From that point on, the trip devolved from a scenic adventure into more of a wilderness trek. The mist lay heavy between the trees here, and the narrow road became an obstacle course of stones and ruts. Even though I drove as slowly as I could while still keeping Mark in view, my trusty Honda suffered some cruel jounces. It reminded me of an eerie sequence from a horror movie—I saw few signs of human habitation. Once in a while, a mailbox or a dilapidated shack materialized for just a second before disappearing back into the haze. If an actual person had stepped into my path, I probably would have screamed and driven into a tree.
What would possess someone to move out here, even start a business out here? A bargain price on the property, no doubt. An urge to bond with nature. But maybe also a desire for isolation? The need to hide what he or she was really up to?
After about ten minutes that seemed more like hours, we made another turn and pulled into a small, gravel parking lot. It already held a black-and-white patrol car with two cops beside it, a second SPCA vehicle that looked more like a van, and a few people I’d seen at the FOCA table the day before. The rest of us pulled up near them and parked.
Just as I stepped out of my car, I heard someone in the distance shout, “We got him! Damn, I think we finally got him!”
I fell in step with Mark, and we traded curious glances. “Think he means Schaeffer?” I asked.
But two young guys in black SPCA polo shirts emerged from the woods carrying a cage-like trap about four feet long. Barely contained inside was an enormous tan, spotted cat. It snarled at its captors in sharp, explosive bursts, almost like barks, and tore at the wire mesh of the cage with hawk-like talons. The animal must have been fairly heavy, because the two men balanced the trap between them. As they drew closer, I could see the beast had a neck ruff and tufted ears like a bobcat, but lashed a full-length tail more like a domestic cat’s.
Yeah, that definitely could have killed a small dog. In fact, the little boy from the second attack had been darned lucky to get away with just some deep scratches.
The two SPCA investigators set the trap down in the middle of the parking lot, where Naughton met them wearing his regular black uniform, plus short boots and a visored cap.
Even when set down on the gravel, their captive continued to growl and spit. Mark bent as close as he dared. “Is that the demon cat we’ve all heard so much about?”
“Fits the description,” said Naughton, gazing down at the cage. “I don’t know about the ‘demon’ part, but he’s a nasty one. I’ve seen bobcats caught in this kind of trap before, and usually they’re pretty intimidated. They tend to quiet down, waiting to see if you’re going to hurt them. But this guy’s full of fight.”
With perfect timing, the cat let out another mini roar, flashing long fangs I could easily see even from a safe distance. The FOCA and SPCA people clustered around, and one young woman snapped cell phone pictures to document the capture.
“What happens to him now?” I asked. After all, I thought, if this creature had been purposely bred by man, he couldn’t help his unnatural behavior. He posed a greater danger than a normal wildcat precisely because he lacked any fear of humans.
“That’s a tough call,” Naughton said. “Except for the aggressiveness, he doesn’t show any obvious signs of rabies. Unfortunately, the only sure way to make that diagnosis is after an animal has been euthanized.” He turned to one of his assistants, a lanky, acne-scarred fellow. “For now, put this guy in the back of our van, shake some dry food into the cage, and, if you can, slip him a pan of water. We’ve still got a lot more work to do here.”
Naughton led the rest of us up a rise, where we came upon a weathered, dark brown farmhouse, a few decades old but in reasonably good shape. Free-range chickens prattled nearby. As we passed the rear of the house, a Rottweiler-type guard dog sprang from beneath the porch and charged to the end of his chain, barking furiously. The thickness of the chain reassured us all that we could ignore him for the time being.
Raised beds near the house held flourishing herbs of all kinds—no doubt peppermint and spearmint among them. Farther on, we passed rows of larger garden beds, some shaded with fabric stretched over wire arches, others left open to the sun. I glimpsed brilliant heads of lettuce, kale, broccoli, and other leafy greens. Another section combined bush beans low to the ground with pole beans on tall wire supports. Toward the edge of the woods, we passed clusters of berry bushes, one group covered loosely with protective netting—those would probably be the blueberries.
Knowing what I did now about Rick, I suspected Teri deserved the credit for most of this meticulous work, which paid off in the high quality of the farm’s produce. Ironic that even this had been twisted for use in their scheme to acquire Ayesha for their breeding business.
It didn’t surprise me to find a couple of Chadwick PD officers closely inspecting the battalions of healthy tomato plants. They snapped photos and plucked and bagged samples, though seemingly not of any actual tomatoes.
Still, I began to wonder why we’d been summoned here in such numbers and told to bring all the pet carriers we could pack into our vehicles. So far, Schaeffer’s Organic Farm appeared to be—if you overlooked the marijuana—a fairly legitimate business.
Except for one odd thing. Besides the absence of Rick and Teri, I saw no workers anywhere. Surely they employed a few extra people to help them tend and harvest all of these crops.
Mark must have formed the same impression, and called out to Naughton, “Looks deserted. Where is everybody?”
The tall, blond SPCA chief shrugged. “The cops already searched the house. No sign of Schaeffer, so they put out an APB on him. If he had workers, he probably warned them to make themselves scarce.”
“You think he’s responsible for breeding that cat you caught?” I asked.
Naughton nodded. “You’ll see why in a minute. The worst is back here, behind this patch of woods.”
I smelled it before I saw it—the pungent reek of cat urine. It’s particularly strong with unneutered males, and there must have been quite a few up ahead.
Past the trees, we came upon a home-built arrangement of stacked wooden cages. Some were dual-level, kind of an outdoor, Appalachian version of my cat condos. All housed what seemed to be the more rough-and-ready breeding stock: a couple of genuine bobcats, a long-legged exotic that could have been a Savannah, and some burly domestics that might have been feral. A few paced and cried out when we approached, while others cringed in their corners, growling or panting.
The trees provided some shade from the day’s increasing heat, but even so, these natural hunters could not happily sit in their cages around the clock. With Teri arrested and Rick in the wind, these cats had run out of food and water, and their crude litter pans had reached critical mass.
One hungry bobcat rallied enough to snarl at me as I passed. Suddenly, I understood Pete Reardon’s reaction when he learned that Ayesha would be bred to one of these animals. Let’s face it, cat sex is a little rough to begin with. Faced with a male half again as big as she was, with fangs and claws designed to bring down serious prey, the beautiful Bengal would have been lucky to survive uninjured. At the very least, she’d have been badly traumatized, her friendly, confident personality destroyed forever.
I sent a silent message into the ether: Good call, Pete. In the end, you redeemed yourself by sparing her this.
The FOCA volunteers muttered their disgust over the conditions of the cages, and Mark asked Naughton, “What’s in store for these guys?”
“I’ve been in touch with a sanctuary in upstate New York,” the investigator said. “They take ferals and hybrids that haven’t been socialized. Give them something close to a natural environment and treat them like the wild animals they are.”
Near the outdoor cages, we found a type of cat run, also hand-built of wood and chicken wire. It measured about six feet wide and high, and ten feet long. It enclosed a small, boxlike shelter, some shelves, and a long tree limb for t
he animals to climb. None were turned loose in there now, though, and I wondered how often they got even that much exercise.
Finally we reached a small barn, its wood faded over the decades to dull gray. Its door stood ajar, the padlock cut and hanging.
“We broke in here yesterday,” Naughton said. “Good thing we did, ’cause some of these cats are in a bad way. Plus, it needed airing out overnight.”
The outbuilding held stacks of standard wire cages, lined at the bottom with plastic pans. The smell here probably had dissipated a little, or maybe I’d adjusted by now. Our companions from FOCA also soldiered on bravely—probably, doing rescue work, they’d seen worse conditions.
Schaeffer’s breeding operation appeared successful in that the barn housed a fair number of young cats, as well as one new mother nursing five kittens. But Rick and Teri had fallen short in their goals to produce saleable pets, because at least a third of the younger cats appeared to have health problems.
Mark pointed these out to me as we looked over the cages. “Digestive trouble . . . that’s common with hybrids. This one’s got a limp . . . too young for arthritis, so it might be a bone deformity. And see the skin irritation on this female? Probably a flea allergy.”
The mention of fleas made me squirm, and I hoped my pants-tucked-into-boots would give me some protection from those, too. “What about the bald patch on this kitten’s leg?” I asked.
He squatted for a closer look. “Could just be overgroom-ing from stress. Animals can’t stand being shut up for days on end like this. They get neurotic, just like we would.”
The barn upset me even more than the outdoor cages, maybe because these cats seemed tamer and some were less than a year old. Nothing like a sick kitten meowing at you, and pleading with its eyes for help, to break your heart.
With tears coming on, I muttered, “I need to get out of here.”
“Yeah, the smell is really . . .” Mark saw my face, put his arm around me, and took me outside. “I know, it’s bad.”
I realized that, since he’d volunteered to help, he would probably end up dealing with most of these casualties at his clinic.
At that point, Naughton called us together in an open area. “Okay, folks, you’ve seen the situation. My guys will take on the wildcats, since we’ve had the most experience. Becky and Allen, your FOCA team can load up the tamer animals and the kittens. Cassie will give you a hand and provide some more carriers. Dr. Coccia, let us know if you see any animals in immediate distress or that might need to be quarantined for any reason.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Meanwhile, Officer Baylock will keep an eye out, just in case any of Schaeffer’s pals come back—”
A shrill police whistle sounded from the high ground to the west of the house. Officer Baylock raised a finger, signaling us to wait, then dashed off in response.
Naughton also hesitated, no doubt wondering, like the rest of us, what was up.
I really must have been turning into a part-time detective, because I couldn’t resist trailing after Baylock. My curiosity must have been catching, because Mark also came along. By the time we reached that stretch of woods, the officer came trudging back toward us, talking on his radio. We both heard him say something about a “body of a male Caucasian” and a “mine shaft.” I remembered Dawn saying the area was dotted with entrances to old iron mines.
After Baylock hung up, I asked, “It is Schaeffer?”
“There’s no ID,” he answered shortly. When a second officer emerged from the dense greenery, Baylock told him in an authoritative tone, “We need to secure this scene. Detective Bonelli is on her way with the medical examiner.”
I rejoined Mark, who wondered under his breath, “Not another murder?”
By now, the whole animal rescue crowd had gotten sidetracked from its duties and had gathered at the edge of the woods, but Baylock warned us all back.
“The rest of you, go about your business,” he said. “The department is sending out more manpower to search these woods, so it will help if you can relocate the cats ASAP. Meanwhile, keep your eyes open and be careful.”
We didn’t need much more encouragement. It was late morning by now, the mist had burned off as the day heated up, and especially in the shade near the woods, the mosquitoes were starting to bite. We doused ourselves liberally with bug repellent and went to work in the barn.
First, we settled the mother cat and her kittens all in one roomy carrier. Mom looked like a regular domestic with flashy tiger stripes, but the big paws on the kittens suggested they had some wilder genes. At this age, anyhow, they were friendly and cooperative. Maybe if someone hand-raised them carefully, they might make decent pets.
Meanwhile, of course, I continued to burn with curiosity. Who was the dead man? Could it be Rick? Even without ID, Baylock ought to have a photo to work from. Maybe he had been told by Bonelli to keep the details quiet. He might not even know the cause of death yet. Anyway, he hadn’t commented on that, either, except for the reference to a mine shaft.
The cops seemed to be treating the wooded area as a crime scene, but that could be just a formality. Be ironic if it were an accident. If Schaeffer went on the run, fell into an old shaft, and broke his neck.
Most of the tamer cats from the barn came along without much of a fight, though once in a while we had to wrap one in a bath towel just to make the transfer to the carrier. In cases where two buddies had been caged together, we put them in the same carrier.
The four of us were working as quickly as possible, shuttling to and from our vehicles, so we left the barn door open. When I reached into the cage for the year-old kitten with the twisted leg, he turned out to be surprisingly agile. He shot right through my hands, dodged around everyone else, and made it out the door.
“Oops, lost one!” said blond, ponytailed Becky from FOCA.
“I’ll catch him,” I promised. “With that bad leg, he shouldn’t get too far.”
Of course, the silver-gray tabby had done a pretty good sprint out of the barn, so I might have been too optimistic.
He bounded off toward the woods, and I saw the white tip of his raised tail disappear into the underbrush. Still toting a small carrier, I dashed after him. Meanwhile, I fished in my pocked to see if I had any cat treats left. Still one almost-full packet.
I heard voices calling after me, but I didn’t want to give up on this little guy. At worst, maybe his leg could be surgically removed and he still could live a fairly normal life. At best, the deformity wasn’t serious and he’d never be any more handicapped than he was now. All he’d need would be someone kind enough to adopt him. He deserved a better life than he’d had so far.
I tried to make as little noise as possible as I crept through the prickly bushes and entangling vines, and kept an eye out for poison ivy as well as for the lost kitten. This is probably nuts—I’ll never be able to spot him in here. On the off chance that I could lure him to me, I made whispering noises and opened the package of treats. If he wasn’t afraid of people and had been hand-fed before, that might draw him out.
To my delight, the little white-masked face reappeared from under a big bush. At least I assumed it was a bush, though the shape seemed oddly squared-off. Holding out the treats to the kitten, I stole closer. I put some food on the ground and, after he emerged to gobble it, I scooped him up and stashed in him the carrier. Only then did I really focus on the object that had sheltered him and brush away some of the leaves that covered it.
It was an ATV, the kind a farmer or rancher might use to get around his property. This one was a little different, though, than any I’d seen before. It had a pipe framework on top—probably a roll cage—and the exterior sported a camouflage pattern, handy for hunting, I guess. Along with the partial covering of real leaves, this had made it nearly invisible, at least from a distance.
I heard a stealthy step behind me. Before I could turn, cold steel pressed against the back of my head.
A low voice rasped, “Okay, Cassie McGlon
e. You got me into this mess, so you’re going to get me out of it. Or else.”
Chapter 20
Rick Schaeffer and I had never shared a long conversation, but we’d spoken often enough that I recognized his voice. His breathing sounded labored now, though. And although he kept what I presumed was a gun to my head, he didn’t try to hold onto me otherwise.
Breathing hard now myself, I wished I’d followed Naughton’s advice to keep my eyes open. “W-what do you want?”
“First, put that cat down.” When I balked, he shouted in my ear, “Now.”
I stooped to set down the carrier, wishing I knew some clever martial arts move to disarm Rick from that position. But I didn’t have the nerve to elbow him in the groin, and he kept the gun pointed at me. I figured even if I made a run for it, he’d just shoot me.
“Now we’ll go around to the back of this vehicle and you’ll open the cargo compartment.”
I obeyed, but wondered why he couldn’t do this himself. I lifted the lid of the oblong, metal compartment and choked off a shriek.
Inside lay a thick-bodied snake, probably four feet long, doubled back on itself. The rough scales were tan with brown, chevron-like bands. I’d seen this kind often enough in movies and on TV shows to have a gut reaction—I jumped back even before I noticed the segmented rattle at the end of its tail.
But it didn’t move. I realized its triangular head had been nearly blown off, the blood congealing beneath.
“Dead,” Rick confirmed, in a strained voice. “Shot it right after it bit me. See that yellow box underneath? You hafta get that.”
Being an animal person, I’d never had the irrational fear that some folks do of all snakes. In my vet tech training, I’d learned to handle harmless ones. Still, my every instinct rebelled against touching this large, poisonous serpent, though I knew it couldn’t do me any harm. I glimpsed enough of the printing on the yellow box to understand why Rick demanded I retrieve it. So I gritted my teeth, lifted the reptile’s back end, and pulled out the snakebite kit.
The Bengal Identity Page 19