That night, for the first time in weeks, she didn’t dream. She slept straight through the night and woke up feeling fine.
She was very, very happy that it was all over.
Or was it? She had identified all of the pieces, but no matter how much she juggled them, they still didn’t fit together.
These things were certain: Dinkins and his friends had been drugging the birds with tranquilizers or amphetamines, most likely to control their behavior in some way.
They were thinking of using the birds to smuggle drugs across the border.
But maybe they were going to smuggle other things as well.
The pieces slid into place then. She picked up the phone and called the Edmonton police, and when the detective came on the line she said, “How does this sound? Since Dinkins was controlling the behavior of the birds with drugs, he is responsible for transporting feathers across the border, and he has interfered with an endangered species, a bald eagle.”
“I’ll call you back,” the policeman said.
He called back an hour later. “I talked to Dinkins,” he said. “And he’s admitted it. They were not really in the smuggling business. It was more like an auxilliary smuggling business. He was in the business of controlling the behavior of birds so that they would be used later to smuggle anything from drugs to microfilm to their own feathers, and even themselves. Anyway, Dinkins will be in jail for awhile.”
Juliet said goodbye and went up to her room. While she was dressing to go to work, she thought about the birds. The amphetamines would speed them up and make them go farther and faster than they normally would. And the tranquilizers would slow them and bring them down earlier than normal. In time, Dinkins might have been able to establish just the right drug dosage to bring the birds down exactly where he wanted them.
Max stayed home that day. He seemed tired and listless and Juliet thought that he deserved a day in bed. She left him there, curled up on her pillow.
Cam was waiting for her. “I called early this morning to see if you were back yet,” he said. “Your mother said that you were still asleep.”
“It’s nice to be back,” Juliet said, and she smiled because it was true.
Cam watched her and waited, and when she didn’t speak he said, “Well?”
Juliet knew that he was waiting for her to tell him about Canada, and she didn’t mind at all. In fact, for the first time she liked the idea of sharing her news with him. Maybe it was because the case was closed and she had solved it, or maybe it was because Cam had been the only one who had known about it from the beginning.
The only one except Max, of course.
When she was finished telling him the story, he went and stood by the desk with his back to her. He didn’t say anything, and Juliet wondered what he was thinking. She hoped that he didn’t resent her, but when he turned she saw that he didn’t. It was something else.
“It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” he said. “I wonder how many drugged birds there were?”
“Too many,” Juliet said. “But it’s over now. And it wouldn’t have worked anyway, not really. Birds were flying south long before man arrived on the planet, and they aren’t going to alter their course that easily.”
Cam came back and sat beside her and said, “I think I said that I’d tell you when I couldn’t do without you, remember?”
Juliet shrugged, and nodded, and turned away. Suddenly she felt shy, and a little afraid. She knew what he was going to say.
“Well, I can’t do without you any more,” Cam said. “I missed having you around, and so did the animals.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’ll be here until the spring. But I’d like to go back to Yellowstone in May.”
Cam nodded, and they went to work. They worked side by side for the rest of the day, giving injections, examining teeth, removing splinters, and cutting toenails. It was a pleasant day, and for the first time Juliet felt like they were partners.
Katie was waiting by the door when she came home. “Max is sick,” she said. “He won’t eat, and he just stays there on your bed and sleeps. I’ve been thinking that he might have eaten one of those tranquilizer implants.”
Juliet ran upstairs and examined him. Katie was right. He seemed sleepy and lethargic.
“I told you,” Katie said.
Juliet took his temperature and looked into his eyes and his ears, and when she was finished she said, “He hasn’t been drugged, Katie.”
Katie seemed annoyed. “How do you know that?” she asked.
“Look at his eyes. They’re clear.”
Katie studied them, and then she looked up at Juliet and shrugged and walked away.
“He’s sick,” Juliet said. “His temperature’s up.”
She looked him over again, and found a raw cut in his back right paw. When she touched it, Max whimpered.
“It’s infected,” Juliet said. “He needs an antibiotic.”
But Katie didn’t appear to be listening. She was standing by the bookcase flipping through one of Juliet’s books.
She has become just like I used to be, Juliet thought. She would rather be right than do a good job. How very strange.
She went to Katie then, and put her arm around her and said, “Will you go over to Cam’s and ask him for an antibiotic while I stay with Max?”
Katie put the book away and wiggled out from under her arm and waited until Juliet had written the name of the antibiotic on a piece of paper.
She left then, without saying a word, which made Juliet feel both sad and a little angry. When Katie was gone, she went over to the bed and sat beside Max.
“You’ll be all right in a few days,” she whispered. “But I’m afraid that it will take Katie a whole lot longer than that.”