“A cow? A live cow?”
“Yes. The younger cats get live pigs. It’s part of learning to survive on their own.”
“They’re not going to release them into the wild, are they?”
“I was told by their lead researcher that that’s what he wants to do.”
“He had to be bullshitting you.”
“I don’t think there’s a joke inside of this guy.”
She rubs her arms through the heavy coat she’s wearing. I’m curious where she got it as I’m sure there is no place in Dallas to buy one. She says, “I’m cold. Is there someplace inside we can talk in private?”
“Yes.” We go back up to the door. Again I punch in the code Merwin gave me. I worry that it won’t work, but it does and we step just inside next to the cougar.
“Is this the only place?” Tanya asks.
“The only place that I know of, except for areas in the animal gardens, which I cannot get to without an escort even if they weren’t locked down.”
“What do you mean, locked down?”
“After the last death yesterday Victor Vandermill, the CEO, said that no one was to go in for any reason.”
“You said one was a murder. Tell me about that.”
I tell her about the death of Doctor McCully as well as the deaths of Thomas Holm and Lester the security guard. I explain the intertwined relationship between Mister Vandermill, Ms. Bravelli, Doctor McCully and Ms. Strong, and the theory that Victor killed McCully with the steel sabre-tooth jaws. I’m very careful to use titles and last names, and try to be objective in both my words and voice level so as not to give away that I am part of the tangled relationship, not reveal who it is she smells on me. I tell her that my source thinks that the other two deaths were arranged.
“First of all,” she says, “you said that Mister Vandermill was in India yesterday. Even if it was possible to arrange for a Bengal tiger to kill the security officer, being out of the country pretty much knocks him off of the suspect list. Why would the CEO want to kill his own people anyway? I can see the jealousy thing with the doctor. Second of all how would anyone even set it up to begin with? It’s not like they have a way of telling the animals to suddenly go nuts and start killing people. Have they had attacks before?”
“Not that I know of, but then I haven’t asked that question directly to anyone.”
She shivers, rubs her hands together and then sticks them back into her pockets.
“Okay. Let me see if I have it right,” she says. “I’m going to throw the two Bengal attacks out as strictly coincidental. That leaves Vandermill and this triangle relationship thing, or maybe not a triangle–more like five sides.”
“Five?” One of my organs moves.
“The problem we now have is that Victor Vandermill killed Doctor McCully because he thought the doctor was sleeping with Ms. Bravelli. Now that you’re sleeping with her, you’re afraid you’re his next target. Is that pretty much it in a nut shell, Zach?”
I wish for a stroke or a heart attack right now. There’s a pain in my left shoulder. Unfortunately it has to do with my laptop hanging there. I shift it to the right.
“It isn’t your wife and family you want to go back to Dallas for, is it? You’re afraid for your life. What about Ms. Bravelli’s life? Or do you consider her your basic expendable slut?”
Maybe I could just climb over the fence and go find a sabre-toothed cat to wrestle.
“Take me back to wherever it is you live. I need to use the bathroom.”
“Sure,” I say meekly. I open the door for her and we proceed up the stairs to my apartment.
Tanya digs in her luggage, which is sitting just inside the door, comes out with her toiletry bag and disappears into the bedroom. I go sit in the recliner, stare at nothing and wonder if my stomach will ever stop twisting. When she comes out, we’ll leave. I’ll face whatever has to be faced later but right now we need to get out of here. I know that part of the pressure inside my chest is another tragic event on the way. I don’t want to be here for it. It could be anyone, including Tanya.
There is a knock at my door. I get up, cross halfway to it before it opens and Aileen steps in.
“We were supposed to meet at 9:00,” she says.
I forgot. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.”
“We’ve got a problem, anyway.”
“No shit!” I say.
“You know?”
“That my wife is here? Of course I know.”
“Your wife is here?”
“Yes.” I point toward the bedroom.
Aileen lowers her voice. “Oh, no!”
“It’s a lot more than an ‘Oh, no.’ It seems you shared a bit of your perfume with me last night. I’m in deep shit and she already knows who is in there with me.”
“You told her?”
“No. But she has a way of just working the figures until the shit works to the top. Anyway, we’re leaving together on the first outbound helo.”
“You’re dumping the book, then,” she says flatly.
“It’s either that or dump my marriage. The choice is easy I’m afraid.”
“Yes.” She looks down at her shoes. “I understand.”
“You’d better go before she comes out. I don’t need the confrontation.”
“Right.”
She turns to leave. “What other problem do we have?” I say.
“It’s not important now. You guys just go. Get her out of here.” She goes out and starts to pull the door closed.
“Aileen,” I say.
She looks back in at me.
“Why did you steal my CD? Whose side are you on?”
“Pardon me?”
“Last night, a half hour before . . . ah . . . before we ah . . .” I clear my throat. “You snuck in wearing all black and removed a CD from a place I had it hidden. I watched you do it.”
She comes up close to me and whispers. “You didn’t watch me do anything but lay on my back, Zach. First of all I don’t own anything black. Second of all that would have been about 1:30. I’m not stupid enough to go sneaking around when the monitors are being watched. Basically, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I heard your voice. You were startled when you tripped the mouse trap.”
“What mouse trap? Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”
It wasn’t her. I can read it. It definitely wasn’t her. “No. I wasn’t dreaming. I guess it was someone else. I’m sorry. It seemed so obvious at the time.”
“Oh!” she suddenly says. “I see. You were angry when I did come in because you thought . . . of course . . . that’s why . . .”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry is your word of the day I’ll bet.” I can tell by the way she is looking over my shoulder that Tanya is standing behind me.
I give her a sad smile and nod.
“Something is definitely going on around here. Good time to get out.” She leaves and I close the door. I turn and face my wife.
“She’s pretty,” she says.
I close my eyes and wish my troubles away. When I open them she’s still there.
“When can we leave?”
“We can go talk to the pilots right now.” She follows me to the elevator and we go up. When we step onto the roof both hangers are empty. There is no one around.
“Humph” she snorts. “Who do we talk to now?”
“I don’t know.” We go down to the boardroom. No one is there either. The first person I think to ask is Aileen. I go looking for Henri Cassell instead. He is in his office apartment and the door is open. I knock on the frame.
He looks up and smiles when he sees Tanya. Without waiting for an introduction he comes from around his desk. “You must be Mrs. Price. I heard you were here. I’m Henri Cassell.”
“Nice to meet you.” Tanya shakes his hand.
“We’re trying to get a helicopter out but they don’t seem to be here,” I say. “Do you know when they’
ll be back?”
“No, I don’t. Let me check.” He picks up his phone and dials. “Randolph. This is Henri. Where are you now?” He looks at me and then at Tanya. “I see. How long will you be in Great Falls? . . . Ah, I see. How about Ace? Didn’t he just come in? . . . Okay. . . I understand. Thanks. See you tomorrow.
“Well,” he says to us, “Randolph is in Great Falls and will be until tomorrow when the bosses fly in. Ace is on his way to Missoula for some aviation thing. He won’t be back until this evening.”
“Is there any other way out of here?”
“Afraid not, Mrs. Price.”
“We’ll just have to wait,” I say.
“Are you leaving too, Zach?” Henri is surprised.
“Yes.”
“You have a contract remember.”
“I’ll return the advance.”
“I don’t think that’s the issue.”
“You’re the one who advised I leave.”
He holds up his hands and laughs. “Couldn’t have been me. You probably have that a bit construed from our initial conversation the day you arrived. There were a lot of things going on and your sudden presence caught me off guard. I’m in charge of the money and surprise expenditures put a tilt in my world. Victor and Lance hired you without advising me so I might have come off as a little gruff. In any case you ought to wait until Lance and Victor return. That will just be until tomorrow. Anyway, by the time Ace gets back there’s no way you’re going to get a flight out of anywhere tonight.”
I look at Tanya and then back at Henri. “We could get a motel in Kalispell.”
“Nonsense. You’re already here. Stay and talk to Lance tomorrow. Why go to all the trouble of finding some other place to stay tonight?”
“Fine,” Tanya concedes. Her tone says that it’s not so fine. I think she would have preferred a room with two beds so that we didn’t have to touch in the middle of the night, or better yet, two separate rooms.
Back in the apartment she walks into the bedroom and back out. “At least get the linens changed. I’m not going to sleep in them after her.”
I feel at a loss. I stand there in a fog until I think of Ulla. How do I find her? My phone doesn’t work and I don’t know where she resides.
“Get yourself a set for the sofa as well.”
I nod and go looking for Ulla.
In the boardroom I look through the short directory and dial Ulla’s number. She answers on the third ring. I tell her what I need. She says she’ll take care of it and asks if my wife needs anything else. I tell her I don’t think so and return to the apartment.
Tanya is sitting in the chair looking out the window. Without turning around she says, “Where did you go?”
“Had to call Ulla to get the linens. My phone doesn’t work.”
Tanya picks it up, listens and puts it back down. “Sounds fine to me.”
“It wasn’t working the other day.”
“Obviously someone fixed it. You never thought to check it?”
I sit on the sofa and let my chin drop to my chest. What is happening? Everything is falling apart. I’d like to have a civil conversation with Tanya but that doesn’t seem possible. She probably thinks I’ve gone off the deep-end. I get a feeling that in her mind my talk of the sabre-toothed cats and the deaths are only my creations. I think the only thing that’s real to her is the fact that I cheated.
We sit that way for a very long time, each in our own silence, she looking out at the landscape, me looking at my lap.
She gets up and goes into the kitchen. The refrigerator opens. “Where do you eat?”
“Here.”
“You have a half carton of milk, two eggs, a couple strips of bacon, and four beers.”
“I wasn’t expecting company. Besides, I was planning on leaving today so I didn’t restock.”
“The two of you must have lived on sex.”
A cupboard door closes much too loudly.
“If I’m going to spend the night here, I don’t want to do it hungry. I haven’t had breakfast so I’m starving. Where do I go to get something decent?”
“I’ll call Ulla.” As I reach for the phone, it rings. “Hello?”
“This is Aileen. Let me talk to your wife.”
“Why . . .”
“If you don’t let me talk to her I’ll come over there.”
I walk the phone over to Tanya. I’m going to be sick. I go into the bathroom, sit on the lid of the toilet and put my head in my hands. I haven’t brushed my teeth, shaved or showered. I decide a shower would be good. Anything to put off going back in to face the wrath.
I’m standing under the hot water, letting it flow about my body when the bathroom door opens.
“Zach.”
At least give me some peace in the shower, I want to say. I push the door open far enough to look out at Tanya.
“I’m going over to Aileen’s for breakfast,” she says and walks out.
I close the door, turn the temperature up and slide to the floor of the shower. Can it get any worse?
The pressure of pending doom rises in my chest. I groan and try to gain some solace in the hot water beating down upon me.
Chapter 23
They hunt in pairs–one to distract–one to attack.
–from the journals of Zechariah Price
I hear Ulla call my name from the living room. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, shaved and dressed. It seems rather odd as I don’t recall getting out of the shower.
“I’ve got your linens, Mister Price.” Ulla comes into the bedroom and drops the sheets next to me. “Quite a surprise I’ll bet.”
“Pardon?”
“Your wife arriving. She said she was surprising you.”
“Yes, she surprised me alright,” and she and the woman with whom I had animal sex a few hours ago are having breakfast together. What are they talking about?
I force my mind out of the fog and swivel my head toward Ulla. “Are there any other women working here, Ulla?”
She looks at me rather oddly. “What do you mean?”
“Are you, Ms. Bravelli and Ms. Strong the only women?”
“Yes,” she says slowly as if that’s not the case but she’s guarding what she tells me.
“Has Ms. Strong been around the last couple days?”
“She was back the day before yesterday. Someone has to continue the veterinarian duties until the Doctor is replaced.”
“Of course.”
“I brought some things for dinner tonight as I know you have nothing. I’ve never seen a man live on so little.”
“Thanks, Ulla.”
“Where is your wife?”
“She is having breakfast with Ms. Bravelli.”
There is a long pause. “Oh!” She punctuates it with a rise of her eye-brows.
“What do you know, Ulla?”
She laughs seriously. “I know you and Ms. Bravelli have become good friends. I see in your face maybe too good and that certainly isn’t good, is it?”
I shake my head. “No. Not good at all. Not very damn good at all.”
“Get up and go find something to do. I’ve got to change your bed out.”
“You don’t have to . . .”
“Nonsense. Get!”
I go into the living room and stand around with my hands in my pockets. There’s a tiny voice in my head–that part of every person’s brain that’s a little insane. It’s saying, “Go join the women for breakfast.” Of course the entire rest of me is screaming, “NO!” I sit down in the chair and stare out at the landscape. It has turned into another nice day. The snow is still receding. The feeling, the tension in my chest, is rising again and once more I’m not sure it’s the signal of another approaching death or only a warning of my own demise–a work in progress. I decide it’s a mixture of both. I also come to the conclusion that the pending death of someone is sooner than I originally thought–maybe today.
Maybe this morning!
I jump to my
feet, rush out the door and run around to Aileen’s door. It’s closed. I listen for a second. There is only dead silence. This is stupid. Tanya wouldn’t do anything. I walk a few steps away. The pressure in my chest rises. I rush forward and open the door without knocking. The glare from the huge window blinds me for a second and then I see they are sitting at the counter across from each other, Tanya on the same chair on which I sat when I came over for soup and sandwich. Both faces are turned my way and the glare is not just from the window.
“Sorry.” I close the door.
They’re laughing at me now. They have banded together to become amused by me. My anger rises; to hell with them.
Women! Unpredictable, illogical, conniving, manipulative, unreasonable, and capricious, as well as a number of other adjectives I can feel, but can’t currently think of.
The pressure in my chest is still there, pulsing with my heart, which is beating at a rate roughly double its normal resting state. I go up to the boardroom and look out the window. There is nothing to see, no tigers or cats attacking man that is. There is only diminishing white and growing evidence of brown earth. If garden number three is open to the no-man’s-zone surrounding the complex, why haven’t I ever seen the sabre-toothed cats patrolling–or has the cold kept them in the garden? I leave the boardroom and go up to the roof. I figure I can get a good scan of the grounds before security chases me off.
I go directly to the eastern end of the building, which overlooks the three dome buildings and the animal barn. The morning sun is gone. Clouds hang low and the air has turned cold. I can see nothing out at the far reaches of building three. That’s a good two hundred yards. If there were animals roaming out there, would I need binoculars to see them? I look down at the gate through which all must pass to enter the gardens. The gate is open. This is odd as the gardens are supposed to be in lock-down. I see nothing else though, no evidence of security. I’m not even being chased off the roof. I quickly walk the circumference of the roof. I discover a road leading from the far end of the barn. It disappears through the distant trees and as far as I can tell from the fence line that I can see, it’s all sabre country. It also looks as though the road has been plowed. I go down to the ground floor and the exit out to the gardens.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 19