Claw Back (Louis Kincaid)

by Parrish, P. J.

  Louis thanked the dispatcher and clicked off. He looked back at the sliding glass door. Elsie Kaufman was still standing there clutching her poodle, staring out at him. He looked up at big clock-sized thermometer on the house. It read ninety-five.

  Fuck this.

  He tore off his tie and blazer and tossed them toward a lounge chair, his eyes still locked on the panther.

  He crept back to the animal and squatted down, about four feet away. Maybe he was too close but he didn’t think so. The cat’s eyes opened for second then closed again.

  “Hang on, cat,” he said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was almost five but the slanting sun was still beating down on the patio full-force. Louis had retreated to the overhang near the sliding glass door with the glass of lemonade Elsie Kaufman had given him. The panther had not moved but Louis could see from his vantage point it was still breathing.

  He heard the click of a gate latch and looked up. Two men in khaki shorts and white short-sleeved shirts had come onto the patio. As they came closer, Louis saw the large patches on their shirts – FWC for Florida Wildlife Commission -- and the radios on their belts.

  “You the officer who called us?” one guy said coming to Louis. The other guy had headed straight to the panther.

  “Yeah,” Louis said.

  “Any idea how long it’s been here?”

  “I’ve been here about forty-five minutes.”

  “What about before that?”

  “No idea. Is it important?”

  “Yes.”

  The guy joined the other ranger. Louis heard the gate open again and a third man came onto the patio. He was stocky but shorter than the others, dressed the same except for a FWC ball cap and big aviator sunglasses. He was carrying a black duffel and went quickly to the panther without a look at Louis.

  “You want the crate, doc?” one asked the small guy.

  “Let me get a look first.”

  The two taller rangers took a couple steps back to give the smaller man room to kneel by the panther. Louis came up behind them and watched as the small guy took a syringe and carefully injected something into the cat’s fleshy nape. The animal gave a slight jerk then laid its big head back on the concrete.

  The guy in the ball cap - Louis figured he was a vet – waited a few seconds then began to examine the animal, running his palms over its fur, moving from the neck and down over the ribs. He then went on to test each limb, gently manipulating first the front legs then the back ones.

  “I think the back right leg is fractured,” he said. “Better go get a board, Jeff.”

  When the vet glanced his way, Louis caught a glimpse of his face beneath the ball cap brim. It was smooth, brown-skinned and boyish. The mirrored aviator glasses glinted in the slanting sun as the vet stared up at him.

  Louis heard the scrape of the sliding glass door and turned to see Elsie Kaufman peering out, the trembling poodle still in her arms.

  “Angel has to poop,” she said.

  “You can’t let your dog out, ma’am,” Louis said, going to the door. “You’ll have to take her to the front yard.”

  “She never goes out in the front.” She pointed to a spot of yellow grass in the corner of the yard. “She’ll only poop over there.”

  “Ma’am –”

  “And she didn’t poop this morning.”

  Louis glanced at the FWC rangers then back at the old woman. “Your dog only uses the backyard?”

  She nodded. “Yes, she doesn’t like to go out on the street because the kids on their bikes scare her.”

  “What time did you let her out here this morning?”

  “At seven. I always let her out right after Willard does the weather.”

  “You told me that you noticed the panther out here only because your dog started barking. Did she bark in the morning when you let her out?”

  Elsie Kaufman shook her head. “She piddled and came right back in. I let her out again right before three. That’s when I heard her go crazy barking. I came out here and when I saw that animal I brought Angel right back in and called nine-one-one.”

  “You’re sure it was three?”

  “Yup. General Hospital was just coming on. I missed the first ten minutes, damn it.” She craned her neck to look beyond Louis. “How long does it take to pick up a dead cat anyway? If Angel poops on my carpet one of you is going to come in and clean it up, you hear?”

  She closed the door. When Louis looked back at the rangers, the two large ones were carefully strapping the panther onto a board.

  The vet zipped up the duffel and came up to Louis. “Thanks for calling us.”

  It was only then that Louis realized the vet was a woman. She had taken off her ball cap to wipe her face and her ponytail had come loose, hanging over her shoulder. When she took off her sunglasses he got a good look at her eyes – large, soft brown and long-lashed.

  “No problem,” Louis said. “Is the panther okay?”

  “He’s really dehydrated. That’s probably why he wandered into this yard, to drink from the pool.” She shook her head slowly. “But how in the hell he got here with that leg is beyond me.”

  Louis had been wondering the exact same thing. Elsie Kaufman’s house was in a dense cookie-cutter subdivision called Lehigh Acres, a good thirty miles inland from the gulf and about twenty miles from the eastern city limits of Fort Myers.

  On his travels from the west coast over to Miami, Louis had seen the big road signs -– WARNING PANTHER HABITAT. But the signs were out on Alligator Alley, the interstate that cut across the Everglades, and that was a good ways south of here.

  “I thought panthers lived down in the Everglades,” Louis said.

  “Most do. But this one’s an Oka cat.”

  “A what cat?”

  “Oka cat. There’s a small isolated population that lives up here in the Okaloachoochee Slough. That’s in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary only about twenty miles due east of here. Bruce is an Oka cat.”

  “Bruce?”

  She had been watching the other FWC rangers and when she turned back to Louis a small smile tipped her lips. “I name all my panthers.”

  “Your panthers?”

  “Yeah. They’re my panthers. All thirty-two of them.” Her smile faded as her eyes drifted back to the cat lying on the board. She looked back at Louis. “I don’t want to lose another one. I better get him back to the hospital.”

  She started to leave.

  “Oh, by the way,” Louis said, “I found out it...Bruce showed up here on the patio between seven this morning and three this afternoon.”

  She nodded. “That’s helpful. His radio collar malfunctioned so we didn’t even know he was in trouble.”

  “So why’d you put out a BOLO for him.”

  She took off her sunglasses. “BOLO?”

  “Yeah, the notice you guys put out to law enforcement agencies that you had a missing panther.”

  “We didn’t send out a notice for Bruce. The panther we’re looking for is a female. Her name is Grace. And she’s still missing.”

  “Doesn’t she have a radio collar, too?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not sending out a signal.”

  The sound of the gate closing made her look away. “I have to go,” she said. “I need to get Bruce to the hospital.” She started away but then turned back.

  “Thanks for staying with him,” she said.

  “No problem,” he said. “I have a cat myself.”

  She gave him an odd stare then walked away, disappearing through the gate.

  Louis looked back at the sliding glass door. The old lady with the poodle slid it open a crack.

  “Can we come out now?” she asked.

  “Yeah, they’re gone.”

  He looked up at the reddening western sky. It had to be past six. Maybe if he hurried he could still catch Mobley at O’Sullivan’s.

  His blazer and tie...

  He turned to the lounge chair to grab them but froze.
The blazer was floating out in the middle of the pool.

  He glanced around but there was no leaf scoop, nothing he could use to retrieve the blazer. For a second he thought of jumping in and getting the damn thing.

  To hell with it.

  The panther was alive. This joke of a case was over. And so were his chances of getting back in uniform.

  He picked up the tie, tossed it in the pool and left.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A soft touch on his face woke him as usual. Louis pushed her away but she persisted. Finally, with a sigh, he opened his eyes.

  “Come on, give a guy a break,” he said.

  Another caress on his cheek.

  He looked down at the black cat sitting next to him. It reached out a paw and tapped his cheek again then sat staring at him until he finally pushed back the damp sheets and got up.

  “Okay, okay.”

  The cat followed him through the bedroom and living room and out onto the porch. He held the screen door open and the cat slipped out. It stood for a moment in the sandy yard then trotted off into the sea oats.

  Louis bent to retrieve the copies of the Fort Myers News Press and the Island Reporter. He stood on the porch yawning, squinting into the shimmering gulf. He went back inside his cottage, pausing to bang a fist on the rattling wall-unit air conditioner. It wheezed and groaned but the air didn’t get any cooler. He switched it off. Blessed quiet filled the small cottage. The only sound was the whisper of the surf and the slap of his bare feet on the terrazzo as he headed to the kitchen.

  As he waited for the Mr. Coffee to drip, he scanned the front page of the News Press but there was nothing of interest. Not that he expected the news about the panther to make the papers. He had dutifully reported his call on Elsie Kaufman yesterday but he had gotten back to the sheriff’s office too late to talk to Mobley. It would wait until later when he went in to get his temporary credentials.

  After he stirred sugar into his coffee and took a quick gulp, he shook a bag of Tender Vittles into a bowl and refilled the water dish. When he went back onto the porch, Issy was waiting for him. He held open the door and the cat came in.

  “That was quick. Too hot for you, too, huh?”

  The cat went to its food, scarfed it down and began to lap up water. Louis watched her, noticing for the first time that she looked thinner than usual. Not that he ever paid that close attention. Issy had been a shadowy presence in his cottage for five years now. He had taken the cat in after she was accidently abandoned by a woman he had been involved with in Michigan. He had never liked cats much, but now, as he looked down at Issy he had to admit he had come to like having her around. It wasn’t like have a dog or something. All he had to do is let her out and in, toss some food in her bowl and pick up the dead lizards she left on his bed. She made no real demands on him. She was the perfect companion.

  He made a mental note to call the vet and picked up his coffee, heading to the bedroom.

  The phone rang, pulling him back to the kitchen counter.

  “Hello?” he said, sliding onto a stool.

  “Mr. Kincaid? Louis Kincaid?”

  “You found me. Who’s this?”

  “Katy Letka.”

  “I’m sorry...who?”

  “Katy Letka. I’m the FWC vet who came to get the panther yesterday.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.”

  “Listen, I know it’s early but this is important. I called the sheriff’s department to find you and they said you’re really a private investigator.”

  “Yeah, I’m on a special assignment with the sheriff’s department for now.”

  “Well, I need some special help.”

  Louis waited, stirring one more sugar into his coffee, wondering what had driven Katy Letka to call him -– a cheating boyfriend, a deadbeat dad?

  “This is about Grace,” she said. “We found her collar early this morning. It had been cut off.”

  “Don’t you have investigators?”

  “We used to have a guy but he got canned in staff cutbacks and he wasn’t very good anyway,” she said. “And this is not the usual thing we investigate. This isn’t normal. Something’s wrong. I think Grace has been abducted. Will you help me?”

  “Abducted? Who would abduct a wild animal?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I don’t know where to go with this.”

  Louis paced slowly around the kitchen. He wanted to help. He had already been assigned to the case -– even though Mobley had probably done it as a joke. But it wasn’t a joke to Katy Letka.

  “All right,” he said. “Where do we start?”

  “I’ll show you where we found the collar. There’s a place in Immokalee where we can meet up -- Juan’s.”

  “I know it.”

  Juan’s Place was a red and white cinderblock bodega favored by the migrant fruit pickers who made up a good portion of Immokalee’s population.

  Louis pulled into the dusty lot and spotted the van with the FWC emblem among the rusty pickups. When he swung his white Mustang alongside, Katy Letka got out of the van. She was wearing the ball cap, a long-sleeved white shirt and khaki pants, the kind with Velcro pockets and zippers at the knees that could convert the pants into shorts with the flick of a wrist.

  Even in his t-shirt and jeans, Louis was sweating by the time he approached the door of her van.

  “I took the liberty,” she said, holding out a tiny Styrofoam cup.

  “Thanks,” Louis said, staring down into the ink-black coffee. “Any sugar?”

  With a rip of a Velcro pocket she produced three packs and a plastic stir.

  As Louis sipped his coffee his eyes locked on the huge vehicle sitting on the other side of the FWC van. With its monstrous gnarled tires and stripped-down frame it looked like an ATV on steroids. There was a large empty cage in the back. One of the two FWC guys who had showed up to rescue the panther yesterday was loading bottled water into a cooler. Like Katy Letka, he was dressed in long pants and a long-sleeved shirt.

  “So where are we going exactly?” Louis asked.

  “About ten miles southeast of here,” Katy said. “In the middle of the Okaloachoochee Slough.” She eyed Louis’s ’65 Mustang convertible. “Your car won’t make it. You’ll have to ride out with us in the swamp buggy.”

  Louis downed the coffee and followed her to the back of the ATV.

  “You might want to put this on over your t-shirt,” she said, holding out a wad of clothing.

  “Why?”

  “Where we’re headed the forecast is ninety-eight degrees with a hundred-percent chance of insects.”

  Louis shook out the wrinkled long-sleeved shirt with a FWC emblem on the pocket, slipped it on and climbed into the back seat.

  The swamp buggy came alive with a roar. The guy behind the wheel turned and stuck out a hand. “I’m Daryl,” he said with a smile. “Better buckle up.”

  About ten minutes outside town, they left the blacktop road for a gravel turnoff and were soon rumbling through heavy brush. Then the gravel disappeared leaving only two ruts in the deep yellow grass. Squat palmetto palms swiped at the sides of the swamp buggy and it was so jarring Louis had to grit his teeth.

  Talk was impossible, so he let his mind wander as his eyes moved over the jungle-like terrain.

  He had been in a place like this once before, a desolate spot called Starvation Prairie, where he and Joe had hunted a child kidnapper. It had been the case that had brought them together. She was a Miami homicide detective, he was a PI. They had ended up lovers.

  Joe...

  It had been easy when she was still in Miami, just three hours away from him across Alligator Alley. But now she was in Michigan and there was more than just miles between them.

  The swamp buggy jerked to a stop. The engine roar was replaced by a silence so thick he could feel the pressure in his eardrums.

  Then came the drone of insects.

  He felt a tug on his arm. Katy was holding out a blue plastic bottle. �
�Here,” she said.

  Louis took the bottle. “Avon Skin So Soft?”

  “Best mosquito repellent on earth.”

  He sprayed his face and neck and jumped down from the buggy. The ground was spongy with pine needles, the air soupy with smells like things were dying all around him. He fell into step behind Daryl and Katy as they pushed through the brush.

  Louis spotted a strip of yellow tape tied around a tree. Katy stopped at the tree and held out a large plastic bag to Louis.

  “This is where we found her collar,” she said.

  Louis took the plastic bag. The collar inside looked just like the one Bruce wore, except it had been cut.

  He fingered the radio unit through the plastic. “Okay, I don’t know much about panthers,” he said. “Let’s start at the beginning. How did you know that it...Grace was missing?”

  “Most our panthers are collared. Every two days, our plane goes up to give us readings on their radios.”

  She glanced up at the heat-hazed sky and wiped her brow.

  “Normally, a female panther’s territory is about seventy-miles and Grace had stopped moving,” she said. “I wasn’t worried because I thought she might be denning.”

  “Denning?” Louis asked.

  “When they’re getting ready to have kittens, they reduce their range,” Katy said. “But then the radio signal went dead.”

  “That’s why you put out the BOLO?”

  She nodded. “Sometimes the radios malfunction. We wanted the rural deputies to keep an eye out for her just in case she was hit by a car. This morning, while we were searching her last coordinates, we found her collar. When we saw it was cut off I knew something was wrong.”

  “Poachers?” Louis asked.

  “There’s only two poaching cases we know of,” she said. “One was a hunter who said he shot the panther because he was threatened. Which is ridiculous because panthers are shy. They stay away from humans.”

  “And the other guy?”

  “Some rich asshole who got drunk with his friends and decided he wanted a stuffed panther head mounted on his wall. One of his buddies turned him in. He’s doing five to ten up in Raiford.”