P. J. Parrish

Claw Back

CHAPTER ONE

He hadn’t been inside in a long time.

It was as dark as he remembered, and it smelled as bad. O’Sullivan’s was a cop bar. Located a block from the Fort Myers police station, it had the feel of a married guy’s den. Stale smoky air, cigarette burns on the tables, rows of trophies, a floor of crushed peanut shells and a big-screen TV permanently tuned to ESPN.

Like all primitive habitats, it had a pecking order. City detectives had staked out the back of the bar; county detectives, out of legendary necessity, owned the tables by the men’s room so they could piss and moan more conveniently; the round tables in the middle belonged to the rank and file uniforms.

And in the back, by the juke box, sat Lance Mobley. Arms spread across the back of the booth, perched under a Happy Birthday banner, he looked like a king on a red leather throne.

Louis Kincaid waited until his eyes adjusted before he started back. He needed to see everything clearly right now because this wasn’t going to be easy.

When he stopped at the table, Mobley was talking over his shoulder to a pretty lady in a blue halter top. No one was sitting in the booth with the sheriff, but the table was littered with empty bottles, heaping ashtrays and crumpled wrapping paper. Louis scanned the gifts while he waited for Mobley to finish flirting. A bottle of Leopold’s Gin with a card that read: Gin makes you sin. Three cans of John Frieda hair mousse duct-taped together. A bundle of cigars. And a twelve-pack of animal print condoms.

Louis had known Mobley a few years now. Knew he was a publicity hound, an office iron-pumper, a ladies’ man, a closeted lounge pianist. But probably most important, he was a competent sheriff who used his charm and good looks to mask his lack of good judgment and investigative skills.

Louis glanced around the bar. Half the Lee County cops — and more than handful of city cops — were here. No matter what Mobley was, his men liked him. And that was important.

Mobley’s voice broke his thoughts. “Sit down, Kincaid.”

Louis slid into the booth. Mobley grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured himself another shot.

“You want a drink?” Mobley asked.

“Sure.”

Mobley tried to signal the bartender, and when he was ignored he searched the cluttered table for an empty glass. He found a used shot glass beneath a crumple of gold paper and filled it for Louis.

Louis let it sit in front of him.

“So what did you want to talk to me about that was so important you’re interrupting my birthday party?”

“You told me to meet you here,” Louis said. “You never said you’d be at a party.”

“Fuck it,” Mobley said. “Talk to me.”

Louis glanced down at the whiskey and decided to drink it. His throat was still burning when he spoke.

“I’m here to ask you for a job,” Louis said.

Mobley’s brow shot up and his eyes took a moment to focus. The bar was noisier than hell but suddenly it seemed as if there was no one here but the two of them.

“I want back inside,” Louis said. “I want to wear a badge again.”

Mobley continued to stare at him, but as understanding sank in, his lips tipped up in a small smile.

“And I didn’t think this day could get any better,” he said.

Suddenly someone slapped Mobley on the back of the head, mumbled something about the sheriff getting lucky tonight and wandered away. Mobley paid him no attention, his gaze still on Louis.

“You’re too old,” Mobley said.

“I’m twenty-nine.”

“You look thirty-five easy.”

“It’s seasoning.”

“You’re too controversial, too well known as a PI,” Mobley said. “I don’t need any deputies who get their names in the papers.”

“You mean deputies who get their names in the papers more than you do.”

“See, that attitude is exactly what I’m talking about,” Mobley said. “You’ve been rogue too long. You’ve forgotten what it’s all about, lost respect for things like protocol and even fucking rank.”

Louis leaned over the table. “Listen to me,” he said. “I graduated pre-law from Michigan. I trained in one of the best police academies in the country and graduated third in my class. I’ve been shot at, stabbed and nearly hanged and have worked with some of the best investigators in this state and in Michigan on half a dozen cold cases. With all due respect, you have no idea what kind of cop I was or what kind I will be. Sir.”

Mobley’s dimmed expression never changed. For a few moments, the bar was a cacophony of noises — clinking glasses, deep throated laughter and the pounding music of Guns and Roses’s “Welcome to the Jungle.”

“No,” Mobley said, turning back to his drink. “Go ask Chief Horton for a job. He seems to like you.”

“The city is on a hiring freeze,” Louis said. “You’re not. I saw the notice two days in the newspaper.”

“We’re hiring deputies only,” Mobley said.

“I don’t care where I start.”

“I said no.”

Louis sat back, staring at the empty shot glass in front of him. He hadn’t wanted to make the argument he was about to make — it seemed desperate and self-serving to use his race to pry an opening in the tightly shut door. But truth was, his brown skin was exactly what Mobley needed right now.

“I also read something else in the newspaper,” Louis said. “Your department is facing seventeen counts of employment discrimination. I hear the justice department is coming down to review your hiring and promotion files.”

Mobley shoved his glass aside and leaned into Louis. “Those charges are bullshit. I don’t have a bigoted bone in my body. Everyone knows that.”

“I guess you can tell that to the DOJ when they get here,” Louis said. “And trust me, once they get a hold of you they never let go.”

Mobley was quiet, grinding his jaw.

“Did you know,” Louis continued, “that there are some police departments in the south that are still under DOJ hiring quotas from the 1960s?”

“You’ve managed to sink lower than I thought possible,” Mobley said. “Threatening me with discrimination. Get out of my bar.”

Louis didn’t move, instead ordering two beers to give Mobley time to simmer down. After the sheriff had taken a long pull from his bottle, Louis went on.

“Listen, sheriff,” he said. “I don’t like affirmative action either, though I know that even now there are some companies that still need it forced down their throats. But I never took advantage. I didn’t even put my race down on my college application.”

“So what’s your point?”

“My point is, you need some brown faces in your department and you’ve got one right in front of you asking you for a job.”

Mobley shook his head. “You don’t get it, Kincaid,” he said. “We’ve gone out of our way to find qualified minorities. I’m not stupid. I know I can’t police this community with nothing but white men, but I’m telling you the quality of human being I need just isn’t out there.”

“Maybe you haven’t looked in the right places.”

“I have a damn good recruitment division,” Mobley said. “And we’re going to solve this so-called race problem. I don’t need you and all the dead bodies you seem attract.”

Louis looked away, hand around the beer bottle. He knew Mobley wouldn’t make it easy, knew he’d have to grovel some, but he had thought he could talk him into it. Though he still had his detractors, his reputation as a PI in southwest Florida was a damn impressive one and he knew he might be able to take that to a place like Miami or Orlando. But damn it, he wanted to stay here, in Fort Myers, on Captiva, in his little gray cottage. Near the water. Near the handful of people he had let into his life.

“Lance,” someone called, “You got a call at the bar.”

“Tell them I’m in the shitter.”

“It’s Undersheriff Portman. Better take it.”

Mobley mumbled something and looked to Louis as he started a long slide out of the curved booth. “I got to take this call,” he said. “Don’t be here where I get back.”

Louis watched Mobley stagger toward the bar where he leaned on his elbows and picked up the phone. Louis drew a breath and put a five on the table.

Half-way to the door, he stopped and took another look around O’Sullivan’s. It was one level above a dive with its sputtering neon and cracked leather booths. He had never found a place like this when he was wearing a badge. Back in Ann Arbor, flush with a criminology degree and a rookie’s idealism, he had decided he was too smart, too good to be part of the gritty off-duty lifestyle of a cop. And in Mississippi, the only tavern in town had been decorated with a confederate flag.

Outside, the August air was still and scorched-smelling, baking the buildings and sidewalk like they were rocks in a kiln. Louis headed toward his Mustang.

“Kincaid.”

Louis turned to see Mobley standing in the doorway of the bar. His hair was the color of hay, his skin as bronzed as a lifeguard. A cigarette hung limply from the side of his mouth.

“You really serious about wearing a uniform again?” Mobley asked.

“I told you I was.”

“Okay, I’ll give you a shot.”

“A shot?”

Mobley tried to take the cigarette from his mouth but the paper stuck to his dry lip and he had to peel it off. It took him a moment to refocus on Louis.

“I got this situation going on I’m going to deputize you for.”

“Deputize me?” Louis asked. “Is that even still legal?”

“Yeah, kind of,” Mobley said. “Anyway, doesn’t really matter. I can do what I want.”

“Right.”

“You’ll get a temporary badge and ID card,” Mobley said, “but no uniform. You’ll wear street clothes. Jacket and tie.”

In ninety-nine degree heat. Mobley was screwing with him but that was okay. He had a jacket. Somewhere. In his truck maybe, from that last case he had worked over in Palm Beach.

“So, consider this a test, Kincaid,” Mobley said. “You pass it — and only I decide if you do — and I’ll get you in front of my hiring board with a five-star recommendation.”

“You got a deal,” Louis said. “When do I start?”

“I’ll get you your credentials tomorrow, but you can start right now.”

Louis squinted up at the sun. It was already three. He looked back at Mobley.

“Okay, what’s the job?”

“I want you to go pick up a dead cat.”

CHAPTER TWO

It wasn’t just any cat.

This one weighed about a hundred and thirty pounds and had claws that could rip a man to shreds.

The panther was lying on its side, motionless, on the baking cement of the pool deck. Louis stood about ten feet away, sweat dripping down his face, muscles tensed. He moved closer. Close enough to see the cat’s big pink tongue hanging from its mouth.

“Is it dead? It’s dead, right?”

He glanced back at the old woman standing at the open sliding glass door. She was holding a small poodle whose curly white hair and anxious eyes matched her own. The damn dog had barked non-stop from the moment Louis set foot on the patio but at least for the moment it was just shaking, like it was having a seizure.

“Yes, ma’am, I think it’s dead.”

The pool pump kicked on with a loud groan and gushing noise.

The poodle went into a barking frenzy. Louis looked back at the woman who was trying hard to keep it from jumping out of her arms. When he looked back at the big cat it still wasn’t moving.

No, it wasn’t dead. Its chest was moving, just barely.

“Ma’am,” he called back over his shoulder. “I think you’d better take your dog inside.”

“What?”

“Please go inside the house.”

He waited until he heard the sliding door close. The barking was muted now at least. He crept closer to the cat and squatted down.

It was about seven feet long from nose to tail’s end with a tawny brown coat that was white on the belly and tipped in black on the tail and ears. Its yellow eyes were open but unfocused and its mouth hung open, showing its tongue and large teeth.

Louis had never seen one alive before, just pictures in magazines and those black silhouettes on the road signs cautioning people to drive slower. But he knew it was a Florida panther. He knew, too, that there weren’t many left in the wild. And he knew that this one was dying.

He craned his neck, trying to get a better look at the big cat but he couldn’t see any wounds or any blood. The only thing that seemed off was that the animal looked too thin. Louis could see the gentle rippling of its ribs as it labored to breathe.

Louis jerked the radio from the back pocket of his chinos and keyed the special frequency Mobley had assigned him.

“Kincaid to Lee County base.”

A pause. “Identify again?”

“Kincaid. Louis Kincaid.”

Another pause. “Who is this?”

“Kincaid. I’m on temporary assignment for Sheriff Mobley and — ”

“One moment.” The radio went silent. Louis wiped his sweating face and looked down at the panther. He couldn’t see the chest moving anymore. He inched closer and gently nudged a back paw with his shoe. The leg moved and Louis jerked back.

The radio squawked to life. “Okay, Mr. Kincaid. What’s your business?” It was a woman dispatcher. She sounded young, with the sweet calming tone of a kindergarten teacher.

“I need to speak to the sheriff ASAP.”

“He’s unavailable.”

Louis glanced at his watch. It was past four. Mobley was probably still at O’Sullivan’s laughing his ass off.

“Miss, I could use some help here,” Louis said. “I’ve got a Florida panther here on someone’s patio and — ”

“Panther?”

“Yeah, it’s — ”

“You’re sure it’s a panther?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Does it match the BOLO description?”

Bolo? What the hell?

“Read me the BOLO, please,” Louis said.

The dispatcher read the be-on-the-lookout alert put out by the Fish and Game Conservation Commission. As far as Louis could tell the description matched the panther, right down to the bulky radio collar it was wearing.

“Is it dead?” the dispatcher asked.

“Not yet.”

And that was what was going to help Louis pass Mobley’s damn test. He knew Mobley didn’t care about a dead cat. A dead panther found in the wild wasn’t news. The sad fact was the cats were routinely killed by cars. But a rescued live panther found on an old lady’s patio in Lehigh Acres was another story. A story that the TV cameras — and Lance Mobley — wouldn’t be able to resist.

“I need to contact the Fish and Wildlife people,” Louis said. “Can you patch me through to someone, please?”

“I can notify them for you.”

“I’d like to speak to them myself,” Louis said.

“One moment, Mr. Kincaid.”

A minute later a man came on the line and Louis told him about the panther on the patio. The man asked no questions, only for directions to Elsie Kaufman’s house. He asked Louis to stay until a ranger arrived.

Louis thanked the dispatcher and clicked off. He looked back at the sliding glass door. Elsie Kaufman was still standing there clutching her poodle, staring out at him. He looked up at big clock-sized thermometer on the house. It read ninety-five.

Fuck this.

He tore off his tie and blazer and tossed them toward a lounge chair, his eyes still locked on the panther.

He crept back to the animal and squatted down, about four feet away. Maybe he was too close but he didn’t think so. The cat’s eyes opened for second then closed again.

“Hang on, cat,” he said.

CHAPTER THREE

It was almost five but the slanting sun was still beating down on the patio full-force. Louis had retreated to the overhang near the sliding glass door with the glass of lemonade Elsie Kaufman had given him. The panther had not moved but Louis could see from his vantage point it was still breathing.

He heard the click of a gate latch and looked up. Two men in khaki shorts and white short-sleeved shirts had come onto the patio. As they came closer, Louis saw the large patches on their shirts — FWC for Florida Wildlife Commission — and the radios on their belts.

“You the officer who called us?” one guy said coming to Louis. The other guy had headed straight to the panther.

“Yeah,” Louis said.

“Any idea how long it’s been here?”

“I’ve been here about forty-five minutes.”

“What about before that?”

“No idea. Is it important?”

“Yes.”

The guy joined the other ranger. Louis heard the gate open again and a third man came onto the patio. He was stocky but shorter than the others, dressed the same except for a FWC ball cap and big aviator sunglasses. He was carrying a black duffel and went quickly to the panther without a look at Louis.

“You want the crate, doc?” one asked the small guy.

“Let me get a look first.”

The two taller rangers took a couple steps back to give the smaller man room to kneel by the panther. Louis came up behind them and watched as the small guy took a syringe and carefully injected something into the cat’s fleshy nape. The animal gave a slight jerk then laid its big head back on the concrete.

The guy in the ball cap — Louis figured he was a vet — waited a few seconds then began to examine the animal, running his palms over its fur, moving from the neck and down over the ribs. He then went on to test each limb, gently manipulating first the front legs then the back ones.

“I think the back right leg is fractured,” he said. “Better go get a board, Jeff.”

When the vet glanced his way, Louis caught a glimpse of his face beneath the ball cap brim. It was smooth, brown-skinned and boyish. The mirrored aviator glasses glinted in the slanting sun as the vet stared up at him.

Louis heard the scrape of the sliding glass door and turned to see Elsie Kaufman peering out, the trembling poodle still in her arms.

“Angel has to poop,” she said.

“You can’t let your dog out, ma’am,” Louis said, going to the door. “You’ll have to take her to the front yard.”

“She never goes out in the front.” She pointed to a spot of yellow grass in the corner of the yard. “She’ll only poop over there.”

“Ma’am — ”

“And she didn’t poop this morning.”

Louis glanced at the FWC rangers then back at the old woman. “Your dog only uses the backyard?”

She nodded. “Yes, she doesn’t like to go out on the street because the kids on their bikes scare her.”

“What time did you let her out here this morning?”

“At seven. I always let her out right after Willard does the weather.”

“You told me that you noticed the panther out here only because your dog started barking. Did she bark in the morning when you let her out?”

Elsie Kaufman shook her head. “She piddled and came right back in. I let her out again right before three. That’s when I heard her go crazy barking. I came out here and when I saw that animal I brought Angel right back in and called nine-one-one.”

“You’re sure it was three?”

“Yup. General Hospital was just coming on. I missed the first ten minutes, damn it.” She craned her neck to look beyond Louis. “How long does it take to pick up a dead cat anyway? If Angel poops on my carpet one of you is going to come in and clean it up, you hear?”

She closed the door. When Louis looked back at the rangers, the two large ones were carefully strapping the panther onto a board.

The vet zipped up the duffel and came up to Louis. “Thanks for calling us.”

It was only then that Louis realized the vet was a woman. She had taken off her ball cap to wipe her face and her ponytail had come loose, hanging over her shoulder. When she took off her sunglasses he got a good look at her eyes — large, soft brown and long-lashed.

“No problem,” Louis said. “Is the panther okay?”

“He’s really dehydrated. That’s probably why he wandered into this yard, to drink from the pool.” She shook her head slowly. “But how in the hell he got here with that leg is beyond me.”

Louis had been wondering the exact same thing. Elsie Kaufman’s house was in a dense cookie-cutter subdivision called Lehigh Acres, a good thirty miles inland from the gulf and about twenty miles from the eastern city limits of Fort Myers.

On his travels from the west coast over to Miami, Louis had seen the big road signs — WARNING PANTHER HABITAT. But the signs were out on Alligator Alley, the interstate that cut across the Everglades, and that was a good ways south of here.

“I thought panthers lived down in the Everglades,” Louis said.

“Most do. But this one’s an Oka cat.”

“A what cat?”

“Oka cat. There’s a small isolated population that lives up here in the Okaloachoochee Slough. That’s in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary only about twenty miles due east of here. Bruce is an Oka cat.”

“Bruce?”

She had been watching the other FWC rangers and when she turned back to Louis a small smile tipped her lips. “I name all my panthers.”

“Your panthers?”

“Yeah. They’re my panthers. All thirty-two of them.” Her smile faded as her eyes drifted back to the cat lying on the board. She looked back at Louis. “I don’t want to lose another one. I better get him back to the hospital.”

She started to leave.

“Oh, by the way,” Louis said, “I found out it…Bruce showed up here on the patio between seven this morning and three this afternoon.”

She nodded. “That’s helpful. His radio collar malfunctioned so we didn’t even know he was in trouble.”

“So why’d you put out a BOLO for him.”

She took off her sunglasses. “BOLO?”

“Yeah, the notice you guys put out to law enforcement agencies that you had a missing panther.”

“We didn’t send out a notice for Bruce. The panther we’re looking for is a female. Her name is Grace. And she’s still missing.”

“Doesn’t she have a radio collar, too?”

“Yeah, but it’s not sending out a signal.”

The sound of the gate closing made her look away. “I have to go,” she said. “I need to get Bruce to the hospital.” She started away but then turned back.

“Thanks for staying with him,” she said.

“No problem,” he said. “I have a cat myself.”

She gave him an odd stare then walked away, disappearing through the gate.

Louis looked back at the sliding glass door. The old lady with the poodle slid it open a crack.

“Can we come out now?” she asked.

“Yeah, they’re gone.”

He looked up at the reddening western sky. It had to be past six. Maybe if he hurried he could still catch Mobley at O’Sullivan’s.

His blazer and tie…

He turned to the lounge chair to grab them but froze. The blazer was floating out in the middle of the pool.

He glanced around but there was no leaf scoop, nothing he could use to retrieve the blazer. For a second he thought of jumping in and getting the damn thing.

To hell with it.

The panther was alive. This joke of a case was over. And so were his chances of getting back in uniform.

He picked up the tie, tossed it in the pool and left.

CHAPTER FOUR

A soft touch on his face woke him as usual. Louis pushed her away but she persisted. Finally, with a sigh, he opened his eyes.

“Come on, give a guy a break,” he said.

Another caress on his cheek.

He looked down at the black cat sitting next to him. It reached out a paw and tapped his cheek again then sat staring at him until he finally pushed back the damp sheets and got up.

“Okay, okay.”

The cat followed him through the bedroom and living room and out onto the porch. He held the screen door open and the cat slipped out. It stood for a moment in the sandy yard then trotted off into the sea oats.

Louis bent to retrieve the copies of the Fort Myers News Press and the Island Reporter. He stood on the porch yawning, squinting into the shimmering gulf. He went back inside his cottage, pausing to bang a fist on the rattling wall-unit air conditioner. It wheezed and groaned but the air didn’t get any cooler. He switched it off. Blessed quiet filled the small cottage. The only sound was the whisper of the surf and the slap of his bare feet on the terrazzo as he headed to the kitchen.

As he waited for the Mr. Coffee to drip, he scanned the front page of the News Press but there was nothing of interest. Not that he expected the news about the panther to make the papers. He had dutifully reported his call on Elsie Kaufman yesterday but he had gotten back to the sheriff’s office too late to talk to Mobley. It would wait until later when he went in to get his temporary credentials.

After he stirred sugar into his coffee and took a quick gulp, he shook a bag of Tender Vittles into a bowl and refilled the water dish. When he went back onto the porch, Issy was waiting for him. He held open the door and the cat came in.

“That was quick. Too hot for you, too, huh?”

The cat went to its food, scarfed it down and began to lap up water. Louis watched her, noticing for the first time that she looked thinner than usual. Not that he ever paid that close attention. Issy had been a shadowy presence in his cottage for five years now. He had taken the cat in after she was accidently abandoned by a woman he had been involved with in Michigan. He had never liked cats much, but now, as he looked down at Issy he had to admit he had come to like having her around. It wasn’t like have a dog or something. All he had to do is let her out and in, toss some food in her bowl and pick up the dead lizards she left on his bed. She made no real demands on him. She was the perfect companion.

He made a mental note to call the vet and picked up his coffee, heading to the bedroom.

The phone rang, pulling him back to the kitchen counter.

“Hello?” he said, sliding onto a stool.

“Mr. Kincaid? Louis Kincaid?”

“You found me. Who’s this?”

“Katy Letka.”

“I’m sorry…who?”

“Katy Letka. I’m the FWC vet who came to get the panther yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

“Listen, I know it’s early but this is important. I called the sheriff’s department to find you and they said you’re really a private investigator.”

“Yeah, I’m on a special assignment with the sheriff’s department for now.”

“Well, I need some special help.”

Louis waited, stirring one more sugar into his coffee, wondering what had driven Katy Letka to call him — a cheating boyfriend, a deadbeat dad?

“This is about Grace,” she said. “We found her collar early this morning. It had been cut off.”

“Don’t you have investigators?”

“We used to have a guy but he got canned in staff cutbacks and he wasn’t very good anyway,” she said. “And this is not the usual thing we investigate. This isn’t normal. Something’s wrong. I think Grace has been abducted. Will you help me?”

“Abducted? Who would abduct a wild animal?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem. I don’t know where to go with this.”

Louis paced slowly around the kitchen. He wanted to help. He had already been assigned to the case — even though Mobley had probably done it as a joke. But it wasn’t a joke to Katy Letka.

“All right,” he said. “Where do we start?”

“I’ll show you where we found the collar. There’s a place in Immokalee where we can meet up — Juan’s.”

“I know it.”

Juan’s Place was a red and white cinderblock bodega favored by the migrant fruit pickers who made up a good portion of Immokalee’s population.

Louis pulled into the dusty lot and spotted the van with the FWC emblem among the rusty pickups. When he swung his white Mustang alongside, Katy Letka got out of the van. She was wearing the ball cap, a long-sleeved white shirt and khaki pants, the kind with Velcro pockets and zippers at the knees that could convert the pants into shorts with the flick of a wrist.

Even in his t-shirt and jeans, Louis was sweating by the time he approached the door of her van.

“I took the liberty,” she said, holding out a tiny Styrofoam cup.

“Thanks,” Louis said, staring down into the ink-black coffee. “Any sugar?”

With a rip of a Velcro pocket she produced three packs and a plastic stir.

As Louis sipped his coffee his eyes locked on the huge vehicle sitting on the other side of the FWC van. With its monstrous gnarled tires and stripped-down frame it looked like an ATV on steroids. There was a large empty cage in the back. One of the two FWC guys who had showed up to rescue the panther yesterday was loading bottled water into a cooler. Like Katy Letka, he was dressed in long pants and a long-sleeved shirt.

“So where are we going exactly?” Louis asked.

“About ten miles southeast of here,” Katy said. “In the middle of the Okaloachoochee Slough.” She eyed Louis’s ’65 Mustang convertible. “Your car won’t make it. You’ll have to ride out with us in the swamp buggy.”

Louis downed the coffee and followed her to the back of the ATV.

“You might want to put this on over your t-shirt,” she said, holding out a wad of clothing.

“Why?”

“Where we’re headed the forecast is ninety-eight degrees with a hundred-percent chance of insects.”

Louis shook out the wrinkled long-sleeved shirt with a FWC emblem on the pocket, slipped it on and climbed into the back seat.

The swamp buggy came alive with a roar. The guy behind the wheel turned and stuck out a hand. “I’m Daryl,” he said with a smile. “Better buckle up.”

About ten minutes outside town, they left the blacktop road for a gravel turnoff and were soon rumbling through heavy brush. Then the gravel disappeared leaving only two ruts in the deep yellow grass. Squat palmetto palms swiped at the sides of the swamp buggy and it was so jarring Louis had to grit his teeth.

Talk was impossible, so he let his mind wander as his eyes moved over the jungle-like terrain.

He had been in a place like this once before, a desolate spot called Starvation Prairie, where he and Joe had hunted a child kidnapper. It had been the case that had brought them together. She was a Miami homicide detective, he was a PI. They had ended up lovers.

Joe…

It had been easy when she was still in Miami, just three hours away from him across Alligator Alley. But now she was in Michigan and there was more than just miles between them.

The swamp buggy jerked to a stop. The engine roar was replaced by a silence so thick he could feel the pressure in his eardrums.

Then came the drone of insects.

He felt a tug on his arm. Katy was holding out a blue plastic bottle. “Here,” she said.

Louis took the bottle. “Avon Skin So Soft?”

“Best mosquito repellent on earth.”

He sprayed his face and neck and jumped down from the buggy. The ground was spongy with pine needles, the air soupy with smells like things were dying all around him. He fell into step behind Daryl and Katy as they pushed through the brush.

Louis spotted a strip of yellow tape tied around a tree. Katy stopped at the tree and held out a large plastic bag to Louis.

“This is where we found her collar,” she said.

Louis took the plastic bag. The collar inside looked just like the one Bruce wore, except it had been cut.

He fingered the radio unit through the plastic. “Okay, I don’t know much about panthers,” he said. “Let’s start at the beginning. How did you know that it…Grace was missing?”

“Most our panthers are collared. Every two days, our plane goes up to give us readings on their radios.”

She glanced up at the heat-hazed sky and wiped her brow.

“Normally, a female panther’s territory is about seventy-miles and Grace had stopped moving,” she said. “I wasn’t worried because I thought she might be denning.”

“Denning?” Louis asked.

“When they’re getting ready to have kittens, they reduce their range,” Katy said. “But then the radio signal went dead.”

“That’s why you put out the BOLO?”

She nodded. “Sometimes the radios malfunction. We wanted the rural deputies to keep an eye out for her just in case she was hit by a car. This morning, while we were searching her last coordinates, we found her collar. When we saw it was cut off I knew something was wrong.”

“Poachers?” Louis asked.

“There’s only two poaching cases we know of,” she said. “One was a hunter who said he shot the panther because he was threatened. Which is ridiculous because panthers are shy. They stay away from humans.”

“And the other guy?”

“Some rich asshole who got drunk with his friends and decided he wanted a stuffed panther head mounted on his wall. One of his buddies turned him in. He’s doing five to ten up in Raiford.”

Louis peered at the collar through the plastic, fingering the cut in the heavy leather. It had been sawed off with a large blade.

“Did you find any blood here?” he asked.

“Blood?” Katy asked.

“From Grace.”

She shook her head. “We looked, in about a twenty-yard radius but we didn’t see anything to indicate she was hurt.”

“Then she had to have been tranquilized.”

Katy just nodded, still looking around the brush like she had maybe missed something.

“He wanted her alive,” Louis said. “What would someone do with a live panther?”

She looked up at him. “I don’t know.”

Louis walked away, eyes to the ground. Every crime scene was the same — the perp always left something of himself and always took something away. It could be a discarded cigarette butt or dirt picked up in the tread of a sneaker.

In this jungle, evidence was going to be hard to find. But not impossible. Lee County’s CSI team was one of the state’s best. It was just a matter of getting Mobley to cough up the money and manpower for a missing cat.

The squawk of a radio drew Louis’s attention back to Katy. He was too far away to hear the conversation. When Katy signed off, she waved him over.

“I got the lab work on Bruce,” she said. “They found acepromazine in his system.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a tranquilizer,” she said.

“I thought you tranquilized him on the patio?”

“No, acepromazine is a fucking horse tranquilizer,” she said. “The injection site was his chest. He was darted.”

Louis was confused. “So how’d he break his leg?”

She didn’t seem to hear him. She was staring at something in the distance, her jaw clenched.

“Katy? How’d he break his leg?”

“He must have climbed a tree,” she said, pointing to a towering tree. “They do that when they feel threatened. He was darted and fell.”

Louis shaded his eyes to look up at the spindly cypress tree. “How long do they stay out?”

“Half hour, maybe forty-five minutes.”

“Plenty of time for someone to load a panther into a cage in a truck and get away someplace isolated.”

Katy nodded.

“Grace went missing first, right?” Louis asked.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe he wanted two,” Louis said. “A male and a female.”

He wiped the sweat from his face and looked back at Katy.

“How many panthers are left in the wild?” he asked.

“Maybe thirty,” Katy said. She hesitated. "We’re losing them fast.”

“Well, maybe someone’s building an ark,” Louis said.

CHAPTER F IVE

All the way across town, he heard sirens. As he pulled into the parking lot of the Lee County Administration Building, he remembered something a female cop had once told him. The sudden swell of multiple sirens was like a baby’s cries — experience told you just how serious it was.

A couple sirens, combined with an ambulance or two, probably indicated a traffic accident on a major road. Sheriff’s cars streaming in one direction was likely a backup situation for an officer in trouble. Cruisers from every agency whizzing through every red light meant something big was going down.

And that’s what was happening now.

He parked his Mustang in the visitor’s lot and picked up the envelope Katy had given him. He knew he would need ammunition to convince Mobley this panther thing was worth his department’s time, and Katy had obligated with some stunning photographs.

“Maybe it will make it real for him,” she had said.

Louis wasn’t sure anything could warm Lance Mobley’s heart besides a double shot of Jack Daniels but it was worth a try.

Mobley’s office was down the first corridor, the double glass doors marked by the five-star county seal and Mobley’s name in large gold letters.

The secretary was on the phone, but her eyes darted up to Louis as he came in. Louis didn’t know her but she bore a stark resemblance to all the secretaries Louis had seen at this desk before her. A toned, sun-streaked blonde who wore a bright print blouse and a Slinky-like bunch of gold bracelets.

She finally hung up the phone and drawing a weary breath looked again to Louis. “Yes?”

“I’m Louis Kincaid. The sheriff is expecting me.”

He could see from the blank expression on her face she couldn’t place his name.

“I’m working with the Fish and Game — ”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry. Things are a little chaotic right now.”

“What’s going on? I heard the sirens.”

“Armed robbery in Estero,” she said. “Three wounded officers, one suspect was shot at the scene, two others fled in a green Monte Carlo. The entire county is in pursuit.”

Louis looked toward Mobley’s open office door. The high-backed leather chair was empty. Mobley would be tied up all day with a situation like this, especially if it was his department that eventually took down the robbers.

Which meant a missing panther was low priority for Mobley right now. Still, Louis had a crime scene waiting to be processed and each additional day left it open to contamination.

He looked back at the secretary. “Should I wait or — ”

Suddenly, the door behind him banged open and Mobley came in. He was in full green and white uniform and dripping in sweat. His eyes shot briefly to Louis then he walked to the secretary’s desk, snatched his messages from her outstretched hand and moved quickly into his office. He left the door open and Louis took it as a gesture to follow.

The first thing Mobley did was reach over to turn up the volume on the police radio near his desk. Red lights zipped back and forth on five channels. To anyone else, the radio traffic would have sounded like excited gibberish but Louis understood every word. The wounded officers had already been released from the hospital, Collier County S.O. had joined the pursuit and the fleeing suspects had caused a traffic accident on Tamiami but had managed to drive on, dragging a sparking fender behind them.

Mobley glanced at Louis. “I don’t have time right now for you and your dead cat,” he said.

“He wasn’t dead,” Louis said. “He was — ”

Mobley held up a hand to silence him as he leaned toward the radio. The suspects had entered I-75, heading south at a high speed. One of Mobley’s deputies radioed in for permission to continue the pursuit in what was suddenly far more dangerous conditions — a crowded freeway. The deputy sounded young, his strained voice nearly drowned out by the screaming siren in the background. A superior officer, also in the chase, gave him the okay to continue.

Mobley hadn’t sat down, hadn’t moved from his spot behind his desk. He reminded Louis of how Susan Outlaw looked a few years ago when she was waiting for news on her son Ben after he’d been kidnapped. It was a combination of emotions: fear for those you cared about and helplessness because you couldn’t be out there — wherever there was — to help.

For the next five or six minutes, they listened to the anxious chatter of officers and wailing sirens. Then suddenly it was over, the young deputy’s voice dominating the others as he announced that the Monte Carlo had clipped a semi, went airborne and flipped until it was nearly cut in half by a tree. With a small break in his voice he ended his transmission with, “both suspects appear to be DOA.”

Mobley keyed the radio and asked for the exact location of the roll-over. He was told the pursuit had ended two miles north of the Collier County line, in Lee County.

Mobley’s turf. Mobley’s headlines.

Mobley turned the radio down, walked to the open door and told the secretary to schedule a press conference in an hour. He came back to his desk and dropped into his chair.

“You got about thirty seconds before I get slammed,” he said.

“The panther wasn’t dead,” Louis said. “It was illegally darted, fell from a tree and went looking for water.”

“Sounds like hunter trying to poach a trophy.”

“It’s not a poaching incident,” Louis said. “The wounded panther was not the same cat Fish and Game put the BOLO out on. That was a female cat named Grace. And we know for a fact that she’s been abducted, probably by the same person who tried to take Bruce.”

“Bruce?”

“The male cat in Lehigh Acres.”

Mobley’s eyes came up to Louis’s face, flickering with disbelief. “I’m about to coordinate the processing of an armed robbery scene with multiple fatalities and you’re giving me some fairy tale about kidnapped cats?”

“I can appreciate your position,” Louis said. “But there’s only a handful of panthers left out there. Fish and Game monitors them very closely. It’s a federal crime to even mess with the cats.”

“But not our crime, Kincaid.”

“You’re wrong,” Louis said. “It is our crime. You gave it to me.”

Mobley smiled. “You thought I was serious?”

Louis felt sucker-punched. He had thought Mobley was serious, at least as far as seeing just how much shit Louis would take to wear a badge again.

“Yeah,” Louis said. “I thought you were being straight with me because I thought you were a man of your word. Even when you were drunk.”

Mobley’s smile vanished and his face flushed with color as he glared at Louis. The phone started ringing but Mobley made no move to answer it. Finally, the secretary intercepted it and the office was quiet again. Mobley was still staring at him so Louis decided he’d simply keep arguing.

“I don’t think the cat-napper is a trophy hunter,” Louis said. “I think he wanted to mate the male and female panthers. But the male, Bruce, got away from him.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,’ Mobley said. “Why would a guy want a litter of panther kitties?”

“Maybe he wants his own family of cats,” Louis said, thinking of the strange people who lived in the Everglades in shanties and tents. “Maybe he’s trying to help stave off extinction. I don’t know. But I do know that if I’m right about him wanting to mate two panthers, he will come back for another male. And when he does, someone could get hurt.”

Mobley’s phone started ringing and again he ignored it. His gaze dropped to Louis’s hand. “What do you have in that envelope?” he asked.

Louis opened the envelope and dumped the photographs Katy had given him on the desk. Most were shots of Bruce and Grace, obviously taken with telephoto lenses, but with an artist’s eye for the beauty of the lithe animals.

The last four pictures were of Bruce lying half-dead on the Lehigh Acres patio, Bruce with his leg splinted, a close-up shot of Grace’s severed collar and last, a picture of Katy holding a spotted panther kitten, back-dropped by the green foliage of the Everglades.

“Who’s this?” Mobley asked.

“The Fish and Game officer in charge of the panthers.”

Mobley sifted through the photos. The phone started up again, this time followed a second ringing on the other line. Voices echoed from down the hall. Louis knew his time was running out.

“Sheriff,” Louis said. “Everyone loves a good animal rescue story. Think of the great PR you’ll get when we find Grace.”

“It’s only great PR if you find the thing alive, Kincaid.” Mobley tossed the photos down and stood up. “What do you need?”

“A CSI team in the Everglades as soon as possible,” Louis said. “I could use some techs who specialize in tire and animal tracks.”

Mobley gave him a withering look. “What else?”

“I want to talk to people who’ve been arrested for animal abuse or poaching in the glades,” Louis said. “So, I’ll need access to your criminal database.”

“I’ll have Ginger arrange authorization.”

“I’ll also a four-wheel drive vehicle.”

A clamor of voices rose in the outer office. Louis glanced over his shoulder to see a huddle of men in suits and sweaty uniformed officers waiting to see Mobley. Behind them, he spotted a TV cameraman.

When he turned back, Mobley was holding out a small leather wallet.

“You’ll need this, too,” Mobley said.

Louis took the wallet and opened it. On one side was a gold deputy’s badge with the Lee County Sheriff’s seal. On the other, where the official ID would go, was a white card with the sheriff’s office logo embossed across the top. Underneath, it read: The courtesies and law enforcement authority of this office have been temporarily extended to Louis Kincaid. It was signed by Sheriff Lance S. Mobley.

“I do keep my word, Kincaid,” Mobley said. “Now go find that damn cat. Alive.”

CHAPTER SIX

After leaving Mobley, Louis felt the need to burn off the extra adrenalin of the day so he stopped by Gold’s Gym and did a quick hour in the weight room.

That wasn’t enough so he swung by Fowler Firearms and killed another hour target shooting with his Glock. It was Friday — Ladies Shoot Free! — and the place was packed with women laying waste to paper Zombies with pink Sig Skeeters.

He didn’t mind being the lone male. He had been avoiding going to the Lee County Gun Range lately because he didn’t want to run into any cops who might get curious about why he was sharpening his shooting skills. Not yet at least. Not until he was sure he had a permanent deputy badge on his chest.

Eventually he’d have to break down and go to the Lee County range. He was going to have to do the tactical training course, test his accuracy shooting at the computer-controlled moving targets that mimicked what a cop might encounter on the street. It was one thing to shoot at static paper silhouettes. It was something else entirely to make split-second decisions on random moving targets.

He hadn’t done tactical training since the academy. He knew he was rusty. Just like he knew his body had gone a little soft and his credit needed cleaning up. It didn’t matter. He was willing to do whatever it took to get back inside.

It was past five by the time he got home. He fed Issy, peeled off his sticky clothes and took a long cool shower to get rid of the film of sweat and Avon Skin So Soft.

A breeze was blowing in from the Gulf when he emerged from the bathroom, towel around his waist, so he didn’t bother to turn on the air conditioning. When he went to the refrigerator to get a Heineken he caught the faint scent of gunpowder. His Glock was lying on the kitchen counter where he had left it.

He had planned to go through his mail and phone messages but all that would have to wait.

He pulled what he needed from a kitchen drawer, tucked the towel tighter around his waist and sat down on a stool at the counter.

The ritual was always the same. And there was something oddly calming about it.

He grasped the Glock firmly and dropped out the magazine, setting it aside. Next he made sure the chamber was clear. He’d never accidently fired a weapon while cleaning it but he once knew a cop who did. The stray bullet had killed him.

Dismantling the Glock had taken him some time to master. It wasn’t like the old model 10 revolvers or the simply assembled shotguns he’d used as a rookie. The Glock was a little like one of those wooden block puzzles where each movement had to be done in the correct order to open it up.

First, he pulled the trigger until it clicked back into place. With a claw-like grip on the top of the gun, he pressed a tab and the slide came off.

He squirted a little Hoppes oil into the three pieces — the spring, the slide and the barrel — then wiped each dry with a piece of an old t-shirt. The Glock’s frame was polymer but he always took the time to blow away the gun powder residue from the crevices.

As he reassembled the Glock, he thought suddenly of Bud. He was his firearms instructor back at the academy, a small soft-spoken bald man whose quiet reverence for guns had earned him the name of the Buddha. He could still hear Bud’s words.

Take care of it and it will take care of you. For those of you who ride alone it is the only partner you’ll have.

Louis reassembled the Glock, slid it back in its holster and set it on the counter. The phone messages were still waiting. He hit the rewind button.

“Hey Rocky, how the hell are you?”

It was Mel. He had met the ex-Miami detective on a case here on Captiva Island years ago and they had forged one of those old-marriage bonds that withstood the benign neglect that colored most male friendships.

“Look, we need to get together,” Mel went on. “Yuba and I are going over to the Roadhouse Saturday night to see Lou Colombo. We want you to come with us and don’t give me that shit that you have plans because I know you never do. Call me.”

Louis took a long draw from the Heineken. He hadn’t seen Mel since that case they worked together over in Palm Beach last Christmas. Yuba was a lovely East Indian bartender who had followed Mel back to Fort Myers. Mel never admitted it, but Louis knew they were in love.

Shit, that Palm Beach case had been seven months ago. Where had the time gone?

The next voice was a male and at first Louis didn’t recognize it.

“Hey, Louis, are you there? Pick up, dude! I guess you’re not home. But you’re never home.”

It was Ben, the boy whom Louis had befriended years ago after rescuing him from a kidnapping. He didn’t recognize him because the last time they had talked Ben’s voice had been an octave higher.

“You aren’t going to believe this, but she’s finally doing it,” Ben said. “Mom and Steve are getting married.”

Louis leaned closer to the phone.

“Anyway, it’s nothing fancy. You know Mom, she’s not even going to change her name.”

Well, what woman named Susan Outlaw would? Especially since she was a public defender. The fact that Steve’s last name was Fuchs might have figured into her decision. Despite that, Louis had to admit Steve was a good man. And he’d make a good stepfather for Ben. Still, it stung a little to know that Ben just didn’t seem to need him as much as he used to.

The next message on the machine began with a gruff cough.

“Yeah, this is Ned Willis, and this call is for Louis Kincaid, the private investigator.”

Willis…the district attorney on the fraud case he had just finished down in Bonita Springs.

“You were set to testify next week but the trial has been postponed,” Willis said. “We’ve rescheduled for September 3 but we definitely still need you to be here. My office will follow up with a letter. Thanks.”

The next voice was female, flat and all too familiar.

“You have no more messages.”

Louis stared at the machine for a moment then reset it to record. He got a fresh Heineken from the refrigerator, picked up the stack of mail and went out onto the screened-in porch.

Issy was curled on the lounge chair and he set her gently aside before he sat down. He took a long draw from the Heineken as he sorted through the mail. The stack was fat with supermarket flyers, bills, a Lillian Vernon catalog — how the hell had he gotten on that mailing list? — bank and credit card statements, and two copies of “Police” magazine.

He set the bills in one pile, gave the “Police” cover a quick glance and tossed the Lillian Vernon catalog to the floor. Something bright fluttered out.

A postcard. A postcard showing a horse and buggy.

Oh shit…

He retrieved the card but he didn’t need to look at the back. He knew who it was from. With a sigh, he turned it over.

Hi Louis,

I found this card at the farmer’s market. It’s Mackinac Island! Isn’t it funny that I found it here and it’s the exact same place where we’re going to go for my birthday? You don’t have to give me a present. You can take me on a buggy ride instead. I can’t wait to see you! — Lily

Louis looked out over the gulf. The sun was starting to set, leaving a pink smudge in the heat-hazed yellow sky.

Lily’s birthday was September 2 and he had promised her he would come up to Michigan and take her to Mackinac Island. But now the damn fraud trial had been postponed and he had to be here instead.

Shit. Shit, shit…shit!

He felt eyes on him and looked down to see Issy looking up at him.

“What?” he said.

The cat just stared at him.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “I’m a fuck-up. I’m a fuck-up who can’t be bothered to pay attention to a cat let alone a kid.”

Issy jumped off the lounge and went into the cottage. With sigh, Louis looked at the postcard again.

Until just a few months ago, he hadn’t even known he had a daughter. Lily’s mother Kyla had been an on-and-off girlfriend during his senior year at University of Michigan. The night she came to his dorm to tell him she was pregnant was etched in his memory like a bad dream.

Rain pounding on the window. Kyla standing at the door of his dorm room, so soaked from the rain he didn’t even notice the tears running down her face.

I’m pregnant, Louis.

What do you want from me, Kyla?

I want to know you love me. I want to know you’ll be there for me.

He didn’t tell her what he was thinking. That he was twenty years old and he didn’t want his life to be over. He just wanted — after too many foster homes, too many years bouncing from one place and face to another — he just wanted a clear smooth road ahead for a change.

Kyla’s last words to him that night still stung.

I’ll get rid of it then.

And his words stung worse.

Go ahead.

Louis stared at Lily’s looped signature. Lily…just Lily. That was always how she signed the cards. What did he expect? Love, Lily?

Lily. Just Lily.

Kyla couldn’t have known of course. Couldn’t have known that the name she had given to their daughter was a hybrid of her own name and that of Louis’s dead mother Lila. Strange that the two females in his life who were like strangers to him had blended into this third little female who was becoming…

Becoming what?

His daughter?

He wasn’t a father. Not yet. He had a long ways to go to earn that title. He had no idea what it was going to take right now but he had the strange feeling it was going to be like running the tactical course, a series of twists and turns where things would come flying out of the blue and you never knew what was going to hit you and lay you low.

He downed the last of the beer. The low slant of the sun told him it was maybe six-thirty. Still plenty early enough to call Ann Arbor.

He gathered up the mail and went back inside. Setting the mail by the phone, he dialed Kyla’s number but it went to the answering machine. He had a vague memory of the last time he had phoned and Lily telling him she was going to ballet camp in Interlochen sometime in August.

Damn.

Breaking the news to Lily that he wasn’t going to make it for her birthday was not something he could leave in a message so he hung up. He’d try again in a couple days.

He stared at the steady red light of the answering machine, thinking now of Mel and Ben.

He thought, too, about the small group of people who circled in his life’s orbit. Dan Wainwright, the first chief he had worked with when he moved to Fort Myers. Dan had retired two years ago and moved to Arizona. And Sam and Margaret Dodie, the older couple who treated him like a son but lately only seemed to call on holidays. And his foster parents Phillip and Frances. Even his contact with them had dwindled. Last time he talked to them — was it a month ago or two? — they had bought a new Airstream and were planning to wend their way toward Yosemite.

Everyone was moving on with their lives, moving away from him.

Even Joe.

Especially Joe.

After she left her job at Miami homicide to take the sheriff’s job up in northern Michigan, they hadn’t managed to make good on their promises to visit each other. When he had called her last Christmas, she had said that maybe they should see other people. It wasn’t just the two thousand miles that separated them, he knew. It was the widening hole in his own life. Joe had put words to it.

I want you to want something for yourself. Louis.

And her unspoken words — and until you do I don’t want you.

He grabbed the receiver and dialed Joe’s cabin. He got the machine and hung up without leaving a message. When he dialed Joe’s private number at the Lee County Sheriff’s Department her secretary answered.

“This is Louis Kincaid,” he said. “Is the Sheriff still there?”

“No, I’m sorry, she’s not.”

Louis shifted to look at the clock on the stove. It was nearly seven. Joe was probably on her way home.

“Do you want to leave a message?” the secretary asked.

“No, thanks. I’ll try her at home.”

“Oh, she’s not there. She won’t be back in town until next Monday.”

Louis shifted the receiver to his other ear.

“Would you like to leave a message mister — ”

“Kincaid. Louis Kincaid. No, no message.” He started to hang up. “Wait, can you tell me where she went?”

The secretary hesitated.

“I’m a good friend,” Louis said.

“Yes, Mr. Kincaid, I know who you are.” She hesitated again. “The sheriff is on vacation. In Montreal.”

Montreal?

“She’ll be calling in to get messages, Mr. Kincaid,” the secretary said. “I can tell her you called.”

“What? No, no, that’s okay,” Louis said.

He thanked the secretary and hung up. He stood for a moment, staring into the deepening shadows of the living room, still wrapped in only the towel, his skin sticky from sweat. Finally, he moved to the air conditioner and flicked it on. With a groan, it began to split out a meager stream of cool air.

He grabbed the holstered Glock and went into the bedroom. It was nearly dark and he had to switch on the bedside light. He paused before he put the gun away, taking a moment to slip it from its holster.

The Buddha was in his head now, whispering.

For those of you who ride alone it is the only partner you’ll ever have.

Goddamn it. He was getting tired of riding alone.

He slid the Glock back in the holster, put it in the drawer and went to the bathroom. His hands still smelled of Hoppes oil and he washed them quickly.

The smell was still there.

That’s when he remembered it.

He opened the medicine chest, scanned the bottles on the shelves but it wasn’t there. He jerked open the door beneath the sink and rummaged through the bottles of hydrogen peroxide, shampoo and shaving cream. He found it behind the rolls of toilet paper.

He rose, staring at the small plastic bottle of Jean Naté After Bath Splash. It looked empty. He took off the top and upended the bottle into his palm. A trickle of green spilled out.

Louis brought his palms up to his nose and closed his eyes.

For a moment Joe was there and then she was gone.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“They seem to be doing a very meticulous job.”

Louis watched the two crime scene techs as they worked their way the through tangled brush sticking evidence flags in the ground, taking pictures and sifting through the dirt.

He looked to Katy. She wore a green long-sleeved shirt over an old t-shirt, a vest bulging with stuffed pockets and long camouflage pants. Her face — rendered dark brown by the tint of his sunglasses — was streaked with sweat.

“The sheriff said they’re the best techs he has,” Louis said.

She looked up at the sky. “I hope they’re quick,” she said. “It’s going to rain soon.”

He glanced up at the sky. Ugly purple clouds were building to the southwest and the humid air was heavy with the smell of ozone. It wasn’t just going to rain. It was going to be a palmetto-pounder of a storm.

Katy had wandered away from him, apparently not expecting a reply. Although they were fifty feet from the techs, her eyes were also locked on the ground. Louis knew she was hoping she would find something the techs didn’t. He understood that. Many times he had been at a scene, separated from the forensics team by yellow tape, but still he looked for something he thought only he could see.

Katy stopped under a tree and pulled off her ball cap to redo the scrunchie holding her ponytail. What a strange woman, he thought, quiet, reserved, somewhat disconnected from what was going on around her.

They had been together nearly two hours, walked maybe a mile, but she had spoken only three times. Once to ask how many days the techs would be able to come out here and once to caution him not to step on a Scarlet King snake. The third time she had stopped Louis and pointed to something up in a tree. His heart quickened because he thought he was going to see a panther but then he realized she was pointing to a purple and yellow flower high on a limb. She told him it was a rare clamshell orchid and like the panthers, the orchids were protected from poachers.

She was smiling — the first time he had seen her do so — so he just nodded, deciding not to tell her he already knew that. He had learned all about wild orchids from the weird case he had just finished over in Palm Beach — a string of grisly murders involving rich salacious women who all had an obsession with a rare flower called the Devil orchid.

He thought about telling her about the case because he wanted to convince her that he wasn’t just some hack PI trying to catch a chance with the sheriff’s department. For some reason, he felt the need to impress this woman.

That’s why he had gotten up early and stopped off at the Fort Myers Library. He had spent a quick hour reading everything he could find on Florida panthers.

The big cats, he learned, had once roamed over all of the southeast states and were hunted as pests, with the State of Florida offering a five-dollar bounty for every panther scalp. As the state’s human population grew, the panthers declined, their habitat shrunk by housing developments, highways and drainage canals. By the 1970s, everyone thought the animal was extinct.

But a Texas animal tracker named Roy McBride found evidence of surviving panthers. School kids took up the cause and pressured legislators to name the panther the state animal. Speed limits on the highways cutting through the Everglades were lowered and committees were created to save the cats.

It was an uphill battle. Only a handful of the cats were believed to still be alive and the ones that survived were weakened by inbreeding. Last year, in an act of desperation, the state had even started a sperm bank for the remaining males.

Louis had found one other interesting fact in a magazine article — the panther was considered sacred to the Seminoles.

Louis had read all this with a deepening sense of depression. But it also created in him a more urgent resolve. He was damned if he was going to let Mobley sideline this case.

“Kincaid!” one of the techs called. “Come here.”

Louis started over toward Mickey, the older of the two techs. Katy hurried to catch up. They paused in a small clearing where the brush was tamped down into the muck.

“I have tire tracks,” Mickey said.

Louis bent over but could see no definable impressions in the mess of leaves and mud. Mickey motioned for Louis to step back and pulled a clunky-looking light from his bag. He told his partner to hold a small tarp over the ground to block the sunlight and knelt down. When he directed the ultra-violet beam at the ground the rugged outlines of the tire tracks seemed to rise up from the mud. They were too narrow to have come from one of Fish and Game’s giant swamp buggies.

“I’ll know for sure later,” Mickey said, “but I think we’re looking at Super Swamper radials.”

“Are they standard on a specific four wheel drive?”

Mickey shut the light off and stood up. “No,” he said. “People buy them for their mud buggies to be able to get around out here and any place else they want to go four-wheeling.”

“But if we find a suspect we can compare his vehicle tires to these tracks?” Katy asked.

“That’s the idea,” Mickey said. “These treads look to be pretty worn with some specific nicks. If we find a suspect tire the match will be as strong as fingerprints, ma’am.”

“How far do the tire tracks go?” Louis asked.

“Well, they look visible quite a ways out heading toward the southeast.”

Louis turned in the direction Mickey was pointing. He took off his sunglasses and peered between the cypress trees to the prairie beyond. He was disoriented by the primitive landscape, not able to tell where the hell they were.

“What towns are we near?” he asked.

“Immokalee’s the only one out here,” Mickey said.

Louis nodded. At least he knew where that was. Once again, he had met up with Katy there, leaving his Mustang in Juan’s parking lot. But Immokalee was to the northwest, in the opposite direction of these tire tracks.

The sun slipped behind some clouds and there was a low rumble of thunder.

“What else is out here?” Louis asked.

“There’s some cattle ranches but they’re pretty far east, closer to Lake Okeechobee, down around Devil’s Garden,” Mickey said.

Louis had been to Devil’s Garden for the Palm Beach case. There was nothing there but a rusty sign marking an intersection, an old cinderblock store called Mary Lou’s and an abandoned cattle pen where they had found a decapitated body. Devil’s Garden and the cattle ranches were too far away for the panthers to be any threat to livestock.

“Actually, the closest thing to civilization way out here is the rez.”

Louis looked back at the tech. “The Seminole reservation?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s called the Big Cypress Reservation.”

“How far?”

“Oh, maybe twenty miles or so.”

Louis glanced at Katy. She was slowly moving away, eyes still trained on the ground. There had been no accusing tone in Mickey’s voice but Louis sensed Katy had heard something that had compelled her to step away from them and maybe away from the idea that an Indian might be involved. Louis decided to let the possibility go for now and hoped they would find something that led away from the reservation.

“Let’s follow the tracks some,” Mickey said.

He led Louis and Katy across the clearing, stabbing the ground with the small orange flags as he walked. Suddenly, Mickey stopped walking and knelt down. Drawing a small ruler from his shirt pocket, he measured the depth of the track in three places before looking up at Louis.

“The tracks deepen here by a quarter inch and look to continue that way,” Mickey said, pointing south. “I’m guessing he stopped here and added weight to his load.”

“Weight? How much weight?” Louis asked.

“Hard to say. Maybe a hundred pounds.”

“He put Grace in his truck,” Katy said.

“Grace?” the tech said.

“That’s the missing panther’s name,” Louis said.

“I thought they just had numbers.”

Katy turned to stare hard at the tech. “They do have numbers. She was FP105,” she said dryly. “She weighed ninety-two pounds last time we were able to dart her and check.”

Louis looked down. “If he loaded her up here, aren’t we walking all over his footprints?”

“Already checked,” Mickey said. “Foot prints would’ve been shallower, easily washed away by last night’s rain.”

“It didn’t rain last night,” Louis said.

“It did out here,” Mickey said. “I checked before I left the station this morning. We’re lucky he has Super Swampers on his vehicle or we might’ve lost these tracks, too.”

“Hey Mick.”

The other tech, a pudgy guy named Buck, appeared suddenly out of the brush. He wore a white paper jumpsuit, purple latex gloves and a pair of glasses with a magnifying lens inset on the right side. He looked a little like a Haz-mat responder.

“Look what I got,” he said.

He held up a clear plastic evidence bag. Inside was a slightly crumbled box of cigarettes.

“It was back there, under a tree,” Buck said. “I might be able to get some prints off it. Cellophane looks clean.”

“Butts?” Louis asked.

“Nope,” Buck said. “Haven’t seen one butt of any brand.”

“Can I see that?” Katy asked.

Buck handed the bag to her. She took a long look then handed the evidence bag back to Louis. She turned and walked away.

Louis stared at her back for a moment then brought the evidence bag up to peer closely at the pack inside. He could easily make out the brand — Viceroy — but it took him a couple more seconds to see what Katy had noticed. Cigarettes packs in Florida, as in all states, bore a state tax stamp on the bottom of the cellophane. This pack had no stamp and that meant one thing. It had come from the only place in the state where cigarettes weren’t taxed — the reservation.

“I’ll be right back,” he said to Buck, handing him the bag.

He walked to where Katy stood. She had taken off her hat and wiped her face with her sleeve, leaving a dirty smear of sweat across her forehead.

“He’s not Indian,” she said.

“You don’t know that,” Louis said.

“I know,” she said. “I feel it in here.” She put her fist to her chest.

Louis took a slow breath. “Katy, I have to consider all possibilities or I’m not doing my job,” he said.

“It is not your job anymore,” she said. “I don’t need you. I don’t want you here anymore.”

He stared at her in disbelief. He knew the Seminoles, much like the illegal Hispanics in Immokalee, resented outsiders even when they wanted to help. And he respected that. But she had invited him in her world, her uncivilized world of poisonous snakes, rare orchids and panthers that perched in trees. She had introduced him to the cats and somehow, just by the way she spoke of them, she had made them almost human.

He didn’t want to walk away from this. He wanted to find Grace and he wanted to find her alive. Not just for Katy, but for himself. It was going to be his only way back in.

“Take your techs and leave,” Katy said. “I will find another investigator.”

She turned and walked away from him, her step quickening as she neared her swamp buggy.

“Katy. Stop.”

Without a look back, she climbed into the high seat of the buggy and started it up. The roar split the silence and the tech guys looked up in surprise. Then the big buggy rumbled away into the brush, leaving only the retreating growl of its engine in the sticky air.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Louis picked up the laundry basket, used a foot to slam the dryer door shut and headed back to his cottage.

He was coming around the rain-puddled yard when he saw the Game and Wildlife truck parked near the Bransons on the Beach sign. A moment later, Katy came off his porch, stopping short when she saw him.

“Oh, you’re here,” she said. “The door’s open but there was no answer when I knocked.”

“I was around back doing my laundry.” He came onto the porch. “Come on in.”

Inside, he set the basket on the counter. When he turned to Katy she was standing awkwardly just inside the living room. His radio was tuned to a classic rock station out of Tampa. Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” was playing.

“I came here to apologize,” she said.

“What for?”

“Leaving you stranded out in the slough this morning.”

“I got a lift back with Mickey and Buck.”

She gave a curt nod. She looked uncomfortable, like she wanted to say something else but didn’t know how to begin.

“I was just going to have a beer,” he said. “Want one?”

She nodded and ventured further into the living room, looking around. “Nice place,” she said.

He nodded toward the plastic bucket he had set by the stove before he ducked into the refrigerator. “The roof leaks, there’s no water pressure and the A/C is shot. Other than that, it’s paradise.” He handed her a beer. “Let’s go out on the porch. It’s cooler out there.”

Katy settled into the old chaise so Louis took the wicker chair. She was quiet, sipping her beer as she looked out at the pale smudge of sun sinking slowly into the bank of rain clouds over the gulf.

“You’ve got a great view,” she said finally, using her beer bottle to point to the swaying sea oats.

“Like I said, paradise,” Louis said.

“Okay, this is tacky but I gotta ask. How do you afford a beach house on Captiva working as a PI?”

“Well, you are looking at the head of security for Bransons on the Beach,” Louis said. “I get all the laundry tokens I can use and a break on the rent. All I have to do is make sure the kids don’t play their radios too loud, check the locks on the empty cabins and make sure the trash can lids are shut to keep the raccoons out.”

“How come you’re working for Mobley?”

Louis took a drink before he answered. “I’m trying to get a job on the force. Your panther case is a kind of a test.”

She considered him for a moment before she took a long draw on the beer. “How long you been doing PI work?” she asked.

“About four years. Sort of fell into it after I moved down here from Michigan.”

Katy’s gaze wandered back to the water. “Man, I’d love to live near the water,” she said softly. “I share a shitty apartment with a roommates out near the Miromar outlet mall. I have a great view of I-75 from my bedroom and one shelf in the refrigerator.”

“How long you been in Florida?” Louis asked.

“Thirty-three years. I’m a native.”

This morning, when he brought up the Seminole angle Katy had almost bit his head off. He was almost sure she was Indian but there was no easy way to bring it up.

In his five years as a Florida PI he’d never had any direct contact with either the Seminoles or Miccosukees, the only two surviving tribes in Florida. All he knew was that they ran a high-stakes bingo hall on the reservation west of Fort Lauderdale and were pressuring Florida politicians to open a real casino. They also sold the tax-free cigarettes at smoke shops scattered over on the east coast. And like all tribes, they were sovereign nations, exempting them from the normal reach of the law. They policed their own, with their own cops, courts and moral codes.

As Katy looked out over the water, Louis took the moment to study her.

She was dressed in baggy white linen clam-diggers, orange flip-flops and a blue t-shirt so faded he could barely make out the lettering on the front — BOB SEGER AMERICAN STORM TOUR 1986.

There were no angles to her profile, except maybe the high plateau of her cheekbones on her round face. Her skin was smooth and almost the same light brown tone as his own. He hadn’t really seen her hair before now because she had always stuffed it up in her ball cap. But he could see it now, a long straight black sweep as magnificent as a thoroughbred’s tail. Except for her hair clip, the only adornment she wore was a bracelet made of small blue and red glass beads.

He focused on the bracelet as she raised the beer to her lips.

“I like your bracelet,” he said. “Is it Indian?”

Her eyes, when she turned to him, were as black and still as the slough water. “Yeah, it’s Seminole,” she said. “So am I.”

Louis took a drink of beer. “I didn’t mean to offend you this morning.”

“You didn’t.”

Lightening zigzagged silently over the gulf. It was quiet except for the music coming from the radio inside.

“Oh man, I love this song,” Katy said.

Louis strained to listen but he couldn’t recognize it. That’s why he liked this Tampa station. It played the obscure stuff.

“What is it?” he said.

“‘Pretty As You Feel’.”

It took him another full stanza before he recognized the singer’s distinctive contralto. And another minute before he understood.

“Grace Slick,” he said.

Katy looked over at him with a sly smile.

“And the other panther is named after Bruce Springsteen?” he asked.

She raised her beer in a salute.

Louis sat back in the wicker chair, propping his legs up on the table. “Why do you name them?” he asked.

She gave a small shrug. “So they aren’t just numbers.”

They were quiet until the song ended.

“I was reading about panthers today,” Louis said. “I saw something that said they are sacred to the Seminoles.”

It was getting dark and he couldn’t see Katy’s face. But she had relaxed some, her body sort of melting into the lounge. Whether it was from the beer or from being more comfortable around him he didn’t know.

“Sacred,” she said softly.

He waited.

“My great aunt used to tell me stories,” she said. “They were like our fairy tales or like the Greeks making up stories to explain things that couldn’t be explained.” She looked over at him. “You want to hear one?”

“Please.”

“Well, the Creator made all the animals but he loved the panther best,” she said. “The panther would sit beside him and he would pet its soft furry back.”

Katy took a drink of beer, her eyes going back out over the darkening gulf.

“When the Creator was making the earth, he put the animals in a large shell, telling them that when the time was right they would all crawl out,” she went on. “He told the panther that because he was the most majestic and patient of all animals that he was the perfect one to walk the earth first. Then he sealed up the shell and left.”

“What happened?” Louis asked, when she didn’t go on.

“A tree grew next to the shell and its roots cracked the shell open but no animals came out,” Katy said. “The panther was patient, too patient. So the wind, which knew the Creator wanted the panther to come out first, blew on the shell so hard the crack grew larger and the panther came out. Then all the other animals came out too.”

She laid her head back on the lounge.

“The Creator watched all this and decided to put all the animals into clans,” she said. “For being his faithful companion the creator gave the panther with special qualities. Your clan, he said, will have knowledge of all special things. You will have the power to heal.”

Louis had a vague memory from his research this morning, something about the Seminoles being divided into clans.

“Do your people still have clans?” he asked.

She seemed surprised by the question. “Yeah, we do,” she said. “Your clan is inherited through your mother. There used to be more clans but many went extinct. There are only eight left — panther, bear, deer, wind, bird, snake, otter and Big Town.”

“Big Town?”

“It was created for non-Indian women. The myth is that during the Seminole wars in the eighteen-hundreds, two white girls were found wandering in the woods. The Seminoles took them in but because they didn’t have Indian mothers, they could belong to no clan. So one was created for them.”

It was dark now. The signal from the Tampa station had faded, the music a dull murmur of static drowned out by the surf’s whisper.

And then, a plaintive meow.

Louis sat up, looking to the screen door. Issy’s black form was just visible outside. He rose and held the door open. The cat came onto the porch, pausing to look up at Katy.

“You have a cat?” she said.

“I told you I did.”

Issy came to her, arching her back against Katy’s leg. Katy set her beer bottle down and bent low, running her hand over the cat’s sides.

“What’s her name?”

“Issy.”

The cat suddenly bounded off into the cottage.

“Well, I think it’s time for me to go,” Katy said.

When she awkwardly tried to extricate herself from the lounge, Louis rose quickly and helped her to her feet. He reached inside the door and slapped the porch light switch. When Katy headed toward her truck, he followed.

She paused at her truck’s door, turning toward him.

“I thought you were bullshitting me about having a cat,” she said.

“I’m not much of a bullshitter.”

Her face, reflected in the porch light, was unreadable. She got in the truck but turned to him, elbow on the open window.

“Look,” she said. “I spent all day thinking about this. I still don’t think a Seminole would harm a panther but I am willing to let this investigation go where it needs to go. I want to find Grace and I want you to stay on the case. Do you want to?”

“Yes,” Louis said. “Call me in the morning and we’ll talk about our next move.”

She gave him a nod and started the truck.

“Your cat is really thin,” she said.

“I know.”

“How old is she?”

“I don’t know.” Louis hesitated. “I’m worried she dying.”

“Old cats get thyroid disease,” Katy said. “She’ll probably be okay with meds. Have her tested, okay?”

Before Katy could leave, Louis put a hand on the open window.

“Can I ask you something personal?” he said.

“Sure.”

“What clan do you belong to?”

She hesitated. “Snake.”

“Not my first guess,” he said.

She gave him an odd smile and jammed the truck into drive, pulling out of the yard.

Louis watched until the tail lights disappeared down Captiva Drive then went back into the cottage. Issy was waiting by her empty bowl in the kitchen. He poured a bag of Tender Vittles into her bowl and sat at the counter, watching her as she ate.

When she was finished, he picked her up, grabbed a fresh beer and went back to the porch. There he sat, watching the silver curtain of rain move in from Gulf and stroking Issy’s thinning fur.

CHAPTER NINE

The thing was lying in the middle of the road.

At first Louis thought it was a big log but after he slowly moved the Jeep ahead, he hit the brakes hard.

Alligator. It was a damn alligator.

It was at least twelve feet long and it was sprawled straight across the width of the dirt road.

Louis inched closer until the fat tires were almost touching the thing. It didn’t move.

Louis stood up in the seat and scanned the sides of the road but the brush was too thick and soggy so there was no way to turn around. And by his calculations he had left the paved road at least five miles back so he wasn’t about to go back all that way in reverse.

He had been out here for almost two hours already, driving around in circles in the open vehicle. He had a headache from the sun baking his head and his kidneys felt like they were going to fall out from all the jostling. He wasn’t sure he was even on the right road.

He looked back at the gator and laid hard on the horn.

The thing still didn’t budge. Didn’t even move a slitted eye in his direction.

Fuck!

He looked in the back for something he could throw. Nothing but a big empty Coleman cooler. He had a water bottle but he wasn’t about to sacrifice that. There was probably a jack and crowbar somewhere but he’d be damned if he was going to get out and look. He glanced down at the holster on the passenger seat. With one eye on the gator, he slipped out the Glock, pointed it at the dirt and fired.

The alligator gave a loud hiss and slithered off into the brush.

Louis holstered the Glock, sat back down behind the wheel and continued down the rutted dirt road.

This trip had seemed like a good idea this morning when he went into the station to pick up the four-wheel drive Mobley had promised him.

The cop manning the desk in the garage was named Sergeant Sweet, but he had given Louis the same sour look all the cops had been giving him. The rogue PI, riding his way into the department on an EEOC horse. That’s what they all thought. Sweet asked Louis if he was “working the panther thing.”

When Louis said he was, the sergeant said his ten-year-old daughter had started a petition in her class to get the Florida panther named the state animal and she was sad about the one that had gone missing.

“Find the damn cat,” the sergeant said. “I don’t want to have to tell my kid the thing is dead.”

Then he handed over the keys to a souped-up Jeep that had been commandeered from a drug raid and told Louis that he should check out “the weirdos out in the swamp camps.”

There were hundreds of hunting camps on private land in the Everglades, the sergeant explained. After the federal government created the preserves in the seventies, the camps were grandfathered in and a handful still existed, handed down from one generation to the next.

Most were down south of I-75 but there was one just a few miles from where Grace had disappeared, the sergeant said. It was called Hell’s Hammock.

Be careful, he added, they’re all mouth-breathers who love their guns and hate the government. And that includes anyone wearing a badge.

Louis hadn’t told anyone else where he was going. He hadn’t even called Katy.

It wasn’t just the fact that the swamp camp men were bound to be hostile to a strange black man let alone a woman ranger. He was shutting her out for now because this was his world — going after dirt bags in a possibly dangerous situation. She didn’t belong here.

He would tell her later. His plan right now was simple: just quietly look around and check these guys out.

If he could find them.

Sergeant Sweet wasn’t sure exactly where Hell’s Hammock was. The directions were vague, just landmarks mainly. About halfway across I-75, he was supposed to watch for a gravel service road just past the first rest stop. Louis had found the road but deep into a jungle of palmetto palms it began to narrow. The brush created a tunnel so thick and close Louis had to shift in the seat toward the middle to keep from getting scraped.

The road forked and dead-ended a couple times, forcing Louis to back up and look for landmarks he had missed. The sergeant had said to watch for an American flag tied to a tree and turn left, but the only thing hanging from trees out here was Spanish moss.

Damn. Another dead-end. And this one looked like he wasn’t even going to be able to back out. He glanced down at the police radio on the seat but the signal had died miles ago.

He downshifted and eased the Jeep forward. There was a patch of sunlight ahead. And a tatter of a faded old flag hanging limp from a tree.

After a left turn, the thicket opened into a small clearing. He went another twenty yards then stopped, taking stock. There were three buildings, crudely made from plywood and topped with tin roofs. The largest of the three had small windows covered with shutters and a sagging porch. The other two buildings were small, probably a storage shed and an outhouse. There were no vehicles of any kind to be seen.

And no sign of a human being.

Except…the front door of the main building was wide open.

Louis turned off the Jeep. In the quiet that piled in he could hear the whisper of the pines that ringed the compound and then the cry of a swallow-tail kite.

Maybe the men were out hunting. He got out of the Jeep, scanning the ground for tracks but saw nothing in the dirt and long grass. In fact, except for the open door, the camp looked deserted.

He had a sudden flashback to walking into another camp. It was years ago and thousands of miles away. Northern Michigan, in the dead of winter, and he was hunting a cop killer. The trail had led him to a remote camp inhabited by off-the-grid Vietnam vets. A one-armed soldier named Cloverdale had held him at bay with an AK47, endured his questions, then sent him back down the snowy hill with a warning never to come back.

Louis reached into the Jeep and got his Glock. He slipped it into the large front pocket of his khaki vest and zipped the pocket closed. If anyone was here, he thought as he started for the open door, he didn’t want them to think he was a cop. He’d be run off — or worse — before he ever got his first question out.

At the open door, he paused. As far as he could see in the dim interior, there was no one inside. It was one big room, maybe twenty-four by fifteen feet. He could make out the outlines of a table and chairs, some bunk beds and what looked like a primitive kitchen.

He stepped inside.

The door slammed closed behind him. Something hard and heavy came down on the back of his head. Stunned and seeing white, he fell forward. His hands skid over rough wood, his palms ripped with splinters.

“Hit him again, man! Hit him again!”

Louis tried to turn over but a boot slammed into his back. Then again into his shoulder and a third time into the back of his head. His hands flew up to protect his head but suddenly someone was on him, punching him and groping at his pockets.

“Get his wallet! Get his fucking money!”

Louis started swinging, feeling his fists hit flesh but the man on top of him didn’t budge.

It was getting hard to breathe and there was something — blood — in his eyes. He felt the man’s hands roughly moving down his chest. They stopped when they got to the bulge of the Glock.

“He’s got a fucking gun!”

Louis grabbed at him, trying to keep him from getting to the Glock. The man punched him hard in the face. A flash of white light then he felt himself going out. Flicking light and voices cutting in and out, like a bad radio connection.

Stay awake…stay awake…

The man moved off him but Louis couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. There was a fire in his side and he knew his ribs were broken.

“Look at this, it’s a fucking Glock. It’s gotta be worth five hundred easy.”

“Where we gonna sell it? Tell me that, Memo! We can’t go back to Lauderdale. We can’t go nowhere now after what you did.”

“The fucker wouldn’t give me the money!”

“He didn’t have any fucking money! It was already in the safe!”

Quiet. The voices were quiet for a second.

“Get his wallet.”

Louis tried to get up. He had to fight. He had to -

“Don’t be stupid, man. I got your Glock pointed at your head.”

Crushing pressure of a boot on his back holding him down. More hands digging into the back pocket of his jeans.

“Got it. He’s got thirteen bucks and a VISA card.”

“Check the other vest pockets for the Jeep keys,” the other man said.

The boot came off his back and one of the men rolled him onto his back.

Two faces blurry above him — one pale and long, the other dark and round. Ball caps, dirty t-shirts, jeans caked with mud. The dark man was padding him down and Louis fought back his rise of panic. If they found the badge he was a dead man.

“Got the keys.” The man’s hands stopped. “Hey, he’s got another wallet.”

Louis felt the guy pull out the small leather wallet that Mobley had given him.

“He’s a cop!”

“What?”

“Look at this, Marv. He’s a fucking cop.”

The pale man’s eyes went from the badge down to Louis.

“How’d you find us, cop?”

Louis was silent.

“Where are the others?”

“No others,” Louis said. He felt blood in his mouth and spat it out. “I wasn’t looking for you.”

“We need to get the fuck out of here, Marv. Shoot the fucker and — ”

“Shut up, Memo! I need to think.”

Louis pushed to a sitting position and tried to focus on the two men. If he got out of this cabin alive he wanted to remember enough to catch these bastards.

Marv was six-foot and slender, shaved head, horsey face and prominent bad teeth. The t-shirt, Louis could see now, had a Harley emblem on it. The other guy, the one called Memo, was dark, Hispanic maybe, and gone to fat. His faded orange Miami Dolphins t-shirt had the sleeves cut off. He had a scorpion tattoo on his neck.

The bald guy tossed the badge wallet to the floor then leaned over and pressed the barrel of the Glock to Louis’s temple.

“You kill me, you die in the chair,” Louis said.

The man’s breath was like sewer water. “I don’t like niggers and I don’t like cops.”

He eased the Glock away from Louis’s head. He threw the badge wallet into a corner. “But I ain’t no murderer.”

He moved away. Louis shut his eyes in relief. He could hear the creak of the floorboards as the man moved around the room.

“Find something to tie him up with.”

Louis watched the dark man as he rummaged through the kitchen. When he came back, Louis saw a loop of old rope in his hands. The bald man pointed the Glock toward the bunk beds.

“Move your ass over there.”

Louis crawled to the bunks. They were heavy wooden things, built into the wall. He leaned back against a post, his ribs on fire.

The dark man forced Louis’s hands behind his back. Louis grimaced as the man wrapped the rope tight around his wrists, tying it off high on the top bunk. The dark guy was smiling when he stepped back to admire his handiwork.

“Let’s get out of here,” the bald guy said.

The other man grabbed a backpack off the counter, paused, then reached over Louis to snag a pack of cigarettes from the bunk.

As they left, the dark guy started to pull the door closed. The bald man slapped a hand against it.

“Leave it open. Maybe a gator will crawl in and eat him.”

Louis could hear them laughing until it was drowned out by the sound of the Jeep coming to life. It built to a roar as they revved the engine then slowly it faded to a low growl as they pulled out of the camp.

Louis strained against the rope. No give. His hands were going numb.

He looked to the open door, trying to estimate what time it was. He had signed out the Jeep at ten-thirty this morning but in all the twisting and turning trying to find this place he had lost track of time.

Sergeant Sweet…he was the only one who knew where he had gone. But there was no reason for him to sound the alarm if Louis didn’t come back. The Jeep was signed out for indefinite use.

Louis tugged at rope then laid his head back against the post.

It was quiet. A terrible, empty quiet.

CHAPTER TEN

The darkness had crept over him — the rectangle of light that defined the open door turned from green to gray then disappeared — and he thought it was because he was losing consciousness. But then, out of the blackness, came sounds.

The soft whir of a motor.

The creak of a rusty hinge.

Coughing.

Had the men come back? He strained to see something, anything, in the pitch black.

No, no…

Just crickets, frogs, and something else, a gator maybe.

Louis leaned back against the bunk. How long had he been here? He couldn’t tell anymore. It was the thick of night now and any hope he had of someone finding him was fading fast. It hurt to take a breath and he had to piss. He twisted his hands but the rope held tight on his wrists.

There was nothing to do but wait for the light. Maybe he could chew through the rope. Maybe if he yelled someone would be close enough to hear. Maybe…

He would die here.

He closed his eyes.

The rectangle of the door materialized out of the gloom. Dawn. His ribs and his lip throbbed. His parched throat felt like sandpaper and his whole body ached. Had he slept? He didn’t know because his mind felt as numb as his hands. The gnawing in his stomach wasn’t hunger anymore. It was fear.

He lay his head against the rough wood of the bunk, watching the details of the brush outside in the compound emerge in the frame of the doorway. He closed his eyes.

A sound. Close.

His eyes shot open. He jerked upright as far as the rope would allow.

An animal.

No! It was louder. And it was engine of some kind, he could tell now. It was getting louder. It was outside in the compound. Then, suddenly, it died and it was quiet.

Louis waited, his eyes riveted on the open door. A huge silhouette filled the doorframe.

“What the fuck?”

The voice was different from those of the two men who had left him here. Very deep, no accent. It took Louis a second to realize the man was holding a rifle. And it was aimed at Louis.

“Hey! Don’t shoot!” Louis yelled.

The rifle kept its bead on Louis’s chest.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I’ve been here all night. Come on, untie me, man.”

“This is my camp, asshole. You broke into my camp.”

“I didn’t break in. Two guys jumped me.” No choice, he had to chance it. “I’m a cop, man. My ID is over there on the floor by the table.”

Slowly the rifle came down. The man scooped up the wallet, glanced at the ID inside and looked back to Louis. “What are you doing in my camp?”

“Untie me. I’ll explain.”

The man set the rifle by the door and pulled a large knife from his belt. He knelt by Louis.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he said as he began to saw at the rope.

“All I want to do is take a piss.”

The rope snapped free. The man stepped back and picked up his rifle. Louis rubbed his wrists and holding his ribs, got to his feet. He walked unsteadily out the open door and unzipped his fly. When he was done, he looked back at the man who had come out to stand on the porch. He was a burly six footer with dark hair, dressed in old jeans and a denim shirt bleached almost to white. He had his rifle tucked under his arm and was looking at the police wallet. When his eyes came up to Louis they were hard.

“Louis Kincaid,” he said, pronouncing his name Lou-ee. “Okay, what’s your story Lou-ee Kincaid.”

Louis pulled in a painful breath and launched into a quick summary of the panther case. When he was finished, the man shook his head and smiled.

“So you figured that some hunters killed your cat and you came out here to bust us, huh?”

“I don’t know what I figured,” he said. “You got some water?”

The man didn’t move. “You know, it was stupid of you to come out here alone,” he said. “I could have shot you.”

“I know,” Louis said, patting his swollen lip. “I should have told Katy I was coming here.”

“Katy? Katy Letka?”

Louis looked up. “Yeah. Do you know her?”

“Yeah, I know Katy.”

Louis stared at the man — he was smiling at the mention of Katy’s name — as his fogged brain trying to make sense of this.

“You’re a friend of Katy’s?” the man asked.

“Yeah.” Louis hesitated. “Are you?”

“Shit, yeah.”

The man’s eyes swept over Louis then he turned and went to his swamp buggy parked under the trees. He returned with a canteen and held it out to Louis.

Louis took it and drank greedily.

“So tell me about these guys who jumped you,” the man said.

“Not much to tell,” Louis said. “Like I said, they were hiding out in the cabin and jumped me when I came in.”

“Someone’s been using our camp,” the man said. “I’ve been coming out here to check every couple days.”

“I don’t think these two are your guys,” Louis said. “They were on the run from something they did over in Fort Lauderdale. They didn’t seem too bright.”

The man nodded. “Whoever’s using my camp has been coming and going for months. We noticed it when we realized some canned food was missing.”

Louis took another drink of water, trying not to gulp. His head was slowly clearing.

“One of my buddies got a glimpse of him once, but couldn’t track him,” the man said.

“What did he look like?”

“Stocky, dark-skinned, long black hair. He just disappeared into the swamp. He seems to know what he’s doing out here. We call him the phantom. The only thing he leaves is cigarette butts.”

“Cigarettes? You know what kind?” Louis asked.

“No, but the butts are probably out in the trash.”

“Can you show me?”

Louis followed the man out to one of the small outbuildings and waited until the man unearthed a heavy black trash bag. Louis opened it, grimaced at the smell, but dug through it until he found a butt.

He squinted, unable to see a brand name on it without his reading glasses. “You see a name?” he asked, holding it out the man.

The guy came took it. “Viceroy.”

Louis let out a painful breath.

“That mean something?” the man asked.

“Maybe. The guy who abducted the panther smokes Viceroys.”

The man tossed the butt back in the trash and secured the lid. “Your ribs broken?” he asked Louis.

“I hope not.”

“Well, we better get you someplace where we can find out.”

Louis nodded and they started toward the swamp buggy. The seat was a good four feet off the ground and when Louis hesitated, holding his side, the man set his rifle in the back and helped Louis up into the seat.

“Thanks.” Louis paused. “What’s your name?”

“Gary. Gary Trujillo.”

“Thanks, Gary.”

The man jumped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The swamp buggy roared to life. Louis spotted a CB radio mounted on the dash.

“I need to get an APB out on the guys from Lauderdale,” he said. “Can I use your radio?”

Gary pulled sunglasses out of his pocket and slipped them on. “You get a good look at the scumbags?”

“Yeah,” Louis said. He gave Gary a quick description.

Gary keyed the CB, calling someone named Otter. Louis listened as Gary described the two men who had violated their hunting camp and ordered a swamp buggy posse to hunt them down.

“We got it, Tru,” Otter answered and signed off.

Gary put the swamp buggy in gear but before he pulled out he looked at Louis.

“We’ll find the guys who did this to you,” Gary said. “I only want one thing in return.”

“What’s that?”

“No publicity. We just want to be left alone, okay?”

Gary pulled out of the compound. Neither man said anything as Gary expertly maneuvered the buggy over the rutted roads. Louis sat silent, holding his ribs against the bouncing, thinking about what was going to happen if one of Gary’s friends found the two men who had jumped him.

He didn’t care. Marv and his little friend Memo had done something over in Lauderdale that was bad enough to drive them into the stinking bowels of the Everglades. And he knew that when the two dirt bags were caught — and as Louis looked over at Gary’s profile he had no doubt they would be — Louis would get the credit for the collar of two fugitives.

“Gary,” Louis shouted over the engine’s din.

“What?”

“I can try to keep you and Otter out of things, but what if the scumbags talk about you?”

Gary gave him a crooked smile. “Don’t worry. They won’t.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Four days, Kincaid,” Mobley said. “Four days and already you’ve managed to get your name in the paper.”

Louis looked beyond Mobley to the window, to the cloudless blue sky with its searing white sun. There was no way he could explain what had really happened out at the hunting camp. It was like something out of a James Dickey novel.

Marv had done exactly what Gary predicted: found the westward road that was paved enough to lull Marv into thinking he was on his way to Immokalee where he’d be able to fill his belly with beer and his head with hopes of making a clean getaway.

But Old Bucket Road was one of those roads Louis had gotten turned around on coming in. He had almost ended up in a ditch of black water and needed to slowly reverse his way out. Sure enough, that was where Otter had found the Jeep, only Marv had been too stupid to try to back up and had driven the Jeep door-high into a gator hole. When Otter and the other men surrounded the Jeep with rifles drawn, Marv and Memo — covered with mosquito welts and fear-sweat — had surrendered without a fight. By the time Gary and Louis arrived, the dirt bags were tied to a tree and Otter had pulled the Jeep from the bog. Louis’s Glock was laying on the driver’s seat.

“Remember our deal,” Gary said. And he and the others were gone in a cloud of noise and gas fumes.

As soon as Louis was able to get radio contact driving back to Fort Myers, he informed the sheriff’s dispatcher that he was en route with two fugitives from Fort Lauderdale. He made sure he used the frequency the local reporters monitored because even though he didn’t really want the publicity he needed it. Needed everyone, not just Mobley, to see this notch his belt.

A WINK news truck was sitting in the sheriff’s lot when Louis shoved the handcuffed Marv and Memo through the station doors. The story about a local PI, working for the sheriff’s department, busting two fugitives who had robbed a 7-Eleven and sent the clerk to the hospital with a ruptured spleen was a big story on slow news day. By morning the papers had the story.

And this morning, when Louis walked in the station on his way to Mobley’s office, for the first time the cops he passed gave him a nod of acceptance.

Louis looked from the window back to Mobley. It was hard not to smile.

“I don’t believe you got me into something like this,” Mobley said, tossing the News-Press to the desk. “Who the fuck is going to believe this crap?”

“Look, sheriff, I told you the truth about what happened, but I don’t think you really want the truth out there,” Louis said. “They’ll ridicule you over this whole lost cat thing and this good PR will go away.”

Mobley ran a hand through his hair and turned his chair toward the window. Louis stayed standing, his gaze drifting to the newspaper. He hadn’t mentioned something else to Mobley, a story he had read in the same paper while he waiting for Mobley to come in. An article on the upcoming EEOC civil trial Lee County was facing in federal court. Worse, there were whispers of a recall election for the sheriff in the wind at O’Sullivan’s.

Mobley spoke without turning his chair. “Goddamn, you’re a pain in my ass.”

“We still got a deal?”

Mobley swung his chair around and gave Louis a long look. “Yeah,” he said. “But now you need to bump these fucking Lauderdale shitheads out of the news cycle before some reporter starts digging deeper. You need to find me that cat.”

“I’m working on it.”

“You got any leads?”

“Maybe,” Louis said. “The hunter told me there was a fellow hanging around the camp. He didn’t get a good look at him but he said he was dark skinned with long black hair.”

“That’s it?”

“No, we found pack of cigarettes at Grace’s crime site and I’m hoping to get prints off the cellophane, but the lab’s taking its time. The cigarettes were purchased on the reservation.”

“No tax stamp.”

“Right.”

“So, you’re linking the smokes with this guy with the long black hair and thinking you might have a Seminole for a perp.”

“There’s another connection,” Louis said. “The Seminoles believe the panther is the Creator’s favorite animal and endowed with special powers — ”

“Spare me the Jungle Book shit,” Mobley said. “What you’re telling me is that you want to take a trip to the rez and ask around about some weirdo who wanders the Glades and might be stealing the panthers, even though the damn cats are sacred to his tribe?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mobley sighed. “Do you know how unwelcome we are there?”

“Yes.”

“And you realize that even if the cat-napper pops out of a teepee with the damn cat on a leash, you have no authority there to arrest him?”

“I know that, too.”

“Then why are you going?”

“I just want to ask some questions,” Louis said. “I believe that if the panthers are as special as I’ve been told, I might get someone to talk to me.”

Mobley was quiet, his eyes drifting to the newspapers before they came back to Louis. “Okay, but I want you to take an Indian with you.”

“Excuse me?” Louis asked.

“I said, I want you to take an Indian with you so you don’t get yourself shot or something,” Mobley said. “I have one down in the traffic division. I’ll call down and get him up here.”

“No thanks, sir.”

“Why the hell not?”

Louis paused, thinking of Katy. He had ignored her advice about the camps and got his ass kicked. Now he was about to ask her to help him go after one of her own people. No way she would help. But there’s was no way could he do this without her.

“I have my own Indian, sir,” Louis said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The smell wasn’t strong but it was enough to take him back decades. Suddenly, he was eleven years old again and staring at a lion.

It was a very old lion but a lion nonetheless and he had been scared, hiding behind his foster father Phillip’s leg. It was his first trip to the Detroit Zoo and the smell of the lion house was heavy in his nostrils, like nothing he had ever smelled before, like nothing he would ever smell again.

Until now.

Louis stood at the entrance of the room, his eyes roaming over the line of large cages to his left. All four were occupied by panthers, two lying down, two pacing. He wondered which one was Bruce but there were only numbers on the paperwork hanging on each cage and he couldn’t remember Bruce’s.

A door banged open at the far end and Katy came toward him. She was wearing a plastic apron over her uniform and a look of derision on her face.

She stopped before him, hands on hips. “You should have called me,” she said.

“I know. Did you see it on TV?”

“No, Gary called me not long after he left you.” She shook her head. “What the hell were you thinking going out there alone?”

“Look, Katy, I had reason to believe those guys at the hunting camps — ”

“No you didn’t!” She took a deep breath. “Those guys would never hurt a cat,” she said. “They hunt, yeah, and they’re a little off the grid, yeah. But they know more about the Glades and care more about the Glades and the animals there than any half-assed tree-hugger. Gary and his guys helped us get the panthers declared endangered, for God’s sake.”

She fell quiet. Louis noticed the two panthers had stopped pacing and were watching her.

“I’m sorry,” Louis said. “I made an assumption about — ”

“Yeah, cops tend to do that a lot about people they don’t know.”

“I’m not a cop, Katy.”

She was quiet. He was wondering how he was going to bring up going to the reservation. Wasn’t that another assumption about people he didn’t know much about?

“How’s Bruce doing?” he asked finally.

“Come see for yourself.” She led him to the last cage. Bruce was lying in the corner, his back leg splinted. The cat raised his big head to look at Louis then put it down again, closing his eyes.

“Is he okay?”

“Turned out it’s just a bad sprain,” Katy said. “But he’s depressed. He wants to get out of here and go home.”

Louis thought of his six hours in the emergency room last night waiting for the pimple-faced intern to send him on his way with a pain prescription and the pronouncement that there was no cure for his two bruised ribs except rest.

“I know how he feels,” Louis said.

Katy looked up at him, eyeing his swollen lip. “Gary says they roughed you up pretty good.”

Louis just nodded.

“You’re damn lucky Gary came by.”

Louis nodded again.

Katy let out a sigh and waved a hand. “Come on. Let’s go to my office and talk about where we’re going next.”

Her office was a corner of a cramped room with file cabinets, four desks — all vacant right now — and walls covered with maps, photographs, and notices about the panther conservation program. One bulletin board showed photographs of school kids posing with a panther and the kids’ hand-written notes and drawings of cats.

Katy moved a pile of files and motioned for Louis to take the chair next to her desk. She scanned a stack of message slips, tossed them down and swiveled her chair to face Louis.

“So what’s our next step?”

Louis pulled in a breath so deep it hurt his ribs. “You aren’t going to like it.”

“I want Grace back. Try me.”

Louis told her what Gary had said about the man breaking into the camp, adding the detail about the cigarettes with no tax stamp and the physical description Gary had provided. He watched her expression go from comprehension to a sort of weary sadness.

“You aren’t thinking of going out to the rez alone, are you?” she asked.

“No.”

Her eyes stayed on him for a moment then drifted off to something on the left. Louis saw it was a photograph of a panther. He couldn’t be sure but he thought it looked like Grace. Katy blew out a long breath and rose, taking off the plastic apron and picking up her ball cap.

“Let’s get going,” she said.

The Seminole Indian reservation was located just off Alligator Alley — the old name for Interstate 75 that everyone used for the highway that cut an east-west slash across the Everglades.

The tribe had turned their access to the interstate into a profitable oasis that offered the only gas, food and reliably clean bathrooms for anyone traveling the hundred and fifteen miles between the South Florida coasts. If you wanted some entertainment, the Seminoles also provided airboat rides in the swamps, a tour of an authentic Indian village, a museum and an alligator wrestling show.

A couple miles north of that lay the real reservation. It was a simple grid of concrete block houses and trailers interrupted by the occasional store. Black-haired boys in t-shirts and Nikes played soccer in a dirt yard, chased by dogs. A knot of women, arms draped with plastic bags from Walmart and Publix, talked on a corner. Two men stood outside the open door of a cinderblock Baptist church smoking cigarettes. It looked like any of the hard-scrabble little towns that dotted the southwest Florida landscape.

“How’s the tribe doing?” Louis asked.

Katy gave him a glance as she swung the Bronco down a side street. “Better than most, worse than some. They’ve made some money on cigarettes and bingo but the chief is pushing hard for a real casino. And I wouldn’t bet against him.”

Louis knew that Indian tribes all across the country were talking about casinos now. A mega-resort was planned for the lush Connecticut countryside and he had heard a Michigan tribe was also fighting to build one. Seeing the humble houses made him think that a business that employed a couple thousand people with benefits could do nothing but good for a place like this. But from the tone in Katy’s voice, she didn’t sound as if she approved.

“You don’t want to see a casino here?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Katy said. “It’s sort of like winning the lottery. It doesn’t always bring what you expect.”

“Unemployment is high here, right?” Louis asked.

She nodded. “And too many of the kids drop out of school.” She was quiet for a long time. “I was lucky. I got a scholarship from the tribe to FSU. But the money’s dried up.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I think they’re afraid the kids won’t come back.”

Katy swung the Bronco around a corner and stopped in front of a one-story brick building with a colorful tribal seal mounted near the glass doors. They climbed from the Bronco but before Louis even closed the door, a man emerged from the building. He was well over six feet with the build of a wrestler and the posture of man ready to defend his territory. Short cropped black hair framed a face that told Louis he was close to forty and had sent a good part of his life in the Florida sun.

“Katy Letka,” the man said.

Katy stopped a few feet in front of him. “Hello, Moses.”

“It’s been a long time. You look well.”

“I am. You look well, too.”

His black eyes shifted to Louis. “Who is this?”

“Louis Kincaid,” Katy said. “He’s working with the sheriff’s office to help locate a missing panther. Louis, this is Moses Stanton, the tribal chairman’s executive assistant.”

Stanton studied Louis for a moment then turned back to Katy. “You are also looking for this panther?”

“Yes, I’m still with the Fish and Game department,” she said. “And yes, I still love it.”

“Your skills could be useful here.”

Louis glanced at Katy. She suddenly seemed very stiff, staring at Moses Stanton with a hard squint. He suspected there might be more history here than just a tribal member who had left the flock.

“I’m useful where I am,” Katy said.

“Then why are you here?” Stanton asked.

“The missing panther is a female,” Katy said. “She has been gone four days now but she wasn’t the only cat involved in whatever is going on. Before she was taken, a male panther turned up wounded. We think whoever took Grace tried to take the male panther but lost him.”

“Capturing two large cats. Not an easy task.”

“You’re right,” Katy said. “He would have to be someone who knows the Glades and is familiar with the panthers.”

“He also has access to animal tranquilizers,” Louis added.

Stanton gave Louis a dismissive glance before his eyes moved back to Katy. “So I ask you again, why are you here?”

“We have a description of a man who has been seen in the hunting camps,” Katy said. “Long dark hair, brown skin, good at eluding the hunters.”

“An Indian,” Stanton said.

“Yes.”

“No Indian would harm the panthers.”

“I’m not sure he’s looking to harm them,” Katy said. “I believe he may be trying to mate them.”

“For what purpose?”

“I don’t know. I can only guess he thinks a cub will somehow bring him something he cannot otherwise obtain. Peace. Happiness. Some kind of special power maybe.”

“He sounds like a crazy man,” Stanton said.

“Most criminals are,” Louis said.

This time Stanton didn’t even look to Louis. His eyes drifted away from Katy to the street. He was quiet for a long time before he looked back to Katy.

“You have not been here to see your great aunt Betty in a long time,” he said.

Katy looked suddenly stricken. She took a step toward Stanton as if trying to cut Louis off from hearing. “Does Betty ask about me?” she asked softly.

“No. She recognizes no one now. Your cousins sit around her bed and sing for her soul.”

Katy pulled the brim of her ball cap lower and looked to the ground.

“The Alzheimer’s is bad,” Stanton said. “Her body is giving up. She is giving up.”

Katy looked up. “Why didn’t someone call me?”

“No one should have to.”

Katy’s face was slick with sweat. Louis could almost feel the heat of shame radiating off her.

“Katy,” he said, “I’ll go wait in the truck.”

“No, wait,” Katy said, grabbing his arm. She turned back to Stanton. “I will go to see Betty today, Moses. But right now, I need to talk about the panther. Please. I need, we need, your help.”

Stanton didn’t move a muscle. Then he looked over Katy to Louis, meeting his eyes. Louis had the weirdest feeling suddenly, like the man could almost read his thoughts. Like he could almost sense that the missing panther wasn’t important to Louis, that it was just a means to an end. Louis forced himself to hold Moses’s Stanton’s eyes.

“Moses,” Katy said, “you know everything that goes on here. I need you to tell me if anyone has been acting strangely. Has anyone moved away and taken a home in the swamps? Have you caught anyone stealing supplies or drugs from the clinic?”

Moses finally broke his stare with Louis and crossed his arms. “I know no one who would interfere with the panthers. And I am not sure I would tell if I did.”

“Moses,” Katy said softly. “You know what they mean to me.”

For the first time Louis detected a crack in the man’s façade.

Stanton looked away toward the knot of kids kicking a soccer ball. “All right, Katy Letka,” he said quietly. “I will help you. I will conduct my own investigation and if I find you are right, I will let you know so you can find the panther and take her back where she belongs.”

He looked back to her. “But I will give you no names and you will not walk through these streets looking behind doors. If I find someone here is involved in this, we will deal with it ourselves.”

Katy said nothing but Louis could tell from the sudden sag of her shoulders that she knew she would get nothing else. She said a brisk goodbye and started back to the Bronco. Louis hurried to catch up with her. Moses Stanton stayed in front of the tribal headquarters doors watching them.

Katy remained silent as she drove around the corner and down a street, pulling up in front of a small stucco house with a concrete porch cluttered with folding chairs. There had once been flowers in the window boxes but they were wilted now, victims of the searing summer sun and neglect.

The front door was open. There were three women on the porch and three men standing in the sparse shade of a tree smoking cigarettes. The women were dressed in cotton blouses and skirts and wore their hair in long braids. The men had lined weathered faces and dusty clothes. But what struck Louis was that another one of his assumptions about Indians was proving wrong. Every man he could see had short hair.

“I won’t be long,” Katy said, eyeing the women on the porch. “I’ll leave the engine going so you can have some air.”

“Thanks.”

Katy started toward Aunt Betty’s house. The few people outside turned their attention from the SUV to Katy herself. Louis watched closely, curious about the reception she’d get.

Katy paused under the tree and spoke briefly to the men. When they didn’t step back to let her on the porch, she steeled herself and slipped between them, disappearing into the house. For a moment, the men looked back at the SUV then went back to talking among themselves.

Louis sank back into the seat. Partly to be less obvious, but mostly because he was groggy. His aching ribs had kept him up most the night and about four in the morning he had finally relented and popped a pain pill. He laid his head against the window and idly watched the parade of people in front of the house.

One woman caught his eye. She wore a bright yellow sun dress and was coming down the street carrying a casserole dish covered with aluminum foil. A second woman followed her, slightly younger, carrying a basket of neatly folded laundry. The men parted to let them inside the house.

Suddenly Louis was somewhere else.

In Bessie’s old boarding house in Blackpool, Mississippi. A stranger in his own town of birth, sitting vigil by the bedside of a dying woman he could barely remember — his mother. Women had come then, too. Black women carrying clean linens for his mother and casseroles and cookies for him.

He remembered none of their names but he remembered their voices. Soft and soothing as they gathered by Lila’s bed, the sound carrying across the hall to his room where he took refuge when he could.

And then, after Lila died, came the sound of their voices raised joyously in song, drifting up from the parlor downstairs. He didn’t understand why they were happy, these strange women, because his mother had lived a short ugly life, given away her children, given him away, and then she had suffered a painful death. It made him angry to hear their voices.

Bessie had been the one to explain it to him.

Death was a relief from agony. Death was a return to Jesus. Death was a going home.

Louis looked back to the house. The men had wandered off and the porch was empty. There was no one on the street but a couple of kids on bicycles.

Then the house screen door slapped open and two young men exited. One was thin and wore a black t-shirt and jeans. The second was shorter and more tightly muscled, like a football running back. He wore a loose fitting plain white shirt with an odd heavy silver necklace, like a scythe blade on a chain. Both men had long black hair pulled back in pony tails.

The men took a long look at the SUV then lit up cigarettes.

Louis sat up straighter. The stocky kid was still staring his way and Louis knew the kid could see his face behind the glass. The kid tapped the other guy on the shoulder, said something in his ear, and both started away from the house.

Louis got out of the SUV.

The men were heading down the street at a quick clip. Louis had made enough traffic stops and interviewed enough suspects to sense fear. A shift of the body to avoid calling attention to the weight of a gun in a pocket. A twist of the shoulders to release tension. A suddenly quickened pace.

He knew he shouldn’t be doing this.

He was nosing around in Katy’s territory and she was going to be pissed. But something told him to stay with them, just for a block or two.

At the corner, the thinner guy broke off. The stocky one took one last look back at Louis before turning down a side street.

Louis followed, about thirty feet behind. The guy was walking fast and stiff, his head swiveling back at Louis every few feet. Finally, he reached a yellow house with a yard full of toys and a plastic wading pool. He cut across the grass and quickly slipped inside. Then, despite the heat, he slammed the heavy door.

Louis jogged back to the SUV. Katy was in the driver’s seat, both hands resting on the wheel.

As he got in she wiped her face quickly.

“You okay?” he asked.

She shrugged but he could see she was struggling to not cry.

“Where’d you go?” she asked.

“I followed someone,” he said. “A guy in his twenties, stocky.”

“Why?”

“He was acting hinky.”

“Hinky?”

“He went into a yellow house over on the next street.”

Katy frowned. “That might be Hachi or one of his friends.”

“You know him?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not really.”

“He didn’t like me following him.”

“A black guy gets out of a FWC vehicle and follows you. What young guy here would like that, Louis?”

“Fair enough. But I’m going to run a check on him. What’s his last name?”

She hesitated. “Keno.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t get you in trouble with Moses.”

She stared at him for a long time then with a final look back at Betty’s house, she jammed the SUV into gear and pulled slowly away.

They were out on Alligator Alley heading west into the setting sun before Katy spoke again.

“She’s dead,” she said softly.

For a second Louis thought she meant her great aunt Betty but then realized she was talking about Grace.

Katy flipped down the visor to retrieve her sunglasses and slipped them on, but not before Louis saw her eyes well with tears.

“You don’t know that,” Louis said.

She looked left, to the huge empty expanse of the Everglades. “We’ve increased our search flights, we’ve got every officer out there looking and all the hunters on alert,” she said. “There’s no sign of her. She’s gone, Louis, Grace is gone.”

Maybe it was the emotion of the visit to Betty. Maybe she was just exhausted. But this was the first time he had heard defeat in her voice.

“Look,” he said, “Things go cold on cases but then you get a break and things heat up. You have to stay with it, you have to stay positive.”

She glanced at him then looked back to the road.

“Go home and try not to worry,” he said. “Have a glass of wine and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll start again early tomorrow.”

She was silent.

“You’ve got to trust me on this,” Louis said. “We’ll find her, Katy. We’ll bring Grace home.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

For the third time in the last twenty minutes, Louis checked his watch, this time even tapping it to make sure it was running. Almost eight.

Where the hell was Katy?

“Everything okay here?”

He looked up at the waitress. “What? Oh, yeah.”

“Top you off?” she asked, holding up the coffee pot.

Louis nodded absently and she refilled his mug.

Yesterday, after their visit to the reservation, Louis had asked Katy to meet him for breakfast this morning. The forensic report from Grace’s crime scene was due back today and he hoped to be able to show it to Katy to boost her mood. When he went to pick it up the tech said he would bring it over to the IHop when he came over to get his takeout coffee.

Louis looked out the window for Katy’s FWC Bronco. No sign of it on the morning crawl along Tamiami Trail. He glanced at the pay phone out by the entrance, but he had already called her apartment and gotten the machine. A second call to her office got him a secretary who told him she hadn’t come in yet.

The guy from the forensic unit came in the entrance, spotted Louis and came over to his booth.

“Here’s your prelim,” he said, tossing a manila envelope on the table.

“Thanks,” Louis said. “Tell the cashier to add your coffee to my bill.”

After the man left, Louis put on his reading glasses and took out the report. He skipped over the tire tread part, focusing in the boot prints that had been found. They were for a men’s size ten Timberland Flume, a common hiking boot.

He zeroed in on the cigarette pack. The lab had been able to lift two clean prints from the cellophane but there was no match to anyone in the system.

He turned the page, scanning quickly, then stopped. The techs had found human hairs tangled in some brush. The analysis read: natural black, from the head, straight with circular cross sections, medium-sized pigment granules, and a thicker cuticle, consistent with Mongoloid pattern.

Louis took off his glasses. “Mongoloid” meant someone of Asian or Native-American descent. But he knew this wasn’t going to be enough to convince Katy.

He glanced out to the parking lot. Still no sign of her truck. He put his glasses back on and went back to the report.

One hair had its bulb intact, which meant they could test for DNA. But Louis knew there was no point. He had read enough about the new technology to know that a test would take months to come back. Besides, they had no one — and nothing — to compare it to. That wasn’t really true, he thought. They had the cigarette butt from the hunting camp but what would that prove? Besides, he had promised Gary Trujillo not to involve him in the case and there was no way Mobley would foot the bill for the high cost of a DNA test.

Louis took a drink of his coffee but it had gone cold.

So would this case if he didn’t think of something.

But first he had to find Katy.

He rose, picking up his check. After paying, he called Katy’s apartment again. Still no answer. He tried her office, this time getting Jeff, the man who had been with Katy on the call to rescue Bruce from the patio. Jeff remembered Louis and told him that it was unusual for Katy to not check in.

“She’s been here every day at the crack of dawn since Grace disappeared,” he said. “She’s been pulling twelve-hour days and riding us all pretty hard.”

“You try to radio her?” Louis asked.

“Yeah, about a half-hour ago. No answer.”

“Try again, would you?”

Louis waited, listening while Jeff tried to raise Katy but there was no answer. Jeff came back to the phone.

“She could be out of range if she went out into the Glades,” Jeff said.

“Except she was supposed to meet me for breakfast.”

“Yeah,” Jeff said softly.

“Keep trying the radio,” Louis said. “I’ll check back in with you in a half hour.”

He hung up and looked again to the parking lot. He decided to go to her office. Maybe he and Jeff could go looking for her.

Traffic was bumper-to-bumper on southbound I-75 and the swirl of red and blue lights ahead told Louis there was an accident. He sat, hands tapping on the wheel, gaze wandering out the side window. A sign for the Miromar Outlet Mall caught his eye. He was right near Katy’s apartment.

He swung the Mustang onto the shoulder and sped up onto the off-ramp. The apartment complex backed onto the freeway and he found Katy’s building and parked. As he was starting toward the stairway he spotted her FWC Bronco sitting in a parking spot.

He breathed out a sigh of relief. Maybe she had taken his advice yesterday to heart and gotten drunk and just slept in.

On the second floor, he knocked on her door. No answer. He pounded harder this time. Nothing. There was a window with closed drapes. He rapped hard on it, hoping it was Katy’s bedroom.

The door flew open. A woman poked her head out, her blonde hair wild around her tan face.

“What the hell is it?” she said.

The woman was wearing Joe Boxer pajamas and her face was creased with sleep-lines. Obviously the roommate.

“Is Katy here?” Louis asked.

“Who are you?”

“Louis. I’m a friend of Katy’s and she — ”

“She’s at work.” She started to close the door but Louis wedged a foot in it to stop her.

“Hey!”

“Katy’s not at work,” Louis said. “You sure she’s not here?”

The roommate rubbed her face. “Yeah, I’m sure. I saw her leave early this morning when I got home. I work the night desk at the Clarion and we sort of pass each other coming and going.”

“Her car is still in the lot,” Louis said.

The woman stepped out and squinted down over the railing. “Huh,” she said. “That’s weird. She must’ve taken the Jeep instead.”

“What Jeep?”

“Her own car. She keeps it parked in number ten, next to her work truck.”

Louis looked down at the FWC Bronco then back at the roommate. “What time did she leave?” he asked.

“About six.”

“Was she dressed for work?”

The roommate nodded. “Yeah, the same thing she wears every day, khaki shorts, and one of her ranger shirts over a tee. And that ugly baseball cap.”

“Did she take her radio with her?”

“Yeah. She keeps it in a charger on the kitchen counter next to her keys and I saw her take it.”

“Does she have a gun?”

“Gun? Yeah, she has a gun.”

“Where does she keep it?”

“In her bedside table.”

“Would you see if it’s there, please?”

The roommate eyed him. “Stay here.” She shut the door and locked it. Louis waited, sweat beading on his face. Only nine-fifteen and it was already in the high eighties.

The door jerked open. “The gun’s not there,” she said, stifling a yawn. “We finished here? I’m pulling an extra shift today and I need my sleep.”

Louis thanked the roommate and went back downstairs to the FWC Bronco. It was locked. He looked in the window.

Immaculate as usual. No radio stuck in the console charger. Nothing strange. Except…

There was something on the back seat. He cupped his hands on the back window. Clothing. A white shirt with the prominent FWC emblem on the breast. And Katy’s ball cap.

What the hell was going on here?

Louis did a slow scan of the parking lot, his eyes focusing in on the asphalt around the Bronco and its surface. No sign of a struggle.

There was only one explanation. She had started off her day as normal, maybe to meet him for breakfast but had changed her mind. She had left in her personal unmarked vehicle but had apparently felt the need to shed her work shell. There was only one reason she had done it: She had gone back to the reservation and didn’t want to be seen as an outsider. But was it on a personal visit to see Aunt Betty? Or was she defying Moses and going to see Keno?

That would explain why she didn’t call him. But why hadn’t she at least checked in with her office or told them she was going to be late?

He walked back to his Mustang. As he was unlocking the door something in the next car caught the sunlight. He went to the Toyota and peered in the window. It was a piece of silver hanging from the rearview mirror. It was odd-looking, like a woman’s heavy silver necklace.

Louis did a quick scan of the Toyota’s back seat but saw nothing strange. He went around the back. The plate was from Hendry County, not Lee. The Seminole reservation was located in Hendry.

It meant nothing. But it could mean everything. He jotted down the plate number in his notebook then wiped a sleeve over his sweaty face, pulling in a painful breath.

Something didn’t feel right in his gut and it wasn’t his bruised ribs.

“You’re becoming a pain in the ass, Kincaid.”

Louis wasn’t in the mood to argue with Mobley but he understood the sheriff’s position. The evidence he had offered Mobley about Katy was razor-thin and there was no way the sheriff would authorize a search for someone who had been out of contact for less than four hours.

“I’m late for a meeting,” Mobley said.

He picked up a file and headed for the door but then he stopped and looked back. “Are you getting personal with this woman?”

“What?”

“Your Indian lady. Is something going on?”

“Goddamn it, Lance.”

Mobley shook his head. “Then why this knee-jerk reaction?”

Louis stared him straight in the eye. “How long you been a cop?”

“Seventeen years.”

“Haven’t you ever just had a bad feeling about something?”

Mobley’s jaw tightened. “What do you want from me?”

“Make a call to the Seminole police. They’ll talk to you.”

Mobley hesitated then turned to his secretary outside the office. “Ginger, get me the Seminole police chief on the phone.”

He went back to his desk and a few seconds later the phone buzzed. Mobley picked up the receiver. Louis waited while Mobley talked to someone he politely addressed as Chief Gilley.

“Ask about Aunt Betty,” Louis said.

Mobley covered the receiver. “Who?”

“Katy’s aunt. Make sure she didn’t die.”

Mobley stared at him and went back to his call. A minute later he hung up.

“No one has seen her,” he said. “And Aunt Betty is still kicking.”

Ginger appeared at the door. “Sheriff, you’re really late for your meeting.”

“Fuck,” Mobley muttered, picking up his file again and headed to the door.

“Sheriff.”

Mobley turned with a heavy sigh. “What?”

“Put out an alert on her Jeep,” Louis said.

Mobley tapped the folder lightly on his palm, eyeing Louis, before he turned toward his secretary. “Ginger, give him what he needs.”

Mobley left. Ginger leaned against the doorframe, giving Louis an appraising glance. “He must really like you,” she said.

“No,” Louis said. “He likes cats.”

Ginger laughed and motioned for Louis to follow her back to her desk. “Give me the info on the alert,” she said, sliding a pad toward him. “I’ll get it out ASAP.”

Louis scribbled Katy’s name and a description of her Jeep, knowing Ginger could get the plate number herself.

“This is just an attempt to locate,” he said, handing her the pad.

“I got it,” Ginger said, turning to her computer.

As he watched her, Louis knew this wasn’t going to be enough. There was a good chance Katy wasn’t even in Lee County right now. Or any place where a cop would spot her Jeep.

He pulled out his notebook. “Run this plate, please.”

With a few taps of the keys, a name and address popped onto the computer screen. Louis leaned in to read it — HAYWOOD KENO, 1445 PALMETTO STREET.

Haywood…not Hachi. Unless Hachi was a nickname.

“Ginger, can you pull up this guy’s DL?” he asked.

It took a few moments but then the driver’s license photo came up. It was the man he had followed yesterday.

Then he remembered the weird silver thing he had seen hanging from the rearview mirror of the Toyota in Katy’s parking lot. And he remembered where he had seen one like it before — around Hachi Keno’s neck the day he had followed him.

Keno had met Katy in the parking lot and she had left with him. But why? The only explanation was that he convinced her he knew where Grace was.

And it wasn’t on the reservation — it was somewhere isolated, somewhere no one could hear or see the cat.

Louis stared at the photograph. Keno’s eyes stared back, dark and unfathomable. He could read nothing in them. And that bothered him.

“Ginger, I need one more address,” Louis said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Louis almost hadn’t expected to see Gary Trujillo open the door of the neat green-shuttered trailer. With the flower boxes under the windows and the plastic flamingo in the yard he was sure when he drove up that he had the wrong house.

“I need your help,” Louis said.

“I told you I don’t want to get involved,” Gary said, starting to shut the door.

“Katy’s missing,” Louis said.

“What? What do you mean missing?”

“We were supposed to meet for breakfast and she didn’t show. She hasn’t been to work or called in. I think she’s with a Seminole named Keno and I think he’s the guy who took the panther.”

Gary came out onto the porch. “You think he took Katy, too?”

“I don’t know. She might have gone with him because he told her he knew something about Grace. I don’t know. I just know I don’t like the feel of it.”

“How come you don’t just call out the cavalry?”

“The reservation is off limits,” Louis said. “But I don’t think that’s where they are. I think they’re out in the glades somewhere, but Hendry County is out of my jurisdiction. Besides, the cops wouldn’t know where to start looking.”

Gary was quiet for a moment. “You’re thinking he’s got this panther hidden somewhere. Somewhere isolated, like a hunting camp.”

Louis nodded. “And you know where they all are.”

Gary glanced at the sun, which was already starting its slow descent. “I’ll go get dressed,” he said.

Louis was wearing the same polo shirt and khaki pants he had put on that morning, and now, out here in the sodden-blanket air of the Glades, he was sweat-soaked and mosquito-bitten. It was after five and they were into their second hour of their search.

They had started at Gary’s camp, where there had been no sign of any intruders since Louis’s encounter there. They had done a quick search of all the “live” camps, but they had all been locked up tight with no signs of intruders. That left the abandoned hunting camps.

“No one knows exactly how many there are,” Gary said as they plowed through the brush in his SUV, heading south now. “These camps have been handed down for generations and some families have just given up and left.”

One and a half million acres. That was the figure running through Louis’s head as he took in the desolate landscape of trees and brush. That was how large the Everglades were. How in the hell were they going to find Katy in all this?

He glanced toward the west. There was only about an hour of daylight left. If they didn’t find some trace of Katy or Keno soon they’d have to give up and start again in the morning.

If he could even convince Gary to try again. They had checked out four abandoned camps so far and none had any signs that anyone had been there.

The thick brush parted and Louis spotted a clearing ahead and then a cabin. No, not a cabin, he decided as they drew near, just another listing shack.

There were no fresh tire tracks in the narrow dirt road leading in and no signs of life anywhere in the weed-choked compound. Louis let out a hard breath of disappointment.

“Another dead end,” Gary said as steered the SUV in a wide slow circle. “That’s it. We’re heading back.”

“Have we hit them all?” Louis asked.

Gary was quiet, his jaw clenched, eyes trained on the windshield.

“Gary, are there any more camps?”

Gary braked to a hard stop. “Look man, this is nuts. You realize what the chances are of finding anyone out here? Fuck, you’re not even sure Katy is really missing.”

“I know she is.”

“How? You don’t even know the woman. You don’t know what she’s like. She just does this sometimes.”

Louis stared at him. “What do you mean?”

Gary’s face was red and he was gripping the steering wheel hard. He looked away and shook his head. “Katy and me, we used to be together,” he said slowly. “But it got too hard, you know? It was always work with her, always the damn cats. She’d like disappear on me. I wouldn’t hear from her for days and then she’d come back saying she was out hunting down a cat or nursing a sick cub or going to some school or to talk to a damn politician.”

Katy and Gary? Yeah, it seemed odd. But only on the surface. They both loved the same thing — this awful desolate beautiful place.

Gary finally looked at Louis. “I loved her but there was never any room for me. It just got too damn hard.”

He looked away, jerking the SUV into gear. They rode in silence for a long time. Louis realized they were not heading west back toward Alligator Alley, that they were still going south. The brush was getting heavier, the terrain changing from prairie to swampland.

“I thought we were going back to Fort Myers,” Louis said.

“There used to be two abandoned camps northwest of Copeland,” Gary said. “I don’t know if they’re still there but we might as well check them out.”

Copeland. Louis remembered the place. It was a forlorn little town on the edge of the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve. He and Joe had chased a kidnapper out into the swamp. The man had almost killed Louis before Joe shot him.

Her job had always come first, too. It was why she was now sixteen hundred miles away in Michigan. It was partly why they had split up last Christmas.

He was deep in thought and it took him a moment to realize the SUV had slowed. Gary was leaning forward peering into the thick stand of cypress trees ahead as they inched forward.

“I thought I saw something move,” Gary said.

Louis sat up straighter, his eyes straining into the dusk. Then he saw it — a faint quiver of white light. It was there and then it was gone, like a firefly moving through the trees.

“A flashlight?” Louis asked.

Gary braked. “A lantern most likely.”

He shut off the engine. The quiet rushed in, followed by the soft sounds of the coming night — frogs and crickets.

“We’d better walk from here,” Gary said.

Gary reached in the back and pulled out rifle and a flashlight, sticking the flashlight in his hunter’s vest. Louis slid out of the SUV, landing ankle-deep in warm water. He pulled out his Glock and followed Gary.

The outline of a shack materialized out of the gloom. It was constructed of weathered wood with a corrugated metal roof, its two windows boarded up. Louis couldn’t see a door; they must have approached from the back. A broken picnic table sat in the high weeds next to two rusted oil drums. In the swampy ground, Louis couldn’t make out any tracks. There was no sign of a vehicle, no lights, no sounds. No signs of any life.

“Shit,” Gary whispered at his side. “I could have sworn I saw something.”

“I saw it, too,” Louis said, his Glock trained on the shack’s windows. “Let’s check the front. You go left, I’ll take the right,” Louis said.

He crept up to the shack, flattening himself against the wall. He started slowly toward the front of shack.

A sudden pop!

He knew that sound. A silencer.

“Fuck! I’m hit!”

Gary. Somewhere to his left in the darkness.

A crashing noise, like someone running through brush.

“Gary!” Louis yelled.

A soft moan. Louis headed toward it.

In the darkness, he almost tripped over Gary’s body. Louis dropped to one knee. Gary was lying on his side in the mud, writhing.

“Shit,” Gary hissed, gripping his thigh.

“Did you see where he went?”

“No, no, I didn’t see anything. Ah, shit, it hurts…”

Suddenly, Gary went limp and quiet.

“Gary! Gary!”

No response.

Louis padded Gary’s vest and found his flashlight. Crouching low over Gary’s body, he switched it on. He had to find the wound, find out how badly Gary was hurt.

No blood. He couldn’t even see a hole in his jeans.

Son of a bitch.

Louis switched off the flashlight. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust but finally he could make out the black outline of the far trees. No light. The lantern was gone.

But Louis knew he was out there, waiting. Not with bullets but with tranquilizer darts.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The buzzing of insects filled his ears. Sweat burned his eyes.

Damn. He couldn’t see a thing.

But he couldn’t risk turning on the flashlight and being an easy target for a dart.

Louis pressed his fingers against Gary’s neck. His pulse was slow but strong. He remembered that Katy said a tranquilized panther would stay out for at least a half-hour.

He’d have to chance it and leave Gary here.

Louis began to crawl, slowly, silently, alert for every snap of branch or creak of a door opening. When he made it back to the shack, he eased up against the walls, moving back to the shuttered window. He pressed against it, straining to hear anything inside.

Nothing.

Then he heard it…a faint moaning sound.

No, not a moan. A low growl.

Grace was here, inside this shack. But what about Katy? She had to have heard him yell out Gary’s name. If she was inside, why hadn’t she called out?

Louis slipped around to the front of the shack, feeling his way along the planks for the door, mindful that there might be a cypress stump or porch he could trip over. But there was nothing under his feet but muck.

Grace growled again, louder this time, a deep throated cry that ended in a whimper. It was the strangest sound Louis had ever heard from an animal. Was she dying? Was the bastard performing some sick ritual on her?

Louis drew a breath and held it, hoping to hear a human voice. Nothing.

He knew he had to go in.

But if Grace was loose, wounded and hungry, she might attack him and he might be forced to — God forbid — shoot her. Even if Grace was caged, the shooter could be lying in wait inside and dart him as soon as he opened the door. He would have only a few seconds to return fire. And if he missed, he’d be helpless.

He should retreat. Go back to Gary’s SUV and get on the CB radio. Get some help out here, even if it didn’t come until dawn. He could keep this shack covered until then.

But then Grace cried again, a pitiful growl that floated in the night a long time before it faded. He couldn’t wait — Grace could be dead by morning.

Louis drew up the flashlight and his Glock and stepped to the door. He kicked it in, splintering the jamb.

A scream. Animal scream.

He switched on the flashlight and swung it in an arc. Grace…lying in a cage. Other things registered in a blur. A cot heaped with clothes. A dirty portable toilet. A belt of knives hanging on the wall. And the smell — like rotting meat.

A muffled sound in the dark corner behind him.

He spun.

It was Katy. She was tied up, arms over her head, suspended from a hook on a rafter. In the flashlight beam her eyes were wide and wild above her duct-taped mouth. Her face was streaked with mud and dried blood.

He went to her and peeled off the tape.

She pulled in a ragged breath. “Keno! He’s outside!”

“Katy, take a breath.”

She was tied with fishing line, looped over the hook. He began to work at the line on her wrists.

“He heard your truck and he tied and gagged me! He took the dart rifle and ran outside. He wants to — ”

Something hard came down on the back of Louis’s neck. He tumbled forward, almost falling into Katy. He dropped the flashlight and started to grope for it but suddenly he heard Keno working a rifle mechanism. The bastard was trying to load another dart.

Louis scrambled to his feet and suddenly a beam of light beam came up behind him — Katy had worked one hand free and was holding the flashlight. It washed Keno in white light. He stood, holding the large sighted rifle. His hands were shaking, his clothes were caked with mud and his face was dripping with sweat.

“Freeze!” Louis shouted, leveling the Glock at him.

“No. No, you don’t understand,” Keno said.

“Drop the damn gun!”

“I need to do this,” Keno said. “I need to save her. I need to save her now.”

“Drop the fucking gun!”

“Louis!” Katy said. “Don’t shoot him. He’s — ”

Keno got the dart chambered.

Damn it! He didn’t want to shoot this guy, not in front of Katy but the bastard wasn’t leaving him any choice.

“Louis, he’s trying to save Aunt Betty!” Katy cried. “He thought the panthers would — ”

Keno started to raise the rifle.

Louis fired.

The bullet caught Keno in the shoulder and spun him around. Keno dropped the rifle and fell, landing half outside the door.

Katy let out a strangled cry. Louis went to Keno and snatched up the rifle. He had aimed only to wound, hitting Keno in the shoulder. It was enough to bring him down but he wasn’t going to die.

A howl. Deep and pained, coming from Grace.

“Louis! Untie me! Quick!” Katy yelled.

He started back to Katy but saw the belt hanging on the wall and grabbed one of the knives. He had barely sliced through the fishing line before Katy yanked away and ran to the cage.

Louis used a piece of the fishing line to tie Keno to the door latch. Keno looked up at him then hung his head.

“Louis!”

He turned to Katy. She was crouched next to the cage, holding the flashlight on Grace. He got his first good look at the panther.

She was sprawled on her side in the small cage, all four legs out, her body heaving with labored breaths. The cage was littered with feces, small bones and uneaten food of some kind. Grace’s coat was matted with brown mud.

He went to Katy’s side.

“How did you find me?” Katy asked.

“I got worried and hunted down Gary,’ Louis said. “We checked all the abandoned camps.”

She looked at him, her face half-lit in the light. “Gary? Where is he?”

“Keno got him with the dart,” Louis said. “He’s outside, twenty, thirty feet from the shack.”

Katy nodded, her face slick with sweat. “Get me Keno’s rifle.”

“What?”

“Just get it!”

Louis got the rifle and brought it to Katy. When she stood up, she wavered. Louis held out a hand but she brushed it away and took the rifle.

Grace let out a bellow filled with pain.

“Take this and hold it so I can see her,” she said. Her hand was shaking as she gave him the flashlight.

Louis took the flashlight and trained it on the panther. Katy took two steps back. Her eyes were filled with tears. She raised the rifle.

“Katy, wait! Don’t! We can take her — ”

“She’s in pain, damn it!”

Grace raised her head, her eyes coming up to Katy.

Katy fired.

A sharp pop!

Grace’s head fell hard and her yellow eyes went blank.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Louis stared at the motionless panther. He didn’t even realize Katy had moved away until he felt something brush his shoulder. She was holding a blanket.

“I need your help,” she said.

“What?”

“There’s a Coleman lantern in here somewhere. Find it and bring it over to the cage.”

“Katy — ”

“Just do it, please!”

She knelt and untied the wire on the cage door. Louis swung the flashlight around the room until he found the lantern and some matches. He lit the lantern and brought it to Katy.

In the hard light of the lantern he got a better look at Grace. What he had thought was brown mud was dried blood, concentrated around her haunches. There was a small pool of fresh pink blood near her tail.

Katy swung the cage door open and ducked inside, grabbing Grace’s front legs.

“Help me get her out onto the blanket,” Katy said. “Take her back legs but be gentle.”

“Katy, what are you doing?”

“We have to get her out of the cage so we have room to work.”

“Work?”

Katy looked up at Louis, her eyes bright with a mixture of fear and — good god — excitement.

“Grace is in labor,” she said.

Louis glanced back at Grace. Now he could see the bulge in her belly. And labor explained the fresh blood.

Katy was examining the panther, pressing on her abdomen. “She’s too weak to do this herself,” she said. “We need to help her. There’s only one kitten.”

Louis’s mind started spinning with options. Move the truck up closer and load Grace in, use the CB to call for a chopper or something.

“Katy, we can get someone here in an hour,” he said.

Her head shot up. “No!” she said. “We can’t wait. I don’t know what the tranquilizer will do to the fetus. Grace and the kitten could be dead in an hour.”

Katy looked back to the panther. “The amniotic sac is visible but Grace can’t push it out.” She shook her head. “Damn, I don’t have gloves or antiseptic, I don’t have any oxytocin. damn it…”

Louis knelt, setting the lantern on the wood floor. “All right,” he said. “What do you need me to do?”

Katy gave him a wavering smile. “Bring me the knife and see if you can find a clean towel or something. And I need a piece of that fishing line.”

Louis rose and used the flashlight to do a quick scan of the shack. The place was decrepit and filthy, with nothing but some fast food wrappers and some jugs of bottled water. He finally found Keno’s knapsack. It held some toiletries and some men’s underwear.

He cut off some fishing line and took it and a pair of blue boxer shorts to Katy. She didn’t even look up as she took them.

“Hang on, Grace,” Katy whispered.

Louis could see a small greenish sac protruding from beneath Grace’s tail. He shut his eyes. A weird memory flashed to his brain, that day back in the police academy when they had breezed through the part in the textbook about delivering babies.

When he opened his eyes, Katy was carefully pulling out the sac. He watched, fascinated, as she wrapped the kitten in the blue shorts and broke the sac. She severed the cord with the knife and used an edge of the shorts to clean the fluid and tissue from the kitten’s mouth and nose.

“You need to tie the cord,” she said, nodding to the piece of fishing line.

“What?”

“Cut off a small piece of the line and tie it, close to the kitten’s belly.”

Louis knelt, sliced off a piece of line and carefully tied the umbilical cord. He sat back on his haunches, watching the kitten.

“It’s not breathing,” he said.

“I know,” Katy said. She began to rub the kitten briskly with the shorts. She rose suddenly, still cradling it. “There’s water somewhere in here. Where it is?”

“Over there,” Louis said, pointing.

Katy disappeared. Louis stayed crouched by the Grace, watching her closely. She was still out, but her lower abdomen was moving.

Suddenly, a second green blob appeared.

“Katy!”

“What?”

“There’s another one coming.”

“What? I only felt one!”

Louis could see the kitten’s head protruding now. But nothing else was happening.

“It’s stuck,” he yelled.

“You’ll have to pull it out.”

He yanked off his polo shirt and scooted closer to Grace. He wrapped the edge of the shirt over the kitten’s head and pulled downward gently but firmly.

Come on…

Slowly, the slimy little creature emerged. He grabbed the knife from the floor, carefully cut through the umbilical cord and tied it off.

Then he let out a breath, sat back on his haunches and looked down at the kitten cradled in his shirt. It was wiggling but its face was covered with tissue.

Gently, he rubbed the kitten’s nose and mouth like he had seen Katy do. At first the kitten didn’t respond then it opened its tiny mouth and let out a noise like a rusty hinge.

Yes. Breathe. That’s right. Breathe.

Another weak mew and the kitten settled in the folds of the shirt in Louis’s hands. He supposed he should set it down next to Grace but he wanted to hold it just a moment longer.

“Congratulations, dad.”

Louis looked up over his shoulder at Katy. Her face was slick with sweat and dirt. She looked exhausted but she was smiling.

“I’m glad you find this funny,” he said. He looked at the blood on her hands.

“Did the other one make it?” he asked.

She nodded.

Louis looked at Grace. The panther’s head was still down but her eyes were open now and her chest rose and fell in an even rhythm.

“Is Grace going to be okay?” Louis asked.

“Yes, she’ll be fine,” Katy said. She looked toward Keno, slumped near the door.

“What about Hachi?

“He’ll make it,” Louis said.

There was a sudden shuffling sound outside. Louis tensed and started to look for a spot to set his kitten down but then a bulky familiar frame filled the doorway.

Gary stood there, hands braced on the frame, wavering. His eyes went from Keno lying at his feet to Grace and finally back to Louis.

“What the fuck happened?” he asked.

Louis held up the kitten. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re an uncle.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“What the fuck happened here?”

The man standing in front of Louis — Hendry County sheriff Amos Zeedler — was sweaty, sleepy and confused. It was dawn and he had just arrived at the shack in a muddy white SUV, trailed by two detectives in a county swamp buggy. One of the detectives stood in the open-air buggy holding his rifle and looking like an anxious Secret Service agent on a rooftop. The other was hovering around Gary’s SUV, making small talk.

The Hendry entourage had been led here by Gary who had reluctantly left late last night to summon help once it had been decided that four humans and a cage holding a panther would not fit in Gary’s truck. And Katy’s Jeep was too low on gas to travel far.

“I asked what the fuck happened?” Zeedler asked again, looking hard at Louis. “Who’s been kidnapped? Who’s been shot? Who shot him and who the hell are you?”

“Louis Kindcaid,” Louis said, producing the badge Mobley had given him. Zeedler’s dark eyes flicked to the badge and back to Louis’s face. He seemed surprised there was a cop on the scene.

Louis had asked Gary to tell the Hendry County sheriff that a Lee County officer was involved and that Mobley would need to be notified. Apparently Gary had forgotten that last part.

“You’re one of Mobley’s guys,” Zeedler muttered.

Louis ignored the slight. “Yes, sir. Could you tell me if you have notified Sheriff Mob — ”

Zeedler’s eyes shot up to Louis, squinting against the rising sun. “Who got shot here?”

“An Indian named Hachi Keno.”

“Is Keno alive?”

“Yes, sir. He’s tied up inside.”

“Was he armed?” Zeedler asked.

“Yes, he had — ”

“Fuck,” Zeedler muttered again, looking off toward the cypress trees. “An officer-involved shooting. Just what I need right now.”

“With all due respect, sir, I’m not your officer and most of the paperwork and investigation will fall to Lee County. Now, I would — ”

Zeedler looked back at him. “Who did this Keno guy kidnap?”

Louis held Zeedler’s little black eyes for a moment. Louis was sure the sheriff wouldn’t notify Mobley until he knew exactly what had happened and how it would play out in the media.

Damn Gary.

He had done a piss-poor job at explaining things to Zeedler. And Louis knew why. Gary had hoped to give them enough information to get Hendry County out here, and then he planned to turn into a ghost, just like he had after the episode with the Fort Lauderdale robbers. But that wasn’t going to happen this time. The Hendry County deputy had not left the side of Gary’s SUV.

“The victim, officer,” Zeedler repeated. “Who did Keno kidnap?”

“Her name is Katy Letka,” Louis said. “She’s an officer with the Florida Wildlife Commission.”

“And that man Gary Tootillo outside — how is he involved in all this?”

“Katy and I were working on a poaching case. When Katy disappeared yesterday morning, I suspected Hachi Keno had taken her and was keeping her at one of these old camps. Gary knew about the camps and we spent most yesterday searching. We found her and Keno last night.”

Zeedler blew out a breath and again wiped his brow. He was so sweaty his dark uniform looked as if were melting onto his body.

“Don’t fuck around with me, officer,” Zeedler said. “You’re a cop. Why not just arrest Keno last night and drive him and the victim back into town in Toot-whatever’s vehicle?”

Louis hadn’t been fucking with Zeedler but he would now.

“Because we couldn’t have brought Grace with us,” Louis said.

Zeedler yanked off his hat. “Who the fuck is Grace?”

“Follow me,” Louis said.

“Now wait a minute,” Zeedler said.

Louis walked toward the shack. “Follow me, sir.”

Zeedler hesitated then decided to follow Louis to the shack. When Louis pushed open the door and Zeedler stepped inside, his hand went immediately to cover his nose.

Louis had heard that sunshine was the best disinfectant but in this case, the light only elevated the place from disgusting to revolting. Feces. Bones. Maggots. Rust.

How Katy had stayed in here all night, Louis didn’t know. It had to be a powerful devotion to Grace and those kittens. Even now, she was still sitting on the floor near the cage. He could tell she was exhausted but her eyes were lit with exhilaration.

Keno was tied to a hook on the opposite side of the shack, awake but pale. Katy had taken off his shirt and cleaned his wound the best she could. Louis’s bullet had caught him in the fleshy part of his shoulder, exiting cleanly. But even a minor gun wound could easily become infected.

“Sheriff Zeedler,” Louis said. “That’s officer Katy Letka, on the floor.”

Katy raised a hand in a weary acknowledgement.

“That man is Hachi Keno,” Louis said, “and that’s Grace in the cage.”

Zeedler spun back to Louis. “Grace is a goddamn panther?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“You son of a bitch,” Zeedler said. “You sneak into my jurisdiction, you solicit civilian help in a search for a kidnapper and then you shoot an Indian — all over a goddamn lost panther?”

“Poached panther,” Louis corrected. “Keno abducted Grace, which is what started all this.”

Zeedler just stood there, hand back at his mouth, his gaze circling the tiny shack. He was blanching a little and Louis hoped he would at least move outside if he puked up his coffee.

“Now will you call my sheriff and get him out here?” Louis asked.

Zeedler lowered his hand. His eyes grew even smaller, like shiny drops of oil. “Yeah, I’ll call your sheriff. And I’ll be surprised if you even have a job when he gets a load of all this crap.”

Louis suspected Zeedler was probably right, but he said nothing. Job or no job, he didn’t regret a moment.

Zeedler grabbed his radio and told his dispatcher to contact Sheriff Mobley. He added that he would be transporting a suspect to the hospital. Then he jammed the radio back in his belt and pointed to Keno.

“Untie that man,” Zeedler said. “I’m arresting him for kidnapping.”

“There was no kidnapping,” Katy said. “I went with him willingly.”

Louis glanced at Katy, not surprised she didn’t want Keno arrested. During the long night, Louis had wandered in and out of the hot fetid shack but Katy had stayed inside, watching Grace and the kittens but also talking to Keno. Even standing outside, Louis could hear the soft murmur of their voices. Keno would clam up every time Louis came back inside. Louis didn’t know exactly what Keno had told Katy but he had the feeling they had reached some understanding about Grace and some forgiveness about what Keno had done to Katy.

Zeedler stared at Katy for a moment then looked back to Keno, who was now paying attention to what was happening. He looked terrified.

“Then I’m taking him in for poaching an endangered animal,” Zeedler said.

A new voice came from behind them, deep and commanding. “I don’t think so.”

Everyone turned to the doorway. Moses Stanton stood there, arms crossed.

Like Zeedler had done, Moses took in the interior of the shack, his eyes resting a long time on Katy and Grace. He stepped inside and slowly took off his hat.

“Who the fuck are you?” Zeedler asked.

“Moses Stanton, executive assistant to the Seminole chief.”

“And who the hell called you?” Zeedler asked.

“Smoke signals,” Moses said, with a small smile.

“Very funny, Stanton,” Zeedler said.

“Let’s get to the point,” Moses said. “You have no reason to be here, sheriff.”

“The hell I don’t. We’re in my county,” Zeedler said. “And that panther over there is a federally protected animal. That means no one can hunt it. Not even Indians.”

“You’re wrong, sheriff,” Moses said. “May I remind you of a 1985 case right here in Hendry County. A Seminole man killed a panther and the state charged him with a felony for killing an endangered animal.”

“I remember that,” Zeedler said. “He got off because the court ruled old treaties said you could hunt anything you wanted on the reservation. But this panther is not on your land.”

“The lawyers said the treaties gave us the right to hunt anywhere, not just on our own land,” Moses said. “And it was argued that the Seminole had the right to kill the panther to use in a religious ritual.”

Louis glanced at Katy. She gave him a small shake of her head as if to warn him not to ask any questions.

“It doesn’t matter what the fucking lawyers said,” Zeedler said. “The case was dismissed.”

Moses nodded. “Do you want to spend the next two years fighting about this again?”

For a moment, Zeedler looked so angry he couldn’t draw a breath. But then the anger faded to simple frustration. He looked down at Keno and then at Grace in the cage.

He shook his head. “All right,” he said. “I’m not going to the mat over a fucking cat.” He looked at Louis. “Mobley can deal with this — and you.”

Zeedler pushed by Moses out the door. Louis turned to watch him as he stalked back through the tall grass toward his swamp buggy.

“I will be taking Hachi with me,” Moses said.

“I can’t let you do that,” Louis said.

“Why not?”

“Because I shot him,” Louis said.

Moses nodded. “He probably deserved it,” he said.

“That’s not the point,” Louis said. He wiped his sweating forehead, his head clouded from exhaustion. “I’m a cop,” he said. “I’m looking at a shit storm because of this.”

Moses smiled slightly. Then he turned to Katy.

“Did Hachi hurt you?” he asked.

“He didn’t mean to,” Katy said.

“Did he hurt the panther?”

“He didn’t know how to help her. That’s why he brought me here.”

Moses went to Keno and knelt by his side. He carefully removed the cloth Katy had put on Keno’s bare shoulder and examined the wound. Then he tilted Keno forward and looked at his back.

“It doesn’t look bad,” he said, looking up at Louis. “The bullet went right through.”

Moses rose and began to search for something, running his hand along the wood planks near the door. Louis realized he was looking for the bullet.

“It’s to your left,” Louis said.

Moses pulled out a pocket knife.

“Leave it there,” Louis said.

Moses popped the bullet out of the wood.

“You just contaminated the crime scene,” Louis said.

Moses looked at him. “There was a crime committed here?”

“There was a shooting, damn it!”

Moses gave him a small smile then put the bullet in his mouth and swallowed it.

“What shooting?” Moses said.

Louis stared at him, stunned.

Zeedler was suddenly back. He thrust a radio at Louis’s chest. “Mobley wants to talk to you,” he said. “You’re on a secure channel.”

Moses slipped out of the shack. Louis stood in the doorway watching him.

“Kincaid! You there?”

Louis keyed the radio. “Yeah…yeah, I’m here.”

“Sheriff Zeedler tells me you’ve got a mess out there. You shot the suspect?”

Louis rubbed his face. “Yes, sir. He’s okay.”

The radio was silent and Louis knew Mobley was thinking that this was going to be shit storm for him, too.

“You stay put,” Mobley said finally. “I’ll call the reservation and talk to Chief Gilley. Maybe I can save your ass.”

Louis looked outside at Moses. He was just standing there, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the sky.

“I don’t think you’ll need to, sheriff,” Louis said. “I don’t think the tribe is interested in prosecuting me. I think they consider this a family thing.”

“You telling me they don’t care you shot one of them?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you, sir.”

Mobley was quiet again.

“How’s the woman?” he asked finally.

Katy was still sitting on the floor by the cage. Her head was down on her knees.

“Katy’s fine. But I need to get her out of here.”

“And the cat?”

Louis moved over to the cage. Grace seemed to be sleeping. One of the kittens had crawled away. It was the one Louis had delivered. He could tell because it had more spots than the other one. It raised its tiny head and looked up, its eyes as blue as the sky. He wanted to think the kitten was looking at him but he knew it was probably only attracted to the sunlight coming from the door.

“The cat is fine, sir,” Louis said. “So are her kittens.”

“Kittens?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a long silence.

“They have blue eyes,” Louis said. “They’ll photograph well.”

There was no response and Louis thought Mobley had just clicked off, probably satisfied that he wasn’t going to have to wade through the jurisdictional swamp of the Seminole sovereign nation thing over one of his deputies. No, not even a real deputy. A private eye he had semi-hired during an alcoholic haze and sent him on a joke of a case so he could justify not giving him a real chance to wear a badge.

There was a huge spider web in the corner of the open door. Louis stared at it, watching the yellow and black spider move slowly toward a squirming exhausted fly.

A burst of radio from the radio brought him back.

“You still there, Kincaid?”

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

“Well done, deputy Kincaid,” Mobley said. “Well done.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was too hot to eat. It was too hot to sleep. It was too hot to even move.

Louis lay still on his bed amid the damp tangled sheets, staring up at the ceiling fan. It did almost nothing to cool the cottage down but it was all he had now. Yesterday the air conditioner had finally died and his weasel landlord Pierre said it would be at least three days before he could get a new unit installed.

Louis looked down at the foot of the bed. Issy was sprawled on her side, all four legs extended, unmoving. He rose on one elbow to watch her. It took a minute but he finally saw the gentle rise and fall of her thin chest.

It was almost too hot to even breathe.

He rose, pulled on a pair of shorts and went out into the living room, glancing at the stove clock. Almost five. He had napped for two hours.

Louis grabbed a Heineken and started toward the porch, stopping as his eyes fell on the telephone and the answering machine. The machine’s steady red light stared back at him like a taunting eye.

He had called Lily this morning but there had been no answer and he had to assume — hope — that Lily and her mother were still away at ballet camp. He still hadn’t told her he wasn’t going to make it up to Michigan in time for her birthday but he was determined not to break the news with a message.

Louis took a swig of beer. He had called Joe, too. No answer at her cabin and he hadn’t had to guts the call her office, afraid he’d be told she was still on vacation.

He took another long drink of beer. He didn’t want to think of her, lying in some big bed at the Ritz Carlton in Montreal with some guy.

He brought the cold beer bottle up to his sweating forehead and closed his eyes.

Screw this.

He grabbed a second beer and went out onto the porch. The sea oats on the low dune beyond his yard were swaying slightly. If there was any air to be found, it would be down by the water.

The beach was deserted. No one searching for shells, no one braving the bite of no-see-ums. Late August on Captiva. Even paradise could sometimes feel like hell.

Louis dropped down onto the beach, wedged the unopened beer in the sand and took a drink from the open one. As he watched the sun’s slow descent into the gulf, he tried to will his mind to go blank. But Joe was there at his side.

Have you ever heard of the green flash?

No, Louis, but I suspect you’re going to tell me about it.

It’s an atmospheric phenomenon where if conditions are just right, the top of the sun will turn green just before it disappears. The Celts believed that anyone who sees it can never be hurt by love.

He had shut his eyes, giving in to the lull of the surf and he didn’t hear her come up behind him.

“Hey there, stranger.”

He looked up into Katy’s face.

“I followed your footprints down here,” she said.

He smiled and patted the sand. “Have a seat.”

She sat down, cross-legged on the sand next to him. “Where have you been? I called you a couple days ago.”

“I had to go down to Bonita Springs for a deposition. I’m testifying in an insurance fraud trial next month.”

“I tried the sheriff’s office, too, but they said they hadn’t seen you around.” She paused. “So the job there didn’t work out after all?”

He took a long draw from the beer. “Haven’t heard,” he said.

Katy was quiet for a moment. “You see that picture of Mobley in the paper?”

Louis nodded. “Yeah. He was holding my kitten.”

“How do you know it was yours?”

“I just did.”

She chuckled. “I named it Lou.”

Louis turned to her. “Lou?”

She shrugged. “The only rocker I could think of was Lou Reed. The other kitten is named Nico, after his girlfriend.”

“Lou…close enough.” He held out the second beer. “You want one?”

She nodded, took the bottle and popped the top. After taking a drink she set it down in the sand front of her. “I called you because I wanted to explain about Hachi.”

Louis knew that Mobley had reached a détente with the Seminole police chief and Keno had gone back to the reservation. No charges had been filed by anyone or against anyone.

“I know it bothers you that he got away with it,” Katy said. “But you need to understand why he did it.”

“Katy — ”

She held up a hand. “I want to tell you.” She pulled in a deep breath. “I left the rez when I was twenty so I didn’t know much about him but Moses told me what I am telling you. Hachi’s mother died when he was very young and in the tribe your social place is counted only through your mother’s side. He was taken in by my great aunt Betty’s family even though she is of a different clan. Hachi was a lonely kid. Even after the ceremony — ”

She stopped to look at Louis. “The Seminoles have a special ceremony to recognize a boy’s entrance to manhood. Even after that, he couldn’t seem to find his place. He didn’t really belong to anyone or anything.”

“Lots of people don’t fit in,” Louis said. “But they don’t commit crimes.”

“But in his mind it wasn’t a crime.”

“So why’d he go after the panthers?”

Katy let out a sigh. “It’s complicated. The tribe has doctors but they also still have shamans.”

“What, like medicine men?” Louis asked.

She nodded. “They use plants and animal parts to treat our people. They are important in our ceremonies and are very respected in the tribe. Hachi wanted to go to medical school but didn’t even make it through high school so he decided he was going to become a medicine man.”

“You just become a medicine man?”

“No, and that was the problem. Shamans are chosen and trained from boyhood.”

Louis was quiet, watching the sunset. “You said something back at the shack about Keno wanting to use the panther to help your aunt. Is that what this was all about?”

“Yes,” Katy said quietly. “He believed that if he could get the placenta of a mother panther he could use it to cure Aunt Betty’s sickness. That’s why he tried to take Bruce, to mate with Grace. But then he realized Grace was already pregnant. And he came to get me to help.”

Louis shook his head. “I have to ask, Katy. Is he mentally ill?”

She sighed. “No, just lost. And desperate to help Aunt Betty, to stop something no one can stop.”

They fell silent. The sun was hovering just above the horizon as the sky began its slow kaleidoscopic color shift.

Katy leaned forward, drawing her finger through the sand to make two intersecting lines.

“What’s that?” Louis asked.

“The world,” she said.

“I thought the world was round?”

“This is the world of man’s two souls.”

“I thought we only had one.”

In the waning light he saw her smile. “Humor me,” she said.

“Okay, go ahead.”

“The Seminoles believe we all have two souls,” she said. “The first one is the one that leaves our bodies when we die. The second one, the ghost soul, leaves the body when we dream and it sort of just wanders around until we wake up.”

“I’ve had nights like that,” Louis said.

“Well, our dream soul needs to travel to the north, but sometimes it gets lost and goes across the solopi heni. That’s our word for the Milky Way, the road that leads to the west. The west is where the dead souls go. If a ghost soul wanders into the west then when the person wakes up their ghost soul is forever sick.”

She brushed the sand from her hands. “That’s what happened to Hachi.”

Louis was staring down at the lines in the sand. “Do we all go north in our dreams?”

She looked over at him and smiled. “Yes. The north is the place of happiness.”

Louis was quiet. A sudden breeze blew in from the water, cool and smelling of rain. Far out over the gulf, a zigzag of lightning lit up the purple clouds then it was dark again.

“It’s getting late,” Katy said. “I better go.”

“Want to go get a burger or something?” Louis asked.

“I can’t. I’m going over to see my aunt. And I want to talk to Moses about working part time on the reservation.”

“Really? Doing what?”

“They can use a good vet.” She paused. “I want to get back inside. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Louis said. “Yeah, I do.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Louis stopped at the glass doors to the county building and squinted at his reflection.

Not bad for an off-the-rack Dilliard’s clearance suit. It fit him perfectly, though he knew it wouldn’t have six months ago before he started working out. He had hit for a Ferragamo blue tie and crisp white shirt to go with the charcoal gray suit. He looked like he could be going to a job interview or a funeral.

He wished he knew which one it was going to be.

Louis yanked open the door and was met inside by icy air and a cacophony of voices. Suits and deputies were everywhere and radio traffic echoed through the tiled halls.

It had been almost a week since he had found Grace. Mobley had finally called him at seven this morning, waking Louis from a sound sleep.

He expected Mobley would grudgingly concede the job, saying something like “It’s a done deal. Come in later to start your paperwork.”

But he hadn’t said that. He said something else.

We need to talk. My office. Two sharp.

Louis had crawled out of bed and sat there for a minute, his hopes slowly dying as he started to question the reasons for Mobley’s terse phone call.

There was a chance Mobley was just screwing with him again. Making him wait, making him hold his breath. Mobley had already said he had done a good job, and the sheriff’s photo with the kittens had been picked up by newspapers as far away as Arizona. How could Mobley not give him this job?

But it might not be completely up to Mobley. Maybe there were other hoops to jump through, other people Louis had to face. The undersheriff. The lawyers handling the EEOC lawsuits Mobley was facing. Maybe even the county board of supervisors who probably weren’t too eager to let Mobley hire a P.I. whose face had been on the cover of “Criminal Pursuits” magazine.

Which is why Louis had gone to Dilliard’s this morning and bought the suit he couldn’t afford and shined his only pair of dress shoes with a banana peel, a trick he had learned in the academy.

If he was going to stand up before a firing squad at least he’d look good.

Mobley’s reception area was empty. Ginger’s desk looked abandoned. Photos, the pink ceramic pen holder and the plants on her credenza were gone. So was her nameplate.

The office door opened and Mobley came out. His eyes swept over Louis. “Nice threads. What happened to your old blazer?” he asked.

“Don’t ask.”

Mobley didn’t smile but his eyes showed a hint of amusement as he led Louis into the office. It was ice cold, the force of the air conditioner rattling the closed blinds. Mobley’s desk was stacked with folders and papers. His inbox had overflowed into the empty outbox. The trashcan was stuffed. A pile of newspapers covered his back shelf.

“Sorry for the mess,” Mobley said. “I’m short-handed.”

“Where’s Ginger?” Louis asked.

“She got promoted.”

“To what?”

Mobley had to think for a minute. “Executive Director of Compliance for Fair and Equal Employment Opportunities in Law Enforcement Environments.”

“Sounds like a lawyer’s job.”

“She is a lawyer,” Mobley said. “Passed the bar last month.”

Louis had always assumed Ginger was another of Mobley’s empty-headed bimbos. He did that too often, he realized, assuming things. He had made assumptions about Katy, about Indians, about hunters and even about panthers. None proved accurate.

“Sit down, Kincaid.”

“I’ll stand, if you don’t mind.”

Mobley picked up a folder. “This is what took me so long to get back to you,” he said. “It’s the results of your background check.”

Louis said nothing.

“I suppose I should have made my original offer contingent on a background check since no matter how much I might want to hire someone, some things in a man’s past are automatic eliminators that I can do nothing about.”

Louis stiffened his spine, trying not to show his disappointment.

“I don’t particularly like some of the things you did when you were in uniform in Michigan,” Mobley said. “And I don’t like how you’ve handled some of your cases here in Florida. Or the large number of shitheads you’ve had to shoot.”

Louis stayed quiet, fighting the urge to just thank Mobley for the chance at wearing a badge and get the hell out of here.

“But,” Mobley went on, “no matter your methods, you’re an honest man. Your moral compass, to coin a phrase, is pointed in the right direction.”

He had it. He had the job.

“I can teach a man a lot of things,” Mobley said. “I can’t teach integrity. You’re hired.”

“Thank — ” Louis cleared his throat. “Thank you, sir.”

“It’s only as a deputy,” Mobley said.

“I’m fine with that.”

“You’ll go through all the formalities,” Mobley said, opening a drawer. He pulled out another file, opened it and started through the papers inside.

“Here’s a packet of some of your pre-hire paperwork. You’ll have to report for a drug test, take a physical, take a psych exam — ” Mobley looked up at him. “You can get through one of those, right?”

“I think so.”

“You’ll have two more interviews,” Mobley said. “The path is greased unless you say something to really piss someone off, so try to show some respect to the oral board, okay? They’re kind of old guard.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mobley handed him the folder. “Anyway, there’s more junk in there. Personnel and emergency contacts forms, health and life insurance, academy registration crap. There’s a guy down in Human Resources named Archie. He sets up all the tests. You need to see him before you leave here.”

“Today?”

“The next academy class starts September 15,” Mobley said. “I called in a couple of markers with FDLE to get you admitted to it. If you want this job, you’ll make that other stuff happen. Am I clear?”

Lily…

The Academy was a sixteen-week course. Before today, making it up to Michigan to see her was going to mean only a two-week postponement. Now it would be four months. And there would be no vacation time for a year at least.

“Yes, sir, we’re clear,” Louis said.

Mobley motioned to the door. “You need to get your ass out of here,” he said. “I have the final interviews for Ginger’s job.”

Mobley reached for the door, but before he opened it, he put a hand out. Louis shook it.

“Thank you, sheriff.”

“Just don’t screw me on this, Kincaid.”

“Not a chance.”

Mobley opened the door. Three striking young women in business suits, sitting in chairs along the wall, looked up.

The first had flowing dark brown hair, large brown eyes and long shapely legs crossed at the knees. Hispanic.

The second woman wore her black hair sleekly pulled back, set off with gold hoop earrings and red lipstick. African- American.

The third woman was petite, with silky black hair cut around her face in a swish-swish style that made her look younger than she probably was. She wore no make-up but she didn’t need any. Her skin was smooth as porcelain. Asian.

Louis looked back to Mobley and raised a brow. “Interesting group of candidates,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Mobley said. “Diversity is a beautiful thing.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

It was past four by the time Louis finished up with Archie in Human Resources. He exited the station, a fat folder of forms under his arm, and stepped out into the thick August air.

At the Mustang, he paused to yank off his blue tie and suit jacket and tossed them on the passenger seat along with the folder.

The buzz of getting the job was still there. After almost six years without one, after all these years working in the shadows as a PI, he was finally going to feel the sweet weight of a badge again.

Damn, he wanted to share this moment with someone.

Mel. But then he remembered that he had gone to Atlanta with his girlfriend Yuba to meet her mother. It had surprised him that things had gotten that serious for his friend, but he was happy for him.

Susan Outlaw and her son Ben. They wouldn’t really understand how important this was.

Sam Dodie. His old chief from Mississippi would get it but Sam and Margaret were roaming around out west somewhere in their motor home.

Phillip. But his foster father was thirteen-hundred miles away up in Michigan and this wasn’t something that could be celebrated over the phone.

Joe…

More than anyone she would know what this meant to him. But he wasn’t ready to talk to her yet, wasn’t ready to find out if her trip to Montreal had been her way of moving on after their argument last Christmas.

Louis looked over the hood of the car toward the station, watching as two cops come out in street clothes, laughing as they headed toward their cars, probably bound for O’Sullivan’s and after-shift unwinding. For a second he considered going there but he decided to wait until he had a badge, until he was finally one of them.

He got in the Mustang, started it up and turned the air on high. For a moment he just sat there, hands on the wheel, squinting out the windshield into the low-slung white sun.

Katy.

Katy would get it.

He glanced at his watch. She’d still be at her office for at least another hour. He slammed the Mustang in gear and peeled out of the lot.

Her desk was empty but there was a full cup of steaming coffee sitting amid the mess of papers. There was no one else in the office, so Louis headed back toward the area holding the panther cages.

There was Katy, standing behind a metal table holding a plastic baby bottle. Jeff was beside her, a wadded up towel in his hands.

“Louis!” Katy said, looking up.

“Hey Katy,” he said. “How’s it going, Jeff?”

“Fine, Mr. Kincaid.”

“Louis, it’s Louis, okay?” As he came forward he realized Jeff was cradling a panther kitten in the towel. It was squirming and making raspy mewing noises.

“Oh man,” Louis said. “Is that Lou?”

“Yup,” Katy said.

“He’s gotten big in a week.”

Katy nodded. “He’s going to be a really big boy, maybe over one-forty.” She held up the bottle. “Hold him tight, Jeff. Let’s give him the rest of his vitamins.”

The kitten was fighting to get out of the towel but Jeff firmly wrapped its legs and Katy injected the last of the white liquid into the tiny pink mouth.

Louis heard a strange huffing noise and looked to the cage at his left. Grace was pacing, watching them anxiously. The second kitten, Nico, was asleep in the back of the cage.

“Okay, we’re done,” Katy said.

Louis watched as Jeff opened a small door of the cage and carefully set the kitten back inside. Grace immediately began licking it. After a moment, she grabbed it by the nape and took it back to the corner.

Louis watched them, thinking about the signs he had seen coming onto the preserve and across Alligator Alley. PANTHER CROSSING. DRIVE CAREFULLY.

“How long will you keep them here?” he asked.

“A couple more weeks,” Katy said. “Then we have to release them.”

Louis turned to look at her. He was puzzled that he didn’t see any sadness in her expression. But then he realized that any sentimentality he might have about the cats wasn’t part of Katy’s makeup. She could love the cats but she couldn’t let herself get too attached. It was like his job in a strange way. He could care about the people he helped, fight for the victims, and even mourn the dead. But if he let any of it sit in his heart too long he couldn’t do what he needed to do.

Jeff left, heading out a back door.

Katy glanced over Louis, taking in his dress slacks and shirt for the first time. “Hot date?” she asked.

“No, job interview. I’m going back in uniform.”

Her smile widened. “That’s great. I know how much you wanted it.”

“That’s why I’m here,” he said. “Want to go have a beer to help me celebrate?”

She shook her head. “I’d love to, Louis, but I can’t right now. Jeff and I have to — ”

Louis held up a hand. “Work. I get it. Some other time maybe.”

She cocked her head. “You want to come help us?”

“Help you do what?”

“We’re releasing Bruce today. Jeff has him crated and ready to go.”

“He’s okay?” Louis asked.

“Good to go.” Katy smiled. “He’ll do better out there than in here.” She pulled off her apron and looked at her watch. “We need to do it at dusk because they feel safer then. So, you want to come?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Louis said.

The setting sun was just starting to singe the tops of the cypress trees when Jeff slowed the swamp buggy. Riding in the passenger seat, Louis had a clear view of the landscape but still no idea where they were. He knew that unlike Katy, who seemed as at home in the Glades as the panthers, he would never feel like anything but an intruder in this primordial place.

He had come to appreciate its desolate beauty, come to understand its strange pull on the soul. But he still didn’t belong here.

Jeff stopped the swamp buggy. The quiet, after the roar of the engine, was almost deafening. Katy, who had been riding in the back with another ranger, jumped out and came up to Louis.

“You sure you want to mess up those nice shoes?” she asked, smiling.

“Screw the shoes. Let’s go.”

It took all four of them to lift the crate down from the buggy. It was solid wood except for the breathing holes so Louis couldn’t see Bruce. He could only hear him, hear his anxious panting.

Louis had sweated through his white dress shirt by the time they set the crate down on the marshy ground. He wiped his face, looking around.

They were somewhere deep in the preserve and Katy had chosen an isolated hammock for the release site, an island of brush and trees that sat a foot or so above the shallow water.

There was a low fringe of dark green on the far horizon and above that the sky was a huge blister of purple and orange. They had maybe ten minutes of daylight left.

“Let’s do it,” Katy said.

She went to the front of the crate and grasped the handle in the front. She gave it a hard tug upward.

“Go,” she said softly.

The panther was a brown blur and it took Louis’s eyes a second to catch up with Bruce. He was running across the open field at full speed. Then with a splash of his hind legs in the shallow water, he was gone.

Louis stared at the spot in the dark brush where the panther had disappeared.

“Where’s he going?” he said.

“North,” Katy said.

She stood staring into the darkness. “It’s still mating season,” she said. “He’ll travel hundreds of miles to find a mate if he has to.”

They stood silent for a moment then Katy let out a long breath, turned and walked back to the swamp buggy.

Louis didn’t move. He looked east, where the rising moon was a pale sliver and Venus burned bright. He looked west, where a flock of egrets seeking a roosting place slid silently across the purple sky. He looked north, where the panther had gone.

Suddenly, he knew what he had to do. He still wanted the badge but it would have to wait a little while longer. Mobley would rip him a new one and Louis knew he’d spend the next year clawing his way back to Mobley’s good side but he also knew that the sheriff understood that a good cop was first a good man.

Before he set foot in that academy Louis knew he had to go north, for just a while.

North, where Lily waited for a birthday party.

North, where maybe, just maybe, Joe waited for him.

Content

P. J. Parrish
Claw Back

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER F IVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY