3 Panthers Play for Keeps

by Clea Simon

  ***

  Still, I was uneasy as I drove us both back over to the preservation land, my mood as gloomy as the gray clouds that had begun to gather overhead. I’d had problems understanding animals before. Every now and then, I couldn’t hear them at all. More often, it was that I misunderstood what I was getting. Trying to interpret their animal expressions in human terms. Wallis was the only creature I could really communicate with. More so, I realized with a bitter laugh, than Jim Creighton, at any rate. If she were here, she might be able to help translate for me. If she were willing to take on a dog. With Spot finally falling silent beside me, I mused about the possibility of making that happen. Making that happen without one of us getting scratched to bloody shreds, that is. Over twenty minutes of highway driving, I couldn’t come up with a way to get it to work.

  One look at Spot, as I pulled into the parking area, and I knew something was up. He had shifted as I parked, becoming both more alert and—for lack of a better word—apprehensive. I saw him lift his head, and he gave me a brief glimpse of his concentration as he took in the air for scent. That air was damp, rain was coming, and I didn’t need him to make out the stale beer and testosterone. Several cars, in various stages of rusting out, were already there, and two pickups, both with gun racks. Neither belonged to Albert, and I sat in my car for a moment, wanting to see what kind of pack had gathered before I left its safe confines.

  “What’s up, Spot?” I put my hand on his back. To anyone outside, it would look like I was giving my pet a pat. “What do you smell?”

  “She’s here.” The thought almost had a whine in it. The big eyes that looked up into mine were filled with sadness—sadness and fear. “She’s here.”

  Poor guy. Animals, although some humans deny it, feel grief just as we do. Maybe more acutely, because they don’t fool around with abstract notions of an afterlife. Unlike us, they make no distinction between our physical selves and any ethereal essence. They know death better than we do. But they also, and I didn’t want to think too much about this, know when something—blood, gore, bits of flesh—remain.

  “Yes, she is here. Was here.” He smelled her. Smelled some remnant of her, that much was clear. I thought he must know that she had died here, too—either from the lingering metallic scent of blood or from some other essence emitted in panic and pain, the scent heavy in the thick and humid air. So, yes, part of her was here, no doubt. More vivid to Spot than it would be to even our best forensics experts. But, no, she was not coming back. “Do you understand?” I’d kept eye contact as my thoughts rambled, hoping that something would make sense to the bereaved animal.

  “She’s gone.” I felt a tremor go through him and then, to my surprise, his tail wagged, hitting the leather seat with a thud. Well, maybe he had been caught up in Laurel’s pain, in her last moments. Animals understand relief, too.

  Just then, another pickup pulled up. Albert. And so I got out and let Spot out, snapping on his lead. That was more for show than anything, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to maintain some kind of physical contact with the dog. For whatever reason, I had a hard enough time reading him, and if he picked up anything out here, I wanted as clear a picture as possible.

  “Hey, Pru.” Albert was holding a brown paper bag but not, as far as I could see, a ferret. “Uh, glad you could come.”

  I nodded in response and looked around. Creighton should have been here by now. He should be the one to break the news. Albert misread my look and gestured to the milling pack. About a dozen men had assembled; I seemed to be the only female willing or foolish enough to come out. “I’ll introduce you to the guys.”

  “Great.” I tightened up on Spot’s lead. I recognized some of the men from Happy’s. The rest looked like they did their drinking at home. I didn’t think they’d put much stock in anything I had to say, and I was glad to have a dog by my side.

  I joined Albert as he walked up to the knot of men, standing by his side as the grunts of greeting were exchanged. With a crowd like this, I wanted to make clear from the start that I was an equal—or, at least, Albert’s equal—and that I could meet them on their terms.

  “Pru, Pru Marlowe,” I said with a nod to the biggest of the bunch. “And you are?”

  “Butch,” he said, predictably. “What’s this?” He nodded at Spot.

  “He’s part hound,” I interpreted. “We found Mariela’s body together.”

  “Oh yeah, I heard about you.” A light went on under his bushy brows, and I wondered if this was the ringleader.

  “Pru, over here.” I turned. Albert was motioning me to come to him. He was talking with a dirty-blond man in dirty jeans. Not too tall, and wiry rather than muscular, he had the look of a street fighter. I nodded in recognition and stood my ground.

  “Albert.” The street fighter’s mouth twitched. Could have been a smile, could also have been that his teeth were bad. Whatever, he started walking, towing Albert behind him.

  “Stu.” He held out a grimy hand. I took it. He’d recognized my immobility for what it was, and he was giving me my due.

  “Pru,” I replied. Albert, meanwhile, was getting all puppyish, bouncing around us. “Stu- Pru, it rhymes,” he said.

  This, then, was the boss. “So Stu, what makes you think you can find a cougar in a hundred acres of forest?”

  He accepted my question with a nod. “I know a little something about animals.” That closed-mouth smile again. “And Albert here told me you’d be bringing the dog.”

  “Hey, Stu.” A big guy, bushy beard and a beer belly, yelled from near one of the pickups. “When we gonna start?”

  “The natives are getting restless.” I was watching his face, looking for an opening. He was waiting for something, but I didn’t know what.

  “They’ve got beer. They’re happy.” He was watching me, too. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.

  “What are you waiting for?” Sometimes a direct approach can shake something loose.

  It didn’t. He smiled for real. To my surprise, his teeth weren’t bad. No meth then, and not the kind of poverty you often see out here. “I was wondering when you’d spring your surprise.”

  My eyebrows asked the question.

  “You don’t want this hunt to go on,” he answered. “I know about you.”

  “Do you know that the Laurel—the second woman—wasn’t killed by a cougar?” He was watching me, and I couldn’t read his eyes. “By a wild cat?” That wasn’t it, or not entirely. “And that the first victim had been moved?”

  “I’ve got a job to do, too.” It was an odd statement. “And, as I’ve said, I’ve worked with animals before.”

  “Then you know there’s probably nothing out there. Nothing hanging around, anyway.” He didn’t look like a fool. Then again, maybe he was taking some fool’s money. “I mean, this is as much a wild goose chase as it is a cougar hunt.”

  He shrugged. “You don’t have to hang around.”

  That had to be it. Haigen, I was betting. Paying by the day. “No way am I leaving.” If this crowd cornered any animal, I wanted to be there to intercede. At least until Creighton showed up.

  “Suit yourself.” With that, he turned. “I guess we’re good to go.”

  He raised his hand, and the assembly gathered like bears around a garbage can. “I’m glad you all came out. Thanks for spreading the word.” He nodded at several of the men, turning to acknowledge them. “This is important work.” It was funny. He was a head shorter than most of them, easily fifty pounds lighter than most. Didn’t matter, he was clearly the boss, and each time he nodded, the recipient pulled himself up, pulled his belly in, at least temporarily.

  “Look, the way we’re going to do this is simple.” He was speaking their language, but I got a sense that he actually had a more thought-out plan. “Pru and I are going to go ahead, with the dog. We’re going to see if we can get the cat’s scent.
You all stay back a bit.”

  A little grumbling. None of them wanted to take second place to a girl.

  Stu scanned the crowd, making eye contact with each man in turn. “We don’t want to frighten the kitty cat away, do we?” Mumbled assent, a little confused. “When we’ve got the cougar’s trail, that’s when you’ll all come in.” A low roar. This was more like it. “We’re going game hunting today, boys. We’ve got to be smart about it.”

  That little speech led to enough hooting to scare almost anything away. But something about Stu’s approach made me think he wasn’t worried. Before I could ask him any other questions, however, he waved the big beard over.

  “Pete, I want you to do something for me.” The big guy nodded. “Keep these fellows back, will you? I want at least a hundred yards between them and me. I need to do some tracking.”

  Another nod, and he turned to me. Clearly, he did know something about me—and about animals. “Shall we?”

  I didn’t dare turn around. He’d have known I was looking for Creighton—my “surprise,” as he’d called it—and I didn’t have any other tricks up my sleeve. What I did have was a dog who was quivering with eagerness, and a man who was not what he seemed. And so I signaled to Spot, who stood at attention, and nodded to the man to take the lead. In for a penny, in for a pound. We were going on a hunt for a cougar.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  We set out in silence, letting Spot take the lead. Once we were well away from the parking area, Stu stopped. Reaching inside his jacket, he took out a bunched-up cloth and knelt on the ground. “Come here,” he offered it to Spot.

  Spot hesitated for a moment, until I gave him the okay. Then he reached over, burying his nose in the cloth. Stu didn’t offer it to me, and when Spot withdrew, he shoved it back inside his jacket.

  “The cougar’s scent?” I was asking the obvious. What I wanted to know was what that cloth was, and where Stu had gotten it.

  “From the girl. The first one.” He answered my unspoken question. “I know one of the deputies.”

  It was a good answer, but it was a lie. For one thing, the cloth was white. Mariela had been wearing that colorful blouse. I hadn’t seen a sweater or a scarf near her, and the loose fabric Stu had now secreted away didn’t look like an undergarment.

  Whatever it was, the scent it held was potent. I was trying to focus on Stu, to figure out what was going on with this strange man. But my mind was being flooded by impressions. Not images—Spot took things in through scent—but more three-dimensional than anything we could describe as smell. Stronger than whiskey, this was like moonshine—raw and intoxicating, heady in a way that edged into dangerous and yet had a kind of crazy appeal. In this damp weather, scents were amplified, exaggerated. The image of the snow leopard came into my mind again—the big spots, the lush tufts of fur. It was the wrong image, a picture my mind was putting on the scents Spot was getting, and I pushed it from my mind. Ordinary people anthropomorphize their companion animals. That’s what gets them in trouble. What I do is overinterpret. It’s just as bad.

  I turned from Spot to the man by my side. I wanted to push Stu, find out what he had held out to the dog, but with Spot’s impressions still flowing through me, it was all I could do to stand upright. Something incredibly captivating was out there. Something fierce.

  “You okay?” His question pulled me back to reality.

  “Of course.” I snapped. Being caught off guard makes me cranky. “Why?”

  “You just…” He looked away. “It’s nothing.”

  It wasn’t. He either knew something or sensed something, and I didn’t know how to get it out of him. Maybe it didn’t matter: Spot was trembling with anticipation, that wild and heady perfume filling his mind. “You ready?” I turned to the dog. “Please,” he responded with every fiber of his being, and so I unhooked the lead. “Hunt,” I said.

  He didn’t take off. I didn’t expect him to. The hound part of his makeup was a tracker, not a chaser. What he wanted was to find that scent—that tantalizing brew—and follow up on it. And so for all the drama of letting him off the lead, we basically were doing nothing except watching him sniff the ground.

  “You said you had experience with animals?” I tried to make it sound casual. I already knew that what he’d said was true because of the way he waited, watching Spot for any sign that he’d picked up the trail.

  “Yeah,” he said. I’ve met Maltese that were easier to read.

  “Around here?” Subtlety wasn’t working, and Spot was still searching for a lead.

  Stu only shrugged. Just then, Spot got it. I felt it like a jolt of adrenaline, and only after the briefest of pauses realized that the scent was old, stale. The same scent, though, and we both turned to it. Turned, I realized after a moment, back to the parking area—and back toward the men who still waited, looking at us.

  “Get back.” Stu called. He might not have picked up the same signals as I did, but he could read a dog. Sure enough, Spot retraced our steps, weaving through the men. He’d come to the spot where we’d parked the other day, right by the wall of brush. For a moment, I panicked, waiting for the bay that would announce a trapped animal. But although Spot raised his big head and sniffed the air, the message was clear. Whatever had been there was gone. The trail was dead.

  I knew it. I thought Stu did, too. But before I could ask, we heard the sound of tires on gravel. Creighton’s unmarked had finally arrived.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  “Hi, Jim. What brings you out here?” I nearly batted my eyelashes, only I thought Creighton might laugh.

  “Pru.” His nod was his non-answer, and he looked around until he saw Albert, skulking toward the back of the pack. “Albert. May I have a word?”

  Albert blanched, at least the part of him that wasn’t covered in beard did. But he took a few toddling steps forward, and Creighton did him the courtesy of escorting him around the back of his cruiser. The rain that had been threatening all morning had started, a thin mist that was beginning to bead on the car.

  “Albert, what’s going on here?” Creighton asked. I, of course, tagged along, just close enough to hear.

  “Nothing.” Albert couldn’t have looked guiltier if he’d tried. Being damp didn’t help.

  “Doesn’t look like nothing.” Creighton had his cop look on. Even from where I was, I could tell.

  “Jim, we went out already,” I broke in. “Spot led us back here.” I couldn’t believe I felt bad for Albert, but I did. “The trail was cold.”

  Albert looked from me to Jim and back again, then started edging away. “We’ll be talking,” Jim called to his retreating back. Then he turned toward me.

  “You took your time.” I felt bad for him. I did. But I didn’t like that he’d left me there alone for so long—or that he hadn’t bothered to tell me the news about Laurel.

  “I had someone else to talk to.” The cop look again. I stared. Waited. It was pointless. He wasn’t saying anything more, and I was getting chilled. When he finally broke the silence, it was with a question of his own: “So?”

  I filled him in, at least as much as I could without getting myself locked up. I didn’t care about getting that tech in trouble, and it didn’t make sense to hold out what I knew. Besides, it added to the strangeness about the hunt—and about its leader, Stu.

  “He knows about Laurel. Knows she wasn’t killed by a cougar. Knows that Mariela was moved, too.” I concluded. “When I told him, he didn’t blink an eye. There’s something else about him, Jim.”

  “Oh?”

  I bit my lip. I wanted to say, “He knows about me, too. About my sensitivity.” I couldn’t, of course, but I shared what felt safe. “I have a feeling someone’s talked to him about me. Told him to look out for me—in both senses. And I think maybe someone’s paying him to be here. To hunt for a cougar that nobody has seen.”
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br />   “Interesting.” If I hadn’t just seen Creighton break down over Laurel, I would have thought he was feeling a bit possessive. I shook the idea off: Laurel was dead. Someone had tried to make her murder look like an animal attack. This was part of the case. Creighton’s interest was in the evidence, not me.

  “Which of these clowns are you talking about?”

  I nodded toward Stu. Now that Creighton was here, he looked smaller, somehow. It could have been the rain. Some of the crew had sweatshirts on, but most were just kind of ducking down, as if they could dodge the drops. In Stu’s case, I had a feeling the posture was intentional, like he wanted to melt away into the crowd of soggy good ol’ boys.

  “Why him?” Creighton knew me better than to doubt me. He wanted my reasons.

  “He was leading the hunt. He knows about animals.” I paused, unsure how much to reveal. “He knows I do, too.”

  Creighton didn’t comment on that. He did take a few steps toward the shorter man. “Excuse me.”

  Stu looked up and blinked. Except for the lack of a beard, it was a dead-on impersonation of Albert, blank face and all. “Who, me?”

  “Yeah.” Jim’s eyes narrowed, trying to see what I had. “You were leading the hunt.”

  A shrug. “I wanted to help the lady with her dog.”

  “He had a scent rag.” I hadn’t wanted to show my hand. I also didn’t want him to get away without answering our questions. “Something from Mariela, he said.”