by Nancy Martin
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Michael asked me.
“Stop asking. I’m fine.”
He pointed the flashlight at the barn. Its dilapidated shape leaned precariously southward. The moon shone down across the broken tiles of the old roof and revealed a gaping hole with a broken rafter poking out. As we watched, a pair of bats flickered out of the hole and disappeared into the sky.
“Hello?” Ignacio whimpered. He stepped closer to Emma.
“There,” I said to Michael. “Shine the light a little farther over.”
He followed my direction, and the flashlight suddenly picked out the criss-cross pattern of a tall chain-link fence. It stood fifteen feet high and stretched far into the darkness.
“What’s that for?” Emma asked. “To keep deer out?”
“Nope, look. Razor wire.” Michael aimed the light higher. “See?”
Emma cursed softly at the sight of coils of dangerously sharp concertina wire fastened to the top of the fence. “What’s back there?”
Nobody suggested we find out, but we all moved forward as if drawn by the same magnet. We followed the tall fence for as much as fifty yards before we reached a ravine where it made a turn and ran along the rocky ledge. Below, we could see the gleam of water and hear it rushing over rocks. We couldn’t walk along the narrow ledge, so we turned back the way we’d come.
And heard a low, long rumble.
“H-hello?”
“It’s okay, Ig,” Emma whispered.
The sound floated to us through the darkness. It reverberated in the air—softly, yet with menace. The back of my neck suddenly prickled, and even Michael froze still as a statue until the sound died away.
“What was that?”
“A motor of some kind?”
“Don’t laugh, but to me it sounded like a great big stomach growl.”
“A growl?” Michael said.
We retreated more quickly than we’d come and at last arrived at the beginning.
“I gotta pee,” Emma announced. “Whatever we heard, it went straight to my bladder.”
Ignacio was also hopping from one foot to the other in the universal language of urinary emergency.
“Go back to the car,” Michael said. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“Okay, hurry.”
Emma grabbed Ignacio’s hand, and they hustled across the grass toward the parked car.
“I’m going with you,” I said to Michael.
“I can go faster by myself.”
“One of the foundations of a good marriage is compromise.”
He smiled in the moonlight. “Okay, let’s go.”
Together, we crept rapidly through a copse of trees, and ended up in the backyard of the house. A patio faced the fence, and a lone plastic outdoor chair sat on the pitted concrete with a bucket beside it. It could have sat there for a day or ten years. Impossible to guess. More trash cans were lined against the back wall of the house.
Here, the fence had a large gate. It wasn’t locked, just latched and tied with a short length of dirty nylon rope.
More than the gate, I noticed the smell. A heavy, moist, dog-kennel smell.
“What do you think?” Michael asked.
“Do you think Kell’s been living here?”
“Check the trash barrels. If he’s been here, he’d have left garbage.”
I hiked across the yard to the large plastic cans and found them all fastened tightly shut and secured with sturdy bungee cords, probably to keep raccoons and other pests from getting into the contents. Risking my manicure, I unfastened one of the elastic cords and pulled the lid off. Inside, I found, not garbage, but dog food. Lots of it. I replaced the lid with care.
Which was when I became aware of the mess beneath the carport. Someone had set up a pair of sawhorses with a sheet of plywood balanced on top. The plywood was stained, and so was the floor. My boots stuck to the dark, sticky substance on the concrete. The smell made my stomach roll.
In one corner of the carport, someone had created a heap of garbage. I looked closer and realized it was a tangle of antlers and animal limbs. Pieces of bone, the leftover bits of carcasses.
I backpedaled out of the sticky carport. The gunk on the floor was blood.
When I rushed back to Michael, he had already opened the gate and was inside the enclosure.
I ran, stumbling in my clumsy boots, across the grass to him. “Are you crazy?”
“Stay outside,” he commanded. “I’m just going to look around.”
“Don’t, Michael, please.”
“There’s another fence inside this one. Like a pen or something. I’ll be okay.”
I followed him. But he was inside, and I was outside. I trailed him as he progressed along the new fence, casting the flashlight upward to note that there was no razor wire here. Instead, the inner enclosure was topped by a kind of chain-link roof. Michael shone the light into the interior pen. Nothing.
Then suddenly, I heard a terrible metal clang and Michael stifled a yell. He cursed, lost his balance and fell headlong into the tall grass. The flashlight flew into the air, tumbling, and went out, extinguished with a crack of plastic on rock.
“Michael!”
I knew he was alive because he began to curse even louder.
“Michael!”
More cursing.
I ran back to the gate, my heart near to exploding in my chest. My hands—cold now and clumsy—fumbled with the latch for a terrible half second before I managed to jam it upward, and the gate squealed open. Inside the inner enclosure, I doubled back, heading for Michael’s now-strangled bellowing. I hitched up the bulky coat and bathrobe and tore through the grass, shouting—I don’t know what, but shouting just the same.
I found him thrashing in a patch of brambles.
He panted with pain. “Jesus Christ, it’s a trap!”
An iron animal trap. Clamped around his ankle and drawing blood. I could see the wet shine.
The two of us tried prying it off, but the thing had snapped shut with incredible force and was now impossible to budge. With my hands, I found the chain in the dark and felt blindly along its length until I located the juncture where the chain had been welded directly to the metal fence post. Only a blowtorch could have unfastened it. Michael sounded as if he was hyperventilating.
“Michael, Michael, I have to go for help.”
“Go,” he said, clenching his teeth to get control of himself. “It’s not so bad.”
But it was.
He didn’t tell me to hurry. There was no need for that. I got up, and ran back toward the gate, toward the car, toward Emma. I pounded along the grass. My breath was coming in sobs. Then my boot caught again, and I nearly fell. I grabbed the fence to catch myself. My cheek slammed against the chain link.
And then I saw it.
His yellow eyes first, and then the unmistakable black and orange mask, the wide mouth, the long, long teeth. A cat.
A tiger. The sleek body striped with orange was unmistakable.
Six feet away from me, with his gaze locked on mine.
And I heard him rumble again—the low, rolling purr of a hungry carnivore.
He took a pace toward me with one enormous paw. His head never moved, but his body eased forward like liquid. His shoulders looked as strong as a bull’s, and his body was nearly as big. He was very, very big.
I could not move. But the adrenaline in my veins was suddenly screaming in my ears. My hands, curled around the heavy chain link, felt like blocks of ice frozen in place.
A tiger.
Then Emma was beside me, yanking my hands, calling my name. The tiger leaped clean off the ground, smooth and silent as a bird, his paws outstretched, his giant claws unsheathed. He soared, growing more enormous, more powerful.
I pulled free and pushed back, taking Emma with me.
The tiger hit the fence just as we hit the ground, safe but nearly hysterical with fear.
The tiger opened his mouth and gave a
kind of scream. Not a roar, but something louder, deeper and even more bloodcurdling.
Then he turned and leaped away, disappearing into the darkness of his prison.
Emma babbled, her hands still locked around my wrists.
“Go see what tools are in the car,” I said. “A tire iron, anything!”
I had just realized Michael had his cell phone, so when Emma took off running for the car, I raced back to find him again.
He was still on the ground, but stretched out on his back, and straining to get as far from the fence as he could manage. On the other side now were two more tigers. Both sets of eyes were fixed on him. One of the animals sat at the edge of the fence, the other paced in agitation.
“Jesus,” Michael said, and it didn’t sound like a curse anymore.
“Emma’s coming. Do you have your phone? Michael, your phone!”
“I dropped it. It’s here somewhere, but—”
The sitting tiger had begun to work her paw beneath the fence. She made hideous, throaty hisses as she clawed, trying to reach Michael’s foot, trapped just half a yard from those deadly claws. The second tiger threw himself at the fence with that scream-roar ripping the night air. They were so enormous, their slashing claws so lethal.
Michael dug backward, trying to stay out of range, but held fast by the trap. The tiger worked her incredibly muscular foreleg under the fence. I could see now why the outer enclosure had been laid with traps. Because the inner fence couldn’t hold the animals.
I fumbled through the grass to find Michael’s phone.
Emma arrived, tire iron in hand. She yelled and used it to bang the fence, causing the tigers to back off for a moment. Ignacio came, too, lugging the car’s spare tire and a tool kit wrapped in canvas. Emma took the tire and jammed it against the fence where the trap was fastened. It provided some protection from the tigers, which were back, hissing and pacing closer and closer.
Michael grabbed the tool kit and struggled to open it. While he scrabbled through the pathetically small objects, Emma wedged the tire iron into the trap. But there was nothing to provide leverage.
“Iggy,” she snapped.
Ignacio obeyed her gesture and grabbed the tire just as one of the tigers hooked a fang into it through the fence. They wrestled, and somehow Ignacio won. He fell down next to the trap, and Emma kicked the tire into place. Together, they jammed the iron into the trap, and I heard Michael gasp back another grunt of pain. He dropped the tool kit.
How they did it, I’m not sure. I was still trying to locate the phone when Emma called to me, and I threw myself down beside Michael to help drag him out of the trap. Emma released the tire iron, and we heard the trap bang closed again.
The tigers followed us along the fence—three of them now, snarling and hurling themselves at the chain link—as we struggled to get Michael back to the car.
At last, we heaved him into the backseat, and I scrambled in with him. Emma and Ignacio climbed into the front seat. We locked the doors and sat panting, stunned and shaking with fear.
Ignacio burst into tears.
“Tigers,” Michael said, sounding amazed.
And then he passed out in my arms.
Emma leaned over the back of the seat to look at him. She shook her head in wonder. “Mr. Lucky.”
Chapter Fifteen
At the hospital, I didn’t faint until the doctors had stopped the bleeding, pumped Michael full of a powerful painkiller and taken him away for an X-ray of his broken leg.
“It’s not a compound fracture,” a very jaunty young doctor told me later when I could sit up and absorb information. “Although that’s what normally happens when a human steps into one of those animal traps. Nasty things, those. I didn’t think they were legal anymore. Where did you say this happened?”
“On a farm,” I said weakly. “We were out walking.”
He looked at my raincoat-and-pajamas ensemble, now a torn, muddy ruin.
“It’s a long story,” I added.
“What about all the other injuries? The bruises? The wound on his chin?”
“He was in a car accident a couple of days ago.”
“Wow. What is he? Cursed or something?”
“It’s a long story,” I said again.
He seemed less interested in my story than in telling me more about leghold-trap injuries. Trauma from leghold traps sometimes caused animals to chew off their own limbs, he told us cheerfully. And he had heard about a dog that sniffed a steel trap that snapped closed around its neck and killed it instantly. In med school, he had watched a surgeon remove the toes of a child who had stepped in a trap set for muskrat.
“Anyway,” the doctor said when the infomercial was over, “there’s no compound fracture here, but it’s a pretty spectacular break that’s going to require surgery. I’ve called about getting him to an OR right away for an open reduction and internal fixation. We’ll install some hardware—a pin and a few screws. Trouble is, we won’t be able to cast it because of the risk of infection to the puncture wounds. So he’ll need to see a wound specialist, who will probably prescribe IV antibiotics for six or eight weeks. And tetanus. He should also have a boost of tetanus just in case—”
I didn’t hear any more. I fainted again.
Emma and Ignacio took me home, and gave me a shot of brandy before seeing me into bed for the second night in a row.
In the morning I felt much less woozy. After a restorative piece of cinnamon toast, I put on jeans and a turtleneck sweater from Target. I packed up Michael’s razor, some clothes and his telescope book. Emma drove me back to the hospital.
We found Michael drugged and sleeping in a private room. Aldo sat on the uncomfortable visitor’s chair reading a newspaper and making a cup of Starbucks coffee last. Instead of his tuxedo, he wore one of his more customary outfits—black sneakers and a red tracksuit, unzipped partway down to show the logo of a weight-lifting gym on a black T-shirt. A gold chain gleamed on his thick neck.
“Hey, little lady,” he said to me as he lumbered to his feet. “Howya doin’? Feeling better?”
Perhaps I was still feeling too emotional. I felt my eyes overflow, and I gave Aldo an impulsive hug.
“Hey! Don’t start that stuff again!” He pulled away, startled, then turned sympathetic when he saw my face. “Hey, the boss is gonna be just fine. Just fine. See? They got him breathing on his own and everything.”
Aldo put a fatherly arm around my shoulders, and we looked down at Michael in the bed. He had electrical leads stuck to his chest and running to a beeping monitor, IV tubes in both arms, and a contraption under his leg that prevented the bedclothes from touching him. He slept soundly. Even with rough stubble and the cut on his chin, he looked young.
“I took the oxygen tube out of his nose,” Aldo confided. “It looked undignified, you know?”
“But if he needs the oxygen—”
“Nah, a doc came in and said it was just a precautionary thing, so it’s all good.” He held up a palm-sized gadget that was attached by a wire to Michael’s IV stand. Aldo poised his thumb over the button. “I been giving him a little jolt of painkiller now and then. Keeps him comfortable. You okay? You had some breakfast?”
“I’m fine, Aldo, thank you. And thank you for coming last night.”
“Hey, you did the right thing, calling me. There was a newspaper guy came by, but I ran him off.”
I hadn’t expected that, but of course reporters would be interested in anything that happened to the son of a known Mafia kingpin. I said, “Thank you. I didn’t want to leave Michael alone, but—”
“But I made her go home,” Emma said. “She was a mess, and Mick wouldn’t have wanted her here like that.”
“Aldo, do you know my sister Emma? Em, this is Aldo.”
“Hey,” said Aldo. “We met last night. Thanks for taking over. You must be the horsey one, not the crazy one.”
“That’s debatable.” Emma grinned. “You must be the knee breaker.”
&n
bsp; Aldo looked humble, but pleased. “I help out when I can.”
While they talked, I put my hand on Michael’s forehead, checking for fever, I suppose, or maybe just to reassure myself that he was alive. His skin was dry and warm to my touch. I had an ache in my chest, and I leaned down to kiss him.
He woke up about half an hour later. He shifted in the bed and squinted at me. His voice was hoarse, but strong. “Tigers?”
I patted him, and he went back to sleep. Aldo went out for more coffee. Alone, Emma and I stood at the window and talked in sickroom murmurs.
“So,” she said. “What the hell? Tigers in Vivian Devine’s backyard?”
“I guess Vivian graduated from collecting house cats to big cats.”
“Very big cats.” Emma glanced at me quizzically. “Puts a whole new light on Penny Devine’s death, doesn’t it?”
“Em!”
“Oh, come on. You thought of it, too.”
I hugged myself and looked out the window. “That Penny might have been killed by tigers?”
“And maybe eaten.”
We looked at each other, and she grimaced.
“Tell me again about the hand you found. Was there any sign…?”
“Of teeth marks? No. Actually, it looked as if it had been—well, amputated. The cut was clean.” I laid my hand karate-chop-style across my own forearm to show her where the cut had been. “It was just a hand and a wrist with a small amount of—I can’t believe I’m saying this—a small amount of arm showing. I noticed the wristwatch and the nail polish, but nothing more than that.”
“Have you called Bloom yet? To tell him about Vivian’s backyard zoo?”
“I tried before we left the house this morning. I got his voice mail, but I didn’t leave a message. I figure he might not believe me.”
“Do you have the cell phone Mick gave you?”
“Oh, heaven! It’s at home on the kitchen counter again!”
