Lion Down

by Stuart Gibbs

  Meanwhile, Summer didn’t appear to have any concerns at all. She proudly put an arm around me and beamed at Lily. “You’ve come to the right place,” she said. “No innocent lions are getting killed while we’re around. We’ll take the case.”

  3

  THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

  In the end, I weaseled out of making a decision right away. I agreed to go see the crime scene without actually agreeing to help investigate. I figured my parents couldn’t get upset with me for that—it wouldn’t be dangerous to visit the scene—and Summer probably would have been annoyed at me if I’d refused that much. Plus, there was a chance Lily’s friend was totally wrong. He might have turned out to be a crazy conspiracy theorist who was inventing evidence to protect the lion, in which case I could simply refuse to help. I didn’t want to be part of condemning a mountain lion to death, but if there really was one close by with a taste for pet dogs, then maybe putting it down would truly be the right thing to do.

  However, Lily’s friend wasn’t a crazy conspiracy theorist at all. Instead, he was an intelligent, likable guy.

  His name was Tommy Lopez, and he met us at the end of Lincoln Stone’s driveway. His Fish and Wildlife pickup truck was parked by the side of the road. There was a gun rack in the rear window with two rifles in it.

  Tommy was built a lot like Lily: short but very fit. He wore his official Department of Fish and Wildlife uniform, a short-sleeved khaki shirt and dark brown pants with a DFW baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. He also had a backpack with two reusable water bottles in the side pockets. There were big sweat stains under his armpits and around the collar of his shirt, indicating he’d been out in the heat a long time already.

  Lily had driven us there in her car, an ancient hatchback that she had converted to run on vegetable oil. The engine worked fine, but the rest of the car seemed to be three minutes from falling to pieces. One rear window was missing and covered with plastic wrap, the front bumper was held on with duct tape, and I could see the road passing beneath us through rust holes in the floor.

  Since I was thirteen, my parents didn’t make a big deal about me needing to tell them everywhere I was going. They didn’t want me heading off to San Antonio or Austin without permission, of course, but they were fine with me hanging out at FunJungle or exploring the woods around our trailer or going to Summer’s house for the day. Lincoln Stone’s ranch wasn’t very far from the park, so it didn’t seem like an issue to head out there.

  In fact, Lincoln Stone lived even closer to FunJungle than I had realized. It was three miles by road, but much closer as the crow flew. It hadn’t taken very long to drive there, which was a good thing, because I doubted Lily Deakin’s car could cover much more distance before breaking down.

  There was nothing about the driveway that indicated anyone famous lived at the ranch, which was probably the point; an unassuming entrance guaranteed more privacy. There was an electronic gate, but thousands of other ranches in the area had those too.

  Tommy directed us to park on the gravel shoulder of the road. As we climbed out of the car, he introduced himself to Summer and me.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Summer said.

  Tommy turned his attention to Lily and gave her a shy smile that said maybe there was more to their relationship than Lily had indicated—or that maybe Tommy hoped there’d be more. “Thanks for coming out here,” he said.

  “It’s no big deal,” Lily told him. “We’re happy to help.”

  Tommy looked around skittishly, then said, “Lincoln’s not here right now, which is good, because he’s made it clear he doesn’t want Fish and Wildlife pursuing this investigation any further. He just wants us to issue the permit to kill the cat. His housekeeper agreed to let me in, though. I told her I had to take a few more photos of the crime scene. But we need to be cool and not cause any trouble, okay?” He gave Lily a stern look, as though maybe he didn’t quite trust her.

  “We’ll be cool,” Lily assured him. Summer and I chimed in agreement.

  A call box with a camera was mounted on a post to the left of the front gate. Tommy went over to it and pushed the button.

  Someone answered in Spanish. The housekeeper, I figured.

  Tommy replied in Spanish himself. I had been studying the language in school, but hadn’t learned enough to follow the conversation yet. From Tommy’s tone, I got the sense he had struck up a friendly rapport with the housekeeper. After a little back-and-forth, there was a buzz and the gate slowly swung open.

  “We’re good,” Tommy told us, then pointed to his pickup.

  We all climbed in. It was a tight squeeze, but since none of us were that big and we weren’t going far, it wasn’t too bad. Now that I was closer to the gun rack, I observed that one of the rifles fired bullets while the other fired sedation darts.

  Tommy started the truck and we headed up the driveway. It snaked through a forest of live oak and cedar, climbing a small rise, and then Lincoln Stone’s house came into view.

  It was the ugliest building I’d ever seen.

  It was a large, sprawling mansion, but it had been designed to look like a log cabin. The biggest log cabin on earth. Enormous tree trunks had been cut in half and cemented to the sides. A long wooden porch ran all the way along the front. Although the house had probably been built within the last three years, the wood had all been purposefully weather-beaten to make it look older. However, any sense of age the house was designed to convey was completely ruined by the array of high-end vehicles parked in front of it. There was a Bentley, a Maserati, a Ferrari, and a Ford pickup, all freshly washed and gleaming.

  Tommy parked beside them and we climbed back out of the truck. Lily was gaping at the fake log cabin. “That is absolutely hideous,” she said.

  Tommy signaled her to keep her voice down. “Don’t let the staff hear you say that! And from what I understand, Lincoln is trying to convey some sort of kinship with the original settlers of this country with this house.”

  “He’s conveying that he’s an idiot,” Lily said under her breath.

  An older woman in a maid’s uniform emerged onto the porch, observing us warily, like she still wasn’t sure if allowing us on the property was a good idea.

  Tommy waved to her and flashed a smile. “¡Hola, Elena! ¡Muchas gracias!”

  The woman pointed at her watch and said something in Spanish.

  “¡Sí! ¡Sí!” Tommy said, then went on in Spanish. Whatever he said seemed to reassure Elena, who went back inside.

  “Those trees Lincoln has stuck to his house aren’t serving any structural purpose,” Lily grumbled. “He’s cut down old-growth forest and burned who-knows-how-much fossil fuel to have it trucked down here just so he can pretend to be Davy Crockett.”

  “I have to get a picture of this,” Summer said, snapping a few shots with her phone. “It’s unbelievably tasteless.”

  “Let me show you the crime scene,” Tommy said quickly, like he was trying to change the subject. “Lincoln will be back in an hour and we want to be long gone before he gets home. It’s right over here.” He led us past the edge of the driveway and around the house.

  On the back side, the architect had given up the notion of making the house look like a log cabin. Instead, it was completely modern, with huge windows and cantilevered patios, though it was still strikingly overdone. From here, there was a view of the surrounding Hill Country—although Lincoln Stone had leveled a large portion of forest to get it. It was immediately evident why Lincoln had tried to keep FunJungle from being built: You could see the whole park from his house, and despite FunJungle’s environmental mission, it didn’t really blend in with its surroundings. The parking lots, in particular, were great black scars on the land.

  I could also see the brown, dusty patch where the Wilds was being built and close to that, the trailer park where I lived with my parents.

  Down the hill below Lincoln Stone’s house were a swimming pool, an enormous hot tub, a wide lawn, and
a lighted tennis court that looked like it hadn’t ever been used. There was a layer of dust on it and the net sagged listlessly.

  To the side of the tennis court was a private firing range. This looked like it had been used. A lot. A silhouette of a human being was tacked against some hay bales in the distance. Dozens of bullet holes perforated the chest. I knew that lots of people fired guns on their private property in the area—I had plenty of friends from school who did it—but the sight of the bullet-riddled silhouette made me uneasy.

  The lawn butted up against a stand of trees. Tommy led us through them to a small clearing not too far from a barbed-wire fence that marked the edge of the property. Lincoln’s house was still visible through the trees, but our view of it was obscured.

  A small cloud of mosquitoes buzzed around the trees. Enough so that we could hear them. Thankfully, I had slathered on the bug repellant that morning. When you lived in the woods like I did, mosquitoes were a constant menace.

  On the floor of the clearing, someone had tried to make a picture of something with masking tape. It hadn’t worked very well, as the tape hadn’t stuck to the dirt. It took me a few seconds of staring at it to realize what the point of it all was. “Is that an outline of the dead dog?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Tommy said sheepishly. “Mr. Stone has seen a lot of crime shows on TV, and he insisted that there ought to be an outline to show where the crime was committed. I tried to explain to him that we don’t really do that sort of thing for animals, and he got very upset. So I did my best. Even though I didn’t really have the right kind of tape. And there wasn’t much of the body left to outline.”

  Summer snapped a picture of this with her phone too. “Is that why the outline’s so small? Because that’s all there was after the . . . uh . . .”

  “Eating?” Tommy finished. “No. Mr. Stone wanted the outline to represent what King actually looked like.”

  “But King’s a golden retriever,” Summer said. “This outline looks like it’s for a hamster.”

  “Oh,” Tommy said. “You’re thinking of the King from TV. Not the real King.”

  “There’s two different dogs?” I asked, confused.

  “The King from TV doesn’t really exist,” Tommy explained. “Lincoln made him up. The real King was a bichon frise.”

  Lily snorted with laughter. “A bichon frise? Mr. All-American Tough Guy had a lap dog?”

  “A French lap dog,” Summer added.

  “Apparently he’s allergic to most dogs,” Tommy said. “But he knew having a bichon didn’t really fit with his image. So he pretended to have a retriever for the cameras.”

  “That’s why you never saw King on TV with him!” Summer exclaimed, putting things together. “Lincoln talked about him all the time, and showed photos, but the dog never came on the show.”

  I said, “So all those stories he tells about hunting and hiking and camping with King aren’t true?”

  “Almost nothing about Lincoln Stone is true,” Lily informed me. “The guy’s entire image was designed to attract a certain type of viewer. He’s supposed to be a red-blooded, all-American alpha male. The kind of guy who likes to drink beer, race cars, and kill wild animals. But that’s not what Lincoln used to be like. In fact, his name isn’t even Lincoln Stone. It’s Farley Turkmeister. And he was born in Beverly Hills.”

  I was awfully surprised by this, and from the look on Summer’s face, it seemed that she was too.

  “Anyhow,” Tommy said, “there wasn’t really much left of the dog to outline. Only the tuft of its tail—and the collar. It was right here.” He pointed to a spot just south of the outline.

  Both the tuft and the collar had been taken away, though. The crime scene itself looked like every other part of the clearing: a mat of dirt and cedar needles.

  Summer snapped a few photos of it anyway. “Who found the body? Or, I guess, what was left of the body.”

  “Lincoln did,” Tommy answered. “That’s what he told my boss, at least. I wasn’t there for the questioning. It was around eleven o’clock last night. Lincoln says he’d let King out to go to the bathroom, but the dog didn’t come back when he called, so he came looking for him. He said he was searching for a long time, but he eventually found the remains here. And then he got sick over there.” Tommy pointed to the edge of the clearing, where there was still a faint spatter of vomit.

  “So, he didn’t actually see a mountain lion?” Lily asked. “Or even hear one?”

  “No,” Tommy said. “But that’s not really unusual. For a big animal, cougars can be extremely stealthy. There are plenty of cases of them getting into people’s yards and eating a pet without anyone hearing or seeing anything. Sometimes the people are even out in the yard themselves, barbecuing or something, just a couple feet away. But there’s plenty of other things that are suspicious about this case.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “For starters, there is a mountain lion who lives in this area, but she wasn’t anywhere near here last night.”

  “How do you know that?” Summer asked.

  “Because she’s collared,” Lily answered.

  “Right,” Tommy agreed. “Her official number is T-38, but everyone at Fish and Wildlife calls her Rocket.”

  “Why?” Summer wanted to know.

  “I’m not sure,” Tommy admitted. “I think because the T-38 is a plane they use for training at NASA down in Houston, and NASA shoots off rockets, but that’s just a guess. She’s a five-year-old female, and this is part of her territory. We even know she’s been on this property recently—”

  “How recently?” I interrupted.

  “Three days ago,” Tommy said. “And she’s been prowling around here on and off for the last two years. But last night, she wasn’t anywhere near here. She was over by FunJungle.”

  “FunJungle?” I repeated, concerned. “Where?”

  “Not anywhere close to the tourists,” Tommy said reassuringly. “Over on the back side, near where they’re building the theme park rides.”

  “I live right next to where they’re building the theme park rides!” I exclaimed.

  “Oh,” Tommy said. “Then I guess she was near your house.”

  I must have looked worried, because he quickly added, “She’s not really dangerous to humans, though. Probably. I mean, there’s little kids at the house next door to here and she’s never caused them any trouble. If Rocket’s sniffing around FunJungle, it’s because she’s attracted to all the animals over there, not the humans. I mean, with all those exotic antelope in SafariLand, it must smell like a buffet dinner to her.”

  My heartbeat had sped up; I had to lean against a tree to steady myself. It surprised me that I was reacting like this to a mountain lion. After all, back in the Congo, I had grown up around plenty of dangerous animals. But it had been a few years since then. Maybe I was older and wiser, or maybe I had gotten a little soft in America; either way, the idea that there was a large predator on the loose in my neighborhood was unnerving.

  “The point is,” Lily said, “Rocket couldn’t have killed King last night. And there’s proof.”

  “So why didn’t you tell Lincoln Stone that?” Summer asked.

  “I did,” Tommy said. “And I told my boss, too. They both said King must have been eaten by another mountain lion.”

  “And you don’t think he could have been?” Summer said.

  I knew the answer to this even before Tommy said it. I might not have known a whole lot about mountain lions, but I knew big cats pretty well. Still, I let him say it, rather than stealing his thunder.

  “It’s unlikely,” Tommy said. “Because this is Rocket’s territory. She’s certainly marked it. Any other cougar would know they should find another place to hunt.”

  “Could Rocket have had kittens?” Summer suggested. “Maybe a little cougar did this.”

  Tommy shook his head. “She hasn’t given birth recently. If she had, we would have known. She would have made a den and be spend
ing time there, or at least staying close. But her radio transmitter hasn’t shown movement indicating that has happened.”

  “What if it was a male lion looking for a mate?” I said.

  “That’s what my boss suggested.” Tommy snapped a long dead twig off a cedar tree. “So that’s what Lincoln thinks too. It’s possible. But there are other things that don’t add up. This doesn’t look like a kill site at all.” He pointed at the ground with his twig. “For starters, I don’t see any tracks.”

  “The ground’s pretty hard here,” I observed. “Not great for tracks.”

  “I’d still expect to find something,” Tommy countered. “But there’s not. No signs of a fight, either.”

  “What kind of fight would a bichon frise put up against a mountain lion?” Summer asked. “It’d be like a piece of plankton trying to fight off a whale.”

  “Not exactly,” Lily argued.

  “Still, those dogs are tiny,” Summer said. “It’d barely be an hors d’oeuvre for a big cat.”

  “Which is another problem,” Tommy said. “If a cougar made a big kill, it might not be able to finish eating it and leave something behind, but a bichon frise? The whole thing should be gone. So why leave the tuft of the tail?”

  “It’s mostly hair, right?” Summer asked. “Carnivores don’t eat the hair of their prey so much as the meat.”

  “True,” Tommy admitted. “But still, I wouldn’t expect the tuft to be left here. A mountain lion doesn’t want to hang out near humans any more than it has to. If it killed a small dog like that, chances are, it’d take off with it and eat it somewhere safer. Not right by the house.”

  “Wouldn’t King have made some noise?” Lily asked. “If he was being attacked by a cougar, he probably would have been barking up a storm. Or crying in pain. You’d think Lincoln would have heard it.”