Claws (20 page)

Thirty-Eight

Jackson awakened to the sound of the bathtub draining. He got up and padded out to the hallway. The earlier pain medication had worn off. His body hurt in more places than he could have imagined. He had pain pills, but he hadn’t taken them yet. The door to the bathroom was open. Steam billowed out like evening fog. The light was switched off.

He started into the bathroom as Katy stepped out. She was wrapped in a large white bath towel that barely covered the parts she intended to cover. She was carrying a glass of wine, still half-full.

Startled by Jackson, she jumped back, causing her towel to slip, and when she tried to stop it from falling, she dropped the wine glass. Jackson stabbed at the glass and miraculously caught it, although the wine spilled out. The towel puddled at Katy’s feet. She shrieked and grabbed it off the floor and covered her front. The white towel had soaked up wine, leaving behind a pink Rorschach test.

They stood in silence looking at each other, Katy hugging the towel against her body. “Katy,” he said. Jackson said her name like it was the only word he knew. “Katy,” he repeated.

She dropped the towel and walked into his arms. They kissed and pressed their bodies together. This time the kisses were softer but more urgent. This time Jackson felt the softness and warmth of her body, her skin pink and damp from the hot water. This time he knew that Katy felt his desire for her. She ran her hands up under his t-shirt and tugged it off him. Skin-to-skin from the waist up and pressed together, they tumbled into Jackson’s bedroom.

When he was naked as well, they eased themselves onto the bed and explored each other’s body like cartographers mapping a new land, and only then, after becoming familiar with the new smells and tastes, did Katy roll on top of Jackson and take him inside her. The furious pace of their lovemaking left them both limp and damp. Then they rested, and while they rested, Katy outlined her plan to Jackson. Then they made love again, this time slowly.

Jackson didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he awakened, he was alone. Katy had left a note on his nightstand. He read it, and then he got up and put on the same t-shirt and sweatpants that he had discarded a couple of hours earlier. He went
downstairs, gulped a glass of water, and swallowed a pain pill.

He returned to the bedroom and started to sit in the easy chair. His blue suit still was draped across the back. What has it been, he thought, two days? Three? He hung up the pants and then the coat. That’s when he found Ed’s letter. Christ! He had forgotten all about it.

He read the letter while sitting in the old chair and afterward read it a second time. Then he got dressed. He clipped the gun holster to his belt, loaded the Glock 21, and went outside. His wrecked Ford pickup was gone. Angie and Brian must have dropped it off while he and Katy were making love, he thought. The pickup would need extensive bodywork. He hoped it was safe for Katy to drive. He got into the black Jeep Grand Cherokee and drove to town.

“Jackson,” Dell said, surprised to find him at his door. Dell had a highball glass in his hand. He was dressed as though he had recently come from a nice dinner.

“We need to talk,” Jackson said.

“Well, sure. How are you? Come on in, come in. Iris told me what happened out at the Placett farm. My god!”

“Jackson, is that you?” Iris said. She walked into view. “What are you doing out of bed?”

Jackson looked at her. Something different? He didn’t see it if there was. “I have to talk to Dell.”

“Tonight?” she asked. “Kind of late, isn’t it?”

“Yes, tonight.” His body felt better, but he tried not to move suddenly. His head was clear enough so far.

“Then I’ll leave the two of you alone.” Iris took three steps away before she said to Jackson, “But you can congratulate me first if you’d like to.” She held up her left hand and flashed her engagement ring.

For the longest time Jackson was speechless. The silence began to weigh on everyone until he laughed and then congratulated Iris and Dell. Ten minutes later, after a celebratory drink, Iris left them alone to talk.

“Freshen up your drink?” Dell asked.

Jackson had barely sipped the Black Bush in his glass. He shook his head no. “Pain pills.”

Dell was seated on the couch. Jackson sat in one of the leather club chairs. He removed Ed’s letter from his jacket and laid in on the coffee table between them.

“What’s this?” Dell asked.

“The truth, I think. You tell me.”

As Dell read the letter, his expression changed a dozen times. “This doesn’t prove anything.”

“Not in court. In public, at election time, with your brother running for governor …” Jackson shrugged.

“Sonofabitch!” Dell said. “Is this payback for Iris?”

“Iris?” Jackson laughed. “Dell, I’m happy about it.”
And he was too, for it meant the end of Jesse and Shane. Jesse had told him she was over Shane, but he knew what a teenage girl was done with on Friday, she would die for on Saturday. Iris marrying Dell made it permanent.

Dell scowled. “So what do you want then?”

“To know who’s involved in this KGC group and who let all these cats loose and got so many people killed.”

Dell forced a laugh. “And you think I know?”

Jackson crossed his arms and said nothing.

Dell got up, went to the wet bar, and refilled his glass with scotch. “Ed didn’t have all his details right,” Dell said. “But then Ed never did.”

“Which detail is that? You didn’t shoot your wife?”

“I did. Technically. It happened like the letter says. I was putting a new scope on my deer rifle, and she grabbed the gun during an argument. It shouldn’t have been loaded. I never leave my guns loaded here in the house. I imagine Shane and his friends got into my gun case and one of them loaded it playing around. I didn’t know for sure, probably didn’t want to know.” Dell sipped his drink. “Anyway, neither Ed nor I wanted to lay that guilt on a ten-year-old. It was a horrible, unbelievable accident.”

Jackson didn’t say anything.

“Suppose I do know something?” Dell asked. “What happens then?”

“Depends. Depends on whether you point me to someone I can arrest. Tucker and Ronnie and this KGC group, I already know about. What I don’t know is who let the lions and tigers out and why?”

“I wasn’t there,” Dell said. He drifted back to Jackson and sat on the couch again. “But Fred would be my guess. Bulcher’s a hothead. Always has been. And he was really pissed at Ted. I figured it was because their sand and gravel deal went sour but maybe not.”

“Like maybe he didn’t want Ted talking to the Feds.”

Dell arched his eyebrows and sipped his drink.

Jackson picked up the letter. “Somebody shot at me. They used a gun like the one you own, that elephant gun.”

“I have no reason to shoot at you.”

“Know anybody else with a gun like that?”

Dell shook his head. He didn’t mention his brother, although Dan had a matching elephant rifle.

“Somebody’s going down, Dell,” Jackson said. “You want it to be you, that’s fine with me.” He stood.

“Now just hold on a second!” Dell waited until Jackson sat again. “Fred borrowed my Mark Five, okay. He said it was for a friend of his. Two, three days later, he brought it back. It’d been fired. He cleaned it, but I could tell. I knew it’d been fired.”

“So it’s all on Fred; that’s your story?”

“You asked what I think, and I’m telling you.”

“Why’d Fred or his friend shoot at me?” Jackson asked.

“You might be surprised, Jackson, but some people around here consider you a big pain-in-the-ass.”

“So was somebody trying to scare me or kill me?”

“I don’t know.” Dell chuckled. “But if I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. I don’t miss what I shoot at.” Jackson didn’t say anything else, and Dell nodded toward the letter. “So what are you going to do?”

“With Ed’s letter? I haven’t decided yet.”

“That detail that Ed has wrong,” Dell said, “it involves the Knights of the Golden Circle.”

Jackson nodded. His head was fuzzy. “I’m listening.”

“It wasn’t me that was involved with them. It was my brother. Tilda found out that Dan was part of the KGC militia and threw a fit. Her father was bankrolling Dan’s political career back then. It was Dan we were arguing about. Tilda wanted to expose him. But he’s my brother.”

“Christ!” Jackson said. “He’s going to be Governor.”

“Yes, he is. And he left that group six years ago.”

Jackson stared at Dell for a long time. Then he tore up the letter, dropped it on the floor, and left.

When Jackson got home Katy met him at the door. She kissed him. “What’re you doing up and about?”

“Looking for answers.”

“You find them?”

“Maybe,” he said. Jackson wasn’t convinced Dell was telling the truth. He doubted if he would ever know the whole truth. Does anyone ever know the truth, he wondered? “How about you?” he asked Katy. “You locate the cubs?”

Katy’s note had told him she was returning to the Placett farm to look for Kali’s liger cubs. She pulled a check out of her jean pocket. It was made out to Mandy Placett for seventy-five thousand dollars.

“Wow!” Jackson said. “Where’d you get this?”

“I found two cubs in the barn. Feisty little cats. I don’t know if I’d have caught them without Josh’s help. Anyway, we got them in a portable cage and I took them to Stan. Two baby ligers, a male and a female, at twenty-five thousand each. I told him if for twenty-five more, I’d help him capture the remaining lions and tigers.”

“You must be very persuasive,” Jackson said.

Katy kissed him again. “I hope so.”

Katy stayed for another three days, the time it took the hunters and Stan’s rescue group to kill or capture the remaining lions and tigers. Katy shot one tiger and helped capture another, along with a pair of Barbary lions. A day after the last of the exotic cats was accounted for Jackson
drove Katy to the Pocatello airport.

“I wish you’d stay longer,” he told her. “I was just starting to get used to having you around.”

Katy laughed. “Used to having me, you mean.”

“That too.”

“My god, you’re blushing,” Katy teased. She touched his cheek with her fingers. “I wish I could, but I really do have to get back to the ranch in Africa.”

They both tried to hide the sadness they felt at saying goodbye. Neither of them did a good job of it.

“I have a surprise,” Katy said when they reached the security station. It was as far as Jackson could accompany her. She gave him an envelope. When he opened it, he saw two tickets to Botswana. “They’re booked for Christmas, while Jesse’s on school break,” Katy explained, “but they’re changeable.”

When Jackson saw the cost of them, his eyes widened.

Katy laughed. “The publisher paid for them, a bonus for signing a new book deal.” Her new book deal to write about the Idaho Lion Hunt also meant that she could keep Skorokoro. Only now she wasn’t sure that she wanted to.

Epilogue

Iris filed an injunction to keep the baby ligers from leaving Idaho. She argued that the two cubs, the only purebred ligers in the world, belonged to the heirs of Ted and Dolly Cheney. Since Ted had no heirs, it meant that Pamela Yow, Dolly’s cousin, owned them. Stan was furious at her betrayal. Nevertheless, he had to leave the ligers in Buckhorn until the courts resolved the ownership.

The baby ligers were housed at Reynolds’ Auction Barn while awaiting removal to their temporary home at the zoo in Pocatello. They were kept in cages that Stan and ARK provided. On the same Thursday night that Jackson took Katy to the airport, someone broke into the barn, opened the cages, and released the cubs. They were never found.

A year later an elk hunter from the tiny village of West Yellowstone, Idaho’s lone gateway to the famed national park, claimed to have seen giant cats prowling the woods there. He described the cats as monsters.

Acknowledgments

Novels are long journeys, and many people make the journey possible. No doubt, there are some that I will overlook. To them, I apologize in advance for the slight.

First and foremost I owe a debt of gratitude to Judy Coppage, my agent when I wrote for television, and after that, my manager, as I entered the nebulous world of the free-lance writer. She has put up with me for years without much to show for it. Long ago I told her a story about lions, tigers, ligers, and other animals escaping from a ramshackle compound in Idaho in 1995. Judy thought it would make a great screenplay, but I never got around to writing it. When I told her in late 2008 that I wanted to write a novel, a thriller, she reminded me of the story.

Literary agent, Julia Lord, offered a critical and observant eye. Author and teacher, Keith Abbott, edited a manuscript in need of editing. Pamela Bothwell not only proofread the book, she read it twice. Kimberly Myers read each draft of the novel, and there have been many, and offered encouragement and a home in Los Angeles so that I could escape New England winters. Other people who aided my journey include Craig Feagins, Mary Salter, Amanda Russell, Nancy de los Santos, Neil Hassall, Jane Darling, Melinda Foley, Don Sprague in Pocatello, Jack Dudley, the Gun Library Manager at Cabela’s in Portland, Maine, and Jeremy Hinkle, who helped educate me about ligers and let me roam his Wild Animal Safari at Stafford, Missouri. I especially want to thank researcher Glida Bothwell, my encyclopedia about all things Idaho. Any mistakes in describing Idaho are my responsibility, not hers.

Thanks to authors Alan Jacobson and Anne Kemp for responding to unsolicited e-mails and befriending me. You might not be reading this at all were it not for Joel Gotler and for everyone at Premier Digital Publishing.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Ozzie Cheek

Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

978-1-4804-3973-3

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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