by Joseph Flynn
So much so they could practically imagine the mountain lion salivating.
But they never saw so much as its shadow.
“One clean shot,” Oliver said in response to Corrie’s calling off the hunt. “Come on, you will-o’-the-wisp sonofabitch, give me one clean shot.”
“They prefer sneak attacks,” Corrie reminded him.
“The bastard’s so close, been doggin’ us so long, it’s gotten very personal for me.”
“Him, too, I think.” Corrie never would have thought she’d say something like that — but at that moment, she believed it. “Listen, tomorrow we can dog him with real dogs. You can come along if you want.”
Oliver kept scanning the trees. “I just might do that.”
Then, being very careful, they walked out of the forest and back to the highway. Even there, they felt they were being watched from the trees. It was only when they got into Corrie’s 4x4 and drove off toward town that they could tell themselves they were no longer being stalked — but even then an ominous tingle played at the muscles of their shoulders and necks.
“I want to thank you for your help,” Corrie told Oliver as she drove. “I know the past couple of days weren’t easy for you.”
“You’re welcome — and they weren’t.”
“We’ll get him tomorrow.”
“Then let’s hope everybody obeys the curfew,” Oliver replied. “Let’s hope everybody’s real careful tonight.”
The deputy chief called headquarters from Corrie’s 4x4 and spoke with Sergeant Stanley. Both men knew the conversation was likely being monitored, and took care to speak elliptically. Oliver recognized the irony of the situation. Cops bugged the bad guys’ conversations, making them speak in code. Reporters eavesdropped on cops, making them use circumlocutions.
“Progress?” Oliver asked, regarding the Cardwell case.
“Chief’s busy with his new reading.”
Colin Ring’s material, Oliver surmised. Didi DuPree hadn’t needed a court order to get that stuff, now had he? But then Didi had wound up as cat chow, and they’d inherited it. Life as it should be, the deputy chief felt.
He’d dearly like to read Ring’s notes and manuscript, too. But after a day of having the mountain lion size him up for kibble, all Oliver wanted now was a warm bath and to see Lauren and Danny. He’d catch up on his reading later.
“Same cast of characters?” Oliver asked, meaning suspects.
“Might be a surprise guest appearance.”
A new suspect? That got Oliver’s attention.
“The chief want me to come in?”
“Hasn’t said so, Deputy Chief.”
“Let him know I want in.” If there was to be an arrest.
“Will do.”
“Meanwhile, I’ll be at home.”
“Ten-four.”
When Oliver broke the connection, Corrie asked him, “Ron’s making progress in the Cardwell case?”
“Maybe. He might have found a joker in the deck.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me the way things are going around here. Nothing ever turns out quite the way you’d expect.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” Oliver agreed.
Then he closed his eyes for the rest of the ride home.
The sun was setting as Ron returned to reading Colin Ring’s manuscript, “Hollow Thunder.” He’d just spoken with Sergeant Stanley about enforcing Clay Steadman’s curfew edict. All pedestrians were to be off the street before dark. Vehicular traffic was to be limited to those going to work, returning home from work or leaving town. The fatal attack last night at Gayle Shipton’s house had been on the fringe of the built-up area of town, as had been the backyard invasion of the Derby house, but there was nothing to say the mountain lion might not venture deeper into residential or commercial areas. The police didn’t want any innocent bystanders in the way if a patrol unit spotted the animal and officers responded with gunfire.
Picking up where he’d left off, Ron was glad that he’d made his breakthrough — found the man he knew in his gut had killed Isaac Cardwell — before he had begun reading. If Ring had things right, Jimmy Thunder had more enemies that he’d have ever imagined. There were other televangelists, both black and white, whom Thunder had demeaned. There were officials of charitable organizations to whom Thunder had promised large donations and then failed to make them. There were former teammates from his pro football days whom Jimmy had publicly humiliated by revealing their personal failings and holding them up to his flock as examples of how people should not behave.
Wading through all those suspects could have muddied the water for years.
But one thing Ring had made eminently clear was the visceral hatred Mahalia Cardwell felt for her former son-in-law towered above the animus anyone else bore him. She blamed Jimmy Thunder for the death of her daughter. And now her grandson.
Even with what Ron had learned, however, he still hadn’t found a motive for why his suspect had killed Isaac Cardwell. It was all that stopped him from going out and arresting the man right now. A hand knocked softly at his door. He looked up and saw Corrie.
“I went back to your place and cleaned up,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
It was the first time they had a chance to talk privately, without distractions, since last night. He still thought she looked awfully young — but he no longer worried about it.
Ron said, “I don’t mind. You clean up real nice.”
Corrie smiled, somewhat ruefully.
“Glad I’m good at something. I certainly haven’t been able to find that lion.”
“You’ll get him tomorrow, when you have the dogs to help.”
“That’s what I told the deputy chief. He went home.”
“There’s a man who knows his priorities.”
“How about yours? They include taking a break for dinner?”
Ron had been sitting at his desk long enough to feel stiff. He was starting to get hungry again, too. And he knew if you pressed too hard at detail work, you just might overlook the one fact you needed most. Sometimes a break was just what the doctor ordered.
Especially when the doc looked like Warden Knox.
Ron stood up, and was slightly dismayed by all the cracks, pops, and creaks he made doing so. He saw Corrie was grinning at him.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll rub some liniment into those tired old bones tonight.”
Ron stepped around his desk to join her and said quietly, “We’ll see who rubs what into whom.”
The moment they drove out of the police parking lot they were both aware how the town was not itself that night. Under the lavender sky of dusk, the curfew had swept the streets clean of strollers, shoppers, and moviegoers. Restaurants were closed. Sidewalk cafes were deserted. All of this on a night when the temperature held steady at its daytime high.
Normally, the temperature in Goldstrike fell appreciably at night. At an elevation of six thousand feet, the heat of the day dissipated quickly. Even in August, the mercury could get down to the fifties shortly after dark. But not tonight. If anything, the temperature seemed to be rising.
“Warm front must be moving in,” Ron said.
Above the mountains to the north of town, heat lightning flashed from fat black clouds stalled over the peaks.
“Rain?” Corrie asked.
Ron sniffed the air. “Don’t think so. Just a hot, sticky night with a few special effects thrown in for atmosphere.”
“Good night to hunker down, anyway,” Corrie said, looking out at the empty streets.
“Yeah. People won’t complain if it’s just one night at home.” Ron concurred. Then he nodded toward the ghost town view ahead of them and said, “It looks pretty eerie, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t surprise me if that mountain lion out there felt the difference and decided to come into town to look things over.”
“The way I felt out in the woods today, it wouldn’t surprise me if we find him under your desk when we get back to your office.”
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“That bad, huh?”
“I keep telling myself that I’m a scientist, a trained professional, an outdoorswoman of considerable experience — and the longer this thing goes on, the less I can relate it to anything I’ve experienced before. I grit my teeth when I think I’m becoming superstitious, but I’m starting to believe not every mystery is susceptible to rational analysis.”
Ron looked at her. “In other words, you’re spooked.”
“You bet.”
He said, “The hotel restaurants have to be open to serve their guests, but that’s not what I had in mind.”
“Me neither.”
“You want to see if we can get a cup of coffee somewhere. Then we’ll drive around, see if we can spot the lion asking for directions to my desk.”
“Sure,” Corrie smiled. “If we see him, I’ll line up the shot and you can steady my rifle”
“As long as I have one hand free to hide my eyes,” Ron responded.
They found coffee but not the mountain lion. An hour later, they’d just stepped into Ron’s office when the phone rang. Ron took his seat and answered on the second ring. Corrie listened in from a guest chair.
“Chief Ketchum.”
“Hello, Ron. This is Jack Telford. I’d like to report a theft.”
A theft? Why had the call been put through to him, Ron wondered.
“Jack, you may have noticed we’re a little busy around here right now. Did you lose anything valuable?”
“A nail,” Texas Jack replied.
Ron didn’t say a word.
“Not worth a penny, in and of itself,” the poker champ continued. “But maybe it’s come to mean a great deal more to some folks.”
“You got something to say, Jack, say it.”
After a brief pause of his own, Texas Jack did. “I was thinking I might have given you the wrong impression the other day. Talking about how Jimmy Thunder owed me all that money, and how I didn’t expect to get it back. What with Jimmy’s poor son being killed so recently, it seemed, upon reflection, I might’ve pointed a finger at myself. What with policemen being naturally suspicious people, anyway.”
Ron responded, “We get a lot more suspicious when we learn a person has a rap sheet. And an unfortunate history.”
Jack’s silence was considerably longer this time.
Finally, he went on, “What I did, Ron, was think about those nails I dropped that day you came by my place. I guess I must have a suspicious nature myself. And I didn’t get to be the card player I am without being good at details. So I counted those nails. The ones I picked up and the ones I’d already put in my roof. I searched all over to make sure I hadn’t missed any, and I came to the conclusion that one was taken. You wouldn’t know what happened to it, would you?”
“I’ve got it, Jack.”
“Glad to see I haven’t lost my touch.”
“Tell me something,” Ron said. “Whatever happened to the guy who attacked you in the Harris County Jail?”
“That old boy? He got out. But not long after that he had the misfortune to get drunk and pass out on some railroad tracks — shortly before a fast freight train happened to come rumbling through. Kind of ironic, I thought, that boy pulling a train. So to speak.”
“Poetic justice,” Ron agreed.
“How much thought have you given that it was me nailed that Cardwell boy to that tree?” Jack asked.
“Enough to check you out.”
“You checked hard enough, you know I had a complaint against one man — not a whole race of people — and my score’s been settled.”
“Yeah, so you tell me.”
“So I don’t have to worry about you visiting me in any official capacity?”
“You’ve got no worries from me, Jack.”
“Then I’ve got something for you.”
“What’s that?”
“You remember I told you about knowing the fella in that garden truck the other day?”
“Unh-huh,” Ron grunted.
“I recalled where I saw him. It was at a funeral. Only reason I was there was to keep a friend company. I didn’t know the family, and they didn’t know me. But the old boy I was with played the horses like nobody you ever saw. Then he’d turn around and lose most of his money to me — just to keep his edge at the track. My friend brought me to the funeral because he was a friend of the family whose boy was being buried that day.”
“And who was that?” Ron wanted to know.
“Quite a fine young athlete by the name of Roger Braddock, played quarterback for New York. If you pay attention to such things, you’ll remember he was the boy Jimmy Thunder killed.”
“Sonofabitch,” Ron whispered.
Now he had the motive.
“And that fella in the truck,” Jack went on. “My horse-playing friend, who I just got off the phone with, tells me his full name is Arthur Gilbert Braddock. Former groundskeeper at the track in Maryland my friend favored. And, of course, the dead boy’s daddy.”
“A son for a son,” Ron murmured. “After all these years.”
“That’s why I’m telling you all this, Ron Ketchum. I’m a man who believes in squaring accounts. And if Braddock had killed Jimmy Thunder for what he’d done to his boy, I’d never have let on about him. But that boy, Isaac Cardwell, he had no more business being killed than Roger Braddock.”
“No, he certainly hadn’t,” Ron agreed.
Chapter 53
Well after darkness had fallen, the mountain lion slipped out of the wilderness. It left behind the shelter of the endless pines and the cover of the brush and boulders. Using great stealth, it crept forward onto the hard manmade surface and passed the boundary of the town limit. The trees were sparse here; there was hardly any of the natural shelter on which it depended when hunting.
But the supply of game in this place was boundless.
The big cat’s gut burned with hunger. It rarely got enough to eat these days; it was almost always ravenous. Bringing down an adult deer on which to gorge was beyond it now. It had to subsist on rabbits and squirrels and fawns. But not long ago it had found another source of food: the two-legged creatures. Their senses were dull and they were slow afoot.
They should have been easy prey for the big cat, and sometimes they were. But at other times they had proved dangerous. They surprised the cat with defenses beyond its instincts and experience. But it was learning.
The cat slunk through the shadows where the streetlights didn’t reach, amidst the orderly rows of lairs in which its new prey lived. Sniffing the air, the scent of quarry came from every direction. The animal could hear the sounds of their calls and the noises they made moving about, though these were muted by the enclosures of their lairs.
The lion pressed itself into the deep shadow at the mouth of an alley as a car approached. It watched from concealment as two members of its newly favored food group rolled past. The cat understood instinctively that the two-legged creatures were beyond its reach in these moving lairs. No, it had to pounce on them as they walked upright. Unprotected.
Then the big cat’s head whipped around as it caught a scent. It was not alone in the alley. With a grace and strength it had not completely lost, it turned silently and sinuously around and moving low to the ground crept deeper into the alley.
A pair of eyes appeared in front of it. Terrified eyes. The lion caught the sour scent of its prey’s fear. The big cat moved carefully, taking no chance to allow its cornered victim any avenue to escape. As it closed in, a deep, low growl rumbled deep in the lion’s chest.
Just before it could pounce, the prey bolted.
But as the alley cat tried to leap over its savage cousin, the lion batted it out of the air with one fierce swipe of a paw. The domestic feline hit the base of a brick wall and lay still, stunned, when the lion pounced upon it, the weight from its one hundred and forty pound body snapping the little cat’s neck.
The meat from the prize was barely worth the lion’s effort. It was a
n appetizer, nothing more. The big cat’s hunger was only further whetted. It needed to eat more. It needed to eat now.
The big cat moved back to the mouth of the alley.
It saw no two-legged prey. The hard surfaces all around it were empty. The cat moved out of the alley, further into the town. Game was everywhere, but none of it was within reach. All the two-legged creatures were in their lairs. The cat’s hunger almost drove it mad.
Then out of the endless array of olfactory impressions available to its keen nose, the cat found a familiar scent: one of the two-legged creatures it had been stalking the past two days. This one had spent much of its time outside. If the cat could find it now, at a place in which it was vulnerable …
The mountain lion stalked with a new sense of purpose. A sense of direction. It was closing in on one of the scents that had filled its mind for the past two days. This was a creature of significant size.
This was meat worth the taking.
Oliver and Lauren Gosden had put Danny to bed and turned in early themselves. Lauren had told her husband of passing out her new buttons at the hospital and to the Goldstrike PD. She said she thought she’d made some progress at reconciling the hard feeling that had arisen in the Sunshine Ward — among both the adults and the children. Oliver told Lauren of his day in the woods with Corrie Knox. How they’d found the ghastly remains of Didi DuPree, and how’d they’d felt the cat had been watching them all day, stalking them, just waiting for them to drop their guard. But they hadn’t, and Oliver had to give credit to Warden Knox. She was right out there keeping up her end, moving a whole lot better through the woods than him, and not letting her fear get the better of her.
Lauren told her husband that the chief had all but admitted to her that he and Ms. Knox were an item.
“Dirty old man,” Oliver commented.
“You’re not envious, are you?” Lauren asked.
Oliver Gosden gave his wife the definitive non-verbal answer.
Now, Lauren lay asleep, the ghost of a smile playing at her lips. Oliver was starting to unwind and drift off himself, sleepy enough to ignore the light sheen of sweat on his forehead from the warmth of the night. He had the sensation he was falling, leaflike, through a medium slightly denser than air when the phone rang.