Paw of the Jungle

by Diane Kelly

  The Poacher gestured to the graffiti. “How would you feel about painting the place?”

  “I would feel that the lease is as is,” the man said. “You want the building painted, you can do it yourself.” With that, the man returned to his car, leaving a stench in his wake. He gunned his engine and drove away.

  Cheap son of a bitch. The Poacher climbed into his truck. As he looked over his shoulder to back up, he spotted Harper’s pink cell phone tucked into the map pocket on the inside of the passenger door. Maybe Vicki was right. Maybe Harper was too young for a cell phone.

  He leaned over and retrieved the phone. The movement caused the screen to come to life. Any irritation he’d felt at his landlord for being so tightfisted or at Harper for forgetting her cell phone was immediately forgotten when he saw she’d chosen a photo of the two of them at the zoo for her screen saver. Damn, I love that little squirt. He slid the phone into the glove box for safekeeping. He’d have a talk with her later, let her know she needed to do a better job of keeping up with it or he’d have to take it away.

  He headed off down Vickery. After paying additional deposits at the electric and water companies to have service turned on at the building, he made a stop at a hardware store for supplies. He returned to the garage with three gallons of their cheapest white paint, painter’s tape, and a set of rollers and brushes. After sweeping up the trash around the building, he set to work, painting over the graffiti. It took two coats and most of the day to repaint the outside of the building.

  He’d nearly soiled himself when a police cruiser rolled slowly by, a dark-haired female cop at the wheel and a huge furry dog in the back. She’d glanced his way but had only raised a hand off the wheel in greeting. He’d returned the gesture, momentarily forgetting he had the roller in his hand and inadvertently splattering himself with white paint.

  He spent the rest of the day doing the best he could to smooth out the dents in the bay door and the hail damage on the trailer. He didn’t need one of his torches for that task. A simple butane lighter provided enough heat to enable him to work the metal, force it back into place. The hail damage was a surprisingly easy fix. A little heat and the metal practically popped itself back into place.

  Now that he’d done what he could outside, he turned his attention to the inside of the garage. He hosed down the floor and walls, dusted off the bare fluorescent bulbs overhead, and wiped the grime off the small panel of glass in the heavy steel door on the side of the building. Burglar bars were affixed over the window, the afternoon sun shining through them and casting a hashtag-shaped shadow on the stained concrete floor. If Harper were here, she’d whip out her sidewalk chalk and challenge him to a game of tic-tac-toe.

  By then it was dark and time to get home for dinner. He hadn’t stopped for lunch and his stomach was growling like a lion. Stowing the leftover paint and supplies inside, he locked up and took a final look at the place. It was still a basic cinder-block building, nothing fancy. But it looked less shabby than it had this morning. Tomorrow, he’d pick up some sheet metal and put himself to work.

  * * *

  When he arrived home, Harper met him at the door. “Hi, Daddy!”

  “Hey, squirt.” He bent down and gave her a hug, whispering in her ear. “Did somebody forget something in my truck?” He pulled her cell phone from his pocket and held it up.

  Her eyes went wide and bright with the fear that he’d take her phone away. “I’m sorry, Daddy!”

  He held it out to her, but yanked it back as she went to take it from him. “You promise to be a good girl from now on and remember your phone?”

  She nodded her head so hard it was a wonder it didn’t pop off her neck. “I won’t forget it again. I promise!”

  He reached out and ruffled her copper hair, handing her the phone at the same time. “All right, squirt. Let’s get some dinner.”

  He walked into the kitchen, where Vicki stood at the stove stirring a pot of spaghetti. She still wore her pajamas. She hadn’t even bothered to dress today. No point in asking her whether she’d gone out to apply for any waitressing jobs. Meanwhile, he’d been busting his ass trying to find work, to think of some way to bring in some money. But he knew better than to bring it up. She’d tell him she deserved some time off after taking care of everything on her own while he was in jail, that it was his turn to work and pay the bills. She’d be right about that, too. Still, it chapped his ass.

  She turned and gave him a smile and his ass felt a little less chapped. “Where’s my kiss?”

  He stepped over and planted a peck on her cheek.

  She leaned into it before pulling her head back. “Why is there paint in your hair? And on your clothes?”

  Uh-oh. He thought up a quick lie. “The boss asked me to help paint some signs at a drilling site.”

  She seemed to accept his response and asked nothing further. Unfortunately, she dropped a financial bombshell on him. “Refrigerator went out today. An appliance repair guy came out and looked it over, said it’s shot.” She held up the spoon she’d been using to stir the spaghetti to point at the cooler on the floor. “I put all the food in the ice chest so we wouldn’t lose it. I thought I’d go pick out a new fridge tomorrow, maybe get one of them shiny stainless steel ones with the automatic ice thing in the door. That’ll make our lives easier.”

  Like hell it would. A new fridge could cost a thousand dollars or more. He’d already spent a big chunk of money today on rent and deposits. “Maybe we should look at used refrigerators.”

  She scoffed and cut him a look, her lip quirked in disgust. “You’ll buy your daughter an expensive new phone, but someone else’s icky old fridge is good enough for me?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He let out a loud breath. “We spent a lot on Christmas and need to watch our money right now. The fridge is coming at a bad time is all.”

  She cocked her head. “We could finance it. That way we’d only have to pay a little each month rather than a bunch up front.”

  He supposed he couldn’t argue with her logic. Well, he could, but he knew it would probably land him back on the floor in the boys’ bedroom. He forced a smile. “Sounds like a plan.”

  She perked up as she turned back to the stove. “Maybe I’ll replace this old oven, too, while I’m at it.”

  His gut clenched. Ironically, all this talk about refrigerators and ovens had killed his appetite.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  P TRAPPED

  Megan

  On January 4th, Detective Bustamente and I made visits to several businesses on the I-20 frontage road just west of I-35. They’d rounded up their camera footage for us to take a look at. Based on the route indicated by the trail of flock-covered home security cameras, we surmised the poachers had driven down this way to access the interstate.

  Our first stop was at a hair salon. We were met at the door by the manager, a woman in her mid-thirties with dark hair slicked back in a shiny, perfectly coiffed updo. She led us through a fog of hair spray and dye fumes to a small room in the back that served as a storage area, break room, and office. Brigit lay on the floor next to the desk as the woman rounded up chairs and showed us how to work the program that played the footage.

  “Take all the time you need.” She returned to work, leaving us to watch the recording on her laptop.

  While the business had an outdoor camera, it was positioned over the door and angled to primarily take in the sidewalk and parking lot. The angle was typical. Owners and managers installed the cameras to catch criminals trying to break into their places of business. They weren’t concerned with the traffic going by on the street.

  We leaned in, as if that would somehow give us a better vantage point, but all we could see was tires going by. Some tires were big and some were small. But none of them gave us any clues about the thieves we’d begun to call the Poachers.

  As we headed out, we thanked the woman for her time.

  “No problem.” She turned back to the client in the chai
r in front of her, readied her shears, and gave the ends of the client’s long brown locks a definitive snip.

  We made our way next door to a thrift store. This time, we got tires plus about six inches of each vehicle that went by. We continued on, to no avail, until we watched the footage from a large gas station with a convenience store and diesel pumps specifically designed for eighteen-wheelers. The place was open twenty-four hours, which meant it was more prone to crime. For this reason, its security cameras covered a greater area. Still, while the cameras captured license plates of vehicles at the station, they lacked the resolution to get the license plates of vehicles driving past on the frontage road. We could identify some makes and models, however.

  We made note of several vehicles that went by. A dark green Chevy Suburban. A red Toyota pickup truck hauling a horse trailer. An unmarked white delivery van. All were large enough to transport the springbok. The clock at the bottom of the screen ticked away the hours and minutes. Midnight. One A.M. Two A.M. The number of cars going by increased shortly after everyone rang in the new year, but decreased as the night turned to very early morning.

  At 3:17 A.M., a semi pulled slowly out of the gas station. At first, it was visible on only the first of the three outer cameras. As it continued, it filled the screens of both the first and second cameras. A couple seconds later and the truck’s length took up the lenses of all three perimeter cameras, blocking our view of any traffic in the farther lane of the two-lane frontage road. Just as the back end of the eighteen-wheeler cleared the first camera, I caught a quick glimpse of the tail end of an enclosed white trailer. It looked to be a five-by-ten-foot size, or maybe a six-by-twelve, the type commonly used by building contractors or others for hauling tools and equipment to job sites.

  I jabbed the button to pause the footage. “Did you see that?”

  Bustamente’s head bobbed. “I did. Looked like the back of a commercial trailer.”

  I dragged the feed back a few seconds and we watched again. Yep, definitely a smaller trailer behind the semi. “Do you think the poachers purposely timed it so they’d be hidden by the eighteen-wheeler when they drove past the cameras?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Unfortunately, the freeway entrance ramp sat only a few yards beyond the gas station, meaning that the vehicle pulling the trailer likely pulled onto the highway. That section of the interstate sat below the land that flanked it, and was bordered by tall noise-abatement walls. In other words, no cameras on the frontage road would be able to capture images of the cars driving down in what was essentially a topless tunnel. But the traffic cameras might.

  I turned to the detective. “We need to see what the traffic cameras on I-20 picked up.”

  Bustamente concurred. “I’ll put in a request. Meanwhile, you get back out and talk to some welders.”

  I spent the rest of the day paying a visit to the welding instructor at Trimble Tech High School and meandering around the industrial area bordered roughly by Vickery on the north, I-35 on the east, Rosedale on the south, and Henderson on the west. I talked to a number of people, nearly all of them men, but with a couple of Rosie the Riveter-type women in the mix. While I saw several white trailers at the places I visited, there was no way for me to tell if any of them was the same one we’d caught a glimpse of in the video, hiding behind the eighteen-wheeler.

  By late afternoon, I had made my rounds and was feeling flustered and frustrated. While I tried to maintain some hope the traffic cameras might yield a clue, I was afraid to hang too much hope on their footage. We didn’t know exactly what time the springbok had been taken. It could have been in a number of the larger vehicles we’d noted, or the trailer could have had nothing to do with the theft of the beautiful antelope.

  We had twenty minutes left in our shift. Making a pass through the Chisolm Trail mall would kill the time.

  I parked in a reserved spot and let Brigit out of the back of the cruiser. As always, she popped a quick squat on the grassy patch nearby before we headed down the walkway. With it being January and nearing the dinner hour, things were slow, only an occasional shopper strolling about. Up ahead, I saw the barbershop quartet enter the glass-enclosed area of the mall. They strolled along in a single-file line, snapping their fingers as they sang Billy Joel’s jaunty love ballad “For the Longest Time,” the strains just loud enough for me to hear from this distance.

  I raised a hand in greeting to some of the store personnel along the way. Several of them stood at their doors, with so little to do, looking bored. A glance into the nail salon told me that it was slow, too. Only one nail technician was on duty, the strawberry blond who’d handled my mother’s manicure. The chairs both in front and in back of the other tables were pushed in, telling me no other techs were on duty. The strawberry blond had no client at the moment, and was using her downtime to scroll through her cell phone. I was tempted to take Brigit over, see if the woman would give her a pretty paw-dicure. But using human manicure implements on a dog would probably violate the health code.

  When we reached the center hub, I pulled the glass door open and we stepped inside. Brigit’s salivary glands went into instant overdrive, drool dripping from her lips. Might as well get her some dinner. She’d been cooped up in the cruiser more than usual today, and had been very patient about it. I’d get her some people food as a reward.

  We aimed straight for the kebob stand, where I placed my order with the teenaged boy behind the counter. When it was ready, I slid the meat off the stick and tore it into pieces for my partner. She inhaled it, hardly chewing, smacking her lips after each bite. When she finished, I ruffled her ears. “You need to work on your table manners, Brigit.”

  We were on our way out when a fortyish brown-skinned woman in a snappy tangerine-colored peacoat called out to me from the other side of the space. “Officer! I need your help!”

  As she hurried my way, I did the same, taking long strides.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as we met by the carousel.

  She held up her left hand. Other than a pretty orange polish, her hand was bare. “It’s my rings!” She used her right hand to point behind her. “I think they went down the sink in the ladies’ room!”

  “Show me.”

  We hurried into the ladies’ room, where she pointed at the nearest sink. “That’s the one I used. I was drying my hands at the machine when I realized my rings were gone.”

  “You’re sure you had them on when you came in?”

  “I’m sure about it,” she said. “I just got a manicure. I took them off while the girl was working on my nails, but I know I put them back on before I left. She reminded me not to forget them.”

  She must be talking about the strawberry blond. She was the only nail tech on duty. The reminder seemed to be part of the tech’s routine. She’d done the same thing for the woman who’d had her nails done after my mother. It was thoughtful of her to make sure her clients didn’t forget their jewelry.

  “Did you take them off before you washed your hands?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. The only time I take them off is for manicures and to clean them at home. I never take them off in public like this.”

  “Stay right here,” I told the woman. “Don’t let anyone use that sink. I’ll get the mall manager and see what they can do.”

  “Thanks. I’m praying they’re caught in the trap!”

  I scurried over to the mall’s administrative wing behind the carousel at the back of the center court. I found one of the assistant managers there, and told him what was going on.

  “It’s odd,” he said. “This is the third woman who’s reported losing rings in the mall since Thanksgiving.”

  Hmm. From reviewing the department’s crime statistics, I knew certain crimes, like drunk driving, burglaries, and domestic violence, followed predictable patterns. They increased around the holidays and during the summer months when people were on vacation or grumpy from the unbearable heat. But other times, crimes
occurred in random spurts, with certain statistics increasing for no apparent reason. I supposed it could be the same for situations like this, more people inadvertently and randomly misplacing their property around the same time.

  “I’ll have one of our maintenance crew meet us there,” the manager said, picking up his phone. He dialed a number and spoke with someone on the other end. “Bring your toolbox to the ladies’ room. A customer’s rings went down the drain.”

  He joined me and Brigit, and we made our way to the restroom. The manager stood at the door while the maintenance worker came in carrying a large metal toolbox and a plastic bucket.

  “I hope you find them!” cried the woman in the peacoat as she stepped back out of the way.

  The man placed his toolbox on the tile floor, flipped open the latches, and removed an adjustable wrench. He pushed the bucket into place under the P trap and set to work, twisting the coupling until it was loose. Residual water ran into the bucket as he carefully removed the pipe. He turned the pipe and poured the contents into the bucket. A distinct plop could be heard as something heavy fell into the water.

  He pulled the bucket out and we all looked down into it. Well, we humans looked down into it. Brigit, on the other hand, stuck her face into the bucket and took a drink. Slup-slup.

  “No, girl!” I pulled her back.

  Soap clouded the water a little, but not so much that we couldn’t see something shiny at the bottom of the bucket. The maintenance man pushed back his shirtsleeve, reached into the bucket, and pulled the item out, holding it up. Rather than a wedding set, it was a birthstone ring, silver with an oval-shaped opal.