3 Panthers Play for Keeps (3 page)

Chapter Five

It was a good question, and one I made myself ponder as I drove back into what passes for the heart of our town. Growler might have been talking about Tracy Horlick, and I had to confess, I was getting a vicarious thrill from the idea that the old bag both had an admirer of some kind—and that she had lost him. Then again, the little dog could have said the same about me. Not only did he bear no love for women in general, his own liaisons had been, of necessity, brief, temporary, and all-too-often unconsummated, a sacrifice to the so-called domesticity he was trapped in. If sometimes he got a little catty, so to speak, I could understand it.

However, I couldn’t help but wonder if Growler had been trying to communicate something else, something about the body in the woods. Animals, as I’ve said, aren’t sentimental, and there was no reason for Growler to focus in on the woman that piece of carnage had once been. But he had—at least, I thought he had—given me a distinct impression of panic, of a desperation that probably transcended even his rudest attempts at describing my romantic plight.

This was good because Spot had been unusually silent, even for him. Service dogs, I’d discovered, tended to be uncommunicative. The dedication and focus that allows a creature to bury his individual identity in the role of helping another, particularly one of a different species, didn’t make for a chatty animal. And the excitement of the day—the walk in the woods, the discovery, and then the opportunity to use his dog-given skills to find the body a second time—had occupied his entire consciousness. At least, that part I could access. If there had been more the bigger dog might have picked up, I wasn’t getting it. I suspected there was, though. Not just about the body itself, but about the circumstances that had left that poor woman there. Had Spot been trying to protect me, letting me share that sense of something wild, something truly dangerous, but no more? Had he been trying to shield me from the fear that Growler had picked up? The utter terror?

I simply didn’t know. There was so much those more acute animal senses could have told me. Maybe he had been sharing the scent of another animal, a scavenger who might have found her before we did. The lingering aroma of any drug or other intoxicant that might have led a woman off, alone, into the forest. Even—Growler’s words came back to me—the presence of another. Someone who had taken the woman in love or in rage, and left her, broken, in the wilderness.

No, for that kind of information, I’d need a more communicative beast. Barring that, I’d have to settle for Creighton.

Jim’s unmarked cruiser was in its usual spot when I arrived, and I took a moment to do some uncustomary preening in my rearview mirror. Unlike Dr. Kroft, my hair is neither smooth nor orderly and instead falls in a cascade of rowdy black curls when I don’t have it tied back for work. I freed it now, running my fingers through it to loosen those curls and let the spring dampness plump them up. That’s about all I could manage, in a car. It had been enough in the past.

“Hey, Pru.” I hadn’t even made it to the front door when Albert hailed me. As portly as a hibernating bear, and just as shaggy, the Beauville animal-control officer barreled across the parking lot, one hand holding either his belly or some other precious thing inside his down parka.

“Albert.” I nodded, brushing one unruly lock from my eyes. “You’ve got something there?”

“What? Oh, yeah.” He fumbled with the snaps of his vest. “Bandit—uh, Frank.”

I had to smile. Albert kept company with a ferret. You can guess which was the brains of the operation. And maybe, for me, useful.

“Hey, Frank.” I kept my voice low, reaching out with my thoughts to the small mustalid I could now sense, curled inside the grimy vest.

“Cold
.” His sleepy voice reached me.

“You better take him inside.” I looked up at Albert, trying to skim over the part of him covered with beard and duct tape. “I’ll be by in a bit.”

“Ok, uh, Pru?” I turned back. “Could I get a consult about something?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Consult” implied payment. “A job?”

He shrugged. “It would be for the town. So, maybe.”

That could be promising, so I rewarded him with a smile and watched the color flood the chapped skin above his beard. “Cool,” I said, and watched the heat go up to his receding hairline. Head down, he shuffled off to the right.

I waited, before following him into the glassed-in entranceway that the shelter and our local cop shop shared. As he headed toward his desk—and passed it for the kitchenette beyond—I reached for the left-hand door. It would have been nice to consult with Frank before I bearded this particular dog, but I’d been fighting my own battles long enough to know I could do this.

“Sandra.” The officer at the desk smiled in acknowledgment. She knew enough to let me walk past.

“Just a minute there.” She also knew who her boss was. I was halfway to Creighton’s private office when I heard his voice behind me. I turned in time to see Sandra throw herself into some paperwork. Creighton, standing beside her desk, must have been in one of the small side offices used to interview guests, both willing and not. He was out now, and staring at me.

“Jim.” I smiled. It’s not hard to smile at him, especially when he’s glowering. “May we talk? In private?”

Sandra bent lower over her papers at those last two words, and Creighton squinted at me. There was nothing to see except my smile, however, and so I led the way into the back hallway and the small private office with his name on the door.

“Have a seat,” he said, redundantly. I had already tilted the guest chair back. In deference to his mood, I refrained from putting my boots up on his desk. “So,” he said when he’d taken his own chair, “to what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

“Jim, really?” I’m not good at playing innocent, but I raised my eyebrows in the attempt. “We didn’t really get a chance to talk about her last night.” I paused, it was a cheap attempt, though, and he didn’t fall for it. “The woman in the woods?”

He nodded. “You want info.”

“I am involved.” I floundered for a moment, trying to come up with a more compelling explanation than sheer curiosity. “I was working with a dog—with Laurel Kroft’s dog—and I was getting some very strange signals from him.” Nothing, so I kept going. “Anything you can tell me might help.”

“The dog has a good nose.” He was watching me, looking to see if I’d give him more.

“He does, but he’s being trained to pick up more than scent. To pick up signals, human signals.” That was as far as I dared to go. Creighton knows me pretty well by now. In fact, if he weren’t so damned rational, he’d probably have figured out my little secret.

“Well, she wasn’t giving out any.” He reached for a folder on his desk. “Not anymore.”

“Come on, Jim. Give me something.” I leaned in. Usually that has the desired effect. He didn’t even look up. “Who was she?”

He shook his head, though whether that was supposed to indicate that he didn’t know or that he wouldn’t tell me, I couldn’t tell. “Sorry, Pru.”

“Okay, then. How did she die?”

Now he looked up, smiling. “And you call yourself the animal expert?”

I sat back, confused.

“The victim was mauled, Pru. The top of her head was nearly torn off before something opened her throat and she bled out.”

“Couldn’t be a bear.” I was thinking out loud. “I mean, there might be some mothers and cubs out there, but black bears are usually all bluster. Though a young male, coming out of dormancy…”

He was shaking his head. “It wasn’t a bear. It was something smaller, and the claw marks aren’t right. The ME’s doing some tests, but his first hypothesis was a mountain lion attack.”

“We don’t have—” I stopped myself. We don’t, but we could. “There’s been no evidence of cougars returning here.”

He didn’t respond and instead watched me, waiting. Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t that. There was something else. Something wasn’t making sense. I put my hand to my head and heard Creighton chuckle. But the gesture wasn’t about my hair—or even about flirting with him. I was trying to remember, to recall something I’d gotten. From Spot? No. It was what I’d seen. “She was wearing slacks. A nice shirt. What had been a nice shirt.” I remembered silk. A pattern, dark green and gold. “That’s not hiking gear. That’s not—”

I looked up at him, serious, finally. No thoughts of flirtation in my mind. “What was she doing in the woods?”

“A better question would be, how did she get there?” He was definitely examining me, watching my face for…something.

I was lost in my own thoughts. It had been a hard winter, one of the worst in years. Everything out there was hungry, and a woman alone…

As much as I didn’t like the idea, it could have been a bear. That was more likely than what he was calling a mountain lion. Mountain lions—cougars, our native American panthers—are solo hunters, rarely seen in the wild. And although the tawny cats—
puma concolor—
might once have been common, they had been run out of most of the Northeast by hunters and developers. By a more dangerous predator: humans. There was even some debate about whether or not there were any native animals left in New England. The last confirmed cougar in Massachusetts—confirmed as in shot dead and identified—was over a hundred years ago.

There had been a sighting in the late ’90s, though, and cougars were known to migrate: an animal that was eventually traced back to Western stock had met its end on a Connecticut highway a few years back. So it was possible…but not likely. He—or she—would have left traces. Scat. Claw raking on trees, like so many scratch marks on a sofa. Of course, if nobody had been looking for a big cat, those signs might have been ignored. They wouldn’t be now. Cats, big or small, are creatures of habit, which meant that once located, they are easy to find. If there were a cougar out there, he or she wouldn’t last long. There’d be traps. A hunting party. It was inevitable, not that it was fair. Beauville, like so many tourist areas, was in the middle of a building boom. We invade their space; we become prey. It would be a tragedy, and not just for one lone woman.

Creighton wasn’t having any of it. He was shaking his head. “Pru, you’re slipping.” There was a note in his voice I didn’t know. He was mocking me. “Yes, the ME says the wounds are consistent with an animal mauling, but as you were clearly about to point out to me, we haven’t had any reports of mountain lion attacks for as long as I’ve been on the job. I don’t know what happened to her, Pru, but I don’t think she was killed in the woods at all. Didn’t you notice? She wasn’t even wearing a coat.”

Chapter Six

“That doesn’t mean what you think it does.” The words slipped out. I could sense Creighton sit up, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was imagining those woods, that hunger.

“Maybe she had a fight, and decided to walk home from some lover’s lane. Maybe someone pushed her out of a car. At night, lost in those woods.” I’d had a bad night out in the woods not that long ago. I knew how scary it could be, and how deadly. “Maybe she died of exposure, and some animal came upon her.” I looked up. “You’ve had the full autopsy?”

He shook his head. “I won’t hear till later, but you’re missing the obvious. She didn’t die there. Didn’t you notice the lack of blood?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t. Then again, she’d been lying on a thick bed of leaves.

“Some animals drag their prey.” Bears did, I knew. Did cougars? I was trying to recall everything I’d ever read about the big cats. “To cache it, to save it for a later meal.” I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. That meal had once been a woman. “Maybe Spot and I interrupted something. Did you look for drag marks?”

He shrugged, and I remembered: the thaw had been brought about by three days of heavy rain.

“How long has she been…” I paused to swallow. “Out there? You’re sure the blood didn’t just get washed away?”

He nodded. “Look, Pru, I probably shouldn’t have told you what I did. But it seemed you needed to know. For, ah…closure.”

“Closure?”
Now it was my turn to fix him with a gimlet eye. “Closure, Jim?”

He had the decency to flush, ever so slightly. It made him look younger, more vulnerable. It didn’t make my next question any easier.

“You’ve been spending time with our new shrink, haven’t you?”

He looked up. I met his eyes. I didn’t like this, and I wasn’t a masochist. What I am is a realist, and this was the tear-the-Band-Aid-off moment. Trouble was, he didn’t say anything.

“Never mind.” He didn’t have to. That flush said it all. “Look, it’s been fun. But you’ve got a case to solve. I’ve got a dog to train. And, hey, she’s a nice lady.” I couldn’t help the extra emphasis that crept into those last two words. She was, and neither trait would ever be applied to me.

I turned to walk out, willing my heart to be still as I heard him say my name.

“Wait…Pru?”

I set my jaw. Turned.

“I am going to need to talk with you again.” He had the grace to look a little embarrassed as he clarified that. “To get your statement about exactly what happened, how you found her. When.” He smiled a little. “Maybe you can tell me what the dog said, too.”

I let the door slam as I wheeled out.

***

“No reason to panic
.”
The voice sounded right beside my ear. Without thinking, I wheeled around.
“Not here
.”

And caught myself. I’d made it to the foyer, where I could see into the animal shelter. Albert was slumped over his desk, but Frank was standing on his hind feet, staring at me. Even from here, I could see his nose twitch as he sniffed the air.

“Hey, Frank.” I didn’t know if he could hear me, but, as I reached for the door, I figured it was not only polite to greet him, but also politic. Creighton might not want to give me much information. I may as well hit up the building’s one other intelligent male.

“Oh, he’s not that bad
.”
Frank sank down to all fours as I approached, nose still actively reading the air.
“He’s—how do you say it?—trainable
.”

I caught myself from laughing out loud. Albert, it seemed, was asleep, the combination of his beard and his belly making a comfortable pillow for his shaggy head. Was Frank picking up lingo from me? Or was the idea of a pet just that universal?

“Pet?”
The button eyes looked up into mine, and for a moment I was flustered. Then I got it: Albert might have some annoying habits, but he fed Frank regularly, gave him treats and toys to play with, and kept him safe from larger predators. We humans may not always be the ideal caregivers, but for many of our companion animals, the deal was a good one.

“Not all are good
.”

I nodded. Frank had a point, as I knew well. But as I silently agreed, he brought his tiny, agile front paws together at my response and stood up again, bouncing from paw to paw. I didn’t need that little dance—a ferret sign of distress or agitation—to get Frank’s point. The snoozing man behind the desk was an obvious object lesson.

“Hey. Some of us just aren’t meant for domestication.”

He hopped again, still agitated, and Albert stirred. Well, I’d do what I could for the little fellow. Besides, I’d said I’d drop by. I dragged a chair over toward the desk, letting the grating sound of the legs on linoleum startle Albert into full consciousness.

“Bacon!” He sat up with a start. “Oh, it’s you.”

I smiled. “Pleasant dream?”

“I was—I was planning my shopping list.” Albert reached for a pencil and jotted a note. “Didn’t see you.”

I let it lay. “You said you wanted to speak with me?” I had questions of my own, but if I were lucky, his would negate any need to ask.

“Uh, yeah.” I saw him spell out the word “eggs.” It took a little effort. “You’re working with that special dog program now, right?”

“Yeah.” This wasn’t what I’d expected, but I waited. I didn’t think the regional service-dog association would have any use for Albert, but I was curious.

“You think they might, you know, have a dog for me?”

I felt my eyebrows go up. Albert is not the sharpest tool in the woodshed. Nor the most attractive. He does not have any obvious impairments, however, beyond his personality. And as his presence behind that desk made clear, someone had judged him fit for full-time employment. Granted, Albert was more old school dog catcher than modern animal-control officer, but he served a purpose.

“What are you thinking about, Albert?” Maybe he had a health issue. Considering his diet and apparent disdain for exercise, it was possible.

“I was thinking it would be useful to have a dog who could, you know, help with my duties.”

“Your duties?” Albert’s mandate entailed rounding up unwanted or nuisance animals. After that, I was the one who usually dealt with them—either relocating them, as I had a troublesome raccoon a few months ago, or finding some other way to repair the ruptured human-animal bond. The unloved pets, they were harder to deal with—largely because of the people involved—though Doc Sharpe and I did what we could, which usually meant working to place them in better homes.

“Yeah, you know. If there’s a wild animal I have to take care of.” He was doodling now, and Frank was eyeing the pencil eraser with a covetous glance. “Like, something I have to track in the woods.”

“You want a hunting dog, Albert. Not a service dog.” This was my opening. “But what kind of animal are you talking about? Has someone said something to you?”

He shrugged, but kept hold of the pencil. I didn’t think Creighton would confide in this shaggy bear of a man. For better or worse, though, Albert was part of Beauville’s bureaucracy. Not even my alpha dog lawman could keep him entirely out of the loop.

“I heard some of the guys talking, over at Happy’s last night.” Of course. Creighton might not hang at our local dive—for at least the part of the night he’d been with me—but some of the crew he’d brought out yesterday did. “Heard there’s something out there. A man-killer.”

“Woman-killer is more likely.” The words slipped out before I’d thought them through, but when Albert looked up—startled—I realized I might as well take advantage of the moment. “Those guys get any kind of ID off her?”

I tried to sound nonchalant. Not like I’d just asked the same question of Creighton. I got the same answer: a shake of the head. Considering that it was Albert I was dealing with, I was willing to believe he honestly didn’t know.

“Kind of funny, isn’t it?” I didn’t want Albert to see my frustration, so I kept talking—and held out another pencil for Frank to play with. Not that I wouldn’t sympathize, but it wouldn’t help matters if the little beast gave up and bit Albert in frustration. “I haven’t seen any wildlife reports of a nuisance animal, have you?” Officially, the state reports are available to all animal welfare professionals. In reality, I have no standing—and no means of getting access to them.

“Of a mountain lion or whatever it is? Nuh-uh.” He shook his head vigorously. “That’s what’s so spooky. No warning, just…whoosh…like a ghost in the night. Like those lions in Africa? The mankillers? They get a taste for human flesh, you know.”

“We don’t know that’s what happened.” Now it was my turn to fight frustration. “Very few animals kill humans by choice.” It had been a while since I’d studied the big cats, but basic animal behavior is pretty much the same the world over. “We’ve pushed into their territory. We’re the intruders. But—”

I stopped, unsure of how much I wanted to share with the shaggy man before me.

“We don’t even know if that girl was killed by a mountain lion, Albert.” I didn’t tell him she’d been moved. Or that Creighton wouldn’t have been so curious if the death was a simple case of person-meets-panther.

He was shaking his head. “Deputy Johnson said she was, for sure,” he said. “Joe Carnovy did, too.” He looked up at me. “They had to look for evidence around the body, you know, before the medics took her away? They said it was pretty obvious. She had claw marks all down her front, like from an angry cat. Joe said she looked like this.” He faked a rictus. It wasn’t attractive. “Like it was really bad.”

“Great.” Whether or not this was true, it wouldn’t make my job any easier. I’m for moving nuisance animals, not killing them, and I had the law behind me. Cougars were protected. However, a lot of contingencies would allow for an animal to be destroyed. If there were a public outcry, the best I could hope for was that the damned cat had moved on.

“Watch out!”
Distracted, I’d quit wiggling the pencil, and Frank had grabbed it. I smiled and pulled on it slightly, the better to give him a bit of a tussle.
“This isn’t a game
.”
Those agile paws clasped the pink rubber of the eraser and his teeth bit down. But the dark button eyes remained on mine.
“And big cats aren’t the only killers out there
.”