Night Kill

by Ann Littlewood

  “And this time?”

  “Yesterday morning. A mom and her four boys throwing marshmallows at the black bears, in front of the No Feeding sign.” She paused to let me picture the scene.

  “What’d he do?”

  “He told her to quit it. She says the bears love marshmallows. He says, ‘If I shoot your kids up with heroin, they’ll love it too, same as bears with sugar.’ They yelled at each other until Wallace showed up. Put him on probation. Arnie said he’d get Denny a six-pack as a thank-you.”

  “Denny will survive. He does his job.”

  “He won’t survive if he pisses Wallace off any more. He’s always late and he’s always keeping things stirred up. That boy has the cutest butt and the squirreliest ideas of anybody here.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the side of the building and tossed it into a trash can. “I gotta get back.”

  I tried the door of the Education Outreach office. Locked.

  “No one around today,” Jackie said. “That huge woman who giggles might be in about ten o’clock tomorrow. She’s the volunteer who’s been doing the schools. Can’t you picture her hopping? Good grief.”

  Calvin brought out penguin pictures a half hour before quitting time. I realized, a little late, that he was a shy man and glad to have something to share. We sat at the kitchen table. He handed me a color photo of four people facing the camera in a line. Mr. Crandall had his arm around a smiling dark-haired woman, who in turn had her arm around another man. With a little imagination, he could be Wallace minus the belly, plus a full head of hair. A lean Dr. Dawson smiled to their left, not touching anyone. This amiable group was standing in front of an animal crate. I could see what might be a penguin peering through the wire front.

  “That’s when we got the first penguins,” Calvin said.

  “Mr. Crandall looked exactly the same,” I observed.

  “He don’t change, except his hair’s grayer. I s’pect he’s immortal and he’ll run this place forever.” It wasn’t a rousing endorsement.

  “And the woman?”

  Calvin took the picture back and peered at it. “That’d be Winona Dawson. That crate there’s got the Africans we named after the Dawsons. The names was Wallace’s idea, as I recall. Can’t remember what zoo we got them from, somewhere’s back East. They called them black foot penguins back then. Or jackass penguins. Same thing.”

  Winona Dawson. She seemed pleased and excited in the photo, looking directly at the camera with shining eyes. Thrilled to be part of the new exhibit? Happy to be hobnobbing with the director, her husband’s boss? “What was she like?”

  “Nice. A lot of fun.”

  That wasn’t much use. I gave up.

  “What’s this picture?” I asked.

  “That’s the pair of them in the new exhibit. And our first chick.” I admired pictures of penguins in a bright new exhibit, none of the chipped paint and wear that showed now. There were several adult birds in the picture.

  “You must have ordered penguins from all over the country.”

  He nodded. “We got pairs from maybe three more zoos. I was going out to the airport a lot. Except for the last pair.” He shook his head.

  “And?”

  “That was bad. They came up by truck from California; one of their maintenance staff drove them.”

  “Problems on the road?”

  “No. Weather was fine. It was the crate. The guy who drove the truck was the idiot that knocked it together. Dr. Dawson helped me open it. Nails poking through the bottom, big —splinters sticking out of the boards. Those birds had their feet all tore up, blood and guano all over them. I thought Dr. Dawson was going to hurt that man in a big way. My heavenly days, he was mad when he saw those birds. If I hadn’t been with him, I don’t know what would have happened.” His shoulders moved. Remembering holding the vet back? “He worked on those birds for weeks, every antibiotic you could name. He saved one of them, the brown band male; the other two died.”

  “I can’t imagine Dr. Dawson losing his temper. He’s always been Mr. Self-Control.”

  “Imagine it,” he said flatly. He took another look at the group shot. “I think Dr. Dawson never got over her.” He stacked up the photos and slipped them back into their envelope.

  He reached for his jacket. “Time to head for the barn.”

  I pulled out the group photo for a final look. If you didn’t know him, young Wallace wasn’t that bad looking.

  ***

  That evening, I sat in my minimally presentable living room with Marcie and Denny. Marcie was demure on the sofa; Denny was settled into the green recliner, foot twitching. I had dragged in a kitchen chair for myself. I had serious reservations about this Three Musketeers dynamic, but Marcie had brought a terrific chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. That helped considerably.

  Marcie summed it up: “We have no evidence. The financial motive is weak. Anybody could have done it.”

  Denny hung tough on the motive. “The kickbacks are enough. And I’ll get more information, now that I know what to look for.”

  “We have nothing,” I said. “You want it to be Wallace because he’s threatening your job.”

  “Because he’s worried that I’m on to him.”

  “No, because you fight with visitors.”

  “Will you two stop?” Marcie snapped.

  The silence gave me a moment to note that I had my own reasons for wanting it to be Wallace—I didn’t want it to be Hap. “Listen, I haven’t told you that Hap was at the zoo the night Rick died.” I recapped what Linda had told me and Hap had denied.

  Denny nodded, not surprised. “Arnie says Diego told him that Hap had been hanging around the zoo late at night.”

  “Well, that’s a reliable chain of hearsay.”

  Marcie gave me the look.

  “It’s all blind alleys,” I said. “Our only hope is some sort of trap. But we have no bait.”

  A trap. Now that I’d said it, it sounded like a decent idea. As Marcie had once pointed out, I often learned what I thought by listening to what I said.

  Chocolate is a powerful stimulant. A couple more bites and my creativity spiked. “Look, we can lie. We tell Wallace—no, I tell Wallace that Rick left a package at Denny’s addressed to a university or agency. I took it home and opened it. There’s a letter Rick wrote—which is almost true—and some bones and arrowheads that he got from the construction site. Then I ask Wallace what I should do with them.”

  “He’ll tell you to bring them to him,” Marcie said.

  I scraped up traces of frosting and licked the fork. “I’ll do it as a voice message. I say I’m going out of town Friday. I can’t deal with it until I get back, but I want to know if I should mail the package to the university or not.”

  “And then you hide and watch,” Denny said.

  “Right. I do the preparation tomorrow, get my dogs out of the house. Then we see if Wallace takes the bait. He knows where I live—it’s on my personnel records. He comes to lift the stuff and we know we’re guessing right. Or he doesn’t and we know that’s not it.”

  “Or he brings a gun and shoots you dead,” Marcie contributed.

  Denny gave that a thought. “If he killed Rick, he’ll kill you,” he agreed.

  “Maybe I take his picture ransacking the house. Maybe I disable his car and call the cops. I don’t know; I’ll figure it out.”

  “Better let me handle it. I can borrow a video camera and tape him,” Denny said. “I can call tonight—I’m off tomorrow. I’ll tell him Rick left the stuff at my place.”

  “Yes, let Denny do it at his house,” Marcie said.

  “If Wallace spots him, is he more bullet-proof than I am?” I asked.

  “I’ve got a .22 rifle, but if there’s serious ordnance around, I’m gone and he’ll never catch me,” Denny said.

  “The shoot-out at the Comic Corral.” I sucked a chocolate molecule off my fork and could see it: Wallace blazing aw
ay with a pistol, Denny dodging behind a doorjamb, peeking out to snap off a shot with his little rifle, stacks of collectable comics riddled with bullets, falling over in a cloud of dust.

  “No,” I told them. “Rick was my husband. It’s my risk to take. Denny is not one bit more qualified than I am. I’d like to borrow that video camera, but I’ll go buy one if I have to.” I set my empty plate decisively on the coffee table.

  “I think it’s time we gave it a rest and went home to bed.” Marcie’s voice was calm, but her hands were knots in her lap. “We can think it over in the morning.”

  It was a safe bet she would call tomorrow and try to talk me out of it.

  “Right.” I gave Denny a hard look. “I’ll call Wallace tomorrow after work, like I just found the package. Don’t go shooting your mouth off or charging around wrecking everything.”

  “I forget. Who was it that died and made you Captain Picard of the Starship Enterprise?”

  “My husband is the one who was murdered, remember?”

  “My job is the one in free fall, remember?”

  “Puh-leeze!” Marcie said.

  “Relax,” I told her. “This is what passes for conversation with us.”

  When she left, she took the cake leftovers with her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  After I’d slept on it, the plan to trap Wallace looked shaky. Either it wouldn’t work and I’d look like a fool, or it would work and I’d be dead. I couldn’t decide which was more probable.

  No alternatives surfaced. Maybe if I had more of that cake…One thing that did occur was that if the plan failed and Wallace didn’t show up, I could try it with Hap. I’d test everyone at the zoo until someone fell for it. No, that was wishful thinking.

  Thursday, work was uneventful except for a little kid who fell in the waterfowl pond and was fished out by one of the gardeners. I arrived on the run, summoned by a hysterical teenage girl, as the mom was telling everyone that her little boy did that all the time. She and her sopping child wandered off to finish their zoo visit, leaving the rest of us worried about hypothermia and hoping for swimming lessons soon.

  I was flying solo the coming weekend, but Calvin seemed unconcerned that I might kill off his charges through clumsiness or stupidity. He told me what to do if I had extra time after the basic routine, and that was about it.

  “I’m off tomorrow. If anything comes up, you’ll leave me a note?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Nothing will.”

  No lists of reminders, no home phone number. I recalled all the instructions and suggestions I gave Linda when I left Felines to her, most of which were unnecessary, all of which were probably annoying.

  At home that night, I fed the dogs and iguana, then sat down and wrote a little script for my call to Wallace. I’d have only one shot, and I wanted to get it right and get it over. Marcie called before I finished, full of the same worries about The Plan that had been troubling me. I spent a long time describing all the safeguards I’d thought of, starting with pepper spray. She added another—borrowing her new cell phone. Nothing I said seemed to reassure her, and nothing she said persuaded me not to go ahead.

  We signed off in mutual frustration. I finished the script, rehearsed it twice to two polite but uninterested dogs, and picked up the phone to make the call. The receiver beep-beeped in my ear. Denny had called while I was talking to Marcie. He wanted me to call back as soon as possible. Being Denny, he didn’t say where he was. I called his house.

  “Come on over. I’ve got someone you need to meet.” He sounded twitchy.

  “Why? Who is it?”

  “It’s better if you just come.”

  “I haven’t had dinner yet. Can it wait an hour?”

  “No. I’ve got some TV dinners. Now is good. Later is not good.”

  He hung up, probably figuring curiosity was more powerful than any reason he could come up with. He was right. I reluctantly got into my truck, leaving sad dogs behind. I could leave the message for Wallace later. That wouldn’t be a problem.

  I pulled up in front of Denny’s at maybe 7:30 PM, full dark. His van wasn’t there, but the lights were on in the house. No warning roar from Strongbad. That made me nervous enough to start the truck again and drive another two blocks to park.

  I walked back in the dark, dodging potholes full of water on the gravel road, imagining all the dire possibilities that might be lurking. Native Americans used to tie a rag to a pole and let it flutter while they lay in hiding, ready to shoot arrows into pronghorn antelope that had more curiosity than good sense. I must have been a pronghorn in a previous life.

  I circled the house, squishing through mud, to get to the living room side window, on the same side of the house as the bedroom window I’d jimmied two nights before. Maybe if anything really bad happened, the neighbor with the pistol would save me.

  Moving rhododendron branches aside, I could see Denny sitting in a chair with his back to me. A woman was sitting on his couch. I didn’t recognize her. Denny had a rifle leaning next to him. It looked as if they were drinking one of Denny’s dreadful herb teas. He had a bloody bandage on his hand and a camcorder at his feet. I noticed several apples lying here and there and an orange or two on the floor. The room looked even more disheveled than usual. The situation was definitely peculiar, but was it dangerous? Denny looked calm and confident, chatting away cheerfully.

  I considered my options. Leave and wait until later to find out what Denny wanted? Go get my dad or the neighbor as backup? Buy a handgun? I decided to hell with it, I was hungry and wanted to get this done. They both jumped a foot when I rapped on the window. I came around to the front door and Denny let me in. I looked inquiringly at the woman.

  “Ah, Iris, this is Suzanne.” He pronounced it “Sue-zayne.”

  Suzanne was short and, as my dad would say, built for comfort, by which he meant amply endowed. She was generously proportioned in the chest and hips and reasonably narrow in the waist, given that she was at least as old as my mother. My mother, however, did not favor black low-cut jerseys with black stirrup pants and black high heels. She sat on Denny’s tacky sofa with her legs crossed, looking completely at home. A black knit cap was draped over one knee. Her hair was an expensive blond swirl, slightly mashed from the cap. Stray wisps fell over her eyes. A big emerald flashed on her left hand. It looked like her coral lipstick matched her nail polish, but it was hard to be sure.

  She smiled winsomely. “I’m so glad to meet you, Iris. Freddie’s talked about you.”

  Freddie?

  “Mr. Crandall. She’s, ah, an old friend of his.” Denny gestured vaguely with his bandaged hand.

  I followed his wave, which led me to glance at the ceiling and discover a large hole, clearly the source of the plaster bits distributed liberally around the room.

  “Have a seat, Iris. Denny, could you get another chair for Iris?”

  I took a stack of comics off a wooden chair and pulled it up. “So…what’s going on? Denny asked me to come right over.”

  “Um, do you want tea?” Denny asked.

  “No, I want dinner. I want to go home and get me some sleep. So tell.”

  Instead, Denny lurched toward the kitchen muttering about a frozen dinner, changed his mind, and hesitated. I scowled at him—no help—until he wisely decided to feed me first and tell all later. He headed toward the refrigerator.

  Suzanne smiled warmly. “I tried to help a friend, but I made a fool of myself instead.” She looked at the rug and swung her foot a little. She didn’t really look contrite, but I supposed that was the intended effect. Microwave noises came from the kitchen. Denny came back and sat down.

  It took a little doing, but eventually Denny got his half of the story out. He and Marcie had a chat after we parted the night before. They agreed it was far too dangerous for me to set the trap for Wallace. Instead Marcie would try to talk me out of it, and Denny would give it a try. Yesterday evening, he had come ho
me from my place and left a message for Wallace, saying that he had found some Indian remains and artifacts in Rick’s stuff. With them, he claimed, was a letter Rick had written to the university explaining that he found these at the new Asian Experience construction site. Denny had asked for advice, saying he would be out of town on his days off, but would deal with the package when he got back.

  “Plans you make with me don’t count for much, I take it,” I said.

  Denny was unrepentant. “Marcie was in.”

  He had parked Strongbad with Hap, who was not at all pleased to have a rowdy dog terrifying his parrots. “Did you tell Hap everything?” I asked.

  “Sure, why not?” Denny said.

  So much for trying the trap on other zoo staff.

  Denny left his van on the next street over from his house and hid in the attic with a camcorder poking through a hole punched in the ceiling. The access was by a trap door in the kitchen ceiling, with a chair parked under it. The apples and oranges were provisions; the rifle was just in case. He had a water bottle and a big coffee can to pee in. He settled in with a pile of comic books and a flashlight.

  Denny said he’d come down once to get a pillow and a sleeping bag and was about to climb down again to find some fresh batteries for the flashlight when he saw a light moving around below. “Man, was she quiet! I didn’t hear her open the window or anything.”

  Suzanne said demurely, “I’ve always wanted to be a cat burglar.”

  Most of the rest was self-evident. He’d shut off his flashlight and tried to turn on the camcorder in the dark, knocking it through the hole instead. He tried to catch it and stepped off the floored part of the attic onto the plaster, which could not hold him. He landed on the living room floor with the camcorder, apples and oranges crashing down around him. Not to mention the rifle.

  “And the can of pee?” I asked.

  He ignored me. “I cut my hand on the way down. Suzanne used to be a nurse. She washed it and wrapped it up for me.”

  “Your turn,” I said to Suzanne, who didn’t look like any nurse I’d ever met. “Let’s start with what the hell you are doing in Denny’s house.”