Juliet stopped to see the bird on the way home. It was still in the box, and it seemed sleepy again, as if it had become worse while she was gone. She picked it up and studied it, and then she walked around the room.
Cam wasn’t there, but Juliet could tell that he had spent most of his day in the office. The medical encyclopedia was on the desk, and there were notes all over the place. She didn’t understand most of them, but the last one interested her. “Convulsions?” it said with a question mark. This was followed by the word strychnine? When Juliet saw the encyclopedia opened to the poison section, she understood what he had been looking for.
The bird was awake again, and for the first time it flapped its wings and tried to fly. Beside her, Max whimpered and wagged his tail.
Juliet mulled things over as she watched it. It was possible that a swallow could have picked up some strychnine in some rat poison somewhere, although it wasn’t likely. But would it behave like this? Wouldn’t it have died? And the question, the one about what it was doing in those woods, remained.
Cam came in then, saw her there beside the book, and understood that she was annoyed that he had taken over her case.
“I was just guessing,” he explained. He seemed softer, as if he were trying to be nice. “I don’t even know why I thought it was strychnine since we didn’t see it when it came down and we don’t know if it convulsed ... but....”
“It was the swans, wasn’t it?” Juliet asked. They had read about the swans in the paper the week before. It had been just a small item in the paper, a human interest story, and they had almost missed it. Two dying swans had been discovered by a woman in Yellowstone, and before they had died they had convulsed, or so she had said. She had buried them somewhere. She couldn’t remember where, but was sure they had convulsed. Cam and Juliet had guessed that the swans had been poisoned with strychnine.
Behind them, the door opened, and Juliet saw that it was David McHenry, her ten-year-old neighbor, and he was carrying his cat in his arms. The cat looked like she was dead.
“I found her in the barn this morning,” David said softly. “She was trembling, and her eyes were funny and she looked like she was going to die.”
Juliet took the cat and studied her eyes. She had seen eyes like that only once before, and she had seen them that very day. The cat had the same look as the bird. The cat wasn’t dead yet, but soon would be if something wasn’t done.
“This cat’s been fed whatever that bird was fed,” Juliet told Cam. “Look at its eyes.”
“I wish I knew what it was,” Cam said.
“Maybe it ate a bird,” Juliet said.
But it didn’t matter, not really. The bird seemed better when it was moving, and worse when it was left to sleep, so she took the cat and shook her quickly and made her move around while Cam prepared a shot and they waited for the lab to call. The cat held on. She seemed better, in fact, as the hours passed, and by the time the lab called, she was almost as good as new.
The room was still as Juliet listened to the technician. The bird was sleeping again, and the cat was quiet in Danny’s arms. Even Max was silent. He stood beside her as she held the receiver, and watched her silently.
“That bird was drugged,” the technician said.
“When?” Juliet asked.
“I don’t know yet,” the technician said. “But I’d say it was a matter of days.”
“Long enough to get down here from Canada?”
The technician paused and then said, “Yes. I’d say so.”
“What was the drug?” Juliet asked.
“We don’t know yet,” the technician said.
“Could it have been strychnine?” Juliet asked, and when the technician said no, absolutely not, she felt suddenly happy, then guilty about her happiness.
Juliet hung up and went outside into the icy cold. She didn’t want to see Cam for a minute. She didn’t want him to see that she was pleased that it hadn’t been strychnine. She was ashamed that she felt so resentful and she didn’t want to be small, but it was her case, wasn’t it?
She thought about the bird, and then she thought about the cat. The cat must have found another bird that had been injected. She wondered if a dead bird, or a tranquilized bird, could make a cat sick. She wondered how many birds, and how many cats, had been poisoned.
Cam came out a few minutes later and apologized. “Sometimes I forget that I’m not that much older than you are, and that you know almost as much as I do, and sometimes you even know more.”
“You’re ten years older,” Juliet said. “That’s a lot.” Of course he was older, and of course he knew more, but she needed a case of her own, just one, so that he would know that she could do it. If only he would just trust her with it.
“The bird keeps sliding in and out of sleep,” Cam said. “I wonder what kind of a drug would do that.”
“I don’t know, but I’ll watch it carefully. I won’t let it out of my sight.”
Max barked, interrupting them, and disappeared into the trees. His head was down so she knew he was after something.
“I wonder if that bird will ever fly again,” she said when he was gone. “Its friends are all gone now. It’s on its own. I wonder if it can make it to Mexico or South America all alone.”
“I don’t know, Juliet,” Cam said.
Juliet was silent for a few minutes, and then she said, “I should go. I’ll take the bird with me, I guess, just to make sure it doesn’t fall into too deep a sleep. Should you give it a shot?”
“It’s too small. We have to be careful. I’ll watch it if you like.”
Juliet frowned and said, “No. It’s all right. I sort of feel responsible for it, and anyway, Max wouldn’t know what to do without it now.”
She looked carefully at Cam, and then announced, “I’m going to Yellowstone. The Swallow and I want to find the swans.”
“When are you coming back?”
“Not till Christmas.”
For some reason Cam didn’t seem surprised. Perhaps he knew her better than she thought. He started to ask what her parents thought about her leaving, but she assured him they had agreed.
She could hear Max barking somewhere far away. He had found something. She hoped it wasn’t a bird filled with poison. Or a cat. Or a rabbit. It was amazing what one person was capable of doing to the food chain.
She called his name, heard him bark again, heard the barking come closer and closer still, and then saw what looked like a ball of snow break through the trees and hide behind her. Juliet laughed, and Cam laughed with her.
“Snow-footed hare,” Cam said. “It’s the first one I’ve seen this year.”
“Funny how they turn white like that for camouflage in the winter,” Juliet said as she grabbed Max by the collar and held him back.
“Run rabbit,” Cam said, and the rabbit ran.
And so did Juliet.