The two horse and rider were as still as death in mid-track.
Sirens. An ambulance. People running across the infield.
The place was chaotic.
“Let?s get the hell over there,” Callahan said, and we jumped the rail and headed for the infield.
57
RAINES GETS TOUGH
It was a bizarre sight: Disaway was spread out on an enormous metal table, three legs askew, his head
dangling awkwardly over one side, his bulging eyes terrified in death, his foreleg split wide open and
its muscles and tendons clamped back, revealing the shattered bone. The vet, whose name was
Shuster and who was younger than I had pictured him, a short man in his mid-thirties who had lost
most of his hair, was leaning over the leg with a magnifying glass, and Callahan, dressed in a white
gown, was leaning right along with him. Both gowns were amply bloodstained. I walked to within
three or four feet and watched and listened, keeping my mouth shut and my eyes and ears open.
So far, two horses were dead, a third might have to be destroyed, and two jockeys were in the
hospital, Scoot Impastato with a fractured skull and a broken leg.
“I?ve never seen a break quite this bad,” Shuster was saying.
“The other horses could?ve done some damage when they ran over him,” Callahan answered.
“1 think not. The pastern bone broke inward here... and here. No chips or other evidence of impact.
This is what interests me. See? Right here and then down here, at the bottom of the break.”
Callahan leaned closer and nodded.
“Yeah. Maybe it splintered when the bone broke.”
“Maybe..
Shuster took a pair of micrometers and leaned back over the carcass.
“Less than half a millimetre,” he said. He took a scalpel and scraped something from the edge of the
fractured bone into a test tube.
“Calcium?” Callahan said.
“We?ll see.”
“Butes did this,” Callahan said.
“I?d have to agree. The horse was coming up lame. He should have been scratched.”
“What was the trainer?s excuse for dosing him?”
“Runny nose.”
“Yeah, ran all the way down his leg.”
“I couldn?t argue,” Shuster said apologetically. “It?s a perfectly legitimate excuse.”
