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Was it different with Eastern? Looking at his nervous rantings through the curtain of suspicion Harland had dropped he did seem a little insane.
A
It was absurd. She was clutching at straws, and melodramatic straws at that.
The autopsy would show something: congenital heart failure, brain aneurysm. Something that would prove Sheila was dead before the lion tasted her. But by the time the report came-if it ever did and wasn't simply lost in some FBI file- it would be too late. Not many days would pass before Paulsen's dogs would tree a cougar. It would be dubbed, after the required five minutes of deliberation, to be the cougar, and it would be shot.
"Damn! Damn! Damn!" A
"Think of something else, it's your day off," A
For twelve hours she managed to school her mind. Distract it, was more accurate: a Schwarzenegger movie, a couple of Tecates, a "new" Patsy Cline tape.
Near nine p.m., as she drove back to Guadalupe, Patsy singing "Too Many Secrets," A
Beside her on the seat, atop an accumulated pile of rubble, were the slides she'd taken on the lion transect and of the Dog Canyon Ranger's corpse. A
Technically she should have turned the roll in to the clerk, filled out a form for funding, and waited the requisite eternity for the machinery to grind out one small task.
Patience was not A
Contemplating the envelope she had assiduously ignored all day, she wondered what it was she was so anxious to see. Sheila Drury's intestines festooning the front of her uniform like macabre confetti?
Most definitely, she wanted to see the blood again. If she remembered correctly, there'd been very little. Surely that indicated the lion had clawed Ranger Drury sometime after she had achieved corpse-hood.
That might be an argument that would quicken some kind of interest in Paul. Then he would stop the hunt. If he could. Cori
"Be fair," A
Mankins was in the Cholla Chateau with Cheryl Light, watching television when A
The light in Craig's apartment was out. There was only the eerie purple glow of his snake aquarium light through the white curtain. Either he'd already gone to bed or he was camping on the West Side despite the invasion of the space aliens.
A
The slides were tossed into the bag with the onions and the chocolate pudding. Leaving the frozen goods to hold their own for a few minutes more, A
With hope but no expectations, she peered quickly through the transect photos, then dropped the first corpse shot into the viewer and held it up to the light.
Nothing had changed. The images that she held in her mind were accurate. The shots of the scratches and the puncture wounds were disappointing. The light was so poor when she'd taken them that the colors were faded. It was impossible to tell where the blood ended and the mud began. Not enough proof to impress Cori
A
Was that the way it was with Sheila? Had she delicately made her way into the saw grass, protecting her arms and face, then, with the sudden swipe of one deadly paw, been struck down? And, before the lion dragged or worried at his prey, he was frightened away?
It could have happened that way. But, A
The cat would have nothing to do with it. A
"Be that way," A
A
Both sets of prints, the front and the hind, were forepaws.
"That can't be right…" she whispered, pushing her eye closer to the light source. She changed slides; studied the first one again. There were no prints from hind paws.
A lion with four front paws.
A lion that walked on its hands.
A lion eleven feet long that kept its hind paws on the stone.
A lion with its ass in a sling.
A
When it's dead, she thought, and that's what this lion- or some lion-will be if the hunt's not stopped.
Again she looked at the slides. She was not mistaken. Proof.
Proof of what, she wasn't exactly sure. Proof there was something fishy about the Drury Lion Kill.
"Proof we should look at this whole situation a little more closely before we go bashing around in the wilderness with dogs and guns killing off the wildlife." A
Chief Ranger Mathers was a small woman but big breasted and big hipped, with short, iron-gray hair that curled naturally around her ears. Her face was round, suggesting both plumpness and softness. Neither was accurate. Cori