Death by Equine by Annette Dashofy (read this if txt) 📗

her soul to shreds would’ve driven her to either head the other way or want to slug him. Tonight, all she wanted to hear was this emergency response was a false alarm.

He caught her by her shoulders and held her firm. “Jess, don’t get any closer.” The words sounded gruff, as if he was fighting a cold.

They only fed her apprehension. “Tell me what happened.”

Greg’s face was set in deep lines. She’d known him long enough to recognize the look. This was bad. Real bad. “There’s been an accident. It’s Doc. He’s dead.”

His words hit her with the force of a sucker punch. “Dead?” she echoed. “Doc? No. He wasn’t supposed to be here.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s supposed to be on vacation. I’m covering for him.” She struggled to make sense of what Greg had just told her. Doc was home in bed. His flight would take off in a few hours. It was the only reality she could accept. “There must be some mistake.”

“There’s no mistake. We found him in the stall. Horse must’ve trampled him. There wasn’t anything any of us could’ve done for him.”

“No. It must be someone else. Doc’s too smart. Too careful.” She searched Greg’s face for some hint of uncertainty, but he avoided her gaze. Seizing the moment, she spun from his grasp, ducked under his arm, and dodged the guy in the county police uniform, tripping to a stop in front of the stall. She immediately wished she’d heeded Greg’s warning.

Doc’s broken and bloodied body sprawled in the center of the stall. One leg was obviously shattered at the femur. His chest, unnaturally concave. And his head...

The metallic stench of blood...lots of blood...smacked her in the face and overpowered the more soothing smells of straw and manure.

Gagging, she wheeled away and closed her eyes against the sight. Closing her mind to it was harder. She sagged against the cool block wall and tried to breathe in the spring night air. But her lungs constricted as if her own chest had been crushed.

This couldn’t be happening. Not Doc. Not the man who’d been more of a father to her than her own had ever been.

A second state trooper, every bit as tall as Greg but twice his weight, appeared in front of Jessie. “Get her the hell out of here,” Trooper Larry Popovich said, his voice gruff and no-nonsense.

A gentle hand closed around her arm. “Sorry about that, Larry.” Greg tugged her away.

Once they were out of the shedrow, away from the cops and the helpless medics, Jessie managed to find her breath. Doc was dead. There was no going back, no undoing what had happened. But she couldn’t go to pieces. Not now. Focus. “Have you notified Amelia?” God, this was going to devastate Doc’s wife.

“I called Daniel Shumway. He offered to go over to their house and break the news.”

“Good.” As Riverview’s CEO, Daniel possessed a quiet strength that served him well in business. Jessie felt certain it would also serve him well while delivering the news that would destroy Amelia Lewis’s world.

Greg steered Jessie toward their vehicles, but she stopped and pulled free of his grasp. She wasn’t about to be sent home. There was work to be done. Questions she needed answered. “Where’s the horse from that stall? Did you guys shoot him?”

“No. The trainer moved it to another stall.” Greg pointed to the far end of the shedrow. “The horse’s name is Clown Around Town. Trainer’s a woman by the name of Zelda Peterson.”

Jessie thought of the phone call from Doc only a few short hours ago. Clown Around Town was the name of the horse he’d asked her to treat for colic. But she’d been on another emergency. If only she hadn’t told Doc she’d be delayed, he wouldn’t be laying in that stall. He wouldn’t be dead.

She brushed a hand across her face, fending off the guilt and the rush of tears searing her eyes. “I have to check on him.”

“Him? Who?” Greg’s eyes widened. “Not the horse.”

“Yes, the horse. I’m a veterinarian. Doc called me about this animal. I have to find out why.”

Greg stepped in front of her. Again. “No, Jess.”

She started to point out it was a little late for him to show concern for her wellbeing, but the arrival of a van marked Monongahela County Coroner shut her up. Her vision blurred at the realization she wasn’t going to awaken from this nightmare.

“I have to go talk to the coroner,” Greg said.

She battled the rising hysteria. Fought to hold it together.

Greg shook a finger at her. “Stay away from that horse until I can go with you. We don’t need another body here tonight.”

She watched him walk away. Under different circumstances, she might have found his protective act touching. Tonight, it only further reminded her of all she’d lost. She had no intention of being the next body with or without Greg playing security guard. Shrugging the tension from her shoulders, she headed for the far end of the shedrow.

A gray-haired woman with the physique of a linebacker paced the narrow end of the barn, her phone pressed to her ear. Jessie remembered meeting Zelda years earlier when she’d worked as Doc’s assistant. When the woman spotted Jessie’s approach, she ended her call.

“I’m not sure you remember me. I’m Dr. Cameron.”

The woman extended her hand and Jessie grasped it. “You’re filling in for Doc.” As soon as Zelda said it, her eyes filled with tears.

“He called me to treat Clown. He said the horse was colicking.”

Zelda appeared confused. “Really?”

“Isn’t that why you called Doc?”

With a trembling hand, the woman held out her phone. “I didn’t call him.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t call him? Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

Jessie tamped down her frustration. “Then what are you doing here?”

“The police contacted me at home. Told me my horse had been involved in an accident. I thought Clown was hurt, but when I got here, it was Doc.” Zelda turned the device over and over