Long after Geldenhuis flew off in his airplane and the other man dragged the witch doctor’s body over to the car and, with great effort, pulled it into the backseat and drove away, I made my move. I sat shivering for some time, trying to make sense of the past few days. I had really started to believe what Jon Baggs said about Geldenhuis—that he was a playboy, not a murderer. That he must have been set up for the murder of his former colleague Mr. Lee. Where did this come from?
Again, I couldn’t help wondering if Jon was hiding something. He was either involved somehow, or purposefully playing down the doctor’s role because he didn’t want me involved in the case. I’d have to find a way for him to allow me to take a genetic sample of the ivory evidence in his office. I’d have to get Craig to convince him to give it to us.
After picking up my camera, I steeled myself as I approached the pool of blood on the airstrip left behind by the witch doctor’s dead body. Even though I knew it would be useless, I took pictures of the black liquid, as that’s how it looked through night vision. I had DNA evidence on the brain because I wanted more than anything to take a sample of the blood as evidence. But I talked myself out of it. Even though Craig had told me that I had permission to fly over the border of Zambia, if I was questioned upon my return to Mpacha, carrying blood from a murder victim could make me look like an accessory to murder.
But even just looking at the pool of blood sent a chill down my spine. I hadn’t quite adapted to seeing a murdered person yet, must less watching someone get killed. I had discovered less than a week before that the dead body of a stranger made me feel vulnerable, as if I were suddenly in danger of being attacked. And now, even a pool of blood from a murdered body made me feel the same way.
I took the night-vision tube off the camera, mounted it back in my goggles, and put them on. I walked over to the hangar and sat down, staring out at the airstrip. A long time passed before it felt safe to leave—long enough that the half-moon was low on the horizon. The noise of an airplane taking off traveled a good distance in all directions. And after the gunshots, if anyone had been listening, they’d be listening even closer. But I couldn’t wait too long, or I’d risk someone actually wanting to investigate.
As I waited, I couldn’t help thinking about my dad again. Feeling guilty about how he’d feel if he knew what I had gotten myself into with this job, I suddenly wanted to hear his voice. When I had last visited before leaving for Kruger, I could tell he was proud but also nervous. He held my hands out and squeezed them while he took me in. “Your mom would’ve been so proud. You know that, don’t you?”
I smiled and nodded.
“You’re gonna pack heat, right?” he whispered out of earshot of Kelly, knowing that the talk of firearms with his daughter would upset her.
“Dad, I’ll be fine. I’ll work something out when I get there.”
“You wanna borrow my forty-five?”
“It’s too big.”
“Not over there, it won’t be.”
Dad prided himself in taking me with him on his pheasant hunting trips when I was too young, according to Mom. I think she thought he was somehow living out his failed fantasy of becoming a professional hunter after Vietnam. Taking shrapnel in the face while trying to save a friend and losing most of his vision in his left eye did away with that dream. But after Mom died, he bought me a Remington .30-06 bolt-action rifle for my sixteenth birthday and took me on a weeklong elk hunting trip on horseback in Montana, just north of Yellowstone.
When I complained about the weight of the rifle, he said I needed a bit more than a .270 in grizzly country. After the trip was over, I started lifting weights to build my upper-body strength so I could handle bigger calibers but never got back to them. Then I started working at Yellowstone in the summers, and my life seemed to unfold in the wilderness from there, like one might have expected, having grown up in Wyoming.
But if Dad had known what I was doing here, he’d have caught the next flight over and tried to take me home. He understood why I hadn’t wanted to leave Africa after Sean died. He figured I’d get my footing back with a policy stint in Namibia and then I’d get tired of it and come home. He was already circling ads for park service positions in California, hoping to find me something in Yosemite. Having spent some time there during grad school at Berkeley, I could see it—eventually—maybe. I owed him a call, or at least a postcard.
With my nerves further jangled by the persistent scratching noise of a clawed critter walking on the metal roof above me, I finally mustered the adrenaline to move the airplane. I struggled to wheel the nose of the Cessna out of the hangar. I had to rock it a few times to get it to roll enough so that I could get the momentum to pull it out.
I got in and started up the plane. I drove onto the bumpy strip and pushed in the throttle to accelerate. Pulling up on the yoke, I flew into the night, eager to put as much distance between myself and the witch doctor’s blood as possible.