Chapter 13 Chapter Twelve

A beagle came running in, sniffing the hay-strewn ground, and nonchalantly fiddled with shavings of horseshoes.Molly Brown gracefully rests her other hind leg on the hoof rest, as if standing in a beauty parlor awaiting a manicure. "Huey," I said, "there's a lot going on in this fire. Bodies were found in the fire, but there shouldn't be anyone in Sparks' house. It's my job to investigate the female victim, and I must Do your best to find out why she was there and why she didn't get out when the fire started. You were probably the last person to be on the farm before the fire and I ask you to try to recall the day and see if you can recall anything out of the ordinary , find clues, even a little bit."

"That's right," Marino said. "For example, did you see Sparks cryptically calling or waiting for someone to visit? Did you hear him mention the name Claire Raleigh?" Doyle got up and slapped the mare on the rear a few more times.I instinctively kept my distance from its muscular hind legs.The beagle barks at me like I've suddenly become a stranger. "Come here, little one." I bent down and held out my hands to it. "Dr. Scarpetta, I can see you trust Molly Brown, he knows. As for you—" He nodded at Marino, "You're afraid of them, and they can feel it. Oh, I'm just saying that .”

Doyle said and walked out.We followed, Marino hiding behind a horse at least fourteen hands high, against the wall as the farrier turned the corner to where he parked.It was a small red truck with a special propane fuel forge at the back. He turned the handle of the forge, and blue flames jumped out instantly. "Its hooves are a bit defective, and I have to put clips on them to fix them, like human orthoses." He said, holding an aluminum horseshoe with the pliers and heating it over the flames. "If the stove isn't too hot, I usually count fifty," he said.That's when I caught a whiff of grilled metal. "It's enough to count to thirty at this time. The color of the aluminum is not changed, but it is only slightly softened by heating."

He moved the horseshoe to the anvil, began to drill holes, then fitted the clips and hammered them flat.Then use a grinder to smooth out the sharp part, the noise of the machine is very similar to that of a Strike chainsaw.Doyle seemed to be buying time, trying to figure out what to do with us.His loyalty to Sparks was unquestionable. "At least," I said to him, "this lady's family has a right to know the truth, and I must inform them of her death, but first of all she needs to be identified. And they will certainly ask me what happened to her." , so I must find out the truth."

Still no response from Doyle, we follow him back to Molly Brown.Seeing that it was stepping on the fresh excrement, he angrily took the old broom and swept the excrement away.Beagles lounging around. "You know, the horse's trump card is to escape," Doyle finally said, pulling the horse's front legs and clamping them between the knees again. "It just wants to escape, but you think it can't do without you." He drove the nails into the horse's hooves, and bent the points that protruded through the hooves. "If a man is cornered, he is no different from them," he added.

"I hope I don't make you feel threatened." I stroked the Hound's head. Doyle bent and flattened the tip of the iron nail with a pair of pliers, thinking about the answer calmly. "Be quiet!" he yelled to Molly Brown, as the air smelt strongly of metal and feces. "The thing is," he said, beating his round hammer, "that you two come running out of nowhere, assuming that I will trust you unconditionally, as if I could learn to shoe this horse right away." "It's normal for you to feel this way," I said. "It never occurred to me to shoe the horse," Marino said. "I wouldn't even think about it."

"They can bite you and throw you far away. Horses will step on people, cows like to kick people, and slap your eyes with their tails. You better let them know that you are the boss, or you will be in trouble." Doyle straightened up , rubbed his back, and went back to the forge to heat another horseshoe.We follow along. "Look, Huey," Marino said, "I'm asking for your help because I think you'd like to. Because you care about the horses, and you should care about the people who died in the fire pit." The farrier dug out a new horseshoe from the tool box on the truck and held it in tongs. "I can only give my opinion at best." He moved the horseshoe over the flames.

"All ears," Marino said. "I think it was a planned operation, and this woman was involved, but she just didn't get out." "You think she's an arsonist." "One of them, but bad luck." "Why do you think that?" I asked. Doyle pressed the warm horseshoe out of the hoof. "You know, Mr. Sparks' way of life makes many people uncomfortable, especially like you female Nazis." He said. "I still don't understand why you think this woman is involved in a conspiracy," Marino said. Doyle stretched and began to turn his head again, his neck crackling.

"Perhaps the perpetrators didn't know that Mr. Sparks had gone abroad. They had a girl in the vanguard, a girl he had an affair with." Marino and I let him talk. "He's not the type to say no to people, in fact I think he's too lenient, sometimes against himself." The grinding and clattering of metal seemed to fuel the farrier's anger, and the hissing of the hot horseshoes as they dipped into the cold water seemed a gentle warning.He went back to Molly Brown in silence, sat down again and put on new shoes, filing the roughness and taking out the hammer.The mare was a little restless and seemed bored.

"I'll tell you one more thing, to back up what I said," he said without pausing for a moment, "that Thursday when I went to his farm, I saw a helicopter hovering overhead that didn't look like it was fertilizing the crops. .Mr. Sparks and I couldn't help wondering if it got lost, or couldn't find a place to land. The helicopter circled in the air for about fifteen minutes before heading north." "What color?" I remembered seeing a helicopter near the fire. "White, like a white dragon boat." "Like a small piston engine helicopter?" Marino asked.

"I don't know much about airplanes, but yes, the helicopter is really small. There are only two seats, I guess. The fuselage is not painted and numbered. Weird? It seems to want to spy on something from the sky." The beagle half-closed his eyes and rested his head on my shoe. "You've never seen that helicopter on the farm before?" Marino asked.He could tell he remembered the white helicopter, too, but didn't seem to have much interest in it. "No, Captain. Warrenton has no interest in helicopters. It will scare the horses." "There's an air station in the area, there's often aeronautical groups, and there's a lot of small private airfields nearby," Marino added. Doyle got up again. "I'm just trying to tell you what I know." He said, taking a printed handkerchief from his back pocket and mopping his face. "I did my best. Damn, it made me sore." "One last question," Marino said. "Sparks is a famous businessman and must have used the helicopter occasionally, like to get to the airport or something. His farm is pretty remote, after all." "Of course, those helicopters landed directly on his farm," Doyle said.He looked at Marino for a long time, his eyes full of suspicion. "Are there any of his helicopters similar to the white one you saw?" Marino asked again. "As I said, I've never seen that helicopter." Doyle stared at us.Molly Brown wrestled with his noose, baring his dirty yellow tusks. "And," said Doyle, "if you want to incriminate Mr. Sparks, please leave me alone." "We don't want to incriminate anyone," Marino retorted, "just want to know the truth. As they say, the truth speaks." "That's good news," Doyle said. When I drove back, I was full of thoughts, sorting out in my mind all the information I had learned for a long time and what I had just heard.Marino also had his own opinion.The closer he got to Richmond, the lower his spirits became.Pulling into his driveway, his pager rang. “The helicopter thing is so out of the blue,” he said as I parked in the back of his truck, “maybe it didn’t make much sense.” Of course there is such a possibility. "What's the matter?" He picked up the pager and glanced at the phone number displayed on it. "Damn, something happened again. You'd better come in with me." I rarely go into Marino’s house, and the last time I seem to have been was at Thanksgiving, when I visited him with homemade bread and a box of special stew.Of course, by then he had already hung up the house with fancy decorations, twinkling strings of lights and several Christmas trees.There is an electric train that circles around the town of Piaoxue, which is still fresh in my memory.That time, Marino made the eggnog with 50 percent abv Virginia Lightning Moonshine.Honestly, I really shouldn't have driven home that day. At the moment his room looked dark and drab.His favorite recliner sits in the center of the plush rug, and bowling trophies he's won over the years are displayed on a shelf above the fire.The big-screen TV is perhaps the most exclusive piece of furniture in the house.I accompanied him into the kitchen, where I saw the greasy stove, the overcrowded trash can, and the sink.While he was on the phone, I turned on the hot water, dampened the sponge and started scrubbing around. "You don't have to," he said softly to me. "Someone has to do it." "Hello," he said into the microphone, "I'm Marino. What's the matter?" He listened carefully for a while, his brow furrowed and his face flushed.The atmosphere suddenly became tense.I started to wash the dishes, which was quite a lot. "How far have they checked?" Marino asked. "No, I mean, did they confirm the flight? Oh, sure? This time they're sure? Yeah, that's right, no one remembers. All over the world People are so dazed that they can't see anything, right?" I rinsed the glasses carefully, and drained them on a towel. "I agree, the luggage thing is really weird," he said. I used up the last drop of dishwashing liquid and found a dry bar of soap under the sink. "When you get there," he continued, "you might as well check out that white helicopter that's circling over Sparks Ranch." He paused. "Maybe before the fire, and certainly after, Because I saw it with my own eyes at the scene of the fire." Marino listened in silence for a while longer.I started to wash the sporks and spoons, when unexpectedly he said, "Do you want to talk to your aunt?" I froze, staring at him. "Here." He handed the microphone to me. "Aunt?" Lucy seemed as surprised as I was. "What are you doing at Marino's?" she asked. "Cleaning." "what?" "Are you okay there?" I asked her. "Marino will explain it to you. I'll find out about the white chopper, it's got to stop somewhere for refueling, or contact the flight service station in Leesburg. Those might leave routing information, though Not necessarily. I should go." When I hung up the phone, I suddenly felt neglected, and an inexplicable anger surged up in my heart. "I think Sparks is in trouble, doctor," Marino said. "What happened?" I asked anxiously. "It appears that the day before the fire, which was Friday, he showed up at Dulles Airport for his 9:30 p.m. flight. He checked in his luggage but did not pick it up at the terminal in London. That means he probably checked his bags, gave his ticket to the flight attendant at the gate, turned around and left the airport." "International flights will count the number of passengers," I questioned. "If he didn't board the plane, he would definitely be found." "Perhaps, but being able to climb to today's seat shows that he is quite extraordinary." "Marino..." "Wait, hear me out. According to Sparks, security personnel were already there when his plane landed at London Heathrow at 9.45am the next day, Saturday morning. This is British time, converted to our local time is 4:45 in the morning. After he learned about the fire on the farm from the security guard, he flew back to Washington immediately on a United Airlines flight, so he didn't go to claim his luggage. " "It's possible to do that when you're sad," I said. Marino said nothing, just stared at me.I put the soap by the sink and dry my hands. "Doctor, you can't always protect him," he said. "I haven't. I'm trying to be as objective as possible, which isn't always possible for everyone. At least the security at Heathrow remember seeing him?" "Don't remember, and we can't figure out how airport security would know about the fire. Sparks has a story for everything. He said he was often given a special treat by security during his travels, and they often went to board the plane." News of the fire made it to the London morning papers that day, and the business people scheduled to meet with Sparks called British Airways and asked them to pass the news on to Sparks as soon as he got off the plane .” "Have we sent someone to talk to this businessman?" "Not yet, it's just what Sparks said. Hate to tell you that, doctor, but don't think that no one will lie on his behalf. If he's the mastermind of this incident, I can assure you that he plans to I would add that by the time he arrived at Dulles Airport to fly to London, the fire had broken out and the woman was dead. Who can say he didn't kill her first and then Use some kind of timer to light the fire after you leave the farm?" "That's a possibility," I agreed, "but there's no way to prove it. Nobody can be sure unless we find evidence in the course of our investigation that some sort of remote ignition device was used." "It's so old, at least half of the things in the house can be used as timers, alarm clocks, VCR time displays, computers, electronic watches, etc." "Yeah, but there's got to be something to start the fire, a detonator, a spark, a fuse, or a flame. If you don't have anything else to clean, I'm leaving," I said nonchalantly. "Don't be mad at me," Marino said. "It's not my fault that this happened." I stopped in front of the gate and looked back at him.A few wisps of gray hair hung on his bald, sweaty forehead, and there was probably a pile of dirty laundry in the bedroom that no one would clean up for him in a million years.I thought of his ex-wife, Doris, and imagined how hard she was working on the housework.But one day she suddenly left and fell in love with another man. Marino appears to have been injected with another type of blood.No matter how good the intention is and how outstanding the work is, it will always be out of tune with the surrounding environment.Such conflicts are eroding him little by little. "Do me a favor." I said with my hand on the door. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his sleeve, then produced a cigarette. "Don't mislead Lucy," I said, "you know as well as I do that the problem is local law enforcement and local political disputes. As far as the truth is concerned, I'm afraid we haven't gotten around to it, Marino. So take it easy Convict them." "I'm really surprised," he said, "that bastard tried everything to get you out of a job, and now you're treating him like a saint?" "I didn't say he was a saint. Honestly, I don't think there are saints in the world." "Sparks the heartthrob," Marino said, "if I didn't know you, I'd think you were possessed." "I don't bother to respond to such words." I walked out, wanting to slam the door hard. "Yeah, that's what people say when they're guilty." He followed me out the door. "Don't think I don't know you and Wesley are having trouble..." I turned around and pointed my finger at him like a gun. "Stop it," I warned him. "You have nothing to do with me. And don't question my professional competence, or try it, Marino. Damn, you know better than anyone." I walked down the steps, got into the car, backed up slowly and deliberately, then turned around and sped away without looking back.