Claws (8 page)

Fourteen

Jackson found Iris and Dell in the Split-Rail Café and headed toward them. Katy hurried to keep up.

“I knew it wouldn’t take you long,” Iris told Jackson a second later, while her eyes fixed on Katy. “And you must be the lion hunter I heard about,” Iris said to her.

Jackson introduced everyone, providing names and roles. No mention was made of Iris being his ex-wife. “Now that we’ve all made nice,” Jackson said, “one of you mind telling me what just happened with the State Police?”

“We don’t need them here,” Iris said.

“We don’t?” Jackson said. “Last I heard we have twenty-two big cats running around killing people.”

“And we’ll get rid of the lions and make money for the town too,” Iris said. “We’re going to have a public hunt.”

Katy’s mouth opened in amazement, and Jackson muttered, “Are you out of your mind?”

“Coffee?” Suzy Beans asked. Nobody had paid attention to the waitress standing beside the booth. “And menus?”

Jackson and Katy didn’t want coffee or food.

“I know who you are,” Dell said to Katy as Suzy shrugged and indifferently sauntered off. “I heard about you when I was on safari. Read your books too. Tell Jackson how much it costs for an African safari.”

“It all depends on the length and the services.”

“My brother and me, we spent over twenty-five grand for ten days in Kenya and a short stay in South Africa.”

“Well, it’s expensive to run a good safari.”

Iris sipped her latte and then said, “A thousand dollars. That’s what we’ll charge each hunter for a license. And they can get it back and a lot more money to boot. We’ll offer prizes for the biggest cat killed.”

“You won’t get ten people,” Jackson argued.

“Oh we will, and not just from around here either,” Dell said. “California, Texas, New York. People will flock here from all over. A once in a lifetime adventure and you won’t need a passport or twenty grand to have it.”

“We’ll be on the national news by noontime today,” Iris said. “It’ll put Buckhorn, Idaho on the map.”

“But maybe not for the reasons you want,” Katy said. She turned to look at Jackson. “Can they do this?”

Iris laughed. “We already did it.”

“So when is this hunt going to happen?” Jackson asked.

“As soon as my brother gets here,” Dell replied. He then said to Katy, “Dan’s the lieutenant governor.”

“The acting-governor,” Iris added with emphasis.

Jackson looked skeptical. “Dan agreed to this?”

“Hell yes. He’s flying in tomorrow to kick it off,” Dell said. “And I bet we have two, three hundred hunters by then, with another three hundred or more on the way.”

“Every one of them buying a license and paying for food and drinks and motel rooms and gas,” Iris said.

“And caskets,” Katy said. “Don’t forget about caskets. You’ll sell some of them too.”

A short time later Jackson eased the Grand Cherokee into the motel parking lot and stopped outside Katy’s door. He left the engine running but shifted into park.

“You know what’s going to happen here, don’t you?” Katy asked.

“Nothing good. I’m pretty sure of that.”

“These lions and tigers, they’re not going to call a time out until the town’s ready,” Katy said. “Big cats eat ten to twenty pounds of meat a day just to survive. That means they have to kill something and keep on killing. Today, tomorrow. Animals or people, whatever they can.”

“I can talk to Iris again, but …” Jackson shook his head. “She’s blinded by the upside and can’t see the down.”

Katy thought about her own money problems. How far would she go to save Skorokoro? Pretty damn far! “You and the mayor don’t appear to see eye-to-eye about much.”

Jackson shut off the engine. “She’s my ex-wife.”

Katy bobbed her head. “I didn’t catch that part.”

“We have a daughter, Jesse, a fifteen year old.”

“The girl the tiger chased.”

“My guess is it was one of the ligers chasing her.” Jackson then told Katy the story of Jesse’s escape.

When he finished, Katy said, “I hope I can meet her.”

“Me too. But after what just happened this morning, I figured you’d be on the first plane out of here.”

“But then you don’t know me yet, Chief Hobbs.” She opened the door and slid out. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

“To do what?”

“To come pick me up.”

Jackson said, “And where exactly are we going?”

“To Safari Land. To go liger hunting.”

Jackson barely had settled behind his desk at the police station when Sadie announced that Major Jessup wanted to see him. Jackson followed her to the bullpen and greeted the state cop and asked him if he wanted coffee.

“I’m a tea drinker myself,” Jessup said.

“So is Sadie.” Jackson nodded toward her. “She’s very picky.” Jackson led them to the breakroom where he poured coffee while Major Jessup made a cup of Assam tea heavy with cream and sugar. “So what can I do for you?”

“Trooper Ronnie Greathouse is missing.” Jessup explained about Ronnie’s schedule and his failure to show. “Nobody’s seen him all day.” Jessup sipped his tea. “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to have two of my men look for him. The Roberts twins. You met them earlier today.”

The police department should run a missing-person search in town. Jackson knew it, and the ISP major knew it too, but with everything else going on, Jackson was not going to get territorial. “Two of the hunters, right?”

“Uh-huh. And that’s really why they volunteered. I know they’ll find a way to get out in the woods today.”

A moment later they headed to Jackson’s office, mugs in hand. “Don’t let the mayor know they’re hunting,” Jackson said, “or she’ll want them to buy a safari license.”

Jessup sneered. “A public hunt is crazy and dangerous. Whoever thought this up –”

“Will regret it. I know it and you know it, and they’ll learn soon enough,” Jackson told Major Jessup. “Tell your troopers to let me know if they need our help.”

Jessup nodded and sat in a chair in front of Jackson’s desk while Jackson eased into the gray Aeron chair behind it. “You know trooper Greathouse very well?” Jessup asked.

“Ronnie? Not all that well. One of my officers hangs out with him. Tucker Thule. You’re welcome to talk to him, but we’ll have to call him in. It’s his uncle that was killed on Saturday. I gave Tucker some time off.”

“If my troopers don’t find Greathouse,” Jessup said, “I’ll turn it over to a detective in Meridian. He can talk to your officer later if he needs to.” Meridian, Idaho’s third largest city, with a population nearing 75,000, was the location of the Idaho State Police headquarters and training facility. “This is damn good tea,” Jessup added.

After Katy talked to Janet Cook, who claimed the public lion hunt would provide her with a can’t-miss best-seller, Katy turned on the motel television and watched the news. She was amazed at how quickly the story of the escaped cats and proposed safari was spreading. It was the top story on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and most other news channels.

She had just switched off the television when Stan Ely phoned. Stan also had heard about the public lion hunt and spent the first few minutes railing against the plan. For that matter, he had not been thrilled when Katy first had
told him she was going to Idaho to hunt lions, but he still had helped her connect with the rotund gun dealer.

When Stan paused for breath, Katy said, “A public hunt’s not what I expected. It’s not what I came here to do. You know that, Stan.”

“I know ARK’s going to file an injunction.”

“An injunction?” Katy said.

“To stop the public lion hunt.”

“Wow! You can do that?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Stan admitted. “But even filing the injunction gets us press and leverage. Maybe it’ll encourage people to donate money. It’s been a rough couple of years. When people lose their jobs, we lose their support.”

“If you stop the public hunt and bring your rescue people up here, won’t there be trouble?”

Stan laughed. “Katy, trouble is what I live for.”

Late Monday morning the Roberts twins parked the black Chevy Suburban Jessup had left for them outside a modest ranch house. They knocked on doors, peered through windows, and called Ronnie’s cell phone. The knocks went unanswered, and the cell phone did not ring inside the house. A search of a Dodge Ram pickup parked in the driveway yielded no clues either. Then they split up and
talked to the neighbors. Nobody reported having seen Ronnie since Sunday night, but more than one person told them that Ronnie owned a bike as well as the truck. The Dodge Ram in the driveway could mean anything or nothing. The motorcycle might be missing or in the garage.

“We have to get inside,” Bill said once they returned to Ronnie’s house and compared interview notes. “I’m going around back again, and when I’m ready, you bang on the front door real loud. Give me two minutes.”

“Copy that,” Dwight said.

Bill then hurried to the back, and a moment later Dwight pounded on the front door. Even so, he still heard glass breaking. Before long, the front door swung open.

The twins searched each room of the three-bedroom house but found nothing of interest except a pornography collection, mostly girl-on-girl, a wrapped gift addressed to someone named Maryann, and a box of papers pertaining to something called The Knights Of The Golden Circle. The papers included a notebook filled with writing that they couldn’t decipher.

“It looks like a goddamn code book,” Bill Roberts said, thinking back to his days in the military. “What the hell’s this guy up to anyway?”

Fifteen

For the next hour Jackson dealt with routine matters – there was a DUI, a family fight, and some petty thievery to handle – but when he tried to update the duty roster, he couldn’t bring himself to simply replace Ed’s name on it. In the end he put the old roster sheet aside and started a new one. He then briefed two reserve officers on the route the funeral procession would follow from the church to the cemetery on Tuesday. He reminded himself to dig out his police blues and make sure his uniform was clean and pressed. He also told Sadie to find the black armbands they would all wear to Ed’s service.

Next, he called Angie into his office and gave her a small, plastic evidence bag containing the necklace taken from Dolly. “See if you can find out where it came from,” he said. “May belong to whoever let the cats out.”

“So you’re thinking a woman let them out?”

Jackson said, “Could be.”

“Or it could be Dolly’s necklace?”

“That too.”

“Not much for me to go on.”

Jackson said, “Enough for a deputy-chief.” He said it dryly, but his lips twitched a grin and his eyes crinkled. He got out his car keys and put on his gray hat. “Not sure exactly when I’ll be back. You’re in charge.”

“Should I ask where you’re going, just in case?”

“Liger hunting,” he said. “What I heard anyway.”

When Jackson pulled into the Sportsman Motel parking lot, he noticed more cars than he had seen there earlier, including cars with Montana and Utah tags. He figured someone’s hunting buddies had been tipped off and were now first in line for the safari. He knocked on Katy’s door.

Some twenty minutes later, Jackson rolled to a stop outside the decrepit farmhouse at Safari Land. When she saw the place, Katy asked if he was playing a joke on her.

“Oh, it gets worse,” said Jackson. “Wait to you see the animal cages.” He parked the Jeep in the same place he had parked two days ago – or was it yesterday? He had to stop and think. So much had happened so quickly.

Jackson removed the Stoeger P-350 from the back of the Jeep and loaded it with slugs. His officers carried a Remington 870 12-guage pump, but he had brought his own shotgun from
Colorado. While Katy retrieved the .375 from its padded carrying case, Jackson examined the land and the buildings, turning in a full circle.

“They won’t attack us here,” Katy said. “Too open. But you’re right to be careful. The cats associate this place with food, so they’ll return here if they’re hungry.”

“May not be all that hungry. We’ve already had five reports today, everything from a missing Irish Setter to a pet llama to a pair of gray wolves found near a chicken house. The farmer said there wasn’t much left but the heads and some skin. I doubt if the chickens killed them.”

“Sounds about right,” Katy said. “For whatever reason, big cats don’t always eat the head and the groin.” She couldn’t hide her tiny smile. “Ready?”

Dix Wagner had lost money on cattle. When he tried raising sheep, wolves and mountain lions decimated his herd. He considered raising ostrich until buying one of the birds. The beast had nipped him. After he shot it, both Dix and his wife, Anita, discovered they did not like ostrich meat anyway. As a last resort, Dix tried goats. He soon discovered a thriving market for goat milk, yogurt, and meat, especially in Asia, and he now had a growing herd of Spanish, South African Boer, Nubian, Myotonic, and pygmy goats. There were over one hundred goat breeds that he
knew of. Dix was experimenting to see which ones survived best in the rugged eastern Idaho climate.

In midmorning a flurry of barks and yelps from Rufus, his border collie, and the howling and crying of his goat menagerie caused Dix to grab his rifle, an old Remington .30-30, and rush to the pens to see which of Idaho’s predators he would have to contend with now.

When he got there, two female lions were gutting his Nubians; a large male lion was dragging away a live pygmy goat; and a fourth cat, another lioness, had Rufus by the throat. Dix shot the dog-killing lioness first. He hit her high in the head above the eyes, but she didn’t fall over like he expected. She did drop Rufus, but Dix knew his dog already was dead. Dix kept shooting even as the pride scattered, and the male lion carried off the pygmy goat in his mouth. The tiny goat was crying and screaming.

Dix ran after them. That pygmy goat was his wife’s favorite of the herd. Fortunately for Dix, none of the lions turned back and attacked him. Unfortunately, Dix was sixty pounds overweight, smoked two packs of Camels a day, and took sixteen different pills for various ailments. After running a hundred feet he slowed; after another fifty feet he stumbled; after two hundred feet Dix fell over.

Anita Wagner’s 911 call went to the County Communication Center in St. Anthony and was rerouted to the Buckhorn Police Station where Angie responded. The Roberts twins picked up the call on their police radio while on their way to talk to Maryann Fedder, the woman they had identified as the intended recipient of Ronnie’s gift.

“Lions!” Bill said. “Hot damn! Let’s go!”

“What about this?” Dwight indicated the gift.

“Hell, leave it.” They were stopped at the road leading to the Fedder house. Bill nodded toward the mailbox. They had opened the gift to see what it was. Bill grinned and said, “We wouldn’t want to deprive her.”

After showing Katy the ramshackle cages and then admiring her ability to curse in three languages, Jackson cut the yellow and black crime scene tape across the back door. County sheriff detectives had processed the house, but he wanted Katy to look through the files and charts. He hoped he was wrong about the number of freed cats.

When they reached the office, Katy immediately was drawn to a framed diploma from the California Institute of Technology, a small college that is home to many Nobel Prize winners. “Cheney went to Cal Tech? Really?”

Jackson nodded. “Ted was a scientist. Genetics.”

She said, “Impressive,” and replaced the diploma. After that, Katy began sifting through file cabinets.

When Jackson’s cell phone rang, he left Katy in the dining room, walked outside, and listened to Angie tell him about the attack at the Wagner goat farm. Jackson resisted the urge to rush to the Wagner place. Instead, he said, “Let me know what you find over there.”

“Did you see this?” Katy asked the moment Jackson returned. Her voice had an urgency that was lacking before.

“See what?”

“You remember me telling you about ligers?”

“Enough to know they sound like sharks with claws.”

“That’s not a bad description,” she said. “I don’t really know all that much about them, but I do know the difficulty in raising ligers is getting them to breed. The male is usually sterile. Some people claim they’re always sterile. Female ligers have reproduced, but only with a lion or tiger, never with a male liger.” Katy waved the file in her hand. “Safari Land has two ligers, and according to this paperwork, the female is pregnant and due anytime.”

“And that changes things how?”

“It says that Kali, the female, is pregnant by the male liger named Shaka.” Katy paused like she was waiting
for the drum roll and said, “If two ligers have bred for the first time in history, it means we have to save them.”

After spending the night and Monday morning near Brown’s Creek, Kali and Shaka reached Jackson’s farm at mid-morning. At first the ligers were cautious and stayed out of sight, but before long, they explored the corral, the barn, and the outside of the house and the few sheds.

Their exploration complete, they hid in a patch of Great Basin Wild Rye grass that was six feet high. The rye grass was part of a two-acre prairie south of the house. No grasses, bushes, flowers, or trees existed here that were not native to the Idaho prairie in the early 1800s. The prairie was a restoration project for Jackson and his daughter. Jesse had done all of the research herself. The prairie was never cut, although Touie and Boots and Blaze, Jackson’s two quarter-horses, were turned out to graze on the land and to fertilize it with what they left behind.

In hot climates big cats lay up during the day, but after Kali rolled around to flatten a small patch of dry grass and the ligers had rested, they went off in search of food. They soon smelled water and, knowing that all animals eventually end up at water, headed east toward it.

On the drive to the Wagner farm Angie used the flashing lights in the Dodge cruiser but not the siren. Still, she went as fast as the two-lane road with an abundance of curves and dips safely allowed, especially knowing that she was pissed off and distracted again.

Before leaving the station, Angie had gone to her locker in the big bathroom. There was a stack of half-lockers there, six up and down. Not all of them were in use. Her locker was up top and on one end. The moment she gripped her combination lock, it fell open. It had been cut. Stuck to the inside of her locker door was a pinkish, rubber dildo that looked like Pinocchio’s nose. When she tried to remove it, the dildo wouldn’t budge. Super Glue, she thought instantly. She had wasted valuable time getting rid of the thing. If she found the person who put it there, she might cut off more than a rubber dick.

At the goat farm Angie encountered a pair of troopers that looked like clones and the same two emergency medical technicians she had seen at the Placett farm on Saturday. The EMTs were struggling to get Dix Wagner off the ground and onto the gurney. A woman stood nearby watching. Angie tried to remember her name. Dix had an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. At least he’s still alive, Angie thought. Anita, that’s the wife’s name, Angie recalled.

On her way to the field Angie walked past the goat pens. Splotches of dirt were stained reddish brown from dried blood. A dog and a couple of goats lay on the ground, all dead. The wetter blood spots and a pile of entrails still attached to one of the goats were covered with blue flies. The gore in the pens reminded her of the ‘slasher’ movies Sharon liked to watch. She hated them.

As she strode across the mowed hay field, Angie felt the small, plastic evidence bag in her shirt pocket bounce with her breasts. Why was Dolly clutching the necklace, she wondered? Was it a plea to God to help her? Did she rip it off someone’s neck? Was she trying to tell them something, like a murder victim writing the killer’s name in his own blood? A moment later Angie stopped, nodded to the twin troopers, and then greeted the emergency medical techs before asking them about Dix Wagner’s status.

“Looks like a heart attack,” the youngest of the EMTs told her. “But I’m not a doctor, so we’ll have to see.”

“I’m Deputy Police Chief Angie Kuka,” Angie said to Anita Wagner. “Can you tell me happened here?”