Claws (17 page)

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 ’cause 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.

“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.