by Mary Walker
“Peoples don’t read that sign,” the guard grumbled, walking away.
Katherine stood up. “Goddamn it, Ra, you’re supposed to let me know when someone’s coming! Bad dog, sleeping on the job. Well, what are we going to do now?” She looked down at the stuffed dog.
“Let’s see if I can lift this thing.” She bent over, reached her arms around the dog’s legs and hefted. “Not so bad,” she grunted, staggering with it out the door. She carried it to the open back of the car and hoisted it inside. Then she pointed for Ra to get in. He hesitated. “In,” she commanded. The dog jumped into the back and sat as far from the stuffed dog as he could.
“Don’t blame you,” Katherine said, slamming the tailgate.
She got her purse from the closet, closed the door and put the lock back on.
A flash of panic coursed through her. Oh, my God, keys! She rummaged frantically through her bag. Thank God, there they were. She jumped in the car, locked the doors, and revved the engine.
The big guard was there to salute them through the gates.
Katherine’s heart pounded with excitement. “Oh, Ra, he did leave me something. I can’t wait to see what we’ve got here.”
9
AS if enacting some ritual of black magic to make the dead speak, Katherine waved her hand slowly over the twenty-one photographs and the six white pages. They had to mean something.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of her father’s studio, she closed her eyes and circled her head slowly, trying to relax the tension in her neck. The stuffed dog, eviscerated once more, lay tipped over on its side, pushed out of the way, under the long table. Both living dogs slept close by.
It hadn’t been money, of course. But she hadn’t really expected that it would be.
It was a message to her from her father. He had written “Katherine Driscoll” on the manila envelope. He had hidden it away and sent her the key and the receipt so she would be sure to find it if something happened to him. It was a secret communication from him to her, the only one they would ever share. Katherine was flooded with the desire to understand the message and carry out his intentions, if only she could figure out what they were.
After wrenching the large envelope from the cavity of the dog, she had spilled out the contents and spread them in a circle around her: twenty-one black-and-white photographs and six document pages—apparently copies of Austin zoo records concerning new animal acquisitions.
The photographs were all of animals being unloaded from huge vans, some in crates, some tied and hobbled. Katherine turned them over. On the back of each photo a date and a place were written in her father’s handwriting. All were dated within the past three months and were marked with one of four names: Cloud Nine, Bandera; Circle Z, Fredericksburg; PLS, Lampasas; or RTY Ranch, Kerrville.
Katherine looked through them for the most recent ones, the four marked 10/2/89, just two weeks ago. All four had “RTY Ranch, Kerrville” written below the date.
Katherine picked one up and studied it. Four men were unloading a huge crate from a large van. Like the other twenty, it was not up to the usual standard of her father’s wildlife pictures. It looked hurried, perhaps taken from a distance in insufficient light.
She picked up another. A striped antelope, large as a cow, with long twisted horns and huge ears, stood outside a crate. Katherine didn’t know what the animal was called, but she was certain it was not native to Texas.
In another photo, a large goatlike animal with thick horns curling back into a semicircle over its neck was being released into a paddock. It had a long, flowing fringe of hair extending from its chin to its throat, chest, and down to its forelegs. It reminded Katherine of the three billy goats gruff. Again, she couldn’t name it, but knew it was foreign.
The last picture dated October 2 showed three more large antelope-type animals standing in a paddock.
In other photos, she recognized a huge Cape buffalo, four wildebeest, and a pair of ostriches. There were several more varieties of horned antelopes she couldn’t name, but she knew none of them were the native pronghorn antelope, white-tailed deer, or mule deer.
She was willing to bet these were African animals being unloaded at Texas ranches.
This was not so unusual. Katherine knew ranchers in the Boerne area who stocked their fenced areas with exotic animals and charged enormous fees for hunters to shoot them. It was a legitimate business. And a lucrative one.
She looked at the animals again and wished she knew more about African wildlife.
Then she remembered her father’s library. She sprang from the floor and ran into the tiny second bedroom her father had used to store his books. His animal collection was organized into geographical sections. Out of the African section, she pulled a book called A Field Guide to the Larger Mammals of Africa. As she walked back to the studio, she leafed through the table of contents. If these photographed animals were African, they should be in here.
Stretching out on her stomach, she arranged the open book in front of her, with the photos of the striped antelope and the bearded animal right above it. She paged through the book, stopping at each illustration.
Midway through, in the section on Tragelaphinae, she found the big striped antelope. It was a bongo. Its habitat was central and west Africa, very rare now. In the last chapter, Caprinae, she found the picture that matched the bearded animal exactly. It was an aoudad or Barbary sheep, a wild sheep inhabiting the Saharan zone of Africa.
It was satisfying to be able to name them.
But so what?
Katherine shut the book and pulled the letter from her father out of the zipper compartment of her bag where she had stashed it. She reread the part that said, “What you would need to do in return is something only you can do. It would not be difficult for you, I’m sure. You might even enjoy it.” What was he expecting her to do in return for the money? Something involving these documents and pictures he’d left with her name on them?
He’d intended to explain it all to her, but now he couldn’t; she was on her own.
She reached for one of the sheets and studied it more carefully. The heading in bold type said, “Austin Zoological Garden Acquisitions.” Under that were nine column headings: “Access No., ISIS No., Classif., DOB, Sex, Source, Paym. Fund, Acq.D, and Quar.” The entries under those headings were printed in tiny, precise, accountant-like handwriting.
She wondered what the sheets had to do with the photos. Maybe the zoo had also acquired some of these same species. She pulled over the other five sheets and checked back in the book for the bongo’s scientific classification. It was Boocercus euryceros. She ran her finger down the second column of the first sheet, then the second sheet. On the third one, she found it: (Access No.)M-139744, (ISIS No.)11-2504, (Classif.)Boocercus euryceros, (DOB)6/3/85, (Sex)M, (Source)MFWAD, (Paym.Fund)-ACDF, (Acq.D) 10/2/89, (Quar.)21.
The zoo had acquired a bongo on October 2, the same day her father had photographed one being unloaded at the RTY Ranch in Kerrville.
So what?
If I knew a little more about the zoo, she thought, I might be able to figure this out.
She looked at the sheet again, intending to check for the Barbary sheep, Ammotragus lervia. But the tiny numbers and letters blurred and dissolved. She closed her eyes and felt the gritty friction of lids against bloodshot eyeballs. She put a hand to her face. The skin felt greasy and slack. God, she was tired. This had been the longest day of her life. She glanced at her watch—ten past midnight.
She needed to sleep a few hours and then come at this fresh. It was too confusing right now.
Slowly she rose from the floor, one aching joint at a time. She shouldn’t lie on her stomach. It made the small of her back sore. Standing, she arched her back and groaned. She started to leave the papers and photos on the floor, but changed her mind and gathered them back into the envelope. He had gone to great pains to conceal these; so would she.
Both dogs struggled to their feet and padded beh
ind her as she walked to the bedroom, carrying the envelope with her.
She lifted the mattress at the head of her father’s bed and tucked the envelope between the box spring and the mattress. Then she collapsed on the white chenille spread. The last thing she heard was the dogs flopping down onto the floor next to the bed and the last thing she felt was the tufty pattern pressing into her cheek.
* * *
The pointman took his time to savor the moment. The morning air was brisk and invigorating. Yes, invigorating. Just mouthing the word made him feel renewed and powerful. Two days, two down. He was powerful, doing now what he was meant to do.
He looked around him at the old wood-slat blind on its spindly tripod legs, listing hard to the south. This was a world where he felt at home: country air and hunting. He’d like to have a ranch like this—a little place with some acreage and good hunting. When he finished this work, then, finally, he could concentrate on living.
He gazed down on the buck’s antlers—ten sharp points. Perfect. “Practice makes perfect, sonny,” his mother used to say. She was so right. Well, this one’s for you, Mom.
The deer’s huge dark eyes were wide open and already beginning to glaze over with white. The mouth was agape, with a trickle of blood oozing out onto the dirt. But that was the only blood. This part of it was very neat. The next part would get bloody; he’d need to get rid of these clothes, just as he had done with the others.
He leaned down and grasped the bases of the main antler beams and began to drag. Amazing how heavy in death these animals were who looked so light in life, as if they were subject to a different law of gravity. He tugged it a few inches at a time through the dirt, until the buck lay at the edge of the tree line. So it could be seen from the blind. Bait. It would draw the real prey.
Breathing hard from the exertion, he leaned over and caressed each of the five pointed tines on the left antler. It was the fighting tine, ten inches long and sharp as a skewer, that would do the job, he decided. He wished he could be around to see the faces of the cops or the game warden or whoever discovered this one.
After this, he would be half finished. Unless he added one more to the list. He had forgotten that there was one more person there. He might have to add her now that she was intruding herself. Really, it was fate. She was asking for it, putting herself in his path like that, reminding him of her role in it.
He looked at the neat bloodless hole where the arrow protruded from the deer’s chest. He ran his eye up the shaft to the red plastic vanes, striated to resemble a feather, trying to decide whether to pull it out and get rid of it or just leave it there. He felt sour panic rising in his throat. It was childish and negligent that he hadn’t thought that important issue out ahead of time. One of the reasons things had gone so well yesterday was that he had thought everything out, just the way his mother had taught him to do. “Always think of the consequences, sonny, think of the worst thing that could happen and plan for it.”
He reached into his shirt for his talisman and held it, slowly squeezing, until the fangs punctured the skin of his palm. There. He felt better. It was fine. He was doing a good job. The first one had gone perfectly and so would this. He had right and justice on his side.
He could think about the arrow while he waited. There was time. He walked back into the trees and picked up his bow and quiver of arrows. “A good workman always cleans up his tools,” he heard his mother say. He sat at the edge of the clearing with his back braced against an oak tree. The arrow could not possibly be traced to him. It had been purchased ten years ago in Waco. There was no way it could come back to haunt him. So it didn’t really matter. It was just a—what was the word he had looked up the other day? Aesthetic. That was it. The question of the arrow was just an aesthetic matter. Would it look better in or out?
Now it came down to waiting, again. That was fine with him. He was a good waiter. He’d waited a long time for this.
* * *
The dogs woke her at eight. She sat up in bed with a jerk.
My God, that envelope.
She leaned over and pulled it from under the mattress. If Lieutenant Sharb was right, if her father had been murdered, then the information in the envelope might have been the cause. And now she had it. Having it could be dangerous, really a police matter.
How come I didn’t think of this last night?
I was just so tired.
She felt an unaccustomed flutter of fear under her breastbone.
Maybe I should run this over to Sharb right now and wash my hands of the whole matter.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and pulled the envelope from under the mattress. She stared at her name written in big loopy black letters.
But my father didn’t take it to the police. Why not, if my gut feel is right, and there is proof of illegal activities in here? He must have had a reason for keeping it to himself.
She ran her hand through her snarled hair. No, this is a communication between my father and me. There’s no need to tell anyone about it yet. Anyway, things have always turned out best when I rely on myself.
Now Ra began to prance in place and Belle gave one sharp bark of demand from the doorway. Katherine stood up and stretched. “You’re a tyrant, Miss Belle, you know that? Come on.” She led them to the kitchen, filled two bowls with Belle’s food and stuck them outside the back door, in the tiny fenced-in backyard.
Then she tried Travis Hammond’s number, but his answering machine was still on. She left another urgent message saying she had to talk to him. She could think of no other way to find out about the thirteen-hundred-dollar payments than to ask him outright. When she tried to conjure up a logical explanation for why her father had been paying almost half his salary to an attorney for nearly thirty years, as far back as his records went, she drew a blank. It was incomprehensible.
She located a can of coffee and brewed a pot in her father’s old electric percolator.
As she sat at his kitchen table holding a steaming cup, a surge of nostalgia gathered and swelled inside her chest, compressing her heart and lungs and her empty stomach, wringing them so painfully she had to set down the cup and wrap her arms across her chest. It was a feeling of longing for what had never been, for what she had only imagined. She wished above all else that her father were here now, to drink coffee with her. To talk about the secret pictures he took of her. To tell her about the contents of the envelope and what he wanted her to do with them. What could she do that no one else could? Had he had a premonition of his death? Did he feel threatened? Is that why he had urged her to come soon? Is that why he had sent the key and the receipt?
She leaned over and pulled the envelope from the counter. She laid the photos and documents on the table, one at a time, as if she were dealing out cards, and then studied them.
She focused on the documents and the headings at the top of the columns—not too difficult to figure out in the morning light: Access No., Classif., DOB, Sex, and Source were obvious; ISIS No. She had no idea about. Paym. Fund must be where the money to buy the animal came from. There were two separate sets of initials appearing in that column—AZSPF or ACDF. Surely anybody connected with the zoo could tell her what those were, but she’d have to be careful. They’d want to know why she was asking. Of the final two categories, Acq.D was certainly date of acquisition, and Quar. probably stood for the number of days the animal was kept in quarantine.
She turned all the photos face down and checked all the dates against the zoo records. The dates all matched up; each day a photo was taken, the zoo had acquired some animals. And for all those animal entries, the letters ACDF were written in the payment-fund column.
When the phone rang, she snatched up the kitchen extension, certain it was Travis Hammond finally returning her call. But a female voice said, “Hi, coz, this is Sophie. Just confirming dinner for tonight. Mother and Daddy are eager to meet you. You okay all alone there?”
“I’m not alone. The dogs are here.”
“No,” Katherine said. “Oh, yes. Do you have Travis Hammond’s phone number at home? I’ve been trying to get him.”
“Sure. Let me look here in Daddy’s book.” There was a silence. “Yes, here it is—538-9897. I don’t think he keeps regular office hours anymore, so you might have better luck reaching him at home. See you at six, okay?”
“Yes. Oh, Sophie, where’s a good place to shop for clothes? I didn’t bring any with me, so I might buy some today instead of driving home.”
She was silent for a moment, as if it were a weighty decision. “You’d like Scarbrough’s, I think. Over at Highland Mall.”
* * *
After getting no answer at Travis Hammond’s home number, Katherine called the zoo and made an appointment with Sam McElroy. He was going to be out of the office until five, Kim Kelly told her, but he could see her then.
Katherine put down the phone and groaned. More than anything in the world she hated to ask for favors. Well, he had asked—repeatedly—what he could do to help. She was going to take him up on the offer.
So she had a free day until then. She should drive home to pay Joe, check on the kennel, and get fresh clothes, but for the first time since she had bought the house eleven years ago, she didn’t want to see it. Somehow it was easier to get used to the idea of losing it when she was away.
She felt like doing something irresponsible for a change. Yes, she would buy some new clothes to meet the Driscolls in. But first, there were commitments to fulfill.
She drove downtown and located the tallest bank building, one with gold windows and a parking garage. She entered the marbled lobby and rented a safe-deposit box. After making copies of the photographs and documents, she locked up the originals. As she left the bank, she couldn’t explain to herself exactly why she had gone to the trouble, but it felt right.
She found the post office, wrote a check to Joe, and sent it overnight delivery.