Night Kill (6 page)

I tried a long shower to wash away the stink of terror and self-doubt, hot water stinging the hand and knee abrasions. The incident kept replaying with different camera angles and all the script variations: Rajah locked in like he should have been, no problems; the old tiger, far more agile than I would have thought, leaping up to slam me to the ground; teeth and claws sinking into my unprotected primate flesh; Raj shot to save my life. Or not, no one noticing until too late. The hot water tank finally ran out and I sloshed out of the bathtub, dimly aware that the water was ankle deep and staying that way. A clogged drain seemed trivial.

After a can of soup and walking the dogs, I paced around the living room and tried to figure out what had happened and what to do, the dogs watching in mild puzzlement. I considered talking it over with Marcie. This was too personal, too complicated. I felt too humiliated, frightened, and confused to tell anyone, even her.

Had I locked Raj in or not? Had I seen him safely in the night den before I went out into the yard? I circled the sofa and wandered in and back out of the kitchen, while I walked through the incident in my mind. The image was there—he was locked in. But was it true, or merely what I wanted to see?

If he was out in the yard when I first entered it, he must have been down in the moat. I’d been out there three or four minutes before he jumped me, a long time for him not to notice. More likely, he’d been in the den watching me through the open cat door. Had I been that oblivious? I had to admit it was possible.

I gave up on “what happened” for the moment and considered “what next.” No one saw the accident; there would have been a big hullabaloo immediately if anyone had. Linda hadn’t noticed anything amiss when she took over for the afternoon after I’d fled or she would have phoned to check up on me. I stared unseeing out the living room window into the gray day.

Range got up and started sniffing around. He found his tennis ball and nudged me hopefully. I stepped around him and paced on. Winnie snoozed.

If I reported the accident, Wallace would never let me stay at Felines. I wouldn’t be a part of the clouded leopard introduction or train Spice or hand-feed the cougars. I’d lose the fragile clout I’d built over the last year as the feline keeper. At best, I’d be junior keeper in another area. Displaced, demoted.

If the incident had been an accident due to my carelessness, it was really a wake-up call that would make my job safer, not more dangerous, because I’d be paying close attention from now on. So I didn’t need to report it.

Range laid his head in my lap, his lips bulging with the tennis ball. I took the soggy ball and tossed it for him. It rolled under the sofa and his claws scraped on bare wood as he tried to paw it out. Frustrated, he lay on his side and shoved his nose under the sofa. He moved it an inch or two. The sofa legs made a little squeal as they skidded on the hardwood floor.

The squeak. I remembered the noise, more of a high-pitched scraping sound, and I remembered what it was. It was the sound of the guillotine door being raised, the door that let the tiger out into the exhibit. Someone had pulled the cable and opened it for Raj.

Chapter Five

I sat on my bed, sipping my first coffee as I finished putting on my uniform. Why had I thought I hadn’t closed and locked Raj’s door to the exhibit? With the fear and adrenaline gone, I was positive I had locked that door, like always, with Raj on the inside where he belonged. Maybe Linda or Wallace had come into Felines, not seen me in the yard, and opened the cat door to let him out. Maybe the schedule changes had confused someone into making a major error.

I wiggled one foot into a rubber boot and pulled it on. My hands and knees hurt from yesterday’s scrapes, and I was sore all over. My cheek was a little bruised, not too noticeably.

What about the main service door into Felines? When anyone came into the building, it slammed itself shut. Unless you were careful with it. I didn’t hear the door slam while I was out in the yard. Linda would close it quietly. Wallace might not have bothered. Dead end.

I pulled the second boot on and tried to picture the foreman letting the tiger out into the yard. Or a keeper. Why would they? Even if they thought it was their responsibility to let Raj out, they would check the yard first—that’s what the little windows were for. Arnie came to mind. He tended to be casual about standard procedure. Or was it wishful thinking to believe someone else opened that cat door?

I could keep quiet or I could tell Wallace. I knew perfectly well what I should do—tell Wallace and let him deal with it. And he would assume it was my fault because I was feeble-minded from grief. He would move me to another area forever, a new routine to learn under another keeper, another chunk whacked out of my life.

Losing Felines…my heart turned cold in my chest. Only a year ago, hard work and random luck had made me the right person to get the assignment when the old feline keeper retired. It was everything I wanted in a job and I’d given it all I had. Now restless luck was blowing the other way.

I brushed my hair, filled the dogs’ water bowls, and climbed into my truck, parked side by side with Rick’s on the driveway. Getting to the zoo took about twenty minutes. Nothing became any clearer. I should have called Marcie last night and talked it through with her. Too late now.

I’d pulled into the zoo parking lot when questions about Rick’s death clinked against the accident with Raj. I sat behind the wheel, the motor off, trying to figure out whether any real connection could exist. If I brought that up, mentioning two peculiar accidents in one breath, I’d be labeled “deranged” for sure. Besides, I couldn’t get it to make any sense. What could the incident with Raj possibly have to do with the puzzle of why Rick fell in the moat a few hours after midnight? Did he get drunk here or on the way? Did I care? I wasn’t sure.

Regardless, I had two options for today’s dilemma: stay silent about the episode or find out who let Raj out and then tell Wallace. I tried to pull myself together. This wasn’t necessarily a career disaster, just a problem to solve.

I caught Linda at the time clock and walked with her to Felines. The path was wet from rain in the night, littered with a few yellow leaves and yesterday’s visitor trash.

“You must have had a mild case,” she said. “Hap had the flu for a week. My number’s probably up next.”

“Linda, did you go back to Felines after we talked to Dr. Dawson yesterday morning?” So I wasn’t going with the silent strategy. According to Marcie, I never knew what I was planning until I said it or did it.

“I went to Children’s Zoo. That’s where Wallace put me. Why? What happened?” She stopped beside the zebra exhibit, facing me with her freckles wrinkled in concern.

“I think somebody let Raj out on me. I wasn’t hurt, just scared.”

“You went out into the yard and he jumped you?”

“Right. Did you let him out?”

She was slow to answer. “I didn’t do that. I never went back to Felines. You could have been killed.” She stared at me, pale. “Why didn’t I know about this? Didn’t you tell anyone?”

“Just you. I need to find out how Raj got out.”

“Iris, are you sure you didn’t leave the cat door open? You’ve been—a little distracted.”

“I know the routine. I’d never make that mistake.” It sounded totally unconvincing.

“People are already worried about you, worried about an accident. If Wallace hears about this…”

“Yeah. I know.”

Hazel eyes stared me resolutely in the face. “I’m not sure how to say this, Iris, but it doesn’t seem likely that someone else opened that door. Why would anyone? You don’t seem to be quite yourself yet, and no wonder, considering all you’ve been through…”

“I had to ask. It must have been someone else.”

“Iris, we’re friends, but you’d better give this some thought before you question anyone else. It sounds pretty…unrealistic. People will worry even more about your state of mind. And they might take it as an accusation.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Just forget it.” I started toward Felines.

“Iris…” her voice trailed after me.

I found Arnie at Bears, hosing the grizzly moat, a small, faintly ridiculous figure in his brown zoo uniform and a Western hat. He always wore cowboy boots, no doubt for the extra couple of inches, and didn’t seem to care that constant wetness wrecked them fast. Bushy mustache, beady eyes, and buck teeth qualified him for Rodentia, not Bears.

He switched off the water, never reluctant to stop working. “Why, no. I was busy as all git out yesterday. Never went near the cat house. I heard you got the flu. Was it the trots kind or the upchuck kind? Did you get the shot this year?”

I told him it was the stomach kind, which was close to the truth, and left before he could ask anything more.

I leaned my forearms on the guardrail and stared at the cougars, lying high on wood platforms, indifferent to the cold, on their sides with pale bellies turned toward me. The night keeper had left the big cats with access to the outside yards, probably for the last time until spring. The wind bit through the thin brown jacket with my name stitched on the left breast. “Just a problem to solve” wasn’t showing much promise. Any of a dozen people might have a legitimate reason to go into Felines. If I asked them all, they would probably put me on desk duty forever and hide the scissors. A culprit could lie about doing it, out of fear for the consequences. And it was still possible, barely, that I hadn’t locked Raj in properly.

The female cougar stood up, stretched, and jumped down, hitting with a solid thud. The male rolled off his platform as limber as mercury and landed beside her, biffing her shoulder with a paw. She floated up eight feet to a log and he followed, then down again, two graceful bodies at play.

Given that I couldn’t save my bacon by determining how Raj got out, could I resurrect silence as an option? Linda knew and Arnie might guess. If I asked her to keep quiet, Linda might not talk, and Arnie was not good at guessing. But silence had its own dangers—the risk of getting fired, not just losing Felines, if Wallace found out I hadn’t reported the accident.

Hap and Dr. Dawson walked by the lion exhibit, apparently on their way to the Commissary. Hap waved and I waved back. Dr. Dawson nodded toward me. The three lions had been inside the night dens, out of sight. Spice emerged, eyed them, and padded down the cement slope to the moat at the bottom. Simba stuck his head out, then retreated back to the warmth. Next door, Raj was shut inside, a wise decision considering his age.

When the cold got to be too much and a happy ending still declined to materialize, I pushed myself upright and went inside. My stomach hurt and my head hurt. I wished it was the flu.

I found a tennis ball in a kitchen drawer, walked down the hall to the left, and climbed into the serval exhibit. The servals were always good medicine for troubles.

This exhibit was completely interior—no yard—and blessedly warm. The inside was done up with rocks and logs. I sat quietly on the ground. Spot, the female, came up to me right away. She had been bottle-raised and retained a skittish tolerance for people. She was calm for a serval—which was to say, jumpy. All the small wild cats are high-strung, at least all the ones I’d met. They are predators, but also prey and have a prey animal’s wariness. I scratched lightly along Spot’s spine and rubbed under her chin. Her fur, yellow with black spots, was a little stiffer and coarser than a house cat’s. She didn’t seem troubled that I hadn’t brought a food pan.

Pele, the male, was zoo-born, but mother-raised. While he wouldn’t tolerate actual contact, he wasn’t afraid of me. He kept his distance and did a little odoriferous squirting to make it clear that he was Top Cat in this corner of the world and I was only a visitor.

How could I find out who had come into Felines yesterday morning? A security camera would be just the ticket, a video clip to review, but there wasn’t any. And no cover story I could think of would keep people from guessing the truth if I kept asking questions.

I rolled the tennis ball across the exhibit, along the fake dry streambed. The ball skittered around the embedded rocks. Pele pounced on it, leaping high in the air and coming down with his feet bunched. He batted the ball around, Spot making ineffectual passes but staying out of his way. He was bigger than she and much more committed to killing tennis balls.

Linda thought I was genuinely at risk. Would she sacrifice our friendship, go to Wallace, if she thought it would save my life?

She would.

The ball got stuck in a crevice. I scooted my butt over to it and tossed it high up in the air. Pele leaped three feet up, the way servals snag flushed birds in African grasslands. He smacked it a good one with a forepaw, knocking the ball hard into the glass. It rebounded and hit him in the face, scaring the daylights out of him. I held still until he got his nerves under control and his dignity back.

Rick had died dumb, a stupid, clumsy, unprofessional accident. Professionals didn’t hide behind lies and silence.

I gathered up the ball and climbed out of the exhibit. Spot and Pele watched me, side by side, probably wondering where breakfast was.

“Thanks, guys,” I told them sadly and shut the exhibit door. I put the ball away in the kitchen and walked to the service door and out.

One chance left.

He was sitting sideways to me at his desk, belly up against the keyboard tray, blue denim shirt straining at the snaps, poking at the keyboard with two index fingers. His face turned wary. “Oakley? What do you need?”

“Mr. Wallace, did you open the cat door and let Rajah out into the exhibit yesterday morning?” I looked for alarm or evasion.

“Of course not. I got better things to do than your work.” His eyes narrowed. “So what happened yesterday?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. I think somebody let Raj out.”

“And where were you?”

On break? Visiting Primates? In the bathroom? “In the yard.”

“What happened?” His full attention focused on me, boring holes in my heart and stomach.

“Raj chased me back out. I wasn’t hurt, just skinned my knee. He didn’t get out.”