“Wasn’t hunting season.”
“You telling me a little poaching is unheard of in these parts,
especially when a man’s hunting out of season on his own land?”
The attorney shook his head. “Not at all. But Ed wasn’t a hunter.
Never had been.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Stan Quartermass was the hunter, and Ed just -inherited the
guns. And another odd thing–wasn’t just a full magazine in that
shotgun. He’d also pumped an extra round into the breach. No hunter
with half a brain would traipse around with a shell ready to go. He
trips nd falls, he might blow off his own head.”
“Doesn’t make sense to carry it in the house that way, either.”
“Unless,” Paul said, “there was some immediate threat.”
“You mean, like an intruder or prowler.”
“Maybe. Though that’s rarer than steak tartare in these parts.”
“Any signs of burglary, house ransacked?”
“No. Nothing at all like that.”
“Who found the body?”
“Travis Potter, veterinarian from Eagle’s Roost.
Which brings up another oddity. June tenth, more than three weeks
before he died, Ed took some dead raccoons to Travis, asked him to
examine them.” The attorney told Jack as much about the raccoons as
Eduardo had told Potter, then explained Potter’s findings.
“Brain swelling?” Jack asked uneasily. “But no sign of infection, no
disease,” Paul reassured him. “Travis asked Ed to keep a lookout for
other animals acting peculiar. Then . . . when they talked again, on
June seventeenth, he had the feeling Ed had seen something more but was
holding out on him.”
“Why would he hold out on Potter? Fernandez was the one who got Potter
involved in the first place.” The attorney shrugged. “Anyway, on the
morning of July sixth, Travis was still curious, so he went out to
Quartermass Ranch to talk to Ed–and found his body instead. Coroner
says Ed had been dead no less than twenty-four hours, probably no more
than thirty-six.”
Jack paced along the wall of horse photographs and along another wall
of bookshelves and then back again. slowly turning the glass of port
around in his hand. “So you think–what? Fernandez saw some animal
behaving really strangely, doing something that spooked him enough to
go load up the shotgun?”
“Maybe.”
“Could he have been going outside to shoot this animal because it was
acting rabid or crazy in some other way?”
“That’s occurred to us, yes. And maybe he was so worked up, so
excited, that’s what brought on the heart attack.” At the study
window, Jack stared at the lights of the cowboys’ bungalows, which were
unable to press back the densely clotted night. He finished the
port.
“I assume, from what you’ve said, Fernandez wasn’t a particularly
excitable man, not an hysteric.”
“The opposite. Ed was about as excitable as a tree stump.”
Turning away from the window, Jack said, “So then what could he have
seen that would’ve gotten his heart pumping so hard? How bizarre would
an animal have had to be acting–how much of a threat would it have to
be seemed–before Fernandez would have worked himself up to a heart
attack?”
“There you put your finger on it,” the attorney said, finishing his own
port.
“Just doesn’t make sense.”
“Seems like we have a mystery here.”
“Fortunate that you were a detective.”
“Not me. I was a patrol officer.”
“Well, now you’ve been promoted by circumstances.”
Paul got up from the corner of his desk. “Listen, I’m sure there’s
nothing to be worried about. We know those raccoons weren’t
diseased.
And there’s probably a reasonable explanation for what Ed was going to
do with that gun. This is peaceful country. Damned if I can see what
kind of danger could be out there.”
“I suspect you’re right,” Jack agreed. “I brought it up only because
. . well, it seemed odd. I thought if you did see something peculiar,
you ought to know not just to dismiss it. Call Travis. Or me.” Jack
put his empty glass on the desk beside Paul’s.
Y’ll do that. Meanwhile . . . I’d appreciate if you didn’t – mention
this to Heather. We’ve had a real bad year down there in L.A. This is