Screaming in terror, Paulsen dove into the depression face first, her gun spinning off towards the forest.
Nigel, stunned by the electronic fence, landed in an unconscious heap right behind her. The momentum of his big body had carried him past the old wire fence line and into the meadow.
“Holy crap,” I heard Alan breathe beside me.
“Go get Kami and bring her over here to take care of Nigel,” I told him, hustling over to where Paulsen’s gun had landed. “He’ll be out for a little while, but I’d much rather she was right here when he does wake up.” I snatched up the gun and aimed it at Paulsen, who seemed equally unconscious in the dirt.
“A pathetic plan, huh?” I congratulated myself, then studied the sleeping tiger. “Thanks, buddy. Anytime you want to take a flying leap, it’s okay with me.”
A moment later, Paulsen stirred as Alan and Kami came running back to meet me, Kami’s hands still cuffed together. I handed the gun to Alan. “You cover her, Hawk. You know I hate guns.”
Alan expertly drew a bead on the base of Paulsen’s skull. “Sit up with your hands on your head,” he told her. “I grew up shooting snakes on the reservation, and I’m not about to miss one now.”
I looked at him in surprise. “Pretty intimidating for a high school history teacher, don’t you think?”
He threw me a grin. “Man, I could get used to birding with you, Bob. It sure beats the hell out of watching C-SPAN.”
Great. Alan the Six-shooting Birdwatcher.
“I’m positively underwhelmed,” I told him, pulling out my cell phone.
“Who are you calling?” Kami asked, kneeling beside Nigel. I noticed her hands resting on the tiger’s flank, rising and falling with his deep breathing.
“Stan Miller,” I said, just as he picked up at his end. “Where are you? And why aren’t you already here?”
“Flat. Had to fix it.”
“You got a flat tire?” I almost laughed out loud. I’d always assumed real life didn’t apply to Scary Stan.
He ignored my question and my tone, too. “Be there in five.”
“No rush,” I said. “We have the situation under control. But I don’t know who to call when the sheriff is the one we want to arrest.”
He let out a soft whistle. “In four,” he replied. The phone went dead in my hand.
“Stan will know what to do,” I told Kami and Alan, who had raised the gun to keep it level with Paulsen’s head as she had lifted herself into a sitting position on the ground. She kept her back towards us, but took a look over her shoulder, probably just to make sure Alan really did have a gun on her.
“Why Billy?” I asked her again.
“Why Jack?” Kami added, her voice crackling with anger. “If it was Ben’s idea, I swear to God I’ll kill him myself.”
Paulsen didn’t say a word.
“I think it was the sheriff’s idea,” I explained to Kami. “A spur-of-the-moment one. I’m guessing Jack caught her tearing down the fence right over there on Friday night, and somehow she forced him over to Green Hills before she shot him. Then she figured she’d frame you for it, thereby eliminating you as an obstacle to what she thought Ben wanted: the ATV project. She killed Jack at the youth camp because she knew he’d be found faster there than here in this seepage meadow that only a few birders know about.” I took a look at Paulsen’s back, still stiffly erect. “Have I got it right, Sheriff?”
She didn’t answer.
Not that I really expected her to.
But it would have been nice to have some affirmation of my guesswork.
Kami, however, began to fit together a few more pieces of the murder puzzle.
“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “Remember I told you that Eddie and I started tracking Billy’s car on Friday? Eddie told me on Saturday morning that Billy’s car had made a brief stop not far from the turn-off to the meadow here after he left my place following Jack, but neither of us could figure out why Billy would do that. But he was following Jack, so he must have stopped because Jack stopped. And Jack must have stopped because he saw a car turning back onto the road from the meadow’s turn-off and thought that was odd.”
Kami’s fists clenched on Nigel’s fur. “Jack knew there was nothing down that road but the seepage meadow, so why would anyone be out there at two or three in the morning?”
“Unless that someone was messing with your fence?” Alan suggested.
“So Jack followed the car,” Kami continued, conviction coloring her voice. “He had to have recognized it as the sheriff’s patrol car and wanted to know what was going on in the seepage meadow that had caused her to come out there.”
“Let me guess,” I interrupted her, and looked at the sheriff, who still kept her back towards us. “You led him to Green Hills, because you knew it was deserted and a popular birding spot, pulled a gun on him when he got out of the car, walked him down the slope and shot him.”
“And Billy, who was following far enough behind not to give himself away to Jack, showed up at Green Hills just in time to hear the gunshots,” Alan concluded. “So Billy knew who killed Jack. Then, a few hours later, Billy, theoretically on his way to Mystery Cave, ends up with a dart in his neck and a bullet in his head.”
Kami suddenly smacked her forehead with her shackled palms. “Of course! The county sheriff has access to tranquilizer darts to manage wildlife problems—Paulsen must have picked one up to use on Billy, which would also implicate me. But why Mystery Cave?”
“Ben,” Stan said, suddenly materializing behind me.
I swear the man is half ghost.
“Where’d you come from?” Alan demanded, obviously rattled by Stan’s silent approach. I, at least, was getting somewhat more accustomed to his sneaking up on me. Then again, I wasn’t holding a gun on a murderer who happened to be an officer of the law, either. No wonder Alan was jumpy.
“Thief River Falls,” Stan replied, his voice flat.
Alan looked even more confused. Thief River Falls was more than halfway across the state from Fillmore County.
“He means where did you come from right now, Stan,” I clarified, “not where you grew up.”
Stan gave me his usual empty-eye look. “Oh.”
“What’s Ben got to do with Billy’s death?” Kami asked him, picking up on what Stan had said when he appeared.
“Traced Billy’s phone calls. Ben was last.” He held his hand out to Alan. “Gun.”
Alan passed the gun to Stan, who slipped it into the back of his camouflage pants. “Friends are on the way,” he added.
“Care to elaborate?” I asked him.
He gave me another empty-eye look.
I shrugged. “Just thought I’d ask.”
He turned his attention to Kami. “Billy called Ben yesterday morning. We’re going to talk to Ben about it. My guess is that they set up a meeting for something, but only Ben walked away.”
“The sheriff was the one who walked away,” I corrected him.
“That right? Guess she took the meeting, then. Not Ben.” He studied Paulsen’s back. “We’ll see.” He glanced again at Kami and focused on her cuffed hands. “Let me get you out of those.” He took two steps toward her, then froze as Nigel stirred beside her.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “He’s going to be unconscious a little bit yet.” She held out her hands for Stan to release. He slipped a thin wire from one of his pants pockets and slid it into the cuffs, which sprang open. “Thanks,” Kami smiled, watching Stan’s fingers remove the cuffs from her wrists. He stuck them in the back of his camo pants, too.
“Are you always this well prepared?” I asked him.
“Apparently not,” he replied, his voice a dull monotone. “Didn’t expect a flat.”
I looked over at Paulsen, who still wouldn’t face us. “I didn’t expect a crooked sheriff.”
For a moment or two, we were all quiet, and then Kami spoke up. “I wonder where that cave entrance is,” she mused. “If it’s the real motive behind everything here, it’s got to exist.”
She pointed to the far side of the meadow that seemed to crest abruptly. “If I were hunting for a sinkhole or cave entrance in a hidden bluff, it might be over there. It looks like old karst territory.”
I looked in the direction she pointed. It was beyond the area Alan and I had searched earlier and seemed to form a natural border to the seepage meadow’s wetlands.
“Let’s take a look,” I said to Alan, striking off towards the opposite side of the meadow. At the same time, I heard cars approaching on the road. Stan’s friends were about to show up. “Give him the whole story, Kami,” I shouted back to her. “He really is one of the good guys.”
Ten minutes later, Alan and I were bending over, inspecting a wide dark mouth of a cave in the underside of the meadow’s far crest.
“What do you think, Professor?” I asked Alan.
“A definite possibility,” he replied. “It’s big enough for a person to crawl into, and though I can’t see very far into it, I don’t see a back wall, either.” He straightened up. “You want to go in and investigate?”
I took another look into the black maw. “Nah. I think I’ll let the experts get swallowed into the depths of darkness where they are helpless prey to the whims of unstable geological formations.”
Alan laughed. “I guess caves rate right up there for you where bats rate for me.”
“You got that right.”
We both looked into the cave entrance again. Near my feet a small wet trickle of water soaked into the ground. I looked at the brush and empty fields that spread away from the cave; it was actually a good habitat, sheltered and quiet, and chances were good there were some other hidden springs of water rising up through the karst land.
Someone whistled my name.
BobWHITE!
I grabbed Alan’s arm and put my finger to my lips, cautioning him to be quiet and listen.
Very slowly I turned in the direction of the call.
A Northern Bobwhite was perched in a low branch of a sturdy shrub maybe twenty-four feet away on my right. It was a male, its white throat and eye line almost startling bright in the sunshine. Just below it, two more round reddish-brown quails foraged on the ground.
These were the Bobwhites Jack had promised us, tucked far away from the noise of the road and any ATV unsanctioned trails. I pointed them out to Alan, silently mouthing the birds’ name.
“Are they rare?” Alan whispered.
“Pretty much,” I whispered back. “They’re considered extinct in the wild in Minnesota.”
“They don’t look extinct from here.” He pinched my arm hard.
“Hey!”
Twenty feet away, the three Bobwhites took flight, leaving us alone on the edge of the field.
Alan feigned an innocent look. “Just checking. As long as this Bob White is alive and kicking, that’s all I’m worried about.”
“You just don’t want to be alone on that altar when Lily comes marching down the aisle,” I accused him.
“Damn straight,” he agreed. “What’s a best friend for, anyway?” He nodded towards the shrub that had held the calling Northern Bobwhite. “You going to tell your buddy Stan about the birds?”
I closed my eyes and rubbed my hand over my forehead. Stan had been a huge help in the last two days, trying to track down Ben’s dealings to solve Jack’s murder. For that and for Shana’s sake, I was grateful.
He was, however, my longtime rival in the world of Minnesota birding, and I’d already handed one rare bird to him today.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell Scary Stan.” I paused a beat and grinned. “Tomorrow.”