“Is that normal?”
“Yes,” Angie said. “That’s a normal weight; maybe even a little on the low side. Mountain lions can weigh up to two hundred and seventy-five pounds, though, that’s rare.”
“And a mountain lion and a cougar are the same thing?”
“Yes,” Angie said. “Mountain lion, cougar, puma; they’re different names for the same species of animal.”
Angie looked out at the ten reporters. There were three television cameras. An occasional flashbulb flashed. She saw Graham Tucker on the far side of the parking lot, standing near a cruiser. John Crandall and Robert Gonzalez were talking to him.
The reporters were friendly enough, and so Angie stayed on to answer their questions. Cars slowed down, and drivers tried to figure out what was going on at Hildreth’s Market. Oracle was a sleepy little town of peaceful people, working class folks and a high number of artists and writers.
Angie pointed to one reporter whose hand was raised.
“Is it normal for these animals to confront people?”
“No,” Angie said. “It’s not normal. It does happen, but cougars tend to shy away from people.”
“Any idea why this animal didn’t shy away?”
“It could be any number of things,” Angie said.
“Such as?”
“Well, last year’s forest fire burnt more than two hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, as you’re all well aware,” Angie said. “A shift in the local ecology could account for erratic behavior.”
“Did you see the animal?”
“I did,” Angie said. Then she added, “After it was killed.”
“Why weren’t you able to relocate the animal?”
“The animal attacked the sheriff’s deputies,” Angie said. “They reacted, I presume, in the manner that they saw fit. We were unable to get the helicopter up into Peppersauce Canyon.”
“Wait a minute,” one reporter said. “You’re telling me that you had a helicopter up in the air and you had a tranquilizer gun?”
“We had Telazol tranquilizer darts in the helicopter,” Angie said.
“And you failed to dart the animal?”
“We couldn’t get the helicopter up into the canyon,” Angie said.
“Two men are dead, Doctor Rippard,” the reporter said. “And you’re telling me you could have prevented it?”
The cameras recorded every gesture, movement, and every emotion. Angie looked worried but tried to compose herself.
“The animal attacked the men,” she said.
“And now the animal is dead, correct?”
“Yes,” Angie said. “I’ve said that already.”
The reporter held a thoughtful finger to his lower lip. He had short red hair, a flattop cut, and piercing blue eyes. “So,” he said. “Two people are dead. A cougar is dead. A woman and her six-year-old son are in the hospital. And all this was because you couldn’t get a helicopter up into the canyon?”
“Well, the attack on Maggie Eiser occurred last night,” Angie said. “I wasn’t notified until after the attack.”
“Is it fair to say that you were the most knowledgeable person on the scene with regard to mountain lion behavior?” the reporter said.
Angie seemed shocked by the question’s implication and was speechless.
“Would that be a correct assumption, Doctor Rippard?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” she said.
“And two people are now dead?”
“We’ve been over that already,” Angie said.
“Please answer the question, Doctor Rippard.”
“Yes, two sheriff’s deputies are regrettably deceased,” Angie said. “There was nothing we could do. The attack happened too fast. The men were on the ground. I was in the helicopter. No one expected a mountain lion to attack them the way that it did. It was just unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?” the reporter said. “Two people are dead. You were the expert on the scene, Doctor Rippard. You could have prevented it. You could have told those men not to go up there.”
“If you’re implying this was my fault—”
“Are you, or aren’t you a mountain lion expert, Doctor Rippard?”
An embarrassing chill went through the crowd. Angie’s face turned bright red with humiliation and shame. She was stunned.
And in the heat of the moment, she said, “I can tell you, this; this just doesn’t happen. Mountain lions just aren’t supposed to attack people this way. What happened here this morning was an unfortunate tragedy—a rare, freakish unfortunate tragedy. And we are all deeply saddened by it.”
Fourteen
Officer Jim Kleifelt had been with the Tucson Police Department for seven years, and there was not much that would rattle him. He and Officer Holly Newton rode in a golf cart beside the fourteenth fairway. In front of them on the cart path, golf pro Paul G. Knowles led the way. In the cart with Paul was groundskeeper Ernesto Torres.
“What is this all about?” Holly asked.
The golf cart bounced along the asphalt cart path, climbing higher up into the hills. Behind them, the city of Tucson spread out wide in the valley below. A city of nearly a half million situated two thousand feet above sea level, Tucson had largely retained its flavor as a desert town in the American Southwest.
“Groundskeeper called in a situation,” Kleifelt said. “Apparently some kids were up here partying last night on the fourteenth green.”
“So, that warranted a call to Tucson Metro?” Holly asked.
Jim shrugged.
“We’ll check it out,” he said. “He found a cell phone, and the last call was nine-one-one.”
The golf carts swung around a curve in the cart path, and everyone saw the bright yellow pin flag up on the hill. There was a navy-blue “14” on the flag. The putting green had a two-tier surface area, and there was a huge bunker that wrapped around the left side. It looked like there was a pond up behind the green, a eucalyptus tree over on the right, and a waterfall at the back of the pond where the sheer rocky cliffs north of Tucson began the rugged climb up into the mountains.
They saw clothes in the middle of the green.
The carts pulled over to the right side. Officer Kleifelt locked the brake and frowned at the scene.
“I just came up over the hill here,” Ernesto said excitedly. “And I saw the clothes. There was a blanket at the back. And I said, hey, you know, someone was partying.”
“Where did you find the cell phone?” Officer Newton asked.
“On the front of the green,” he said. “I picked it up, so it’s probably got my fingerprints on it. It’s over here.”
Kleifelt said, “Don’t come any closer. We’re going to have to call in an I.S.B. unit. This is a crime scene.”
Holly looked at him. He hadn’t consulted her at all and had made a quick decision. She wasn’t pleased.
Paul Knowles said, “I’ve already got golfers out on the course. Do you think we can have this cleaned up by ten?”
Kleifelt removed his radio from his belt, and he made the call. Holly walked over toward the blanket under the eucalyptus tree. She saw the girl’s panties and the men’s briefs, and she felt an immediate chill. No one would leave here without their clothes, she realized.
She started back around the right side of the pond. Golf pro Paul G. Knowles was pleading his case to Kleifelt. He had golfers out on the course, he said. It would take them a couple of hours, but eventually they would make it up here to the fourteenth, and the last thing he wanted was to explain to them that they’d have skip the fourteenth, the signature hole.
“Oh, my God,” Holly said.
All three men looked up and saw her. She was about thirty meters away, over on the right side of the pond. There were bushes and a footpath up into the hills, but Holly was frozen standing there in front of the bushes. She swung back to her left. Her hands came down to her knees, and she vomited.
Fifteen
Angie received the phone call as sh
e was listening to Sheriff Graham Tucker navigate his way through the reporters’ questions. She thought the phone call was a hoax because the woman was telling her there had been another attack.
“Who is this?” she said.
Both Gonzalez and Crandall looked up, hearing the alarm in Angie’s voice.
Assistant Chief Jane Kennedy told Angie who she was.
“Commander of I.S.B.?” Angie said into her cell phone.
“Investigative Services Bureau,” Chief Kennedy said. “It’s one of four bureaus within the Tucson Police Department.”
“How did you get my number?” Angie said.
“Somebody from the Office of the Medical Examiner recommended you as a specialist,” Chief Kennedy said.
Kennedy explained briefly that Tucson I.S.B. had three divisions: central investigations division, forensics, and special investigations division. C.I.D. handled all violent offenses, and was itself organized into five details, one of which was homicide. The folks in homicide often worked closely with the Office of the Medical Examiner, and Angie had twice served in courtroom litigations as an expert wildlife biologist for the Office of the Medical Examiner.
“I see,” Angie said.
“We’ve got a full-scale crime scene down here in Tucson,” Kennedy told her. “Two kids are dead.”
“Jesus,” Angie said.
“It looks like an animal attack,” Kennedy said. “And we sure could use your experience.”
“Chief Kennedy,” Angie said, “are you aware that there was a mountain lion attack up here in Oracle last night?”
Kennedy said she was not. The news hadn’t made it down to Tucson yet. Angie explained that she was standing at an impromptu press conference right that moment about the attack that had occurred at Peppersauce Canyon.
“Two sheriff’s deputies are dead,” she said. “Local press is up here right now.”
“Jesus,” Kennedy said.
“Yeah,” Angie said. “This is gonna turn into a hurricane of a media frenzy. You’re sure it was an animal attack?”
Kennedy said she could not be certain, but that she had never seen a homicide scene like this one, and that that was why she was calling Angie. She needed her help.
“Give me an hour,” Angie said. She glanced at Gonzalez, John, and Dave Baker. “I’ve got a couple of good people with me.”
Kennedy explained where the Ventana Canyon Golf Course was located. Angie knew the place well. They had a five-star West Corp. hotel that had ignited fierce controversy ten years back when it was built because of its proximity to protected lands. Angie even remembered the billionaire developer because of his notorious nickname “The Chopper,” which was not earned for his planting trees around the globe.
Angie glanced at her wristwatch and saw that it was nine-thirty in the morning. It’s been a hell of a twelve hours, she thought.
But nothing could have prepared her for the next twelve.
Sixteen
Angie sat up front in the helicopter in the seat beside pilot Dave Baker. Robert and John were in the back, and all four enjoyed the view from ten thousand feet as they came over Mount Lemmon and saw Tucson spread out far below. Baker communicated with local air-traffic control out of Davis-Monthan and learned they could put down on the golf course.
“A guy had a stroke in the middle of a tourney back in December,” Baker said to Angie, Robert, and John. “They had to airlift him out. We can land on the twelfth fairway.”
The helicopter came down the mountain like a fly down an elephant’s back. They could see traffic moving up and down the residential streets north of Skyline Drive, where the homes started at a million and went as high as fifteen. A three-acre lot with sixty-mile views could sell for a million bucks, and as such, developers like Charlie “The Chopper” Rutledge had little reservation about parking homes and lavish resorts as high up the mountain as county, state, and federal ordinances allowed.
Some houses bordered National Forest Land, and the encroachment into preserved lands was a non-stop war between billionaire developers and conservationists living from paycheck to paycheck. For the past thirty years, it seemed that the developers had been winning.
“There’s the course,” Baker said.
From the air above the land, Angie saw just how much the Ventana Canyon Resort encroached on the Coronado National Forest. There was a line of homes—literally a swath—cut into the side of the mountain along a ridge from southeast to northwest.
“It’s no wonder people are being attacked,” John Crandall said. He leaned forward and looked at the hillside. “They’re building homes right into the National Forest Land.”
Baker said, “Ten years ago, the boundary was two miles further down the mountain.”
Gonzalez said, “You mean to say they’ve built everything up here in the past ten years.”
Baker nodded, and each of them was stunned. There were easily two thousand homes in the area he pointed out.
“This section here was National Forest Land a decade ago,” Baker said. “Each of these homes goes for about two million, on average. You do the math.”
Angie did. “Four billion dollars of development,” she said.
“In ten years?” John said, taken aback.
“I’d say that’s a reasonable estimate,” Baker said. “You see, that’s just the homes. You add in local businesses, road construction, the new hospital. All total it’s probably twice that amount of money that has gone into this area in five years.”
“All of which was National Forest Land,” Angie said, “a decade ago?”
Baker said, “It’s tough to compete against that kind of money if your only cause is preservation.”
Seventeen
Police Chief Jane Kennedy approached the helicopter in a stretch golf cart that had front and back seats. She had short brown hair, brown eyes, and a slight nervous tic that made her look like she was smiling with the right side of her mouth when she actually was not. She locked the brakes and stepped out of the cart to greet Angie Rippard.
“Doctor Rippard,” she said loudly over the helicopter.
The two women shook hands. Angie introduced John Crandall and Robert Gonzalez, and all four walked toward the golf cart. Angie rode up front with the chief, and John and Robert sat in the back. It only took about a minute to get up to the green, and Jane explained that they’d found the two bodies about thirty meters from the green.
“Just beyond a row of bushes,” she said.
Angie asked, “What makes you think they were attacked?”
“They were partially buried.”
Angie nodded and glanced back at Robert.
Jane said, “But it doesn’t look like any kind of human burying.”
And she looked into Angie’s eyes to make certain that she understood what she meant.
“I see,” Angie said, and she glanced back at John. “You may want to sit this one out,” she said.
“You bet,” he said. “I’ll just hang out here by the golf cart and keep an eye on things. You go ahead.”
Jane led Angie and Robert up through the crime scene. There were two dozen officers, detectives, medical technicians, forensics investigators.
“We’ve been able to hold the press up at the clubhouse,” Jane said. “But I think you were right, Doctor Rippard, once the national media gets wind of two separate attacks—if that’s what we have here—we’ll have to hold some kind of press conference.”
“How’s the golf course management doing?”
“So, far, they’ve been very cooperative,” Chief Kennedy said. “We’ll hold the conference at the club house. You’ll want to speak?”
“Let’s take a look at the bodies,” Angie said.
Jane led her toward the row of bushes back behind the pond.
• •
Angie noticed paw prints along the bank of the pond, and she glanced up ahead beyond the bushes where the hill rose up steeply into the rocky cliffs.
“Have yo
ur people seen these?” she said, kneeling down to inspect the prints.
Jane Kennedy said they hadn’t and then waved for one of her people to come over. To an untrained eye, the tracks looked like large dog prints. Everyone knelt down and looked at the tracks in the drying mud.
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