Night Kill (13 page)

“He was an amateur.”

“But very, very thorough. He took off Bessie’s lid and the toilet tank top. He must have been tearing up the house for a couple of hours.”

“Maybe he thought you were someone who keeps drugs around.”

None of our theories was promising.

The landlord, a thin, mournful man, dropped by. He shook Dad’s hand with an appraising look, and I felt it necessary to explain that my husband had died and that this truly was my father and not my sugar daddy. The Russian viewed the damage and said he’d talk to his insurance agency about repairs. He left me with the feeling that he wouldn’t trouble about the lease if I wanted to move out soon.

We returned to installing security features. “I should have done this the day you moved in here,” Dad muttered. I remembered he had planned to upgrade the locks, but hadn’t because Denny moved in with me shortly after I’d rented the house. Dad was always leery of Denny. Then I kicked Denny out and soon Rick was sharing the place. I’d felt safe living with Rick, physically at least.

“I should have done it myself,” I told him.

Dad wanted me to get rid of the doggy door. No way. I couldn’t run home every day at lunch to let the dogs out. “It’s not that big a door, anyway. Only a junior burglar would fit. The dogs and I can beat up a junior burglar.” I’m a lot braver in daylight.

Dad stalled until evening and was reluctant to leave, even after the house was as secure as it was ever going to be. I elaborated on Winnie and Range’s ferocity, pointed out the police cruiser passing by, and accepted a pipe wrench he provided from his truck. I’d be fine alone. Really.

That night, I had second thoughts as I lay in bed listening for Bad Guys, pepper spray beside my pillow. Range licked his privates noisily; Winnie snored in a genteel way. Would the intruder be back? Was the fire set to destroy whatever the intruder couldn’t find? What was he looking for? Surely it had to be a man. A woman wouldn’t have been that messy.

Things moved around outside, ignored by my unreliable canine guardians. The kitchen faucet dripped, or maybe the bathroom faucet. Bessie scrabbled in her cage, little scraping noises.

Chapter Eleven

Monday morning, I awoke early, nauseated from bad smells and bad dreams. The faint beer smell had been bothersome, but this was worse. My mother’s prescription—paint everything—required more effort than the rental was worth. I looked forward to some sympathy at work and maybe help in locating new housing.

If there was any justice in the universe, my second week at Birds would go better than the first. Work hard, pay attention to details—it would pay off eventually. Calvin didn’t need to be my new best friend; all I wanted was a comfortable working relationship with a little respect.

Finding Arnie settled comfortably in the penguin kitchen, in the chair that wasn’t Calvin’s—in my chair—curdled good intentions into irritation. Apparently it didn’t take much time for me to start feeling territorial. Calvin was bent over hunting around in the cupboard left of the sinks.

“How’ya doin’, Iris?” Arnie’s purple cowboy hat sat damply on the table, mottled by rain.

“Just ducky, Arnie. What brings you to our avian paradise?” Arnie was not the audience I had in mind for my domestic crisis.

“Oh, Calvin asked me to drop by and help him catch up the eagle. He’s got to fix that leak in the roof where she likes to sit.” He beamed amiably at me.

I suppressed a scowl.

The eagle was a big, powerful bird who had collided with a power line years ago. A permanently droopy left wing and life in a cage were the results.

“You might clean up the kitchen and tend to the bugs,” Calvin suggested, his back to me as he set out two pairs of heavy leather gloves. “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”

I bristled. “Hadn’t I better help out so I learn how to do it?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want anybody getting hurt,” Calvin said slowly.

“Bald eagle’s a lot of bird,” Arnie added, with a hint of condescension that made me want to yank the mustache off his face. “Those things got strength in their feet like you wouldn’t believe. They bite, too. It’s better not to have people crowding around when you’re working with them.”

Calvin seemed to accept that as summarizing the situation. He handed Arnie one of the pairs of gloves and a net with a four-foot aluminum handle. He carried the other gloves, a hammer, and some nails. The senior male and his favored subordinate set off to conquer the eagle, leaving me in the kitchen.

I said a lot of bad words about macho exclusionism and cursed myself for not knowing how to nip it in the bud. After banging food pans around for a couple of minutes, I swore at myself again for letting them shut me out and headed down to the birds of prey area.

By the time I got there, they had the bald eagle on the ground tangled up in the net. Both men were jammed into the exhibit. The door, wire mesh on a pipe frame, was wide open. The eagle was not going gently; the net heaved as she tried to flap her wings and strike with her feet. One long dark wing feather was broken and sticking out of the net at an angle. Calvin was bent over maneuvering to grab her legs while Arnie held the net. Calvin grabbed one yellow leg that ended in talons with two-inch claws. The eagle slashed at his glove with the other foot, whickering shrilly. Finally he grasped the second leg and stood up, a leg in each hand, the eagle bashing her wings against his face. The net was still draped over her with wing tips poking through. Arnie tugged at it, trying to disentangle net and bird.

It was not an elegant performance.

“Arnie, get that net off and grab her wings. She’s going to bust every feather,” Calvin barked. Damaging a bird’s feathers was a significant misdemeanor since they wouldn’t be replaced until the next molt.

Arnie fumbled around with the eagle’s wings, finally disentangling the net. The bird turned her attention to Calvin. His voice got louder. “Get her behind the head, Arnie, she’s going to bite. Get in there and grab her. Do it, Arnie.”

Calvin couldn’t do anything besides hold the legs. The bird was excited, flapping vigorously, and her yellow beak was huge. Arnie reached cautiously for the back of her white head and pulled back when she bit at him. That was not the right move; she struck at his thumb and hung on like a feathered bulldog. Arnie yelled and did a little dance. Perhaps the gloves weren’t quite thick enough. Finally he yanked his hand away, out of the glove. The glove dangled from the eagle’s beak for a few seconds, which kept the beak occupied, but Arnie didn’t move to grab her head. Instead, he had a few words to share with the bird. I found them educational and was glad no visitors were within earshot.

Calvin was getting angrier and not at the bird. Arnie picked his glove up off the ground and tried to grab her head again, with more success.

I might not know much about birds, but I knew chaos when I saw it. If the bird hadn’t been so upset, I would have savored watching the skilled professionals in action. Clearly there was no role for me in the situation; another person would only make it worse.

Calvin got both legs under control and the bird’s wings tucked under his arm. Arnie finally slipped a dark cloth hood over the blazing yellow eyes and fastened it around her neck. Her cries shut off and both men relaxed. The eagle no longer struggling, Calvin muttered apologies and carried her out of the exhibit. “Get going,” he barked at Arnie, who went to work with the hammer.

The fun was over and I was discouraged. I thought rodeo-style animal handling wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. The other areas at the zoo had succeeded pretty well in training the animals to shift to a holding area. I couldn’t see any way to do that with the eagle, given the cage construction. Still, there should have been a better way, something a lot less stressful for the eagle and the keepers. My enthusiasm for learning how Calvin managed eagle restraint was gone. I should have stayed in the kitchen.

Calvin was snapping instructions at Arnie about the repairs when he noticed me as I turned to leave. I didn’t say anything and neither did he. His face reddened. I expected him to yell at me for not staying in the kitchen as ordered, but he didn’t. Walking back to the Penguinarium, it came to me that he was embarrassed, not mad. Prospects for a relationship based on mutual respect were looking poor.

I hustled through the kitchen chores and lugged feed down to the waterfowl pond, strategies that kept me out of his sight. When the ducks and swans had finished bolting their food, it was time for my own lunch.

I grabbed a hamburger at the café. Everyone else had eaten and left so I lacked an audience for my dramatic episode of burglary and arson. On the plus side, Calvin wasn’t there either.

I drifted to the office to share my disasters with Jackie and found Dr. Dawson emerging from the administration building.

“Ah, Iris. We’re moving forward with the clouded leopard introduction in a few days.” He led me a little away from the building, out in the open.

“Linda said you were about ready to give it a try.”

“Yes, somewhat against my better judgment. Waiting at least another two weeks would be better, but Mr. Crandall is anxious to report progress to the zoo board. This process is too subjective for me to marshal good arguments in favor of delay, so we go ahead. Don’t take me wrong—the protocol you developed is working well. You did a nice job on the research.”

He really didn’t think I was a hopeless bungler. I felt like a desiccated houseplant plunged into a big tub of water.

Dr. Dawson glanced back at the administration building. “I’m not optimistic, but we’ll take all reasonable precautions. I trust things are going better at Birds?”

“Not too bad.”

I watched him stride long-legged and erect toward the Commissary, unsettled that I was so pleased by his comments. What word would Marcie use? “Needy” perhaps? That did not fit Iris Oakley at all. Still, his words were balm that fortified me to face the rest of the day. I decided to pass on a chat with Jackie and headed back to work.

Arnie was gone from the Penguinarium and Calvin was no more or less talkative than usual. He sat at the kitchen table with a stack of rumpled daily logs in front of him.

“You do the afternoon feed at the aviary,” he said. “I’ve got to get these report summaries caught up.”

This was the first time he’d trusted me to do this alone. Or maybe he didn’t want to be around me right now. I moved around the kitchen fixing the afternoon pellets, fruit, and bugs while his head stayed bent over the paperwork, ballpoint pen in hand. I piled the food pans into a green two-wheeled garden cart. Maybe I should ask him where we stood, let him yell at me, yell back that he wasn’t such a hot-shit bird keeper either. But words didn’t come, and I left with the silence still intact.

It was a weekday and cool; visitors were few. I had the World of Birds to myself, people-wise. The big aviary was heavily planted with shrubs and a mix of live and artificial trees. A little stream ran through, with an arched bridge over it. You could wander the path and play “where’s Waldo?” with birds above and below.

Entry was through a door into a little anteroom, then through another door. Laden with food pans, I pushed my way in. The nenes hissed at me from the ground. Little teals paddled in the stream like expensive toys while bright bits of green and red and blue flickered in and out of the foliage, clucking and trilling. I set out the duck chow and stood on the cement path beside the little stream and waterfall, watching. Small ducks in rounded shapes and subdued browns and grays; jays and starlings and tanagers gleaming in extravagant colors: they were all beautiful. I wondered if I’d ever learn the two dozen species that lived there and couldn’t imagine telling individuals of the same species apart. But Calvin could do it, so maybe someday…In the meantime, what a peaceful place to stand and watch and listen. Arsonists seemed remote and irrelevant.

After all the food pans were distributed, I made a careful tour, tidying up leaves, visitor trash, and spilled food, the way Calvin did. I salvaged a couple of bright feathers and stuck them in my breast pocket.

On the bridge over the stream, I noticed that a heat lamp was burned out. The enclosure wasn’t heated, so warm spots were important. Multiple heat lamps provided options so weak or unpopular individuals couldn’t be shoved out in the cold. Each was tucked inconspicuously into foliage, with perches underneath.

Maybe the bulb was only loose. That would save a trip back to the kitchen for another one. It was easy enough to check. I put a hand on the iron guardrail and leaned over the stream, weaving the other hand up through twigs, around a food platform, and past the larger branch that served as a perch. My wrist brushed the rim of the metal reflector that housed the bulb.

The jolt knocked me flat on my back on the bridge.

Stunned, I lay there, mind and body both out of order, staring at palm fronds.

Nothing happened for a couple of minutes, except my heart lurched unevenly and body parts reported for duty by starting to hurt. A Mexican green jay landed on the railing and inspected me. A bird I couldn’t identify gave a loud, rattling call from the far corner.

When a nene waddled over and evaluated the possibility of pecking out my eyes, I tried sitting up, with some success. The jay flew off; the goose hissed at me without retreating.

What the hell?

My heart was still pounding and my breath came short. There was something familiar about this. Ah, yes, the same as when Raj almost nailed me. Raw terror.

I lurched to my feet, shaky but unwilling to touch the rail, and tried to figure out what had happened.

It wasn’t that hard.

The metal reflector was charged; I had touched it and the iron handrail at the same time.

I took a shuddering breath, then limped off the path. The goose sneered and hopped off the bridge into the water. I followed the electrical cord to the outlet hidden in a corner. My hand trembled as I yanked the plug out of the socket.

Now what? Take the time, think it through.

Having the daylights scared out of me didn’t count as damage. My ass was bruised, and I had a lump on the back of my head and a burn mark on my wrist. Nothing seemed to be broken and I hadn’t been actually unconscious. Was this a big enough deal to report to Wallace? Keepers banged themselves up all the time. Working Birds had already given me a new collection of bruises, cuts, and scrapes from unfamiliar obstacles.