by Dixie Lyle
Tango. I need for you to ask Augustus a question.
Ask him if anyone gave him something to drink, here at the enclosure.
Tango pressed herself right up against the wire and relayed my question as loudly as she could. After a moment, Augustus weakly raised his head and gave a short response.
Augustus coughed and twitched a little more. In his present state, it was heartrending to see. When he stopped, Tango stayed quiet.
Well? What did he say?
What does that mean?
Tango sounded as frustrated as I felt, and just as worried.
[Caroline is returning.]
Caroline rushed back inside with some aluminum poles and rope. Working quickly, she constructed a head-high tripod with a hook on the top that she hung the saline bag from. Augustus’s tail flicked back and forth a few times, but that was all.
“Is there anything we can do?” I asked.
“Not right now,” Caroline said. “Just keep everyone away from him—can you do that?”
There was no accusation in her voice, but I heard it just the same. She’d come to the same conclusion ZZ and I had. “Yes, of course,” I said.
If only I’d done that in the first place.
* * *
ZZ showed up a few minutes later. I let Caroline fill her in.
“First things first,” ZZ said when Caroline was done. “Foxtrot, stop blaming yourself. There’s no way you could have predicted this and you’re no good to me if you’re moping around steeped in guilt. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said meekly.
“Second, bring Shondra up to date and tell her to keep this quiet. Third, inform the guests that Augustus isn’t feeling well. Don’t say anything about a possible poisoning until we know more. Tell them he needs solitude and to please respect that. Keep them calm.”
“Done.”
“After that, we’ll reconvene in my study—you, Shondra, and me. We’ll talk about what to do next. Go.”
I went. Tango said she was going to stay.
[This is an interesting, if tragic, turn of events,] Whiskey commented as he trotted alongside me. [And difficult to understand.]
“No kidding,” I muttered. “Who gains from this? Every single one of the people here desperately wants to claim Augustus for their own. Killing him makes no sense.”
[Perhaps it’s not about claiming him. Perhaps it’s about denying him to someone else.]
I thought about that. “Maybe,” I said slowly. “If one of the others were convinced Navarro was about to get his hands on Augustus, they might figure he was better off dead than in the hands of a criminal. But that’s a pretty extreme point of view.”
[Murder is an extreme act.]
I couldn’t argue with that, so I didn’t. “Luis Navarro lives in a world of extremes. If he thought one of the others was going to get Augustus, I’m sure he’s capable of killing Augustus just to make sure no one else gets him. But that doesn’t make sense, either—he’s a player, and players don’t give up that easily. I’d expect a few more moves from him before doing something like this.”
[Augustus isn’t dead, though—just sick. Perhaps this is one of those moves.]
Now, that made sense. A threat and a reason to walk away, all in one—who wants to acquire a dying liger? The one who poisoned him, of course, because they’d know Augustus would recover. Risky—but then, someone in Navarro’s line of work was no stranger to risk. I accepted it as a working premise; I’d talk to Shondra about it, see what she thought.
As it turned out, she didn’t.
“There’s no way,” Shondra said flatly. She stood up from her desk and motioned me over to the door. “For one thing, nobody’s come near the liger pen since I installed the cameras but Caroline. For another—well, I want to show you something.”
Whiskey and I followed her out of her office and down the hall. She didn’t say anything until we got to the guest bedrooms, where she stopped in front of Navarro’s door and pointed at its base. There was a tiny silver box there, and another across from it on the other side of the door. “He goes in or out, he trips this,” she whispered. “Simple electric eye. There’s another outside his window.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “And how long have you had this place wired up like a prison?”
She grimaced. “Take it easy—I only just installed these, and they’re strictly temporary. But Navarro didn’t leave his room or open his window last night, and he only left for a few minutes this morning.”
I remember what Zhen said about seeing him in the hall. “Where did he go?”
“I don’t know, but he wasn’t gone long. Enough time for a cigarette, maybe.”
“Sure. Because he’s the kind of guy that threatens people with execution, not secondhand smoke.”
Shondra shrugged. “Social conditioning is a weird thing. I served with guys capable of shooting a human being without a second thought, but who couldn’t pee in front of a member of the opposite sex.”
Which was when the door opened and Luis Navarro stepped out.
He didn’t look surprised to see us. He just smiled and said, “Ladies. What a pleasant way to start the day. Are you my official escort?”
Shondra said nothing, just looked at Navarro with an utterly blank expression on her face that was scarier than anger. It didn’t seem to bother him at all.
“No, Mr. Navarro,” I said pleasantly. “We just happened to be passing by. But while I’m here, there is something I need to tell you.”
“Please do.”
“I’m afraid Augustus is unwell.”
I watched his reaction closely, but he didn’t react at all. He just said, “Oh?”
“Yes. We’re monitoring the situation closely, but we’re asking all the guests to refrain from visiting him while he recovers.”
Navarro nodded, as if he’d expected this. “Of course. I hope he doesn’t have to be transported elsewhere for treatment.”
“Why would you hope that?” asked Shondra.
“I’m just thinking of his well-being. All sorts of nasty things can happen on the open road—accidents, mechanical breakdowns, bad weather. Even hijackings.”
“We’re keeping him on-site,” I said before Shondra could reply.
“Probably for the best,” Navarro said. “Now, how about breakfast? I’m starving.” He brushed past us casually. Shondra did her best to kill him with a stare, but the daggers she was imagining failed to appear in his back.
“I think I’ll join him,” Shondra said. “Suddenly I’m hungry, too.”
“Okay, keeping an eye on him? Good. Ripping out his heart and eating it? Not so much.”
“No promises,” Shondra growled as she left.
Navarro’s response was interesting. His veiled threat was meant to keep Augustus here, which could mean he knew Augustus wasn’t in any real danger—or it could just mean he thought I was lying. He seemed to think this was subterfuge on our part in order to move Augustus to another location—one that presumably we’d keep secret. Or at least he was acting like that’s what he thought.
Shondra didn’t think there was any way he could have snuck out and poisoned Augustus.
I wasn’t so sure.
* * *
I tracked the guests down one by one and gave them the news. They all reacted differently: Karst was skeptical, Rajiv was worried, Zhen looked stricken. Abazu was the one I was most concerned about; I thought he might have some sort of meltdown and insist on seeing Augustus. He surprised me, though.
“I’m sure he will be fine,” Abazu said. He gave me a sunny smile. “He is in excellent hands, after all—Caroline impressed me as being most conscientious and thorough. We must remain posit
ive, and trust to God.”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
Distraction was the best way to deal with worry, so I made sure they were all aware of the estate’s many amenities: the pool, the tennis courts, the private theater with its extensive movie collection, the library, the stables. I promised I’d keep them updated on Augustus’s condition while being deliberately vague about what was wrong—I insisted it was nothing serious—and then went up to my office to do a little research on the Internet.
The things I found out about ethylene glycol were interesting but horrifying. It was odorless, colorless, and sweet tasting. It was first synthesized in 1859, and seemed to have no commercial use until the Germans discovered it made dandy explosives. By 1929 every dynamite maker in the world was using it.
[Interesting but not relevant,] Whiskey remarked when I told him this. [Not unless Augustus spontaneously explodes, which I consider unlikely.]
“My point is that this stuff is pretty evil,” I said. “You know what accounts for over ninety percent of its commercial use today?”
[Antifreeze?]
“No, that only takes up a little more than half. The other forty percent? Production of polyester.”
[I fail to see the connection between polyester and evil.]
“That’s because you’ve never worn a pantsuit in August.”
[Is any of this research going to be useful, or is it simply ammunition to bombard me with trivia?]
“Little of both. The previous ones were trivial, but what I’m about to tell you is important.”
[Then please proceed.]
“Ethylene glycol fluoresces under a blacklight.”
[Since when is light black?]
“Since the nineteen sixties, when they invented rock-and-roll posters. Never mind, I don’t want to explain that. Blacklight is another term for ultraviolet light, which is technology. Easily obtained, easily understood technology.”
[That sounds like good news—but it fails to explain why you sound so smug.]
“Because it’s not supernatural. It doesn’t have anything to do with ghosts or storm spirits or cryptic messages from beyond the grave. Score one for science!”
[So it’s basically a flashlight.]
“Well … yeah.”
[Impressive.]
I paused and looked down at my canine partner. He stared back at me with that extreme skepticism dogs do so well—you know, with the raised eyebrows and the serious mouth and the ears up?
“Shut up,” I said cleverly. “Anyway, ZZ has one. It operates on house current, not batteries, but I can get a long extension cord and run it out to the liger enclosure.”
[Then, by all means, let’s do so.]
I dug the blacklight out of ZZ’s storage room, which was filled with the castoffs of her many varied but short-lived hobbies. You know that warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with all the crates of mysterious artifacts stacked to the rafters? This room was like that, only weirder: scuba tanks stood side by side with rock-climbing equipment; three kinds of bread machines were stacked like little robots on top of one another; a rack of brightly colored boomerangs hung on the wall next to a backpack holding a parachute. There were snowboards, surfboards, and wakeboards, blowguns, spearguns, and Nerf guns. There was high-tech digital film equipment, programmable embroidery machines, and a plastic unicycle. There were specialized outfits for every environment from Death Valley to the Antarctic, and gadgets of every size and description—many of which had never been developed past the prototype stage. ZZ had a weakness for prototypes.
I found the blacklight on a shelf with some electroluminescent wire, two kinds of strobes, and a disco ball. There were several coiled lengths of bright orange electrical cords on the shelf beneath it, and I slung these over one shoulder.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go do some sleuthing.”
* * *
When we got down to the liger enclosure, we saw that we wouldn’t have to worry about power; Caroline already had a cord there. It was plugged into a small, square machine with a built-in screen, and had another cord leading from that to a short plastic wand in her hand. She crouched next to Augustus, pressing the end of the wand against a small, shaved area on his side; Augustus hadn’t moved.
“How is he?” I said, approaching the wire fence.
“I’ll let you know in a moment,” Caroline said. She studied the screen intently as she moved the wand. “I’m taking a sonogram. It’ll tell me how bad the accumulation of calcium oxalate crystals in his kidneys is.”
“And?”
She shook her head. “It’s not good. I’m giving him bolus crystalloids to restore renal function and bicarbonate to reduce the metabolic acidosis, but he’s already hyperkalemic.”
“Can you tell me again and make it less jargony?”
“Sorry. I tend to do that when I’m in crisis mode.” She hesitated, then looked squarely at me. “His kidneys are failing. I don’t know if he’ll pull through.”
“Is there anything else we can do?”
“Other than a kidney transplant, no. And honestly—even if we had one available—I don’t think we have time. I’m sorry.”
“Do what you can.” I showed her the light I carried, a short purple fluorescent tube in a black metal case. “I’m going to be using this to look around, but I won’t get in your way.”
She nodded, but her focus had already shifted back to her patient. She was muttering softly to herself about high blood urea nitrogen, serum phosphorus, and pH blood balance.
I left Whiskey outside. I had no idea where Tango had gone, but she wasn’t anywhere in sight and I couldn’t hear her voice in my head.
I plugged the blacklight in and shone it on the artificial rock basin that served as Augustus’s water dish. To my surprise, it didn’t fluoresce at all. “Huh,” I murmured. There were a few scraps of meat lying a short distance away; I checked them out in case the poison had been introduced that way, but they appeared to be antifreeze-free.
Then I turned my attention to the waterfall pool.
When I shone the UV light on it, it lit up with a ghostly green luminescence. The whole pool was contaminated. It and the waterfall were a self-contained, constantly refiltered closed system, so as soon as the blacklight hit the falling water it glowed with the same eerie light. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t utterly lethal; it was like watching liquid radioactivity gushing from a breach in a nuclear reactor, and just as deadly.
I brought the light around slowly, knowing what I was going to see but still dreading it. It fell on Augustus, and the liger’s whole body fluoresced—not as strongly as the water, but there just the same. I knew why the glow was weaker, and so did Caroline. “Oh, God,” she whispered.
Augustus had gone for a late-night swim. And then he’d cleaned his wet fur off the same way all cats do—with his tongue.
When Caroline spoke her voice sounded detached, like it had broken under the load of emotion and had stopped trying to convey it. “It’s even worse than it looks. Ethylene glycol is also absorbed through the skin. If he was in the pool for any length of time, he would have received a fatal dose without ingesting a single drop.”
And that’s when I noticed Augustus’s chest wasn’t moving anymore.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I guess I should have expected what happened next.
Augustus’s spirit rose from his body. It wasn’t transparent and it didn’t drift up like smoke; it was as if a more vibrant, focused version of Augustus suddenly got to his feet, while a dull imitation remained motionless on the ground.
I gasped. I’ve seen a lot of animal spirits, so I should be used to the incredible colors and internal illumination they give off—the ghost of a peacock has to be seen to be believed—but this was different. He was a white so pure it brought me to tears. He radiated strength and nobility and something deep and powerful I couldn’t define—not until I met his eyes.
Sadness.
An
d then he bounded away.
Toward the graveyard, of course.
I looked down at where Caroline was doing her best to get his heart going again. “Don’t,” I said. “He’s gone.”
She stopped what she was doing, then let out a scream of pure frustration and pounded on Augustus’s body. She did it a few more times, then broke down in tears. I was crying, too.
And then somebody else joined in.
Ever hear a cat cry? It’s the saddest, most heart-wrenching sound in the world. It’s pure misery and loneliness and suffering, and you’ll do just about anything to make it stop. That’s what Tango sounded like; she must have been nearby. I couldn’t tell if Caroline heard it, too, or if it was just in my head.
When I had myself under control, I pulled out my phone and called ZZ.
And then I took the blacklight and began a slow, methodical search of every inch of ground in the enclosure and around it, because I intended to catch whoever had done this and make them pay.
Whiskey paced around the outside of the fence, sniffing the ground. Tango’s keening hadn’t lasted long; I thought she might have chased after Augustus’s ghost.
Neither Whiskey nor I found anything—no tracks, no spots in the fence where someone might have cut their way in. I stopped and stared at the black, rocky peak of the artificial mountain crag the waterfall flowed out of, set into a tall concrete wall, and tried to figure out how someone could have approached the enclosure without being seen by either Shondra’s cameras or Tango.
[I’m not picking up any scents other than guests, staff, or residents,] Whiskey reported. [I suppose any of them could have put the antifreeze in the pool.]
“How? It would have taken a fair amount to contaminate a pool this size, and that’s not exactly easy to do without being noticed. Before the cameras were installed, none of the guests was alone with Augustus; either Caroline or I was always present. And afterward, the cameras would have spotted someone dumping chemicals into the pool.”
[Perhaps they gained access to the plumbing?]
I shook my head. “It’s a self-contained system, like a big version of those little water fountains that sit on your desk. Pumps are inside the crag. If the water starts to run low, you top it up with a hose.”