Sector C (8 page)

Mike looked to his boss, Kevin. “I can parse data in the field as well as I can here at the office. I can’t tell a bull from a heifer, but maybe I can run down leads, conduct some face-to-faces or at least recruit some help.”

“It’s three states,” Kevin reminded him. “Where would you even start?”

“The school party was in Williston, North Dakota. That’s just over the county line from where the hamburger came from.
Could be some dairy farms around there, too.”
He grinned. “No wife, no kids, no dog to board — assuming there’s an airport nearby, I could fly out today.”

IT WAS DONNA BAILEY’S THIRD trip to the Spalding Ranch is as many days. Three weeks after his herd had first started showing signs of neurologic
disorder,
Mr. Spalding had lost seven cows. Nine more seemed to be in the beginning stages of whatever was making its way through his dairy herd. 

Standard tests for practically everything in the book had consistently yielded negative results, not just for the Spalding animals but for the surrounding farms and ranches as well. Necropsies validated the symptoms, showing pockets of degeneration, as well as plaque, in the brain tissue and spinal cord. It was clear why the animals were dying, but what pathogen was responsible still eluded Donna and her colleagues as animals in a wider and wider area became afflicted.

The return trips were the ones Donna hated the most. Each call to the Spalding Ranch this week had meant another failure, another cow she was being asked to put down. Even Chad and Alfie seemed subdued by the increasingly depressive situation. The lanky vet tech had been even quieter than normal on rounds today, and the hyper
border
collie lay curled on the seat with her muzzle resting heavy on Donna’s thigh. The dog’s eyes were shut, an occasional shudder rippling through her body as she presumably chased after dream-squirrels.

Even after they pulled up to the barn, Alfie couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to get out of the truck.

Dan met them at the barn door. By the absence of Mr. Spalding, Donna pretty much knew what was coming.
“Another one?”

“’Fraid so.
Thought you’d want to know, otherwise we’d have handled it ourselves.” Dan pointed her inside.

Chad’s phone chimed. “It’s Mrs. Rourke,” he said, excusing himself to take the call.

The cow they’d come to see was down. Not just too weak to stand on her own but laid out flat, her legs stiff and bouncing against the hay-strewn floor.

“Are you going to want to open her up?” Dan asked.

Donna had necropsied the first cow and calf, then another last week. None of them had told her anything she didn’t already know from dozens of necropsies across the county. “No need.”

“I’ll be getting the truck then.”

The truck with the winch, he meant. Donna nodded. He’d drag the carcass out to where he’d disposed of the others, away from live cattle and the hay fields,
then
he’d use a front-loader to dig up dirt to cover her over per county standards.

Chad returned as Dan was walking out, and the vet tech held the cow’s head still while Donna injected the barbiturate into the jugular vein. She placed two fingertips on the cowlick in the middle of its forehead and massaged the cow gently while it died. Not that this cow would care; it was likely too far beyond feeling much of anything by that time. But it was a habit Donna had — a last act of compassion for these gentle animals whose lives were spent in the service of her kind. Then she put her stethoscope to its chest and listened to be sure heart and lungs were truly stilled.

Dan arrived only a moment later, and he and Chad hitched the cow to the winch. The foreman gave Donna a stiff nod as he climbed back into his truck and started the slow drive to the makeshift burial mound.

Donna looked around the empty barn. “How much more of this are we going to be doing, Chad? What the hell
is
it?”

The young man scuffed his boot toe along the floor then kicked the cornerpost of one of the stalls.
“Beats me.”
Donna wasn’t sure if he was answering one or both of her rhetorical questions.

“What did Mrs. Rourke want?” she asked as they walked back to her truck.

“Who?”

Donna looked quickly at her tech. For just a flash, Chad’s brow wrinkled in earnest confusion. He’d obviously heard her clearly enough. And he wasn’t joking with her. “Mrs. Rourke. She called just a few minutes ago.”

Chad stopped mid-stride and his forehead wrinkled again as he searched for that elusive memory. He licked his lips. Then his eyes widened. “Oh yeah, Uncle Jim thinks he found the remains of the cat that’s been killing livestock up by Morris Hanes’ place. He wants you to go have a look. He needs someone to certify it was a natural death so no one gets in trouble for hunting out of season or has it counted against the state’s quota.”

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.

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?”

“
It’s
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.