The Ridge(55)

The place was in Georgia, and all of the cats needed rescue. The owner simply told authorities that he’d “gotten in a little over his head.” Being in over his head meant forgetting to feed the animals, apparently. The cats were housed in filthy, small cages with no food or water in reach. Every bone in their bodies showed beneath matted fur. Often taking strange cats could be a challenge, even requiring sedation. In this case, the only thing that was needed to lure the animals out and into the transport cages was a bucket of clean water.

Cody, one of the cougars, was in such bad shape that he required two weeks of antibiotics just to stabilize enough so the vet could remove several infected teeth. He now had a hilariously crooked smile, which he showed often, and his ribs were no longer pushing against his flesh. His brother, Otto, had suffered frostbite so severe that his ears were mangled shreds.

Audrey looked at the two cats, healthy and happy and eager for food, and said, “Let the sheriff’s department try its worst. I run one of the best facilities in the country, and I’m not closing it. The escape was not due to our facility. It was due to a cat that is something strange. Our fence height exceeds the minimum. If he jumped over it without help… well, good for Ira. But we couldn’t stop it.”

“They say those black cats are supposed to be witches,” Dustin said. “I remember reading about it with David.”

She looked at him and sighed. “Helpful, Dustin. I’ll just call the old witch defense into play. When they’re burning me at the stake, remember that it was your suggestion.”

They were cleaning one portion of the cougar enclosure while the cats were isolated with their meat in another sector. Audrey always worked this way in the preserve. David and Wes would sometimes go in the enclosures, but Audrey never did. Dustin was watching the police, and Audrey looked up, too. One of them—Wolverton—appeared to have found something. He called to Shipley, who walked on slowly, carefully—every move Shipley made out here seemed cautious—and knelt beside his comrade. They turned something over in their hands, whispering.

“What did you find there?” Audrey called, walking toward them. A plastic bag appeared, the item went into it, and then the bag disappeared into Wolverton’s pocket.

“Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Clark. Nothing here.”

She frowned and turned back to Dustin. His pale face was grim. “They found something, all right.”

“What?”

“I think it was a shell.”

She stared at him. “From Wesley’s gun?”

“Maybe.” He didn’t look at her when he said it, though.

“Dustin,” she said, “do you think someone else shot my tiger?”

He still didn’t meet her eyes, just took his rake and returned to work.

“We’ll see what the police think,” he said.


Kimble had left Jacqueline abruptly, thanking her for her time like some door-to-door salesman who’d struck out badly but had to keep the false smile until he was out of sight. She hadn’t even responded, just watched sadly as he stood up to go.

“You wanted to know the truth,” she said as the CO opened the door for him.

Yes, he had. And the truth was that several years of his life had vanished into a fantasy image of a woman who belonged in the state hospital, not the prison.

He picked up his phone as soon as he got into the car, began to make calls about work, real work, determined not only to make up for lost time but to force his mind away from her and back into the world of real problems that needed real solutions. Back into his world.

His first call was to the department’s evidence tech, to see whether the medical examiners had come through on Kimble’s request and retrieved the bullet from the tiger.

They had.

“Looks like a .223,” the tech told him. “We can of course do more specific ballistics if you need them, but I can tell you the caliber right now. That mean anything to you?”

It meant plenty.

The gun in Wesley Harrington’s hand on the night of his death did not fire .223 cartridges.

Kimble thanked them, hung up, and called Shipley.

“You still out there?”

“Yes, sir. No sign of the cat. Everything’s been peaceful.”

“Listen, I just got a match back on the bullet that killed the cat. It wasn’t fired from Harrington’s gun.”

Silence.

“We’re looking at a very different scene now,” Kimble said, “and it is important that we handle it right. This thing is not what it appears to be. Harrington did not shoot that cat. If anything, he probably went in there because the cat had been shot, and that makes it a crime scene, and a serious one.”