“There now!” Hamlin's face appeared again.
“Great, now you’ve incapacitated us so you can get out of town before the chief finds out what's up,” I said. At least I was hoping that's what his plan was.
“Running away would be so inconvenient,” he said. “And I’d rather be around when they discover the terrible tragedy. Don’t worry; you’ll be the heroine. You bravely put your life on the line to rescue one of the zoo's animals, and did away with the killer. Too bad that you had to sacrifice your own life in the process—falling victim to the same crossbow that killed poor Patrick Lanahan.”
He produced a crossbow from behind his back and flourished it.
“Is that the same crossbow?” I asked.
“Course not,” he said. “It's young Charlie's crossbow. Mine's back at the range. But the bolts’ll match just fine.” He looked at the crossbow and frowned.
“What's wrong?” I asked. Something that would bring his plan to a screeching halt, I hoped.
“He does you in with the crossbow,” Hamlin explained. “But I have to figure out how you kill him at the same time.”
He scanned the bottom of the trench, frowning as his eyes dwelled on Lola for a few moments, and then shaking his head as if she had sadly disappointed him.
“Just out of curiosity, why did you kill Lanahan?” I asked. “I’d have thought he was useful. Your canned hunting operation's going to take a hit without him to provide the exotic animals, isn’t it?”
“Can’t be helped,” he said. “There's plenty of other places I can buy from. Hell, I should have known it was risky in the first place, buying animals from someone only twenty miles away. First six months or so, I made up fake bills of sales so it looked like I’d resold the animals to zoos in the Midwest or on the West Coast. But he never came by to see how they were doing,
so I stopped bothering. After a while, it came to me that I was wasting money buying the animals when I could just rip a few holes in his fences and let him think they wandered off. But that backfired.”
“He paid more attention to the animals he still owned?”
“Yeah. The Shiffley kid shooting that fancy antelope was a gift. Took the heat off for a while. As long as Patrick was busy snooping around the Shiffleys’ land, looking for traces of his lost critters, I could get away with anything.”
“So what happened?”
“I had a hunter who wanted a big cat. Kind of a disappointment that the lion turned out to be a fake, but I convinced him that a bobcat would be good enough. And turns out Patrick was staking out the zoo. Sleeping out in that miserable trailer office.”
“He caught you trying to steal Lola, and you killed him.”
“I offered to cut him in on the hunting game but he wouldn’t deal,” Hamlin said, and from his tone, I gathered he thought Lanahan's refusal fully justified killing him.
“Why did you have to bury him in our basement?”
“Wasn’t my original plan,” he said. “I was going to plant him out in the swamp on old man Bromley's land. But I stopped by Flugleman's to get some quicklime—speed up how fast the body disappears, you know—and when I heard about the ready-made hole your father had dug, it sounded perfect.”
“Perfect,” I echoed. I knew the trouble had all started with Dad and the penguins. But all would be forgiven if Dad would just show up soon to check on his beloved birds. I thought longingly of my cell phone, which was upstairs, in my purse, carefully hidden away from sneak thieves and kleptomaniacs. If I’d had it, I could have called for help by now. Instead, I had to keep Hamlin talking and hope someone showed up before he figured out how to perfect his scenario.
“And what was that whole business with Spike?” I asked. “Did you really think Reggie was still in his den?”
“No, but that was the day I went back to collect the bobcat,” he said. “Only to find you and the old geezer snooping around the zoo. I needed to slow you down long enough to haul her out. Worked, too. Say, I don’t suppose it would make sense for you to whack him on the head with the crossbow, would it?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” I said. “This stinks.”
“Try to look at it philosophical like,” Hamlin said. “We all gotta go sometime.”
“But not like this,” I said. “In books and movies, whenever someone's menaced by a deranged killer, they always seem really upset about the possibility that the guy's going to be so sharp that the police can’t catch him. That's nonsense.”
“How come?” he asked. He seemed genuinely interested.