Claws (7 page)

Twelve

As far as anyone knew, including wives, the men at Jerry and Marcy Umfleet’s log-kit house were playing cards Sunday night, although no cards were out on the kitchen table. Marcy, a stout woman in a short skirt, the lone female present, was handing out cold Budweiser when Ronnie Greathouse said, “Let’s get started.” Ronnie had swapped his state trooper uniform for jeans and a t-shirt with Jesse James’ image on it. Ronnie had both a swagger and a voice that commanded attention, and the others had ceded the leadership role to him after Ted Cheney quit.

“What about Tucker?” Jerry asked.

“Running late. He had to work,” Ronnie said. “Probably just as well given what happened to his uncle.”

Apart from Ronnie and Jerry, a non-union plumber, only Fred Bulcher, owner of a sand and gravel business, and Joe Kennet, a truck driver from Rexburg, had shown up for the meeting of the Knights of the Golden Circle.

“I wanna know who let them goddamn cats out,” Ronnie said. Everybody looked at everybody else but nobody spoke
up. “Goddamnit, we said we’d send Ted a warning!” bellowed Ronnie. “We said we’d let ONE of his cats out to show him we mean business. A warning to keep his trap shut. But we didn’t say do it right now.” A month earlier Ted ridiculed the small group – they never had more than eight members – and then resigned. “So who screwed it up? Who opened the goddamn zoo doors and killed Ted? I know one of you did.”

The three men claimed innocence and tossed out wild theories about how Ted’s cats got free. When Ronnie tired of listening to them, he described the plan to bring in the state police hunters. He advised everyone to lay low until the ISP had left. Eventually, they discussed other topics, including a plan to replace Chief Hobbs with Tucker Thule. Jerry reported that the Aryan Brotherhood would back their efforts to defeat the Jew county prosecutor in the upcoming election. Fred was dismissive of Jerry’s plan. He believed change came through violence. Burning out the baby killers in Rexburg had been their biggest moment so far, although among friends they also had taken credit for a murder there. “Revolution spills blood,” Fred argued.

By the time Tucker arrived, the meeting was nearly over. As soon as the men began popping fresh beers and telling jokes about mud people, dykes, beaners, and
ragheads, Ronnie left. Usually he would have joined in, but tonight he had better things to do.

The night was cool so he zipped his leather jacket before firing up the 2006 Custom Fat Boy. He decided not to wear a helmet. He had photochromic sunglasses for riding at night. He had bought the bike in Pensacola, Florida and ridden it across country. That had been the best week of his life. Pearl black with chrome wheels, the Harley-Davidson had been a pussy magnet from day one, which he knew made it even stranger that he was on his way to see a woman who rode a wheelchair instead of a motorcycle.

After Maryann Fedder’s accident, her dad had installed a separate door with a ramp that led directly into her ground floor bedroom. The door would be unlocked now and Maryann in bed watching television or reading. At first Ronnie was simply curious about sleeping with a crippled woman. Then he discovered that he truly liked Maryann, and he kept returning to see her. Now he was the backdoor man. The thought made Ronnie laugh. Backdoor man! He wondered if Maryann had done it that way before? Maybe tonight!

Jackson studied a photo of Katy while he waited in the baggage claim area. This late at night there were few other people. After a while he laid the photo on the seat
beside him. He stretched his legs, clasped his hands behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling.

To be a policeman, he thought, was to spend each day pushing a boulder up hill knowing that it will naturally roll down again. Although his job was to maintain order, disorder was inherent in life. It simply was a matter of whether we created it or whether disorder found us. There was both rape and Katrina. There was murder, and there was 9/11. There was assault with intent, and there was whatever you call a monster cat that kills a dying man looking to fly-fish his way into that gentle night. His real job, Jackson decided, was to maintain a myth of order.

When he heard the announcement for the arrival of the flight from Denver, Jackson got up and went to the men’s room. As he came out he nearly ran over a young woman pushing a wobbly baby stroller. A wheel was bad, and he offered to look at it. The woman wore the old-fashioned long dress of the conservative Mormon sects clustered in southern Utah. She stammered a shy “thank you” but declined his help. He watched her leave, struggling with the stroller. She reminded him of the few traditional Muslim women he had seen in Colorado, the invisibly caged.

Jackson took out Katy’s photograph again, but he didn’t need it to recognize her. Katy was smaller than he
expected and thin too but without looking starved. She moved with the grace of someone who had learned posture by walking with a book on her head. Although most of the other women wore clothes designed for a gym instead of an airport, Katy was dressed in a loose pants and jacket outfit and nice shoes suitable for traveling. She wheeled a sage green carry-on with a computer bag riding piggyback. The strap of a small purse angled across her body, emphasizing her breasts. She spotted him now and smiled.

“Miss Osborne,” he said, going up to her.

“Katy,” she told him and smiled again.

They shook hands. “I’m Jackson Hobbs.”

“I know,” she said. “From the TV, remember?” Jackson forgot that he was still holding Katy’s photograph until she took it out of his left hand. In the photograph she was on safari and carrying a large caliber rifle. “I tend not to travel with my elephant culling gun,” she said. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”

“Not too much,” he said. “We waiting for luggage?”

“I’m afraid so. I’ve been on the road over a month.”

They continued to make small talk while they waited for Katy’s luggage to arrive, and when it did Jackson lifted a large Briggs & Riley roller bag off the conveyor.

Twenty minutes later they were in the Jeep and leaving the Salt Lake City airport. They drove north on Interstate 15 toward Pocatello, some two and a half hours away.

As soon as they settled into the drive, Katy asked Jackson questions about Safari Land. He told her some of what Angie had dug up on Ted and Dolly Cheney and then said, “They were living in Buckhorn when I arrived, five years ago. It wasn’t called Safari Land then. It wasn’t called anything. Just another abandoned farm going to seed. At the time I think they had a couple of lions and tigers and some Great Northern wolves too. Not sure what else they were keeping there. I heard they were trying to breed the wolves with Huskies. Anyway, about four years ago they got rid of the wolves and started bringing in more and more big cats. I’m not sure where they got them.”

“A failed circus, overcrowded zoo, dumb people trying to raise a lion or tiger in their yards,” Katy said.

“So not that hard to come by?”

Katy nodded.

“I was out there maybe three years ago with my daughter, Jesse, and then again about a year or so back. The Cheneys wanted to open a safari park. Take you on a protected drive while the animals roamed free. But they could never get all of the permits they needed and then –”
Jackson glanced over at Katy. She had been quiet for the last few minutes. She was asleep. “Oh hell,” he said.

Kali and Shaka heard the motorcycle when it was two miles away, but they paid little attention to it. Raised in captivity, the ligers were familiar with machine noises. Anyway, they were too hungry to concern themselves with the noise. They had followed the wolves into the hills, but with Kali moving slower than usual, failed to catch them. Now, Kali was leading them toward a distant chicken coop.

The ligers crossed a creek where the water was lowest and climbed up a steep bank. At the top of the bank was a paved road, hard beneath their paws. They were halfway across the road when they saw the bright headlight.

Ronnie still was thinking about the meeting at the Umfleet house as he rounded the bend before the bridge over Brown’s Creek. Fred had been the instigator in turning the guys against Ted Cheney. He had told them that somebody in town was talking to the law about the militia group. Fred wouldn’t reveal how he knew this. He claimed that there was somebody high up that backed the KGC but couldn’t be seen as part of it. Fred cast suspicion on Ted. Ronnie doubted if any part of Fred’s tale was true, but he was glad to be rid of Ted Cheney. Ted was difficult; Fred, he could handle.

As soon as Ronnie crossed the bridge, his light beam illuminated the animals. He couldn’t believe his own eyes. Two monster cats stood as still as statues in the middle of the road. Ronnie slammed the brakes and swerved to miss the animals. The Harley-Davidson went into a slide. He rode the slide off the asphalt and clung to the handlebar when the bike caught air. The Fat Boy flew over a steep bank and came down front-wheel-first on a bushy hillside. Ronnie catapulted over the handlebar and turned a perfect somersault before landing on his back. The motorcycle bounced and banged its way into dense weeds.

When Maryann Fedder woke up, the television was on. It took a moment for her to remember what she had been watching before crying herself to sleep. A woman on the Shopping Network had been selling the identical nightgown she was wearing. She rubbed the satiny fabric and felt the lace edges. She was certain Ronnie would like it. She imagined him fondling it and slipping it off her and …

Maryann made herself stop. She didn’t want to cry again so she focused on the television, flipping channels. Three years earlier her parents had upgraded the satellite service to receive over two hundred channels. She paused for a moment when she saw a guy on a motorcycle. Ronnie
had never made a date and failed to show up before. She guessed this was how he planned to dump her.

She switched channels. Usually, she watched cooking shows. New dishes were appearing regularly on the family dinner table now. She paused. Africa. The channel had to be National Geographic or Discovery. What she saw reminded her of something her dad had said earlier about lions and tigers loose in Idaho. She gasped when she saw a leopard bring down a helpless baby wildebeest. At least she hadn’t bought the crotchless panties Ronnie wanted her to wear.

By the time Jackson stopped at a service station and Katy awakened, it was after midnight. They both got a coffee-to-go, and then Katy offered to drive.

“I’m fine,” Jackson said, “but unless you want to sleep, you could tell me about hunting lions and tigers.”

“As I understand it, I’ll be briefing the State Police hunters in –” she looked at her watch “– something like six hours, so you’ll hear most of it again.”

Jackson cracked a grin. “Hearing it twice probably won’t hurt me.”

For the next thirty minutes Katy told him about tracking and hunting big cats. Jackson interrupted her often to ask questions, and when they finally fell silent, she said, “So what do you think?”

“I think finding and killing the lions and tigers won’t be as easy as people imagine.”

“It never is.” Katy looked out the window and saw the green and white sign that indicated they were twenty miles from Pocatello. “I need to stop in Pocatello.”

“Stop? Where? Kind of late to pay a visit.”

“Not to this guy.” Katy turned on the map light and read off an address and asked if Jackson knew it.

“The university district,” he said. “I can find it.”

“It’s a house. Belongs to a gun dealer.”

Jackson glanced at her curiously.

“I can’t go lion hunting without rifles. This gun dealer said he’d provide what I need if I stopped by tonight. He’s actually a friend of someone I know in Colorado, a man who runs an animal rescue operation.”

“An animal rescue guy that’s friends with a gun dealer that’s helping a safari guide. Did hell freeze over?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s an American luxury, seeing the world as left or right, good or bad, hunters or preservers,” Katy said. “In Africa the lines are fuzzier.” She watched him as she spoke. “Take you for instance. You’re a policeman. But does that mean you never do harm?”

Jackson kept his eyes on the road. Katy didn’t see the sadness deep inside them. “Aren’t you half-American?”

“American mother, British father. I was born in England, but I lived a lot of places growing up, including Africa and the States. My dad worked for the World Bank.”

“Guess that explains the tiny accent.”

“What accent?” she said with a laugh as she watched his profile in the dashboard lights. Jackson’s face was not classically handsome, but she liked the combination of rugged and sensitive. He had a burn scar on the side of his neck. It didn’t look to be more than a few years old.

“House fire,” Jackson said once he noticed her looking at the scar.

Katy waited for him to say more. Most people felt a need to annotate, to explain, as if they owed the world a reason for their imperfections. Jackson silently returned to watching the road ahead. Katy repeated the question from before that remained unanswered. “So do you?” Katy asked. “As a policeman, do you ever cause harm?”

Jackson knew Iris would say yes. Eileen Stevens too. Nancy Larson certainly would say yes, if she weren’t dead. “Nobody walks through life without leaving a footprint,” Jackson said. “Not even if we want to.”

Thirteen

“This is it,” Jackson said as he stopped behind a white Mercedes SUV parked outside an immaculate 1930s’ Craftsman bungalow. Katy knocked, and a man wearing pajamas under a bathrobe made from loud beach towels opened the door. Ollie Hamm was six-two and twice as wide as a normal man. When Katy shook hands, it felt like she was gripping sausages. Hamm was cordial despite the hour, but after Jackson answered his questions about the escaped cats without adding commentary, Hamm soon got down to business.

Ten minutes later, in the glow of bright outside lights, Jackson and Katy loaded two gun cases into Jackson’s Grand Cherokee. One rifle Katy identified as a .375. “It’s the one I use in Africa unless I’m culling elephants,” she explained. “My Weatherby has a few custom modifications, but even without them, it’s the single best big-game rifle for a safari.”

“So I’ve heard,” Jackson said, recalling Dell’s lecture. The second gun case was hard and shaped differently, like a bow-hunting case or a case for some musical instrument. “And this one?”

“A Remington model three-eighty-nine pneumatic dart gun. And a variety of darts with gel collars.”

“A dart gun?”

“Killing an animal isn’t the only way to stop it.” Katy didn’t say anything about the animal rescue group coming to Idaho. Stan had asked her not to mention it.

They continued north on Interstate 15 to Idaho Falls, picked up U.S. Highway 20 through Rexburg and Saint Anthony, and then turned east on ID47. Some two and a half hours after visiting Ollie Hamm, they reached Buckhorn in the middle of the night. Jackson’s first stop was the Sportsman Motel. They found three black, unmarked Chevy Suburbans, each a few years old, parked in a row. Jessup and his hunters had arrived. Jackson rang the night buzzer for a long time before the sleepy clerk responded.

After Jackson helped Katy unload her gear and made plans to return for her in a few hours, he drove out to the western edge of town and turned into the Elk’s Club. He didn’t belong to the Elk’s, although Iris did, but he had been there for meals and other events. A National Guard Black Hawk helicopter sat on the grassy playground. In the parking lot there was a trailer with two ATVs. Everything was just like Jessup had said. Jessup intrigued him. For an African-American man to be a major in the Idaho State Police, Jackson
knew he either had to be so good that he would be a colonel if he were white or so incompetent that he was a safe token to equality. He suspected that Jessup was very good.

A state trooper car was parked alongside the building. Unlike the SWAT team’s plain Suburbans, the black cruiser had a white diagonal band across the front doors with the words: Idaho State Police. The trooper guarding the equipment was asleep behind the wheel. Jackson left him alone and drove home to doze for a couple of hours.

The State Police team sent to Buckhorn to shoot the big cats consisted of two detectives and six troopers under the command of Major Jessup. They wore camouflage on Monday morning, giving them the look and feel of a military instead of a police operation and distinguishing them from everyone else gathered at the Elk’s Club. Club members had cooked breakfast, and the men were eating as dawn broke. Major Jessup sat with Stilts Venable from Fish and Game and two troopers in regular dark blue ISP uniforms. Jessup had little appetite for his eggs, even before the phone call.

“Listen up!” Jessup yelled after dumping his Blackberry on the tabletop with a bang. He stood and
addressed his men. “Any of you men here buddies with trooper Ronald Greathouse?” He waited. “Anybody?”

His question was met with silence until trooper Bill Roberts said, “Not exactly buddies, Major, but I know him. We worked a Boise State football game last year.”

“Well, trooper Greathouse is MIA,” Jessup said. “He was scheduled for guard duty at two A.M. last night and didn’t show.” Jessup sent one of the uniformed troopers at his table to Ronnie’s house and then checked his watch. “Soon as Chief Hobbs and his lion expert get here, we’ll be runnin’ and gunnin’, so you men chow down.”

Iris stepped out of the shower and onto the scales. Two extra pounds. Damn! Why is it that a single pound above starvation on a woman with a drop of Mexican blood always sticks to her ass, tummy, or hips, she thought? But even the unwanted weight didn’t stop Iris from feeling happy as she dried her body with a plush Turkish towel. Last night had been a success. By the end of the meal, Dell, who had arrived in a grim mood, had forgotten about his cemetery visit. With Jesse and Shane in Rexburg at the movies, the evening flowed naturally from dining room to bedroom. Her body still tingled when she thought about it.

Iris was brushing her teeth when the idea that had
flittered just out of reach yesterday suddenly landed. It was so obvious, like hiding something in plain sight. She spit out the toothpaste and rinsed her mouth. They were going about it all wrong. Faced with two problems, you use one to solve the other. Her plan was bold and brilliant.

She hurriedly dressed and grabbed her car keys and rushed out. Instead of going to the Elk’s Club to greet the State Police hunters, she drove to Dell’s house.

Major Jessup did a poor job of hiding his surprise when Jackson introduced Katy. Asked to ‘look authentic’ for a couple of television interviews, she had been carting around the boots, cargo pants, Solumbra shirt, and cotton fishing vest she often wore on safari. She never imagined that she would use her gear on an actual hunt. Since September mornings can be chilly in Buckhorn, Katy also wore a nylon windbreaker.

After a few minutes of conversation designed to both charm and grill Katy, Jessup gathered his men in a semi-circle and introduced Jackson who then introduced Katy.

At first Katy simply looked at the hunters. “I was nineteen when I shot my first lion,” she said a moment later, “a man-eater that’d killed thirty-two people.” She watched as the men’s eyes crawled off her body and up to her face. “My uncle had a game farm in Botswana and was a well-known hunter and guide. I was on Christmas break from
the university when he was asked to kill the lion. Now some people say only an old or injured lion will attack human beings. Don’t believe it. This lion was young and healthy when he developed a taste for human flesh.

“Uncle Bucky was just starting to have problems with his eyes about then, so I talked him into letting me go along on the hunt. My job was to provide fresh meat for the camp. My uncle was particularly fond of eland.”

Katy paused and sipped some bottled water. “A week into the hunt Uncle Bucky broke his ankle. And it’s only because of his accident that I was following Ezekiel, our incredible, ageless tracker, through seven-foot-tall yellow thatching grass when the man-eater attacked us.

“If a lion charges you, don’t try for a head shot. Above the eyes a lion is all muscle. A central shoulder shot is the safest and easiest. Aim for the middle part of the chest region, and you have a chance of hitting lungs, heart, major veins and arteries, important bones.” Katy paused again and looked from man to man. “The average shot will be long, but some may be as close as fifty feet. A lion can cover that distance in a second. I had my uncle’s three-seventy-five Ruger loaded with three-hundred-grain soft-points. It still took two shots to drop the lion. Even then I put a third bullet in him. And I’m
talking about a single lion. Lions mostly hunt in prides. Had there been more than one lion, I wouldn’t be here now.”

She watched the hunters shift in their chairs. She had them listening and alert, the way she wanted. “Now, let’s talk about tigers,” she said. “Our solo assassins.”

“It was something you said in the café on Saturday,” Iris told Dell. They were in his kitchen where Iris was making coffee while Dell fixed toast. “You said you could go on safari right here. So I started thinking, if you’d go on a lion safari in Idaho, how many others would too?”

“A hell of lot of people.”

“Then why should we pay anyone to kill these cats if we can get people to pay us? The town can make money, and we get rid of the animal problem too. What we should do is hold the first lion safari in America.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. Hell, it’s a great idea, Iris,” Dell said. “But we’ll have to make it affordable, you know that. We can’t charge safari prices.”

“We’ll do better than that. We’ll offer prizes. Each hunter buys a license to shoot lions and tigers and maybe goes home with a big check as well as a trophy.”

“Then the only thing I see standing in our way is politics. The State Police hunters are already here.”

Iris opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. “That’s where you come in. Crap. You’re out of fat-free half-and-half.” She shut the door, saying, “You need to call your brother, our acting-governor, right now.”

When Katy finished answering their questions, the men applauded loudly. Major Jessup then reviewed the plan, and afterward the hunters gathered their equipment. They were more familiar with a Colt M4 or the Blaser .308 and R93 sniper rifles than they were a Weatherby Mark 5, Winchester .458, or a .375. None of them even had seen a Churchill Double 470. Some of the sharpshooters had no special training. Others were trained to handle raids and hostage rescue. None of them were trained for lion hunting. Even so, they were confident they would find and kill the big cats, despite the scare that Katy had thrown at them.

Troopers Dwight and Bill Roberts were especially eager to get started. The twins had served together in Iraq and trained as snipers. Afterward, they both joined the State Police. The Roberts twins were the two shooters that would hunt from the helicopter using borrowed big-game rifles.

Two other hunters would travel by ATVs, while the rest of them – two troopers and two detectives and Major Jessup – would follow Katy on foot. The starting point of the
hunt for everyone would be the Placett’s farm unless the helicopter spotted a tiger or a lion pride elsewhere.

The helicopter took off and the noise nearly kept Major Jessup from hearing his phone. He covered one ear with his hand when he answered it and sought the shelter of the Elk’s Club. The other hunters got ready to pull out.

Jackson was showing Katy how to use the police radio he had given her when they saw the helicopter turn around. They were watching it land when Major Jessup returned.

“What’s going on?” Jackson shouted to him as soon as Jessup was close enough to hear.

“New orders. We’re to pack up and leave town.”

“Leave?” Jackson said in disbelief. “Whose orders?”

Jessup didn’t answer until he was standing three feet away. “Colonel Rudolph, my superior. And his orders came from Lieutenant Governor Dan Tapper. The acting-governor.”

Katy walked up and joined them. “What’s going on?”

“That answer’s above my pay grade, Miss Osborne,” Major Jessup said. He looked back at Jackson. “I’m told your town mayor can explain everything.”