Cat In A Leopard Spot

“Interesting.” Molina stood. “You’ve got their names, ranks, and serial numbers?”

Su nodded.

“Then I’ll take a look at them.” Molina checked the names and facts the detectives had recorded from their separate preliminary interviews, then led the way to the interrogation rooms, curious as a cat.

Three people might be just what it would take to stage-manage the Van Burkleo death scene to make it look like a wild animal had turned the tables on the hunter. Predator turned prey, turned predator.

Everybody liked a happy ending.

First Molina eyed the trio through three different two-way mirrors.

“The old woman’s the leader,” Su told her. “A retired professor from Davis, California.”

“Late middle-aged,” the thirty-something Molina corrected the twenty-something Su.

The fifty-some thing Alch just snickered to himself.

Su shrugged. Over thirty was one big Do-Not-Go-There Zone.

The twenties seem to last forever, Molina thought, remembering what it was to be kid-free…also as green as goat cheese that had been sitting out for three months. Don’t-Go-Back-There Zone.

They marched off to eye the other suspects. Molina passed on the twenty-some thing surfer boy with the punk haircut.

At the late-forties tree hugger in the ponytail, she smiled nostalgically. “I’ll try him first.”

Su’s sharply arched eyebrows rose. She plucked them in a dragon lady pattern that Molina had only seen in that old comic strip, Terry and the Pirates, drawn decades ago when the “Oriental menace” had been Fu Manchu instead of sweatshop labor.

Every generation reached back to find fodder for rebellion. With Mariah, it was ear decor so far. So good.

Alch was nodding approvingly, not that she sought it.

Molina left the two detectives behind the mirror and entered the room, sat down, turned on the tape recorder. “Lieutenant C. R. Molina,” she began, adding date and time in a toneless official voice.

She flipped open a manila folder and appeared to study it.

“Evan Sprague.” She repeated his name aloud without acknowledging him. “You don’t have a criminal record.”

“Of course I don’t,” he said, trying to sound indignant and merely sounding nervous.

Molina slapped the folder shut. “We’re investigating a murder.”

“I…I’ve been told that, Lieutenant.”

“What were you doing on the deceased’s property?”

“I told the other officers. Detectives. Whatever. We were…scouting.”

“Just a bunch of Boy Scouts on a camp-out?”

“No, uh, we’re green.”

“I guess!”

“We’re for animal rights.”

“So.”

“You must know what goes on at that ranch.”

“We’re just ignorant city police. You tell me.”

“It’s a head-hunting place.” Mr. Limp Noodle was turning into Mr. Barbed Wire before her eyes. “They collect de-accessioned once-wild animals, like excess zoo stock, illegal exotic pets that have been confiscated from all over, anything that used to be wild and free and has a beautiful coat of fur or a handsome set of horns.”

Molina nodded to show comprehension. He would never tell from her expression that she was also nodding agreement with his indignation.

“These animals are not wild in any sense of the word. They’ve become dependent on humans. They’re domesticated, fed, watered like sheep or cattle. And then they bring in these wealthy weekend ‘hunters’ who don’t have time to go to authorized hunting areas, these weekday lawyers and doctors who want heads for their office walls, and let them take potshots with bows and arrows and rifles and bullets at the animals until they kill them. It may take a while. These ‘professional men’ are lousy shots, and they don’t want to mar the heads and shoulders before they’re stuffed.”

“I get the picture. So, if Van Burkleo was this…pimp for canned hunters”—Sprague’s pale eyes glittered at the word she’d armed him with—“why couldn’t your dedicated group have turned a leopard loose, thrown Van Burkleo on the antelope horn, and clawed him somehow, leaving a dead body with no suspect but a dumb animal, with which the community outrage is usually satisfied if it’s put down for the sin of touching a human. Case closed. The leopard was doomed anyway.”

Sprague practically leaped up from his chair at her throat.

“That’s just it. We subdue, brutalize, imprison, abuse these wonderful beasts that nature has given us, and let one—one—raise a paw in protection or protest or plain animal instinct, and we kill the animal. We are the animals that deserve killing!”

“Exactly,” Molina said coolly. “Which of your compatriots was the mastermind?”

“None! We didn’t do it. We protest peacefully. We disrupt the hunt.”

“You risk getting yourself skewered with an arrow or a bullet. Killed yourselves.”

He took a deep breath. “If so, it shows what kind of ‘recreation’ this sort of hunting is.”

“Then you don’t object to sanctioned hunting on designated preserves in season?”

Another deep breath. “Those people observe the law, and at least give the prey a fighting chance. But I still wonder why they have to kill something when it’s no longer necessary to survive.”