Claws

by Ozzie Cheek

  “Gary,” Jackson replied, after the inevitable question, “I can’t even find Eric Stutz.”

  The next time Jackson phoned the hospital in Rexburg he spoke to Eileen Stevens, Tucker’s aunt. Eileen and Tucker’s wife were waiting for him to be moved from recovery to a private room. Jackson provided Eileen with an edited version of the events in the market that led to Tucker’s injuries. “I need to see him soon as possible.”

  “As a friend or the Chief of Police?” Eileen asked.

  “Tucker’s in trouble,” Jackson said. “But that’s all I can tell you right now.”

  There was a long pause. Jackson could hear her breath over the phone. “Tomorrow is what the doctor recommends,” Eileen finally said. “Give him until tomorrow. Please?”

  Jackson delayed his plans to visit Tucker until the next morning. With his trip to Rexburg on hold, he then contacted the county prosecutor, Bud Spiegel.

  After talking to Spiegal Jackson arranged for Missy to stay overnight or even longer with Jesse and Iris. Then he took Angie with him to make the arrest. Pamela had finished her shift at the town library, and they arrested her as soon as she returned home. Jackson did not cuff her, although he did read Pamela her rights.

  “What’ll happen to Missy?” Pamela said on the way to Jackson’s SUV. Her lips quivered and her eyes were wet.

  Jackson told her what he had arranged, and Pamela thanked him. For a moment he thought she was going to hug him. It was the strangest arrest he ever had made.

  “Can I see Missy? What do I tell her?” Pamela said.

  “The truth, I guess.” He nodded at her Bible. She had a white-knuckle hold on a worn Bible with black, fake-leather bindings. “The truth will set you free, right?” At the police station Pamela was given of choice of being locked in the storage room or handcuffed to a desk. She chose the storage room. After she was locked up, Jackson retreated to his office to wait. The only reason he had arrested Pamela was to make her talk. She knew something about Safari Land; he needed to know what it was. Even so, there were times when he hated his job, and right now was one of them. Four Idaho State Troopers arrived around 3 P.M., and Jackson turned over crowd and traffic control to them. He then sent as many of his people home as he could spare. Everybody needed rest. Angie refused to leave. Then he phoned Major Jessup. When Jackson didn’t reach him in the office, he tried Jessup’s cell phone. Jessup answered after one ring, although he was changing a dirty diaper. “You have a kid, right?”

  “A daughter,” Jackson said. “She’s fifteen now.”

  “Diapers or teenagers, tough choice,” Jessup said.

  Jackson chuckled and thanked him for the troopers.

  “I tried to get you more help. The problem is our acting-governor now wants troopers patrolling a hundred miles in every direction up your way. He’s scared shitless that some of those cats will get out of Fremont County.”

  “With all the people here,” Jackson said, “he could be right. The hubbub could cause the lions to scatter.”

  “Oh shit,” Jessup said, “hold on while I clean up the mess.” Jackson did and listened to Jessup talking to the baby the way adults always seem to talk to babies. He had done the same with Jesse. When Jessup finished his clean up task, Jackson explained what he wanted to do.

  Thirty-Three

  Jackson knew he should leave. Three times he had promised Katy to explore his land with her, and three times he had cancelled. He needed to check on his Black Angus cattle. He had seen the carrion birds circling their field for two days. He was hopeful that Boots, his quarter horse still out in pasture, had avoided the wild cats. He needed to get Boots into the barn. Even so, when Pamela asked to talk to him, Jackson had Angie bring her to his office.

  “Before you say anything, Pamela, I want to remind you that you have a right to an attorney.”

  “I told you, I don’t want a lawyer,” Pamela said.

  “You change your mind, you tell me.” He turned on a miniature tape recorder and said, “Do you understand you don’t have to talk to me without an attorney present, and if you do, anything you say can be used against you?”

  “It’s God’s punishment I fear, not the court’s.”

  “I need you to answer yes or no.”

  “Yes, I understand. I don’t want a lawyer.”

  “Okay. Then let’s talk.” He removed the necklace found in Dolly’s fist and asked, “Is this your necklace?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Could you reply verbally, Pamela?” he said.

  “I gave it to Dolly. It’s mine.”

  “Can you tell me when and why?”

  “Dolly came to the library about two weeks ago,” Pamela said. “I hadn’t spoken to her in months. If we saw each other in town, one of us would always go the other way. But that day, she wouldn’t leave without talking to me.” Pamela hesitated, her eyes damp. “She told me she was dying, that she had cervical cancer. She said she wanted to make peace with me, that she’d do anything to make amends for the wrong she had caused me with King.”

  “Do you recall the exact day?”

  Pamela shook her head. “But I remember Dolly saying Ted got in a big argument that day.”

  “With?”

  “Fred. Fred Bulcher. Some lawman was there too.”

  “A lawman? I don’t suppose she said who?”

  Pamela shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Go on.”

  “There’s not much more to tell,” Pamela said.

  “How do these wild cats figure into all this?”

  “Dolly wanted to make things right, so I told her to get rid of those cats and stop what they were doing.”

  “So she helped you set them free?”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I opened the cages or told somebody else to do it. I’m still the one that let them out. The ligers are an abomination, a sin.”

  Jackson was stumped for a moment, and then it fell into place. “Dolly freed them?”

  “I don’t know.” Pamela began to cry. “She said if she poisoned the cats, Ted’d know it was her. So I told her somebody would have to shoot them if they got out.” Pamela stopped and blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “I told her I’d open the cages, but she said the cats were used to her feeding them and wouldn’t bother her. I never meant for Dolly or anyone – oh, dear God! – all these people are dead because of me.”

  Jackson gave her a minute to compose herself before saying, “So how’d she get your necklace?”

  “I gave it to her in the library that day,” Pamela said. “To show her I forgave her for taking King away from me. And to comfort her.”

  Christ! Jackson thought, all this over a man.

  Jackson returned Pamela to the storage room. He was still deciding whether to jail her in Rexburg or what to do with her when Angie walked in. “Somebody here to see you.” She stepped to one side, and Jackson saw an older man who looked like a department store Santa Claus in the doorway. “Chief, this is the guy I told you about,” Angie said. “The one snooping around the Cheney house that day.”

  The man held out his hand. “Agent Ted Sands.” Jackson stood and shook hands. “FBI,” sands added.

  Jackson looked at Angie who mouthed “told you,” and before Jackson could ask, Sand’s showed his credentials.

  Jackson motioned Sands to a chair. “What can we do for you, agent Sands?” Jackson said.

  The three of them sat as Sands said, “I see you arrested Dolly’s cousin, this Pamela Yow.”

  “I did. But why’s the FBI care about that?”

  “We don’t.” Sands paused and waited for a reaction and when none came, he said, “Not unless she killed Ted and Dolly Cheney. You see, they were the real targets of this operation. It was never about freeing lions and tigers.”

  Oh hell, thought Jackson. “How do you know that?”

  “Cause Dolly was a CI for us. She was our informant about this group of terrorists you have here.”

  “Terrorists
?” It took Jackson a moment to link the dots. “You mean the Knights of the Golden Circle?”

  Sands nodded. “We’ve had our eye on them for a while. We’re sure they burned that women’s center in Rexburg.

  “The Planned Parenthood clinic?”

  “Those two girls that got murdered right after it happened, one of them worked at the clinic.”

  “The murders were a few months later, weren’t they?” asked Jackson.

  Sands shrugged. “Dolly got ten thousand dollars. The deal was she’d provide the names of the terrorist cell.”

  Jackson saw Angie lean forward in her chair. “And did she? Did Dolly give you any names?”

  Sands shook his head. “She didn’t know their names. So we were working on getting her to turn Ted Cheney. We think the terrorists found out about it and killed them and covered it up by releasing the lions and tigers. Hard to say if a man was shot by the time the lions are finished.”

  “But Dolly wasn’t shot,” Angie said.

  “No, she wasn’t. Maybe somebody let the cats out too soon or – hell, any number of things could have gone wrong,” Sands said. “Don’t take these terrorists lightly.”

  “How long had Dolly been your CI?”

  “A few months,” Sands told Jackson.

  Jackson was pissed that the FBI was investigating people in his town and keeping it a secret, but he kept his feeling to himself. Sands stayed another twenty minutes, revealing just enough that Jackson and Angie could fill in the rest for themselves: Dolly was afraid the members of the anti-government group would harm Ted for leaving them, and since Ted was desperate for money to keep Safari Land going, she had turned informant. Sands’ information didn’t tell Jackson who set the cats free, but it did clear Pamela Yow. Jackson released her once Sands left and drove her home. When they got there, Pamela hugged him.

  Katy was wearing her safari gear. A small daypack and the two gun cases were spread on the floor. “You made it,” she said to Jackson as he entered the living room.

  “I’ll hurry and get ready before anything happens.”

  Jackson went upstairs to change while Katy prepared her rifles. She felt guilty that she was not out looking for Eric Stutz. Truth is, she didn’t know where to look. She also knew that her chance of finding Kali and her cubs was disappearing. She would search for Eric again tonight.

  When Jackson returned, outfitted in jeans, flannel shirt, and hiking boots, Katy was loading the .375 with 300-grain Winchester Silvertips, three in the magazine and one up the spout. Then she fed the Model 389 dart rifle a 10 CC Type “C” cartridge-fired dart with a gel collar.

  “The darts contain succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant,” she explained. “A small amount usually works, but then nobody usually tries to tranquillize a nine hundred pound cat. Some people prefer etorphone hydrochloride, but if you prick yourself, it kills you.” She examined the dart gun. “The stuff I use is safe.”

  Katy added water bottles and protein bars to her pack, and since she was carrying two rifles, she gave the pack to Jackson. He had his M4 today, loaded with a full clip of .223s designed to penetrate. He also wore his Glock 21 handgun. After a final equipment check, they set off in toward the field where Jackson had his cattle herd. Halfway there, Katy stopped to examine some lion excrement. “A female lion,” she said.

  “How do you know that?” Jackson asked.

  “A female lion spore is different from a male’s.”

  Jackson smiled. “I’m not even going to ask.”

  “I’m not an expert tracker,” Katy said, “but I’d say there are three, maybe four lions. But they’re not going toward the cattle.” She pointed east. “What’s out there?”

  Jackson thought for a minute and then said, “Aw, hell! That’s where my two horses were grazing.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Boots is still out there,” Jackson said.

  They headed east at a brisk pace. Katy’s eyes followed the ground, but just as often she looked up and around. When Jackson asked her why, she said, “Animals will tell you whether a predator is close. You see a group of impala all looking the same direction, something’s got them worried.”

  “Not many impala out here.”

  “Deer, elk, wolves, antelope, whatever. Anything out here will run from lions except maybe Kali.”

  When they stopped to rest, Jackson leaned the M4 against a dogwood tree and removed the daypack from his back. “You don’t mind me asking,” he said, “what made you become a big-game hunter in the first place?”

  “Took you long enough.” Katy laughed, drank some water, and passed the bottle to Jackson. “You ever wonder why our eyes face forward? Not just human eyes either, but the eyes on every land predator. But the herbivores like deer or cattle, they have side-facing defensive eyes. Fact is, we humans are born hunters. It’s in our genes.”

  “Never cared much for hunting. Faulty genes I guess.”

  “No, they’re not. You’re just a different type of hunter. What you and I both do really is hunt danger.”

  Jackson thought about her words as they set off again. He was still thinking about them when they crested a rise ten minutes later and spotted a herd of white-tailed deer running away. Katy took out her binoculars.

  Thirty-Four

  Kali flicked her long tail at the bothersome Blue Bottle flies swarming around her and licked her muzzle. She could see the prey on the rim of a gully. Unlike the big gray prey she had chased, this prey was smaller and reddish brown. This prey wasn’t running away either. This prey already was dead. Kali had no qualms about stealing another predator’s kill if she could do it safely.

  Predators usually return to feed on a kill until it’s all gone, so Kali inspected a stand of locust trees and the spotty patches of gray rabbit brush and silver sagebrush that grew alongside them. She was looking for movement – a twitch of tail or the flutter of ears – but mostly she listened. Sound carries at 1100 feet per second. The forest slows it down some, but the ears tell most animals a predator is close long before the eyes do.

  When she saw nothing and heard nothing, Kali moved out from behind the bitterbrush where she was hiding. If she used the gully and approached from below, she could be out of sight until she reached the prey. Even then, she would not eat in the open. She would tear off a portion of meat and drag it away. Only when she was safe would she satisfy her hunger.

  “The land drops away sharply” Katy said, rotating her Leupold Camo binoculars from left to right. The Pocatello gun dealer had provided the expensive binoculars.

  “It’s a creek bed. Dry this time of year,” Jackson told her. “Never runs much water now anyway. There’s a gully. Pretty steep in places, but not everywhere.”

  “I see something on the edge of the gully, maybe six hundred feet northeast. If it’s what I think it is, you’re not going to like it. But I can’t be certain from here.” There was a knoll with western red cedars between them and the gully, and the viewing angle was poor.

  Katy gave her binoculars to Jackson. He adjusted them for his vision and found the gully and traveled along it until he could glimpse the downed animal. After a second, he said, “Oh hell! It looks like Boots.”

  Seconds later, Kali leaped over the edge of the gully and pounced on the mare. It was Jackson’s first sighting of the female liger. He saw the giant maneless head and huge body and uttered, “Christ Almighty!”

  Kali clamped her jaws on the mare’s foreleg where the humerus attaches to the shoulder. She ripped away twenty pounds of horsemeat. She slowly looked around, and then tore off a smaller piece of horsemeat and ate it. Her hunger had overwhelmed her caution.

  Katy reclaimed the binoculars and located the giant cat. It was her first sighting of the liger as well. Katy’s pulse raced. After a second, she said, “She’ll settle in to feed for a while. If we get the wind in our face, I might get close enough to dart her.”

  “How close is close enough?” Jackson asked.

  “Un
der a hundred yards, but the closer the better. Kali’s a big cat. The dosage could be tricky.”

  Katy strapped the dart rifle across her back and picked up the .375. She waited for Jackson to gear up, and then without speaking, they set off. Although he was not a skilled hunter, Jackson still realized that Katy possessed a set of trail skills unlike anything he had seen before. Not a twig snapped or a dry leaf crackled when she walked.

  When they were a hundred and fifty yards out, Katy ceased even whispering and resorted to hand signals. In this way she told Jackson to stop and sit. He quietly lowered to the ground. She sat beside him, their thighs touching, placed her lips against his ear, and whispered instructions. Her warm breath caressed his skin and made his groin ache.

  Katy noticed that Jackson was distracted, and she waited until he nodded yes. Then she handed him the .375 and checked the load in the dart rifle. Satisfied, she pocketed a second dart, nodded to indicate it was time to go, secured the .375 to her back, cradled the dart rifle with both hands, and crawled forward on her elbows and knees. Jackson followed her.

  For twenty minutes they crept toward the red cedars on the knoll. When they arrived, Katy unharnessed the .375 and gave it to Jackson. He already had set his M4 aside. She shouldered the dart rifle now and calibrated the scope.

  Kali suddenly lifted her head and licked her bloody muzzle. The liger looked straight at Jackson and Katy and held the look for a long time. Then suddenly whipping her head around, Kali sprang to her feet. Katy’s finger was on the trigger housing when Jackson tapped her and pointed toward two female lions bolting from the brush.

  In the lion kingdom females do most of the hunting, although males help with large prey, but the main role of the male, other than to procreate, is to protect the pride. The male learns to fight, while the female learns to hunt for food. Even so, the female lions charged Kali. Most prey will flee upon seeing a lion’s flash of teeth, the low tail, and the fast charge. Not Kali. She dropped the horsemeat she was eating and sprinted toward her attackers.