large manila envelope that weighed a couple of pounds. Pamela had a thin, boyish body draped in shapeless dark clothes. Only thirty-nine, her hair was graying and cut severely. Rumor had it that she was once a singer in a country band fronted by her ex-husband, but Jackson had trouble imagining it. She told him she was sorry about Ed. Jackson thanked her and then waited for her to leave, but she didn’t budge. “I warned all of you,” she said. “I told the town, the county, all of you to take them cats away and shut the place down.”
“The cats at Safari Land?”
“It’s blasphemy, what they’re doing.”
“What exactly are they doing, Pamela?” he asked.
“Going straight to hell, that’s what.”
Once the librarian left, Jackson drove home. He ate dinner and read while seated on the couch in front of the unlit fireplace. Aspen logs filled the grate. The papers from Pamela filled the coffee table. A plate with the remains of a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and some sea salt and vinegar potato chips covered most of the pages. Next to it was a bottle of Sawtooth Ale. In Colorado he had developed a fondness for the Longmont brewery’s beer. An Idaho Falls liquor store stocked it. He had forgotten to ask Pamela Yow the name of her former husband.
At first Jackson wasn’t going to read Pamela’s research. The tiger was dead. Most everyone believed the problem was fixed. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what Jesse had said: “It’s not the same cat.” So he read.
Jackson had never imagined that lions and tigers killed so many people. In a mangrove forest in Bangladesh and India, home to the largest concentration of tigers in the world, the cats had killed some 1,500 people. A single tiger once killed 438 people in Nepal and northern India. In Kruger National Park, lions may have eaten up to 15,000 people, most of them refugees from Mozambique trying to cross the park at night to illegally enter South Africa to work in the fields and mines there. What chilled him the most, however, was reading about three generations of lions in Tanganyika, formerly Tanzania, that worked together tokill. The pride was so organized that after grabbing a person, they would race off into the bush, passing the body from mouth to mouth, like a baton in a relay race, until they were miles away and could devour their victim.
Jackson reviewed his notes. He always wrote notes. It’s what policemen do. He read: The lion is trained from birth to be aggressive, to fight and kill, to be a member of a hunting tribe. Tigers are solo hunters that use stealth more than aggression. Lions prefer open grassland; tigers like woods and trees. Eastern Idaho offered both.
The last stack of papers he opened were interviews and book reviews and biographical information about a woman named Katherine Osborne. Katy, she was called. Jackson had asked Pamela to find an expert he could talk to about exotic cats. She had given him a writer who looked like a Vogue model. He needed a real hunter, not some poster girl. He looked again at the photographs of her and said, “Wow!” He stuffed the paperwork back in the envelope.
After her shower Katy decided to skip going out to dinner in favor of room service. She donned a thick, terrycloth hotel bathrobe and leaned against a mountain of fluffy pillows on the queen bed, surrounded by financial reports. She was examining the finances ofSkorokoro, her ranch in Botswana, a ranch started by her Uncle Bucky. The hunting ranch was increasingly unable to compete with government-backed safari parks and to contend with increased costs and decreased clientele. She wanted to keep Skorokoro going, and not just for her. Families worked and lived there. It was their home too. But the money she made from books and safaris and the special jobs to kill a man-eater or track down an injured animal left to suffer or to cull a herd to allow the strongest to survive simply weren’t enough anymore. She needed more
“The cats at Safari Land?”
“It’s blasphemy, what they’re doing.”
“What exactly are they doing, Pamela?” he asked.
“Going straight to hell, that’s what.”
Once the librarian left, Jackson drove home. He ate dinner and read while seated on the couch in front of the unlit fireplace. Aspen logs filled the grate. The papers from Pamela filled the coffee table. A plate with the remains of a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and some sea salt and vinegar potato chips covered most of the pages. Next to it was a bottle of Sawtooth Ale. In Colorado he had developed a fondness for the Longmont brewery’s beer. An Idaho Falls liquor store stocked it. He had forgotten to ask Pamela Yow the name of her former husband.
At first Jackson wasn’t going to read Pamela’s research. The tiger was dead. Most everyone believed the problem was fixed. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what Jesse had said: “It’s not the same cat.” So he read.
Jackson had never imagined that lions and tigers killed so many people. In a mangrove forest in Bangladesh and India, home to the largest concentration of tigers in the world, the cats had killed some 1,500 people. A single tiger once killed 438 people in Nepal and northern India. In Kruger National Park, lions may have eaten up to 15,000 people, most of them refugees from Mozambique trying to cross the park at night to illegally enter South Africa to work in the fields and mines there. What chilled him the most, however, was reading about three generations of lions in Tanganyika, formerly Tanzania, that worked together tokill. The pride was so organized that after grabbing a person, they would race off into the bush, passing the body from mouth to mouth, like a baton in a relay race, until they were miles away and could devour their victim.
Jackson reviewed his notes. He always wrote notes. It’s what policemen do. He read: The lion is trained from birth to be aggressive, to fight and kill, to be a member of a hunting tribe. Tigers are solo hunters that use stealth more than aggression. Lions prefer open grassland; tigers like woods and trees. Eastern Idaho offered both.
The last stack of papers he opened were interviews and book reviews and biographical information about a woman named Katherine Osborne. Katy, she was called. Jackson had asked Pamela to find an expert he could talk to about exotic cats. She had given him a writer who looked like a Vogue model. He needed a real hunter, not some poster girl. He looked again at the photographs of her and said, “Wow!” He stuffed the paperwork back in the envelope.
After her shower Katy decided to skip going out to dinner in favor of room service. She donned a thick, terrycloth hotel bathrobe and leaned against a mountain of fluffy pillows on the queen bed, surrounded by financial reports. She was examining the finances ofSkorokoro, her ranch in Botswana, a ranch started by her Uncle Bucky. The hunting ranch was increasingly unable to compete with government-backed safari parks and to contend with increased costs and decreased clientele. She wanted to keep Skorokoro going, and not just for her. Families worked and lived there. It was their home too. But the money she made from books and safaris and the special jobs to kill a man-eater or track down an injured animal left to suffer or to cull a herd to allow the strongest to survive simply weren’t enough anymore. She needed more
Similar Books
