The Stars Shine Bright Page 4

  “Jack?”

  “That’s correct, Dr. Jackson.” He lifted the plastic ID badge clipped to his hospital scrubs. Mark Jackson, MD, was printed below a picture of Special Agent Jack Stephanson. “Glad you recognized me, Miss David.”

  “How did—?”

  He shined a penlight in my eyes. “Feeling better?”

  I felt sick. And raised my hand to block the light. “That hurts.”

  But it was nothing compared to the pain searing down my right side. I gasped.

  “Cracked ribs,” he said with utter detachment. Like a real doctor. “Miss David, do you know where you are?”

  I could only whisper. “Harborview.”

  “Correct, you are in Harborview Hospital. You were admitted at four o’clock this morning.”

  I reached for the tender spot on my right side. The skin felt hot, swollen. I looked at Jack, but he was watching the open door. Two nurses hurried past, their shoes squeaking down a hall of shiny white vinyl. He turned back to me. His eyes were aquamarine.

  He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “For finding a way for us to play doctor.”

  “You’re not—” I pushed myself up, ready to let him have it, when the pain sliced down my side again. I winced.

  “That bad?” he asked.

  “No.” I forced back tears.

  “It wouldn’t hurt so much if you held still.” He paused. “Not that you’re capable of that.”

  “Wow. Some doctor you are.” I tried to glare at him, but the pain kept blinking back the sting in my eyes. Hold tight. If the waterworks started, I didn’t know if I could stop. Slowly, I tried two breaths and touched my ribs again, telling myself to pretend all the agony was physical. When the tears were back under control, I withdrew my hand. And gasped again.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  I stared at my left hand. The ring finger. It was bare.

  “Where’s my—” But I stopped.

  “Your what?”

  Engagement ring.

  But the hazy memory was coming back. Eleanor. Early this morning. She removed the ring, worried about theft. Despite the wave of relief, my heart kept pounding. Imagining what my fiancé would say if I lost his ring. One more fight.

  “I can prescribe some pain meds,” Jack said. “But I think what you need is a full-body massage.”

  “I need a real doctor.”

  “You don’t think I can pass?”

  “No.”

  But the terrible truth was, Jack did look like a doctor. Some good-looking, overconfident MDeity with an ego the size of Africa. And why not? The undisputed star of the Seattle Violent Crimes unit was cocky, savvy, and just over six feet. His body had the sculpted musculature of an anatomy chart, and his chiseled face framed bright eyes that could shift from green to blue and back again. I was forced to work with him twice, and both times I had to watch women launch themselves at him, flinging their dignity away because they’d found a Ken doll with a concealed gun permit.

  Not that I cared. Our relationship, as our supervisor McLeod said, was “purely plutonic.” Sometimes malaprops were spot-on. This guy was from another planet, some cold, dark part of the galaxy. And I wished he would go back.

  “Something wrong with your phone?” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’re taking a huge risk coming in here.” Our contact since the UCA started had been by cell phone only. I kept the conversations punctual and courteous.

  “I had to—I needed—Hey, I’m your case agent,” he finally managed. “Don’t you dare question me. And you’re the one in trouble.”

  I gave him my best glare, but he was looking over at the door again. His name tag dangled from the scrubs. Around the FBI office, Jack was known as a compulsive ladies’ man. I almost felt sorry for the nurses, imagining what Dr. Jackson had planned for them. He turned back suddenly and caught me staring at the badge. He grinned.

  “Harvard Medical School.”

  “Big deal. Raleigh David’s a millionaire.”

  “Okay, moneybags, tell me why you were in that horse stall.”

  “She was sick.”

  “Who?”

  “The horse.”

  His eyes were turning green. “You know what the suits upstairs always worry about?”

  “Paperwork.”

  “They get nervous about some thug seducing the beautiful agents when they go undercover. But wait until I write this up. Raleigh slept with a horse.”

  “Don’t you have somewhere else to go, some malpractice you need to commit?”

  “Management’s nervous, Harmon.”

  I turned away, staring out the room’s picture window. Harborview sat on Capitol Hill, otherwise known as Pill Hill for its many medical facilities. My aunt—my real aunt, Charlotte—lived less than a mile from here, with three mean cats and a collection of weird rocks. I could see the sun was shining in a burst of August’s last days, but down the hill, the skyscrapers looked like ice that refused to melt.

  “Hi there,” Jack said.

  A pretty woman stood at the door. She had short dark hair and was pushing a wheeled cart stacked with meal trays. But she stopped when her eyes locked on Jack. He walked toward her, asking her name. I hated to admit it, but loose cotton scrubs only made Jack’s build look tighter.

  “Becky?” he said.

  She nodded. Speechless. Eyes the size of dinner plates.

  “Becky, could you do me a favor? Come back in about fifteen minutes?” He lowered his voice. “I’m having some issues with this patient. Noncompliant, you know what I’m saying?”

  She nodded once more, head moving up and down like a hormonal zombie. Jack patted her shoulder, then walked back to my bed. Becky’s eyes combed down his back. Standing next to my bed, he picked up my left wrist and pressed his fingers into my skin, staring at his wristwatch.

  “Your pulse is erratic,” he said.

  I glanced around him. Becky, returning to reality, was pushing her cart out the door, into the hallway. When she turned left, I whispered, “She’s gone.”

  “Good.” He didn’t let go of my wrist. “Give me the 302.”

  I yanked my hand away and was rewarded with another round of stabs down my right side. But the pain was almost manageable now. Duller. Like lingering heartache. I kept my eyes on the door and gave Jack a careful description of last night. My whispers grew hoarse with the jackhammer rhythm of facts. The FD302 was a mandatory document, filed for every interview conducted by an agent. No speculations allowed. No emotions. No interpretations. Facts only, the tangible realities typed up for the bureaucracy.

  “And where did you get the sleeping bag?” he asked.

  “The groom. Juan Morales. He lives in the barn.”

  “I meant, how did you get it?”

  “He gave me the key to his room.”

  “Did you happen to take anything else?”

  “Yes. My pride. I learned my lesson on the cruise ship.”

  “Great. And here’s another lesson. When you fire a weapon while undercover, it creates an avalanche of paperwork. And OPR gets involved. Again.”

  When I closed my eyes, the images kept playing in my mind. That horse. Blind with fear. Kicking. The scream, so human.

  “Hello?”

  I opened my eyes.

  “Did you hear me? McLeod wants you to come in.”

  “Why?”

  “He thinks the Mob pegged you.”

  “Tell him he’s wrong.”

  “I don’t know, this kind of thing is right up their alley. What about Sal Gagliardo?”

  “He wasn’t there last night.”

  “One of his capos?”

  “No. And his groom even offered to stay with the horse. They don’t suspect me.”

  “You know this for sure?”

  “My gut tells me.”

  “Harmon, none of the suits have guts. That’s a prerequisite for management. Eviscera
tion.”

  “Then give them the cold logic.” The words came out sharp, bitter. The anger bristled under my skin. The suits. The suits who directed my life from behind their safe desks, sitting in padded chairs, pushing paper through the system as if nobody was talking about life and death and justice.

  “What logic?” Jack asked.

  “One nanosecond of rational thought would tell them the Mob’s not that dumb. Attempting to kill a federal agent? The FBI would descend on that racetrack—we’d make their lives miserable.”

  “So who lit that fire—the horse?”

  My throat was raw from the smoke. I picked up a cup of water sitting beside my bed and drank it. The fluid went down like crushed glass.

  “I don’t know who did it,” I said finally.

  “They’ll enjoy hearing that.”

  “Yet. I don’t know who, yet.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “Two people knew I was in that stall. One was Juan, Eleanor’s groom.” I reminded Jack he had a fake social security number. “And the groom for Sal Gagliardo’s barn.”

  He almost laughed. “And you still think the Mob’s not behind this?”

  “Yes. Because that groom is horse-crazy. No way would she put that animal in any kind of danger.” I looked up at him. “By the way, Eleanor won’t tell me. Did the horse . . . ?”

  More green seeped into his eyes.

  “The horse shattered its leg trying to get out. The Seattle Times ran a story. They mentioned a barn worker who was lucky to be alive.”

  “I don’t believe in luck.”

  “Reconsider. If that horse hadn’t broken its leg, it would’ve kicked you to death.”

  I stared out the window again.

  “Harmon, give me something solid to feed the suits. Otherwise they’ll call off the UCA.”

  “Call it an opportunity. I saw an opportunity.” The words tasted as metallic as blood. I had to justify a split-second decision in the field for people who deliberated in meetings. The same people who held my life in their hands. “That’s the federal jargon, isn’t it? An opportunity presented itself. The agent seized it. And—”

  “And OPR is greasing their guillotine.”

  “I had to fire the gun. The door was locked.”

  He nodded and walked across the room. Beneath the wall-mounted television, a table was covered with floral bouquets.

  “You’re very popular, Miss David.”

  “I’m Eleanor Anderson’s niece.”

  The biggest arrangement was a red-rose heart, mounted on an easel. It looked more suited for the winner’s circle. Or a funeral. Jack took the small white envelope protruding from the crimson flowers, reading the note. “‘From your friends at Emerald Meadows.’ ” He looked over at me. “ The same friends who tried to incinerate you?”

  “Maybe they were after the horse. Did you ever consider that?”

  “No.” He slid the card back into the flowers, then walked over to my bed. “Somebody disabled the sprinkler. Just the one above your stall. They wanted you dead.”

  “Or the horse.”

  “You keep saying. But theories won’t get you reinstated.”

  “That’s why I’m going to solve this case.”

  He laughed, crossing his arms over his chest. The biceps bulged. “You’re a persistent woman.”

  I looked away.

  “We still have to go over the firearm.”

  “The door was closed, I couldn’t get around the horse, so I tried to shoot the bolt open.”

  “Right,” he said. “Because any sane person would shoot the horse.”

  When I didn’t reply, he said, “You are a great shot. According to the fire inspector, you blew the handle off. By the way, they’re ruling this arson.”

  “Gee, really?”

  “No need for the sarcasm, Miss David.”

  Miss David.

  In the dream somebody was asking my mother if she missed her husband, David. My dad. Her face seemed as delicate as porcelain, the jasper eyes wounded and fragile. But her smile. Her smile was like the old days. I felt my throat burning again, only this time it was because I was six years old and telling myself, Don’t cry.

  “What are you thinking?” he said.

  “I want to call Western State. See how she is.”

  “The line here’s not secure. But your mom’s fine.”

  “How do you know?”

  “And speaking of Western State,” he said, “you missed an appointment with Dr. Freud.”

  Dr. Freud, aka Nathan Norbert. The Bureau-assigned head shrinker. I stared at my hands and didn’t reply.

  “I don’t like it either, Harmon.”

  I looked up. His voice sounded different. Soft. But not that keep-the-volume-down soft. It was . . . tender. I opened my mouth, about to say something, but Becky the orderly came wheeling into the room. She called out, making sure Jack noticed her. And I felt a strange sort of gratitude. Painful relief. Because in that last moment his voice reminded me of some slivers of time, when Jack came on the cruise ship and didn’t seem like such a jerk. When he stepped up and revealed some depth. Real depth. I gazed down at my hands again.

  No engagement ring. Nothing but a hospital gown. And a big bunch of lies.

  I listened to them chatting and tried to ignore the goose bumps rising on my arms at the sound of his voice.

  Chapter Six

  The Northwest’s winter, which pulled up its gray flannel blanket of clouds and slumbered through six months of steady drizzle, inoculated Seattle’s population in several significant ways: people here rarely carried umbrellas, they refused to cancel outdoor events due to bad weather, and they seemed only mildly disappointed when the rain once again reared its head and poured during summer.

  But since Raleigh David wasn’t from Seattle, I carried a chic black umbrella. Just before 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, I hurried through the morning rain and watched a practice run of thoroughbreds alongside the track’s white rail. Thundering hooves shook the ground as I made my way to the grandstands, closed the umbrella, and climbed up the concrete stairs. The rain pattered on the metal roof overhead, sounding like fingers drumming impatiently for the first race. The regulars streamed from the public entrances, slipping into habitual seats. Men, mostly, they ranged from middle-aged to elderly and toted betting sheets and brown bags, their hooded eyes dull, almost dead. But a second glance revealed just how carefully cultivated that morbidity was, how each of them had erected a defensive wall to live with the inextinguishable spark of suspicion.

  When I reached the top of the stairs, a track official in a green blazer smiled and made an extravagant gesture of tapping his watch before pulling open the door where a small sign warned Members Only Beyond This Point.

  “You better hurry,” he said. “She’s up there waiting.”

  I sprinted the flight of stairs, glancing at my watch. But the engagement ring caught my eye. The peridot gems looked murky, a rheumy olivine, and clouds had gathered in the citrine stones, as if the morning sky had settled into the yellow quartz. I was still running up the stairs as I rubbed the stones on Raleigh David’s fine slacks, feeling somewhere between foolish and guilty—foolish because I rubbed the ring while wishing like it was Aladdin’s lamp; guilty because this seemed to be a sign about my decision not to tell my fiancé about the barn fire. The news would only upset him, waiting for me to come home to Virginia, waiting for us to get married and start a family. But the cruise to Alaska had upset those plans. A vacation of solitude and reflection had only strained our relationship further, and two months later we were relying on the U.S. mail. DeMott refused to use computers or cell phones, and I despised talking on the telephone. Once upon a time his old-fashioned attitudes struck me as quaint, ideal for a guy whose family had lived on the same vast estate of land since the 1700s. Now the quill-pen perspective annoyed me. So I rubbed and wished, praying for those once-upon-a-time feelings to come back.

  After giving the ring one final swip
e, I stepped into the track’s private dining room. It was 10:01 a.m.

  “You’re late!” Eleanor bellowed.

  The woman’s schedule ticked like a bomb. Every day, at precisely 10:00 a.m., Eleanor ate breakfast in the members-only dining room. Coffee, black. Rye toast, dry. One poached egg, soft yet not fully cooked. A long rectangular space full of white-clothed tables, the dining room had picture windows perched high over the track’s finish line. Sixty feet below, the horses zipped through needles of rain, finishing the final training runs. Somehow the wet weather made the dining room feel that much more exclusive.

  As I took my seat at Eleanor’s table, a waiter floated into view and asked for my order. His name was Raoul.

  “I’ll have a Denver omelet,” I told him. “Hash browns. Bacon, sausage, toast. And the largest glass of Coca-Cola with no crushed ice. Thank you.”

  Eleanor said, “That food will kill you.”

  “So will life.” I snapped open my napkin.

  “With what you eat, you should be the size of a tree.”

  My first day out here she referenced the Hindenburg. Then a barn. Then a bus. I decided I was growing on her.

  “Raoul,” she told the waiter, who knew to hover after my order, “my niece will have rye toast and a poached egg. Please change the Coca-Cola to skim milk.”

  Raoul bowed and scurried away.

  Eleanor picked up her coffee cup. The white rim was gilded with gold horseshoes. “How are you feeling?”

  “Hungry.”

  “I was referring to your ribs.”

  “They hurt. Especially when I’m hungry.”

  “You should’ve stayed in bed.”

  I dropped my voice to a whisper. “And you were supposed to fire me, but that didn’t happen.”

  She lifted her chin, telegraphing delivery. “When people have some slight disadvantage, they develop other things to make up for it, like charm. Who said that?”

  “You did.”

  “Amanda, in The Glass Menagerie.” She took another sip. “What’s your plan for today?”

  I shifted my gaze. Three tables behind Eleanor, Sal Gag sat hunched over the day’s betting sheet. An unlit Havana rested in perpetuity between his sausage-like fingers, while the other hand pinched the handle of a demitasse. In his enormous hand, the tiny cup looked like it was stolen from a toddler’s tea set.