Claws

by Ozzie Cheek

  Some of the audience cheered. Others shouted out, “How?” Most people remained quiet and looked confused.

  Iris nodded to Stan Ely, then stepped aside, and he replaced her at the podium. The floor shook from boos and catcalls and stomps. Stan waited until the noise died down before he said, “The big, new prize mayor Inslay referred to is an offer from Animal Rescue Kingdom.” The mention of ARK brought another round of boos and jeers.

  “I know all of you have heard about this big female liger. But what you didn’t hear is that she’s pregnant or has already gave birth to a litter of liger cubs. What you don’t know is that these liger cubs are rare. They’re so special, in fact, that Animal Rescue Kingdom will pay you good people twenty-five thousand dollars for each and every liger cub that you can capture.” This news brought a rippling of applause. Stan talked over it. “And we’ll also offer twenty-five thousand dollars to anyone who locates the female liger and guides me to her.”

  The applause was louder now, but it also was easier for Stan to quiet the crowd. “Now I said capture, not kill. The liger cubs must be alive.” Stan glanced back at Iris. She smiled. “One more thing. This offer isn’t bound by the court ruling. It’s not open to just anybody. To be eligible, you need to trade your hunting license for a prize ticket. Mayor Inslay will explain the details. Just remember, you could go home with twenty-five or fifty thousand or more. Anybody here like a hundred grand?”

  The crowd answered with cheers and applause. Iris breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t her fault if Stan believed she had engineered the fire and that Jackson and the Buckhorn police were responsible. Her smile never left her face, not even as her mind churned out a way to screw over Stan Ely. She watched him hold up his hands, like Moses parting the sea, and yell, “Twenty-five if alive!”

  When Jackson arrived, Stan Ely was basking in adulation. Jackson had sent Angie, Brian, and two reserve officers to the assembly to keep order and deal with traffic while he finally changed clothes and ate dinner. Now that he was at the assembly, he at first could not fathom what had happened. Upon hearing about the miraculous turn of events Jackson was happy that the town had escaped disaster. His second thought was that Katy had not been as lucky. Katy only had herself to look for Kali. Stan Ely now had a whole town.

  While Stan was turning the hunters in the gym from mob to disciples, Katy was at Green State Park following the trail of the three-legged tiger. She had been following the trail of the cat since leaving the Placett farm, changing clothes, and gearing up. Just as she thought she was closing in, the tracks had ended at an asphalt road. For the past hour she had been trying to find them in the dark using a flashlight.

  She shut off the light now and stood in the road and listened. She shivered as the wind rustled the leaves around her. Then she turned and headed back to the camp.

  To her surprise Jackson was at the campground talking to two oil workers from Galveston that had been part of his search team the first day. When he saw her, he peeled off from them. “Any luck?” he asked Katy.

  She told him what she had been doing. “But I can’t find any tracks on the other side of the pavement.”

  “So the tiger’s following the road now.”

  “Seems like it.”

  “And that road leads into town,” Jackson said. So far there had been no confirmed sightings of big cats in town despite six calls from people in the last day claiming to have seen a lion. “So what now?” he asked Katy.

  “I don’t know. Talk to Stan, I guess. He left a strange message on my cell phone.”

  “Oh hell! You don’t know what happened, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  He told Katy about the public assembly and Stan Ely’s surprise offer. When he finished, Katy said that she needed to see Stan, jumped in the Ford, and drove off.

  On the drive home Jackson tried to think about something other than Katy, so he thought about the coded names Jessup had given him. If any of his officers were part of a militia group, he would put his money on Tucker. But he had no proof. Not yet anyway. Before leaving for the night, Jackson had shared the information and his own suspicions with Angie. She had offered to investigate Tucker. She seemed delighted by the opportunity.

  The farmhouse was lit up when Jackson arrived. Only then did he remember that Jesse was spending the night. The door was unlocked. He entered, called her name, and heard his daughter reply.

  “Upstairs,” she said. “We’ll be right down.”

  We? That was the other part of the message Jesse had left. Missy Yow was spending the night too. Missy had stayed over many times before, but Jackson hadn’t known about the condoms before. He was not happy that Jesse’s sleepover friend was a sexually active fifteen-year-old.

  After uncapping a beer Jackson plopped down in the recliner in the living room. Jesse and Missy clomped down the steps a few minutes later. Both girls wore floppy lounging pants and oversized t-shirts. His daughter brushed his cheek with a kiss. “You look tired,” she said.

  “Cause I am.” He said hello to Missy. “So how’d you two get here?” he asked Jesse. “Your mom?”

  “Mom’s busy with Dell,” Jesse said sarcastically. “And with celebrating. Shane gave us a ride.” Jackson wanted to say something about the need for her to get along better with Iris, but while he was searching for the right words, Jesse said, “Daddy, you find the little boy yet?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But I’m hopeful.”

  Jackson told the girls about the Bengal tiger Katy had followed. Both Jesse and Missy thought the story was deliciously scary. Even so, their conversation soon drifted away from big cats and little Eric to more of the normal stuff that interests teenagers.

  Jackson listened to their chatter until he felt his eyes close. He got up, kissed Jesse, and told Missy goodnight. Missy leaned forward offering her cheek for a kiss too. As Jackson hesitated, a necklace popped out of her t-shirt. It was a silver cross on a chain.

  “That necklace you’re wearing,” he said to Missy, “where’d you get it?”

  “This old thing?” Missy said, touching the cross and chain. “My mom gave it to me. She has one just like it.” Missy wrinkled her brow. “But I think she lost it.”

  The call came at five-fifteen Saturday morning. By five-twenty Angie was dressed, and five minutes after that, she unlocked her Subaru. She had no police radio with her, since she was off-duty, and when she tried to phone Tucker at the police station, her call was routed to the communication center in the county seat. “Asshole,” she said, and quickly added, “No, not you,” as soon as she realized the dispatcher in St. Anthony she had talked to earlier was on the line again. “My duty officer’s MIA.”

  Last night, she had instructed the communication center to call her instead of Jackson in case of an emergency. A tiger prowling Martino’s Market, a block from downtown, was certainly an emergency. Martino’s was a deli and grocery store known for good meats. A frantic Mexican janitor had reported the tiger and then ran off.

  Angie hadn’t followed Tucker Friday night since he was at work. But she had tailed him the two previous nights, before Jackson made her surveillance official. She didn’t know if Tucker belonged to a militia group or not, but she knew that he was the one harassing Sharon and her. On the second night, he had cruised Sharon’s bungalow three times. Today, she planned to confront his homophobic ass.

  Angie stopped at the police station and swapped her Subaru for the Dodge cruiser. She didn’t use the siren, but flashed the lights as she drove to Martino’s Market. A few minutes later, she pulled into the parking lot and parked next to another Buckhorn police cruiser. The car was empty.

  She popped the trunk on the Dodge and removed her M4 tactical rife and loaded it. Then she jogged to the front of the market and peered through twin glass doors. The lights were dim, but Angie could see shelving was knocked over and food scattered in the aisles. She heard noises inside. A second later Tucker crashed into a shelf. Angie only saw him for a secon
d, long enough the see the blood.

  Angie rattled the doors, but they were locked. She ran around the building to a side door near a tumble of milk crates and strewn garbage. The door was open. Angie was about to radio for backup when she heard Tucker scream.

  She entered as Tucker scuttled across a meat case, a three-legged Bengal tiger right behind him. Angie was so dumbstruck, she couldn’t move. In fact, she didn’t move again until after Tucker stumbled, until the tiger pounced on him and knocked him off the case. They thudded against the black and white tile floor behind the meat case. She slid along the wall until she could see them again. The tiger had Tucker’s right arm in his mouth.

  “Oh god! Oh god! Oh god!” Tucker shrieked. His bowels and bladder had released. Angie could smell him now. When Tucker saw her, he stopped screaming for a second. She would never forget the surprised and fearful look on his face. She really didn’t mean to grin.

  Angie shot the tiger in the neck, breaking his spine. As the big cat fell, the bones and muscles that attached Tucker’s arm to his body snapped and tore, and his right arm was severed. Blood spurted from the stump. Angie grabbed up a pile of towels and called for help.

  Thirty-Two

  By the time Jackson reached the Buckhorn clinic, Tucker had been taken to Rexburg. He phoned Madison Hospital and learned that Tucker was alive and in surgery. Jackson wouldn’t be able to see him for hours. He then told Angie to write up a report. She had recapped the events on the phone, but he had to go over everything with her in person. “I’ll see you soon as I’m done with Katy and the Fish and Game boys.”

  “Katy?”

  “She wants to cut open the tiger you killed.”

  Twenty minutes later he watched Katy slide a sharp butcher’s knife into the soft belly of the Bengal tiger and slice through skin and fat and muscle tissue. Jackson and Stilts Venable stood a few feet away. The odor wasn’t pleasant, but Jackson had smelled worse things recently.

  Katy laid the bloody knife on the tile floor of the market. She reached inside the tiger with both hands until she had a firm grip on the gut sack. She piled the entrails and stomach on the floor, and then she sliced and diced the tiger’s guts until she dropped the knife and said, “Thank god.” Whatever happened to Eric Stutz, the contents meant the Bengal tiger had not eaten him.

  By the time Jackson left the market, Angie was out on a call. Jackson phoned the hospital again. There was no update on Tucker. He thought back to his original plans for the morning. A short time later, he was sitting opposite a small ranch house with a half-brick front. The house backed onto the high school football field. A ten-year-old Honda Accord the color of dried blood was parked outside a one-car garage.

  Jackson knew Pamela Yow wasn’t the only person in town that considered Safari Land a nuisance, although most people in Buckhorn didn’t care much what you did as long as you were white, Christian, Republican, and heterosexual. The Cheneys likely scored high on these. Most everyone did in Fremont County. Even so, one question nagged at him – if the goal was to get rid of Safari Land, why not just kill the cats? He got out and walked toward the house.

  Pamela was dressed for work when she answered the door. She didn’t act surprised to see him. Five minutes later Jackson laid out Dolly’s broken necklace on the kitchen table. For a moment he looked at the cross and thought about the different meanings it had: an implement of torture, a religious symbol, and a clue to a crime. Put anything in a new context and it changes meaning.

  “You recognize this?” he asked Pamela. They were seated around an antique oak table. Pamela had given him a cup of herbal tea that he hadn’t touched.

  “Looks like the necklace Missy and me have.”

  “Could I see your necklace?”

  “You could,” she said, “if I knew where it was.” She fiddled with her herbal tea bag and said, “Sure you don’t want coffee? I don’t drink it, but I can make it.”

  He told her no, that he’d had enough coffee already.

  “You ever go out to Safari Land to visit your cousin?”

  “I told you, we’re not … we weren’t close.”

  “Ever hear of the Knights of the Golden Circle?”

  “What’s that? Oh, you mean that Catholic group?”

  “I believe that’s Knights of Columbus.” Jackson watched her. She was lying. She wasn’t good at it either. “I need to see your necklace, Pamela.”

  Pamela squirmed in the chair. “Well, I can look for it but … where’d you get this one?”

  “It was in Dolly’s hand when we found her.”

  “Oh.”

  “You should get yourself a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer? What do I need a lawyer for?”

  Jackson waited, watching her. Did she not understand?

  “God will protect me,” Pamela said in a near whisper.

  “I’d still get a lawyer if I were you,” he told her.

  When Jackson reached the downtown square, traffic coming into Buckhorn off highway 34 was backed up for a solid mile. On the square itself traffic looked like an Idaho Falls shopping mall parking lot at Christmas time. Even pedestrians were having trouble getting anywhere today. He counted two reserve officers and two blue-pins, nearly half his force, and all of them traffic cops now.

  While he inched his way along, trying to get to the Elk’s Club, Jackson listened to the local radio station. The woman who read the news had a slight lisp. She said hunters were booking hotel rooms as far away as Idaho Falls. Rexburg, St. Anthony, Ashton – anyplace closer was sold out of rooms. He knew that local people were opening up their homes to rent out the spare bedroom. Jackson hoped that the promised state troopers would arrive soon to help out. Hell, he thought, it still won’t be enough.

  He reached the Elk’s Club and found Sheriff Midden coordinating the search dogs with Deborah’s group on horseback. “I’m going to start charging you stable rent,” Deborah said to Jackson. She grinned when she said it.

  He looked at her curiously.

  “Armando found one of your horses. We have Blaze.”

  “Blaze? My mare’s okay? Any sign of Boots?”

  She shook her head no. “I’ll bring Blaze by later.”

  “So where’s the sheriff sending you off to now?”

  “Above the old Newdale farm,” she said. “That’s where the parents were hunting the day Eric disappeared.”

  An hour later Jackson was getting ready to leave for the hospital in Rexburg – Tucker was out of surgery now – when he received a phone call and heard, “She’s been shot.”

  “Who’s been shot?” Jackson asked. “Who’s this?”

  “State Trooper Len Grey here, Chief Hobbs,” the trooper said. “The horse-lady, Deborah, she got shot.”

  Since the Fremont County Medical Clinic in Buckhorn was not downtown, it didn’t take Jackson more than five minutes to reach it. A short time later, a nurse led him to a curtained cubicle. Deborah was lying on her side, her eyelids closed, and Jackson asked the RN, “She asleep?”

  Deborah’s eyelids flickered. “No, she’s not asleep. She’s thinking she should go visit friends in New York while she’s shot and can be the queen of dinner parties.”

  Two off-duty State Police troopers helping in the search had given Jackson the details when he arrived at the clinic. A large caliber bullet had nicked Deborah’s ass cheeks as she stood in the stirrups to look around. “Way I figure it,” trooper Grey explained, “some dumbass hunter mistook her pinto for this big liger and shot at it.”

  “They say I’ll need surgery if I want a perfect ass,” Deborah said, laughing. Her words and laugh were slurry. “Told’em I never had one to start with.” High on pain drugs, Deborah prattled on about her failed marriage and ‘the other woman’s’ perfect ass, and Jackson, knowing that she’d regret her words later, quickly left.

  Angie Kuka was waiting for him outside the clinic. “You’ve been avoiding me all morning,” Jackson said.

  “Are you going to fire me ’ca
use of Tucker?”

  “Should I?”

  Angie hesitated. “Tucker’s been harassing me and my … my girlfriend. So I was already watching him, even before you asked me to. I had to be sure it was him.”

  “You still saved his life.”

  “I just told you I’m a lesbian.”

  “Well, guess that explains why you never hit on me. Anything else? If not, get back to work.”

  Angie smiled, got in her car, and drove off. Jackson was still standing outside the clinic when his cell phone rang. He looked at the caller I.D. and saw the Colorado area code. “Gary,” he said, “how’s the fishing?”

  “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Jackson, and yesterday he took the trout somewhere else.”

  Jackson forced out a laugh.

  “So listen. I talked to the Stutz’s closest neighbor, a woman named Marge Merkle-Jones.” Jackson asked Peterson to spell the name. He did, and Jackson wrote it down. “Anyway, this neighbor woman, she sometimes watches their dog for them if they go away. She’s pretty sure they had the little dog with them when they left for Idaho.”

  “Maybe they took him to a vet if he’s sick.”

  “Thought of that too,” Gary Peterson said, “so I called every animal hospital and vet in Grand County and even checked in Summit County. Nobody has Poncho.”

  “Panchutz,” Jackson said.

  “Whatever. Ugliest little dog picture I’ve ever seen.” Jackson thanked him and started to hang up, but Gary Peterson wasn’t done. “That brother of Rene Stutz, I checked him out while I was at it. He’s still locked up in Buena Vista, five big ones to go. He’s definitely Aryan Brotherhood or something like it. But his wife, she packed up and moved to your neck of the woods two years ago.”

  “Idaho?”

  “Somewhere around Rexburg is what I was told.”

  They chatted a few more minutes, and then Jackson tried to get off the phone before Gary could ask him if he had found Jesus yet, and he almost made it but not quite.