He nodded slowly. "It could kill the girl. Drag her off. Come back for the baby."
He said it without emotion. Not coldly, just matter-of-fact. I tried to keep my thoughts as logical, not to picture the scenario he'd described.
"I didn't see any signs of a struggle near the road," I said. "But it had been a few days and there was rain... Still, it doesn't account for the missing stroller."
"Could have fallen into the ditch. Or been dragged. Cat trying to get the baby out."
I looked out the passenger window.
"Or maybe it wasn't a cat," he said after a moment.
"Maybe."
I made a cell phone call before we reached the zoo. Kira's mother, Meredith, was a member of Zoocheck Canada, an animal protection agency that monitored the conditions of circuses and roadside zoos. Meredith had been trying to get Bob's Wild Kingdom closed for years. Every few months, I signed her petition.
Before storming in there, I needed to know how many cougars they had. If one did escape, the owner obviously hadn't reported it. And if I didn't know my facts, he could bullshit me from here to Newfoundland.
The first time we drove by, I took one look at the hap hazard maze of mesh wire enclosures and dismissed it as an abandoned farm. At the next intersection, another sign for Bob's Wild Kingdom pointed back the way we'd come and I realized that the "abandoned farm" had been the zoo.
It was certainly no kingdom. Those wire mesh enclosures housed deer, ostriches, llamas, two mangy camels, and one yak with matted fur. Each fenced area was no larger than fifteen feet square. The ground was bare dirt and muddy straw. For food and water dishes, they had plastic buckets and ice cream pails.
Meredith had said that Bob wasn't a Robert, but Roberta MacNeil, as the crooked sign on her trailer proclaimed. In the spring, the zoo was open from Friday to Sunday only, so I went up to the trailer and rapped on the door. No answer. Jack knocked louder. Still nothing. He peered into a window.
"Dark," he said.
I walked to the gate. No sign of anyone. I glanced up at the six-foot chain-link fence. Easy to scale.
"Slow down," Jack murmured, though I hadn't taken a step toward it.
"Meredith said there are two cougars here," I said as I walked to the fence and put my fingers through the links. "All I have to do is find them, and this place is so small it'll only take a minute. Just stand guard for five minutes while - "
Curses rang out from one of the buildings.
Jack gave me a "told you" look. I pretended not to see it.
"Hello?" I called. "Hello!"
A short, stocky woman emerged from a rusty metal shed.
"We're closed."
"I just wanted - "
"Bill Bryson, SPCA, Investigations Department," Jack said, flashing his wallet too fast for her to see more than a card. He didn't introduce me, which, I admitted, was wiser than my plan. Roberta and I had never met, but if she bumped into me around town after this, I could claim I'd been escorting "Bill."
Jack continued, his faint brogue swallowed as he affected what I called his "national newscaster" voice, no trace of any regional accent. "I need to talk to you about your big cats."
"I didn't lose no cougars." She opened the gate and ushered us through. "Look around all you want. Tex and Mex are right where they should be. In their cage back here." She started walking, then turned and gestured to Jack's cast. "Watch your step. It's mud season. Damned slippery."
We passed cages of monkeys, foxes, and one lynx that lay draped over a branch like it'd died there. Judging by the smell, it had. All the other animals moved to the edge of their cages and stared out at us with the hardened bitterness of lifers.
People paid to come in here. In summer, kids raced along these rows, parents scurrying after them, and they had a good time. What kept them from taking one look, one sniff, and running to the nearest exit?
"Here they are," Roberta said. " Tex and Mex. My cougars."
One of the tawny big cats lay in the lone beam of sunlight that filtered past the heavy bars. The other paced the shadows at the back. Both were old, with rotting teeth and mangy fur, just as Meredith had said. I couldn't imagine either having the strength to cover the twenty kilometers between here and the Potter place, let alone kill a healthy teenager.
I glanced at Jack, but he was watching the cat pace in its dirty cage. It turned to look at him, a haunted, half-mad emptiness in its eyes.
I checked the cage. No broken door bound shut with rope. No recent welds on the bars. No signs of any recent repairs. The pacing cat slumped into an exhausted heap and fell asleep almost as soon as it hit the floor.
The cat lying in the sun turned its empty eyes on me. I shivered. Even if Roberta left the door open, I doubted these cougars would get farther than the front gate.
"Everything seems to be in order," Jack said.
"Like I told those cops when they called last night, I run a tight ship. Nothing gets in or out."
"A life sentence," I murmured. "No chance of parole."
Roberta frowned and scratched her head hard, as if something was nibbling at her scalp.
"That's all I needed to see," Jack said. "Thank you for your time."
"No trouble."
As we turned away, the one cougar stood and stretched, sniffing the air.
"You'll get fed soon enough, Mex," Roberta said. "Don't start your complaining now."
Roberta escorted us to the gate and held it open. As we exchanged good-byes, an unearthly scream ripped through the morning quiet.
Roberta laughed when I jumped. "That's just Mex, bitching for her food."
"It sounded like - "
"A woman screaming, I know. That's what everyone says. When I lived out West, tourists used to call the cops all the time, saying some poor woman was screaming in the forest."
Now I knew what those city kids had heard out near the Potter place. And it hadn't been a cougar.
Chapter Ten
At the lodge, I settled details for Jack's stay with Emma while she rolled dough for apple strudel.
"So make sure he's comfortable, show him around," I said as I snatched a sugarcoated apple slice from the bowl. "You probably won't see much of him anyway. He keeps to himself. I need to zip into town - "
"Still looking for Sammi?"
I stopped chewing.
"Did you think I wouldn't figure it out? You've been gone more in the last week than you have in months. You're worried about her. At least someone is." She peeled the rolled dough from the board and laid out another ball. "I asked around myself when I went shopping this morning. Everyone thinks she just ran off."
"Which she probably did."
"But something's telling you otherwise, so you keep looking. Did you get anything from Janie?"
"Do insults count?"
"You want me to take a run at her?"
I indulged in the fantasy for a moment. A killer ex-cop might not faze Janie, but Emma was a different story. Last month, in town, when Janie had tried to hit me up for an advance on her daughter's pay, Emma had come around the corner, eyes blazing as fiercely as her red-dyed hair, and Janie had skittered off so fast you'd think she'd spotted an unopened rye bottle in the ditch.
"Not yet," I said. "Let me check around a bit more on my own."
"Should I expect you for lunch?"
"I have to stop at the diner. I'll grab something there."
I parked in town and went to Canadian Tire for supplies. Better to walk into the diner carrying a shopping bag, to prove that I'd come to town for a reason. If Riley got wind of my snooping, he'd slap an interference charge on my ass so fast he'd be winded for days. Then, having accused me of buggering up his investigation, he'd actually need to start one, and probably balls it up to spite me.
Pretty much every town up here has a Canadian Tire, which carries everything from spark plugs to coffee-makers to paper towels. I suppose they carry tires, too, if you can find them. In White Rock, the Canadian Tire has everything from
building supplies to inflatable rafts shoved into a store hardly big enough for fishing lures (aisle two, top shelf, behind the china mugs). Shopping there is great, if you like scavenger hunts. I'd developed a near-perfect system. Find an item that has absolutely nothing in common with the item you want, move it aside, and, bingo, there's what you came for.
After twenty minutes, I had everything I needed: a monster-sized ball of string, a box of disposable plastic gloves, and a pocket-sized Maglite with extra batteries. Then I grabbed a handful of other items the lodge could always use, like ant traps, dish towels, and a copy of Chatelaine for Emma. At the checkout, I stifled the itch to ask for news of Sammi. If there was any, I'd hear it soon enough.
Outside Larry's Diner I grabbed a copy of the local weekly paper. Then I went inside and ordered a coffee. My stomach wouldn't consider lunch.
Reading the newspaper front to back took ten minutes, and I'm no speed reader. As I'd hoped, there was an article on the cougar, one that confirmed my fear - the "scream" had indeed been heard Sunday night, between eight and nine, soon after Sammi was last seen walking in the same area.
According to Liz Bowles - the owner, editor, and sole reporter of the White Rock Times - the "cougar story" was nothing more than further proof that city living destroys brain cells. How many times, she ranted, did cottagers from southern Ontario mistake boulders for bears, garter snakes for Massasauga rattlers, local dogs for wolves? Americans were even worse, wandering around looking for reindeer and polar bears. Those kids probably heard a tomcat yowl, then expected the police to investigate, wasting our tax dollars with their ignorance.
Liz was pleased to report that our local OPP detachment, as efficient as ever, had cleared the matter up with a phone call, confirming that Bob's Wild Kingdom was not, in fact, missing a cougar. Did I mention that Liz's maiden name was Riley? As in sister to Don Riley, head of our efficient OPP detachment?
"So they cleared up that cougar thing," I said as Larry refilled my coffee.
"Well, that's what they seem to be saying."
"You don't believe it?"
Larry shrugged.
"Well," I said, folding the paper. "If there is a big cat out there, I, for one, would sure like to know."
"If I were you, I'd tell your guests to stay out of the wood for a while."
"Damn. That's not good." I added cream to my coffee. "You know, I hear cougars are territorial, stick mostly to one spot." I'd heard nothing of the sort, but it worked for me. "Maybe it'll be enough to keep people away from that particular area. Those kids were over by the Potter place, weren't they?"
Larry put the pot back on the burner. "Yep. The lot next to it, where that cottage burned down a few years back. If folks want to camp before the MicMac opens for the season, Eric sends them over there."
"Any idea from which direction they heard the cat? North, south?"
"East, away from your place. It was close to the campsite, though. They came tearing in here like the devil was on their tail. They said it sounded like the cougar was right beside 'em. I told Eric not to go telling any more folks to camp over there. Cougar or not, we don't need that kind of trouble."
"No kidding. I'll make sure none of my guests go hiking that way. Thanks."
I lingered for the minimum amount of time, engaging in the minimum amount of small talk, then hurried to my truck.
I went to the makeshift campsite, still hoping those kids had indeed heard a cat. But there's a point at which optimism crosses over into denial.
So I took precautions. If I found something, I couldn't let the police know I'd been first on the scene. I had to treat this search as if I was looking for a place to hide a body myself.
I wore the spare rubber boots I kept in the truck, two sizes larger than my own feet, so they could be worn by anyone who borrowed the pickup and got stuck in the spring mud. If I found anything, I'd dispose of them. I tied my hair back with an elastic, then donned the Raptors ball cap I stored in the truck for hair emergencies, and tucked every strand of hair under it. The Maglite and batteries went into my coat pocket, along with three pairs of clear plastic gloves and a big ball of string. I was ready.
I parked on a logging road several kilometers away, so neither my truck nor its tire tracks would be near a potential crime scene. Then I walked the roadway stretch, hoping to see signs of a struggle or a disturbance on the forest's edge that I might have missed two days ago. Nothing. When I reached the campsite, I started my search.
I began with the stretch from the east edge of the campsite to the road Sammi had traveled. I foot-measured a meter into the forest, then tied the end of the string to a tree to mark my starting point. As I walked, I stretched the string behind me, marking my path and giving me a one-meter strip. Once I neared the road, I tied the string off, measured another strip, started a new string on the other side, and searched that strip. Then I cut the first string, removed it, and started a fresh one.
A temporary grid system. It seemed like a waste of time in the early stages, when the road marked my starting point, but once I got farther into the forest, it'd all start to look alike and it was too easy to drift and miss areas.
I found a sizable walking stick and started searching the grid, using the stick to clear the path in front of me, so I wouldn't miss anything beneath the cushion of dead leaves. When I came to low bushes or thick undergrowth, I used a smaller stick to poke around and shone the high-powered Maglite into dark crevices. It was excruciatingly slow work.
It might seem as if I was making this more complicated than it needed to be. Surely if anything had happened to Sammi, the signs would be there. You can't drag a teenage girl and baby stroller into the forest without leaving marks, right?
It's not that easy. Just because people hadn't been tramping through the woods didn't mean other creatures hadn't. Herds of deer made herds of human-sized trails through the undergrowth. I saw plenty of trampled grass and broken twigs, but, unlike in Sherlock Holmes stories, that didn't necessarily mean a person had been this way. I had to search inch by inch.
After four hours, all I had was a sore back.
Time to break for dinner. Eating was the last thing on my mind, but I didn't want to do anything out of the ordinary. Not with Jack around. I'd considered letting him know what I was doing, but he might offer to help. If I found what I most feared, I wanted to do it alone.
Jack was here to recuperate. A guest. Not a friend, not a colleague, not a mentor. I wasn't going to bring him into this any more than I had to, and when I did, it would be as a calm, detached professional investigating a case. If I found Sammi's body, I would not be calm, detached, or professional, no matter how hard I tried. So he was staying out until I had something to report.
I found Emma in the kitchen, taking a casserole from the oven.
"How's John?" I asked.
"They should be back any minute. He went out fishing with Owen."
I tried to picture that, and failed. "I didn't know John fished."
"He doesn't, apparently, but Owen offered to show him how and he agreed to give it a shot." She pulled the foil from the dish, steam billowing up. "Actually, it was more like: 'You fish?' 'Nah.' 'Wanna try?' 'Sure.' At least they won't scare the fish away with their chattering."
"Any last-minute check-ins?"
She shook her head. "Empty again tonight unless someone comes by late. But we have two more bookings for the weekend, so it looks like we'll have a full house."
I imagined a weekend stuffed with kayaking and bird-watching, no time for Sammi. My stomach fluttered. I reminded myself this was my priority. My gut didn't agree.
"I'll be heading out again after dinner, if that's okay. Just a few things I need to wrap up, make sure I'm clear for the weekend."
Emma studied me. "Is everything okay, Nadia?"
I forced a smile. "Sure. Why?"
Another long look that I struggled not to squirm under. Then she said, "You do whatever you have to do."
Jack and O
wen appeared before dinner reached the table. I ate like a race car stuck in a fifty-kilometer zone - wolfing a few bites, forcing myself to slow down, gulping some more, slamming on the brakes...
I told myself Jack wasn't really a guest, so I didn't need to play hostess. But it was the looks he kept shooting that slowed me down - his intense gaze swinging my way every time I gulped a mouthful or responded with one-word answers to Emma's efforts to strike up conversation.
I even had a slice of strudel... or at least cut it up and pushed pieces around on my plate. Then I cleared the table for Emma, loaded the dishwasher, and fled by way of the kitchen door.
I found Jack leaning against my truck's fender, one elbow braced on the hood, the crutch in front of him, resting against his chest. He didn't say a word, just watched my approach with that unwavering gaze.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, going for casual. Even managed a smile. "Hey. Everything going okay? All settled in?"
"Same as last time you asked."
"Right, well, if you need anything, Emma's around. She's officially on duty until ten." I pulled out my keys and had to flip through the ring twice to find the right one. "I hate to eat and run, but with no guests around, I have to take advantage of it. Got some work to do on the other side of the property."
"That where you think she's buried?"
The keys slipped and I fumbled to grab the ring before it fell. "B-buried?"
"Sammi. You're looking for her body."
I tried to laugh. "In these woods? If Sammi's out there, I don't have a hope in hell of finding - "
"Cut the shit, Nadia. We both know that cougar scream was a girl. You found out where. Now you're searching."
"No, I - "
"You're gonna tell me you're not? What's the big deal?"
He had a point. So why did my stomach clench at the thought of admitting it? I supposed I just didn't want him saying that hunting for a live girl was fine, but digging up a dead one could get me in trouble, and I couldn't afford anyone taking too close a look at my life. And if he did say that, he'd have another point. But I didn't want to hear it.
He swung the crutch under his arm and pulled open the driver's door. "You can drive."