by Edie Claire
Holy hell. Leigh’s muscles sagged with relief.
“Can I let go of you?”
Leigh nodded emphatically, and the man’s arms gradually loosened.
“Just hold still and be quiet.”
Leigh wanted to protest that she wasn’t an idiot, but since there was some evidence to the contrary, she kept her mouth shut.
The door at the top of the steps creaked. Footsteps started down. The policeman tried to muscle his way in front of Leigh, but their movements made a rustling noise. Leigh winced as the figure on the stairs stopped suddenly.
He had heard them.
Crap.
The tinny, muffled sound came again, and now that Leigh stood mere inches away she realized the policeman was wearing an earpiece. It was clearly not a great one, but the Avalon PD was no SWAT team, either. “He’s got it,” she heard the voice squeak. “Move in!”
The overhead lights switched on. The officer beside her hustled out of the run in a flash. Leigh stood still and watched as the figure on the steps hesitated a moment, then started up, only to be confronted by another policeman at the top of the steps. “Put your hands up!”
Scarface was carrying a kennel in one hand. He made a feint as if he would jump off the staircase and run, but his cause was clearly lost. There were policemen at the top and bottom of the stairs and another by the basement door. “Put your hands up!” all three shouted.
Scarface swore. He dropped the kennel and kicked it viciously the rest of the way down the steps. The officer at the bottom sidestepped the missile and charged just as the other at the top descended. Scarface offered no further resistance as the two cuffed him and hustled him down to solid ground.
“We got him,” the officer by the door reported into his radio.
“Got her too,” another one reported from the other end.
Leigh crept out of her hiding place. Her, too? The officers began to frisk their suspect, and Leigh moved down the corridor on shaky legs. The carrier Scarface had kicked had bounced down the stairs, struck the door of the staff bathroom and careened toward her. The policemen seemed wholly unconcerned with it. But Leigh was not.
“Whatcha doing wandering around a vet clinic, boy?” the police chief questioned their captive. Leigh realized he must have been the man stationed upstairs; most likely hiding somewhere in the kennel room. The carrier Scarface had picked up was the one Leigh had seen sitting out in the floor, holding some kind of sleeping small mammal.
No sound came from the carrier now. No evidence of movement.
“Well?” the police chief repeated.
The accused said nothing. In full light, the injuries to his face looked even more gruesome than in the dark. He also looked considerably younger than Leigh had assumed.
“What happened to you?” the chief continued. “Did you get in a fight with a pair of scissors?”
“It was a beak,” Leigh blurted, unable to restrain herself. The policeman seemed to have forgotten she was there. She was only a foot away from the dropkicked carrier now, and still she could hear nothing from within. She felt a certain amount of empathy for the boy with the ravaged face; his torn nostril would leave a scar for sure, and though the rest of his injuries would heal, they would be painful in the process. But her empathy only went so far.
“The beak of a cockatoo,” she repeated as all four men stared at her. “And its claws. Most likely also a puncture or two from the teeth of a friendly mutt named Lucky.”
“Friendly?!” the boy protested, evidently forgetting his plan to stay quiet. He followed up with a string of rather unimaginative four letter words. “That dog’s psycho!”
“We’re bringing her down,” a voice over the radio informed.
Leigh cast a nervous glance down at the carrier. Through the slats on its sides she could see a tuft of soft brown fur. It was motionless. “You’re the psycho, Jonathan,” she hissed.
“Who the hell is Jonathan?” he snapped back.
Footsteps pounded down the staircase outside.
Leigh squatted by the carrier, opened the door, and braced herself to look in. Wood shavings had scattered everywhere. The dome-shaped plastic house in which the animal had been sleeping was upended in the rear of the kennel. The mass of fur was lying on its side in the front. Leigh put in a hand and gently felt it.
It was cold and stiff.
It was also completely synthetic. Leigh’s heart skipped a beat as she pulled out a stuffed rabbit with large plastic eyes that somehow looked vaguely familiar.
“Aw, man!” the boy roared, staring at the object in her hands with disgust. He followed up with a few more vulgarities just as a fourth policeman walked through the door, guiding in front of him a cuffed accomplice. Her face was partly obscured; wisps of her bountiful, flyaway hair were stuck in the tears that streamed down her cheeks.
It was Kirsten.
Chapter 26
The fourth policeman was followed down the steps by a very self-satisfied looking Maura Polanski. She shot a look at Leigh that was part castigation, part amusement, then threw both hands up in the air. “I knew it would be you,” she said with a smirk, walking over. “They told me an unidentified female had jumped out of a van and sashayed right into the clinic, and I told myself, ‘Of course that’s her. Who else would knowingly barge into a sting operation?’”
Leigh’s face flushed. “Knowingly? What am I, psychic? I just came to get my dad’s phone!”
Maura blinked at her a moment. “Your dad didn’t tell you?”
Leigh groaned. “My dad has been either throwing up or unconscious the entire afternoon!”
“Oh,” Maura said with surprise. “Oh,” she repeated heavily. “Sorry about that. Both the chief and I talked to him, and you were right there with him at the time, so we assumed… I mean, the doc sounded pretty good to me. I had no idea he was that bad off.”
Leigh blew out a breath. “It’s what he does. Like a wounded gazelle on the Serengeti — he can show no weakness. I’m sure he did his best to sound perfectly normal to you, then collapsed as soon as he hung up. He hasn’t said a word to me or my mother all afternoon!”
Maura reached up and scratched her head. “Well, that explains that, I guess.”
“Why didn’t the police just tell me when I got here?” Leigh questioned.
“The guy watching the lot didn’t recognize you,” Maura answered. “By the time they figured out who you probably were, the perp was at the door.”
“So they figured they’d just let me stumble into some potentially homicidal maniac?” Leigh asked, irritated.
Maura smirked again. “You weren’t in any danger. There was no indication the perp was armed, and if it looked like you were getting into any trouble, they would have intervened. But as long as you stayed out of his way, they figured they might as well see how far he’d go. They had him on breaking and entering at the door, but when he picked up the rabbit cage, that clinched it.”
The boy swore again. The police officers had been reading him his rights while Maura and Leigh talked, but he appeared to be listening more to Maura. Now his grisly face swung toward Kirsten.
“It was a setup, you idiot!” he yelled.
“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Kirsten screeched back.
Leigh looked down at the stuffed bunny she still held in her hands.
“That’s Eddie’s,” Maura said proudly. “Cute little thing, isn’t it? Very realistic.”
Leigh considered. It all made perfect sense… in retrospect. Kirsten’s appearances at the clinic might be sporadic, but when present, she did have access to all that happened therein. She had been somewhere in the back when Paige treated Lucky’s bleeding nail and she had been in the room when Olan said he would die if anyone ever stole his prized cockatoo. Even more telling, she could have seen the cockatiel cage at the clinic on Tuesday and known that Randall planned to take the bird home.
But she was just a kid!
Leigh looked at the sobbing b
londe. The teen appeared mortified. But apparently she was not so cowed that she wouldn’t try one last-ditch effort to save herself, even if it meant throwing her boyfriend under the bus. As Leigh watched, Kirsten looked from one policeman to the other and then suddenly assumed a hurt expression. “You never told me you were going to steal the animals!” she accused, blinking at Scarface through mascara-smeared lids.
The boy’s eyes rolled.
“I didn’t know what you were doing!” Kirsten protested, her attempt to sound innocent so fake it was cringeworthy. “You never told me!”
“Yeah, right,” he spat back sarcastically. But then his thin shoulders slumped in resignation. “Whatever, Kirsten.”
“All right, you two,” the chief ordered. “Let’s head back up the stairs. Going to take a little ride to the station now. You can call your parents from there.”
Kirsten sniffed.
Scarface spouted another vulgarity.
The policemen marched them both up the stairs.
“Well, good job Koslow,” Maura said magnanimously, giving her a hefty clap on the shoulder.
Leigh barely remembered to brace herself. She looked up at her friend with skepticism.
“No, I mean it,” Maura said, smiling. “You could have screwed the whole thing up completely. As it was, you were only a pain in the ass.”
“Thanks,” Leigh said dryly.
Maura laughed. “No, really. You stayed quiet and stayed out of it. What more can the Avalon PD ask of a private citizen?”
Leigh continued the skeptical look. Her friend had been possessed by disturbingly good cheer ever since she realized she was going to have a healthy baby at age 43. Leigh kept expecting that the euphoria would wear off eventually, but so far it had not. “I can’t believe you’re smiling,” Leigh said cautiously, “when you know this means my name will appear on yet another police report.”
The detective shrugged. “Hey, at least I don’t have to write it. I’m not even on duty yet, remember?”
The one other officer remaining in the basement approached Leigh. “Sorry about the… er, manhandling,” he said sheepishly. “We were hoping you’d want to keep out of sight, but if you’d bumped into me in that kennel I suspect you would have been too startled to stay quiet.”
“You assumed correctly,” Leigh agreed. “No problem.”
“Can I get a quick statement from you?”
Leigh not so patiently answered the officer’s questions as Maura prowled around the remainder of the clinic. When the technicalities were concluded, the last policeman left and Leigh dropped down on the staircase, scattering wood chips in the process. “Jared will not be happy about the state of this place,” she said tiredly as Maura sank down beside her.
“Au contraire,” Maura said cheerfully. “He’s just like your mother, you know. He’ll clean it right up and then spend the rest of the day telling everyone what a mess it was.”
Leigh smirked. “You know, you’re right. He’ll be thrilled.”
“I’m always right,” the detective said smugly.
Leigh scowled at her. “You could have told me you suspected Kirsten.”
Maura perked an eyebrow. “Me? I never gave the girl a second thought. I barely knew she existed.”
Leigh frowned. “Then how—”
Maura made the annoying smirk again. “Okay, so I’m not always right. Myself. But I’m usually right, because I know who to listen to. Who’s in the right place at the right time noticing all the right sorts of things.”
Leigh considered. “Allison?”
“Incredible instincts, that girl,” Maura praised. “She had Kirsten pegged as a phony from the get-go, but she didn’t leap from that to petnapper. Not immediately. But when we were looking at people inside the clinic, Allison didn’t automatically rule her out just because she was young, pretty, and innocent-looking, either.”
Leigh groaned. She herself had discounted Kirsten, albeit subconsciously, for no better reason than that the girl was so close in age to her own kids. As if a child’s actions, by definition, could be of no consequence. Had Kirsten not been standing right there when Olan mentioned the mango? Allison had remembered that.
“I’ve got to give her credit,” Maura continued. “Allie didn’t like the girl, but she didn’t jump to conclusions because of that. She waited, and she watched. And when I told her you guys had found Zeus wandering around Avalon, she had a different take on it than we did.”
“Oh?” Leigh asked, growing annoyed that it was Maura, and not herself, who had been the recipient of her daughter’s musings.
Maura nodded thoughtfully. “We assumed that Zeus had escaped, just like Lucky did. Most likely because he got aggressive with his captor.”
“Well, looking at the guy’s face, that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Leigh insisted.
“Well, yeah, but Allison was thinking more about how the animals came to be wandering around free afterwards. With Lucky, it makes sense. Kirsten would have known that the dog hated being picked up, and would have certainly told her boyfriend to avoid that. But you know Lucky… he’s good at lulling people into a false sense of security. The petnapper could have lured him with food, put a leash on him, and convinced him to jump in a car. But then what do you do with him? What if he wouldn’t get out of the car? What if he got progressively more nervous and refused to go in a strange house? What if the petnapper used up his treats? You can imagine the guy forgetting all about the warning and just grabbing the dog to hurry it along. Then whammo, got your face. You know what I’m saying?”
Leigh nodded. It was easy enough to picture. “So then Lucky’s free, and he trots right down the Boulevard and back home. Where does Romeo live, by the way?”
“Other side of Bellevue,” Maura confirmed. “But with Zeus, Allison wasn’t buying it. She didn’t believe he’d gotten away.”
Leigh’s brow creased. “Why not?”
“Because he would have been in a cage. Or a carrier. Or something. Olan found fruit on the ground and figured the perp had put fruit in the destination cage, opened both doors, and voila. The bird moved from one to the other and the perp slammed the door.”
“Yeah,” Leigh argued, “but he could have gotten away easily enough the second the door was opened again. They would have to feed him or give him water or something, and he would almost certainly attack.”
Maura smiled. “Exactly. And Allison insisted that Kirsten would know that. That she would know better, particularly after what had just happened with Lucky. No one had to open the door at all. It would be easy enough to slide food through the bars and hang up a water bottle.”
“So what did happen?” Leigh asked, irked that whatever it was that must have occurred to her daughter still hadn’t occurred to her.
“Allison’s theory was that Zeus was intentionally let go,” Maura explained. “Which, if you think about it, could be even riskier than keeping him in the cage.”
Leigh pictured someone putting the carrier on the ground, opening the door, and backing away a few feet. Yeah, right… she thought grimly. Good luck with that.
Cockatoos weren’t stupid. And they had long memories.
“But why on earth would they let him go?” Leigh asked. “After taking such a huge risk to capture him?”
“Because they knew that Olan had spilled the beans.”
Leigh mulled the thought. “They couldn’t have. Olan called my dad at home Thursday night. There was no conversation about it at the clinic; the clinic was already closed. And Kirsten didn’t even come in Friday. She couldn’t possibly have overheard anything!”
Maura shook her head. “She didn’t.”
“Then how could either of them have known that Olan squealed? Kirsten heard him say he would die if anything happened to the cockatoo — I was there. I wouldn’t have guessed he’d take the chance, either. I still don’t think he would have if my dad hadn’t talked him into it.”
“Kirsten knew that Olan called your dad,�
� Maura replied.
“How?”
“Texting,” Maura answered. “Another thing that comes more immediately to Allison’s mind than it would to yours or mine. I mean, we text, sure. But teenagers—”
“I know how much teenagers text,” Leigh grumbled. The picture became clearer. “It was Matt, wasn’t it? He was texting Kirsten, probably about five times a minute all week.”
Maura nodded. “Yep.”
“So he just happened to tell her that Olan called, and that Zeus was stolen, and that the police were going to get involved. And here Kirsten and Scarface—” she stopped and looked at Maura. “What is his name?”
“Shawn.”
“And here Kirsten and Shawn are sitting with a cageful of unhappy, screaming cockatoo that everyone in the North Boros is soon going to be looking for.”
“Exactly.”
Leigh blew out a breath. “So they let him go. Drove him somewhere dark in the middle of the night and just opened the cage door. They wouldn’t have cared if he lived or died at that point, as long as he couldn’t be traced back to them.” She considered some more. “It makes sense, but it’s hardly proof. The bird could have attacked while they were feeding it or moving it from cage to cage.”
“Yes,” Maura agreed. “But even so, it was unlikely they would attempt such a thing outside, as loud as the bird could be.”
“Shawn would have been bleeding like a stuck pig,” Leigh argued. “It could have gotten away from them somehow, whether they intended it or not.”
“Absolutely true,” Maura agreed. “I wasn’t convinced, either. Not until I ran a check on the boyfriend. Turns out he’s a dropout just shy of eighteen, with a juvey record. So Allison proposed a sting operation.”
“Why didn’t she tell me any of this?” Leigh protested. “Why didn’t you?”
“She told me that you insisted this morning that you had enough to worry about just taking care of your parents.”
Leigh frowned. She made a mental note never to say anything like that to Allison ever again.
“And as I explained already,” Maura continued, “I thought your dad told you everything else.”