Donna nodded, understanding. While cougars weren’t exactly rare in North Dakota, they weren’t prolific either. One of the few states that even made cougar hunting legal, North Dakota set statewide limits during annual re-evaluations of the populations. This year, a total of eight animals statewide could be killed by hunters—and any animals that died of natural or accidental causes could not be counted against that limit. “OK, let’s go take a look. I think I need a break from dying cows and pigs anyway.”
She opened the cab door and Alfie, who had stretched out along the length of the bench seat, slowly curled herself into the middle and whimpered.
Donna reached out a distracted hand and patted Alfie’s head. “Yeah, well, I missed you, too, girl. Next time, get out of the truck.” She turned the ignition and headed for Jim Thompson’s farm.
Chapter Thirteen
IN AN AREA OF LARGE, COMMERCIAL ranches, Jim’s place was an oddity. Retired from the railroad industry at 55, he and his wife, Charlene, had bought a modest 200 acres and now raised a few cattle, a handful of horses and a small herd of Nubian goats on about half that acreage. The rest—a series of hills and ravines and one stark white butte—he let be wild, an area he and Charlene could hike out to, bring their binoculars and simply nature watch. They were transplanted urbanites, knowing little about farming or animal husbandry when they’d arrived three years ago. They were learning fast, but most of their neighbors still considered them novices and dropped by often to offer them advice, wanted or not.
Jim was also Chad’s uncle, younger brother to Chad’s now-deceased father, though the brothers had grown up far differently after Chad’s grandparents had divorced when Jim was eight. Chad’s father had stayed on the home ranch while Jim had followed his mother to Bismarck. It was obvious, though, once he’d returned, that Jim had never really left the rural life.
When Donna drove up their driveway, a big red Rhodesian Ridgeback whuffed at them from the front porch, announcing their arrival. Jim came out the front door, waving toward them. “Don’t get out,” he called. “You’ll have to follow me out to the back 50.”
Donna almost regretted making the stop when she realized they were going to have to go through three gates on the way toward wherever the cat was, with Jim having to get out of his truck each time to open and then close each gate before they could move on, and then they were going to have to do it all over again on the way out.
“So much for a quick stop,” she muttered at the first gate, and Chad, seemingly back to his old self, grinned.
Once they were through the third gate, they crawled along through the high scrub and weeds that grew along the base of the hills, Jim apparently looking for where he’d found the remains. At last he pulled to a stop and flashed his emergency lights, the signal he’d spotted the body.
Stands of knee-high grass mixed with succulent broad-leaved weeds waved menacingly in all directions. Visions of chiggers swarming those thin, dry blades had Donna itching already. “Did we bring any DEET?” she asked hopefully.
“Nah, I don’t think so.” Chad made a show of opening the back window and rummaging in the trunk beneath it.
Jim was out of his vehicle and motioning them over to a nondescript spot where the grass had obviously been trampled earlier. From her vantage, though, Donna couldn’t see anything that resembled an animal in the area. “Fine,” she muttered, as she tucked her jeans inside her socks. Not that it would help much. Tomorrow she’d likely be waking up to severe itching everywhere from behind her knees to around her waist to up and down her bikini line. “You can stay in the truck, if you want,” she told Chad in a tone that was at once magnanimous and petulant.
“Nah, I don’t get to see too many cougars.” He opened his door and strode through the grass like a hero.
Donna looked at Alfie, still curled up on the seat and making no move to leave the cab. Her tail thumped softly against the back of the seat. “Smart dog.”
With a sigh of resignation, Donna swung herself out of the truck and picked her way over to where Jim stood, a long PVC pipe in his hands, pushing back grass from the cat he’d found.
“Holy—” Chad had gotten there first. “What the hell is that?”
That reaction was totally unexpected from her laconic tech. Donna hurried the last few steps and peered down. Two things were immediately obvious: It was one damn big cat—and it wasn’t a cougar. Coyotes and buzzards had been at the body and only some assorted bones, fur and the head, minus eyes, were left.
“Looks kind of like a tiger that’s been in the sun too long, don’t it?” Jim said. “What do you think it is?”
“It’s a tiger, damn straight.” Chad took the PVC pipe from Jim and prodded at the remains. “An albino?”
“Its nose is too dark. So are its stripes.” Donna slipped a pair of hemostats from her smock pocket and carefully lifted a flap of fur. “I think it’s a white tiger. Not as rare as an albino but rare enough.”
“Especially out here.” Chad started to roll the head aside with the pipe.
“Wait!” Donna straightened back up and began snapping pictures with her phone, getting the remains from several angles.
“You’ll report it as a natural death, right?” Jim asked.
“I don’t see much reason to report it as anything else. Not that we have to worry about hunting limits on tigers around here. I would like to try to find out who it belonged to. It could be someone’s illegal pet that got away, I suppose. If so, we’ll never find its owner. But if it escaped from a refuge or a zoo, they may want to know what happened to it.”
“How about that place up off of 85—Triple A? Triple U? Triple Something. Don’t they have exotic animals? Someone told me they were running a research lab up there.”
“I’ll check,” Donna promised. “Meanwhile, Chad and I’ll take the head with us and put it on ice while we see what we can find out. Chad, will you get a plastic bag for it, please.”
“If no one claims it, can I get it back? If it ain’t too far gone, I could have it mounted and put over my fireplace. Wouldn’t that make a hoot of a conversation piece?”
“Well, the Endangered Species Act says a private citizen can’t generally sell or even own pieces of dead animals if they’re endangered. But there are exceptions, and you could maybe get a permit for it from the Fish and Wildlife Service given the circumstances. In any case, Chad or I will get back with you and let you know what we find out. And I’ll email you the photos. Why don’t you kneel down next to the head and I’ll snap a couple of pictures. Chad, do you have that bag yet?”
“Sorry,” Chad called from the truck. “I got back here and forgot what I was looking for.” He returned with a thick black plastic bag. “How much do we need?”
“Just the head, I think. If I remember correctly, a tiger’s stripe pattern is as distinctive as our fingerprints. And anyone who’s reputable will have a head shot of the forehead fur of all their tigers.”
Weather, insects and scavengers had begun their work already, and had almost made it impossible to gather the head without tufts of hair falling out or the skin pulling even farther away from the muscle beneath. But Chad, with a little help from the snip of Donna’s scalpel at last got the head clear of the rest of the remains and into the specimen bag. Along with a few cold packs to start chilling it down, it fit perfectly in one of the empty ice chests Donna carried in the truck for transporting various specimens from the field.
“What about the bones?” Jim asked a bit plaintively. “Are they protected, too?”
Several ribs and an entire foreleg were already missing, thanks to the coyotes or neighboring dogs. “Ground tiger bone is a popular ingredient in Chinese medicine, which is one of the practices the Endangered Species Act is trying to curb. So, yeah, the bones are protected, too. But Chad and I aren’t going to be taking any more of the body with us—and who’s to say another predator or two doesn’t come around and carry off a femur or maybe even the pelvis after we leave. I w
ould just hope the predator is discreet about who they tell and doesn’t let any other predator come and cart any more of it away.”
“Scout’s honor, doc.”
In truth, though, Donna had a greater worry than whether Jim would be true to his word. As she trudged back to the truck through the tall—possibly chigger-infested—grass, she was much more concerned about just how much she would be itching come morning.
Chapter Fourteen
SIX WEEKS TO PLAN, market and execute an event at Triple E would have been a tight deadline at any time. Scheduling a megahunt over two weeks, preparing accommodations and meals for over 100 clients, and finding the resources to handle nearly 450 trophies under current conditions in a remote area in Western North Dakota was a near-herculean effort. But panic, desperation and an undercurrent of fear were great motivators.
Even so, such an operation could not go unnoticed in a county where relatives from out of town couldn’t visit without attracting attention. For nearly ten years, Triple E had been building its facilities and staffing its research and animal care departments under the strictest security. Walt Thurman had even negotiated a no-fly zone over the compound as part of the package when he had first approached county commissioners with plans for a new research facility. Thurman had not publicly disclosed the true nature of the private business, but rather had let speculation take its course. With the size of the compound being erected, some of the residents believed Triple E had something to do with researching new geothermal or solar energy capture techniques. And somewhere had been planted the idea that the name was short for Energy, Ecology and Economy. The large unmarked trucks carrying feed in and out could easily have been carrying equipment parts.
Residents still raised an eyebrow whenever a private jet landed at Williston Airport, but with only one or two clients being entertained at the compound at any given time, activities managed to stay pretty much under the radar. The slow buildup and rollout of the company’s services had gone perfectly to plan. Then the executives had changed track, gearing up for and anticipating taking the company public in just a few months. It was going to be the businessman’s equivalent of thumbing their nose at the research community and blindsiding the competition all at once. Triple E employees had been riding a high of tension and excitement since the plan for going public had been announced. And even though the plan was to move the museum to an area already attracting millions of visitors each year, McKenzie County, North Dakota, would prosper from the fallout.
While planning the “going public” party, Thurman had felt a pang of regret that Triple E wouldn’t be able to provide the area with advance notice that the sleepy little county was about to be awakened with a roar. Now that those plans had been canceled, his main regret was that there hadn’t been time to build at least one decent hotel to help house the influx of clients being invited to take part in the event Helen had decided to bill as Megahunt: The Last Shot.
The promise of cut rates and a deeply discounted hunt in Sector C drew dozens of clients who had been slowly working their way through the Frequent Hunter program where dedicated hunters, unable to drop the millions of dollars needed to hunt Sector C exclusively, progressed through the other two sectors, hunting the menus of exotic and endangered game available. Each kill earned points they could later apply to gain access to the next sector, with a five-kill minimum in each sector needed to advance. For the chance to hunt Sector C years earlier than anticipated, the lure for these hunters was too great to pass up. Calendars were rapidly cleared and travel arrangements hurriedly made to accommodate the megahunt celebration.
For the elite clientele who could afford to hunt Sector C by simply raiding the tip jar or for those with enough accumulated Frequent Hunter points to apply, the anticipation of Triple E opening its museum to the public appealed greatly to their Type A egos. Nonnegotiable contracts stipulated that no animal remains linked to Sector C were to be removed from the compound. Instead, the trophies, mounted and staged, were placed in the onsite museum, with large placards announcing the names of the hunters who had bagged them.
Like for the Sector itself, access to the museum was by invitation only, which served to keep the mystery of Sector C alive. For the monied, however, who could typically buy everything they wanted but who were summarily denied outright possession of their trophies—albeit by their own reluctant agreement—being able to soon brag to the world about their kills proved a sweet lure. And having the opportunity to erect another placard or two among those of their friendly rivals was sweeter still.
By the time the first clients began to arrive in advance of their scheduled hunt times, hunters had been carefully matched to their animals, supplies had been stocked from local merchants, and the accounts manager, Chloe Glenhaven—who had decided to stay and take her chances with the rest of the executive board, especially after seeing the early response they’d gotten—had announced anticipated receipts totaling $39.4 million. Enough to keep the genetics department and research engine running until Triple E started pulling in money from the museum, and individual scientists and board members started splitting profits from lecture circuits and book deals.
It looked as though Megahunt: The Last Shot would neatly accomplish everything Walt Thurman hoped it would. With skill and a bit of luck, it would provide the transition necessary for Triple E to pull a phoenix and come out the other side of their crisis in the strong, competitive position the founders had envisioned for their fledgling venture when the first bricks and timbers had gone up nearly ten years ago.
All that had to happen now was for the brewing storm to hold off just a little longer.
Chapter Fifteen
THE INVITATION WAS THE proverbial straw as far as Sylvia was concerned.
First it was Charles demanding separate vacations so he could indulge in the one activity she had expressly asked him to refrain from. The flirting and the alcohol and the gambling she could—and had—turned a blind eye to. When the reward was a posh zipcode in Newport Coast, California, and the lifestyle to go with it, there was a lot she could pretend not to see. But his need to kill things was not one of them.
Within a month of their hooking up, he’d asked her to fly to Alaska. She’d gone willingly, eagerly anticipating the grand vistas, the flights of eagles and the singing of whales. What she hadn’t anticipated was a helicopter ride that turned out to be an opportunity for Charles to hunt some polar bear.
“We’re up here, he’s down there—just this once, sweetie,” he’d pleaded when she protested, shouting the words to be heard above the whock whock of the copter blades. Just this once was a mantra she’d come to hate over the years. Sixteen of them, to be exact. There was never any once with Charles. If he got pleasure from it, he pursued it. That abandonment—and, frankly, that stamina—was what kept her enamored of him in the beginning. What 22-year-old wouldn’t get a thrill from a 30-year-old man who lived on the edge and picked up jewelry from Saks as often as other men picked up takeout?
After a while, though, the thrill indeed wore off, and Sylvia, to her dismay, realized her husband was one of the most superficial, not to mention selfish, people on the face of the planet. It was her involvement with the local social clubs that pointed out the degree to which her husband fell short of other affluent men in the community. When describing their lives and husbands, other women used words such as cosmopolitan, philanthropic, civic and other charitable terms Sylvia was quite sure Charles didn’t know the meaning of.
If she admitted it to herself, becoming involved in animal rights organizations was not so much a humanitarian gesture on her part, but backlash for and a way to spite Charles’ avarice for hunting.
The second straw was the intern: Charlene. Twenty-three-year-old Charlene. Charlene who was in law school, boning up on business law and, apparently, boning her husband, too. Truth be known, Sylvia, now 38, had grown tired of Charles’ attentions and when the frequency of their lovemaking dropped off, she had felt relief rather tha
n anger. Her days of wearing tiny, diaphanous, slit-down-to-there-and-up-to-here dresses around the house just so she could keep a naturally wandering husband from straying were well behind her. Not that she hadn’t dallied once or twice herself, but her affairs had all been short-lived, meaningless and, above all, discreet.
“A 46-year-old married attorney should have the decency to keep his hard-on pocketed in public,” Sylvia had complained to Charlene’s mother when the two of them had gone for lunch at the Jane Austin Tea Room. It didn’t surprise her when Charlene’s mother politely agreed.
What really rankled Sylvia, though, and was, for her, the third straw, was Charles’ lies. Over the last few years, lying had become a compulsion for him. Whether he had reason or not to lie, he lied. About the affair, about his vacations, about where he’d been that afternoon and who his clients were. About where he’d eaten lunch and how much he’d lost—or won—while gambling. If there was a way to prevaricate, he did. And not just big, grand lies either, but small, insignificant ones too.
“Is that Michel Germain?” Sylvia had asked, inhaling the fragrance of him one morning at breakfast.
“Creed. Black Creek,” he’d answered as he tucked the last of the boysenberries into his mouth.
Later, in his bathroom, she had found an opened bottle of Michel Germain’s Libido on the counter. A hunt through the cabinets and in the trash, however, had not turned up a whiff of Creed—Black Creek, Green Valley or otherwise.
Apparently, Charles had been lying about his business trips, too. The invitation from Triple E confirmed that. The only reason she got it first, of course, was that she’d thrown him out two weeks before while the lawyer drew up the divorce papers. He’d told her he hadn’t been hunting. He’d told her a new business venture kept him traveling twice a year.
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