Part 9 (1/2)
O'Brien looked at his personal a.s.sistant, who'd just walked into the room. ”Rick, can you take care of that? Get 'em names and numbers?”
”Sure thing, Jerry.”
”But I can't see any of those weirdos following through on their threats,” O'Brien said. ”They're just a bunch of hot air.”
”I'd take any threat seriously,” said Jane.
”Oh, I'll take it dead seriously.” He tugged up the edge of his billowing aloha s.h.i.+rt to reveal a Glock in his under-the-waistband holster. ”No point having a CCW if I don't keep one on me, right?”
”Did Leon say he was getting any threats?” asked Frost.
”Nothing that worried him.”
”Any enemies? Any colleagues or family members who might profit from his death?”
O'Brien paused, lips pursed like a bullfrog. He'd picked up his whiskey gla.s.s again and sat staring at it for a moment. ”Only family member he ever talked about was his son.”
”The one who pa.s.sed away.”
”Yeah. Talked about him a lot on our last trip to Kenya. You sit around a campfire with a bottle of whiskey, you get to talking about a lot of things. Bag your game, dine on bush meat, talk under the stars. For men, that's what it's all about.” He glanced at his personal a.s.sistant. ”Right, Rick?”
”You said it, Jerry,” Dolan answered, smoothly refilling his boss's whiskey.
”No women go on these trips?” Jane asked.
O'Brien gave her a look usually reserved for the insane. ”Why would I want to ruin a perfectly good time? Women only screw things up.” He nodded. ”Present company excepted. I've had four wives, and they're still bleeding me dry. Leon had his own lousy marriage. Wife left with their only son, turned the boy against him. Broke Leon's heart. Even after the b.i.t.c.h died, that son went out of his way to p.i.s.s off Leon. Makes me glad I never had kids.” He sipped his whiskey and shook his head. ”d.a.m.n, I'm gonna miss him. How can I help you catch the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who did it?”
”Just keep answering our questions.”
”I'm not, like, a suspect am I?”
”Should you be?”
”No games, okay? Just ask your questions.”
”The Suffolk Zoo says you agreed to donate five million dollars in exchange for the snow leopard.”
”Absolutely true. I told 'em I'd allow only one taxidermist to do the mounting, and that was Leon.”
”And the last time you spoke to Mr. Gott?”
”We heard from him on Sunday, when he called to tell us he'd skinned and gutted the animal, and did we want the carca.s.s?”
”What time was this call?”
”Around noon or so.” O'Brien paused. ”Come on, you guys must already have the phone records. You know about that call.”
Jane and Frost exchanged irritated looks. Despite a subpoena for Gott's phone records, the carrier hadn't delivered. With nearly a thousand daily requests from police departments across the country, it might take days, even weeks, for a phone company to comply.
”So he called you about the carca.s.s,” said Frost. ”What happened then?”
”I drove over and picked it up,” said O'Brien's a.s.sistant. ”Got to Leon's place about two P.M., loaded the animal into my truck. Brought it straight back here.”
”Why? I mean, you wouldn't want to eat leopard meat, would you?”
O'Brien said, ”I'll try any meat at least once. h.e.l.l, I'd chomp down on a juicy human b.u.t.t roast if it's offered to me. But no, I wouldn't eat an animal that's been euthanized with drugs. I wanted it for the skeleton. After Rick brought it back, we dug a hole and buried it. Give it a few months, let Mother Nature and the worms do their work, and I'll have bones to mount.”
And that's why they'd found only the leopard's internal organs, thought Jane. Because the carca.s.s was already here on O'Brien's property, decomposing in a grave.
”Did you and Mr. Gott talk when you were there on Sunday?” Jane asked Dolan.
”Hardly. He was on the phone with someone. I waited around for a few minutes, but he just waved me away. So I took the carca.s.s and left.”
”Who was he talking to?”
”I don't know. He said something about wanting more photos of Elliot in Africa. 'Everything you've got,' he said.”
”Elliot?” Jane looked at O'Brien.
”That was his dead son,” said O'Brien. ”Like I said, he'd been talking about Elliot a lot lately. It happened six years ago, but I think the guilt was finally getting to him.”
”Why would Leon feel guilty?”
”Because he had almost nothing to do with him after the divorce. His ex-wife raised the boy, turned him into a girlie-man, according to Leon. The kid hooked up with some wacko PETA girlfriend, probably just to p.i.s.s off his old man. Leon tried to make contact, but his son wasn't too keen on staying in touch. So when Elliot died, it really hit Leon hard. All he had left of his son was a photo. Had it hanging in his house, one of the last pictures ever taken of Elliot.”
”How did Elliot die? You said it happened six years ago.”
”Yeah, the kid got it in his fool head to go to Africa. He wanted to see the animals before they got wiped out by hunters like me. Interpol says he met a couple of girls in Cape Town, and the three of them flew off to Botswana for a safari.”
”And what happened?”
O'Brien drained his whiskey gla.s.s and looked at her. ”They were never seen again.”
BOTSWANA.
JOHNNY PRESSES THE TIP OF HIS KNIFE AGAINST THE IMPALA'S ABDOMEN and slices through hide and fat, to the greasy caul that drapes the organs beneath. Only moments ago he brought down the beast with a single gunshot, and as he guts it I watch the impala's eye cloud over, as if Death has breathed a cold mist across it, glazing it with frost. Johnny works with the swift efficiency of a hunter who's done this many times before. With one hand he slits open the belly; with his other he pushes the entrails away from the blade to avoid puncturing organs and contaminating the meat. The work is gruesome yet delicate. Mrs. Matsunaga turns away in disgust, but the rest of us cannot stop watching. This is what we have come to Africa to witness: life and death in the bush. Tonight we'll feast on impala roasted over the fire, and the price of our meal is the death of this animal, now being gutted and butchered. The smell of blood rises from the warm carca.s.s, a scent so powerful that all around us, scavengers are stirring. I think I can hear them now, rustling closer in the gra.s.s.
Above us, the ever-present vultures are circling.
”The gut's full of bacteria, so I remove this to keep the meat from spoiling,” Johnny explains as he slices. ”It also lightens the load, makes it easier to carry. Nothing will go to waste, nothing goes uneaten. Scavengers will clean up whatever we leave behind. Better to do it out here, so we don't attract them back to camp.” He reaches into the thorax to tug on the heart and lungs. With a few strokes of the knife, he severs the windpipe and great vessels and the chest organs slide out like a newborn, slimy with blood.
”Oh G.o.d,” groans Vivian.
Johnny looks up. ”You eat meat, don't you?”
”After watching this? I don't know if I can.”
”I think we all need to watch this,” says Richard. ”We need to know where our meal comes from.”
Johnny nods. ”Exactly right. It's our duty, as carnivores, to know what's involved in getting that steak to your plate. The stalking, the killing. The gutting and butchering. Humans are hunters, and this is what we've done since the beginning.” He reaches into the pelvis to strip out the bladder and uterus, then grasps handfuls of intestines and tosses them onto the gra.s.s. ”Modern men have lost touch with what it means to survive. They go into the supermarket and open their wallet to pay for a steak. That's not the meaning of meat.” He stands up, bare arms streaked with blood, and looks down at the gutted impala. ”This is.”