This cat. I had to assume, was hungry, and by the looks of the wounds on Theo, we had interrupted it quite early in its meal. Sawyer and I were now, unfortunately, standing like sentries between the cat and its kill. Probably not the safest place in the world to be.
Where's Reggie?
The news stories always gave the same advice on how to survive a confrontation with a mountain lion: Stay together in a group, act big. Make noise. Don't approach the animal in a threatening way.
"We need to move a little so we're not between the cat and Theo. Don't look it in the eye. Don't be threatening. But we need to act big."
"I don't know what you mean. How do you act big?"
"First, step sideways a little, right after me. Stay close so we look bigger together." We moved in lock step until we were three or four feet away from Theo, the act felt cowardly. I wasn't ready to sacrifice Theo to the cat, although I didn't see how she could possibly survive her injuries. But I knew I had to convince this mountain lion that it didn't have to protect its kill by coming through us.
"Now slowly unzip your parka." I said to Sawyer, she did. So did I. "Good. Now raise your arms above your head. Do it slowly. Stand as tall as you can." Sawyer raised herself up on her tiptoes.
Beside me was an aluminum and canvas camp chair.
the collapsible kind that people take car camping. I reached down and lifted it up and handed it to her. "Here. It will make you look bigger." I said.
She grasped it as though she had fallen overboard and I was offering her a lifeline. Quickly, she suspended it between her two raised hands.
Where's Reggie?
My eyes were adjusting to the darkness near the rafters. In my peripheral vision I watched the predator watch us, the cat was as beautiful as a creature could be. Its coat was full and plush for winter. Its profile was all strength and grace, and it still hadn't moved a muscle from its crouch. From it, though. I felt as much potential danger as I might if I were traversing an avalanche field in a snowmobile.
I wanted a weapon in my hands and longed for Lauren's Glock. My hands felt behind me on the wall for an elk rack that Theo had mounted for decoration. I lifted the rack into my hands and immediately wondered whether I had just succeeded in masquerading as this cat's favorite food. I held onto the sharp antlers anyway.
Where's Reggie?
Sawyer whispered. "Will it let us out the door?"
The door was in the general direction of the cat. I didn't have a clue how the cat would interpret us approaching the door. "We'd have to get two of them open." I said.
"Do we have a choice?"
"Where's Reggie?" I finally said out loud.
"What could he do?"
"Open the doors for us, if nothing else," I said.
"Could we run for it?"
"We can't outrun that cat if it decides to chase us. I was actually hoping it might choose to leave if the doors were open."
She made a noise that was appropriately skeptical. "How do you know so much about mountain lions?" she asked.
"I don't; I said.
FORTY-THREE
With my admission of ignorance about its habits, the cat finally moved. It was as though it suddenly understood how defenseless we were.
The first movements were a raised paw and, on the opposite side, a simultaneously cocked ear. Sawyer sucked in air and I held my breath before finally hissing, "Act big. Don't look at it." She raised the camp chair above her head and I shook the rack of antlers above mine. Our unzipped coats widened at our trunks, the cat moved another paw and raised its body an inch or two from the floor of the loft.
I felt the strange awe I'd had once when I chanced upon some barracuda while snorkeling in the Mexican Caribbean, the combination of beauty and danger was almost paralyzing.
The paw closest to the pole ladder reached down and felt gingerly for the first rung. "It's coming down." Sawyer said. "It's coming down."
The cat rose on its haunches and raised its head in our direction, temporarily unconcerned with its bloody kill in the comer, the other front paw felt for the upper rung on the ladder. My eyes scanned frantically for another weapon, theo was security-conscious enough to have bars on her windows and doors— she must have a weapon handy to protect herself, the cat lowered a paw another rung, the back legs felt for purchase at the edge of the loft.
Sawyer said. "Oh my God."
I saw it, finally, theo's gun, her final protection was a shotgun. I counted two barrels, side by side, the huge gun was resting lazily on the sill of the window between us and the door, mostly hidden by some gingham curtains. Unfortunately, the barrel end, not the trigger end, was closest to me.
"Have you ever fired a shotgun. Sawyer?"
"Why? Do you see one?"
"Yes, on the windowsill right by me."
"My dad had one."
The cat felt for another rung.
Sawyer's father had taught her how to fly; I sure hoped he had taught her how to shoot. "Give me a quick lesson."
"I guess we need to assume it's loaded, huh?"
"Yes."
"Theo lives alone. Pray that it's ready to go, there's probably a safety you need to release, after that, just point in the general direction of the cat and fire. You don't have to aim very well."
"I can do that." I said, unconvincingly. "Walk with me toward the window so I can reach it."
We shuffled sideways.
The cat growled and bared its fangs.
"Jesus. Oh God." I think the prayer I heard was Sawyer's. Though it might have been mine.
Holding the elk antlers in one hand. I reached out with the other and grabbed the barrel of the shotgun, the steel I touched was as cold as a snake's heart.
Where's Reggie?
The cat leaped down to the foot of the ladder and landed with a muffled thud that mimicked the sound of the blood pumping through my ears, the lion was now closer to Theo than we were. But it was closer to us than it was to Theo. I wasn't breathing and didn't think Sawyer was either.
Outside. I heard a car, the cat did, too, Its ears twitched. Seconds later, voices. Outside. Male voices. I thought, Reggie got us some help.
The cat's eyes widened; its jowls moved.
I maneuvered the shotgun so the barrels were no longer pointing right at me and felt along the side of the weapon for the safety. My fingers found a steel lever and I pushed on it until it stopped moving. I felt for the triggea guard, slowly inserting my index finger and caressing the curved steel of the first of two triggers. I felt a chilling awareness that if this damn gun wasn't loaded and cocked, either Sawyer or I, and perhaps both of us, were going to be mauled by this cat.
The cat was again absolutely still, staring right at Sawyer. I slid closer to her, the arm above my head supporting the antlers was almost numb. I needed to put them down to fire the gun.
The voices outside grew more distinct, the handle turned on the security door.
The cat leaped at Sawyer.
With a rush, she lowered the camp chair to protect herself and I raked the space in front of her with the antlers, trying to keep hold of the shotgun at the same time, we struck the lion together and managed to deflect it to the side, where it landed on its flank between Sawyer and Theo.
I couldn't shoot it there. I might hit Sawyer, and I'd definitely kill Theo if she wasn't already dead. Blood trickled from the lion's ear. It shook its head and righted itself.
The latch clicked on the inner door, the plank door, and a huge man in a black parka and a fur hat filled the entryway to Theo's cabin.
I said. "Careful, there's a mountain lion in here."
"What?" he said, his voice disbelieving.
The cat hissed.
The big man said. "Oh, shit." Pause. "I’ve seen that cat around here. Did it kill Theo?"
"It attacked her. Do you know her well?"
"Yes. I'm her neighbor."
"Is the gun I'm holding ready to fire?"
"Definitely."
"Th
en I think we need to get the cat away from Theo so I can use it."
FORTY-FOUR
"Somebody was outside with you?" Sawyer asked the big man.
"He's still out at the road, waiting to direct the ambulance. Said something about a pickup truck, said you'd know what he was talking about."
The man surveyed our dilemma and said. "Let's all slide away from him, toward the loft. You'll have a clear shot."
We started to slide, trying to be the biggest animals in the world, the cat seemed focused solely on the smallest prey in the room. Sawyer, as she slid away, it actually feinted toward her.
Across the room, beneath the loft. I heard a mechanical clicking. So did the cat, the lights on a VCR flickered and the TV came on, the opening credits for Guiding Light, theo had timers set to turn on the TV and to videotape a soap.
The noise from the TV seemed cacophonous, and the cat edged cautiously toward the sound. I tracked its every deliberate step with the barrel of the shotgun, tha moment it was clear of Theo. I fired, the TV imploded.
I was unprepared for the recoil, which almost blew me over. For many minutes afterward it seemed as though everyone around me was whispering.
An ambulance arrived soon after the cat died, and the attendants found Sawyer kneeling over Theo, crying quietly, pronouncing her dead.
I used Lauren's cell phone to call Sam Purdy and told him what the sheriff was going to find in this quaint log home up Sunshine Canyon, and asked him to run interference.
Sawyer and I left our business cards with Theo's neighbor at the cabin, we assumed that the sheriffs investigators would want to talk with us at some point, we concluded that we could leave before the authorities arrived because Theo's cabin wasn't actually a crime scene, after all, could a mountain lion be charged with B&E or homicide? Neither of us had any faith that the investigators would ever find any evidence that the Rands had managed to lure the lion inside the cabin.
Both Sawyer and I were skeptical anyway, they were too savvy to rely on a predator to do their work.
Reggie was cocooned in a shell of grief as we drova back down the mountain. Despite compassionate prompts from both Sawyer and me, he didn't say a word the whole way back, though he did make a point of constantly checking the passenger-side mirror.
I never spotted the pickup truck again.
Sawyer was rattled too, she wanted to get back to the Boulderado and make final plans to return to Phoenix to get her plane, she planned to take Milt up on his offer to find someone to provide her some protection, she agreed to page me if she was leaving before tomorrow. For now. I had to get back to work. I had patients scheduled and I wanted to see them, maybe even needed to see them.
Sam and the two ex-FBI agents were going to stay busy looking for the Rands.
Back at my office. I checked in with Lauren and her sister. Teresa answered the phone, said Lauren was sleeping and seemed well. I didn't tell her about Theo's cabin and the cat, didn't see what good it would do.
My day at the office started as had a thousand before it. I reveled in the routine of seeing familiar patients at familiar times and listening to their familiar dilemmas. I was surprisingly serene with Victoria Pearsall as she ruminated about her shitty boss. I stayed a step behind Riley Grant as he further consolidated his gains. Each forty-five-minute session was a comforting bracket that seemed to insulate me further from the morning's terror. I did six sessions in six and a half hours. Diane was kind enough to bring me a couple of empanadas and some lemonade for lunch. I wolfed the food down but didn't taste a bite.
Midday, I got a page from a sheriffs investigator who wanted to talk about the mountain lion and Theo.
I didn't call back. I didn't want to think about anything other than my patients' problems, which felt much more mundane than my own.
As four-thirty rolled around, the end was in sight. I had two more sessions to go— my two resistant young men in their twenties— before I would drop by the Boulderado to say good-bye to Sawyer and drive to Denver to be with Lauren for the night, she and I would have to talk about getting bodyguards.
Diane and I worked our office suite without a receptionist. When a patient arrived, he or she flicked a switch marked with either Diane's name or mine in the waiting room, the switches lit a red indicator light in the corresponding office. My red light flicked on right on schedule at 4:28.’ expected to see my regular four-thirty appointment. Tom Jenkins, the man in his late twenties whom I'd been treating for a few months for relationship issues and anxiety. Usually I found his stories tedious, his resistance to my intervention fatiguing. But I had to concentrate when I was with him, so he would most definitely be distracting.
Before going out to retrieve him from the waiting room I went to the bathroom and peed, then to the little kitchen, where I poured myself a fresh mug of coffee, which I carried back to my office and placed next to my chair. I made the short walk toward the front of the house and opened the waiting-room door.
The waiting room is roughly square, with seating on only two of the four walls. From the doorway, I can see only one of those walls, which is furnished with a burgundy sofa that Diane picked out during a recent Crate and Barrel phase. Sawyer was sitting on the sofa, looking nervous.
I was surprised to see her. "Hi, are you on your way home already? I wish you had paged me; I have two more patients to go."
She didn't speak, but I watched her eyes flit briefly toward the wall I couldn't see from where I was standing. I took one step into the room, turned, and recognized my four-thirty, Tom Jenkins, sitting in one of the three upholstered chairs lining the wall. I said. "Hello, Tom. I'll be with you in just a minute. Come on back, Sawyer."
Tom stood but didn't face me. His voice was apologetic as he said, "I'm afraid she's with me, today." Ha showed me a handgun, he didn't point it at me, just pulled it from his jacket pocket and held it out in front of him. I thought it resembled Lauren's Glock. Not identical, but equally menacing.
I said. "Oh, damn."
Sawyer nodded twice, slowly; and arched her eyebrows in an "I'm sorry. What could I do?" exclamation.
Months earlier. Thomas Jenkins had been referred to me by his internist, a man I'd never heard of, maybe that should have made me suspicious. It hadn't. I didn't pretend to know every internist in the metro area. Tom had come in to see me for the first time maybe three months before Arnie Dresser ever went for his final hike in the Maroon Bells. Long before A.J, and Milt intruded on Lauren and me during our lunch in Silver Plume.
Tom wasn't an atypical patient, he was an isolated man who called his loneliness "solitude." He described a history of jealousy and possessiveness in a long series of brief, immature romantic relationships, he described symptoms of anxiety that temporarily had me ruling out panic attacks, the only odd part of his presentation was that he was a self-pay patient in the brave new world of managed-care headaches.
But, of course, that made him more attractive to me, not less.
Oh yes, he had told me he was a firefighter in Longmont, fifteen minutes down the Diagonal from Boulder.
A firefighter. Just like Patrick Rand. Though Patrick worked in Lakewood, twentv miles away.
I shouldn't have been ambushed by him like this. But I was.
I said. "Your name isn't Tom, is it?"
"Why don't we go back to your office?" he suggested. "All of us." He turned to Sawyer and said. "Doctor? After you."
She stood and walked past me into the hallway that led toward my office, he moved across the room and turned the dead bolt on the entry door of the house. "You next. Doctor,” he said to me. I wondered if Diane was still in her office, and that thought precipitated chilling snapshot memories of the last time I'd seen a gun in these offices.
God, there had been a lot of carnage that day. I lost a moment trying to date the memories.
As though he were reading my mind, my patient said. "Your partner is gone for the day. Lucky for her."
We marched down the hallwav to mv offi
ce. Inside, he closed the door and moved toward the chair where I always sat, he said. "Coffee smells good. I always wondered why you never offered me any."
Sawyer and I sat side by side on the gold and gray couch that was directly across from him. I said. "Should I call you Patrick? Or Mr. Rand?"
He didn't react. "I wouldn't be here like this if I didn't know that the game had gotten risky.. Doctor." He rested the pistol on his lap and rubbed his eyes with his hands. "But I have to tell you— that mountain lion today? Can you believe it? That cat saved some lives. I'll tell you what." He half smiled and shook his head.
"I don't think I know what that means." I said, the words. I recognized, were therapist's words.
"It means today wasn't the first time I followed the three of you to that cabin."
"That was you in the pickup?" It was hardly a question.
He raised one eyebrow in surprise and admiration. I decided to point out his failure and try to milk it. "You were sloppy. Your father would never— never— have allowed us to spot him."
The words caught him mid-blink and he held his eyes shut for three or four seconds. My gaze wandered to his pistol.
He nodded and opened his eyes, catching me staring at the gun. "You're right, he was much better at this than I am. I'm afraid I almost blew it for him, all that he had worked for. But my plan at the cabin was good, considering the circumstances. I was going to blow the propane tank. Either the explosion or the fire should have engulfed your car and the cabin, gotten the two of you no matter where you were. But the cat, hell, now there's a wild card for you. Damn cat shows up and pretty soon half the emergency equipment in the county is on its way up there. Even though it didn't work, you have to admit my plan was sound. I did that whole thing— reconnaissance, planning, execution— in one and a half days. My father couldn't have done that, what I did. No. No way." He grew silent, reflecting on something. "I’ve mentioned him some to you, haven't I? He was such a weird character, he'd plan his meals a week in advance, right down to how many slices of bread he'd eat on Friday night along with his three fish sticks and whether or not he'd use jelly on the bread, a day and a half to get that whole plan in place? Not a chance. Sometimes I think it took him a day and a half just to decide to move his bowels."
Manner of Death Page 36