Night Kill
by Ann Littlewood
Summary
The Finley Zoo lions were captive-born; they had never killed. But they knew exactly what to do when Rick Douglas fell into their exhibit in the middle of the night. Zookeeper Iris Oakley, Rick’s hotheaded widow, wants to know why her husband was that drunk and incompetent. Tracking quirky suspects and following murky clues, she’s attacked by a tiger, and nearly killed in other “accidents”. At last her animal instincts make clear what happened the night Rick died and who the murderer is. Then Iris has to prove it.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Hot breath from the lioness touched my cheek. Round dark irises in gold eyes, nostrils flaring and relaxing, a complex pattern faint on the black nose pad, the harsh breath of a meat eater. She stood as tall as I, reared up with her big front feet at my shoulder height. She was all about power: massive jaws, thick forelegs, heavy shoulder muscles. Power she’d never used, never run down and throttled her unwilling dinner, never torn it into fragments she could eat. The familiar fact that she was on one side of the wire and I was safe on the other seemed profoundly odd, a peculiar twist in the ancient relationship between our species.
She opened her mouth a hesitant crack. “Good!” I told her and pressed a miniature raw meatball through the heavy mesh. Her rough pink tongue, the size of a washcloth, worked carefully, scrubbing every trace off the wire.
Spice seemed to enjoy these training sessions as much as I did. She had the basics of the contract down—pay attention and she could induce me to produce something tasty. “Up” and “stay” were in place, and I could inspect her front feet and face up close. Soon I’d get a good look at her teeth, after we worked more on “open up.” The near-contact oxygenated my blood with ancestral fear, diluted by familiarity and good steel down to a pleasant fizz. It was the booster shot I needed to face the evening.
I pulled the handle to open the guillotine door. She dropped down to the ground—class over—and padded outside to join the pride. When I got better at training, I’d see what I could do with Sugar and Simba. Spice was easy—smart and willing, fearless, the logical place to start my education.
Past time to leave work. Time to go home. A quick visit to Rajah, the old Bengal tiger, put off the duty. I strolled down the dimly lit cement hallway, passing empty night dens until I reached his at the end. Raj was an elegant slack rug, yellow and black ribs rising and falling. He opened one eye when I made tiger hello noises and didn’t get up. Still mad.
Being late wouldn’t help. Time to go.
I walked through the cool late afternoon of early October to the time clock at the Commissary, nursing Spice’s success like my last bite of chocolate bar. Wet socks squelched in rubber boots, and my back was resentful of a day spent lifting and scrubbing. I swiped my time card and turned away from Finley Memorial Zoo, trudging toward the parking lot, where my good-looking, funny, hard-working husband waited for me. I reached deep to find a chipper smile.
Author's Biography
Ann Littlewood was a zookeeper at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon, for 12 years, working with a wide variety of mammals and birds. After a stint in corporate America, she is delighted to be back in the zoo world, at least mentally, writing the Iris Oakley mystery series.