Night Kill (28 page)

“You murdered her,” I said.

“I did no such thing.”

“She dumped you and you killed her.” I would goad him, keep him talking, as I had planned, and it would be okay. He would talk and I would listen, and he wouldn’t have time to kill me with the syringe sticking out of his pocket.

He was patient with me. “My wife was attractive to men, and she liked that. I couldn’t always keep her away from them. Yes, it’s true, one night she said she was leaving me. But if anyone murdered her, it was Kevin Wallace.” He waited for that to sink in.

If he moved toward me, I’d keep the table between us and swing the chair at him. My heart thudded unevenly. “Liar. Wallace didn’t kill her. You did. You murdered your wife.” Where was Denny? Marcie should have called the police by now.

Still patient, he said, “You’re not listening. He seduced her when I was out of town for a conference. She didn’t want to tell me, but when I demanded the truth, she let it slip. She was leaving me for Wallace of all people. I’m sure you understand my shock.”

“And that made you hit her. You, not Wallace.”

His voice lost the soothing overtones. “Not murder. An accident. I came to my senses and she was on the floor by the fireplace with a broken neck. She fell back against the edge of the mantel and fractured a cervical vertebra. I would never hurt her. I miss her terribly.”

“Normal people call 911. Murderers bury people in the woods.”

“What better place to bury her than in the forest nearby? I planted ferns on her grave, and I stayed to watch over her when I could have moved on as we planned, on to a bigger zoo, maybe San Diego. She wanted to move to California. I would have done anything for her.” His composure was back in place. He had long ago thought this through. “Nothing would bring her back. If I went to jail, all my education, all my skills, would go to waste. What good would that do? Finley Zoo would never find anyone else with my credentials at the salary they pay. What would happen to animal care?”

That stopped me for a second. I was jeopardizing the animals by trying to stay alive? I blurted, “You stayed because you were afraid. Your worst fear happened—the construction turned up her skull and Rick found it.”

Twin spots on his pale cheeks reddened. The syringe was in his hand now. I knew well enough what it held. A drug to leave me unconscious—at best—while he disposed of my carcass at his leisure. I was one more big primate to immobilize. I’d set up my security measures so carefully, but nothing was working. “You were lucky Rick didn’t tell anyone else, just you. How did you lure him up here?” Had Marcie called the police? I couldn’t call them myself, not and hold the chair and watch him and try to evade him.

He edged toward my right, and I circled away from him. His voice was quiet. “I told him we needed to discuss the matter privately and that I would be in my office late running lab tests. He couldn’t come until after midnight. But I was patient, and he showed up eventually.”

“And you hit him on the head and poured scotch in him using a stomach tube stuck down his throat. You’re the only one who could tube a mammal. Birds are easy, but mammals are hard.” I leaned toward him to hear better, to hear him confirm what mattered so much.

He nodded acceptance and spoke in confidential tones, almost a whisper, circling slowly, the syringe held low. “He refused the scotch, even beer, to my surprise. But he was not suspicious. It was easy enough to distract him and cosh him with a wrench. Like your wrench.” He smiled ruefully. “It was simple to insert the tube before he woke up. A shame it had to be that way. I liked him.”

A brief weird joy flickered. I’d finally gotten it right. Rick hadn’t lied to me.

A subtle shift betrayed his intention, and suddenly aware of my own gullibility, I straightened and stepped back. His murmuring voice had lured me closer, but not close enough to trigger an attack.

“Normal people don’t use lions to kill other people.” I spoke loudly, abruptly. We kept edging around the room with the table between us, an ominous dance. I kept an eye on the monitors, but only to avoid banging my head. Denny had forgotten me. Marcie was asleep.

“Don’t keep saying I’m not normal!” he snapped back, abandoning whispers. “What choice did I have? It was his life or mine. It was a gamble—he might have survived. It’s not as if I murdered him. You can’t predict what wild animals will do in a new situation.”

The thoroughness of his denial was stunning, infuriating. “Bullshit! It went exactly as you planned. I turned Winona’s tooth over to the police this evening. You burned my house and pawed through my stuff for nothing—it was never there.” I threw the words like poisoned darts. “They’ll reopen Rick’s death as a murder investigation and you’ll fry.”

He stopped moving to set me straight, narrow lips in a little smile. “No, they won’t. They blew Rick’s postmortem, after all. They didn’t notice that one head contusion was earlier than the other. With Rick cremated, that evidence is gone, and a tooth doesn’t prove a thing. No one will give his death another thought.”

“Denny’s coming by and the next volunteer is due any minute and my friend has already called the police. You might as well go home and call a lawyer.”

“Denny’s unavailable, on ice, so to speak. The next observer won’t show up for half an hour. We’ll be done by then. Relax. It won’t hurt. I’m very good at this, and you haven’t a chance.”

“If I die, you think nobody will notice?”

“It’s surprisingly simple to manipulate these situations. No one ever thought Winona was dead, until you and Rick made a mess of it. I even arranged for Wallace to fire his new girlfriend when she stole gate receipts, or so it seemed. He’ll always be a bachelor instead of having my wife. I did that! Now everyone thinks you walked into the exhibit with the tiger because you were distracted by grief. See? It’s easily done.”

Why was he bragging? He stood easily, waiting. For what? I felt the day’s physical insults weighting me down. Exhaustion was slipping in through the panic. He knew that. He was giving it time to work.

“You won’t be dead,” he said. “It will be like Winona. You’ll leave town and never come back. I called Los Angeles. They’ve gone with an internal candidate. But I appreciate that you announced that you got the job. Everyone will assume you followed your dream.”

I knew that dream. He had me there.

I opened my mouth to shout that he was wrong, doomed, when he struck like the black leopard, in swift, silent steps. His right arm shot out, syringe in hand, reaching over the table. I leaped away, the needle scoring my arm through my jacket, banging my head on the monitor. I yelped, not sure whether he had injected the drug or not. He kept coming as I dropped the chair, dodged around the table, twisting the handle. But he’d turned the latch while he was fussing with his glasses, and the lock stuck. I fumbled the pepper spray out of my pocket, tried to turn the sprayer toward him, and instead dropped it as he came at me again. Trapped in the kitchen, I bolted away, throwing a chair in front of him. That slowed him enough for me to get the metal table between us again. I glimpsed the pepper spray deep under the counter.

My head ached. He’d jumped me when I was positioned to hit the monitor. We circled faster, each looking for an opening. He’d abandoned subtlety and would simply overpower me. He was bigger and so confident, so fast with that syringe. He leaned forward again, and I fell back into the counter. I grabbed one of Linda’s beautiful cups and threw it at him, but it missed and crashed on the floor. The second one hit him in the shoulder, but didn’t slow him. He glided on his feet wolflike, hair-trigger aware, syringe held low.

He surprised me again, hurling himself at the table, brute strength. With a shattering screech of metal against cement, it slammed into my belly, my spine crushed against the wall, shoving the breath out. He flowed around the table, quick and intent.

I shoved the table back a few inches and twisted down underneath it. I could feel his body heat as he lunged above me, feel the needle catch on the back of my jacket. I scrabbled on hands and knees out from under the table, cutting my palm on broken pottery. I shoved the table up with my back as I stood, felt it collide with his body. He hurled the table away, knocking it over with a metal clang. I lurched upright and away.

Panting, I edged toward the door, the fallen table between us. He paused, looking at the underside of the table. “I suspected a tape recorder. That’s the first place I would have looked.” He kicked it twice, striking with leather hiking boots. I heard the plastic crunch as the table slid toward me. He looked at the syringe in his hand and, astonishingly, unscrewed the bent needle and tossed it on the floor. He took a fresh needle from his pocket and attached it. His movements were quick and automatic, doing what he’d done many times before.

I stood flat-footed, missing my opportunity. He was so much quicker than I was, with a longer reach. My panic strength was almost gone. The cut palm throbbed and my legs were shaky. I slipped a hand into my jacket pocket and gripped the only hope left, Winnie’s chain leash, left from our last walk. It was cool against my fingers.

One of the lions let loose with a roar that shook the building. We both startled with ancestral fear. A roar or maybe a scream tore my own throat as I charged him, crouched low to avoid the monitor. I slashed his face with the chain and connected across his cheek. His glasses smashed to the floor. He yelled with surprise. I slashed at his face again, wanted to keep beating him with the chain. Anger, my old nemesis, my folly, was an ally at last, flooding me with power when true strength was used up. I dropped the leash and spun the overturned table toward his legs. It caught him on the shins, but he scrambled over it, coming at me half-blind and furious. I raced to the door, but knew I would never get the latch open in time. Instead, I grabbed the six-foot catch pole leaning in the corner in a tangle of nets.

I kept moving, carrying the pole low and horizontal. He turned to get between me and the door and his foot slipped on the leash. He fell to one knee. As he staggered to his feet, I slipped the snare over his head and around his neck like implacable justice. I yanked on the loop at the end of the pole—slippery with blood from my hand—pulling it taut, tighter. His momentum shoved me back, but the pole kept him from closing in on me.

His yell clogged in his throat as he clawed at his neck. My jaw clenched, lips peeled back. I snarled as I pulled. The wire bit in; flesh and skin bulged above and below the snare. He couldn’t get his fingers under it. I liked that. He dropped the syringe and clawed at me, reaching for my eyes, but the pole was too long, longer than his arms.

He grabbed the pole with both hands and yanked, throwing me off balance. I braced myself and shoved back, slamming him against the counter edge. Eyes panicky, he pulled the pole right and left, up and down, jamming me into the wall. I hung on with my last reserves as he battered me about the room.

My end of the pole punched me in the belly and I nearly threw up. I tried to keep the end off to one side, but that meant my right hand was battered into the wall. He backed me into a corner, alternately jerking and shoving on the pole while I flopped around. I was getting weaker, feeling my vision start to dim, when he went down to his knees.

He was faking. I kept the wire taut with all my strength, waiting for him to get up and fling me around again. But he didn’t get up. His face was swelling; his eyes rolled back. He went limp and fell over. His weight on the pole pulled my arms straight.

After some indefinable pause, I realized I had to slacken the cable or…not.

I relaxed my bleeding hand, let the cable loosen, ready to tighten it as soon as he leaped up. He didn’t move. His tongue was protruding. He looked old and stringy and repellant. Had I killed him? Should I kill him?

I let go of the pole and it clattered to the concrete floor. He didn’t move. After a stunned moment, I fumbled in the cupboards for a tangle of yellow nylon rope from some forgotten project. Forcing myself to touch him, I wrestled his hands behind his back—no resistance—tied them with the stiff, uncooperative cord, tied his feet together as well. A breath rasped in his throat, then another.

I stood back, wild-eyed and bloody.

Denny. He’d said Denny was on ice.

I glanced back at the limp body as I fumbled with the latch, and lurched out the kitchen door, then the service door into the cold night air. I recalled that I loathed cold. He’d left the electric cart outside, waiting to haul my body away, to his car and then some remote grave. My right hand didn’t work. My left hand turned the key clumsily. I could run faster than the cart would go, except that I couldn’t run. I could barely sit upright and steer.

Outside the Commissary, overhead lights created a mosaic of light and dark, leaving deep shadows along the building. I staggered inside, leaving the cart and its illusion of safety. I hit the inside light switch. Stacked boxes were brightly lit, the aisles behind them dark and full of secrets.

The freezer door was closed. I released the latch and yanked on the handle. Stuck. I dragged a box of carrots over to the door with my good hand and stood on it. Hap’s cleaver was jammed into the crack between the door and its frame, up near the top. I wiggled it out. It clanged and skittered on the floor. I kicked the box aside and pulled open the heavy door.

Denny was curled up on the floor just inside. He mumbled incoherently as I stuck my hands under his armpits and dragged him out. Relief steadied my legs. I left him in a heap and ran to the phone. The 911 operator wanted details, but I demanded police and an ambulance at the zoo immediately and hung up. I turned up the heat in the uniform room and got Denny sitting up on the floor. I unzipped my jacket and sat behind him with my arms and jacket around him, sharing my body heat. The paramedics, the police, and Wallace arrived more or less simultaneously and found us huddled together, shuddering.

While the medicos tended Denny, I blurted out the evening’s events and the story of Rick’s death in disorganized bursts to Wallace and the policewoman. She was apparently responding to Marcie’s call and the paramedics to mine. It wasn’t clear who had called Wallace so that he could get them into the zoo. The policewoman had the paramedics bandage my hand before she’d let me in the patrol car, and then called in a report before she would drive me across the zoo.