Roughstock (A Gail McCarthy Mystery)

by Laura Crum

  Opportunity, and evidence linking her to the scene of the crime, no doubt, but there was no way Jeri Ward was going to discuss those issues with me, the meddling amateur sleuth. I decided to risk one more question.

  "Who was the gun registered to?"

  Jeri thought about that awhile and finally decided to answer. "The serial numbers were filed off." Her curt tone indicated that was the last piece of information I was getting, and she stood up as she spoke. Our interview was at an end.

  I stood up, too, and thanked her for her time, promised to let her know if any relevant information came my way. On my way out of the county building, I checked carefully for signs of Tara, but I'd killed a full hour in the sheriff-coroner's office, and the ropers were all long gone.

  Good thing. I started my truck, glancing regretfully at the sunny blue day outside the windows. Time to get my mind back on work. In ten minutes, I'd be back at the veterinary clinic. My real job, so long neglected, loomed ahead.

  FOURTEEN

  It was almost two o'clock when I pulled in the driveway of Santa Cruz Equine Practice. Hardly an early start to a working day. Of course, Jim had known I needed to attend the trial; that didn't mean he liked it.

  I scanned the parking lot somewhat anxiously. Jim's truck was missing; I relaxed. I definitely preferred to skip my boss's usual caustic comments over what had taken me so long.

  Getting out of the truck, I looked around at my place of employment, which seemed oddly unfamiliar after a week's absence. I could almost see the small complex through a stranger's eyes: the blocky, ungraceful clinic with its garagelike metal roll-up doors in the rear, the row of stalls and pens, the level dirt area we used for unloading and jogging horses. As I trudged toward the back door, I was struck by the fact that the whole place had an institutional quality that was profoundly unhorsy.

  If I ever had my own clinic, a big if, I'd devote at least a little time and money to making it look friendly. A strip of cottage flowers by the front door, maybe; a patch of green grass where visiting horses could relax and snatch a snack. I'd paint my shed row barn red instead of government-standard beige and try, in every small way I could, to make the place seem like someone's barnyard that just happened to be an animal hospital.

  In my early days here, I'd suggested this approach to Jim, but I hadn't gotten anywhere. Spending money on unnecessary frills wasn't Jim's way. In fact, spending money on anything wasn't Jim's way. I had to lobby hard to get outdated, unreliable equipment replaced; it had taken me a year to talk him into putting a car phone in my truck, a convenience that had saved me an enormous amount of time. Jim liked to make money, not spend it.

  I walked in the back door to be greeted with cordial reserve by the tech and the two receptionists, none of whom I knew well. Jim insisted on a severe distinction between us two, as the veterinarians, and the rest of the staff; he had warned me when I went to work for him that he didn't want me hanging out with "the help."

  I had mixed emotions about this. In some ways it struck me as a ridiculous, old-fashioned attitude, a good deal too snobbish for my taste, but nearly three years of working at the clinic had demonstrated his reasoning fairly effectively. Office politics created an enormous amount of trouble; receptionists and technicians sniped at each other and feuded over minor points of power, alliances were formed and broken with unceasing regularity, and the staff's natural inclination to make off-duty friendships resulted in hostilities over stolen boyfriends and the like.

  By nature I was reserved; between my own inability to banter easily and Jim's strictures, I'd found it simpler to stay slightly aloof, a technique that had, in the end, proved more useful than otherwise. Sometimes, though, like now, I wished things were different, that the three women of various ages greeting me with variations on "Hi, Gail; how was the seminar?" were friends instead of acquaintances. It would have been nice to flop down at my desk and tell somebody all about Jack's murder, my own involvement, and that ridiculous scene with Tara. It might have put everything into proportion, and I certainly would have felt more connected, less isolated.

  Instead I told them that the seminar had been all right and asked how things were going at the clinic. "Slow" was the answer. Jim was a bear, the tech said. I wasn't surprised. Jim hated it when things were slow-not enough money coming in. On the other hand, at least he shouldn't be too annoyed about work stacking up during my absence.

  I started to sit down at my desk and look for the schedule Jim had undoubtedly left, when the phone rang. The younger receptionist hurried to answer it. She was gone only a minute and then dashed back into the small cubicle I used as an office with agitation written large on her face.

  "Gail, Kris Griffith needs you right away. Something bad's wrong with Rebby; he's all uncoordinated. She said he just fell down."

  Oh shit. I'd completely forgotten about Kris and Rebby, and Rebby's odd way of moving near the end of the endurance race. I'd meant to call and check on him and never done it. Damn.

  "Call and tell Kris I'm on my way," I told the girl. She was eighteen and part-time, one of many kids who worked at the clinic because they intended to become veterinarians someday. This one was also involved in endurance riding and knew Kris a little. I could tell by the degree of upset she was showing that Kris was probably really stressed out about Reb.

  Jumping back into the truck, I headed down Soquel Drive, all thoughts of lunch and checking the schedule vanishing into an overwhelming worry. What in the hell was wrong with Rebby?

  Never theorize in advance of the facts, I reminded myself, but I kept replaying in my mind his odd way of trotting on Saturday. The hind legs had swung awkwardly out, as if he'd lost some control of them.

  When I pulled into Kris's barnyard ten minutes later, I had to remind myself to be calm and unemotional-only in that frame of mind could I do a good job.

  Kris had herself on a tight rein; tension showed in every line of her face and body, but she kept to a terse recital of the facts as we walked to the pen behind the barn.

  "He seems to be getting worse, Gail. When I brought him home from the ride I kept a close eye on him, and he was swinging his hind legs out in an odd way, but that was it. Yesterday it seemed even more pronounced, but he didn't seem to be in any pain and he was eating well and looked bright, so I thought I'd just watch him. And then, this afternoon, when I went out to check him, he was loping across the corral, bucking a little and playing, like he does and he just fell down. It was like he lost control of his back legs or something. I couldn't believe it. That horse has never fallen. Never."

  By this time we'd reached the corral and I was watching Rebby, who was walking to greet us. As the horse approached, I felt consternation and dismay growing in the pit of my stomach. Always a graceful mover, he seemed, overnight, to have become incredibly awkward, swinging his back legs in a loose disjointed way and stumbling every dozen or so steps.

  Kris caught him and led him back and forth a few times so I could study him, and the condition seemed if anything to grow more pronounced. "Did he get this bad very suddenly?" I asked.

  Kris looked as worried and miserable as I was feeling. "I don't know, Gail. Just this morning, I think. He didn't look like this yesterday. But it's such an odd thing; I've never seen anything like it before, and I'm just not sure."

  I stared at Rebby, feeling worse and worse. What came to my mind was "wobbler syndrome," and I didn't want to say the words.

  Wobbler syndrome, a complex neurological problem that causes horses to stagger in more or less this way, is caused by malformed vertebrae in the neck. It's thought, at least at the present time, to be a condition that exists at birth, and is merely "activated" by the stress of training. Commonly its onset occurs when a young horse begins his working life. However, it can occur at any age, and though there is an operation that sometimes reduces the degree of incoordination, this operation is not always successful, and wobbler syndrome is frequently the death knell for the horse in question.

 
And the horse in question was Rebby. Rebby wasn't just a horse; he was a friend. I'd boarded Gunner at Kris's place for a year, and I'd gotten to know Reb as well as I had Kris. The big dark brown gelding was as friendly as a puppy, often stretching his head out toward me in a bid for affection, as he was doing now. Automatically, I stepped up to him and rubbed his forehead, and after a minute he leaned his head on my shoulder and stood there contentedly.

  Rubbing the underside of his neck, I said, "I think what's wrong with this horse may be neurological."

  "He's only ten," Kris said bleakly. ''And he's always been sound."

  "I need to do some tests on him."

  I reached for the lead rope, but Kris held it tight, fixing her eyes on my face. "What do you think is wrong with him?"

  I wondered if I should mention wobbler syndrome and decided not to. No point in scaring Kris until I did the tests. "I'm not sure yet," I said.

  Kris still clung to the horse's lead rope. "I'm just afraid you're going to tell me he's got some terrible neurological problem that's incurable and will just get progressively worse and the only thing to do is put him down."

  I was silent. Wobbler syndrome is, more or less, a terrible neurological problem that tends to get progressively worse. Kris's fears could be right on the mark.

  After a moment I said gently, "We need a diagnosis. We can't proceed in any direction until we have an idea what's wrong with him."

  "You're right, I know." Kris blinked rapidly several times and handed me the end of the rope. "Go ahead."

  For the next hour, I ran through every neurological test I'd ever done, or heard of. I poked and prodded every inch of Rebby's neck and spine with the blunt end of my ballpoint pen. I walked and trotted him in small circles, I pulled him off balance by jerking his tail sideways, I walked him up and down slopes, I backed him up, and I blindfolded him and repeated the backup. As I proceeded, I grew more and more certain that my initial diagnosis was wrong. Rebby didn't have the classic loss of balance characteristic of wobbler syndrome; none of my tests gave him much trouble.

  "Well, he's not a wobbler," I said when I was done. Kris nodded in relief. I knew she was horsewoman enough to have suspected the same thing I did. "Let me try a few other things. Maybe what's wrong with him is injury-related."

  "Anything you say, Gail."

  I spent another hour examining Reb as carefully as I could for various lamenesses. I flexed and compressed and stretched his stifles and his hocks, I ran my fingers over everyone of his vertebrae, I encased my arm in a plastic sheath and reached up his rectum to examine his pelvis. Nothing. He didn't seem to be in pain, in any obvious sense. But his odd way of swinging his hind legs out and strange incoordination remained as pronounced as ever. I felt stumped. Searching back through the file folders of my mind, I tried to remember one of the lectures I'd heard at Tahoe.

  Rebby stood quietly on the end of the lead rope, watching me, his eye calm, his demeanor relaxed. He'd been poked and prodded and stretched and palpated in various ways for several hours now, but his equanimity remained unimpaired. I stroked his shoulder. His dark brown coat looked glossy black in the late afternoon light-like many mostly Thoroughbred horses he didn't tend to grow much winter coat.

  "EPM," I said out loud.

  Kris, understandably, was looking pretty confused at this point. "What's EPM?" she asked.

  "Equine protozoal myelopathy," I said. "It's pretty new. Or actually, we're just discovering that it exists and just beginning to find out how to diagnose it and treat it. I learned a little more about it up in Tahoe.

  "What it is, is a protozoan that gets in the horse's bloodstream; no one knows exactly how. But it can get in the spinal cord and cause symptoms of incoordination like what Rebby is showing."

  Getting a needle and syringe from the truck, I drew some blood from Rebby's jugular vein. He stood quietly for this procedure, as he had for all the others, his basic trust in human beings overcoming his distaste for the needle.

  "I'm going to run a blood test on him," I told Kris. "That will tell us if he's positive for EPM. Meanwhile ..." I handed her two bottles of pills. "One's an antibiotic and one's a human malaria drug. The dosages are written on the labels. Dissolve them with water and mix them with a little sweet feed. Make sure he eats them."

  Kris nodded, familiar with the process of giving pills to horses. Straightening Rebby's forelock where it lay between his eyes, she said hesitantly, "And if he's positive for EPM, these will cure him?"

  My turn to hesitate. "Maybe. The thing about EPM is it's unpredictable, not to mention no one seems to understand how it works exactly. It can sometimes get in the spinal cord and cause permanent nerve damage. That's why it's important to get him on the medication right away, just in case he does have EPM. Put him in a small pen, too, where he can't run around and fall down and hurt himself. We'll reevaluate as soon as I get the results of the blood test."

  "Okay." Kris led Rebby off toward the barn. The aberrant wobble in his long stride was distressing to see, and I felt my throat tighten as I watched him.

  When I left, half an hour later, after repeating everything I'd heard about EPM twice more and promising to call in the morning and check on Reb, it was almost five o'clock. Dutifully I rang the office; five might be official quitting time, but for a veterinarian, the day's over when the calls are done, not before.

  I knew by the sound of the receptionist's voice that it was bad, even before I really understood what she was saying. "Gail, there's an emergency in Watsonville. Some horse got hit by a car on Apple Lane. The girl called; she says the horse is all bloody, but it's still moving. She thinks it's alive."

  FIFTEEN

  I drove toward Apple Lane praying. Please God, don't let this be too bad. Don't let me find this horse in terrible pain. I'd been a vet for almost three years now, but I'd never grown used to dealing with terminally suffering horses. The best thing I could do was put them out of their misery, but it was never easy.

  I knew Apple Lane, a short side street in the orchards behind Watsonville, and the accident scene was obvious. The blinking yellow flashers on the car by the side of the road, sharp in the twilight, drew me like a magnet. I took a deep breath as I got out of the truck. Hold it together, Gail; just hold it together.

  I walked toward the little knot of people standing by the car. I registered an older woman, a middle-aged man, and a teenage girl. Then I saw the horse.

  I t was on the verge, screened from passing traffic by the car and people. I knew instantly that it was dead. There is a certain stillness, a flatness to a dead animal. I let out my breath in relief

  Dead was bad, but suffering was worse. I approached the group of people. No hurry now.

  The girl didn't know that, though. She'd spotted me and ran in my direction, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the horse's body. "Please, you're the vet, aren't you? Come look at her. She's not dead. She was moving."

  I followed the girl.

  There was a lot of blood. Dark and viscous, it was puddled on the pavement, looking black in the colorless light of dusk. I could see where the car had plowed into the front end of the mare's body, causing the gaping wounds in her shoulder and what looked like a broken right front leg. But it was the head injury, I thought, as I stooped down, that had killed her. The back of her skull was crushed.

  Even though I was sure, I pressed my fingers to the horse's jugular vein for a full minute, wanting to comfort the girl. "She's dead," I said, as gently as I could.

  "She can't be. She was moving."

  "They do that," I explained. "Even after the brain is dead, the body makes little involuntary movements. They're automatic, reflexive." I searched for the right words. "She wasn't in pain, or anything. She died of this head injury. It was probably pretty sudden and painless for her."

  The girl gulped and nodded, holding herself together with an effort. She was about fifteen and had a sweet, immature face, the sort of teenager who was still more interested in horses t
han boys. And this was her worst nightmare come true.

  "I was just letting her eat grass here along the driveway. She loves the green grass. Something scared her and she jerked the lead rope out of my hand and ran out on the road. Her name's Mandy." Sobs were overtaking the words.

  I looked around frantically at the two adults behind us, and the man stepped forward and put his arm around the girl. "It's okay, Shelly. There's nothing we can do."

  "Are you her father?"

  "Yes."

  "I think it would be better if you got her away from here. It can't be helping her to look at her horse like this." He nodded and shepherded the girl off. I turned to the woman. She said quietly, "I hit the horse. It wasn't my fault; the damn thing ran right in front of my car. I didn't see it coming." I looked where she pointed; a large, dense holly bush obscured the driveway entrance completely. "It just ran out from behind that bush as I came by. I didn't have a chance to miss it."

  I nodded. I didn't blame her.

  "My car's a wreck."

  Sure enough-the front end of the station wagon was completely crumpled. "It's really these people's fault," she went on, "but I feel terrible."

  "Are you all right?" I asked her.

  "Oh, physically, yes. I was wearing my seat belt. I'm fine. I just feel sick about the poor horse, and that little girl."

  "I know," I said inadequately.

  "I guess I'd better get their name and number and insurance and all that." She sounded tired and sad.

  "Yes. And probably call the cops."

  "And a tow truck."

  "I've got a car phone in my pickup," I told her. "You're welcome to use it."

  "Thank you."

  The next half hour passed in the dull trivia that follows tragedy. Numerous phone calls and consultations took place. I got a tarp out of my truck and covered the mare's body.