Point of Origin

'Right,' Marino said. 'For example, did it appear that Sparkes might have been having a private, personal conversation on the phone? You get any idea that he might have been expecting company? You ever heard him mention the name Claire Rawley?'

Dorr got up and patted the mare on her rump again, while my instincts kept me far out of the reach of her powerful hind legs. The beagle bayed at me as if suddenly I were a complete stranger.

'Come here, little fella.'

I bent down and held out my hand.

'Dr Scarpetta, I can tell you trust Molly Brown, and she can tell. As for you' - he nodded at Marino - 'you're scared of 'em, and they can sense that. Just letting you know.'

Dorr walked off, and we followed him. Marino clung to the wall as he walked behind a horse that was at least fourteen hands high. The farrier went around a corner to where his truck was parked. It was a red pickup, customized with a forge in back that burned propane gas. He turned a knob and a blue flame popped up.

'Since her feet aren't so great, I have to draw clips on shoes to make them fit. Kind of like orthotics for humans,' he commented, gripping an aluminum shoe in tongs and holding it in the fire.

'I give it a count of fifty unless the forge's warmed up,' he went on as I smelled heating metal. 'Otherwise I go to thirty. There's no color change in aluminum, so I just warm it a bit to make it malleable.'

He carried the shoe to the anvil and punched holes. He fashioned clips and hammered them flat. To take off sharp edges he used a grinder, which sounded like a loud Stryker saw. Dorr seemed to be using his trade to stall us, to buy himself time to ponder or perhaps work his way around what we wanted to know. I had no doubt that he was fiercely loyal to Kenneth Sparkes.

'At the very least,' I said to him, 'this lady's family has a right to know. I need to notify them about her death, and I can't do that until I am certain who she is. And they're going to ask me what happened to her. I need to know that.'

But he had nothing to say, and we followed him back to Molly Brown. She had defecated and stepped in it, and he irritably swept manure away with a worn-out broom while the beagle wandered around.

'You know, the horse's biggest defense is flight,' Dorr finally spoke again as he secured a front leg between his knees. 'All he wants is to get away, no matter how much you think he loves you.'

He drove nails through the shoe, bending points down as they went through the outside wall of the hoof.

'People aren't all that different, if you corner them,' he added.

'I hope I'm not making you feel cornered,' I said as I kneaded the beagle behind his ears.

Dorr bent the sharp ends of the nails over with a clincher and rasped them smooth, once again taking his time to answer me.

'Whoa,' he said to Molly Brown, and the smell of metal and manure was heavy on the air. 'Point is,' he went on as he tapped the rounding hammer, 'you two walking in here and thinking I'll trust you just like that is no different than your thinking you could shoe this horse.'

'I don't blame you for feeling like that,' I said.

'No way I could shoe that horse,' Marino said. 'No way I'd want to, either.'

'They can pick you up by the teeth and throw you. They paw, cow kick, slap their tail in your eyes. It better'd be plain as day who's in charge, or you're in for a world of trouble.'

Dorr straightened up, rubbing his lower back. He returned to his forge to fire another shoe.

'Look, Hughey,' Marino said as we followed. 'I'm asking you to help because I think you want to. You cared about those horses. You gotta care that someone's dead.'

The farrier dug in a compartment on the side of his truck. He pulled out a new shoe and grabbed it with tongs.

'All I can do is give you my private theory.'

He held the shoe in the forge's flame.

'I'm all ears,' Marino said.

'I think it was a professional hit and that the woman was part of it but for some reason didn't get out.'

'So you're saying she was an arsonist.'

'Maybe one of them. But she got the short end of the stick.'

'What makes you think that?' I asked.

Dorr clamped the warm shoe into a foot vice.

'You know, Mr Sparkes's lifestyle pisses off a lot of people, especially your Nazi types,' he answered.

'I'm still not clear why you think the woman had anything to do with it,' Marino said.

Dorr paused to stretch his back. He rotated his head and his neck cracked.

'Maybe whoever did it didn't know he was leaving town. They needed a girl to get him to open his door - maybe even a girl he had a past with.'

Marino and I let him talk.

'He's not the kind of guy to turn someone he knew away from his door. In fact, in my opinion he's always been too laid back and nice for his own damn good.'

The grinding and hammering punctuated the farrier's anger, and the shoe seemed to hiss a soft warning as Dorr dipped it in a bucket of water. He said nothing to us as he returned to Molly Brown, seating himself on the stool again. He began trying on the new shoe, rasping away an edge and pulling out the hammer. The mare was fidgety, but mostly she seemed bored.

'I may as well tell you another thing that in my mind fits with my theory,' he said as he worked. 'While I was on his farm that Thursday, this same damn helicopter kept flying overhead. It's not like they do crop dusting around there, so Mr Sparkes and I couldn't figure if it was lost or having a problem and looking for a place to land. It buzzed around for maybe fifteen minutes and then took off to the north.'

'What color was it?' I asked as I recalled the one that had circled the fire scene when I was there.

'White. Looked like a white dragonfly.'

'Like a little piston-engine chopper?' Marino asked.

'I don't know much about whirlybirds, but yup, it was small. A two-seater, my guess is, with no number painted on it. Kind of makes you wonder, now, doesn't it? Like maybe somebody doing a little surveillance from the air?'

The beagle's eyes were half shut and his head was on my shoe.

'And you've never seen that helicopter around his farm before?' Marino asked, and I could tell he remembered the white helicopter, too, but didn't want to seem especially interested.

'No sir. Warrenton's not a fan of helicopters. They spook the horses.'

'There's an air park, flying circus, a bunch of private air strips in the area,' Marino added.

Dorr got up again.

'I've put two and two together for you the best I can,' he said.

He grabbed a bandanna out of a back pocket and mopped his face.

'I've told you all I know. Damn. I'm sore all over.'

'One last thing,' Marino said. 'Sparkes is an important, busy man. He must've used helicopters now and then. To get to the airport, for example, since his farm was sort of out in the middle of nowhere.'

'Sure, they've landed on his farm,' Dorr said.

He gave Marino a lingering look that was filled with suspicion.

'Anything like the white one you saw?' Marino then asked.

'I already told you I've never seen it before.'

Dorr stared at us while Molly Brown jerked against her halter and bared long stained teeth.

'And I'll tell you another thing,' Dorr said. 'If you're out to railroad Mr Sparkes, don't bother poking your nose around me again.'

'We're not out to railroad anyone,' Marino said, and he was getting defiant, too. 'Just looking for the truth. Like they say, it speaks for itself.'

'That would be nice for a change,' Dorr said.

I drove home deeply troubled as I tried to sort through what I knew and what had been said. Marino had few comments, and the closer we got to Richmond, the darker his mood. As we pulled into his driveway, his pager beeped.