Night Kill

Night Kill

Night Kill

Ann Littlewood

Poisoned Pen Press

Copyright © 2008 by Ann Littlewood

First Edition 2008

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008923135

ISBN: 9781590585047 Hardcover

9781615951178 Epub

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

THEY CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME (FROM “SHALL WE DANCE”)

Music and Lyrics by GEORGE GERSHWIN and IRA GERSHWIN

© 1936, 1937 (Copyrights Renewed) GEORGE GERSHWIN MUSIC and IRA GERSHWIN MUSIC

All Rights Administered by WB MUSIC CORP.

All Rights Reserved Used by Permission of ALFRED PUBLISHING CO., INC.

Poisoned Pen Press

6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103

Scottsdale, AZ 85251

www.poisonedpenpress.com

[email protected]

Printed in the United States of America

Night Kill is dedicated to my mother,
Pauline E. Parker, who set a good example.

Acknowledgments

This book benefited from the generous help of relatives, friends, writing buddies, and zoo professionals. Thanks, guys!

Especially: Nancy, Pam, Laurel, Lyla, J, the Steves, Jane, Brie, Susan, Mary Ann (Title Consultant), Jim, Cynthia, Christine, Michelle and Joe, Nancy, Marilyn, Dick, Dave, Joe, Liz, Mary, Jill, Sally, Mary Jo, Roland, Ralph, and my wonderful agent, Mollie Glick.

Chapter One

Hot breath from the lioness touched my cheek. Round dark irises in gold eyes, nostrils flaring and relaxing, a complex pattern faint on the black nose pad, the harsh breath of a meat eater. She stood as tall as I, reared up with her big front feet at my shoulder height. She was all about power: massive jaws, thick forelegs, heavy shoulder muscles. Power she’d never used, never run down and throttled her unwilling dinner, never torn it into fragments she could eat. The familiar fact that she was on one side of the wire and I was safe on the other seemed profoundly odd, a peculiar twist in the ancient relationship between our species.

She opened her mouth a hesitant crack. “Good!” I told her and pressed a miniature raw meatball through the heavy mesh. Her rough pink tongue, the size of a washcloth, worked carefully, scrubbing every trace off the wire.

Spice seemed to enjoy these training sessions as much as I did. She had the basics of the contract down—pay attention and she could induce me to produce something tasty. “Up” and “stay” were in place, and I could inspect her front feet and face up close. Soon I’d get a good look at her teeth, after we worked more on “open up.” The near-contact oxygenated my blood with ancestral fear, diluted by familiarity and good steel down to a pleasant fizz. It was the booster shot I needed to face the evening.

I pulled the handle to open the guillotine door. She dropped down to the ground—class over—and padded outside to join the pride. When I got better at training, I’d see what I could do with Sugar and Simba. Spice was easy—smart and willing, fearless, the logical place to start my education.

Past time to leave work. Time to go home. A quick visit to Rajah, the old Bengal tiger, put off the duty. I strolled down the dimly lit cement hallway, passing empty night dens until I reached his at the end. Raj was an elegant slack rug, yellow and black ribs rising and falling. He opened one eye when I made tiger hello noises and didn’t get up. Still mad.

Being late wouldn’t help. Time to go.

I walked through the cool late afternoon of early October to the time clock at the Commissary, nursing Spice’s success like my last bite of chocolate bar. Wet socks squelched in rubber boots, and my back was resentful of a day spent lifting and scrubbing. I swiped my time card and turned away from Finley Memorial Zoo, trudging toward the parking lot, where my good-looking, funny, hard-working husband waited for me. I reached deep to find a chipper smile.

Rick had punched out ahead of me and waited in his new pickup in the employee parking lot. Green paint glowed in the gray light, not yet dulled by road grime. I climbed in and we pulled away from the zoo as light autumn rain started. Windshield wipers gave rhythmic warning that summer was shutting down. We caught Interstate 5, vena cava of the Northwest, and headed south toward Vancouver, Washington. Finley Zoo is several miles north of town, in a once-wooded area yielding to row housing. My real sense of home still resided in Portland, across the Columbia River where I’d grown up, but I had picked up the Vancouver inferiority complex in my two years living here. No, not Vancouver, Canada. Yes, in the United States. Portland’s little sister, just as Finley Zoo was an outdated miniature of Oregon Zoo in Portland. But Vancouver shared the Northwest rain and casual style of Portland, and Finley had lions and zebras as authentic as any other zoo. We flowed with three lanes of traffic past a mix of housing, strip malls, and industrial buildings.

When it became clear Rick wasn’t going to break the silence, I asked, “How’s the snake project with Dr. Dawson?”

“She laid ten eggs last night. They all look good.”

Why wasn’t he crowing to me? He and the zoo vet had worked hard for this, tinkering with diet and temperature. I shoved fatigue and worry aside. “That’s really great. You did the research and made the changes and it paid off.”

“Uh huh. Doesn’t count until they hatch.”

So that topic wasn’t going anywhere. “Any news from lunch?” I’d eaten in the Feline kitchen with my friend Linda Carson instead of joining the group at the cafe.

Rick slid out of his preoccupation. “Denny says this big chicken processor is spreading hoof-and-mouth disease to cattle all over the world so that he can control the protein supply for everyone on the planet.” He gave it to me deadpan, confident of my reaction. “He says there’s a Web site with all kinds of evidence backing it up, but the Feds are going to shut it down any day.”

Denny Stellar, fellow animal keeper, my ex-lover and Rick’s current friend, did not confine himself to conventional reality. “Where does he get this stuff? He has got to be the most gullible and suspicious person ever born.”

“Gullible and suspicious? Way to go, Iris.” Rick fussed with one of many little knobs on the dashboard to get the airflow exactly right.

He didn’t ask why I hadn’t joined him for lunch. He didn’t ask about the cats or my day. I told him anyway. “I’m doing a morning session and an afternoon session with Spice. She’s picking it up fast. We’re having a good time. I wish I’d started this a year ago.”

“Good day, huh?” Rick said, slipping in a blues CD.

“Only the last part. The female clouded leopard isn’t settling in. She’s still awfully timid. Arnie screwed up the routine on my weekend and now she won’t eat until I’m far, far away.”

I supposed, briefly, that it was unfair to blame Arnie Bertram for my troubles since he rarely worked Felines. He was primarily the bear keeper and couldn’t be expected to know everything. But I had left detailed instructions and he had ignored them. “He didn’t do the lions right either. Sugar’s so confused she won’t come in. Wallace said not to feed her until she does. So she’s going to bed hungry tonight.” Count on Wallace, foreman with heart of stone. “And Rajah is in a major tiger-snit because I locked him out of his den and put Simba in there for half the day to get a fecal sample. His den has lion cooties.”

“Yeah. Sounds like a hassle.” Rick tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to Billie Holiday.

The way you hold your knife

The way we danced till three

The way you changed my life

No, no they can’t take that away from me.

After a mile or two of silence, I said, “You’re good at training. Maybe you could come by late tomorrow and watch a session with Spice, give me some pointers.”

“Sure.”

Dial tone. File not found. Please call again during our regular business hours.

I decided my feet would rot if I left them wet another minute. I leaned forward against the seat belt to unlace them. “And my boots leak.”

“We’ll go out and have some fun tonight.” He smiled at the prospect, already there.

We were off the freeway and heading through the outskirts of Vancouver, the north end of town.

I kept my voice light, no whining. “I was hoping maybe we could both stay home tonight. Talk, maybe plan for Christmas or something.” Like we used to, I didn’t add.

“I’d rather find some live music.”

I gave up. “You mean, go out and drink a bunch of beer and feel like shit tomorrow?”

“You can always stay home and watch TV,” he said as we pulled into the gravel driveway. “I’ve got energy for a little action.”

Maybe there’s a reason he’s a reptile keeper, I thought. Maybe he lacks talent for warm-blooded species. No, not that many months ago, the world was rich with small joys and big possibilities when we were together. I remembered thinking he was the best listener ever. Then we married and he got tired of me.

Barefoot, I stepped gingerly across the gravel and up the cracked cement path, a dark green rubber boot and a damp sock in each hand.

Vancouver is a bedroom community for Portland and it’s thick with lovely neighborhoods. This wasn’t one of them. The little rental was a one-story wooden bungalow painted gray. The garage roof sagged and a huge Douglas fir tree waited for the next big windstorm to fall and kill us in our bed. Inside were two bedrooms, a kitchen, one unreliable bathroom, a living room, and two bored dogs. A six-foot wood fence around the backyard was what originally captured my attention, and “pets permitted” in the rental agreement corralled my signature, back before Rick. Then, the house had seemed snug and cute.

Winnie, my tan and gray shepherd mix, and Range, Rick’s black mostly-Lab, were ecstatic to have their pack reunited, and thrilled that once again, we were going to shovel out the kibble. Rick got his beer out of the fridge and headed for the TV.

“Aren’t you going to feed the dogs?” I asked.

He stopped to dispense kibble while I rummaged in the fridge. The dogs licked their bowls to a high gloss, then swapped places, each irrationally confident that, some day, the other dog would overlook a choice morsel. Recovering quickly from the inevitable disappointment, they nosed their way out the doggy door to the backyard.

I dug out leftover drumsticks, probably grown by Denny’s protein conspirator. With mashed potatoes and frozen peas, they rode noisily on the microwave carousel. Rick took some of the peas and added grated carrots and lettuce. These he delivered to Bessie Smith, his green iguana.

We ate in front of the TV—Rick on the good sofa, me on the green recliner—watching the news with the dogs curled at our feet. Rick had his beer; I had leftover coffee.

I stared through the newscasters, unhearing. If we had a quiet evening at home together, maybe we could talk, maybe figure out why the affection and laughter were being swamped by irritation with each other. Maybe together we could find our courage, if courage was what was needed, to see what had turned a wonderful courtship into a stale marriage in a few short months.

I wondered if his drinking was the cause of our joyless relationship or the result. Despair had humbled me; I was ready to take whatever blame was my due. He just had to meet me part way. And soon, because hope was being run out of the territory.

“I’m going out to the Bird and find some people,” Rick said. The Vultures’ Roost was his favorite watering hole. “You coming?”

“No way. I’m beat. And it’s your turn on dishes. Why not stay home?” I wasn’t going to beg, damn it.

“Why not have some fun? They’ve been having live music. You suit yourself—I’m outta here when the news is over. I’ll get the dishes in the morning.” Meaning he’d be back after midnight, stinking of beer and cigarettes.

“You’ve been out every night this week. I’m tired of getting lit. Can’t we hang out together for a change? I thought you’d want to hear that Muddy Waters CD you got in the mail.”

“The CD will keep. You’re tired, I’m not. So you watch TV or go to bed early or whatever. I won’t be gone all that long. They have a new group tonight and I want to hear it.” He flipped a piece of chicken skin to Range.

“Just Range?” Winnie was alert, expecting fair play.

“Give me a second, for Pete’s sake.” He tossed her a scrap.

“You’re going for the beer,” I muttered, getting to my feet.

“Hey, what’s with you? I don’t think I’m the one with the problem. I get up in the morning and do my job.” It was a familiar riff between us, familiar and futile.

I gathered the dirty plates and hauled them into the kitchen, wondering how we always managed to get so sour so fast. If he would only tell me…Lousy sex? Not enough? My cooking? Too much complaining? How did geese and wolves pull off this “mated for life” thing? More legend than fact, that’s how.

After dumping chicken bones into the garbage, I put a plate in front of each dog for pre-washing.

“Hey, bring me a beer as long as you’re in there,” Rick called.

Whatever my failures as a partner, it was clear, beyond doubt or denial, that Rick was far more interested in drinking beer than in being my friend.

I went to the fridge and pulled out today’s six-pack—down two bottles, neither into me. I took the whole thing into the living room and pulled out Number Three. The glass neck fit in my hand, a comfortable heft. I looked at Rick, oblivious in front of the television, and adulthood took a vacation. Winding up like a sixth-grade pitcher in Little League, I hurled the beer bottle across the living room and against the wood front door. The smash was delightful, definitely worth the smell and the flying glass. Both dogs were in the bedroom and under the bed in seconds. I could feel my face flush, frustration erupting into anger, rage drowning worry and loneliness. Bottle Number Four performed as well as Number Three. Number Five was a little wild, hitting the doorjamb, but I was still getting warmed up. Rick was on his feet yelling at me. I wasn’t listening. My arm was loose; I was hot. Number Six was going right over the plate and through that door.

Rick moved fast and grabbed my arm. I like to think that I’m as strong as most men, but he had my wrist in a grip I couldn’t begin to counter. “Are you out of your mind?” he shouted. “You knock that off or you are really going to regret it.”

“Let go of me, you bastard. I’ve already got plenty of regrets.” I jerked my arm free, but he grabbed the bottle away.

I walked into the bedroom, closed the door, and stood there waiting for my vision to clear. The rage drained out. I stood shaking. Through the thin walls, I could hear the hiss as Rick uncapped Number Six. I dumped a pillow out of its case and jammed some clothes in, grabbed my toothbrush from the bathroom. Carefully not looking at Rick, I got my jacket off a chair in the living room. Winnie and Range crowded next to me, worried but ready for a walk. I squeezed out the back door with Winnie only.

999

About a week after the Great Beer Debacle, my best friend, Marcie Altman, came over in the evening bringing cider and dark rum. I’d gone to stay at her place, across the river in Portland, the night I walked out on Rick, so she knew the whole story. Denny had found me at work the following day and told me Rick was staying with him, so I had the house back. I also had both dogs, since Range didn’t get along with Denny’s new dog. That was fine with me. I liked Range and he was good company for Winnie when I was gone. Denny relayed Rick’s request that I feed Bessie, as if I would forget we had an iguana. And there we’d been for a week, me with the dogs at home, Rick camped with Denny.