She stops and turns partially toward me, puts her hands behind her back and begins a tour guide monologue. “Wolf and Thomas spent most of their time taking care of the grounds. It’s really too much for two people. Sometimes we bring in temp help to assist, but that creates a separate problem of security. About once a month a bus-load of workers comes in. We first move all the animals into secluded holding areas. That’s a trick in itself when we don’t want the sabres to be aware of our presence. Not a big deal for the Bengals, as they see us all the time, whether we see them or not.
“They, unlike the sabres, are territorial. On rare occasion you’ll see them together at the lake, which they seem to have decided is neutral territory. Follow me.” She heads down a well-worn path.
We walk for only some twenty seconds and then stop. There is a wall with a one-way glass opening about three by four feet. I look and see a Bengal, not Duchess, lying on a knoll poking out into a swamp.
“There are no cameras here,” Aileen says, her voice losing the museum quality and dropping to a whisper. “As we walk I’ll tell you when we’re coming to areas where security can see us. They would have put cameras everywhere in the gardens but decided against the huge staff that would be required to maintain and monitor it all.”
“Why this much security anyway?” I ask.
Aileen doesn’t answer for some time. She stares at the Bengal. “Her name is Pasha.”
“Pasha. Is that an Indian name?”
“Turkish or Russian. Something to do with military leadership. I like the word, the way it flows off my tongue.”
“You named her?” I say.
“I’ve named almost all of them.”
“How many?”
“How many? What do you mean?”
“How many cats and tigers are there? There’re the triplets, whose names I don’t know, Simon and Tricia, Duchess and Pasha, and another Bengal, and at least four more sabres in the third garden. Is that all of them or are there some kittens somewhere that haven’t been introduced to the gardens yet?”
She says nothing for a time and then turns back to the path. “The other Bengal is Ivana. I’ll answer all your questions. First we must do our chores.” I follow her around a banana tree.
Before long we turn into another building. I recall it from the roof. It looked like a growth in the V-groove of the Y.
“I hate this part,” Aileen says. “I have to pick animals to die today. Coming into a camera area.”
It’s a barn of live animals; cows and pigs; food for the Bengals and sabre-toothed cats. Aileen’s voice changes as she explains to me what she is doing.
“We keep livestock for the cats and tigers. It’s important for the sabres to learn to stalk and kill, instead of us doing it for them and leaving meat lying around. There are three chutes, each leading into a different garden, gates on both ends.” She separates two animals from the group and works them toward a gate she has opened. That isolates them in a small pen. She then locks open another door leading from that pen into what I can see is one of the chutes. She leaves them and cuts several others out and into a second holding pen. In the third holding pen she sends a cow. She does this all methodically and with nothing more than clicking of her tongue. “There,” she says. “They’re in the pens and all three chutes are open.”
“What if they don’t go in?” I ask.
“They will. On the other side of the chutes, just inside each garden, I’ll drop ripe fruit for the pigs and a partial bale of hay for the cow. After a time they’ll smell the food and go in to investigate. Once in, the chute gate will close and they’ll have no place to go except forward, toward their last meals. The gate on the other end of the chutes will open as they get close. When they enter their respective garden, those gates will also automatically close behind them. After that it’s just a matter of time until they’re discovered.” She starts up a set of stairs to a loft. “This way.”
I step along behind her. “What do Simon and Tricia get?”
“Fresh beef and pork roasts, delivered to them in chunks twice a day.”
In the loft is a sizable room in itself. At one end stands a huge refrigerator, a couple of counters and a sink. She takes two medium-size stainless steel bowls full of very ripe fruit from the refrigerator, leaves one on the counter and carries the other to one end of the loft. There she opens a small door in the wall and dumps the fruit into a stainless steel pipe about two feet in diameter. “That will drop into the garden so that the aroma will drift in to where the pigs are. It won’t be long before they find and consume the fruit and thus seal their fate as Bengal tiger dinner.” She does the same thing with garden number two, where the triplet sabre-toothed cats reside.
Near the third, but larger door is a stack of hay bales. She breaks up about a quarter of a bale and drops it down the chute. Together we break up a few more bales and drop them to the other cows. We go back down to ground level. She looks at the cattle eating and at the one standing alone, watching and drooling. “Damn!” she says. “I should have waited. Now it might be hours before she goes, if at all.”
“What do you mean, if at all?”
“By the time they are through feeding, the scent of the one I dropped out there will have dissipated. She may never even smell it. Come on. Help me get her to enter the tunnel.”
We get into the pen and begin urging her toward the open door. She starts in several times and then turns away, as though sensing her own fate. Aileen is persistent and eventually the cow goes in. She closes the door behind her. “Sorry, girl,” she says. She pulls her fingers through her hair and blows out. “Hopefully she’ll smell the other hay before long and move on in. Besides, she can’t turn around. The only direction is into the garden. Let’s go.”
We leave the barn and head toward the third garden. I’m anxious to see the cats that got a cow instead of a couple pigs.
“Camera free,” Aileen says. We are stopped somewhere between the barn and the entrance to garden three. “The reason for the security has to do, in part, with the experimentation on sabre-toothed cats.”
“In part? What’s the other part? I guessed the other night at human cloning. You didn’t deny it.”
“No. I didn’t.” She looks at me for a long time. I sense she’s trying to decide what to tell me. “I don’t spend all my time here. I go off on other projects, sometimes months at a time. I’ve spent time at diggings in South America, Israel, and Turkey, as well as California and South Dakota. To be truthful with you, I sometimes wonder why I’m here. They don’t need me to make sabre-toothed cats.”
“I’d say, then, that you’re here for the pleasure of Victor Vandermill.”
“Yes, if I gave him any pleasure.”
“You just did a couple weeks ago.”
She makes a face and says, “But that was the first time in a lot of years.”
“Who finances all your excursions around the world?”
She says nothing.
“You’re here because you feel obligated to him. He paid for your trips so that you’d be obligated to him. I think he killed Doctor McCully out of frustration. He gives you everything you want, but gets nothing in return.”
She makes a fist and points a finger in the air. “I didn’t ask for one thing he’s given me.”
“But you took them.”
“I tried not to. I resisted. But, he’s very persuasive.” Her voice is getting edgy. “Damn you anyway. Why am I trying to justify myself to you?”
“I never asked you to. I think you’re trying to justify yourself to you. I really don’t care.”
She doesn’t take her angry eyes off me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean that.” I lower my voice as though someone is listening close by. “Actually, I do care. I’m not sure I know why.”
She drops her eyes and turns away.
“Maybe it’s hard not to care about the woman who comes into my bed at night.”
She looks sideways at m
e and shows a corner of a grin. “I’ve been pretty stupid since those early days in the tar pits, but that’s ending. I’ve known for a while I was being used. Now, thanks to you, I realize I’ve been using him and that makes me feel even worse.”
“He’s a killer. Don’t go feeling sorry for him.”
“First of all, Zach, there is no proof in that. Second of all, if he did kill Peter it would be because of me. I really don’t want to take on that blame so I hope to hell you’re wrong.”
“I don’t really think you believe I’m wrong?”
She says nothing.
“The deaths aren’t over.”
Now she looks at me.
“Have you been feeling it?”
She stares off in the distance for a few seconds and then says, “No. I haven’t felt anything.”
“I didn’t realize what it was at first because I’ve never had two come this close together before. I thought it was something lingering from Thomas’ death. But this morning it was stronger.”
“It may not be a death, though. Right?”
“True. But whatever it is, it’s going to be bad. It always is.
She sidles a little closer to me. Our arms almost touch. “If you’re so sure Victor killed Peter . . .”
I interrupt her. “I’m not sure Victor did it. I’m just sure Peter was murdered. The motive seems to lead to Victor, that’s all.”
“Okay. If you’re so sure Peter was murdered why didn’t you tell the sheriff when he was here?”
“For one, the sheriff had an escort made up of Victor and Lance. And since there’s no easy way to get into town it doesn’t appear I can get to the sheriff without them knowing it. Besides, evidence, if there was any, was gone with Peter’s cremation. All I’d be doing is drawing attention to myself.”
“Huh.”
“By the way, how do I get into town?”
“Didn’t Lance give you the helo schedule?”
“I haven’t had a full conversation with him since my first day here. I still don’t even know the focus of my assignment.”
“I can answer that. We want a story, not fictionalized, but creative, that follows the progress from the diggings in the Le Brea Tar Pits and the discovery in the caverns to the successful birth and raising of actual sabre-toothed cats.”
“That’s simple. Why haven’t I been told that? Why has it been such a secret? Do you know that it was only yesterday that I found out about the Bravelli caverns? It’s like I get fed only a little piece at a time. I didn’t know about this third garden until I went snooping around on the roof this morning. Zitnik let it slip that there are more sabres, though he would say no more. My hunch is that they are possibly your earliest successes and thus quite mature–probably full-grown.”
“I don’t know why Lance didn’t fill you in on everything the first day. I only know why I didn’t.”
“You didn’t want me here. That was quite obvious.”
She becomes defensive. “I had my reasons. I told you that.”
“I know. I’m not faulting you. Just stating the facts as I see them. You want me here now.”
She balloons her cheeks and blows the air out. “Yes.”
“You weren’t the only one who would have been happy to escort me back up to the helicopter. You were joined by Zitnik, and Henri. Their reasons I still don’t have a handle on.”
Aileen doesn’t give me any help here. She stares in silent thought.
“Are there four full-grown sabres in the garden we’re about to enter?”
She sighs. “Sergei, Karlov, Nadia, and Duscha. So that you know, the triplets are Cyrus, Nitsa, and Zoë.”
“Interesting names; Russian?”
“Russian and Greek. No particular reason. I just like them.”
“That’s it? No others?”
“Other than Simon and Tricia, no.”
“No kittens with big litter boxes in someone’s apartment?”
She shakes her head again. “No kittens. That’s all, except . . .”
“Except what?”
“Let’s go,” she says and turns toward garden number three.
And what? Again the secrecy. Why does everything have to be pried out one piece at a time? And what happened when she was about to tell me about human cloning? How did she sidetrack it? I follow her into the garden and up onto a high overlook. This garden is much the same as number two, with creeks and ponds, except there is not as much foliage, a lot more open ground and large rocks, and no path into it. We have only this view from the top of the dome. I don’t see any animals.
She points down and off to our right, and says softly, “See the hay we dropped out.”
It takes me a second and then I see where she’s pointing.
“The cow hasn’t moved far enough to open the door yet.”
I don’t see the door, or the chute down which she sent the hay. It looks like a wall of vines.
She grabs my arm and points about three quarters of the way toward the other end. “See where the rocks are, on the left of the second pond, the one with the island?”
I acknowledge that I see the pond and rocks.
“If you look in the crevice of the rocks you’ll see one cat. Her head is up and she’s looking around.”
I don’t see. She opens a cabinet and hands me a set of binoculars. When I get them adjusted to my face the long sabre teeth come right in. Just seeing the killing tools on a live, mature, sabre-toothed cat sends a chill down my back.
Aileen uses another pair of binoculars to scan about. “I don’t see any others,” she says. “The males are probably out, with the weather being good.”
“Out! You don’t mean like outside, do you?”
She drops the binoculars from her face. “That’s exactly what I mean. The grounds around the building are patrolled by the four sabres that live in this garden. That’s why the only way out of here is by helicopter.”
I’m incredulous. “That means if someone tries to sneak in by foot, they’re sabre food.”
“Yes.” Her voice in that one word says she is not in agreement with it. “And it’s not to protect the secrecy of the sabre-tooth experiments. It’s to protect what is going on in the depths of Sans Sanssabre.”
“They told the sheriff it was experiments in growing organs for transplant,” I say.
“They told him what would satisfy him, what would be the least damaging. We’ve been the best kept secret in Montana for nearly ten years. This is the first time that they’ve even hinted at the true mission of Sans Sanssabre. We’ve had both state and federal inspectors here for one thing or another, but because we are privately owned, all they really want to know is that taxes are being paid and the employees are being treated well. They’ve never had reason to look any further than that.”
“What have they told people before the sheriff? They had to have given some kind of official statement as to their purpose out here. After all, the construction of this place alone must have caused an upsurge of curiosity.”
“Construction was gradual.” Aileen scans a bit more for the cats. “Victor contracted with different companies for different phases. All of the contractors were from out of state, not even neighboring states. No one contractor saw the entire picture. The garden interiors, landscaping and such, were built by illegal Mexican labor, flown in and housed on San Sanssabre property nearby. The architects were from Brazil.”
“The sheriff said he didn’t know the place existed.”
“He probably still wouldn’t except someone tipped him off about the second animal attack before Thomas could be flown out quietly.”
“Flown out quietly! How could he do that? There are procedures, federal laws and such.”
“Victor has all the right contacts and his own jet. His pilots know how to work the beefed up aviation security system. He has no problem going anywhere he wants.”
“Who do you think tipped off the sheriff?”
“Don’t know. There is talk that it
was you.”
“Me! No, it wasn’t. To be truthful with you, the thought never even occurred to me. I assumed that all the proper procedures were covered.”
“Covered up is the more likely. The sheriff wasn’t notified of Peter’s death.”
“I don’t understand. He was pronounced dead right in Kalispell. I’d have assumed the hospital contacted local authorities.”
“Certainly. The police interviewed me and Traci, and Lance. That was that.” She drops the binoculars and points. “There. Far right corner. Just coming in. I think it’s one of the males.”
I see him for a few seconds and then he drops out of sight behind some trees. Another appears from the same area.
“Both of them. Yep, that’s Sergei and Karlov.”
“They are huge!” I say.
“They’re bigger than we guessed they would be. We wonder if that’s their natural size or if we did something nutritionally to enhance their growth.”
“So,” I say after a prolonged silence, “You have nine sabre-toothed cats. What are your long-range intentions?”
“We want to hold a press conference and present the cats to the world at the same time as releasing the book, the one I was supposed to write.”
I look down at the pile of hay. The cow is standing over it, bits of hay sticking out of her mouth. She isn’t chewing. She’s on alert. I point. “Look.”
“Good. She’s out. She’s also sensing the sabres.”
Suddenly the cow bolts across in front of us. She disappears for a bit then reappears in an opening. She is on the left now, charging to the far end of the garden. One of the male sabres appears right in front of us. I almost step back, although he is thirty or forty feet below us and on the other side of the one-way cat-proof glass. He follows the cow.
“They have her under control now, herding her out into the open, out of the garden.”
“Why?”
“They don’t like to kill where they sleep and rest. The triplets only kill in the area of the beach you saw, since they can’t yet get out of the garden. They’ll almost always drive their victim there before killing. In the rare cases that they don’t, they’ll carry the pig there before consuming.”
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 15