It was an ugly scene. The first thing Kimble thought of was a corpse from a pit-bull killing many years ago. That dog had to put in some time and effort to finish the job. The tiger, it appeared, had needed one swipe.
He went into the cage and crouched down and looked at both bodies. The tiger had been shot just behind the shoulder. There was a high-caliber rifle in the dead man’s hand, his stiff fingers still on the trigger guard.
“That thing on the pole, it’s a syringe,” Shipley was saying. “Looks like he was trying to drug the cat when he came in, but he had the rifle with him just in case, you know?”
Kimble didn’t say anything, his eyes following the blood trail back from the dead man. It seemed he’d dragged himself about ten feet after suffering the wound. Toward the cat instead of toward the gate. That was damned curious. Why would he have tried to close the gap?
“Tell you something, these damned cats are killing machines,” Shipley said. “When we were out here last night, I thought, Someone is going to get hurt. That’s just what I thought. And then this poor bastard gets killed. I don’t understand why anyone is allowed to have animals like this outside a zoo. It’s a dangerous place, and that’s not even counting the—”
“Shipley?” Kimble said. “Shut up for a minute, all right? Just shut up.”
He was looking at the dead man’s eyes as if they might tell him something. It was odd, the way the victim had fallen. Curled up against the cat, almost, but there was no way the killing wound could have been inflicted from that angle. So had the cat tried to come over and finish the job and then fallen dead almost exactly as he reached the man? It didn’t make sense. Unless the poor son of a bitch had been coming toward the cat in the end.
“I’m guessing Mr. Harrington didn’t have any luck with the missing cougar before he found his way here,” Kimble said.
“No. It appears he set up a trap out by the old railroad tracks, but it hasn’t been touched. That’s not good, because this guy was the only person who was able to get him in a cage to begin with.”
“No,” Kimble said, looking back down at the body. “Not good.”
Audrey was usually at the preserve no later than eight, but today she’d been delayed by a call from her sister, who’d awoken at three in the morning from a terrible nightmare, one that was hard to recall in detail but somehow left the overwhelming sense that it was time for Audrey to give up the preserve.
This wasn’t a new sentiment, but it was a new delivery, and one that incensed Audrey. Her older sister had been campaigning for her to abandon the rescue center from nearly the moment the minister had finished David’s eulogy. While Audrey understood and appreciated her concern, she didn’t need any hysterical talk of prophetic nightmares. Not now, not the way things had been going the past few days. It was too much, and she told Ellen that in no uncertain terms. She was committed to the preserve, and if Ellen would shut the hell up about it and support her instead of arguing with her, it would be great.
Afterward, standing in the shower trying to purge the argument with hot water and deep breaths, she felt bad in the way you could only when you understood the place someone was coming from. Ellen had always had a bossy streak, yes, but being in charge wasn’t the issue here. Loving her sister was. Audrey leaned her head against the cool tile of the shower as the room filled with steam and thought of her family, all of them living their practical, ordered lives in Louisville while their once most practical and ordered member, Audrey, drove to the middle of nowhere each morning to feed chunks of bloody meat to cats with paws the size of her head.
Maybe they were entitled to their concern.
She stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her body, which was so thin, too thin. For a time after David’s death she’d been able to con herself into the idea that losing a few pounds was never a bad thing. No creature alive was more predisposed to fall for that con than a woman, after all. It was when five pounds turned to fifteen and then to twenty that she knew it needed to be dealt with. She’d used fatigue as an excuse for a lack of appetite, but fatigue didn’t keep you from avoiding the dinner table. Memories of sharing that table with your late husband did.
She’d been doing better lately, though. Five pounds back in the last month. All you needed to know about appetite you could learn from a lion.
She was thinking that, and smiling, when the phone rang again. She almost ignored it, certain that it would be Ellen again, perhaps calling to apologize, perhaps not. Then she gave in just enough to check the caller ID and saw that it wasn’t Ellen but Dustin Hall.