The Carbon Murder(76)

“You should pay more attention to the police blotter,” Matt said. “Di Palma did a good job on this. He located three different witnesses who’d talk to him. Very unusual in these circumstances. Guys don’t want to be known as spectators for this kind of thing. In fact, most of them don’t even want to be known as ever having been in the One A.”

Had I ever been in a place I wouldn’t want to be seen in? I asked myself. Maybe an ice cream shop alone, feeding my habit with a hot fudge sundae.

I looked at accounts of the words flung about along with the fists of the two men.

All three witnesses reported either, “I’ll kill you,” from Wayne, and “Not if I kill you first,” from Jake, or vice versa.

I read a few of the alleged quotes from the brawl aloud, though Matt had already seen the narrative.

“‘You’re breaking the law.’”

“‘I’ll break your jaw.’”

“Do you think that was deliberate poetry?” I asked him, not waiting for an answer.

“‘I can’t believe you thought you’d get away with it.’”

“‘You’ll keep your trap shut if you know what’s good for you.’”

“‘Not in a million years. You are going down, friend, you are going down.’”

“‘I don’t know what you’re so upset over.’”

“‘She was mine.’”

“‘She was mine’?” I repeated, incredulous. “As if he owned MC? Whichever one said this—”

“Keep reading,” Matt said.

“‘Damn your Suzy Q.’”

“‘You’ll pay for what you did to her.’”

“‘Suzy Q. Suzy Q.’” [Witnesses’ interpretation: taunting.]

“Doesn’t sound like jealous guys fighting over a girl, does it?” Matt said.

“No, it doesn’t. And Suzy Q. Do you suppose that could be—” I asked.

“Spartan Q is my thought. They’re fighting over a horse.”

“A dead horse.”

“So this brings Gallen back into the case.”

“And therefore maybe Alex Simpson.”

Matt sat down, and I served the chowder and sourdough bread, another San Francisco treat that had also made it to Revere’s grocers.

“This gets weirder and weirder,” he said.

I thought of the elements of the case. Three dead people and two dead horses. Buckyball scientists, vets, and equestrians. Houston, Texas, and Revere, Massachusetts.

“I agree. The case is weird,” I said. “And I haven’t even told you yet about my day.”



Matt had the same reaction I did to Dr. Schofield’s confession.

“Not enough to worry about,” he said.

“Unless you’re the funding sponsor. Not that I’m going to report him.” I waved my hand. “It’s his conscience.”

Matt gave me a sympathetic look. “I know it’s tough on you when a scientist doesn’t live up to … what would this be, the Hippocratic oath, maybe?”

I shrugged my shoulders. Were veterinarians also regular MDs who took an oath? At the moment I didn’t care at all.

Well, maybe I cared a little. Once Matt and I finished dinner, I reached for my briefcase and retrieved the printout with the list I’d gotten from Dr. Schofield’s secretary—horses with microchip implants. I might have been influenced to remain in the western/ horse-related mood by the words to Perry Como’s “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” coming from an “old crooners” CD in the background, my choice for the evening.

I scanned the list.





Clever names, I thought, wondering if astronaut Dr. Sally Ride or the owner of McDonald’s restaurants had given permission for use of their names. Or if they owned the horses. Inventive, either way.





There it was. Lucian Five. The names of horses didn’t have a long shelf-life in my brain, but I recognized Penny Trumble’s deceased horse.

“What if all these horses are dead?” I asked Matt. I tapped my pencil the way Dr. Schofield had, end on end.

Matt lowered his Revere Journal. “I doubt it. That would raise a flag.” He came to my chair and peered at the list. “There’s one I know,” he said.

I gave him a strange look, as if he’d just admitted to having fathered a child now living on a ranch in Texas with its mother. “What else are you keeping from me?”

He laughed and pointed to a line on the chart.





“Mike Mercati used to be on the job. He went into private practice a couple of years ago and opened an agency in Saugus. This is probably his middle daughter; I remember she was into horses as a teenager.” Matt sounded like Rose. It seemed I was the only one who had forfeited my knowledge of Revere history.