The Koala of Death (10 page)
“The natives weren’t restless tonight?” I asked.
“Nope. Except for a couple of DUIs we pulled in, everyone was remarkably well-behaved. How was your mother’s party?”
I answered the question he’d actually wanted to ask. “Have no fear; Jason Jackman McIlhenny Forbes IV turned out to be a drunken oaf.”
“She fixed you up with
him
? Unbelievable. Mr. Four happens to be one of the DUIs we arrested tonight. In fact, the little creep has paid so many DUI fines in this county that he’s almost bought us a new jail wing. Doesn’t your mother read the ‘Mean Streets’ crime column in the
San Sebastian Gazette
? He’s been mentioned at least five times, and that’s just this year.”
I had to laugh. “Caro only reads the Society page.”
“Wait a minute. Do I hear music?”
“Friday is party night down here, as you well know. At one time or another, you’ve arrested half the folks in the harbor.”
“Don’t exaggerate. I just tell them to turn the music down and remind them there’s a five-hundred-dollar fine for skinny-dipping.”
The mention of skinny-dipping turned the conversation to more personal topics for the next few minutes, so it wasn’t until we were about to hang up that I remembered to ask Joe some questions of my own.
“Joe, how did Kate die?”
“Teddy…”
“You might as well tell me because it must have been on the news. I just haven’t had a chance to catch it.”
A sigh. “Her body was somewhat bloated by the time you fished her out, so you couldn’t see the red mark around her neck, but she’d been strangled. The medical examiner found flecks of metal in the wound, so the thinking is that the killer used a wire garrote. The advantage of that kind of weapon is its silence. The victims’ airways are immediately compressed. They can’t cry out for help.”
I digested that grim piece of information for a moment, then asked, “You’re certain there was no chance of an accident, like, once she fell into the harbor she got tangled up in some kind of wire?”
“Of course not. And there are other reasons I arrested your buddy.”
I started to protest that Bill wasn’t my buddy, that I’d only known him for a couple of months, but stopped before the disloyal statement left my mouth. Instead, I asked, “What other reasons?”
“I’m not going to tell you, Teddy.”
“Did he confess?”
“Nope. He didn’t have to. Believe me, we’ve got plenty of evidence.”
“Does he have an attorney?”
“The county will appoint him one.”
I asked the question I’d meant to ask the Grimaldis. “How did he get through the electronic harbor gate? He doesn’t have a key card.”
“Teddy, you know those key cards go missing all the time. Now let’s change the subject. Did your mother buy you a new dress?”
“Of course she did. She always dresses her little piggy up for market.”
“Wear it Monday, okay? I’m taking you to brunch at Jacqueline’s.”
Jacqueline’s Bistro was the San Sebastian eatery Joe likes to dine at on special occasions. After tonight’s party, I wasn’t up to more formality, so I suggested a late breakfast at Fred’s Fish Market instead.
With a laugh, Joe agreed, adding, “You are such a barbarian.”
“More than you realize. Caro once hired a genealogist who managed to trace the family bloodline all the way back to the Visigoths.”
“Now
that
I can believe.”
More laughter. Then we billed and cooed until we finally hung up, after which I went below deck and joined Bonz and Miss Priss on sea-scented sheets.
Just before I fell asleep, a discomfiting thought popped into my mind. If Bill had ridden his bike twelve miles from Castroville to Gunn Landing Harbor, surely someone must have seen him peddling along Highway One. A farm supplies salesman, coming back from his rounds. A waitress, having finished her shift. Or even a harbor dweller, heading home to his boat after a late night at work.
Did Joe have a witness?
Saturday was the designated day for the zoo’s Great Flamingo Round-Up, and I had promised Manny Salinas, the head bird keeper, that I would help. Our forty Chilean flamingos were due for their West Nile virus vaccinations, and getting them treated entailed two hours of personnel-intensive labor. Because having the public there might complicate the process, Manny wanted the work completed before the zoo opened.
I arrived promptly at six and went straight to Flamingo Lagoon, the wedge-shaped enclosure situated across the visitors’ walkway from Gunn Zoo Lake. A four-foot wire fence is all that separated the birds from the public, but since our flamingos’ wings have been pinioned so that they can’t fly, this fencing is more than adequate. At the northern end of the enclosure stood an eight-foot-high masonry wall that kept the birds from pecking at their neighbors, the alpacas. Other than that one high wall, Flamingo Lagoon offered the birds all the comforts of home: an acre to roam in, plenty of shade, and a shallow pond where they could fish to their avian heart’s content.
Today the birds were sharing their enclosure with fourteen humans. Three vets had already set up at a series of tables, their syringes gleaming against white cloth. Next to the vets, technicians from the Animal Care Building, their faces a mixture of excitement and dread, counted out vials of serum as they eyed the flamingos.
The flamingos eyed the technicians even more warily.
This was all to the good, because it kept the flamingos’ eyes off the southwest corner of the enclosure, where a group of keepers stood holding the four plastic panels used to corral the birds. At Manny’s signal, the keepers would march forward with their panels in a pincher movement, eventually trapping the birds against the high masonry wall. Once at the wall, waiting keepers would pick up the birds one by one, carry them to a vet for inoculation, then turn them loose. Easy does it, no muss, no fuss. Everybody healthy and happy.
That was the plan, anyway.
As a nonbirder with no flamingo experience, my job was to stand on the visitors’ walkway outside the enclosure and act as an outfielder in case one of the birds made it over the fence and headed for the lake. No flamingo had ever escaped since the Great Flamingo Round-Up was initiated several years back, so no one was especially worried. I had plenty of backup, too. Several yards to my right stood Robin Chase, the big cat keeper who for some reason had decided to hate me, and Myra Sebrowski, who disliked any woman she saw as a rival. Equidistant away on my left stood Gunn Zoo hunk Lex Yarnell, who kept casting flirty glances Myra’s way.
Once we were all assembled in our proper places, Manny Salinas raised his hand and the line of panel-bearing keepers moved forward. They walked so slowly it took the flamingos a minute to figure out what was happening. By then it was too late.
You seldom see a lone flamingo, because flamingos flock. That’s their inbred defense mechanism. This “don’t grab me, grab the other guy” strategy works well on the coastal lagoons of Chile, where it helps individual birds defend themselves from predators. It doesn’t work so well at a zoo, because it makes them easy to catch. As the keepers and their plastic panels advanced, a tightly packed pink sea flowed ahead of them, honking in irritation.
Chilean flamingos are tall birds. They can grow to five feet, but they weigh only five to seven pounds; their height is comprised mainly of legs and neck. This lightness of being makes them easy to haul around, which the keepers started doing as soon as all the flamingos were trapped in the makeshift plastic corral. But the birds’ spindly legs made them extraordinarily fragile, so I admired the care with which the keepers handled them. They grabbed the flamingos while their wings were still folded around their body, the best way to avoid breaking fragile wing bones. Most birds were carried away, long yellow legs dangling, with little struggle, but not all went peacefully. Several long pink necks snaked around keepers’ backs as vicious hooked beaks attempted to find purchase on human flesh.
The noise was deafening, because flamingoes don’t chirp—they honk.
Imagine, if you will, a forty-car traffic jam with each driver leaning on his horn in frustration. That’s what forty trapped flamingos sound like. Add to that the yelps from keepers when flamingos did manage to bite them, and you had one heck of an atonal symphony.
“Some racket, huh?” I called to Lex over the din.
He flashed white, perfect teeth at me. “Anything that pretty has to have a downside.” Then he winked at pretty Myra.
Robin, hunched over like a female wrestler ready to rumble, ignored us all.
The Great Flamingo Round-Up was going so smoothly that I relaxed.
Let’s see, as soon as we were finished here, I’d go over to Tropics Trail and take care of Lucy and Baby Boy Anteater, then I’d…
“Watch out!” someone shouted.
When I snapped to attention, I saw a flurry of pink cascading over the fence.
“Get her before she reaches the lake!” Manny yelled, as someone nearby called into a radio, “Code Blue! Runaway flamingo!”
I opened my arms to grab the bird but she saw me and swerved to the right. With what seemed like a sneer on her beaky face, she rushed by, wings flapping, honking like a Hummer.
Did I tell you that for short bursts, flamingos can run twenty miles an hour?
There was no way I could outrun her, but I could redirect her course. Except for the meandering dirt path she’d found, access to this side of Gunn Lake was obscured by brush. If I could manage to steer the flamingo off the path, she might get caught up in the weeds. But reaching the lake wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Flamingos are shallows waders, preferring not to get deeper than their knees in the wet stuff. Once they’re in the water, though, they’re just that much more difficult to catch.
When I yelled my intentions to Lex and Robin, they and three other keepers charged through the brush from opposite directions. They reached the lake ahead of the flamingo, and shooed her back up the path toward me. Letting her reach the wide visitors’ walkway wasn’t an option. If she did, it would turn into Girl’s Day Out. She might even be able to wander the entire zoo until a feral raccoon—the bane of zoos everywhere—chewed off her spindly neck.
More worried about her safety than my own, I waved my arms and drove her away from the dirt path and into the deepest part of the brush.
It worked. Not only did the weeds slow her down, but they stopped her dead.
The moment I went into the brush after her, I discovered why. The ground here was morass of mud, standing water, and cattails. Bullfrogs and minnows fled before me as I sloshed along, up to my shins in muck. With her thin legs, the flamingo might have been able to elude me, but she’d somehow managed to get entangled in the cattails.
Now was the time for caution. If I spooked her further, she could struggle and break a leg.
Cooing softly, I moved toward her.
“Pretty Bird wants to go back to her friends, doesn’t she? Oh, yes, she does. Pretty Bird is soooo lonely out here.”
Through eyes almost the same color as her pink plumage, the flamingo shot me a mean look.
No skinny bird was going to scare me. “Just let me untangle those lovely legs of yours, honey, and we’ll be out of here in no time.”
I could swear she sneered.
By the time I reached the flamingo, she seemed ready to accept her fate and stood calmly, wings folded around her body. All I had to do was strip the cattails away and pick her up. Piece of cake.
As soon as I bent down, I was rewarded by a nip to my fanny. Because of my thick cargo pants, it didn’t hurt too much, so I just kept working on the weeds until I got her untangled. One cattail, two, three, four…Finished!
“Goin’ home, Pretty Bird.” I wrapped my arms around her torso.
Not to those needles,
Pretty Bird honked, hooking her neck around.
“Hey, what are you…?”
Pretty Bird’s beak grabbed my earlobe.
“Ow!” I screeched.
“Don’t scare her!” Robin yelled, as she and Lex sloshed toward me, and I didn’t think she was talking to the flamingo.
“She’s got my ear!” I howled, leaning toward the bird’s head to take some of the pressure off. The wily thing just pulled back and tightened her hold.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow!”
Don’t hurt the bird
.
What do you do when a five-foot-tall flamingo has you by the ear? When you’re a zookeeper—nothing, that’s what. Defending yourself could hurt the bird, so you just endure and wait for rescue. At least I wasn’t wearing ear studs; Pretty Bird might have choked.
“Oh, ow!”
Don’t hurt the bird, don’t hurt the bird
.
Half out of my mind with pain, I leaned forward again, but this time I leaned too far, because my feet slipped in the mud and I started to fall. Yet I didn’t let go of the flamingo. Somehow I managed to twist my body around so that I landed on my back with the flamingo on my chest, still attached to my ear.
“Ow! Ow!”
Don’t hurt the bird, don’t hurt the damn bird
.
“Honk, honk!” The flamingo increased her hold. If she’d been human, I’d have slapped her.
“Somebody get this bird off me!”
I lay half-buried in mud, slime, and run-off lake water while tadpoles swam around my head and bullfrogs croaked. When you’re in misery, the strangest things pop into your head. Such as…When I was ten, my parents had taken me on a trip to London. Dad wanted me to learn about history, Mother wanted me to meet the Queen. On the final day, we had wound up at the British Museum. I’d been fascinated by the body of the Bog Man, who’d been found in amazingly intact condition after more than two thousand years. He’d been buried in a peat bog, with a rope garrote around his neck. Was that how I would eventually be found, with a preserved flamingo?
I heard splashing from my right. Please, Lord, don’t let it be Robin. She’d just finish me off.
“Love your flamingo earring,” Lex said.
Rescued
! “Get her off!”