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“The surgery,” he said in a rush. “We want the surgery.”
“Okay,” Nola said, returning the syringe to her bag. “Let’s get her loaded into your trailer and to the clinic.”
The man ran to his truck while the girl hesitated, eyes red with tears. “You can save her, can’t you?” she asked.
“I can’t promise anything. She’s very sick. You should have called me a lot sooner,” Nola said gruffly. “We have to hurry.” The girl ran, crying, toward her father’s truck. Some people were just so stupid, Nola thought. Once the man and the girl were out of sight, Nola retrieved the syringe from her bag and in one swift move plunged it into Bijou’s jugular.
“There, there,” Nola whispered into Bijou’s ear. “It won’t be long now.” Black flies gathered at Bijou’s open eyes, nostrils and ears. They find the dying so quickly, Nola thought as the rancher pulled his truck up to the barn. Nola guided Bijou into the trailer and secured the rear doors.
Nola trotted to the open truck window. “I’ll call ahead to the clinic so they’ll be ready for you,” she said glancing over at the girl, who was chewing frantically at her thumbnail.
“You’re not going to do the surgery?” the rancher asked in confusion.
Nola shook her head. “No, every second counts. The surgeon will be waiting for you to arrive. He’ll take good care of her. You need to hurry.” Nola slapped the hood of the truck as if to prod it forward.
The horse would make it to the clinic but wouldn’t survive the surgery. Nola had an excellent perioperative success rate so she was glad to pass the surgery off to someone else. Let Dr. Rasmussen deal with it. Nola didn’t like him anyway. Maybe the rancher would ask for a necropsy; those she enjoyed. Nola hadn’t performed a postmortem on a horse in a long time.
She checked her cell phone in case the hospital in Willow Creek had called. Her mother had fallen down the basement steps a week ago, breaking a hip, her right ulna and three ribs. The surgery on her hip went as well as could be expected for a woman with diabetes, smoker’s lung and osteoporosis.
There were no calls from the hospital but there were three missed calls from the clinic she worked for—Ransom County Animal Health Center. RCAHC, owned by two vets, was a mixed practice, meaning it served all your veterinary needs from your guinea pig’s mange to artificially inseminating your cattle.
Nola’s specialty was with large animals. Pets, or rather pet owners, were not her strong suit according to the partners.
Nola rang the clinic and spoke before Becky, the receptionist, could say hello.
“I’ve got someone coming in with his horse. He’ll be there in ten. Twisted bowel. Dr. Rasmussen should be ready to scrub in.”
“Got it,” Becky said. “Don’t hang up. I need to talk to you. There was a police officer here looking for you,” she said, her voice just above a whisper and laced with a what have you done now tone. “I’ll be right back.” Muzak filled Nola’s ear.
Nola knew what this was about. She’d heard two women talking at the convenience store this morning while in line to pay for her coffee. They were scraping away at their scratch-off lottery tickets while they talked, unaware that she was standing right behind them. “I heard they found that Knox girl’s shoe,” said June, a woman Nola knew from the vet clinic. She lived on a farm outside of town and raised goats. “In the cave where she was murdered.”
Nola didn’t recognize the other woman, but she nodded knowingly. “Really? You know, I always thought the sister killed her. She’s one strange bird.”
June paused in her scratching. “My bet is on the boyfriend,” she said and brushed away the silver dust from her ticket with a flick of her fingers. “It’s always the boyfriend.”
“Naw, it’s the sister. My son went to school with her. Said she had a nasty temper, stabbed a kid once.”
“Really?” June asked and then caught sight of Nola standing behind them. Nola gave them a tight smile but didn’t say anything. They scooted away with their scratch-offs held tightly in their fists.
So it was no surprise to Nola that the police were looking for her. Nola waited for Becky to come back on the line and passed the time by scraping horse shit from the bottom of her boots across the scorched grass. “Like I said, the police were here,” Becky said when she returned. “I said you were at the Niering place. What’s going on?”
“Are they coming here?” Nola asked. “Seriously? I have to get over to Goose Lake to see about a bull.” She opened the truck door, tossed her bag on the seat and climbed inside. “Couldn’t you have just taken a message?” Nola asked, starting the truck and pulling onto the road.
“It’s the police,” Becky said defensively. “What would you have done?”
“I would have taken a message.” Nola sighed and hung up on her. The last thing Nola needed was for a police officer to pull her over in front of a client’s home. It wasn’t good for business. Besides, she promised Richard Madden that she would be there before noon. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. The police could wait. She had a feeling they would be taking up a lot of her time in the weeks to come.
Nola turned onto a county road, heat rising from the pavement in ripples when a car came into view, flashed its lights, slowed down and then did a quick U-turn. Nola knew the car. A black sedan belonging to her former neighbor, Maggie Kennedy. So this was the cop looking for her, Nola thought with newfound interest.
Nola pressed down on the accelerator, drove a mile and then took a sharp right. A shortcut to the Madden farm. Nola knew these back roads inside and out; she’d been crisscrossing them since she was sixteen. But Maggie knew them too. Nola floored the gas pedal, kicking up gravel as she sped down the deserted road past rows of spindly corn struggling to stay upright in the crumbly, dry earth. I’ve got work to do, she thought. Maggie could wait. It wasn’t like Eve was going anywhere.
