Zero at the Bone (28 page)

He stood in the door, his head still back, his mouth rounded and puckered as if he were expecting a kiss. He stood silent for a long time, looking at her. Finally he spoke. “Your grandmother I know well and your father I read in the paper about. My condolences.” He stepped aside for her to enter and made an elegant bow from the waist.

Katherine entered feeling like a beggar who had suddenly turned into a princess.

“My office is ahead on the right,” he said, stopping to flip the switch on an answering machine sitting on a metal desk near the door.

She walked through an ultra-modern reception area full of computer equipment, telexes, faxes, and phones, into a dark, smoky, book-lined room with a huge mahogany desk and an old Victorian love seat. Stepping through the door was like going back a century to a slower, more comfortable era.

“Please,” he said, pointing to the love seat.

She sat and felt the panic reasserting itself. How was she going to approach this?

Watching her intently, he walked to his desk and picked up an ashtray with a smoking cigar in it. He lowered himself painfully into the seat next to her, rested the ashtray on his knee, and stuck the half-smoked cigar in his mouth. “Tell me,” he said.

The lies and subterfuges she had cooked up evaporated into the smoky air. She pulled the copies of the photos and zoo records out of her bag and spread them on the small table in front of him. Then she told him everything: the letter from her father, his death, how she found the envelope containing the photographs, her getting a job at the zoo so she could investigate, and, finally, Vic’s suggestion that she talk to him. She ended with a sigh of relief and leaned back into the seat feeling fully relaxed for the first time in weeks.

By that time, he had smoked his cigar down to a nub. He stubbed it out, picked up the pages, and carried them to the desk. Switching on a reading lamp, he sat down and pulled a magnifier from his drawer. He spent the next twenty minutes in silence, bent over her documents, then studying entries in a ledger of his own. He got up once to pull a folder from his file cabinet. They were the longest twenty minutes Katherine had ever experienced. She tried to occupy herself with surveying his books, a huge collection on exotic animals, the African section alone filling an entire wall.

Finally he looked up and said, “You must be thirsty after your journey. I have some sherry I have been saving. Will you join me in a glass?”

“Yes, please,” Katherine said.

He pushed himself up out of his desk chair with difficulty. As he squatted to open the credenza behind the desk, he said, “In the days when all of us were much younger, Anne Driscoll was one of the liveliest and most charming women I have ever known. Right after the war, this is before you were born, we went with a group of zoo people on safari in Kenya and Tanzania, then Tanganyika. She was fearless. Like a man. I have always been a little in love with her.”

He stood, a bottle in one hand, two glasses in the other. “And, of course, after that we did business, which turned out lucrative for me, very lucrative. Her foundation was my first big customer.” He put the glasses of heavy cut crystal on the desk, uncorked the bottle, and poured from it. Shuffling carefully so as not to spill the amber liquid, he carried the glasses toward the love seat. Katherine leaned forward to take hers.

He sat and raised his glass toward Katherine. “To not harming the people we have loved.” He touched his glass to hers and took a long sip.

Katherine had never liked sherry—too heavy and sweet—but this she enjoyed. It tasted perfect for the environment. They both sipped in silence.

“For the past two years,” he said, “I have dealt with Cooper Driscoll, you know. Your uncle. Not Anne. To him I have no attachment.”

Katherine nodded.

“I have not spoken with her in that time. Cooper tells me she is … dying.”

“I don’t know,” Katherine said. “He won’t let me see her, but that is what I hear, too.”

“I am uncertain what to do here. Very uncertain. It is unusual for me to be uncertain, but in this case…” He shrugged and finished off his glass.

“Mr. Friedlander, the last thing I want to do here is hurt any member of my family, especially my grandmother in her fragile condition. If you give me the information I am looking for, I promise I will use it responsibly. I will not do anything detrimental to Anne Driscoll. You can count on that.”

He sighed and rose again to fetch the bottle from the desk. He filled Katherine’s empty glass and his own. “You are working in reptiles at the Austin Zoo?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “I don’t deal in reptiles. They have never appealed to me. Birds either. I deal in mammals, only mammals.” He pointed at one of the photographs on the only section of wall not covered with books. There were three photographs: a large male orangutan with swollen cheek flanges, an okapi, and a baby gorilla. “These are some of my best finds. Cheops, the orangutan I caught wild in Borneo. He died last year after twenty years in the Detroit Zoo. Now everything is computers and ISIS and red tape. Ninety percent of my time is doing paperwork and keeping up on the regulations for importing exotic species. I may retire. Especially now.” He pulled a fresh cigar from his shirt pocket and waved it at the papers on his desk. “I should go to the authorities with this. You know that.”

Katherine decided not to argue or push him. She had the feeling it would not help her case.

“Tell me,” he said, “why you are a dog trainer.”

Katherine reached over and put her empty glass on his desk. “I think it’s because I love talking with another species. It’s a privilege. Like being one of the few to walk on the moon or to visit some foreign country that other people haven’t seen. I’ve just always known that working with animals was what I was supposed to do.”

He sat back and closed his eyes. “‘They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth,’” he recited.

“Henry Beston,” Katherine said, pleased to recognize a quote she had always loved.

He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “If I give you the information you want, you will promise me not to let your grandmother get hurt? This involves her son, and sons are of great importance, even bad ones. More important than granddaughters.”

Katherine raised her right hand and said, “I promise.”

“And you will promise me that this will come to an end, what is going on in Austin?”

“Oh, yes.”

He nodded. “Then I tell you this and I can document it all.” He smiled at her and added, “In triplicate. On October second, I shipped by air freight to Dallas seven animals destined for the Austin Zoo: two bongos from San Diego, both mature males; three aoudads; two greater kudu; and one scimitar-horned oryx. They were paid for from the Anne Cooper Driscoll Foundation, half in advance, half when they arrived safely. That was done. The checks were signed by the foundation director, Cooper Driscoll.” He tapped the cigar he’d been holding on the table. “Now I see from the zoo records you brought that only one of the bongos and two auodads actually reached the zoo.”

Even though it was what she had suspected, Katherine was shocked, so shocked she had to concentrate on her breathing to regulate it. She had been slow, but she was beginning to see the big picture.

He put the cigar in his mouth but didn’t light it. “The same thing with this shipment in August. Only the two wildebeest arrived at the zoo, but I sent also two bushbuck, an addax, and a sable antelope. Also, on April seventeenth, animals I sent did not get acquired, according to your records.”

“Who took charge of these animals in Dallas? Do you know?”

“Yes. Because I get the shipping orders back. They were all signed by Hans Dieterlen, your head keeper.”

Katherine tried to picture it: The animals arrive by air freight. Hans Dieterlen signs the shipping order. He directs one or two of the animals into the zoo van and the others go into vans headed elsewhere. Cooper Driscoll and Hans Dieterlen were nothing less than bandits, or rustlers. And the penalty for rustling in Texas was traditionally death by hanging.

“What about Sam McElroy?” she asked. “Do you think he’s involved in this?”

The old man shrugged and said, “It’s hard to think he wouldn’t know.”

They sat in silence for a minute.

“So, Miss Katherine Driscoll. What will you do about this?” he asked.

“Is there any way to prove the animals, if we can find them, are the same ones you shipped, the same ones that were paid for out of foundation money?”

He smiled at her and nodded his head, as if she were a cleverer child than he had suspected. “Sure. Some of them, the ones I bought from other zoos, had already been tattooed with their ISIS numbers.”

Katherine’s heart gave a little leap. “Inside the left thigh?” she asked. She remembered Vic had told her that most of the animals and all the highly endangered ones were tattooed with the International Species Inventory System number.

“Yes. The bongos were both tattooed and…” He struggled to his feet and reached for his ledger and magnifying glass on the desk. He opened the book, found the entry. “Also the oryx, and, in August, the wildebeest and the sable antelope.”

“Could you write those numbers down for me?” Katherine asked.

“Yah.” He struggled to his desk and carefully recorded for her the animal, date shipped, and the ISIS number. He handed her the paper, then looked at his watch. “It is almost one o’clock. May I take you to lunch at the best restaurant in Manhasset?”

“I would love it, but I need to get back as soon as I can. Will you give me a rain check?” She turned to walk to the door.

As he was letting her out, he said, “May I give you some advice?”

Katherine nodded.

“It is this: The October shipment was worth one hundred five thousand dollars. The August shipment, seventy-four thousand dollars. And this is with discount for the zoo. Game ranches in Texas expect to pay more for these rare antelope. I know from seventy-four years of living that when that kind of money is loose and when murder has already been done, there is danger. I think I will take a vacation until this is done. You should maybe do the same.” He put his hand out to her.

She took his hand in both of hers and held it. His fingers were very cold at the tips. “Thanks, but I can’t do that yet,” she said.

*   *   *

As she had promised, Katherine called Sophie from the Austin airport at 6:15
P.M
. and told her not to worry about meeting her at the house; by the time Katherine got back, Vic would be there to pick her up. But, with no luggage to collect, she arrived home in record time—fifteen minutes. Good. It would give her time to wash her hair and spruce up before Vic picked her up at seven.

She wasn’t sure if it was the anticipation of being with Vic or the weight of the information she carried, but she felt almost feverish as she walked to the front door.

She had slid her key into the lock before the sense of something being wrong stopped her from turning it. What was it? She stopped and listened. She could hear the traffic from the highway three blocks away and the wind rustling the treetops. Never before had she approached this door in silence. Always, every single time, the racket of Belle’s barking had accompanied the unlocking of the door.

She jerked the key from the lock and took a step back.

Something was definitely wrong.

She turned and ran down the steps, back to her car. As she opened the door to get in, she saw a blue-and-white police car cruise past. With a cry, she bolted out of the driveway into the street, waving her arms to flag it down.

The car squealed to a stop and Patrolman Rogers jumped out. “Miss Driscoll? Just driving by to check.”

Katherine grabbed his arm. “I just got here and the dog’s not barking. She always barks when someone approaches the house. Always. There’s something wrong.”

“Hold on,” he said. “Let me call this in.” He pulled the radio from his belt and spoke into it in a low voice. Then he touched the butt of his pistol. “You stay here while I take a look.”

Katherine handed him her key with a shaking hand. “I’m coming with you,” she said. She stayed close behind him up the steps, holding her breath as he inserted the key and turned it in the wrong direction. “No.” She barely had the breath to get the word out. “The other way.”

He twisted the key the right way and the lock clicked. The door swung open. He stuck his head in first, then flicked the light switch at the door. He looked inside for a few long seconds. Then he stepped back outside. He drew his pistol.

“You stay right here,” he ordered. “Don’t come in.”

He entered the house, leaving the door open.

Katherine felt her systems shut down. Her heart stopped pumping blood; her lungs shut off the air. Her body remained in suspension as she waited.

When he didn’t return after a minute, she leaned her head in the door and looked.

Her throat closed and stuck.

On the hall floor lay a black heap.

Belle.

Blood had blackened the brick floor and pooled around the dog’s head. The smell told her the dog had been dead for hours.

The scene dislodged a memory.
My mother drags me out the door, but I break away. I run back into the house. To say good-bye to Pasha. But he’s lying on the bedroom floor. Even at five, I know he’s dead.

She jerked her head back and tried to call for the policeman, but her throat was still stuck.

Ra.

Where was he?

She had left him in the backyard early this morning.

18

THE four of them had been silent for several minutes as they listened to the clatter of the police packing up their gear.

Cooper Driscoll stood behind his daughter, scowling so that his mouth was stretched into a pencil-line slit. His hands rested on his hips, holding his suit jacket back to reveal his massive torso. As he looked down at Sophie, who sat weeping at the kitchen table, his mouth stretched even thinner, sinking into his face.