Death by Equine

by Annette Dashofy

  The trio tromped down the stairs in silence. Something still whispered to Jessie. She was missing something and had a feeling it was something obvious. But the nagging voice refused to speak loud enough to be heard.

  “What are you going to do?” Greg’s voice shattered the stillness she’d been trying to penetrate.

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t think the house should be left vacant. If you don’t feel safe, I’ll stay here for a few days.”

  For one fleeting, off-kilter moment, she thought he meant with her.

  “I gather you’ll stay in your office at the track?”

  Her world, as she now knew it, righted itself. “Of course,” she said without missing a beat.

  Meryl slung a protective arm around her shoulders. “I’ve already offered my house.”

  Jessie thought of Meryl’s home with her four kids and assorted dogs, cats, fish, and occasionally a ferret or Guinea Pig. “I appreciate that. Really. I have no shortage of places to stay. Milt said I could bunk with him and Catherine. And Daniel invited me to stay at his place.”

  The room fell deadly silent. Jessie looked up to find both Greg and Meryl eyeing her with the same stunned expression. Meryl’s morphed into a sly smile. Greg’s did not.

  “But for now, I’m fine at the track.”

  Greg cleared his throat. “I have to go. Call me if you need anything.”

  “Right.”

  Greg started toward the dining room.

  “Wait up.” Meryl fell into step behind him. “I’ll walk you out. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  Jessie smiled to herself. Poor Greg. The “something” Meryl had in mind was surely Vanessa. Jessie hoped she wasn’t going to spend the rest of the day bailing her friend out of jail for assaulting an officer of the law.

  Once they were gone, Jessie wandered around the living room, poking at the glass fragments with her foot. She wondered if Greg would bother cleaning up while he was there. The thought almost made her laugh. Half consciously, she dug deeper into the shimmering mound with her toe. Something in the rubble caught her eye. Using the sole of her boot, she nudged away the debris. The object caught the light coming through the other windows but didn’t refract it the same way the glass did.

  She squatted and brushed the broken pieces aside. Gingerly, she picked up the silver and turquoise barrette that had been buried. She didn’t have to study it long to know where she’d seen the thing before.

  Meryl’s voice startled her. “Did you find something?”

  Jessie rose, cradling the barrette in her hands. “I think my burglar left behind a calling card.”

  “What is that? A belt buckle?”

  “No.” Jessie held it up.

  “A hair clip? Whose?”

  Jessie stashed the barrette in her pocket and smiled. “Sherry Malone’s.”

  JESSIE ARCHED HER ACHING back and stretched in a useless attempt to relieve the knots accumulated from a second night on the old sofa. She thought about the three offers of beds and skimmed right over Milt’s and Meryl’s to settle on Daniel’s. She closed her eyes and toyed with a delicious daydream involving the memory of his goodnight kiss, expanding to the purely fantasized feel of his arms around her, the warmth of his body.

  A fat feline jumped onto her stomach, effectively performing the Heimlich maneuver, expelling the rest of her fantasy.

  Jessie sat up with a groan, gave Molly’s ears a scratch, and deposited the cat on the floor. Molly ambled over to the bowl where the tabby kitten was crunching dry food, ran her rough, pink tongue over the tabby’s face a couple times, and nudged him aside so she could get her own breakfast.

  Jessie shuffled to the desk and flopped into the chair. She removed the silver and turquoise barrette from the center drawer and turned it over in her hand. What had been in those records that Sherry so desperately needed to hide?

  A loud rap at the office door jarred her from her thoughts. She slid the barrette back into the drawer. “Come in.”

  As if thinking of the young woman had conjured her up, Sherry poked her head into the office. Her usual tan seemed to have washed away, and her voice had a raspy texture that hinted of a sleepless night. “We have a problem in Barn F.”

  Jessie tried to recall who was stabled there but couldn’t. “What kind of problem?”

  “You’d just better come with me.”

  Sherry climbed into the passenger side of Jessie’s truck but refused to offer any kind of explanation. “Drive,” was all she said.

  Jessie was surprised to see Neil Emerick waiting in front of the barn, gnawing on a toothpick. She and Sherry slid down from opposite sides of the cab.

  “What’s going on?” Jessie asked.

  His eyes shifted between the two women. Removing the toothpick, he turned. “This way.”

  Jessie followed with Sherry bringing up the rear.

  At first glance, the barn appeared empty, but a small crowd gathered around one of the stalls halfway down the shedrow. Three men gazed into the stall, their conversation too low for her to understand. When Jessie approached, they grew silent and parted, giving her a clear view of the horse inside.

  An emaciated gray stood in the center of the stall with his head hanging and his eyelids half closed. The horse’s flesh seemed to have sunk inward with only traces of it attached to prominent withers, an angular spine and much too obvious ribs and pelvis.

  Jessie had seen a pasture full of badly neglected horses once when she’d volunteered with the animal control officer during her internship. She’d hoped to never see such a heart wrenching sight again. This was worse. “My God. How could you let this happen?”

  “I didn’t let nothing happen,” Emerick snapped. “I’ve been pouring the feed to the old bag of bones ever since he got here. He gets more grain than any three of my other horses combined. He just don’t pick up. Then this morning that one insisted you look at him.” He thrust a thumb at Sherry, who leaned against the railing across the shedrow from the crowd, chewing her cuticles.

  The haunted look in her eyes rattled Jessie. “He’s running a fever,” Sherry said and went back to chewing her fingers.

  Jessie’s gaze lingered on her, but she refused to meet it. Jessie sensed she had the answers to nearly all of her questions about the last couple of weeks. Right now, though, Jessie only had time to consider the skeletal gray.

  “I’ll be right back.” Jessie excused herself to go to her truck. By the time she returned with a white plastic bucket full of supplies, someone had snapped a break-away tie hanging in one corner to the horse’s halter. The tie appeared to be all that kept his nose from hitting the ground. “You said he’s been like this since you got him. How long ago was that?”

  “I said he’s been like that since he’s been here. He ain’t mine. I’m training him for Doug Whitman.” Emerick motioned toward one of the three men who now stood clustered together farther down the shedrow.

  She rested a hand on the gray’s pencil-thin neck and spoke softly to the horse. He didn’t respond. His hair-coat felt hot and dry, almost brittle. She stroked the flat area between his eyes, slid her hand to cup his ear, rubbing a thumb against the soft hair inside. Then she moved back to pat his neck and ran her hand along his bony spine. Picking through the contents of the white bucket, she found and greased a thermometer with Vaseline and then slid it into the gray’s rectum. A length of cord attached the thermometer to a spring clothespin, which she clipped to the gray’s tail. “How long has he been here?”

  “A month. Maybe a little less. Maybe a little more. I’d have to check my books.”

  Jessie bet Emerick knew to the minute how long this horse had been in his stable. She shifted her gaze to the three men, unsure which one to direct her question to. “Mr. Whitman? How long?”

  The one in the center with a long face and a John Deere ball cap replied. “Like Neil said, about a month.”

  Jessie examined the horse starting with his head, checking
his gums, his tongue and his eyes. “Mr. Whitman, how long have you owned this horse?”

  “Not long. Maybe three, four months. I got him at an auction in Oklahoma.”

  She ran her hands down the gray’s left front leg. As she knelt beside him, she saw the band of swelling that ran along his underside, from his breastbone back. She caught Sherry watching her and knew immediately why Sherry had insisted she be called.

  “I assume you have health papers for this animal?” Jessie stood and looked first at Emerick, then Whitman.

  They exchanged nervous glances.

  “Yeah.” There was a hint of a question mark in Whitman’s voice.

  “I’d like to see them, if you don’t mind.”

  Emerick sent one of the other men, a younger fellow, off to fetch the papers.

  Jessie moved toward the horse’s hindquarters, running a hand under his belly, along the band of edema. After a check of her watch, she unclipped the clothespin and retrieved the thermometer. “One hundred and six.”

  Emerick muttered something under his breath.

  Whitman shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “What do you think it is?”

  Jessie eyed Sherry, who continued to silently chew on her nails. Sherry suspected the same thing she did—Jessie was sure of it. She didn’t expect the health documents to tell her much, but she was praying the Coggins papers had been signed by any vet but Doc.

  Emerick’s young assistant appeared around the corner and jogged down the shedrow toward them. He clutched a dirty envelope, which he offered to Emerick. The trainer indicated he should hand it to Jessie.

  Her head throbbed as she removed the papers and unfolded them. They were dated three weeks prior to Doc’s death. A third of the way down, the space naming the federally accredited veterinarian responsible for drawing the blood listed Dr. Samuel Lewis, Doc’s given name.

  She studied the horse. The sweet, sad, dark eyes. The rough coat. She could only imagine the agony he was in. “I need to do bloodwork.” Her voice sounded hollow in her ears.

  Emerick shrugged. “Whatever.”

  Jessie shot a look at the poker-faced trainer who appeared a lot less concerned than she believed he really was. As she watched him, a puzzle piece snapped into place in the back of her mind. She swung around to Sherry, thinking of the morning Jessie had gone to Emerick’s barn to check on Soldier Bob. The morning Sherry had blocked her passage. The gray head hanging over the stall webbing farther down the shedrow. The apparently empty stalls on either side of him. And later, Emerick himself cleaning out that lone stall.

  Sherry finally met Jessie’s gaze but just for a moment. Then she lowered her head. The glimpse had been enough for Jessie. She turned back to Emerick. “I’m also going to need to draw blood on all the horses in your barn.”

  Emerick’s poker face dropped away like a mask. “Why?”

  “That’s where you had this boy stabled until recently, right? Empty stalls on either side of him. You suspected something was wrong and isolated him. Then you moved him here when you heard I was on my way to look at Sullivan.”

  Emerick stepped toward her, his fists balled. “So what? I figured he had a cold or something. I didn’t want the other horses catching it. I don’t see why you need to draw blood from them.”

  Sherry spoke up. “EIA.” She pressed away from the rail. “Dr. Cameron thinks it’s EIA. Swamp Fever.” Sherry wheeled and strode away, her long blonde braid swaying side to side. No silver and turquoise barrette adorned the top of it.

  Whitman’s face matched the color of his sick horse.

  The trainer loomed over Jessie. “EIA? Equine infect—”

  Jessie refused to react to the stench of his stale breath. “Equine infectious anemia. I’m placing both barns under quarantine.”

  Jessie swabbed the gray’s neck just under his jaw with an alcohol wipe. Then she picked up the Vacutainer she’d prepared a few minutes earlier. She probed the skin and flesh until she found the spot she wanted, inserted the needle, and popped the vacuum tube into place. He didn’t flinch, didn’t bat an eye. Dark blood began streaming into the tube.

  The somber gathering had been joined by Tony Rizzo, known around the track as The Stall Man. Short, stocky, and bald, he controlled which trainers were assigned which stalls. Most days he appeared to take tremendous pleasure in the power he wielded. Today, he seemed even shorter than usual.

  “Are you sure about this?” Tony asked from behind her. “I mean, about it being EIA. Couldn’t it be something else?”

  Jessie’s eyes never left the Vacutainer. “Sure it could. It could be a few things.”

  “So this could be nothing?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What are the other possibilities?”

  She removed the filled tube, placed one finger at the injection site, and extracted the needle, holding pressure. “Anthrax. Equine Encephalitis, Equine Influenza...”

  Tony’s eyes widened. “Those are contagious, aren’t they? I mean, to humans?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Yep. Of the choices, EIA is probably preferable. At least as far as we humans are concerned. None of it’s good for them.” She released the pressure on the spot where the needle had gone in and stroked the gray’s neck. One of the reasons she’d always wanted to be a veterinarian was so she could do something to help sick and injured animals. Except this time she was powerless. There was no cure. No medication. Only one way out. And it sucked.

  Tony tugged a red bandana from his hip pocket and wiped a gleam of sweat from his bald head. “Christ,” he muttered. “What can we do? How do we stop it from spreading?”

  “Quarantine.”

  “I know that. Anything else?”

  Jessie nodded to Emerick who slipped the halter off the horse and clipped the stall webbing to the eyehook in the doorway.

  “Do all the barns have those zappers?” Jessie pointed to the blue lights enclosed in a pitted chrome wire cage hanging from the ceiling. As if on cue, a hapless horsefly flew toward the light and the thing emitted a zzzttt. A small spark flashed where the fly had been.

  “I don’t know. I doubt it.”

  “Flying insect control is the most we can do. Make sure each barn has a zapper or two. Or three. Close in this barn—both sides—as much as you can. That one too,” she said, pointing to the adjacent stable. “Same thing up in Barn K, where Neil used to stall him.”

  Tony shrunk another inch. “But that’s just about impossible.”

  “You close them in during the winter, don’t you?”

  “Well, sure. But trainers take weeks to get the sheets of plywood and such nailed up in the fall.”

  “In this case, better make it hours. Make sure the manure piles are kept cleaned up and cordon off the area around the exterior of the barns.”

  “How far?”

  “Preferably two hundred yards—”

  “Two hundred yards?”

  Jessie understood how much space that entailed. “For now at least, take it out to the stables above and below both barns.”

  He rammed the bandana back in his pocket. “I’ll get right on it.” He turned toward Emerick and regained his normal stature, pointing one stubby finger at the trainer’s face. “You. I never gave you permission to move a horse down here.”

  Jessie noticed Emerick dropped the superiority pretense in the face of the man who could ship his entire stable to a less well-maintained barn. Or cut the number of stalls he could use. Under different circumstances, the sight of diminutive Tony Rizzo successfully dressing down tall, obnoxious Neil Emerick would have brought her immense pleasure. Today, it only made her sad.

  Word was getting out. By the time Jessie, Emerick, and Tony arrived at Barn K, a crowd had gathered on the road in front of the stable. They gazed in, worried expressions on their faces. The one face conspicuously absent was Sherry’s, and for once, Jessie would have appreciated her presence. Jessie had a whole barn full of horses that needed to ha
ve blood drawn. She could use an assistant right about now. The possibility that Sherry had broken into Jessie’s house was the least of her concerns.

  HAVING COMPLETED THE sad task of drawing blood from every horse in Neil Emerick’s barn, Jessie sat in her office, resting her head on her arms folded on top of the desk. Sherry had failed to return, leaving Jessie to manage the entire job alone. To make a bad situation worse, she’d been forced to contend with at least half a dozen owners ranting about her insistence that no horse be allowed to leave the barn. Like rats leaving a sinking ship, they wanted to get their horses out. She heard promises that they would take their animals home and keep them there for the duration. She refused to budge.

  At least there had been no panic. So far. Most palpable was the resentment aimed at her, as if this were all her fault. With a moan, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. If they were as red as they felt, she must be a frightening sight.

  Even if she’d spoken up the minute she learned about Doc’s shortcuts with the Coggins tests, nothing would’ve changed. The gray would still be sick. The others would still be in danger. But if she had said something sooner, she wouldn’t be burdened with the sense that, in keeping quiet, she had somehow contributed to this disaster.

  A soft knock came at the door. Milt stuck his head in before she had a chance to say anything.

  “Hey, darlin’. I hear you’re up to your ass in alligators.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “Come in, Milt.”

  After closing the door behind him, he sank into the sofa. “Where are your kitty cats?”

  Jessie pointed toward her feet. Both Molly and the tabby had curled up together under the desk for a nap.

  Milt crossed one ankle over the other knee. “What’s the deal with Emerick’s stable? I heard rumors you suspect Swamp Fever.”

  “You heard right. I hope I’m wrong, but the symptoms are all there.”

  “Are you really thinking of quarantining all of Riverview?”

  “If any of the horses test positive for EIA virus, it may mean shutting down the entire track.”

  “For how long?”

  “It depends on a lot of things. First, we have to do blood tests on every horse on the property. The feds will be involved—”