Chapter 3
Matthias slumped in the shower, letting the hot water run down his body. Salt water spilled down his cheeks at the same time, as he let his grief flow free now that he was home. Julie had been pretty and kind, a nice girl who’d loved horses just as much as he did. And now she was dead. Someone had shot that kind girl, had put a bullet into her. Why? Who would do such a thing to poor Julie? Had it been some passing stranger? That didn’t make any sense…but then, how did someone shooting Julie make sense in the first place? He hugged himself tightly, giving up trying to make sense of it all. For now, he simply grieved for someone he’d liked who’d died. Later there would be time enough for questions and speculation.
Joshua Harper leaned forward a little. “Did Julie have a boyfriend that you know of, Ms. Pergotte?”
The young woman sitting on the couch across from him shook her head. “Not that I know of,” she replied. “I mean, all Julie ever talked about were horses, you know? I always told her she should get out more, live a little…” she bit her lip and blinked tears away as she said this, and her voice was hoarse when she continued. “But all she cared about was her job. She loved horses. I don’t think that there was a place for any human man in her life. I tried to introduce her to some guys, but she always refused to meet them. God, I can’t believe she’s gone,” she said miserably, wiping ineffectually at her tears.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Pergotte. That’s all the questions that I have for you today, thank you for talking to me,” Joshua said tactfully as he rose to his feet.
“Its no problem. I hope that you catch whoever did this to Julie and lock him up for good. She was so nice…” the girl looked on the verge of tears again, and Joshua knew when to beat feet. It wasn’t his job to comfort distraught roommates, and he’d never been any good at dealing with crying people anyway. He thanked the girl again and fled out to his car.
He called Gabe on his cell phone as he pulled out of the driveway of the little house at Julie Conyers and Abigail Pergotte had rented together. “Well, it’s a dead end here,” he told his partner. “According to her roommate, Julie never even talked about guys, let alone had a boyfriend that she knows of. How about you?”
“I’m looking over her financials, and there’s nothing red flagged here. Apparently she didn’t make much at her job, and there are no extravagant purchases on her credit cards. Also, she had exactly fifteen dollars in the bank. It doesn’t look like she was killed because she had a gambling problem or something like that. What now?”
“Now I come and pick you up, and we head back to the track to look at the security video of the stall that she was killed in, and we talk to the other stable hands about her. Hopefully we’ll pick something up that’ll give us a clue as to why she was killed, so we can finally narrow down the list of suspects.”
“You mean, compile one at all, don’t you?” his partner said dryly. “I hate this case, Josh. It stinks already.”
“Amen,” he replied before hanging up.
“Oh, great. That’s just wonderful.” Gabe’s voice was sardonic. He and Joshua were standing in the control room for the video cameras that were mounted everywhere at the race track, including in the stable blocks. They’d all been put in years ago to deter people from trying to tamper with the horses before races, and they were looking at the video from around the time that Julie Conyers had been shot. The reason for Gabe’s outburst was the picture on the screen. It was in grainy black-and-white(the track couldn’t afford more elaborate cameras) and there was no sound. What the picture showed was a figure in a long black overcoat walking toward the stall. Obviously whoever this was knew about the camera and where it was positioned, because he or she was keeping their back turned to it. The figure was also wearing a hat with the brim pulled low, a scarf wrapped around their mouth and nose, gloves, dark glasses….in other words, barely an inch of skin was showing.
There was no way in hell that they were going to be able to tell who this was from this tape. The person on the tape paused for a moment, then entered the stall itself. He or she was lost from their line of sight for a few minutes, then remerged from the stall(presumably after having shot Julie Conyers in the back) and walked briskly away out of the line-of-sight of the camera. Joshua felt like cursing, but kept it in with an effort. This was no help to them whatsoever. That person could be just about anybody, and the picture wasn’t good enough to make out details anyway. Another dead end. The guy manning the video cameras shrugged apologetically. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s all I have. He - or she - doesn’t show up again on any of my other cameras.”
“Of course not. They ditched the clothes out of sight of the cameras and just strolled away,” Gabe growled in disgust. He looked at his partner. “More interviews?” he said in resignation.
Joshua nodded glumly. They’d have to talk to every stable hand in the place, and hope that one of them would be able to supply some kind of information that could help. The two detectives left the control room, and outside in the hallway Joshua sighed and rolled his shoulders. “This case sucks,” he noted gloomily.
Gabe nodded. “Yeah. Give me a straightforward murder where the spouse did it any day," he commented. “We’ve got nothing to go on here. No boyfriend, no financial problems - other than the fact that she didn’t have much money - no nothing. And a spook in a black coat who was smart enough to keep his back to the camera and change out of his clothes once he’d shot the girl. We’re in real trouble here.”
Joshua nodded, and the two of them departed to start the interviews with the stable hands who had worked with Julie Conyers. Not that they were expecting much, but you never knew…
Matthias pulled into the racetrack parking lot and got out of his car. A good hot shower, a crying jag, and a long nap later, he felt a bit better. He was scheduled to ride in a race in less than an hour, and he had to be here. Jockeys being self-employed, if he didn’t ride he didn’t get paid. He slung his bag over his shoulder and made for the stables to find Doug and talk to him about the race. He found the trainer in the stall of the horse he was going to be riding in less than hour. “Hey, Doug,” he said. “How’s King doing today?”
“Good,” the trainer grunted, lowering the horse’s leg to the ground. "He’ll be ready for you.”
“Great,” Matthias looked at the horse, a rangy dapple-grey gelding with a pleasantly bony long face and placid dark eyes. The King Of Fools, which was his official name, was a phlegmatic creature who Matthias loved to ride. He had a good stride, was level-headed and calm, and never got skittish either on the track or off of it. Also, he had a roomy chest to accommodate well-developed lungs and heart, so he had a ton of stamina. His only problem was that he was a one-pace beast, who couldn’t quite produce a surge of speed at the end. That just meant that Matthias had to be canny when he rode King, and wear the other, faster horses out before the end of the race so that they didn’t have to try to produce that burst of non-existent speed. He’d managed to do that successfully more than once before this, and King had had a fairly successful career as a race horse so far.
He reached out to rub the long nose, which King pushed into his hand a bit. “How is everything?” he asked warily. “I mean, what about Julie’s horses…” he trailed off, feeling a fresh spurt of grief as he spoke her name.
“Danny and Bill are taking care of her horses until I can hire somebody to replace her,” Doug grunted.
“That’s good,” Matthias said. “And…I mean…have the cops…?”
“Nothing so far. They’ve been around half the afternoon, talking to all of the stable hands. They seemed kind of discouraged the last time I saw them,” Doug told him. “I don’t think that they have a clue about who…shot her."
“Oh,” Matthias felt conflicting emotions at his words. On the one hand, he felt terrible that the cops didn’t know who had shot Julie. On the other, his brain immediately went to the detective who’d asked him out earlier. Maybe he’d get to see that guy again…tall, dark, rugged, and handsome, just the way he liked them. Wait a minute, what the hell was he thinking?! Here Julie had been killed horribly just a few hours ago, and he was lusting after one of the cops investigating her murder! He was lower than low. He shook off both sets of thoughts and decided to concentrate on the race for now. “I’m going to get ready, Doug. I’ll see you in the saddling enclosure.”
The trainer nodded and grunted an affirmative. Matthias left him to his fussing over the horse, which was Doug’s way of coping with stress. Not to mention the fact that King was a horse that the trainer owned personally…so he was always even more concerned than normal that the animal ran well. Matthias headed for the jockey’s dressing room to change his clothes and get ready for the race. Inside the dressing room, he greeted the other jockeys who were also getting ready for the race. Well, the male ones anyway. The female jockeys had a smaller dressing room across the way.
They returned the greeting, then one of them said: “Is it true that one of your stable girls got killed today?” All of them looked at Matthias, all clearly dying of curiosity.
He sighed, but he knew how fast gossip spread around the race track. “Yeah, it's true. Julie Conyers. She was shot in one of the stalls, and she died on the way to the hospital. And before anyone asks, no I don’t know who shot her or why. I don’t think that the cops know, either,” he said as he sat down on the bench next to his locker and began to remove his street clothes.
“Wow. That’s too weird,” mused one of the other jockeys, a dark-haired man named Ralph Fellico. “I mean, if she’d been trampled to death or something…but who would want to shoot a stable girl?”
“Maybe the trainer? Maybe he didn’t like how she was taking care of the horse,” another jockey said dryly. His words made several of the jockeys laugh. Matthias glowered at the speaker.
“Doug would never do that!” he snapped. “He really liked Julie!”
The jockey put his hands up defensively. “Sorry, Matty, it was just a joke,” he said soothingly. He sighed, rubbing at his forehead with one hand.
“I’m sorry too, I’m just on edge. I was the one who found her,” he explained.
“Oh, man, that’s harsh. I’m sorry, Matty,” the jockey in question, Hank Gednor, came and sat down next to him. He patted Matthias’s back comfortingly. “Just ignore me, I’m a dickhead.”
He smiled wanly. “I know, but it's okay,” he said.
Hank grinned wryly. “Anyway, we have a race to ride,” he noted. “That should take your mind off of what happened, at least for a little while.”
Matthias crouched over the neck of his mount as the horse plunged down the track. He’d taken King to the rail, even though he knew that there was a danger that they might be boxed in by the other horses. It was a chance that he had to take; he’d wait cannily until the last moment, then make his move. Hopefully the other horses would be tired enough that King could pass them down the back stretch. For now he rode an easy race, not trying to make King speed up at all. The horse’s pace was dictated by the rest of the pack, which surged and flowed around them as the race continued.
They rounded the second to last bend in a good position. King was in sixth place, and several of the horses had already fallen back as they grew tired. Even better, a hole had opened up to one side because of that fact. He kept his eyes on that opening, keeping King balanced and even in his stride.
As they came around the last turn and into the back stretch, Matthias kicked his mount in the side and applied a light touch of the whip, sending King into that opening to begin his run down the last stretch of track toward the finish line. The horse responded, not speeding up but maintaining his strong pace. Horses fell away on either side of them, but it appeared that at least two of them hadn’t been worn down enough. Mathias and King could see their rumps ahead as the three of them came abreast of the finish posts.
He felt pleased when they galloped into third place. That was a great finish for King, and he patted the horse’s sweating neck as the pulled him up into a walk. “Great race, Matty,” Ralph called. He was riding the horse that had finished first, and he had a wide grin on his face.
“You too, Ralph,” he replied sincerely. “Congratulations.”
They walked their horses to cool them down, and Matthias reached up to pull off his goggles and helmet. He ran a hand through his sweat matted curls, feeling tired but decidedly better. Riding horses always made him feel more balanced and centered; today was no exception, despite what had happened to poor Julie. He sighed, rubbing at King’s shoulder as he guided the horse off the track. “You did great, boy,” he told the horse. “I’m really proud of you.”
King snorted as though in reply, as Doug appeared to grab his bridle. “Good race, Matty,” he remarked. “You rode it just right. Third place is excellent.”
“Thanks, Doug,” he replied. He swung out of the saddle as the trainer rubbed his horse’s nose. “I’ll go weigh in.” He pulled the racing saddle off of the horse’s back, holding it in his hands.
Doug nodded. “See you in a bit,” he led King away to the stables to be rubbed down and pampered, as Mathias walked away to be weighed in after the race.
Go to Next Chapter