Breakaway (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (15 page)

Fastening the wide nylon webbing strap under the horse's belly, I instructed our driver to raise the animal at my signal. Once again, I steadied the gray's head and held the lead rope taut so he could brace against it.

"All right," I said.

Slowly and inexorably the boom lifted. In another minute the horse was on his feet. He stood there, swaying slightly. But he stood on all four feet. He had no broken legs, no dislocated joints, nor badly strained tendons. We all watched him.

After a few more minutes had passed, I unfastened the strap from around his belly. The tow truck driver was just climbing back in the cab when the horse collapsed, stumbling forward into the breezeway of the barn and settling almost calmly onto his belly.

"Damn," I said forcefully.

Now what? The gray still seemed remarkably quiet, but I felt he was beginning to show minor signs of stress. The woman who owned him was crying silently, tears running down her cheeks.

"Look," I told her, I hoped evenly, "this isn't going too well. In my experience, horses that go down and won't get up don't have a good prognosis. Horses aren't built to live lying down. If this guy doesn't get up in the next day or so, I'm afraid he'll probably die."

"But what's wrong with him?"

"I don't know," I said helplessly, even as various ideas spun through my head. Cancer? EPM? Heart failure? Nothing seemed to fit these specific circumstances.

"What should I do?” the woman asked.

"You've got three choices, basically. You can haul him to an equine hospital where they have more resources than I do, you can put him down, or you can wait and see."

I hesitated. I hated this question, and I got it all the time. It was so terribly subjective. What I would do might be entirely unworkable for her.

"Haul him to the nearest equine hospital," I said at last. "They can put him in a sling, so he'll stand, and they'll probably be able to figure out what's wrong with him. But it will be expensive."

The woman stared at her horse, lying on his chest in the barn aisle, breathing heavily "All right," she said, "but how?"

I motioned to the tow truck driver who had been standing by his truck during our consultation. "We need to get this horse in a horse trailer," I said.

He nodded, already calculating the logistics of the problem.

"I can put him all the way out," I said.

He pointed at a large piece of plywood leaning against the barn wall. "If we can get him on to that, I can drag him out of the barn, like he was on a sled."

"Yeah." I looked at the owner. "This may not be pretty," I told her, "but we need to get him in the trailer, and it won't hurt him."

An hour later we were more or less organized, with two neighboring men pressed into service. By now it was past noon, and my frustration was growing. Taking a deep breath and reminding myself to stay quiet and calm, I gave the gray horse five cc's of ketamine, which would put him all the way out for fifteen minutes or so.

The minute his nose was touching the dirt of the barn aisle, I nodded to my crew. "Let's go."

As we had prearranged, the five of us, using ropes and what strength we possessed, managed to lever the gelding onto the sheet of plywood, which had been attached by chains to the boom of the tow truck. As soon as he was on, more or less, the tow truck driver leaped into the cab and hauled him out onto the driveway where the horse trailer was ready and waiting.

Now came the tricky part. Thanking God the woman had a stock trailer rather than a little two-horse trailer, I helped the truck driver fasten a second chain to the boom. Once again he lifted the horse, looking for all the world like a carcass on a board, and we pushed, pulled, shoved, and dragged him into the trailer.

Just in time. We no sooner got the door latched than he snorted and lifted his head.

I tranquilized him, gave the woman more tranquilizers and directions for her journey, thanked everybody, and got back in my truck. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, I'd dealt with all of one call, and I was both sweating and starving. I called the office.

The receptionist sounded tense. "Jim's had a couple of emergencies," she said, "and he's way behind on his appointments. He was supposed to see this one woman at noon; he wants you to get out there as soon as you can."

I hung up the car phone, wondering. I knew a Jeri Ward. She was a detective with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department. But it couldn't be the same person. The Jeri Ward I knew did not look like the type to own a horse.

I was wrong. When I pulled into the Bishop Ranch twenty minutes later, the woman who greeted me was indeed Detective Jeri Ward.

Parking my truck under the big cottonwood tree in the barnyard, I got out. Jeri Ward in jeans and a T-shirt looked remarkably different from the sleekly professional woman I'd met in the course of a murder investigation, many years ago. She also looked disconcertingly similar.

Even in her jeans, she appeared poised and well put-together; the white T-shirt unsullied, the short blond hair neatly groomed, the face calm and somewhat aloof. The sight of her brought back a rush of memories, most of them distinctly unnerving.

"Hello, Dr. McCarthy," she said, with just the faintest trace of amusement in her voice.

"Hello, Detective Ward," I replied. Belatedly I realized that she had made an appointment with Jim, not me, and that my presence was perhaps unwelcome. "Jim had an emergency," I said.

"Is that right?" I said stupidly. I'd always assumed this woman was single, that her cool professionalism reflected an austere nature; I would have bet she was solitary by choice. Apparently I was wrong again.

Jeri Ward began walking toward a shed row that led off the main barn; I followed.

"I've always wanted a horse," she went on, "but I thought I was too busy and they cost too much. But Kevin decided I ought to have one. One of his friends is a team penner, and he had a seventeen-year-old horse he wanted to retire. He said the horse would be perfect for me. He gave him to Kevin, just so the horse would get a good home."

"Sounds ideal," I said.

She smiled again. "Wait till you see him. Anyway," she went on, "I don't know much about horses, but enough to know that an older, gentle horse that I can ride through the hills is what I need, so in most ways this guy fits. There are just a few small problems, though."

This had to be the funniest-looking horse I'd ever seen. He was little, with abnormally short legs and an equally abnormally long back. He looked like a dachshund. Added to this, he was high-headed, with a long, skinny, giraffe-like neck, and he had a blind eye on the right side. Not to mention, he was thin as a rail.

"See what I mean," she said. "We picked him up last week, after I made arrangements to board him out here, and he really is gentle to ride, and he seems to be sound. But everything else aside, he's so thin; I thought I ought to have a vet check him, despite the fact that he's a gift horse and all that." Another smile.

"Okay," I said. "Let's get him out."

Jeri took a halter off a peg and walked into the pen with the sorrel gelding, who allowed himself to be caught with no difficulty. "Come on, ET," she said.

I had to laugh. "Is that his name?"

She smiled back. "Fits him, doesn't it?"

"It sure does." We grinned at each other companionably; I was remembering our last encounter, and how annoyed she had been at me for getting involved in a murder investigation. Apparently she was a different creature off duty.

I checked ET out as completely as I could; he was a perfect gentleman throughout. He did indeed appear to be sound; in fact, he was one of the cleanest-legged older horses I'd come across. Judging by his teeth he was closer to twenty than the reputed seventeen. Jeri just shrugged.

ET's pulse and respiration were normal and his heart sounded good; his gut made typical noises. He was definitely blind in the eye that was glazed blue; by my reckoning he had no vision in it at all.

"Do you know how that happened?" I asked. "It looks like the result of an injury."

"No, the guy didn't say. Just told me to be careful not to surprise the horse when he couldn't see me, and that other than that, he was perfectly gentle. And he does seem to be."

I nodded. "Lots of one-eyed horses do just fine," I said. I looked at the horse some more. "I really can't see any reason for his degree of thinness. Sometimes that can be caused by sand in the gut, but his gut sounds normal. Another possibility is heart problems, but once again, there's no sign of that. Have you wormed him?"

"The day I brought him home."

"And his teeth look fine, no corners or sharp edges." I ran a hand over the gelding's ribs. "What are you feeding him?"

"All the alfalfa hay he can eat."

"You might try oat and alfalfa pellets, and put a tub of alfalfa meal and molasses in the pen with him, so he can nibble on it free-choice. That is, if you can arrange it with the stable."

"She can do anything she wants." The voice came from behind me; even before I turned I knew it was Bart Bishop. That quasi-friendly tone thinly overlying an essential aggression-it had to be him.

Jeri gave him a short smile and said, "Can we arrange to feed this horse oat and alfalfa pellets and free-choice alfalfa meal and molasses?"

"I don't know," I said. "There's nothing obvious. Maybe his former owner didn't feed him enough. Maybe he's just a hard keeper. If he doesn't show signs of gaining on this regime, I'll run some blood tests."

"Did you check his teeth?" Bart asked. I stared at him. Did the man really mean to imply I was a totally incompetent veterinarian?

"Yes," I said shortly. Checking the teeth was a routine first step with a thin horse.

"No problem there?" Bart was pursuing it.

"No," I said, and stared right at him, willing him to walk away. This guy was sure different from his brother. I'd already glanced in the direction of Clay's house and ascertained that his pickup was gone.

"I'll start him on his new feed tonight." Bart was looking at Jeri now. "Is that okay with you?"

"Fine," she said. I had the impression she found Bart as annoying as I did.

He smiled at her with a glint in his eyes that I was sure he meant to be charming, but which struck me as merely obnoxious. With that handsome face and the mystique of the trainer's mantle on his shoulders, he was clearly used to bowling women right over. He probably found it annoying that neither Jeri nor I appeared impressed.

"Shall I put him back?" Jeri asked me, ignoring Bart.

"Sure," I said. "I'm done with him."

Taking his cue, Bart gave us both a nonchalant wave and moved off down the barn aisle. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at the slight swagger in his departing butt. Putting the horse away and hanging the halter back on the peg, Jeri accompanied me back to my truck.

"Call me if he hasn't gained some weight in a month," I said.

"All right." Jeri looked as composed and distant as ever. I have no idea what prompted me to say what I did next. "Have you ever run into the problem of a man having sexual relations with a horse?"

Jeri stopped dead, as well she might, and looked at me. "No," she said. She looked at me some more. "It's a crime, you know. Bestiality. It's still on the books." She wrinkled her nose. "That's nasty."