A Nose for Justice Read Online Free PDF Page B

night. He’d have to run over the paths with the ATV again but that was it. Like Jeep, Enrique couldn’t tolerate being idle. He also hated being indoors, regardless of the weather.
    “Might as well get one stall down to three feet,”
he thought, tapping the unfrozen part of the center aisle.
    If he dug out this stall, he’d have a better idea of how difficult it would be to lay the pipe. These things always sounded easy in conversation or drawn on paper, but then you got into it.
    In ten minutes he’d worked up a good sweat. Thirty more and he’d reached a foot down into what would be the front end of the stall. He moved carefully, piling up the sand and small stones mixed in with orovado soil. He turned around to make sure he wasn’t too close to the blazing heater. Its loud whoosh and roar irritated him.
    As he finished the next section, he started to jam down into the dirt with the spade point, but stopped midair. Laying down the spade he knelt to look closer at something in the hole. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing. A tiny LED light hung on the ATV key chain. He ran to the other end of the barn to get it.
    The subzero fluorescent overhead lights had allowed him to work, but now he needed something brighter. Plucking the key out, he ran back, knelt down, his face close to the sandy loam. He pressed the button—the breast of buxom woman—on the key fob Carlotta had bought him. The tiny white light shone on a piece of bone.
    Enrique had seen plenty of cattle, sheep, horse, and coyote bones. This was human, he was certain. Slipping the fob in his pocket, he dug some more, very carefully. An arm revealed itself, then part of a rib cage, and finally, a hand wearing a tarnished silver ring, which was black against the bony white third digit, and gave an eerie contrast.
    He jammed the spade into the dirt right outside the stall. He opened the wide old doors enough to get the ATV out. Firing up the bright red Honda, he sped to the main house.
    “Mom!”
    In the cozy living room with Jeep, Mags, and the dogs, Carlotta looked up quickly.
    Jeep, too.
    They heard the urgency in his voice.
    “Living room,” Jeep called.
    He knocked the snow off his feet in the kitchen, leaving two white clumps incised with his boot tread.
    Carlotta rose. “What is it?”
    But Enrique was looking at Jeep. He said, “Mom, can you get your gear on? I’ll drive you to the barn.”
    She didn’t question him. Jeep rarely wasted time like that. She’d find out when she got there. Perhaps this as much as anything else distinguished her from those under fifty who existed in a constant information/conversation swirl, whose continual observations on whatever it was they were seeing or hearing were not necessarily based on reality.
    “Honey, you stay here,” Enrique ordered his wife. He looked at Mags. “Walk behind us. Take your mind off Wall Street.”
    Mags, who regarded Enrique as an uncle, took her cue from her great-aunt and kept her mouth shut. The two women quickly bundled up as Enrique grabbed a large nine-volt flashlight from the pantry. Carlotta followed, her eyes full of questions.
    “I’ll tell you later. It’s nothing to worry about.” He hoped this was true.
    Once outside, the cold hit Jeep and Mags in their faces. Bitter, bitter cold. Whoever said dry cold wasn’t as bad as moist cold, East Coast cold, was a barefaced liar.
    On the ATV, Jeep wrapped her arms around Enrique’s waist as he put it in gear. In a pair of old mukluks Carlotta had unearthed, Mags trotted down the path behind them. King followed her and Baxter followed King, not at all happy with the view.
    Given how slick the packed-down snow was, Enrique kept the ATV in second gear.
    King stopped a moment to relieve himself along the side of the path.
    Baxter observed, then drily said,
“Where’s the hydrant?”
    While that made King chortle, it didn’t mean he was going to like the fuzzy sausage.
    Once at the barn, Enrique dismounted, but Mags reached