The Leopard's Prey (38 page)

“I think it was Pauline Berryhill. She told me she had to make deliveries on a Sunday. I think she hid Alice out there. Remember, it was Chalmers who found me near Naivasha. He said he’d been following tire tracks, which doesn’t make sense if he was looking for his missing pony.”

“So you think he was looking for Mrs. Stokes?” asked Avery.

Jade nodded. “I think he loves her. He had her photo, the only clean item in his house. Chalmers was very disappointed when he thought he’d been following
my
tracks. But he learned from you and Sam that I’d flown and gotten stranded. So I think he went out there again, found her, and convinced her to go with him. The woman was gone when I stopped back there the next day. Mrs. Berryhill was very distraught this morning and she also said she wasn’t making any more deliveries.”

“Oh, my,” said Maddy. “I’ll have to talk to my new friend, Nancy. If anyone would know some gossip, it would be a hello girl.”

“But why all this pretense of adopting out the baby?” asked Avery.

“Probably so that Alice could start fresh with a new identity somewhere else,” said Jade. “But now that her husband is dead, the pretense is no longer needed. She married the first time because her parents died and she had no one to support her. I don’t think she’s the type of woman who knows how to take care of herself.”

“So she accepted Mrs. Berryhill’s help until another man came along,” said Beverly. “Very interesting. Perhaps all that white flannel is for nappies, then.”

Jade excused herself after dinner to develop her pictures in the separate building that operated as her darkroom. With a red filtered lantern, she took her film through the vats to develop the negatives, then studied them with a lens to look for the best ones to make into prints. To her delight, there were several wonderful photos of the Maasai as well as of the little rhino. She went through them all systematically and finished with a print of the railroad man, Robertson. She could drop it off at the railroad offices tomorrow for him. She was on her way back to the main house when a native came running up, panting hard.

“Simba Jike,” he called, “you are needed.”

Jade held up the lantern and studied him. She didn’t recognize the man, although he looked like a Kikuyu. “Slow down and catch your breath,” she admonished.

“No time, Memsabu. You are needed at the animal building, please.”

“What happened?”

“I think the big lion is sick. I have been told to bring you. Cannot find Bwana Cutter. Other bwanas gone.”

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll go back on my motorcycle. You can sit on the rack in back if you want.”

The man waved her off. “No,” he said, breathing harder now. “I cannot ride on such a machine. You go. Hurry, please, Memsabu.”

“All right, I will. I’ll just tell my friends where I’ve gone.”

“
I
will tell, Memsabu.
You
must hurry before the lion dies.”

“Fine. Be sure to tell the bwana at the house where I am.” She hurried to her motorcycle, and sped away south to the warehouses, wondering what had happened to old Percy and what in the world she could do about it.

As much as Jade wanted to race through Nairobi, she maintained a slower speed and was careful to wipe free of grime the glass over her cycle’s headlamp. The constables had gotten very fussy of late about lights and license tags. They issued fines as readily as most people handed out good morning wishes.
Shame they aren’t so particular about finding murderers.

Still, every time she wondered what was wrong with Percy, she caught herself accelerating.
Who was on watch? Wachiru?
A careful man, attentive to his job. Perhaps Percy wasn’t too bad. Maybe Wachiru just felt that someone should look in on him.

I haven’t a clue how to treat a sick lion.
What if he was dying? What if she had to put him down? That was no good. She hadn’t even brought along her rifle.

She wished she’d looked up the name of a veterinary officer in Bev’s
Red Book
before she’d left. There wasn’t even any phone in the warehouse to use. The railway office wasn’t too far from there. Maybe someone would still be there to let her use a phone.

Cutter’s probably in some bar somewhere getting tight.

Jade skirted the quiet rail yards, finding her way with a combination of moonlight and the occasional light over a warehouse door. She stopped near their animal compound and shut off the engine. Overhead, a bare bulb glowed weakly under the accumulated soot and grime, providing just enough illumination for her to see that the door was open a crack. Another light shone faintly from inside, flickering as if the old bulb was in its death throes.

“Wachiru?” Jade called as she dismounted. There was no answer except for an explosive bark followed by one shrill screech.
Mama baboon’s not happy.
If Wachiru was inside near Percy, he wouldn’t be able to hear her over the din. She went inside, leaving the door ajar, and called again more loudly as she walked toward the back wall, where Percy’s cage was located.

“Wachiru!”

A cacophony of sounds all but drowned out her call. The hyena’s jittery laughter joined with the wild dogs’ gruff barks and plaintive whines and the jackals’ short yelps. The young lioness snarled and woofed. Jade was about to call again when it occurred to her to listen to the animals.

They’re all giving alarm calls.

For the first time, she noted her body’s own, unique alarm going off as a deep, pulsing throb in her left knee.

Get the hell out of here!

She turned and sprinted toward the door, but it was too late. The door was shut. She heard the lock click into place outside and knew she’d been set up.

“Open the door now!” she yelled. She didn’t expect an answer. The only way she’d have gotten a response was if Cutter or Wachiru had come by, seen the door open, and shut it, not knowing she was within. She grabbed hold of the handle and yanked as hard as she could, but the door didn’t budge.

Then she heard a new sound: the asthmatic cough of a leopard. Only this time, it didn’t come from the cat pens.

CHAPTER 21

A Maasai proverbs says, “A predator can hide for a time,
but it will finally be killed or captured.” Essentially, “Murder will out.”

—The Traveler

THE SHIVERING CHILL started in Jade’s stomach and spread out along her limbs. Her heart hammered in her chest. She felt the throb in her wrists and throat, heard it roar in her ears. A film of sweat seeped out over her forehead and in the hollow of her neck. The blind woman’s warning came to her again, only now it was too late.

Steady now!
Slowly and quietly, she wiped her sweaty palm on her trousers. Then she leaned to her right until her hand found the knife hilt. Once she had it safely in her grasp, Jade felt as though she had a slim but fighting chance. She’d have to act fast.
Chui
was a powerful, muscular killer with raking claws that could gut her in an instant.

There had to be another way out of here.
The window!
There were two narrow windows on each long side of the warehouse, eight feet up. She just needed to stack up some of the smaller crates and climb up to one.
But which one? Where’s the leopard?

Leopards, Jade knew, were ambush hunters. Whereas the lion would rush and run down its prey, the leopard would pounce before she even had a chance to make a break for the window. And the cat was an expert climber, too. It would easily follow her up the crates, claw her legs, and pull her down. For all she knew, he was atop one of the cages now, gauging the distance to her with those hypnotic eyes. Her skin prickled at this new fear. There were fewer cages behind her, so chances were he wasn’t hiding there.

Are you so sure?

Part of her wanted to run screaming toward the door, the windows, anyplace but here. But reason told her that escape was useless at the locked door or the windows. No. She needed to be smarter than the cat.

Find it and find a hiding place.

A hiding place. There was an idea. Were there any empty pens in the warehouse?
No.
They’d all been removed with the animals. Jade forced herself to focus on a mental layout of the remaining cages.

Anything I can share a cage with?
Most of the hoofed animals had been housed near the back door. That area was now nearly empty except for a pair of ostrich.
No help there. I’ll be kicked to death.

The next row of cages housed a honey badger, a catlike genet, and the lone white-tailed mongoose. Those smaller predators, too little to threaten the antelope and zebra, had formed a buffer zone from the larger meat eaters. Unfortunately for Jade, their cages wouldn’t fit her. That left the baboons and the larger hunters. Jade didn’t relish trying to vacate or share a cage with any of them, not even Percy.

Then it dawned on her. There
was
an empty cage: the leopard’s. But it was on the far end of the row.
You don’t have much choice.

Could she get to it? That depended on where the leopard was right now. The bulb high overhead continued to flicker spastically as Jade searched in vain for the eyes’ reflective glow.

Listen to the animals.

Every one of them contributed to the racket, and for a moment, Jade despaired of getting any help from that quarter. She forced herself not to react, and listened again. The baboon had definitely become more agitated. Her barking alarm call had changed to a continual high scream.

The cat was close to the baboon.

The baboon cage is behind me.

Fear, a cold knife, cut into her. Jade felt the hairs on her nape rise. She pivoted and stared straight into the hypnotic glare of
chui
. His eyes, a washed-out citrine yellow, flashed cold hate as he recognized her scent. He screwed up his mouth in a snarl, exposing four daggers. The image, flickering insanely with the sputtering bulb, seared itself like a brand in Jade’s brain. Beneath him, the mother baboon shrieked and barked in terror, clutching her baby to her chest.

Jade gripped her knife as tight as the mother baboon did her young and began to make her last apologies to God for every headstrong, bumble-brained thing she’d ever done. One meager chance, that was all she’d get, to drive her knife into the beast’s heart. Even if she came out alive, she’d be badly mauled.

The cat screwed up its hindquarters, tensing to leap. His tail lashed from side to side, then twitched, draping over the edge of the cage. That was when Jade found an unwitting ally. Mama baboon seized the tail of her hated foe and pulled. When she had yanked enough into the cage, she sank her own canines into the tail.

The leopard snarled and hissed, slapping at the cage as he tried to twist and pull himself free. Jade didn’t wait to see the outcome. Instead, she turned and bolted. She knew once the leopard got free it could easily outrun her. Behind her the cat hissed again and rattled the cage as it thrashed. Anger would increase his speed once he broke loose. Jade didn’t have time to make it to the end of the line.

Immediately ahead was Percy’s cage. Suddenly, the
laibon
’s words about danger echoed in her mind:
It comes at you with madness in pale yellow eyes, Simba Jike. You must seek help from your mate.
If she was “lioness,” then Percy was “lion,” her mate. Jade raced for his cage.

Like many of the others, it was held shut with a series of toggle pins. She switched her knife to her left hand, pulled the pins, and yanked open the door, praying that Harry Hascombe’s old pet was still friendly.

The leopard thrashed once more, and the noise was followed by a sharp “yak.” That sound alone pushed Jade to her limit. It meant the mother baboon’s mouth was no longer clamped on the leopard’s tail.

“Get out, Percy,” she said as she got behind him and pushed him on the rump. Percy took one look at the open door and the young lioness across the way and strutted over to her, his tail curled up like a banner. Jade stayed inside and pulled the cage door shut. She fumbled with one of the pins, trying in vain to find a slot to shove it into. She could barely get her hand through the closely placed slats. The back of her hand scraped against the rough wood, tearing off skin.

“Where’s the blasted hole?” she muttered. There! Her fingertips grazed it and she struggled to get the pin tip aligned with it. A hot breath blew across her fingers, and she instinctively yanked them inside just as the razor-sharp talons raked the wood and her two fingers.

Jade stood pressed against the cage back, her knife blade pointed forward. She waited for the cage door to bounce open as it recoiled from the cat’s slap. Her muscles tensed to take the impact and drive the blade into the cat’s heart. The charge didn’t come. At least not immediately. She’d managed to get the tip of the pin into the slot enough to keep the door closed.

But for how long?

She could see the pin sitting cockeyed in its nook. Outside, the leopard pawed furiously at the slats. One good jolt and the pin would tumble over onto the floor. The leopard supplied it. He gave up on the front and launched himself on top of her cage to reach her from above. As he jumped, a hind paw kicked the toggle and sent it flying. The door creaked open a few inches.