3 Panthers Play for Keeps

by Clea Simon

  That fascination, I thought as Dierdre held the door open, was what saved the snow leopard’s life. If he hadn’t been afraid of angering Richard, Nick would have killed the cat right then. I had no doubt that Nick Draper would have been happy to shoot an unconscious animal if a gun had been handy. Probably would have tried to sell the pelt, too.

  I stepped into the foyer. He had a gun now.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  “Nick.” I nodded, even as my hand tightened on Spot’s lead.

  “Pru,” he responded. “Dierdre.”

  “Nick, I didn’t say anything.” Dierdre’s voice was rising in pitch. “Nothing!” Her hands were fluttering around her face. Desperation turning to panic. I could use that. Spot knew it, too. He was trembling, every muscle ready to go.

  His excitement was obvious. “Watch the dog.” Nick angled the gun down. “One move and I’ll shoot it first.”

  “I’m sorry.” I let my eyes flick over to Spot. “You tried to warn me.”

  “This is my job.” He heard me. He saw the gun and understood what it meant. Spot would attack to protect me anyway. “My job.”

  “Sit, Spot. Stay.” I couldn’t risk it. Not while there were any other options to consider. Slowly, every fiber battling to revolt, the dog sat. Dierdre, meanwhile, had collapsed against the wall. I could hear her whimpering.

  “So, Nick.” I tried to sound normal as I could. “What’s your game plan here? Another fake mauling, like you did with Laurel? Did you sweep up some cat hairs to put on her? Some scat?” I spit the words out, more disgusted than afraid. “Do you have another car you can get rid of?”

  “I don’t think I need one.” He was actually smiling. “You’re the type of gal who likes trouble. The kind who sometimes disappears.”

  This was getting worrisome. I shook my head. “Detective Creighton knows I’m here.” I hate to play the white knight card. Right now, however, his appearance would be welcome. “I called him close to an hour ago to tell him I was on my way.”

  Nick smiled, and in a moment I knew why. I’d said too much. “On your way,” said the man with the gun. “What a pity. I’m sure Dierdre here will swear up and down that you never showed.”

  I looked over at the quivering mess propped against the wall. I suspected he was right.

  “You can disappear into the forest,” Nick was saying, “just like that pretty cat of Richard’s.”

  That’s when I heard it. A howl like a soul possessed. A wordless yowl coming down the hall. Nick couldn’t help himself, he turned. We both did. I don’t know what I expected. The snow leopard, maybe. A demon. What I saw was an elderly man, overcome with rage.

  “You killed her!” Richard’s choking cry finally found the words as he charged. “You killed my beautiful girl!”

  “Richard, no!” Nick shook his head, confused, and put up his arms to ward off his onetime benefactor.

  “Go!” I don’t know who gave the command: me or Spot. It didn’t matter. We both jumped. I threw myself against Nick’s body. Spot had his arm in his teeth as Richard’s bulk hit. All four of us went over in a jumble of bodies as the gun went off.

  “Spot!” I yelled. He growled, Nick’s beefy arm still in his mouth, as we all lay in a heap.

  “It’s good to see where your priorities lie,” said Jim Creighton, standing in the open door.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  It was near dawn by the time we got out of there. Somehow, nobody had been shot, but we needed the EMTs anyway—first to bind Nick’s arm and then to sedate Dierdre. They took Richard, too; he had shrunk, after that last desperate run, collapsing into himself in exhaustion or in grief. It had been hard to see his eyes, sunken in that lined face, but even I could feel the cold hate when he glared at his onetime wingman. Nick may have thought he was stepping up, chipping in when things had gotten tight, but he’d gone too far. And really, he was only the help.

  The floodlights made the grounds bright as noon, if noon had a harsh whiteness to it. Under their glare, I finally got to take Spot out to the smoldering embers, where the snow leopard had been kept and where both Mariela and Laurel had been attacked. The techs wouldn’t let him close at first, but when Jefferson started asking about his breeding—speculating about Spot’s lineage—I knew my canine companion had found a friend.

  I left Spot there, leashed, but under the lead tech’s care. While they were working, Creighton took my statement. I realized, then, how smart Benazi had been. I really had nothing concrete to say about him. What I suspected—what Dierdre had intimated, I held back. Why, I wasn’t exactly sure. Habit as much as anything, maybe. That and a sense that I might need something to barter with later.

  Creighton knew it. He always did, but as he poured us both more coffee from a thermos that was going around, he also gave me my out.

  “You must be exhausted, Pru.” It wasn’t a question. I nodded anyway. “So I’m going to let you go. But I may have more questions for you, in the days ahead.”

  I nodded again and then cleared my throat. Words, it seemed, were called for. “You know where to find me, Jim.”

  “Indeed I do.” He smiled. And that was it. We were back on.

  I drove slowly, for me, once he let me go. The combination of bad coffee and adrenaline had left me feeling shaky. I almost swerved off the road as I was passing by the preservation land. That’s when it hit me. I needed to pull over. Not for safety’s sake, but to touch base. Maybe say good-bye to something that had been lost there.

  It felt odd to pull into the parking area without Spot by my side. I knew he was in good hands: The hound part of him loved working with the techs. But I felt naked as I got out of my car and walked to the edge of the clearing. Mariela had been dumped here. Laurel had died here, bleeding out from Nick’s brutal attack. And the snow leopard? Well, she was alone, in unfamiliar territory. And unless I missed my guess, she’d been raised in captivity with no experience on her own. She was about as vulnerable as they had been.

  It made me sad, all the waste. The lives, the beauty. I walked back to my car, and leaned back on the hood, the slight warmth of that big engine the only comfort I could expect.

  I don’t know how long I sat there. Too tired and too jacked up to sleep. But I thought I was in a dream state when I first saw it. A rustle in the underbrush. A play in the shadows as the sun broke over the hills.

  What happened next took my breath away. It—she—was a beauty. Not that much larger than Spot, maybe a hundred pounds, but with a stealth and grace that marked her as a wild thing. Stepping into one of the first shafts of sunlight, I saw the play of muscles under her thick fur. The power in her low-slung body and those heavy jaws.

  “Home?” She turned her big, round head to face me, and I caught the sadness in those eyes. She was as lost out here as I would be.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I didn’t know how much she’d get from me, if anything. I had to try. Staring into those pale green eyes, I thought of the preservation land. How it stretched to the border, to the mountains beyond. Here might be familiar, but here there was a highway. People. The high grounds would be safer. There’d be snow at the higher elevation still, and it would stay cool up there, even in summer. I pictured deer and opossums, and smaller prey, too. She held my gaze as I pictured this and, even without Spot, I got that scent: strange and fierce. Then she turned away, those big paws moving silently over the wet earth. Her tail, as long and thick as a boa, was the last to disappear, its beautiful mottled spots fading into the shadows under the trees.

  “Spectacular, isn’t she?” I turned with a start. Benazi had parked at the other end of the clearing, but I still thought I’d have heard him walk up, if it weren’t for my fatigue and that glorious distraction. “It’s a pity she’s so dangerous.”

  I turned to appraise the man beside me, unsure, exactly what he was discussing.

 
“You are talking about the leopard, right?”

  “What leopard?” He asked, his bushy eyebrows rising slightly. “There are no such animals in these woods.”

  “You know, Nick wanted to sell her for a canned hunt.” I wasn’t sure why I told him this. Maybe so he’d know what a sleazebag he had almost done business with. For a cat-lover, he’d had a close escape.

  It didn’t seem to make him happy. “My way will be kinder,” he said, his voice so low I barely heard him.

  “Wait, what?” I was too tired. I hadn’t put this all together. “You can’t mean, Stu…Gregor, you’ve got to call it off.”

  He turned toward me. “He’s very good at what he does,” he said. “It will be quick, and it must be done.”

  “You can’t.” I met Benazi’s eyes. “I won’t let you.”

  His heavy eyebrows rose slightly at that, but I had the bit in my teeth.

  “The Haigens are going to be prosecuted for keeping a big cat illegally. There are going to be questions about how it was obtained. About who is trafficking in endangered animals. They may be scared of you. Scared into silence.” I paused as I heard my own words. “I’m not.”

  His voice went soft. “Are you threatening me?”

  “I am doing what is necessary.” I thought of the animal I had seen so briefly. She was beautiful. Wild. Scared. “I want your promise that you won’t let Stu kill her. I’ll work with you. Help you with any resources I have.” I let that one sink in; he knew what I was offering. “We can trap her. We can relocate her—to a sanctuary if she’s not fit for these woods. But I won’t let her be hunted down and slaughtered.”

  “You won’t,” said Benazi. His face was a mask, showing nothing. I felt my stomach clench, but I held his gaze.

  His eyes were like stones. I swallowed. And much to my amazement, he smiled. “No, you won’t, will you?”

  With that, he took out a cell and punched in a number. “The hunt is off,” he said. Then he nodded to me, and walked away.

  Chapter Fifty

  The Haigens had enough money left to hire good lawyers, not that it helped. The exotic animal infraction—keeping a big cat as a pet without the proper permits—might have gone away. The wrongful death of Mariela Gomez was not going to be brushed under the rug, and Laurel’s murder, a savage stabbing, had been committed in an attempted cover-up. Richard’s blindness was nearly total by the time their case came to trial, and that might have helped with the sentencing. But his complete lack of disregard for the human life lost worked against him. He was taken away wailing about how much he loved her. He didn’t mean any of the women.

  Nick Draper was another matter entirely. He didn’t have money of his own, and all the rich “friends” he’d helped over the years deserted him when they heard of his latest escapade. Once Raul had been located—he’d gone into hiding, traumatized by the death of his sister and threatened with deportation—the case was sealed. Covering up an affair, or even an illegal pet, would have been one thing. Killing two women? Quite another. He was convicted of second-degree murder, with no mitigating circumstances.

  Dierdre got off lightly, all things considered. She faced the same charges as her husband, but it wasn’t hard to convince a jury that she was under his sway. As an accessory, she would still do time. The difference was, unlike her husband, she’d probably live to walk in the woods again. If her nerves could stand it.

  That left the leopard. But as spring turned to summer, she didn’t surface, and no sightings were reported. I wanted to think I could trust Benazi. Trust the deal we’d made. As the months passed by, I realized he wasn’t going to take me up on my offer. I’d have asked Spot for his impressions, but he’d moved on by then, going to a young mother in Worcester who’d lost her sight in an industrial accident. When I asked Wallis what she thought—about the snow leopard, about her chances—she tended to act smug. Sometimes, I thought, she was jealous.

  “So you’re worried about another cat, out in the woods?” She’d been staring out the window, the last time I’d brought the leopard up. “Wondering if she can make it?”

  From the way her tail twitched, I thought Wallis was looking at a bird. The hills were fully green by then. The road obscured by a veil of leaves.

  “Life in the wild is harsh, Pru. You know that.” A bird or a squirrel, definitely. “A female alone? Doesn’t stand a chance.

  A flash of red in the distance. A cardinal, or a bright red Maserati.

  “Unless, of course, she’s made some friends.”

  Acknowledgments

  The Eastern cougar—aka panther, puma, or mountain lion—is a mystery in itself. I had great fun playing with the concept of this great cat, and for guidance in all things panther, my heartfelt thanks go out to IFAW media contact Kerry Branon and animal rescue officer Kelly Donithan. In terms of writing, I’d like to thank my usual stalwart crew: Lisa Susser, Vicki Constantine Croke, Colleen Mohyde, Sophie Garelick, Frank Garelick, Lisa Jones, Annette Rogers, and, as always, Jon S. Garelick. Jon not only read multiple revisions of this mystery, he took great care of me while doing so. Thanks, my love. Thank you, my friends. Enjoy!

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