sue had a body that said she’d put in plenty of hours at the gym and a leathery complexion that said she’d spent years slathered in baby oil, basting herself in the sun.

  Maggie stuck out her hand for a quick handshake. With the other she pointed to her name tag. “Maggie James.”

  “Jared McKean. This is my sister, Khanh.”

  Maggie looked us both over. “Well, y’all don’t favor much, but there’s all kinds of kin. Adopted, step, or half?”

  “Half. Need a hand?”

  Maggie flashed me a smile that brightened her plain features. “Helping hands are always welcome.”

  Khanh pointed to Maggie’s feet. “Love you boots!”

  They were shiny calf-high leather, tinted with purple and indigo and painted like a pair of Ukrainian Easter eggs. Maggie spun to give us a better view and said, “Thank you! They were way too expensive, but I saw them and it was love at first sight. Some people think they’re a bit much, but every time I look at them, they make me smile.” As if to prove her point, she grinned again. “Awful nice of y’all to lend us a hand.”

  A muscle in Gerardo’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t look up. “We have everything under control.”

  Carlin gave him a sidelong glance, then said to me, “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  I gave her what I hoped was a winsome grin. “I’m full of surprises.”

  “You want to help? Fine. You can carry the coolers from the trailer.” She dropped the shirt she was working on and went to fetch a dolly propped against the back wall of the booth. “Gerardo, why don’t you show him where they are?”

  “As you wish, Señora.” He nudged a cap into alignment on the table, gaze lowering a beat too late to hide the resentment in his eyes.

  “I help here,” Khanh said. While she went to help arrange the tote bags, I took the dolly and followed Gerardo back to the campground. He moved with an easy grace, glancing around with that attentiveness to surroundings that said he was, or had once been, a man who lived with the constant threat of bullets from the darkness. Soldier, cop, assassin, witness protection . . . there was a long list of possibilities, all of which made me hope his loyalty to the Underwoods was as steadfast as it seemed.<
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  The Underwoods were in site three, a few rows to the right of our trailer and several rows farther in. They had a Featherlite Country Estate trailer, Villa style. Fifty-three feet of luxury, thirty-three of which were devoted to living quarters. They’d probably gotten it before Zane’s accident. The outside sported a custom paint job with their logo and a pearl-colored horse against a sky blue background.

  Tesora, I remembered, their prize mare.

  We didn’t go inside, so I didn’t get to see the upscale interior advertised on the Featherlite website. Instead Gerardo opened a storage compartment at the bottom edge of the trailer. Three coolers shared the space with a box of extension cords and six bales of hay.

  I started for the nearest cooler, but he got there first and swung it out of the compartment and onto the dolly, wincing as his hands closed over the handles.

  “Jesus Christ, Gerardo.” I slid the second out and the third on top of it, slung them both onto the dolly at the same time, wondering how I’d ended up in a pissing contest with a man who had second-degree burns on both hands.

  We grappled briefly over the dolly, then broke apart and stared each other down, panting. Each of us had a hand on one handle. There was a fire in his eyes I didn’t understand.

  I held up my other hand as if in surrender. “What the hell are you trying to prove? And who are you trying to prove it to?”

  He glared at me across the coolers. “Why are you here?”

  “Because you’re a pigheaded ass who doesn’t need to be carrying coolers full of whatever the hell they’re full of across hell’s half-acre.”

  “Not here.” He jabbed a finger at the ground, then made an expansive gesture that encompassed the whole of the showground, and possibly the universe, “Here.”

  “Investigating the arson. I’d think you’d want that.”

  “You want Señora Carlin to think you care what happens to her. But you work for them, the insurance company. Your interests are their interests, not hers.”

  I rocked back on my heels. “Did she set the fire?”

  His fist tightened on the handle of the dolly. “Another day, another time, I might have killed you for suggesting that.”

  “Another day, another time, you might have tried.”

  He murmured an expletive in Spanish, then drew in an angry breath. “She did not set the fire.”

  “Then my interests are her interests. Gerardo, I’m not the enemy here.”

  “So you say,” he said, but he took his hand off the dolly.

  The weight of the coolers over the uneven ground made the trek back to the booth an Olympic event. By the time we got there, sweat dripped into my eyes and plastered my denim shirt to my back. A restless crowd had gathered around the TASA booth, where Carlin Underwood faced off with three men wearing the same kind of old-fashioned suits and derbies I’d seen in the ring.

  Eli stood at the fringes of the crowd, scribbling in a yellow steno tablet. Zane had been relegated to the outskirts, circling the mob in search of a way through, expression darkening each time the shifting crowd closed a gap in front of him. He backed off, a hostile glint in his eyes that said he was thinking of effective ramming speeds.

  The guy at the front of the crowd had the thick neck and broad shoulders of a linebacker. He was big but not fat, his chest straining the buttons of his jacket. He looked strong, which he probably was, and he looked ponderous, which I knew better than to take for granted. Sometimes these big guys were surprisingly fast, like charging rhinos. I recognized him from my search the night before. Samuel Trehorne’s son, the man Rhonda Lister had called Junior.

  He and Carlin had squared off across the display counter, leaning toward each other as if to spew their anger onto Carlin’s neatly folded shirts.

  Junior’s companions were smaller, more like a pair of running backs, raw-boned farm boys who looked out of place in their long jackets and short-brimmed hats. One was fair-haired and thick-jawed, with a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once, the other dark, with thin lips and a smudge of a mustache.

  As I pulled the dolly toward the entry gate at the side of the booth, the one with the smudge moved to block me. Beside me, Gerardo sucked in a sharp breath. I paused to set the dolly upright, freeing my hands in case somebody needed to be punched.

  Smudge held his ground but took a step back, palms up as if to assure me fisticuffs weren’t on his agenda.

  Junior jabbed a finger at Carlin. “You aren’t welcome here. Nobody but your animal rights kooks is buying what you’re selling. Hell, even your own judges can’t agree on what’s sore and what’s not.”

  “They’re not my judges,” she shot back. “Most of them are in the Big Lick’s pocket, bought and paid for.”

  He plowed on as if she hadn’t spoken, the smoldering anger in his eyes tinged by fear. The fear made the anger more dangerous. “You’re like one of those cargo cults that think we’re still at war with Japan. Nobody sores anymore, nobody but a few jackoffs on the fringes, but you keep on fighting, even when there’s nobody left to fight. Pretty soon they’ll disqualify a horse if some asshole judge can imagine a scar. When’s it ever going to be enough for you?”

  She gave him a tight smile. “It’ll be enough for me when people like you stop hurting horses.”

  Junior looked at Eli. “You know everything in those brochures is a lie, right?”

  Eli cocked his head. “Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Plenty of those on both sides.”

  “Idiot.” Junior laid his palms flat on the display table and leaned in toward Carlin, close and menacing. “You go on and on about the Big Lick, but you and I both know you can sore a flat-shod horse same as a stacked one.”

  “Maybe, but it’s harder to hide.” She waved a hand at him as if shooing away a fly. “Now, much as I enjoy your company, Junior, if you’re not going to buy a T-shirt, maybe you could move along.”

  The murmur of the crowd became an angry buzz.

  A sudden movement at the corner of my eye drew my attention, and I turned back toward the dolly just as Smudge braced an oversized boot on the top cooler and pushed. The cooler slid to one side, toppled, and landed with a thunk. A tumble of ice, canned soft drinks, and bottled water poured out, sparkling in the sunlight. Ice melt and condensation darkened the dust.

  Smudge giggled, looking toward Junior for approval. “Oops.”

  Gerardo made a sound low in his throat. I pulled him back by the shirt. “It’s just water and soda. Not worth it, buddy.”

  He shook me off but held his peace. Maybe my victory with the dolly had set a precedent. He bent to right the cooler and retrieve the scattered drinks, and after a moment, I followed suit, watching the argument unfold in my peripheral vision. Khanh came to help. Reaching for a wayward Sprite, her fingers brushed Gerardo’s, and she yanked them away as if she’d been burned. He seemed not to notice, his attention riveted on the altercation in front of the booth.

  Junior spat in the dirt by his feet and said to Carlin, “You want to be such a do-gooder, why don’t you go someplace and champion some orphans? But no, you won’t be happy until you kill this breed and put twenty thousand people out of work.”

  “People like you?” Carlin said. “I’ll take it.”

  His hand shot up, drew back as if to strike. I dropped the soda I was holding and pushed past Smudge to intercept Junior, Gerardo on my heels.

  Junior paused, fist trembling in the space between them. There was something in his eyes, half anger, half uncertainty, like a dog that doesn’t know whether to flee or bite.

  From the wheelchair, Zane made a gurgling sound. His head lolled, and his eyes rolled back to the whites. Then he slumped to one side, twitching like a thousand volts were coursing through him.

  9.

  The argument forgotten, Carlin rushed to Zane’s side. Junior backed away as if Zane’s brain injury might be contagious, while the rest of the crowd, uncertain whether to hover or drift away, milled uneasily at a distance
like livestock in a slaughter pen. Off to one side, Eli scribbled in his steno pad, not looking at the page, gaze fixed on the drama surrounding Zane’s seizure.

  Carlin swung the DynaVox to one side and tugged at the Velcro strap around her husband’s chest. “Help me get him on the ground.”

  I yanked open the strap across his lap, pretending not to notice the stench of urine and the dark stain at his crotch. Together Carlin and I eased him out of the chair and onto his side in the dust.

  “Get something between his teeth,” someone said. “A wallet or a belt.”

  “No,” Carlin said. “Just wait.”

  While I knelt beside Zane, one knee pushed against his back to hold him on his side, one hand cupped over his shoulder, Gerardo poked Junior hard in the center of the chest. They faced each other off, fists clenched, gazes locked. Heat rippled off the asphalt and rose like steam around them. Gerardo was the smaller man, but Junior blinked first, holding up his hands and taking a step backward, out of Gerardo’s space.

  For a moment, Gerardo stood his ground. One heartbeat. Two. Then he drew in a breath and spat on the ground. Swore softly in Spanish and turned his back on Junior, a gesture so full of contempt I wondered if he was baiting the bigger man. If he was, Junior didn’t take the bait. A quick nod signaled his men, who drifted away into the crowd, Smudge still grinning at his victory over the cooler. Then Junior went to stand by Eli, watching with smoldering eyes as Gerardo plucked a folded TASA shirt off the stack on the counter and slid it beneath Zane’s cheek.

  We watched Zane shake for less than three minutes. It seemed like thirty. I looked across at Carlin and said quietly, “Who were those asshats with Junior?”

  She spared me a distracted glance but seemed grateful for the conversation. “We call them the Walking Horse Mafia.”

  Officially, there was no such thing as a Walking Horse Mafia. They were just a bunch of bullies with too much old money, influence, and testosterone. But I remembered what Eli had said about killings and wondered if the title might be more than a joke.