Free Claws by Ozzie Cheek Page B

unlocked door. “Anybody here? Hello. Dolly Cheney? Police.” Angie stood still and listened – no radio or TV, no footsteps, no – and then she heard something. She waited but didn’t hear anything more.

    Angie entered the house slowly, glad that she had worn her shoes with the soft rubber soles, even if they were too butch for her taste. She shouldered the M4 tactical rifle.
    The living room was furnished with flea market junk, but the house was clean. A newspaper lay open on the couch – last Thursday’s edition of the Fremont County Journal .
    A doorway led into the kitchen and another to a hallway. A third one seemed to lead to a room that wrapped around to join the kitchen. Dining room, she figured.
    Outside, Jackson searched each outbuilding he saw, those standing and those nearly falling down. He found nothing more except for pieces of a dog or a few dogs or maybe even wolves, and then he returned to the cages. He remembered once seeing about a dozen big cats caged up here. He felt certain the lions and tigers hadn’t gotten together and hatched an escape plan. Somebody had freed them. That made it a crime scene. He called the communication center in St. Anthony and requested a State Police Crime Scene Response Unit, ISP troopers, Sheriff Midden and some deputies, the coroner, an ambulance, and his own people. When he finished, he headed to the house.
    In the kitchen Angie examined a skillet congealed with grease and a sink with a few dirty dishes. Other dishes were scattered on the floor, most ofthem broken. An unbroken plate looked clean. She dropped down and ran a finger over it. Not washed clean, licked clean. That’s when she heard it again, that sound.
    “Dolly?”
    Nothing. Slowly, Angie skirted the broken crockery and crossed the kitchen and entered a small dining room set up as an office. She saw Dolly Cheney on the floor in a pool of blood. Angie knelt beside the woman and felt for a pulse in her neck. Faint. Skin warm to the touch. She radioed Jackson and told him Dolly was alive, but barely.
    “I’m on my way now,” he said. “And I’ll call for another ambulance. Do what you can for her.”
    While she waited for Jackson, Angie examined Dolly’s injuries. Her face was clawed. One arm looked like it had been run through a meat grinder. The hand was intact but bloody and holding something shiny. Angie removed a silver cross and chain from Dolly’s fist. She was examining it when she heard a noise behind her – a hacking or a low guttural growling, a big cat sound. The M4 lay on the floor beside her. She slowly reached for it.
     
    Jackson had climbed the broken concrete steps and looked through the glass panels of the antique side door. He saw Angie squatting beside Dolly, and behind her, he saw a tiger, a Bengal tiger, hethought. The tiger was ten feet away and crouched to leap. Jackson stepped back from the door far enough that he could raise the shotgun and aim it at the tiger, but he didn’t shoot. He wanted to but –
    Then the tiger leaped. Jackson’s shot hit mid-body and kicked the cat sideways. It still slammed into Angie, knocking her forward. She screamed. He shot again. The second deer slug took off part of the tiger’s rear leg. The tiger yelped or cried or made whatever sound a tiger makes with a leg shot off and dragged himself or herself through a doorway that – Jackson would learn – led to the kitchen and then to the back porch and then outside.
    Angie rolled over and sat up. Her hair and her face were covered with bits of blood and flesh and tiger skin. When she looked at Jackson through the blown out glass panes of the door, she saw that he was trembling.
    An hour later Angie sat in the back of the same ambulance that had been at the Placett’s farm a day earlier. Cars were scattered everywhere: county sheriff cars and state police cruisers, a crime scene van, every patrol car in Buckhorn, Tucker’s pickup, the coroner’s minivan, plus a few personal vehicles.