Zero at the Bone (24 page)

“Be sure to air out the bushmaster room,” she said. “Maybe with a fan. I think there’s still some Lysol odor.” She was surprised to hear in her voice the beginning of a proprietary interest in her responsibilities. She would still be meeting commitments in hell.

Danny nodded. “Bushmasters, yeah. Don’t worry about it. Hey,” he said, turning to face Vic, “I better be careful with those characters. Wasn’t it a bushmaster involved in that fatal snakebite here a long time ago?” His eyes were shining with interest behind his thick lenses.

“Yes, I think so,” Vic said. “It was way before my time.” He glanced at his watch.

“Well, it wasn’t before Alonzo’s time,” Danny said. “I’ve asked him about it, but it’s a real sore subject. He doesn’t want to talk about it at all.”

“Yeah, I know,” Vic said. “I asked him once, too. He hates to be reminded. This has always been his bailiwick and he feels responsible for everything that happens here.”

“I don’t know why he’d feel responsible,” Danny said. “Everybody knows that accidents happen when you work around these venomous species. Actually we’ve got a great safety record here.”

Vic headed for the door, looking at his watch again. “That’s true, as those things go with herps. One fatality and two bites that didn’t amount to anything in fifty-six years is pretty damn good.”

“Not if you happen to be the one fatality,” Katherine said, busying herself with some index cards on top of the gecko cage.

Vic stood in the doorway watching her. “Well, are you coming, Katherine?”

She looked at him, then around the keepers’ room. Oh, hell, she’d take her chances. She followed him out the door.

Wayne laughed and called after them, “Watch out for those wolves!”

The open Jeep was parked on the sidewalk right outside the front door of the reptile house. Like all zoo vehicles, it was painted forest green and sported an official decal on the door. Katherine inhaled the crisp morning air and felt like a schoolgirl about to play hooky. She had been sprung from the pit, from its sour smell and overheated air, from the constant supervision of Alonzo Stokes and her own incessant fear.

Vic vaulted over the door into the driver’s seat and opened her door from the inside. She got in without looking at him—an overbearing, macho sort of man; she knew the type. In her work she dealt with them all the time—hunters, good ol’ boys who brought their retrievers to her to train, and never stopped expressing their surprise that a woman could do the job. But he was offering her some freedom, and the chance to pick his brain about recent zoo acquisitions if she played her cards right. And there was a bonus: He seemed to be offering wolves. She loved wolves.

Vic revved the Jeep engine and smiled at her, showing all his glossy white teeth. She looked away without smiling back. He drove on the sidewalk, heading toward the far end of the zoo, away from the main gate. As they sped past the pachyderm complex, she noticed that the morning sun was bathing everything in rosy gold; the two rhinos, Teddy and Ursula, were transformed from dirt-colored clay into massive golden statues stretching their horned snouts over the stockade fence that separated their pens. The giraffes at the African Pavilion glittered like towers of reticulated gold. The sprinklers had just finished soaking the oak and mountain laurel leaves so they glistened in the sun. It was a paradise. She felt like a woman emerging from her cave at the dawn of time.

They rode in silence for a while until Vic said, “In the morning light it looks like Eden, doesn’t it?”

Katherine turned her head and looked at him for the first time. “I was just thinking that.”

“I thought so,” he said.

She studied his profile for a moment. He was clean-shaven for a change, his dark skin looking a little raw from the scraping. His thick black hair grew long on his neck, curling slightly under his ears. His nose had the fierce curve of a scimitar and his hairy hand on the wheel was huge, the skin on the fingertips cracked and calloused. She looked away so he wouldn’t catch her staring.

“Tell me about the wolf-dog you trained,” he said.

“I said tried to.”

“Okay. But don’t tell me they’re not trainable.”

“Oh, they are, with some hard-nosed conditioning—up to a point. It depends what you want them to do. You can certainly condition them to do certain things, but they’ll never retrieve and they’ll never make pets or guide dogs.”

“What I have in mind is much more modest than that. We just want them to come into their holding cages at a certain signal.”

“Why?”

“Well, of all the animals here, the wolves have always been left most alone. They stay outside in all weather, rarely enter their shelter. The keepers just throw them some bones and meat once a day and that’s pretty much it.

“But now we’ve got a problem. The bulldozers and landscapers are coming next week to do some work in their enclosure and it’ll take maybe two weeks to complete. We want to get the wolves into their holding cages during the part of the day when the workmen are there and let them out the rest of the time, but they won’t go into the enclosure. The keeper’s been able to get one or two in at a time, but not all six.”

“Have you tried feeding them inside so they have to come in to get it?” she asked.

“Jerry says he’s tried that, but it doesn’t work.” Without slowing down he bumped across the tracks of the little train that girdled the zoo and pulled up to the fence enclosing Wolf Woods—a long narrow strip bordering the extreme west end of the zoo grounds. The area was sparsely planted with a few bushy pines and some large boulders were scattered around.

There were six of them lying in the shadows at the back of the exhibit, long-legged and bush-coated, positioned almost exactly ten feet apart from one another. Dogs would be lying together in an indiscriminate heap, but wolves needed some distance. Four of them were solid gray, one was a gray-and-cinnamon mix, and one was off-white. Every time Katherine saw a wolf she was reminded that in their anatomy wolves were almost indistinguishable from dogs. But, what a difference in temperament there was between
Canis lupus
and
Canis familiaris!

Vic pointed at a small flat-roofed hut at the south end of the exhibit. “That’s the shelter. They don’t like it, but the workmen say they won’t work here while the wolves are out. Even though we tell them it’s safe.”

“I don’t blame them,” Katherine said. “Wolves have a bad reputation.”

“Yes, they do,” Vic agreed. He hoisted his backpack out of the rear of the Jeep and started walking along the fence. He led the way to the far end, near the hut, where a huge hollow Gunite boulder concealed the gate. He dropped his bag to the ground and pulled out a crumpled coverall. He stepped into it and pulled it on over his zoo uniform. “They tend to jump,” he explained. “Muddy paws.” He smiled down at Katherine as he zipped the fly. “And they could get hurt by my belt buckle. After we solve this first matter, maybe you could train them not to jump.”

“No problem,” she said.

He pulled a jangling key ring from his pocket and unlocked the gate. Instead of entering, he bowed and swung his arm toward the pen for Katherine to precede him. She stepped in, keeping an eye on the resting wolves whose erect ears were turned in their direction. Vic entered, closed the gate and was about to lock it, when he saw a man trotting toward them. “Here comes Jerry,” he said to Katherine. “While we’re here we’ll do a little howling. Socialize. And it’ll give me a chance to look the pack over. I don’t get here often enough and Sterling, that’s the alpha female, had a tumor we removed several months ago. I’d like to check the site.”

A burly red-haired man opened the gate. “Morning, Victor.” He nodded at Katherine. “Is this the trainer?”

Vic locked the gate. “Yes. Katherine Driscoll, Jerry Waters.”

Vic jogged toward the wolves, who looked up at him with glowing eyes. He went right to one of the grays, leaned over, buried his hands in her thick fur, and rolled her onto her back. Jerry did the same with the white one. To Katherine’s surprise, both men scratched the wolves’ bellies and began to howl, throwing their heads back, trying, unsuccessfully, to imitate the deep, mournful howl of a wolf. The two wolves writhed on their backs emitting whines and playful yips, appearing to be in ecstasy as the men rubbed them and gained volume with their caterwauling.

Katherine stood watching with interest. It was impossible not to smile.

Vic moved on to another wolf who’d been jumping on him and whining for attention. He flipped it over and gave one pathetic yowl, then looked up at Katherine. “It’s important to get them on their backs right away.”

Katherine understood what he meant. Wolves respected height. They had a highly structured hierarchy and you needed to establish dominance right away if you were going to head the pecking order.

“Why the howling, though?” she asked.

“Oh, this guy, an ethologist who bred these wolves, Ernst Klinghammer, says anyone who needs to interact with wolves should do some howling with them every once in a while.” He bayed to illustrate and moved on to another wolf. As he was scratching its stomach, he said to Jerry, “How come this female doesn’t have an ISIS number?”

“Oh, she arrived after the others. Remember? We’d already tattooed them.”

Katherine leaned over and asked, “What’s an ISIS number?”

“Look here,” Jerry said, pointing to the place where the hind leg connected with the groin. “We’re marking all our animals with numbers. International Species Inventory System numbers, to help monitor breeding. All zoos are doing it.”

When the two men had played with all six wolves, and Vic had examined the healed scar of the female who’d had surgery, they brushed themselves off and headed toward the hut. Three of the wolves frolicked at their feet until they got close to the building, then fell back.

Inside were eight large cages and a small kitchen corner with a sink and refrigerator for preparing food.

Vic turned to Katherine. “This is where we want them to come, all at the same time. Have you been thinking about it?” he asked.

“I have,” Katherine said. “Jerry, what’s your procedure for feeding them?”

“Around noon every day, I just toss them some raw meat, about three pounds per animal. I try to spread it out around the enclosure, so the dominant animals can’t keep the others away. Last week I tried putting it in the cages, but they weren’t having none of it, went on strike. All but one refused to come in.”

“How long do you have to accomplish this?”

“The workmen are supposed to start on the thirteenth, so twelve days.”

She nodded. “It might work if you did it in increments, a small step at a time. Today you could put the food near the hut, a little closer than the place they stopped when they were following us just now. Spread it out, so they all have a chance at it. Then tomorrow, put it a little closer, the next day right at the door. The third day, you could put it down at the door and then drag it inside, some into each kennel, so it leaves an irresistible trail. And I’d get a dog whistle and blow a few blasts just before putting the food out every day. Then they’ll start associating the sound with food coming and they’ll go where they’re expecting it to appear. Especially if you condition them to come immediately when the whistle blows by removing the food if they don’t come within five minutes. The next time they might remember they have to hustle.”

Jerry was nodding.

Katherine thought for a minute. “The problem is the time crunch. We could certainly do it if we had several weeks, but twelve days isn’t much—with wolves. It might speed things up if they’re hungrier than usual. You could cut down the rations today and tomorrow, to motivate them.” She pointed at the water trough in the center of the enclosure. “You could also empty that and move the water inside tomorrow so they get more accustomed to the cages.”

Jerry was nodding at her. “Sounds sensible. What do you think, Vic?”

“Try it.”

“With wolves, the key is steady, incremental conditioning. If the old male and the alpha female do it, of course the others will,” Katherine added.

“Yeah. Well, we’ll try it. Maybe you could come back in a few days and see how it’s going,” Jerry said. “I hear you’re in reptiles with Alonzo Stokes.”

Katherine nodded. She felt so good right now she didn’t even want to talk about it. “Your wolves are beautiful. I’ll be interested to see how they respond to this.”

They walked to the gate. Jerry let them out and relocked it. “Vic, when are you going to look at that lame muntjac?”

Vic glanced at his watch. “Not now, possibly this afternoon. It’s a pretty full day.”

“Okay. He’s real skittish, so be sure you bring your dart gun.” Jerry looked at his watch and said, “Got to run. I’ve got a group coming.” He jogged off toward the plains exhibit.

As they walked back to the Jeep in silence, Katherine looked back wistfully at the wolves, who had settled back down into their places.

Again Vic jumped into the Jeep without opening the door, but this time Katherine was too quick for him. Before he could lean over to open the door for her, she stretched a leg over the door, anchored a foot on the seat, and hoisted herself in, feeling smug that she could do it so easily.

Vic started the Jeep and headed back the way they had come.

They bumped along in silence while Katherine racked her brain for an innocent way to bring up the subject of acquisitions. Here she was wasting this golden opportunity of time alone with the head vet who knew as much as anybody about the subject. She needed to get on with her inquiries. Maybe she should just ask directly. Before she could think of an approach, they had pulled up in front of the pachyderm complex where the elephants, rhinos, hippos, and tapirs were housed.

“Ever see rhinos mating?” Vic asked as he turned off the engine.

Katherine glanced over at him to see if he was serious. “No,” she said.

“Me neither. Not many people have. Today we could be among the select few. I hear it’s awsome.”

Katherine looked across the road to the reptile house and felt a tug of anxiety. “Is it okay with Alonzo for me to be gone all day?”