CHAPTER THREE
Their flight landed too late for them to look over the crime scene, so they drove to the Council Bluffs Animal Rescue Sanctuary first thing in the morning. The entire combined statistical area of Omaha and Council Bluffs had about half the population of Philadelphia, so traffic was light, and they reached the Sanctuary nine minutes after leaving their hotel.
Turk’s nose was on the ground immediately when they stepped out of the car. Faith felt a touch of encouragement at that. Clearly he could still smell. She wondered what had happened with the test. Maybe someone had a bag of potato chips or lemon cookies in the hospital, and he was distracted by those. He loved lemon cookies.
“This is close to the smallest zoo I’ve ever seen,” Michael said.
The sanctuary was indeed small. Its website claimed it was five hundred thirty-three acres, but a lot of that space was taken up by the parking lot and a three-story animal hospital and rehabilitation center, so the actual space reserved for animal exhibits was probably a third that size.
The sanctuary was still closed, so the parking lot was nearly empty when they arrived. A security guard let them through the gate and informed them that Saul was the manager today and would meet them in his office in the admin building.
“Should we go there first or the crime scene first?” Michael asked.
“Saul first. We need someone who can answer questions.”
“You got it.”
Saul was a rotund, balding man in his early forties with a baby face and small, wire-rimmed sunglasses. He greeted the two agents mechanically. He looked almost as though he was in shock. Maybe he was.
“Can you take us to the crime scene, Saul?” Faith asked.
Saul swallowed. “Um… sure. Yeah, sure.”
“If you’re not comfortable, we can just go there after we finish talking to you,” Michael offered.
“No, that’s fine. It’s all right. I…” He swallowed again. “It’s just crazy. Nothing like this has ever happened here.”
He led the agents out of the building toward the zoo. “It happened in front of the gift shop.”
“Did the cameras catch anything?”
“No. It…” he reddened. “We have cameras in the buildings and the enclosures, but we don’t have any cameras for the exterior. I’m guessing we’ll get some installed soon, but for right now… well, no, the cameras didn’t catch anything.”
They reached the gift shop a moment later. Yellow tape still cordoned off the portion of the walkway that was covered in Marcus’s blood.
“Go check it out, Turk,” Faith said.
Turk approached the blood stained and sniffed around for a moment, then lifted his head and looked deeper into the zoo. He looked confused. An ache formed in Faith’s stomach again.
“So the panther attacks him here,” Michael says. “He tries to fight it off, but it drags him to the ground… here. Then it leaves him there.”
“That’s just it,” Saul explained. “It can’t be one of our cats.”
“Why not?” Faith asked.
“Because that’s not how cats behave. Cats wouldn’t leave a kill where it dropped, they would either eat it right there, or they’d take it to their den.”
“So because Marcus wasn’t eaten, it couldn’t have been a cat?”
“I know that seems farfetched, but it’s a lot more farfetched to suggest that a cat just left him there. If it was a different kind of predator, maybe a bear or a wolfpack, then it’s possible they would have just killed him as a territorial act, but that’s just not how cats work. If they kill something, they eat it. Even when they kill each other.”
“So that’s why you had PD call us in.”
“That’s why we requested you, yes.”
“Is the owner of the sanctuary available?” Faith asked.
“That would be Lisa. She’s out of town today, but she’ll be back tonight, and you can talk to her then.”
Faith noted that and frowned as Turk trotted a few yards ahead, then shook his head.
“The animal scents are probably confusing him,” Saul suggested. “We get that sometimes with dogs. There’s so much going on that it overwhelms them, and they don’t know what to do with themselves.”
Faith’s frown deepened. “Tell me about Marcus. Was he well-liked here?”
“Well, he was the night watchman. He was barely seen here. People got along with him well enough, I guess. No one hated him. He was quiet, kept to himself, did his job well, made sure problems were dealt with quickly.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Usually kids sneaking in after hours to do drugs or hook up.”
Faith grimaced. “Seriously?”
Saul grinned sheepishly. "They know we won't prosecute. We just kick 'em out or sometimes lecture them, depending on whoever the night watchman is. Lisa has a soft spot for kids. She doesn't want to send someone to jail for making out with their boyfriend."
“Trespassing isn’t a good enough reason?”
Saul shrugged. “You’ll understand when you meet her.”
“I look forward to that.”
“So what happened with the cat the next morning?” Michael asked.
"Ah, yes. Well, the jaguar trotted right up to me and started licking my fingers. That's a sign that she's hungry. And another sign that she didn't kill him. Hell, the dead body was there all night, and she never once approached it to try to eat it. Anyway, I led her back to her enclosure and fed her. She licked my face to say thank you, then ate her food."
Faith raised an eyebrow. “Jaguar or panther?”
“Jaguar. People call the black ones panthers. It’s not incorrect, but we also have a black leopard. We call him a panther and her a black jaguar. Just helps us tell ‘em apart in conversation.”
“Do you always buddy up to big cats like that? Michael asked.
"Oh yeah. I love cats. I grew up in San Diego, and my mom worked with the big cats at the zoo there. I was around them my whole childhood. They never once attacked me. I know they're wild animals, and they can do something at any minute, but it's not like they're out there just waiting to tear someone's throat out."
“I get the sense you’re worried for your cat.”
Saul shook his head. “Not really. Lisa agrees with me that she couldn’t have had anything to do with this. We’re both worried for Marcus. Or rather that the killer who did this will get away with it.”
Faith looked over at Turk. He was still trotting back and forth, shaking his head in confusion. She crossed her arms and bit her lip softly.
It’s just the animals. Like Saul said. There’s just a lot going on right now. Hell, even I can smell them.
“That’s not the only reason we’re sure it was a person.”
Faith realized that Saul was still talking. She turned to him and said, “What’s the other reason?”
“The wounds in Marcus’s neck weren’t caused by teeth.”
“I thought his throat was ripped out.”
Saul shivered. “It was, but not by teeth.”
“And you’re sure of this because?”
"Because teeth cut differently than other things. Different teeth cut differently than other teeth. That's how we perform bite analyses. Like with sharks. When people get bit by a shark, they take pictures of the bite and examine the wound so they can figure out what kind of teeth made the bite. Conical, triangular, serrated, smooth, barbed… Then, they match the bite to the shark to determine what species. We can do the same thing with cats. We can also check bite size to determine the size of the jaw, the dentition pattern, the distance between teeth, and so forth."
“Kind of hard to determine all of that when half of a man’s neck is missing,” Michael suggested.
Saul sighed. “That’s what the police department said. I’ll tell you the same thing we told them. Teeth tear the skin differently than other things. Look.” He pulled his upper lip back and pointed at his front teeth. “Incisors are flat. They’re good at chopping through things. A bite from an incisor is going to look sort of like a stab wound from a knife. A blunt one, but you get the picture. Back here, we have molars, which are for crushing, and that’s what a molar bite is going to look like. The skin will look crushed.”
He pointed at the pointy teeth in between his incisors and molars. “These are canine teeth. They’re used for ripping and tearing food. Cats have huge canine teeth. If a cat but into Marcus’s flesh, it would look like the skin was ripped off.”
“Or like his throat was torn out.”
“No! It’s…” Saul took a deep breath. “I know it’s hard to explain. I’m sorry for being frustrated.”
“You’re doing great,” Faith said. “Are you saying it looks like his throat was cut out instead of torn out?”
“Yes! Kind of.”
Michael dropped his chin to his chest and sighed.
“I mean, the throat was torn out,” Saul said, “but it looked like it was torn out by incisors, not by canines. The tears were all wrong. They were too broad, and they were squarish when they should have been round. I’m telling you, agents, Marcus was killed by a human being with some kind of weapon, not by a cat.”
“Any idea what kind of weapon that might be?” Faith asked.
Saul's shoulders slumped. "That's the issue. We don't know. PD wanted to make this an open-and-shut animal attack, but that's just not right. Aside from the fact that it would be immoral to euthanize the jaguar for something she didn't do, it would be immoral and dangerous to let this killer—whoever he is—keep wandering out there."
“I agree,” Faith said. “Do you have any idea who might want to hurt Marcus?”
Saul shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. Like I said, we didn’t talk much. He seemed fine, and I never heard complaints about him.”
Faith nodded. “Got anything, boy?”
Turk snorted in frustration and trotted back to her side. She kept her tone cheerful when she said, “That’s all right, Turk. We’ll find something.” She gave Saul a card. “Call us when Mrs. Hartley gets back. We’ll want to talk to her right away.”
“I will. She wants to talk to you too. She takes this really personal, you know. This was one of her employees.”
“Yes, I imagine. Thank you for your time.”
The three agents walked back toward their car. “I want to talk to the coroner,” Faith said. “I want to see if I can get some more details on whatever weapon killed Marcus Reeves.”
Michael didn’t answer. Faith frowned and turned to him to see him on the phone.
“Yes, Detective. We’ll meet you there.” He hung up and gave Faith a grim look. “That was Detective Cuthbert. He apologizes for not meeting us at the airport. He was busy investigating a murder. He thinks it might be related to this one.”
Faith’s heart dropped like a stone. Their first morning on the job, and already their killer had struck again.
“Well,” Michael offered with a thin smile. “At least we know for sure it’s not an animal.”
That wasn’t a comfort to Faith. She’d spent a lot of time around animals and a lot of time around people. She could say with absolute certainty that people were far more dangerous.