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.