Kit Ehrman: At Risk

I braced my hands against the wall and watched the water swirl down the drain, thinking I could have met the same fate.

I stayed in the shower until the hot water ran cold.

I spent most of the day in bed, listening to music and trying not to think. Not about the horses, or the men, or what they had done. Around four in the afternoon, I got the coffee machine going, made some toast, and sat on one of the barstools. I slid a magazine across the counter and leafed through the pages until I came to an article on pastern lameness.

Behind me, someone banged on the kitchen door. My hand flinched, and coffee sloshed over my fingers and spread across the page.

"Damn."

I wiped my hand on my sweats and walked across the cold white tiles. My landlord was standing on the doormat, blowing on his hands and shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

He looked up when the door creaked open. "Oh, man."

"Hi, Greg."

He closed his mouth with a snap. "Marty said you'd tangled with them, but I didn't think…"

Cold air and a couple of snowflakes eddied in through the open door. I backed up. "Come in."

He stepped into the kitchen and stood just inside the door while the snow on his boots melted and formed an irregular brown puddle on the tile.

"Susan knew something was up," he said. "She saw someone drop off your truck Sunday afternoon and thought that was kind of weird, especially when we didn't see any lights on last night. You know how she is, the motherly, overprotective type."

Motherly would not have been my first choice when describing his wife. Beautiful, yes. And sexy. Motherly? No way.

"Then Foxdale's my first stop this morning, and I hear about the horses." He ran his fingers through his light brown hair. "What happened?"

As I told him, I thought that I should have handled the situation differently. Should have gone back to the truck and driven somewhere else to call the police. Put up a better fight. Hell, I didn't put up any fight.

Greg rubbed the back of his neck. "Jesus. Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm okay." I gestured to the coffee pot. "Want some?"

He glanced at his watch. For answer, he opened the cabinet door closest to the phone.

"Next one over," I said.

Greg let the door thump closed and opened the one beside it. He took down a mug and filled it, then sat on one of the stools and rested his elbows on the counter. He had the loose-limbed build of a basketball player, and at six-foot-three, he had a good three inches on me. He kept his hair layered and long in the back, and he had what many considered Hollywood good looks. But being a horse vet was about as far from glamour as it got. He'd once told me he might have reconsidered his career choice if he'd realized it meant spending half the day with his arm buried to the shoulder in a horse's rectum.

"What they did," Greg said. "I've been thinking about it all day."

"How's Sprite's eye?"

Greg raised his eyebrows. "You sure like to change the subject, don't you?"

I smiled.

"The cornea's healed," he said. "No thanks to your crew. No one's bothered to medicate it. You must've treated it aggressively in the beginning, like I told you."

"Yeah, I did."

He unbuttoned his coat and cupped his fingers around the mug. "Doesn't anyone over there do medications besides you?"

"No."

"Two hundred horses, and no one else does medications?" Greg shook his head. "What are they going to do when you go on vacation?"

"You assume a great deal."

He shot me an amused glance, then took a tentative sip of his coffee.

I sighed. "Nobody else takes the initiative, and management cuts corners wherever they can, whenever they can. As long as the boarders won't notice." I dropped two more slices into the toaster. "How often do horses get stolen around here, anyway?"

"I'd bet it's more prevalent than any of us realize. They don't always make the papers, but I hear about them on my rounds sometimes. Foxdale's more vulnerable than most operations because no one lives on the premises." He smoothed his fingers through his hair. "Someone out there doesn't mind taking risks for what I would have thought was a small profit."

"Maybe they like the risk more than the profit," I said.

His gaze sharpened on my face. "What makes you say that?"

I shrugged. "Firsthand knowledge."

Greg shook his head. "Jesus."

I pulled the slices out of the toaster and dropped them on my plate. "So, what kind of profit are we talking about?"

"Well, let's say the bottom'd dropped out of the meat market, and all they were getting was fifty cents to the pound. For a thirteen-hundred pound horse, that would be about six-hundred-and-fifty bucks. Round up seven good-sized horses, and they'd end up with about forty-five hundred. That's not bad for something that didn't belong to them in the first place. As the price gets closer to a dollar a pound, it just plain gets more tempting."

"What's the price right now?"

Greg shrugged. "Haven't heard."

"How hard would they be to sell? They're some nice-looking horses. Wouldn't they stick out?"

"Put 'em in a crowded lot for a week or two, and they'd look like nags by the time they turned up on the auction block or, more likely, at a packing plant."

I spread some margarine across the toast. "Then they get slaughtered?"

"Yeah, but probably not in the states. Most of them are hauled to Canada first. Then the carcasses are shipped to Europe."

"Why there?"

"Because horse meat is a common… Well, people eat it."

I made a face. The idea seemed alien, like eating the family dog. "What about proof of ownership? Wouldn't they need that?"

"Some outfits aren't very careful with the paperwork end of it. And if the thieves have a connection somewhere, it would be easy."

I slid the plate down the counter and perched on the edge of a stool, hoping I didn't look as stiff as I felt.

Greg eyed me across the rim of his mug. "What goes wrong with people that they'd do something like that?" he said, and I knew he was no longer referring to the horses.

"Things don't go wrong, people do. It was their choice," I said and was surprised by the anger in my voice. "Nobody forced them."

Greg looked at me with an expression I couldn't read. Guess he hadn't expected Philosophy 101. Not from me anyway. He sighed. "I suppose you're right."

He glanced at his watch, then fished his wallet out of a pocket. "Here's my card. Pager number's on the bottom. If you need anything, let me know. The clinic's closed today, so we should be eating around seven. Why don't you come over? Susan would love to have you."

I almost smiled at his choice of words and tried to suppress my runaway imagination by blocking her out of my mind as best I could.

"Come on, Steve." He glanced around the loft-an actual hay loft that he'd converted into a spacious apartment for his teen-aged daughter before she'd decided at the last minute to attend college out of state. I'd considered myself lucky when Greg had offered to rent it to me. "It'll do you good to get out of here, have a home-cooked meal for a change."

"Some other time, thanks."

He downed the rest of his coffee and stood up. "You sure?"

I nodded, and Greg reached over and placed his hand on my shoulder. His palm pressed down on an area of bruising that was still tender. I flinched, and he dropped his hand to his side and stared at me.

"Nothing a Percodan won't fix," I said.

He shook his head and ambled over to the door. "That's strong stuff. Make sure you follow the directions."

"Yes, Mom."

He grinned as he pulled the door shut.

The sky had cleared, and the brood mares, heavy with foal, were grazing in the field where the deer had been. I walked back to the counter and fingered the toast. It was cold, and the margarine had congealed into an unappealing film. I decided I wasn't hungry after all.