Die Again

by Tess Gerritsen

  “What kind of cat did it?”

  “An African leopard. There was one large male in the cage.”

  “Has he been secured?”

  “He’s dead. Dr. Oberlin—he’s that blond guy standing over there—he tried to hit him with the dart gun, but he missed both times. He had to shoot him.”

  “So it’s safe to go in now.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a frigging mess. There’s buckets of blood in there.” Jane looked down at her stained footwear and shook her head. “I liked these shoes. Oh well. I’ll call you later.”

  “Who’s going to walk me through the scene?”

  “Alan Rhodes can do it.”

  “Who?”

  “He’s their large-cat expert.” Jane called out to the group of men gathered near the exhibit: “Dr. Rhodes? Dr. Isles is here, from the ME’s office. She needs to see the body.”

  The dark-haired man who came toward them still looked shell-shocked by the tragedy. The trousers of his zoo uniform were bloodstained, and his attempt at a smile couldn’t disguise the strain in his face. Automatically he reached out to greet her, then realized there was dried blood on his hand, and he dropped his arm back to his side. “I’m sorry you have to see this,” he said. “I know you’ve probably encountered some terrible things, but this is awful.”

  “I’ve never dealt with a large-cat attack before,” said Maura.

  “This is my first time as well. I never want to see another one.” He pulled out a key ring. “I’ll take you around back, to the staff area. That’s where the gate is.”

  Maura waved goodbye to Jane and followed Rhodes down the shrubbery-lined pathway marked STAFF ONLY. The walkway cut between neighboring exhibits and led to the rear of the enclosure, which was hidden from public view.

  Rhodes unlocked the gate. “This will take us through the squeeze cage. There are two inner gates on either end of this cage. One leads to the public exhibit area. The other gate leads to the night room.”

  “Why is it called a squeeze cage?”

  “It’s a collapsible section we can use to control the cat for veterinary purposes. When he walks through this section, we push on the cage wall and it traps him against the bars. Makes it easy to vaccinate him or inject other meds in his shoulder. Minimum stress for the animal and maximum safety for the staff.”

  “Is this where the victim would have entered?”

  “Her name was Debra Lopez.”

  “I’m sorry. Is this how Ms. Lopez entered?”

  “It’s one of the access points. There’s also a separate entrance for the night room, where the animal stays during off-exhibit hours.” They walked into the cage and Rhodes shut the door behind them, trapping them in the claustrophobically narrow passage. “As you can see, there are gates at both ends. Before you enter any cage, you confirm the animal is secured in the opposite section. That’s Zoo Safety One Oh One: Always know where the cat is. Especially Rafiki.”

  “Was he particularly dangerous?”

  “Every leopard is potentially dangerous, especially Panthera pardus. The African leopard. They’re smaller than lions or tigers, but they’re silent and unpredictable and powerful. A leopard can drag a carcass much heavier than he is straight up a tree. Rafiki was in his prime, and extremely aggressive. He was kept in solitary because he attacked the female leopard we tried to place with him in this exhibit. Debbie knew how dangerous he was. We all did.”

  “So how could she make this kind of mistake? Was she new to the job?”

  “Debbie worked here at least seven years, so it certainly wasn’t lack of experience. But even veteran zookeepers sometimes get careless. They fail to confirm the animal’s whereabouts, or they forget to latch a gate. Greg told me that when he got here, he found the gate to the night cage wide open.”

  “Greg?”

  “Dr. Greg Oberlin, our veterinarian.”

  Maura focused on the night cage gate. “This latch didn’t malfunction?”

  “I tested it. So did Detective Rizzoli. It’s in working order.”

  “Dr. Rhodes, I’m having a lot of trouble understanding how an experienced zookeeper leaves a leopard’s cage door wide open.”

  “It’s hard to believe, I know. But I can show you a spreadsheet of similar accidents involving big cats. It’s happened in zoos around the world. Since 1990, there’ve been more than seven hundred incidents in the US alone, with twenty-two people killed. Just last year, in Germany and the UK, experienced zookeepers were killed by tigers. In both cases, they simply forgot to lock the gates. People get distracted or careless. Or they start to believe the cats are friends who’d never hurt them. I keep telling our staff, never trust a big cat. Never turn your back. These are not pet kitties.”

  Maura thought about the gray tabby she’d just adopted, the cat whose affections she was now trying to win with expensive sardines and bowls of half-and-half. He was just another wily predator who had claimed Maura as his personal servant. If he were a hundred pounds heavier, she had little doubt he’d see her not as a friend, but as a tasty source of meat. Could anyone truly trust a cat?

  Rhodes unlocked the inner gate, which led to the public exhibit. “This is the way Debbie would have entered,” he said. “We found a lot of blood next to the bucket and broom, so she was probably attacked while doing morning cleanup.”

  “What time would this have been?”

  “Around eight or nine o’clock. The zoo opens at nine for visitors. Rafiki’s fed in the night room before he’s let into the exhibit.”

  “Are there any security cameras back here?”

  “Unfortunately not, so we have no footage of the incident, or what preceded it.”

  “What about the victim’s—Debbie’s—state of mind? Was she depressed? Troubled about anything?”

  “Detective Rizzoli asked that same question. Was this a suicide by cat?” Rhodes shook his head. “She was such a positive, optimistic woman. I can’t imagine her committing suicide, despite what was going on in her life.”

  “Was something going on?”

  He paused, his hand still on the gate. “Isn’t there always something going on in people’s lives? I know she’d just broken up with Greg.”

  “That’s Dr. Oberlin, the veterinarian?”

  He nodded. “Debbie and I talked about it on Sunday, when we brought Kovo’s body to the taxidermist. She didn’t seem too upset about it. More … relieved. I think Greg took it a lot harder. It didn’t make things easy for him, since they both work here and they see each other at least once a week.”

  “Yet they got along?”

  “As far as I could tell. Detective Rizzoli spoke to Greg, and he’s pretty devastated about this. And before you ask the obvious question, Greg said he was nowhere near this cage when it happened. He said he came running when he heard the screams.”

  “Debbie’s?”

  Rhodes looked pained. “I doubt she lived long enough to make a sound. No, it was some visitor screaming. She saw blood and started yelling for help.” He swung open the exhibit gate. “She’s lying in the back, near the boulders.”

  Only three paces into the enclosure, Maura halted, disturbed by the evidence of carnage. This was what Jane had described as “buckets of blood,” and it was splashed across foliage, congealed in pools on the concrete pathway. Arterial splatters arced in multiple directions, sprayed out by the victim’s last, desperate heartbeats.

  Rhodes looked down at the toppled bucket and rake. “She probably never saw him coming.”

  The human body contains five liters of blood, and this was where Debbie Lopez had spilled most of hers. It had still been wet when others walked through it; Maura saw multiple footprints and smears across the concrete. “If he attacked her here,” she said, “why did he drag her to the back of the cage? Why not consume her where she fell?”

  “Because a leopard’s instinct is to guard his kill. In the wild, there’d be scavengers who’d fight him for it. Lions and hyenas. So leopards move their kill
out of reach.”

  Blood smears marked the leopard’s progress as he had dragged his prize of human flesh along the concrete path. In that trail of streaks and swipes, one clear paw print stood out, startling evidence of the size and power of this killer. The trail led to the rear of the enclosure. At the base of a massive artificial boulder lay the body, covered with an olive-green blanket. The dead leopard sprawled nearby, jaws gaping open.

  “He dragged the body up onto the ledge,” said Rhodes. “We pulled her down to do CPR.”

  Maura looked up at the boulder and saw the dried stream of blood that had trickled from the ledge. “He got her all the way up there?”

  Rhodes nodded. “That’s how powerful they are. They can haul a heavy kudu into a tree. Their instinct is to go high and leave the carcass hanging over a branch, where they can gorge undisturbed. That’s what he was about to do when Greg shot him. By then, Debbie was already gone.”

  Maura donned gloves and crouched down to pull aside the blanket. One glance at what was left of the victim’s throat told her that the attack was not survivable. In appalled silence she stared at the crushed larynx and exposed trachea, at a neck ripped open so deeply that the head lolled back, nearly decapitated.

  “That’s how they do it,” said Rhodes, his gaze averted, his voice unsteady. “Cats are designed by nature to be perfect killing machines, and they go straight for the throat. They crush the spine, tear open the jugular and carotids. At least they make sure their prey’s dead before they start feeding. I’m told it’s a quick death. Exsanguination.”

  Not quick enough. Maura pictured Debbie Lopez’s agonal seconds, the blood pulsing like a water cannon from her severed carotids. It would also flood into her torn trachea, drowning her lungs. A rapid death, yes, but for this victim, those final seconds of terror and suffocation must have seemed an eternity.

  She pulled the blanket back over the dead woman’s face and turned her attention to the leopard. It was a magnificent animal, with a massive chest and a lustrous pelt that gleamed in the dappled sunlight. She stared at razor-sharp teeth and imagined how easily they would crush and tear a woman’s throat. With a shudder she rose to her feet and saw, through the exhibit bars, that the morgue retrieval team had arrived.

  “She loved this cat,” said Rhodes, gazing down at Rafiki. “After he was born, she bottle-fed him like a baby. I don’t think she ever imagined he’d do this to her. And that’s what really killed her. She forgot he was the predator, and we’re his prey.”

  Maura peeled off her gloves. “Has the family been notified?”

  “She has a mother in St. Louis. Our director, Dr. Mikovitz, has already called her.”

  “My office will need her contact information. For the funeral arrangements after the autopsy.”

  “Is an autopsy really necessary?”

  “The cause of death seems obvious, but there are always questions that need to be answered. Why did she make this fatal mistake? Was she impaired by drugs or alcohol or some medical condition?”

  He nodded. “Of course. I didn’t even think of that. But I’d be shocked if you found any drugs in her system. That just wouldn’t be the woman I knew.”

  The woman you believed you knew, thought Maura as she walked out of the cage. Every human on this earth had secrets. She thought of her own, so closely guarded, and how startled her colleagues would be to learn of them. Even Jane, who knew her best of all.

  As the morgue retrieval team wheeled the stretcher into the enclosure, Maura stood on the public pathway, gazing over the railing at what the visitors would have seen. The spot where the leopard first attacked was out of view, hidden by a wall, and shrubbery would have obscured the dragging of the body. But the rock ledge where he’d guarded his kill was clearly visible, and it was now marked by the gruesome trail of blood that had dripped down the boulder.

  No wonder people had been shrieking.

  A shiver rippled across Maura’s skin, like the chill breath of a predator. Turning, she glanced around. Saw Dr. Rhodes huddled in conversation with worried zoo officials. Saw a pair of zookeepers comforting each other. No one was looking at Maura; no one even seemed to notice she was there. But she could not shake the sensation of being watched.

  Then she spotted him, through the bars of a nearby enclosure. His tawny coat was almost invisible against the sand-colored boulder where he crouched. His powerful muscles were poised to spring. Silently tracking his prey, his eyes were fixed on her. Only on her.

  She looked at the placard mounted on the railing. PUMA CONCOLOR. A cougar.

  And she thought: I never would have seen him coming, either.

  Nine

  “Jerry O’Brien’s a bomb thrower. Or he plays one on the radio, anyway,” said Frost as they drove northwest into Middlesex County, Jane at the wheel. “On his show last week, he was ranting about the animal rights crowd. Compared them to grass-eating rodents, and wondered how dumb bunnies got to be so vicious.” Frost laughed as he pulled up the audio file on his laptop. “Here’s the part you’ve got to hear, about hunting.”

  “You think he really believes the shit he says?” she asked.

  “Who knows? It gets him an audience, anyway, ’cause he’s syndicated all the way to the moon.” Frost tapped on his keyboard. “Okay, this is last week’s show. Listen to this.”

  Maybe you eat chicken or enjoy a steak once in a while. You pick it up at the grocery store, wrapped up nicely in plastic. What makes you think you’re morally superior to the hunter who hauls himself out of bed at four A.M., who endures the cold and exhaustion to hike through the woods with a heavy gun? Who waits patiently in the brush, maybe for hours? Who spends a lifetime honing his skill with a firearm—and trust me, people it is a skill to be able to hit a target. Who on God’s green earth has the right to begrudge the hunter his right to engage in an ancient, honored occupation that has fed families since the beginning of human history? These metrosexual snobs who have no problem eating their steak frites in a fancy French restaurant have the audacity to tell us red-blooded hunters we’re cruel for killing a deer. Where do they think meat comes from?

  And don’t get me started on wild-eyed vegetarians. Hey, animal lovers! You got a cat or a dog, right? What do you feed your beloved pooch or puss? Meat. M. E. A. T. You might as well take your anger out on Fluffy!

  Frost paused the recording. “Which reminds me, I dropped by Gott’s house this morning. Didn’t see the white cat, but all the food I left last night was gone. I refilled the bowl and changed the litter box.”

  “And Detective Frost gets the merit badge for pet care.”

  “What’re we gonna do about him? You think Dr. Isles wants another cat?”

  “I think she already regrets the one she has. Why don’t you adopt it?”

  “I’m a guy.”

  “So?”

  “So it’d feel weird, having a cat.”

  “What, do they steal your manhood?”

  “It’s all about image, you know? If I bring home a girl, what’s she gonna think when she sees I have a fluffy white cat?”

  “Oh yeah, like your goldfish gives a much better impression.” She nodded at his laptop. “So what else does O’Brien have to say?”

  “Listen to this part,” said Frost, and clicked PLAY.

  … but no, these grass-eating rodents, vicious bunnies who dine every day on lettuce, they’re more bloodthirsty than any carnivore. And believe me, friends, I hear from them. They threaten to string me up and gut me like a deer. Threaten to burn me, cut me, strangle me, crush me. Would you believe this comes from the lips of vegetarians? Friends, beware the lettuce eaters. There’s no one on earth more dangerous than your so-called animal lovers.

  Jane looked at Frost. “Maybe they’re even more dangerous than he realizes,” she said.

  With a weekly show syndicated to six hundred radio stations, reaching an audience of over twenty million listeners, Jerry “Big Mouth” O’Brien could afford the best, a fact made abundantly c
lear from the moment Jane and Frost drove past the guarded gatehouse onto O’Brien’s estate. The rolling pastures and grazing horses could be on a farm somewhere in Virginia or Kentucky; it was an unexpectedly bucolic setting only an hour outside Boston. They drove past a farm pond and up a grassy slope dotted with white sheep, to the massive log-built residence at the top of the hill. With its wide porches and massive timber posts, it looked more like a hunting lodge than a private home.

  They had just pulled up to the building when they heard the first gunshots.

  “What the hell?” said Frost as they both unsnapped their holsters.

  More gunshots rang out in rapid succession, then silence. Too long a silence.

  Jane and Frost lurched out of the car and were already bounding up the porch steps, guns drawn, when the front door suddenly swung open.

  A chubby-cheeked man greeted them with a pasted-on smile so big it had to be fake. He saw the two Glocks pointed at his chest and said, with a laugh: “Whoa now, there’s no need for that. You must be Detectives Rizzoli and Frost.”

  Jane kept her weapon level. “We heard gunshots.”

  “It’s only target practice. Jerry’s got a nice shooting range downstairs. I’m his personal assistant, Rick Dolan. Come on in.”

  Another burst of gunfire rang out. Jane and Frost glanced at each other, then simultaneously reholstered their weapons.

  “Sounds like some major firepower,” said Jane.

  “You’re welcome to check it out. Jerry loves to show off his arsenal.”

  They stepped into a soaring entrance hall where the natural pine walls were hung with Native American rugs. Dolan reached into a hall cabinet and tossed ear protectors to his guests.

  “Jerry’s rules,” he said, slipping a pair of protectors over his own head. “He went to a few too many rock concerts as a kid, and as he likes to say, Deafness is forever.”

  Dolan swung open a door that was thickly padded with soundproofing. Jane and Frost hesitated as gunfire thundered up from the basement.