Claw Back (Louis Kincaid) (3 page)

“Panther?”

“Yeah, it’s –”

“You’re sure it’s a panther?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Does it match the BOLO description?”

Bolo?
What the hell?

“Read me the BOLO, please,” Louis said.

The dispatcher read the
be-on-the-lookout
alert
put out by the Fish and Game Conservation Commission
. As far as Louis could tell the description matched the panther, right down to the bulky radio collar it was wearing.

“Is it dead?” the dispatcher asked.

“Not yet.”

And that was what was going to help Louis pass Mobley’s
damn
test. He knew Mobley didn’t care about a dead cat. A dead panther found in the wild wasn’t news.
The sad fact was the
cats were routinely killed by cars. But a rescued live panther found on an old lady’s patio in Lehigh Acres was another story.
A story that the TV cameras –- and Lance Mobley –- wouldn’t be able to resist.

“I need to contact the Fish and Wildlife people,” Louis said. “Can you patch me through to someone, please?”

“I can notify them for you.”

“I’d like to speak to them myself,” Louis said.

“One moment, Mr. Kincaid.”

A minute later a man came on the line and Louis told him about the panther on the patio. The man asked no questions, only for directions to Elsie Kaufman’s house. He asked Louis to stay until a ranger arrived.

Louis thanked the dispatcher and clicked off. He looked back at the sliding glass door. Elsie Kaufman was still standing there clutching her poodle, staring out at him. He looked up at big clock-sized thermometer on the house. It read ninety-five.

Fuck this. 

He tore off his
tie and
blazer and tossed
them
toward a lounge chair
, his eyes still locked on the panther.

He crept back to the
animal
and squatted down, about four feet away. Maybe he was too close but he didn’t think so. The
cat’s eyes opened for second then closed again.

“Hang on, cat,” he said.

CHAPTER THREE

It was
almost five
but the slanting sun was still beating down on the patio full-force. Louis had retreated to the overhang near the sliding glass door with the glass of lemonade Elsie Kaufman had given him. The panther had not moved but
Louis
could see from his vantage point it was still breathing.

He heard the click of a gate latch and looked up. Two men in khaki shorts and
white short-sleeved shirts
had come onto the patio. As they came closer, Louis saw the large patches on their shirts – FWC for Florida Wildlife Commission -- and
the
radios on their belts.

“You the officer who called us?” one guy said coming to Louis. The
other
guy had
headed straight to
the panther.

“Yeah,” Louis said.

“Any idea how long it’s been here?”

“I’ve been here about forty-five minutes.”

“What about before that?”

“No idea. Is it important?”

“Yes.”

The guy joined the other ranger. Louis heard the gate open again and a third man came onto the patio. He was stocky but shorter than the others, dressed the same except for a FWC ball cap
and big aviator sunglasses
. He was carrying
a black
duffel and went
quickly
to the panther
without a look at Louis
.

“You want the crate, doc?” one asked the small guy.

“Let me get a look first.”

The two tall
er
rangers took a couple steps back to give the smaller man room to kneel by the panther. Louis came up behind
them and watched as the small guy took a syringe and carefully injected something into the cat’s fleshy nape. The animal gave a slight jerk then laid its big head back on the concrete.

The guy in the ball cap -
Louis figured he was a vet – waited a few seconds then began to examine the animal, running his palms over its fur, moving from the neck and down over the ribs. He then went on to test each limb, gently manipulating first the front legs then the back ones.

“
I think the b
ack right leg is fractured,” he said. “Better go get a board, Jeff.”

When the vet
glanced his way,
Louis caught a glimpse of his face beneath the ball cap brim. It was smooth, brown-skinned and boyish
. The mirrored aviator glasses glinted in the slanting sun as the vet stared up at him.

Louis heard the scrape of the sliding glass door and turned to see Elsie Kaufman peering out, the trembling poodle still in her arms.

“Angel has to poop,” she said.

“You can’t let your dog out, ma’am,” Louis said, going to the door. “You’ll have to take her to the front yard.”

“She never goes out in the front.” She pointed to a spot of yellow grass in the corner of the yard. “She’ll only poop over there.”

“Ma’am –
”

“And she didn’t poop this morning.”

Louis glanced at the FWC rangers then back at the old woman. “Your dog only uses the backyard?”

She nodded. “Yes, she doesn’t like to go out on the street because the kids on their bikes scare her.”

“What time did you let her out here this morning?”

“At seven.
I always let her out right after Willard does the weather.”

“You told me that you noticed the panther out here only because your dog started barking. Did she bark in the morning when you let her out?”

Elsie Kaufman shook her head. “She piddled and came right back in. I let her out again right before three. That’s when I heard her go crazy barking. I came out here and when I saw that
animal
I brought Angel right back in and called nine-one-one.”

“You’re sure it was three?”

“Yup.
General Hospital was just coming on. I missed the first ten minutes, damn it.” She craned her neck to look beyond Louis. “How long does it take to pick up a dead cat anyway? If Angel poo
p
s on my carpet one of you is going to come in and clean it up, you hear?”

She closed the door. When Louis looked back at the rangers, the two large ones were carefully strapping the panther onto a board.

The vet zipped up the duffel and came up to Louis. “Thanks for calling us.”

It was only then that Louis realized the vet was a woman. She had
taken off her ball cap to wipe her face and her ponytail had come loose, hanging over her shoulder. When she took off her sunglasses
he got a good look at her eyes – large, soft brown and long-lashed.

“No problem,” Louis said. “Is the panther okay?”

“He’s really dehydrated. That’s probably why he wandered into this yard, to drink from the pool.” She shook her head slowly. “But how in the hell he got here with
that
leg is beyond me.”

Louis had been wondering the exact same thing. Elsie Kaufman’s house was in a dense cookie-cutter subdivision called Lehigh Acres, a good thirty miles inland from the gulf and about twenty miles from the eastern city limits of Fort Myers.

On his travels from the west coast over to Miami, Louis had seen the big road signs
-
– WARNING PANTHER HABITAT. But the signs were
out
on Alligator Alley, the interstate that cut across the Everglades, and that wa
s a good ways south of here.  

“I thought panthers lived down in the Everglades,” Louis said.

“
Most do.
But this one’s an Oka cat.”

“
A what
cat?”

“Oka
c
at.
There’s a small isolated population that lives up here in the
Okaloachoochee
Slough. That’s
in the Corkscrew
Swamp Sanctu
ary
only about twenty miles due east of here. Bruce is an Oka cat.”

“Bruce?”

She had been watching the other FWC rangers and when she turned back to Louis a small smile tipped her lips. “I name all my panthers.”

“Your panthers?”

“Yeah.
They’re my panthers.
All thirty-two of them.”
Her smile faded as her eyes drifted back to the cat lying on the board. She looked back at Louis. “I don’t want to lose another one. I better get him back to the hospital.”

She started to leave.

“Oh, by the way,” Louis said, “I found out
it
...Bruce showed up here on the patio between seven this morning and three this afternoon.”

She nodded. “That’s helpful. His radio collar malfunctioned so we didn’t even know he was in trouble.”

“So why’d you put out a BOLO for him.”

She
too
k
off her sunglasses.
“BOLO?”

“
Yeah, the notice you guys put out to law enforcement agencies that you had a missing panther.”

“We didn’t send out a notice for Bruce. The panther we’re looking for is a female. Her name is Grace. And she’s still missing.”

“Doesn’t she have a radio collar
, too
?”

“Yeah
,
but it’s not sending out a signal.”

The sound of the gate closing made her look away. “I have to go,” she said. “I need to get Bruce to the hospital.” She started away but then turned back.

“Thanks for staying with him,” she said.

“No problem,” he said. “I have a cat myself.”

She g
ave
him an odd stare then walked away, disappearing through the gate.

Louis looked back at the sliding glass door. The old lady with the poodle slid it open a crack.

“Can we come out now?” she asked.

“Yeah, they’re gone.”

He looked up at the
reddening
western sky.
It had to be
past
six
.
Maybe if he hurried he could still catch Mobley at O’Sullivan
’
s.

His blazer and tie...

He turned to the lounge chair to grab
them
but froze. The blazer was floating out in the middle of the pool.

He glanced around but there was no leaf scoop, nothing he could use to retrieve the blazer.
For a second he thought of jumping in and getting the damn thing.

To hell with it.

The panther was alive. This joke of a case was over. And so were his chances of getting back in uniform.

He picked up the tie, tossed it in the pool and left.

CHAPTER FOUR

A soft touch on his face woke him as usual. Louis pushed her away but she persisted. Finally, with a sigh, he opened his eyes.

“Come on, give a guy a break,” he said.

Another caress on his cheek.

He looked down at the black cat sitting next to him. It reached out a paw and tapped his cheek again then sat staring at him until he finally pushed back the damp sheets and got up.

“Okay, okay.”

The cat followed him through the bedroom and living room and out onto the porch. He held the screen door open and the cat slipped out. It stood for a moment in the sandy yard then trotted off into the sea oats. 

Louis bent to retrieve the copies of the
Fort Myers News Press
and the
Island Reporter
. He stood on the porch yawning, squinting into the
shimmering
gulf. He went back inside his cottage, pausing to bang a fist on the rattling wall-unit air conditioner. It wheezed and groaned but the air didn’t get any cooler. He switched it off. Blessed quiet filled the small cottage. The only sound was the whisper of the surf and the slap of his bare feet on the terrazzo as he headed to the kitchen.

As he waited for the
Mr. Co
ffee to drip, he scanned the front page of the
News Press
but there was nothing of interest. Not that he expected the news about the panther to make the papers. He had dutifully reported his call on Elsie Kaufman yesterday but he had gotten back to the sheriff’s office too late to talk to Mobley. It would wait until later when he went in to get his temporary credentials.