‘There’s nothing about this fire that strikes me as impetuous,’ I said. ‘I think someone knew exactly what he was doing.’
‘Either that or he got lucky.’
The narrow road was dappled with sunlight and shade, and birds on telephone lines reminded me of music. When I drew upon the North Pole restaurant, with its polar bear sign, I was reminded of lunches after court in Goochland, of detectives and forensic scientists who since had retired. Those old homicide cases were vague because by now there were so many murders in my mind, and the thought of them and colleagues I missed made me sad for an instant. Red Feather Point was at the end of a long gravel road that led to an impressive farm overlooking the James River. Dust bloomed behind my car as I wound through white fences surrounding smooth green pastures scattered with leftover hay.
The three-story white frame house had the imperfect slanted look of a building not of this century, and silos cloaked in creeper vines were also left over from long ago. Several horses wandered a distant field, and the red dirt riding ring was empty when we parked. Marino and I walked inside a big green barn and followed the noise of steel ringing from the blows of a hammer. Fine horses stretched their splendid necks out of their stalls, and I could not resist stroking the velvet noses of fox hunters, thoroughbreds, and Arabians. I paused to say sweet things to a foal and his mother as both stared at me with huge brown eyes. Marino kept his distance, waving at flies.
‘Looking at them is one thing,’ he commented. ‘But being bit by one once was enough for me.’
The tack and feed rooms were quiet, and rakes and coils of hoses hung from wooden walls. Blankets were draped over the backs of doors, and I encountered no one but a woman in riding clothes and helmet who was carrying an English saddle.
‘Good morning,’ I said as the distant hammering grew silent. ‘I’m looking for the farrier. I’m Dr Scarpetta,’ I added. ‘I called earlier.’
‘He’s that way.’
She pointed, without slowing down.
‘And while you’re at it, Black Lace doesn’t seem to be feeling so hot,’ she added, and I realized she thought I was a veterinarian.
Marino and I turned a corner to find Dorr on a stool, with a large white mare’s right front hoof clamped firmly between his knees. He was bald, with massive shoulders and arms, and wore a leather farrier’s apron that looked like baggy chaps. He was sweating profusely and covered with dirt as he yanked nails out of an aluminum shoe.
‘Howdy,’ he said to us as the horse laid her ears back.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Dorr. I’m Dr Scarpetta and this is Captain Pete Marino,’ I said. ‘Your wife told me I might find you here.’
He glanced up at us.
‘Folks just call me Hughey, ’cause that’s my name. You a vet?’
‘No, no, I’m a medical examiner. Captain Marino and I are involved with the Warrenton case.’
His eyes darkened as he tossed the old shoe to one side. He snatched a curved knife out of a pocket in his apron and began trimming the frog until marbled white hoof showed underneath. An embedded rock kicked out a spark.
‘Whoever did that ought to be shot,’ he said, grabbing nippers from another pocket and trimming the hoof wall all the way around.
‘We’re doing everything we can to find out what happened,’ Marino let him know.
‘My part in it is to identify the woman who died in the fire,’ I explained, ‘and get a better idea of exactly what happened to her.’
‘For starters,’ Marino said, ‘why that lady was in his house.’
‘I heard about that. Strange,’ Dorr answered.
Now he was using a rasp as the mare irritably drew her lips back.
‘Don’t know why anybody should have been in his house,’ he said.
‘As I understand it, you had just been on his farm several days earlier?’ Marino went on, scribbling in a notepad.
‘The fire was Saturday night,’ Dorr said.
He began cleaning the bottom of the hoof with a wire brush.