Did Not Survive (19 page)

Aliens took control of my mouth, and I told the truth. “He thinks it was an apology from his hostile neighbor, the one who slashed his tires. More likely it's because he was asking about alibis the night Wallace was clobbered.”

Marcie reared up on her knees. “He told me he'd stay out of that, then he went ahead anyway? Did you know about this? Did he tell you he was doing this?”

“I have to finish feeding.” I jogged off to avoid any more damning admissions, then hid and waited to be sure she got the van started. She had a little trouble, but got it going and pulled out. Later we would figure out how to get her back into her own car. Later I would figure out how to justify or apologize or whatever for my role in this.

I was exhausted. And, the more I thought about it, worried and angry. I had sicced Denny on Janet, and who knew better how to get a zoo employee fired? No one would savor it more. She wasn't getting away with this bullshit.

I slammed through the last of my work and enlisted Hap for security. He followed me on his Harley to Janet's house. I would guilt-trip her into going to the police and clearing Calvin. I would also tell her to back off from Denny or she'd be short more than a few tires herself. This wasn't much of a plan, but it beat simmering in fury.

She wasn't home. The house was dark, no car in the driveway. I knocked on the neighbor's door, and a chunky woman with frizzy hair opened it. I said I was a friend of Janet's and needed to talk to her about a job opportunity. The neighbor wasn't the least suspicious, possibly because of my zoo uniform and baby bump. She told me that she'd seen Janet loading kids and suitcases into her car the morning of the day before. No, she had no idea where they had gone. Janet wasn't neighborly. What kind of job was it? A good one? Her brother had been laid off from his cooking job, and if Janet wasn't available…

I backed away, mumbling explanations, and she gave up on me and shut the door. She never noticed Hap and his bike. I sat inside my car with the window rolled down so he and I could consult. What the hell was Janet up to? Hap agreed it was looking as if she really did kill Wallace and had lit out for the tall and uncut. Did she think this was her opportunity for a getaway, before the police figured out Calvin wasn't the killer? Or did she even know her father had confessed? We talked, gave up, and went home our separate ways.

As soon as I got home, I checked in with Marcie. Denny was recovering at her apartment and considered the whole event a misunderstanding. He was sure the neighbor was trying to be extra nice by loading the brownie. Marcie thought that he would be competent to drive her to get her car in a few more hours. She also said, “We have to talk. Tomorrow after work?” I put her off, saying I was supposed to be at my folks and would get back to her.

I hung up and sat wondering what my world was coming to that I would lie to my best friend to avoid talking to her. Before I came up with an answer, Linda called and I knew at “hello” that it wasn't good. I changed gears with an effort. “Calm down. Janet blew town with her kids. I need to think before I call the police.”

“That's not why I'm calling.”

Uh oh.

“Losa killed one of the cubs. The littlest male. Late this afternoon.”

“Oh, no.” Yet another bolt of dismay. “What happened?”

Soft voice, diamond-hard rage. “You know that guardrail in front of the cougars that the garbage truck ran into last month? Maintenance decided to fix it. They decided to jack-hammer the bent metal post out of the concrete so they could replace it.”

“A
jack hammer?
Next door to the clouded leopards? What part of ‘Do Not Disturb' don't they get?” My voice was shrill. I hadn't heard the racket because I was distracted by Denny or shut in the Penguinarium kitchen.

“It's been two weeks. They seem to think it wouldn't apply any more. Besides…,” she paused, “Arnie signed off on the work order.”

She waited until I ran out of bad words. “I was on the way to the Commissary to talk to Hap about the cow bones we haven't been able to get for the lions when I heard the noise. I ran back and yelled at the guys to stop. They shut the thing off. Couldn't have been on more than three or four minutes. But Losa brought the cub out and paced around and up and down the tree trunks, carrying it and banging it on branches. It hung there limp like they do when they're picked up by the neck.”

“Couldn't you get her inside?”

“I tried calling her in for food, but she wouldn't come. I shut the den so she couldn't get at the other cubs and called Dr. Reynolds. She decided that trying to dart her would make it worse. Losa kept putting the cub down, then picking it up and pacing again.”

It was all too easy to picture Losa panicky and unable to settle down. She was a nervous cat to begin with. Inexperienced and rattled, she sought a safe place for her baby and couldn't decide on one. Those super-long canines wrapped around a little cub…“She never took it into the second den?” We'd provided an alternative safe location for just this contingency.

“Not once. Finally she left it and went up to that high ledge and lay there, then she came down and licked it. I went inside and called her. She came and left the cub behind so I went in and got it. It was dead. Dead as a doornail.”

I said more bad words through a thickened throat. “I am going to kill Arnie.”

“No, I'm the Feline keeper. It's my right. You can watch.”

“Is she back in with the other two?”

“Yeah. Dr. Reynolds gave me some kitty tranqs. I put it in a little bit of meat and she ate it. We waited to make sure it worked, and then I let her in the den. She lay down with them and went to sleep. I called a couple of Education volunteers who were on the pregnancy watch. They'll watch on the monitor tonight and call me if she's restless. I have to stay away for a little while.” She went silent.

“Have you talked to Neal?”

“No, he was gone by the time it was over. Dr. Reynolds said she will.” Her tone became iron and rust. “But I do plan to have a word with him myself.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. That's about it. I'm going to bed. Oh, Iris…” She didn't say anything more.

After a bit, I gentled my voice and said, “I'm still here.”

“Thanks for that. Okay, good night.”

Chapter Twenty-two

When I clocked in the next morning, the note on the white board was changed. Now it read “
Neofelis nebulosa
1.1, 1 DNS”. One male. One female. One did not survive. Linda's handwriting. She had come in early and made the disaster public, for all to see and inquire about, as Hap and Denny both did. Denny looked no worse for wear. I told them what Linda had told me. Their reactions were more grim than outraged. We were all dragged down by disaster fatigue.

Denny said, “It'll keep happening. This isn't the third big shift, not yet.”

Hap said, “A bad moon rising. I'm getting afraid to come in.”

I needed an opportunity to talk to Denny in private, and this wasn't it. I didn't want Hap or anyone else to know he had been drugged into incompetence while on the job. Instead, I found Linda and we walked to the Administration building. She went in to have her word with Neal, and I paced outside in a bright, cool morning balanced between spring and summer. A house finch sang a meandering announcement in a rhododendron. Yellow-faced bumblebees worked over spikes of lavender. A ground squirrel rummaged under a dogwood tree. Life busied itself around me, greedy for the season of plenty. Yet only two cubs rooted at Losa's belly where there should have been three. No malice, only stupidity, but what did that matter? Dead was dead, and my heart was constricted by sorrow and anger and immune to joy.

On the asphalt lay a long, inky feather. Our crows begin their molt in June. I held the weightless thing, a primary, the biggest feather a crow has. The surface was split and dusty. I stroked it smooth and clean. The gaps in the vane closed as my finger nail duplicated the bird's bill preening, helping the tiny barbs link the feather together until it lay tidy and united, only a little frayed at the tip. Would life at the zoo ever close up again to a functional unit, the rips in our fabric mended?

Linda emerged, hands in fists at her thighs. “Arnie's not to blame,” she said, flat-voiced, emotionless. “It might have died of a birth defect since it was the smallest cub. Losa was only disposing of it. It's instinctive, so she invests her parenting effort in the healthy cubs. We won't know until Dr. Reynolds does the necropsy. The jack hammer probably had nothing to do with it.”

“If the right prince finds the cub and kisses it, will it come back to life?”

“Oh, yes. And chipmunks and happy peasants will dance all around.”

We walked in silence, side by side, until Linda said, “Us girl keepers are
so
emotional.”

“Tell me he didn't say that.”

“No, but he was thinking it.”

“I'm only an ignorant bird keeper, but this sucks swamp water. Wallace wasn't perfect but…”

Linda said, “Yeah. I know. This guy will be running the place for years.”

Before our ways parted, I glimpsed Arnie heading from Bears toward Felines. His chin lifted when he saw us, and his stride wobbled. He stopped and then veered off toward Primates. I nudged Linda. “For some reason, Arnie doesn't want to talk to us today.”

“That moronic tool. I am truly amazed he even understands what he did.”

“We need to find out what spell of protection he's under and then break the magic.”

“Count me in. Can we do boils and itchiness at the same time? Shrivel his proud manhood into a diseased little twig?” She smiled in a way I'd never seen before.

“Absolutely.” A shiver snaked up my spine.

***

As it turned out, it wasn't only girl keepers who were emotional.

Later in the morning, Linda and I took our lunches outside to the benches near the zebras. We'd bought food at the café and chose this area as least likely to be contaminated by Arnie's presence. The old giraffe studied us from above while next door to him llamas lay in the dust like fluffy Inca carvings. We could smell the elephants, but they were on the other side of the giraffe yard out of sight.

Kayla and Hap had followed us, hoping to get the details on Neal's response to the cub's death. Linda delivered the same dead-pan analysis she'd given me. Hap and Kayla started to get excited and rebut this, when Denny found us and grabbed all the air time.

He bounced between rage and bewilderment, hands shooting off in all directions. “Animals do not disappear. That is not how it works. They die, they escape, they get moved elsewhere. You
find
them. Two healthy turtles in a perfectly good enclosure, a terrific enclosure—they do not disappear. They do not.”

“They disappeared,” I deduced.

“
Yes.
I'm out sick for one hour, I come back, and two animals are missing. My area does
not
lose animals. Reptiles does
not
lose animals.”

“A boa got out on Rick one time. I almost stepped on it,” I said.

“
Nothing
got out. The lid was on. The doors were locked. I took the place apart looking for them. They weigh, like, five pounds apiece. They're not
tiny.
”

“Did you tell Neal?” I asked.

“What's he going to do? Put out an all points bulletin? If anybody's going to find them, it's me.”

Linda asked the obvious. “Who finished up at Reptiles for you?”

Denny took a huge breath and let it out. “Arnie.”

“It's gone to his head,” Linda said. “He's a senior keeper now, and he thinks he can do anything he wants.”

“I asked him,” Denny said. “He said they were all there when he left. I don't think he would outright lie.”

“No,” I said. “But he would outright be wrong. You better tell Neal.”

“I did, I did. He said he wasn't surprised they'd vanished—he'd already seen everything here but a volcano erupting in the goat corral. I told him that I was expecting an earthquake, and he threw me out.” Denny finally sat down. “Do I have to tell the guy who bred them? Is there a moral issue here?”

“It was those Asian tortoises you traded…” I caught myself. “…that got out of quarantine last week.”

“Yeah. When I told Neal they were from a private breeder, he lost interest. ‘Donated pets'. He has no clue how
significant
these turtles are.”

We kicked it around, why two turtles would disappear and two remain behind, whether Denny had an obligation to notify the hobbyist who had hatched and raised them, whether they were stolen or strayed. The discussion took our minds off the dead cub and Calvin.

“It's like Rajah disappearing,” Denny said, brooding.

“Except,” I said, “that these are turtles and he was a tiger. And he was dead and these are alive. And he was hidden in a van and these were on exhibit. Other than that, yeah, a lot alike.”

Denny ignored me. He sat on the bench between me and Kayla, staring at the ground, wrists on his knees, frowning.“Some evil force is aligned against Finley Zoo. A malicious entity at work behind a smoke screen. I thought it was one of those big shifts that happen, seismic, a new beginning after the old ways fail. But this is deeper, worse.” He raised his head and braced his hands on his thighs. “We need to hire a shaman.”

“Or a priest to perform an exorcism,” Hap said.

Linda nodded.

“And a good attorney,” I added. “TV news said Calvin was going with a public defender. That's not good. Not a word about setting bail and letting him out.”

Denny said, “Calvin. Proof that the killer instinct is in all of us. When circumstances align—maybe directed by that malicious entity—the lizard brain takes over. We bury primal anger under the cortex, but it peels away in an instant when—”

“Oh, bullshit,” I said. “He didn't kill Wallace any more than I did.”

“You decided to go to the police,” Linda said.

I shut up. I hadn't made up my mind, I was just annoyed with Denny.

Hap and Denny worried at me, Kayla chiming in now and then, like ravens picking over a road kill, until I told them what I thought Calvin was doing.

“That makes more sense,” Hap said. “Calvin's not a hair-trigger dude. He wouldn't lose it and brain someone. I feel like a turd for ever believing it.”

“Take it easy. We're all desperate for answers,” said Linda.

I said, “I keep going back and forth on whether Janet actually could have done it. I talked to her, and I think she hated Wallace enough to kill him. She could figure out how to get into the zoo and the elephant barn.”

Denny said, “It's not like Finley Zoo has changed much since her time.”

Probably true. “But why would Wallace meet her at Elephants in the early morning? How'd she get the jump on him? It's possible, but it's a long shot. The important thing is that Calvin didn't do it, and that he thinks she did.”

“It's not going to do any good to talk to the bacon,” Hap said, “especially if all you have is a guess.”

“What else can we do?” Linda said. “Pick someone, truss them up, and claim that's the murderer?”

Nobody had a better idea.

“Give it a try,” Hap said. “This is bad. Calvin's not the right kind of tough for prison.”

***

Talking to Quintana. What did I have to offer except opinions and theories? No keen insider perspective, no stunning new information. Nothing to support the possibility that Janet was guilty, her or anyone else. Such as the rumored person possibly seen when and where they shouldn't have been, behind the elephant barn in the early morning. Which made me realize I hadn't been thorough, hadn't looked into that properly.

I hit the time clock a few minutes early and lurked until Denny showed up. We walked together toward the parking lot in relative privacy. “Look,” I said, “that brownie was no accident. You need to be careful.”

He stopped walking, surprised. “Nah, it was just a present. I should have noticed it was loaded, but I was busy working. An apology, like the note said. Nobody slashed a tire today.”

“Denny, this person made a hash brownie, bought a store brownie, opened up the package, substituted the brownie, and re-sealed it. That's not how anybody apologizes. You need to be careful. Someone's trying to get you fired.”

He stared into the distance with his head bobbing in a turtle sort of way. “Yeah, yeah. I see what you mean. The hidden force I was talking about. Something lurking. Like that Dale guy that hangs with Thor. I get really bad vibes off him.”

Dale was indeed a possibility. “You'd better quit asking about alibis. Marcie's on the rampage about it, for one thing.”

Denny's wheels turned. “It could still be the neighbor. I turned in this guy down the road for leaving his dog chained up outside with no shelter. That was a couple months ago, but he maybe found out recently it was me.”

“Whatever. Someone's after you. Watch your back.”

“Right.”

“And make up with Marcie.”

“It could be this guy from the comics convention in May. He was seriously misinformed about Dark Horse comics, and I told him…”

I sighed, got into my car, and left him standing alone in the parking lot still searching for possibilities. Instead of taking the direct route to the freeway and home, I took a back road, circling the zoo, winding among a patchwork of open fields, isolated houses, and new subdivisions. At a weedy field with a few scrubby hawthorns, I pulled the Honda onto a strip of mud rutted with old tire tracks and parked. The slam of the driver's door was loud in the quiet afternoon.

I stepped away from the car into the field and slowly turned 360 degrees. If someone had figured out how to break into the zoo from the back, he or she had to start from somewhere near here.

Between the zoo and the road lay a strip of land that was roughly plowed, with weeds pioneering here and there. Beer cans and a scattering of cigarette butts showed that people hung out here to drink, although the field had no amenities except a backside view of the zoo. The other side of the road was also a field, but it bore a for-sale sign indicating that the land was suitable for development. Beyond that, on a slope in the near distance, the bones of new housing jutted skyward, a row of ten identical roof peaks above ten matching skeletons waiting for sheetrock and siding. No one was working there on a Saturday. The afternoon sun filtered through an even cloud cover, the light vague and glaring. I didn't see another soul.

Hiking over rough ground brought me to the zoo's perimeter fence. Turning left, I walked along it a good distance until it intersected a barb wire fence with “No Trespassing” signs guarding a field plowed into neat, weedless ridges. Whether a crop was planted and not yet up, I couldn't tell. A robin called, distressed at my intrusion. In the distance the freeway imitated the sound of wind in trees. Scrubby clover bloomed yellow underfoot.

I'd never seen the aviary or waterfowl pond from this perspective. I hung my hands on the fence above my shoulders and studied the zoo from the outside. Trash had accumulated inside the perimeter fence where it wasn't obvious from the zoo side. Mallards quacked, unhappy to be stalked.

The fence looked tight except for a spot where water running off the field had undermined it. This was the traditional entrance point for hooligans. The gap was filled with a knot of barbed wire that would require gloves and heavy clippers to remove. Calvin would be pleased.

I turned around and walked back the way I'd come, past the car and along the fence until I was stopped again, this time by hawthorn trees infested with Himalayan blackberries. I was shunted away from the fence to get around the thicket. The ground was littered with a faded pizza box, wrappings from hamburgers, plastic bags of various sorts, and a sleeping bag. I checked out the sleeping bag, poking it with a stick. It was rotted and useless. No one was using it any more.

When I could get close to the fence again, I stopped and studied the tangle of invasive plants. I hadn't noticed the thick old cottonwood rising above the hawthorns, ridged black limbs stretching sideways, a relic of what this land did when it was left to its own inclinations. I'd walked beyond the elephant barn, closer to the Asian Experience construction. Concrete pillars rose to my right, I-beams and rebar poking out.