The Carbon Murder(84)

With the possible exceptions of Lorna Frederick and Alex Simpson.



I don’t know what I would have done if Dr. Schofield hadn’t been at home. I was wired from my new theory and from the continuous coffee drinking Rose and I engaged in while we waited for Berger to call back with the telephone number.

The doctor sounded worried when he heard my voice. He must have guessed that I’d eventually uncover the microchip cost imbalance and jumped in quickly, before I could tell him my purpose in calling him at ten o’clock at night. Lately I’d been doing my best work after hours, like coyotes.

“Look, I’ve already decided to give all my customers a discount on the chips, starting now,” he said, as if I were a traffic cop who’d pulled him over for speeding and then realized he didn’t have his seatbelt on, either.

“I’m pleased to hear that. But I have another reason for calling.” I told him my theory of what the title PROCESSING meant in the Charger Street records. “What do you think of that?”

I heard a grunt of anger that I felt was genuine. “We—the veterinarians are being suckered into giving horses unapproved drugs? Without even a NADA?”

“Excuse me?”

“A New Animal Drug Application. There’s a whole procedure set up through HHS. The Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is under HHS.” Dr. Schofield gave a low whistle. “If what you’re saying is true, those guys at Charger Street and Houston Poly have it made. The ID chips make it possible for them to track the horses for as long as they want to. Geez.”

“Track them?”

“Well, not exactly, not like we track the coyotes. But they can follow a particular horse’s history through the ID chip.”

“But the chip insertion is a one-time thing, so they wouldn’t want to follow it for very long, right? Only as long as the drug, whatever it is, lasts from the one dose the horse gets.”

“That’s enough. Depending on the drug, they can get a lot of information from one injection. Let’s say it’s a time-release, and they’re testing the effectiveness of it over time. And they can follow the horse’s medical history, because …”

“Because they have their vets on their payroll.”

I heard a weak, “Right.”

“Lorna and Alex probably asked to be kept in the loop for all the horses that have their chips. You and Dr. Evans send them updated medical records for completeness, something like that?”

Another weak, “Right.” I was getting too much enjoyment sensing Dr. Schofield’s embarrassment and guilt.

“What’s the packaging of the chips when you receive them?” I asked him. “Do they look different from the ones you might buy direct from the manufacturer?”

“Well, yeah, the ones I get are in a Charger Street lab wrapper. I figured they repackaged it for their inventory control.”

“What would they be testing?” I asked, wanting to hear Dr. Schofield’s theory before suggesting my own.

“It could be anything, I guess. Maybe they’re just putting a different ceramic sealant around the chip, testing a new formula. That could be disastrous, of course, because then if the tissue didn’t form correctly around it, there’d be problems. Foreign matter in the animal’s body.” I heard a long, low groan that might have been another “geez.”

Dr. Schofield’s voice rose and fell unevenly, not the relaxed tones I’d heard for most of my in-person interview with him.

Rose herself rose from and fell into the chair at intervals as she refilled my coffee and broke a biscotti into small enough pieces for me to nibble while I talked. She mimicked this behavior with her fingers to her mouth, but I shook my head no. I didn’t need to add a choking hazard to my already overtaxed system.

“What about bute?” I asked Dr. Schofield, determined to tie up everything in the case together. “Could they be slipping bute into the chip to enhance the horses’ performance? If they’ve strengthened the anti-inflammatory nature, for example, so the horse would be much more limber?”

“Bute. Is that why you were asking about bute this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s C19H20N2O2 of course. I suppose they could be just adding that, but then they really would be getting short-term results. If they want to enhance a horse’s performance, they’d have to be sure it was administered right before a competition. Unless they’re adding a larger amount of bute than would usually be used. And they’d have to know that that particular horse was going to compete within a short time. And they’d be taking a chance on random testing. Of course, Lorna is so tied into the equestrian scene, she can follow the horses very closely, and maybe even has some of the medical people on her payroll.”