We both turned at wailing sirens. Through the window I glimpsed a police car and then an ambulance hopping the curb, headed toward Felines. I was getting the shakes.
“Hap, who was hurt? Was someone killed?”
Hap winced and stepped aside as Wallace banged the door open, slamming the knob into his kidneys. Wallace looked desperately at Hap, then at me. He took a deep breath, sweat darkening his shirt and beading on his forehead. “I’m sorry, Iris.”
I stared at him, trying to decode meaning and coming up empty.
Wallace wiped a sleeve across his face. “It’s Rick. The lions killed Rick. He fell in the moat last night and they killed him.”
That was ridiculous. Rick was fine, staying at Denny’s place since I wasn’t ready to let him come home yet, probably still asleep since it was his day off. Some loony stranger, some mental case, had wandered into the zoo at night and climbed in with the lions. Rick wouldn’t do any such thing. Rick was a professional keeper, not a reckless trespasser or a suicide. Then I remembered the scrap of blue cloth and Rick’s blue T-shirt at the party last night.
Hap nudged me gently into one of the metal-framed office chairs. “I didn’t want you to see him,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”
Wallace backed out uncertainly. “I got to be there with the police. Hap, you stay.” He left, muttering that Mr. Crandall, the director, should be handling this, not him.
Hap stood and I sat in silence in the little room. I looked blankly at gray carpet, at an ordinary wood desk with an ordinary computer. I wasn’t going to think about…anything. I studied the room carefully. Papers were piled on the desk. No photos of family. Instead, a framed drawing of clouded leopards. Color photo of Wallace with a young elephant when he was still a keeper, blue uniforms back then instead of brown. My previous visits were generally so that Wallace could yell at me about being late or letting the cougars chew up another hose. I hadn’t ever really examined this room. I looked at every single thing with my complete attention. If I kept my eyes focused intently, my brain would lack the space to make up its own images. My heart was still hammering; my breath came in short gasps.
I wasn’t nearly done looking when two police officers came in and shooed Hap out. The middle-aged woman sat down in Wallace’s swivel chair, claiming the dominant seat behind the desk. Her brown hair was gray at the temples. She looked like she’d been up all night. Her uniform was a little tight and her gear—pistol and keys and unidentifiable things—clanked when she sat down. The lanky crewcut junior cop sat a little behind me in the other guest chair. He crossed his ankles and twitched one foot over and over.
The policewoman opened her notebook. “Mrs. Douglas, I’m sorry to bother you at such a bad moment, but we need to get a little information from you. Would you mind answering a few questions?”
I stared at the woman blankly. Mrs. Douglas? “Who?”
“You are Rick Douglas’ wife, right?”
“I’m Iris Oakley. Yes, I’m his wife. Was his wife. Kept my own name.” A dark wave started sweeping up from my gut. I looked hard at the clouded leopard drawing.
“How long have you been married?” she asked patiently.
“Five months? Since May.” The bit of blue shirt wouldn’t leave my mind.
“Has your husband acted unusual in any way recently?”
“Unusual how?” It came to me that the red smear on the concrete was made by the lions dragging Rick’s body up from the bottom of the moat to the exhibit area.
“Anything different from normal.”
“We had a fight,” I told her, words emerging slowly through cortical smog, “and I left. Then he left, to stay with a friend, and I moved back in to the house.” I paused, waiting for phrases to form. “Last night we made up, almost. I think we were getting back together. We were going to get back together. The two of us.” My brain was stuck, stuck on never being with Rick again. Ever. My hands were tight knots in my lap.
“When did you have the fight?”
“About a week ago?” I guessed. A long time ago. Some other lifetime. The lions would have torn through the clothing and opened the abdominal cavity. I saw Linda pulling her jacket over Rick’s face, over his chest.
“And then what happened?” Her voice was calm and steady, but her brown eyes showed a predator’s intensity.
“Like I said—(had I said?)—I left. I stayed with my friend Marcie. Then Rick left to stay with Denny because it was my house, before we were married, I mean, and I moved back in.” Would this have happened without the fight?
“But you reconciled?”
“Last night we ran into each other at a party. We sat and talked for hours.” Warm in the truck, his quiet voice, his scent…“I thought we were going to be all right and work it out. He said he’d quit drinking. Did he fall in the moat because he was drunk?” Please, God, don’t let him be drunk.
“We won’t know until we get the lab reports back. Had he been drinking recently?”
“Huh?” I focused hard. “He drank a lot of beer. That’s why I got mad and left. He told me he’d quit. I don’t think he had any beer at the party.” Who had dragged his body up? Simba? One of the females? Rick’s one hundred seventy pounds wouldn’t have been a problem for any of them.
“Was he depressed?”
Was he dead before they got to him? Maybe the fall had broken his neck instantly. I shuddered, staring blankly. The policewoman had said something. I ran the sounds through again and caught the meaning. “Depressed? No. I think, thought, he was glad we were making up. Happy.”
“So you were together last night? Did anyone see you?”
“We sat in his truck and talked, until maybe midnight or so. I wouldn’t let him come home with me. He was going to go back to Denny’s for the night. We were going to talk again today.” Which lion had gotten to him first? Spice, probably. The one who paid attention, the smart one.
“Why did he come up to the zoo late last night?” The younger cop behind me leaned forward. I’d forgotten he was there.
“I don’t know.” Why would he do that? Why didn’t he go to Denny’s, to bed? I pictured him falling over the rail, trying to catch himself, slipping…Spice watching with the same interest I saw in the policewoman’s eyes.
“Were you alone at home, Ms. Oakley?” The policewoman was writing careful notes in a little pad.
“Huh? No.”
“Who was with you?” she asked.
“My dog, Winnie, and Rick’s dog, Range.” I found I was rocking in my chair and stopped. “Can I see him?”
She looked past me, at her partner. “No. Later, if you want to.”
The dogs. Winnie. I needed Winnie. “I want to go home.”
“Do you have a roommate? Did anyone see you after the party?” Her voice was calm and patient, insistent.
“No. No roommate.” I stood up. “I have to go.” Could I leave? Did I need to go do my job before I could go home? What about Rajah? The old tiger hadn’t been fed yet, or any of the other cats.
Just the lions.
I made it to the wastebasket—barely—before dumping my breakfast in gasping retches.
The policewoman closed her notebook and handed me a tissue. “Look, we’ll have more questions later. You can go.”
I wiped my mouth and stumbled out of Wallace’s office into the lobby. Jackie Margulis, the administration secretary, stepped out of the bathroom, her eyes wide. The bathroom had a common wall with Wallace’s office. It was a safe bet she was in there to listen in on my interview. Hap was gone. Wallace was sitting at Jackie’s desk with his aggressive authority back in place, impatient to reclaim his office.
“Your mother said she’s on her way,” he told me. “The, uh, the body has to go to the police morgue.”
I wanted to be alone, alone someplace where I could find the switch to shut off the pictures looping through my mind. My mother finally came, pale and shaking. She took my arm and walked me to the ca
r, like I’d been sick at middle school and the nurse had sent me home. Wallace reluctantly followed us to the curb. I climbed into her car, a familiar place where sanity had a chance—and climbed out again.
“Wallace, are you going to shoot the lions?”
“No. I’m not going to shoot the lions.” He turned away. Jackie lurked in the background, fascinated, a magpie gathering tidbits of gossip.
Mom started the car and pulled out.
Was that an honest answer or an evasion? Was he going to have someone else shoot the lions? Panic or anxiety or dread, or all three, filled me and flowed over, displacing anguish for a few short minutes.
Mom drove me home, her home. She and my father kept me there all day, then I made her take me to my house, to my dogs. She settled herself on the sofa with sheets and blankets. I called Winnie and Range into the bedroom and made them get on the bed with me. Curled in a ball in the middle, with Winnie pressed against my chest and Range snuffling at the back of my neck, I rocked us all until sleep stopped the pain.
Chapter Three
“What the hell are you doing here?” Hap stood gape-jawed in the middle of the Commissary, the combination kitchen and warehouse, with a cantaloupe in each big hand, ZZ Top thumping from a little speaker behind him.
“Going to work.” I swiped my time card and turned to go.
“Does Wallace know you’re coming in?”
“He’ll figure it out.”
“Iris…” faded behind me as I took the familiar path.
Felines smelled like it always did, like a lot of big cats that eat meat and then go potty. It was warm inside and ugly as only off-exhibit areas ever were—unadorned cement and metal. I caught the steel service door before it clanged shut behind me. Night dens stretched off to the sides—lions, tigers, leopards down the hall to the right, cougar, servals, bobcats, and clouded leopards to the left. In front of me, across the hall, a second door opened to the kitchen. Drop ceiling of stained acoustical tiles, double stainless sink, an ancient microwave, and an even older fridge. Metal table and two chipped metal chairs. Décor consisted of curling Gary Larson “Far Side” cartoons and a color poster of lions stalking zebras somewhere in Kenya or Tanzania.
Linda was there instead of Arnie, a relief. Arnie’s cheerful incompetence was more than I could possibly tolerate and it was good to be spared the urge to kill him with a shovel.
She was standing at the kitchen counter in her brown uniform, by the little scale, weighing out ground meat for each cat and putting it in pans on the rolling cart. Lately she kept her thick red hair cropped short, no longer a ponytail between square shoulders. Wide mouth, strong nose, red-brown eyebrows raised in surprise. “Iris. I didn’t expect to see you for a week. What’s up?”
“I’m back, that’s all.”
“Wallace said you were on bereavement leave. Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“I’m done bereaving. I’ll start feeding.” I moved toward the food pans.
“Why don’t you make us some coffee instead?” Her hazel eyes were worried.
It was disorienting. Come to work, do the routine. That was the plan. Coffee making wasn’t for another two hours, at break time. And I directed the work, not Linda. Somehow I was at the sink, filling the kettle with water and setting it on the hot plate. I looked at it, puzzled, and then I was at the fridge, pulling out the French roast. Setting the filter in the pot and adding three scoops.
The water wouldn’t boil for several minutes. What came next? This wasn’t going the way I expected.
Linda washed her hands with the yellow gloves still on to get the meat goo off them, then pulled them off and washed her hands again. “Have a seat. I haven’t seen you since the memorial service. What’s been happening?” There was something funny about her voice, something carefully normal.
“I cried a lot. Then I got the toxicology report.” I didn’t recall pulling out a chair, but I was sitting at the battered metal table.
“And?”
“Drunk. Beyond DUI. Blitzed. Tanked. Empty bottle of scotch in the bushes by the lions, his fingerprints on it.”
“Ah.” Linda was sitting next to me. She was silent for a little bit. “What happened at the party earlier that night?”
“We talked. He promised to stop drinking. Reconciling. Like that.” My voice sounded funny, too, clipped off.
“And he went on a binge a few hours later?”
“Yeah. Promised to quit drinking beer. Didn’t say anything about scotch.” Sweet-talked himself into my pants, then celebrated.
“Iris, that’s a lot to cope with. You know, you can get grief counseling for free through the benefit plan. Jackie could get you the number. I’ll help any way a friend can, but this is a big deal. You should get some help.”
“I’m done with grief. He wasn’t who we thought he was. You know that Billie Holiday song, the one Denny played at the memorial service? It’s not true, not for me. They can take that away. The love away. Only it’s not a ‘they.’ He did it all by himself. Marrying him was a bad decision. I can’t change that, but I can move on and that’s what I’m doing.”
Linda seemed to pull into herself. She started to say something and stopped.
The water was boiling. I made coffee and we drank it, talking about the cats. The female clouded leopard was still nervous; the common leopards were spitting and snarling at each other. We didn’t mention the lions.
I got up to start feeding. Linda stood and put her hand on my arm. I kept myself from shrugging it off.
“Iris, this is a dangerous job. You’re upset. Your husband died in this building days ago. It’s maybe not such a good idea for you to come back to work so soon.”
“I’m fine. I need to get back to routine.” She had a look on her face I didn’t like. I didn’t want her taking sides against me with Wallace. “Look, we’ll work together, like always, and you’ll see. I’m fine.”
She nodded. We both pulled on rubber gloves and finished up weighing out the food.
I pushed the meat cart down to the lion den while Linda checked all the doors that should be closed and locked. Then I threw my weight on the cable that opens the door to the outside exhibit and she blew the dog whistle, two toots for Simba. The three lions shoved in through the narrow opening. They paced back and forth and in and out the cat door, a fast-moving tangle of tawny, powerful bodies and whipping tails. I waited; the lions and I had done this hundreds of times. This was the same as always, I told myself, but my hands didn’t used to tremble.
Finally, only Simba, or most of Simba, was inside at the same time the females were outside. I lowered the door quickly, but not all the way because half of Simba’s tail was still outside. The door was closed enough to block the lionesses. Simba stood there, whipping his black-tipped tail a little, and glaring at us. “Get your butt inside before I chop your tail off,” I told him. He turned to exit. When his rear came around, I let the door slam down.
Simba and I looked at each other, his yellow eyes unblinking. Nausea rooted and flowered in my guts.
Senseless to blame Simba—he was exactly what he’d always been.
Linda dropped his raw meatloaf into the feeding chute. It hit the floor with a mushy plop and he dived onto it. He crouched with the meat cuddled between his forepaws. I shook myself and we moved on to feed the cougars and common leopards while Sugar and Spice moaned outside.
Simba had finished breakfast. Linda tooted three times, let the lionesses in, and shut him out. Sugar and Spice paced around, yowling throatily. Linda took one chute and I took the other. A lioness crouched below each. We dumped out both piles of meat simultaneously. Big teeth and rough tongues made short work of the meat. I caught myself thinking that after a lifetime of ground meat, they still knew what to do with a real carcass. Linda opened the door again and shut all three inside.
I was glad to be done with lions for the moment.
The phone rang while we were down t
he hall feeding the new VIPs, the two clouded leopards, in their separate night enclosures. They were named for their pelts, irregular open spots—“clouds”—shaded in black, gray, and tan. The male watched us warily; Losa, the female, quickly vanished into her den. The two were out of quarantine, but still settling in and hadn’t been allowed time together yet. We had hopes for cubs, but male clouded leopards tend to have a character flaw—they kill their mates discouragingly often.
The phone kept ringing and I kept ignoring it. Linda walked down the hall to the kitchen. She came back and said it was Wallace, wanting me. Reluctantly, I walked back to the kitchen, Linda following.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Wallace asked, today’s favorite conversational gambit.
“Working.”
“Go home. You aren’t scheduled until next Monday.”
“I’m at Felines. I’m working.”
“You won’t get paid. You’re not scheduled. Go home.”
“Fix the schedule.” I hung up. Linda stared at me wide-eyed.
We went back to work.
We’d taken our break in the kitchen, so it was lunchtime before I had to deal with anyone else. Linda had a sandwich from home. I bought the tuna melt at the café and we sat down at a green plastic table inside. Two moms ordered for their indecisive preschoolers and took another table. The keepers started filtering in.
Denny had a variation on the theme: “You’re supposed to be home until next week.”
“You should get out more,” I told him. “We’ve already done that conversation.”
He stared at me—lean, blond, intense—before pulling up a plastic chair and taking out his latest form of nonconventional nutrition, a wooden bowl of brown rice and chopped kale covered with plastic wrap. Did he know about the toxicology report? I had a feeling they all did.
Hap came in and sat down cautiously with just “hello” and “welcome back.”
Night Kill Page 3