The cougars were up and about. Their pale shapes rose and fell in the cool, moist night as they romped. They chirped like birds, one of their many un-catlike sounds, and thumped solidly as they landed. My stomach was still tight against my jeans, but now it felt stuffed and heavy. I’d rested for a few minutes in the parking lot and weary muscles had stiffened up. Fear crouched in its den, waiting. I stood in front of the exhibit and watched longer than I should have.
I wasn’t going to get any smarter or stronger standing in the dark. A dull, iron resolve finally pulled me away from the cougars and around the building toward the staff door. Bagheera, the black leopard, stalked me from behind the wire as I walked. He was invisible but for dim light glinting off his satin coat, a deeper black sliding in and out of shadow.
I unlocked the service door and walked inside the Feline building, shutting it quietly behind me. Ahead of me was the kitchen door. The familiar hallway stretched to my right and left. I could see the lions’ night cage on the right, but the cats were lying out of my line of sight. A cool breeze touched my cheek, probably from the cat door to the cougars’ night enclosure on the left. I’d need to close it later, when they were willing to come inside.
No more skittish uncertainty. This time I knew full well I was walking into a trap. Baiting the trap. I was the goat staked to the tree, waiting for the tiger.
In the kitchen, one new monitor showed an empty outdoor enclosure and the other an empty indoor holding area. Both screens floated from overhead brackets at head-height. Linda sat at the metal table with a clipboard in front of her, watching the monitors. It was a little after eight.
“Where’s the cats?” I asked, pulling up the second chair.
“Yuri’s in that shadow. You can see his tail. He’s been sleeping for the last hour.” She was still in uniform and looked tired.
“Where’s Losa?”
“She’s in the den box inside. You can’t see her.”
“Fascinating.”
“Huh. You want fascinating or you want peaceful? Boring is good. What’s with the duffle bag?”
“Food. A blanket.”
“You’d better not fall asleep.”
“No worries.”
She pulled out the instruction sheet and walked me through the standardized data collection. Every fifteen minutes I was to check off what each cat was doing. “Sleeping” had a long row of check marks. I flipped through checklists from the previous night, the first the clouded leopards had ever spent together. The cats had slept until about midnight, then started moving around. Linda’s notes included “M. and F. sniff noses,” “F. flee,” “M. footscrub.” M was male and F was female.
“Use the checklist first. Then you can add a note if anything interesting is happening.” She reviewed the definitions of foot scrubbing (urinate, then use hind feet to rub it into the ground, a territorial signal), sniff noses, snarl, attack, and the favorite, sleep. “Mostly they’re pretending the other one isn’t there.”
I didn’t remind her that I’d developed the checklist myself.
“Can you stay awake until one?” Linda asked again. “You look kind of wrecked.”
“I am kind of wrecked. But I won’t fall asleep.”
“What happened to your chin?”
I got up and checked the little mirror over the sink. “Fell down and bumped it.”
Linda cocked her head at me. “It was dumb to ask you to be here in Felines. I wasn’t thinking. I can stay with you.”
“I’m fine. Go get some sleep.”
Linda shrugged. “Board meeting tonight. People might drop by. Call me if anything comes up. You know what to do if they fight—the hose is set up.”
Marcie’s cell phone bulged in my jeans pocket next to the pepper spray. I’d driven to her apartment, told her I would feel safer with the cell, and dodged her questions. I’d taken other steps as well, everything I could think of to ensure my survival. As soon as Linda got herself gone, I had a few more steps to take. She took a final look at the monitors, gave me a doubtful look, and left.
Alone in the kitchen, I finished my preparations. The bait wanted to both entrap and survive. All I had to do was wait for the man I expected, confirm he had murdered my husband, and survive until Denny and/or the police showed up. I had the cell phone, pepper spray, and my dad’s big pipe wrench. In case I couldn’t call 911 myself, Marcie expected to hear from me every hour and would phone the police herself if I didn’t check in.
Done, I settled in at the table. Lions grumbled from their side of the building; a cougar yelped from the other direction. The building creaked as it cooled; something dripped. On the motionless monitors, all color faded into gray concrete, dark shadows, black corners. The clouded leopards slept on. The metal table was cold under my wrist. I marked the checklist.
I made a cup of coffee, drank it from one of Linda’s gleaming cups, and marked the checklist. It came to me that I had failed to advertise my presence. I’d called Linda only the day before to change to this shift. Would the killer even know I was here alone? I shrugged. My enemy had been ahead of me every step so far. I had bigger worries.
I wandered around the kitchen and shut off the faucets hard. They dripped anyway. Meat for the next day hadn’t yet been delivered. The stainless steel counters that ran along two walls were spotless and mostly bare. Small bottles of cheap perfume and jars of spices lined the back counter, interesting scents to spot around the outside yards for olfactory excitement. Gear for catching small cats was stashed in a corner by the door, including various size nets on long poles.
I marked the checklist and countered ragged nerves by fantasizing about Losa and Yuri. They’d get used to each other and, maybe in spring, she would go into heat. Passionate cat love would ensue. We’d separate Yuri for safety’s sake and tap our fingers, waiting for the birth. Darling clouded leopard cubs would frolic at their mother’s feet.
I had used up that sweet scenario and was about to head down the hall to visit Rajah when the outer door banged shut. I flinched. It was Wallace blowing in with a blast of wet night air. He looked surprised to see me and not pleased. I guessed he had come from the board meeting.
“Any action?”
“Both sleeping.”
“Good.” He walked behind me to see the monitors and stared at them. Touchy topics floated through the air. I made marks on the checklist. Losa got up and wandered around the inside enclosure, barely visible. She stepped outside through the little door and settled herself in bark chips sheltered by an overhanging ledge, head up, forepaws in front of her. Across the yard, Yuri slept on.
Wallace stood behind me and watched. It made the back of my neck itch. “Uh, it’s looking good,” I said, getting to my feet and turning toward him. I stretched my arms and back theatrically. He wasn’t my first choice for killer, but he wasn’t completely out of the running either.
He stepped back a little. “Why wouldn’t it look good? We’ve done everything by the numbers. She’ll go into heat soon, he’ll breed her, we separate them for safety, and then it all depends on whether she’s going to be a decent mother or not.”
I tried a small test. “You don’t think he’ll beat her up?”
“No. It’s going fine. People think they’re so smart, predicting the worst. These two aren’t that old. They can learn to get along.”
Neither of us found anything else to say until he finally took his leave, with a gruff “don’t fall asleep.”
I called Marcie from the phone on the counter rather than use up her cell phone minutes. She was watching a Jane Austen movie with cats in her lap. I put my jacket on, shifted around on the hard chair, and marked the checklist.
Dr. Dawson was next in, also startled to see me. He scanned the monitors and riffled briefly through the checklists.
“Nice and peaceful. Looks very promising,” I said, never taking my eyes off him.
His brows drew down. “He may be fine for months, then he could decide he doesn’t want to share his territory, and he’ll attack her. It’s the way clouded leopards are wired. We’ll hope for the best.” He would never trust Yuri. He stayed only a moment, the door shutting silently behind him.
I watched another forty-five minutes, my anxiety level escalating. I called Marcie, who sounded sleepy. Unable to sit still, I picked up the pipe wrench and headed down the hallway to see Rajah. The old boy was lying flat in the inside den. I watched his ribs rise and fall, nostrils fluttering. Without any voice in the matter, the cats had traded hunger, parasites, and maybe a broken jaw from a frantic hoof for steady meals and good medical care. In exchange for accepting a tiny territory and few choices, the zoo provided a life with little risk. Their own kind was the major source of danger, just as it was for me.
In the dim hall light, I looked at the cat door and the bar attached to the cable that would pull it open. I pulled on the cable a little. The door opened six inches, squeaking softly. Raj raised his head, looking puzzled. I let the door close gently.
The day Raj jumped me, I’d heard that sound. What I hadn’t heard was the main service door banging shut, the way it did when most people used it. If I had it right, whoever had let him out on me had known the service door slammed and had closed it carefully and silently.
I turned around to check the common leopards on the opposite side of the hall. The inside quarters were empty. Their little door to the outside was open, letting in brief cold gusts. My face was near the mesh as I tried to spot them outside, looking across the night den and through the cat door. No sensible keeper puts face or other body parts directly against mesh or bars, vulnerable to a quick claw or beak. I could see only a black square of darkness and neither the black male nor the yellow female. I half-turned to leave and, with only a flicker of movement and a tiny thud, a black leopard hung inches from my face, white teeth in a gaping crimson maw, black claws hooked on the mesh. I jerked back involuntarily, lost my balance, and banged hard into the bars behind me. Bagheera dropped agilely to the floor.
He’d timed it perfectly, lurking in the darkness until my attention shifted. Invisible against the black night, he’d vaulted through the little door and up on the fencing. I scrabbled to my feet, heart pounding. He leaped easily up to the sleeping platform and settled in, licking an inky foreleg with a long pink tongue, ignoring me. I told him he was a jerk and limped off, leaving him to savor his feline joke.
Frayed nerves still vibrating, I checked the monitors. Losa was up, wandering around. Yuri was still in the shadows, still not moving. I marked the checklist. Losa lay down again in the bark chips.
The door banged and I jumped as Denny slipped in. He was in uniform with a big flashlight clipped to his belt on one side and a cluster of keys on the other side. “All good?”
“Yeah. Quiet. When’s your termination hearing?”
“In a couple of weeks. Arnie’s doing Reptiles, but at night I can fix whatever he screws up. Suzanne says she’ll get my job back. Listen, I’ve got a couple of new ideas about Rick.”
“We need to talk, but not tonight. I’ve got to focus on the cats. Just come by every hour. Please.”
He stared at the monitors, another person enraptured by shadows. He tore himself away. “Will do.”
“Denny, watch yourself. We’ve stirred up the hornets.”
He waved that off, invulnerable.
Alone once more, I watched the monitors and watched the clock in a strange state of suspension, drifting between sleepiness and stomach-clenching anticipation. What else could I do? What would I regret not thinking of?
One of the lions coughed twice. I walked back and stared at them, slack tan bodies resting. Three sets of golden eyes stared back, mouths a little open, outlined by black gums. Spice stood up, turned around completely, and lay down again with a little grunt. I saw her climbing down into the moat, checking out something interesting—Rick, stunned and helpless. “I thought I could accept that you killed Rick because you had the chance to do what lions do,” I said aloud. “I thought it shouldn’t matter to the keeper part of me, but it does. It does matter.”
I went back to the kitchen, marked the checklist, and thought about anger and relationships. I got up, stiff and chilled, and paced around the kitchen. I looked at the observation schedule, taped to the wall by the sink. An unfamiliar name, probably a volunteer from the Children’s Zoo or the Education department, was scheduled for one to five in the morning. Denny hadn’t come back. I heated leftover coffee in the microwave and stood staring into space. I’d almost used up my full store of resolve.
The clock had crept almost to midnight, and it was time to call Marcie. I used her cell phone to test it. It didn’t work. I was redialing when Dr. Dawson walked in again. He’d come through the outside service door silently and had opened the kitchen door as quietly, but I’d been facing that way and saw him immediately.
“I completed a lab test on the male penguin that died,” he said. “I’m heading home, but I remembered you were here and thought you might be interested in the results.” The hood of his parka was down, and he had water spots on his glasses. He stood at the closed kitchen door and fussed with the glasses, struggling to get a handkerchief out of his pocket to dry them, half turning away from me. That done, he moved a few steps into the room, toward me.
“The door didn’t bang,” I said.
“What?” His chin came up, alert.
“Most people let the door slam shut.” I stood at the far end of the table with the cell phone in one hand and the other resting on the wrench. He didn’t get it, and I didn’t explain.
From about ten feet away he said, “Most cell phones don’t work in this building. I imagine it’s all the concrete and metal. Here, try mine.” He pulled out his phone and tossed it to me in a quick, smooth motion. I automatically grabbed for the sleek silver object and, still in the same motion, he flowed forward and captured the pipe wrench off the table. He was astoundingly fast.
I jumped back, both phones clattering to the concrete floor, and pulled a chair in front of me like a circus lion tamer. But I was the animal, one more for him to outmaneuver and far from the quickest. But he didn’t come for me. Instead, he examined the heavy wrench and tossed it into the bin with the nets. It clanked on the bottom, well out of reach, and he withdrew back to the door. I looked at him and thought of Rick, gone from me forever; my beautiful lions used to kill him. “You murdered Winona and buried her in the forest like a road-killed possum, and when Rick found her bones, you fed him to the lions.” My voice was shaky, ragged with loathing and adrenaline.
His chin jerked up. “You have no idea what you are talking about.” He scanned the room carefully, then stepped aside and glanced toward the hallway, looking through the window in the door. I took a step toward him with the chair raised, when he turned back to me. I froze, indecisive.
Whatever he’d seen, or not seen, was reassuring, and I was no threat. He relaxed. I’d heard him tell keepers, “Stay calm and take your time. Work with the animal, don’t rush, and you can accomplish almost anything without trauma.” Now he said quietly, “You think you have it all figured out, but you don’t. I loved Winona. We had a good life—a nice house, enough income. I was never unfaithful or unkind to her.”
“You murdered her,” I said.
“I did no such thing.”
“She dumped you and you killed her.” I would goad him, keep him talking, as I had planned, and it would be okay. He would talk and I would listen, and he wouldn’t have time to kill me with the syringe sticking out of his pocket.
He was patient with me. “My wife was attractive to men, and she liked that. I couldn’t always keep her away from them. Yes, it’s true, one night she said she was leaving me. But if anyone murdered her, it was Kevin Wallace.” He waited for that to sink in.
If he moved toward me, I’d keep the table between us and swing the chair at him. My heart thudded unevenly. “Liar. Wallace didn’t kill her. You did. You murdered your wife.” Where was Denny? Marcie should have called the police by now.
Still patient, he said, “You’re not listening. He seduced her when I was out of town for a conference. She didn’t want to tell me, but when I demanded the truth, she let it slip. She was leaving me for Wallace of all people. I’m sure you understand my shock.”
“And that made you hit her. You, not Wallace.”
His voice lost the soothing overtones. “Not murder. An accident. I came to my senses and she was on the floor by the fireplace with a broken neck. She fell back against the edge of the mantel and fractured a cervical vertebra. I would never hurt her. I miss her terribly.”
“Normal people call 911. Murderers bury people in the woods.”
“What better place to bury her than in the forest nearby? I planted ferns on her grave, and I stayed to watch over her when I could have moved on as we planned, on to a bigger zoo, maybe San Diego. She wanted to move to California. I would have done anything for her.” His composure was back in place. He had long ago thought this through. “Nothing would bring her back. If I went to jail, all my education, all my skills, would go to waste. What good would that do? Finley Zoo would never find anyone else with my credentials at the salary they pay. What would happen to animal care?”
That stopped me for a second. I was jeopardizing the animals by trying to stay alive? I blurted, “You stayed because you were afraid. Your worst fear happened—the construction turned up her skull and Rick found it.”
Twin spots on his pale cheeks reddened. The syringe was in his hand now. I knew well enough what it held. A drug to leave me unconscious—at best—while he disposed of my carcass at his leisure. I was one more big primate to immobilize. I’d set up my security measures so carefully, but nothing was working. “You were lucky Rick didn’t tell anyone else, just you. How did you lure him up here?” Had Marcie called the police? I couldn’t call them myself, not and hold the chair and watch him and try to evade him.
He edged toward my right, and I circled away from him. His voice was quiet. “I told him we needed to discuss the matter privately and that I would be in my office late running lab tests. He couldn’t come until after midnight. But I was patient, and he showed up eventually.”
“And you hit him on the head and poured scotch in him using a stomach tube stuck down his throat. You’re the only one who could tube a mammal. Birds are easy, but mammals are hard.” I leaned toward him to hear better, to hear him confirm what mattered so much.
He nodded acceptance and spoke in confidential tones, almost a whisper, circling slowly, the syringe held low. “He refused the scotch, even beer, to my surprise. But he was not suspicious. It was easy enough to distract him and cosh him with a wrench. Like your wrench.” He smiled ruefully. “It was simple to insert the tube before he woke up. A shame it had to be that way. I liked him.”
A brief weird joy flickered. I’d finally gotten it right. Rick hadn’t lied to me.
A subtle shift betrayed his intention, and suddenly aware of my own gullibility, I straightened and stepped back. His murmuring voice had lured me closer, but not close enough to trigger an attack.
“Normal people don’t use lions to kill other people.” I spoke loudly, abruptly. We kept edging around the room with the table between us, an ominous dance. I kept an eye on the monitors, but only to avoid banging my head. Denny had forgotten me. Marcie was asleep.
“Don’t keep saying I’m not normal!” he snapped back, abandoning whispers. “What choice did I have? It was his life or mine. It was a gamble—he might have survived. It’s not as if I murdered him. You can’t predict what wild animals will do in a new situation.”
The thoroughness of his denial was stunning, infuriating. “Bullshit! It went exactly as you planned. I turned Winona’s tooth over to the police this evening. You burned my house and pawed through my stuff for nothing—it was never there.” I threw the words like poisoned darts. “They’ll reopen Rick’s death as a murder investigation and you’ll fry.”
He stopped moving to set me straight, narrow lips in a little smile. “No, they won’t. They blew Rick’s postmortem, after all. They didn’t notice that one head contusion was earlier than the other. With Rick cremated, that evidence is gone, and a tooth doesn’t prove a thing. No one will give his death another thought.”
“Denny’s coming by and the next volunteer is due any minute and my friend has already called the police. You might as well go home and call a lawyer.”
“Denny’s unavailable, on ice, so to speak. The next observer won’t show up for half an hour. We’ll be done by then. Relax. It won’t hurt. I’m very good at this, and you haven’t a chance.”
“If I die, you think nobody will notice?”
“It’s surprisingly simple to manipulate these situations. No one ever thought Winona was dead, until you and Rick made a mess of it. I even arranged for Wallace to fire his new girlfriend when she stole gate receipts, or so it seemed. He’ll always be a bachelor instead of having my wife. I did that! Now everyone thinks you walked into the exhibit with the tiger because you were distracted by grief. See? It’s easily done.”
Why was he bragging? He stood easily, waiting. For what? I felt the day’s physical insults weighting me down. Exhaustion was slipping in through the panic. He knew that. He was giving it time to work.
“You won’t be dead,” he said. “It will be like Winona. You’ll leave town and never come back. I called Los Angeles. They’ve gone with an internal candidate. But I appreciate that you announced that you got the job. Everyone will assume you followed your dream.”
I knew that dream. He had me there.
I opened my mouth to shout that he was wrong, doomed, when he struck like the black leopard, in swift, silent steps. His right arm shot out, syringe in hand, reaching over the table. I leaped away, the needle scoring my arm through my jacket, banging my head on the monitor. I yelped, not sure whether he had injected the drug or not. He kept coming as I dropped the chair, dodged around the table, twisting the handle. But he’d turned the latch while he was fussing with his glasses, and the lock stuck. I fumbled the pepper spray out of my pocket, tried to turn the sprayer toward him, and instead dropped it as he came at me again. Trapped in the kitchen, I bolted away, throwing a chair in front of him. That slowed him enough for me to get the metal table between us again. I glimpsed the pepper spray deep under the counter.
My head ached. He’d jumped me when I was positioned to hit the monitor. We circled faster, each looking for an opening. He’d abandoned subtlety and would simply overpower me. He was bigger and so confident, so fast with that syringe. He leaned forward again, and I fell back into the counter. I grabbed one of Linda’s beautiful cups and threw it at him, but it missed and crashed on the floor. The second one hit him in the shoulder, but didn’t slow him. He glided on his feet wolflike, hair-trigger aware, syringe held low.
He surprised me again, hurling himself at the table, brute strength. With a shattering screech of metal against cement, it slammed into my belly, my spine crushed against the wall, shoving the breath out. He flowed around the table, quick and intent.
I shoved the table back a few inches and twisted down underneath it. I could feel his body heat as he lunged above me, feel the needle catch on the back of my jacket. I scrabbled on hands and knees out from under the table, cutting my palm on broken pottery. I shoved the table up with my back as I stood, felt it collide with his body. He hurled the table away, knocking it over with a metal clang. I lurched upright and away.
Panting, I edged toward the door, the fallen table between us. He paused, looking at the underside of the table. “I suspected a tape recorder. That’s the first place I would have looked.” He kicked it twice, striking with leather hiking boots. I heard the plastic crunch as the table slid toward me. He looked at the syringe in his hand and, astonishingly, unscrewed the bent needle and tossed it on the floor. He took a fresh needle from his pocket and attached it. His movements were quick and automatic, doing what he’d done many times before.
I stood flat-footed, missing my opportunity. He was so much quicker than I was, with a longer reach. My panic strength was almost gone. The cut palm throbbed and my legs were shaky. I slipped a hand into my jacket pocket and gripped the only hope left, Winnie’s chain leash, left from our last walk. It was cool against my fingers.
One of the lions let loose with a roar that shook the building. We both startled with ancestral fear. A roar or maybe a scream tore my own throat as I charged him, crouched low to avoid the monitor. I slashed his face with the chain and connected across his cheek. His glasses smashed to the floor. He yelled with surprise. I slashed at his face again, wanted to keep beating him with the chain. Anger, my old nemesis, my folly, was an ally at last, flooding me with power when true strength was used up. I dropped the leash and spun the overturned table toward his legs. It caught him on the shins, but he scrambled over it, coming at me half-blind and furious. I raced to the door, but knew I would never get the latch open in time. Instead, I grabbed the six-foot catch pole leaning in the corner in a tangle of nets.
I kept moving, carrying the pole low and horizontal. He turned to get between me and the door and his foot slipped on the leash. He fell to one knee. As he staggered to his feet, I slipped the snare over his head and around his neck like implacable justice. I yanked on the loop at the end of the pole—slippery with blood from my hand—pulling it taut, tighter. His momentum shoved me back, but the pole kept him from closing in on me.
His yell clogged in his throat as he clawed at his neck. My jaw clenched, lips peeled back. I snarled as I pulled. The wire bit in; flesh and skin bulged above and below the snare. He couldn’t get his fingers under it. I liked that. He dropped the syringe and clawed at me, reaching for my eyes, but the pole was too long, longer than his arms.
He grabbed the pole with both hands and yanked, throwing me off balance. I braced myself and shoved back, slamming him against the counter edge. Eyes panicky, he pulled the pole right and left, up and down, jamming me into the wall. I hung on with my last reserves as he battered me about the room.
My end of the pole punched me in the belly and I nearly threw up. I tried to keep the end off to one side, but that meant my right hand was battered into the wall. He backed me into a corner, alternately jerking and shoving on the pole while I flopped around. I was getting weaker, feeling my vision start to dim, when he went down to his knees.
He was faking. I kept the wire taut with all my strength, waiting for him to get up and fling me around again. But he didn’t get up. His face was swelling; his eyes rolled back. He went limp and fell over. His weight on the pole pulled my arms straight.
After some indefinable pause, I realized I had to slacken the cable or…not.
I relaxed my bleeding hand, let the cable loosen, ready to tighten it as soon as he leaped up. He didn’t move. His tongue was protruding. He looked old and stringy and repellant. Had I killed him? Should I kill him?
I let go of the pole and it clattered to the concrete floor. He didn’t move. After a stunned moment, I fumbled in the cupboards for a tangle of yellow nylon rope from some forgotten project. Forcing myself to touch him, I wrestled his hands behind his back—no resistance—tied them with the stiff, uncooperative cord, tied his feet together as well. A breath rasped in his throat, then another.
I stood back, wild-eyed and bloody.
Denny. He’d said Denny was on ice.
I glanced back at the limp body as I fumbled with the latch, and lurched out the kitchen door, then the service door into the cold night air. I recalled that I loathed cold. He’d left the electric cart outside, waiting to haul my body away, to his car and then some remote grave. My right hand didn’t work. My left hand turned the key clumsily. I could run faster than the cart would go, except that I couldn’t run. I could barely sit upright and steer.
Outside the Commissary, overhead lights created a mosaic of light and dark, leaving deep shadows along the building. I staggered inside, leaving the cart and its illusion of safety. I hit the inside light switch. Stacked boxes were brightly lit, the aisles behind them dark and full of secrets.
The freezer door was closed. I released the latch and yanked on the handle. Stuck. I dragged a box of carrots over to the door with my good hand and stood on it. Hap’s cleaver was jammed into the crack between the door and its frame, up near the top. I wiggled it out. It clanged and skittered on the floor. I kicked the box aside and pulled open the heavy door.
Denny was curled up on the floor just inside. He mumbled incoherently as I stuck my hands under his armpits and dragged him out. Relief steadied my legs. I left him in a heap and ran to the phone. The 911 operator wanted details, but I demanded police and an ambulance at the zoo immediately and hung up. I turned up the heat in the uniform room and got Denny sitting up on the floor. I unzipped my jacket and sat behind him with my arms and jacket around him, sharing my body heat. The paramedics, the police, and Wallace arrived more or less simultaneously and found us huddled together, shuddering.
While the medicos tended Denny, I blurted out the evening’s events and the story of Rick’s death in disorganized bursts to Wallace and the policewoman. She was apparently responding to Marcie’s call and the paramedics to mine. It wasn’t clear who had called Wallace so that he could get them into the zoo. The policewoman had the paramedics bandage my hand before she’d let me in the patrol car, and then called in a report before she would drive me across the zoo.
I was frantic to get back to Felines, and not only to turn Dr. Dawson over to the police. I’d had time to remember the clouded leopards. They were surely disturbed by the noise of the fight. Losa was at terrible risk and no one was there to help her if she needed it. It seemed hours since I’d fled.
At last I turned the key in the Feline door with my good hand and walked in with Wallace and the policewoman behind me, not sure whether I wanted to find Dr. Dawson dead or wanted him alive.
He was definitely alive. His hands were still tied behind his back, but he had been working hard and his legs were free. He was standing at the counter sawing awkwardly at the tough nylon rope with a paring knife. He was a mess—blotchy face and rumpled hair and clothes. He pulled himself together and croaked, “Thank God you’ve come. She tried to kill me. She thinks I murdered her husband. Keep her away from me.” He looked truly frightened.
A young man in a University of Washington sweatshirt followed us in, looking alarmed. The policewoman looked startled also, hand at the pistol on her hip.
“Are you the late shift volunteer?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. What’s up?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just keep an eye out for the female. I, uh, got distracted and I don’t know if she’s okay. The male might have attacked her.”
He sat down at the table and watched the monitors, with furtive glances toward us.
The policewoman untied Dawson’s hands. Wallace looked at Dawson, then at me, his face unreadable. The vet rubbed his wrists with shaky fingers and rasped, “She’s insane. I dropped in to check on the clouded leopards, and she starting ranting at me about murdering Rick. She got the catch pole over my head. She almost killed me. Has she got a weapon?”
While the policewoman patted me down, a list of the people who would believe his story, believe that I was nuts, scrolled by. Wallace. Jackie. Linda. Mr. Crandall. Maybe Hap and Calvin. I had to hand it to Dr. Dawson. Poor Iris, deranged by grief, had lost it at last, and he was the victim.
When the policewoman was satisfied I wasn’t packing, I stepped on the empty chair and up to the tabletop. Wallace asked what the hell I was doing, and the policewoman stepped back and moved her hand to her gun again. Reaching up, I dislodged one of the acoustical panels in the ceiling, shoved it aside, and felt a rush like really good sex.
I had beaten the son of a bitch. Again.
The police officer received the little tape recorder like she might a nice package of nitroglycerin.
“It’s all in here,” I said. “And in case it’s not…” I climbed down and looked behind the fridge. He hadn’t found that one, either.
“How many tape recorders did you hide?” the volunteer asked, incredulous.
“Five.” I unearthed the other two and handed them over. “Three different models, all voice activated. At least one should have worked. You get back to those damned monitors. We have to find out if Losa is all right.”
I tested one. Wallace’s voice first, fast-forward to Dr. Dawson again—“…came to my senses and she was on the floor by the fireplace with a broken neck.” Poor audio quality, but understandable.
Wallace looked stunned. The policewoman looked skeptical, but I wasn’t worried. Even if the tapes weren’t enough to convict the bastard, they would activate a serious search for Winona’s dental records.
“We’ll sort this out,” she said, a promise or a threat.
“Losa,” said the volunteer.
And there she was, safe and sound, walking around the outside enclosure. I sagged into a chair.