“One safe passenger and one dead tiger,” Thez reported.
“Who shot the tiger?” Lou asked.
“Cassidy did,” Thez said.
“Cassidy wasn’t supposed to be armed.”
“Well, maybe you should arm her,” Thez replied. “She’s a decent shot.”
I looked at him, pleading. “We won’t tell Rusty about this, right?”
“You better. Things like this tend to get around the station pretty quick.”
As the helicopter settled back at the pad an ambulance pulled forward and whisked our passenger off to the hospital.
“Meeting on the 15th. Everybody got that? Cassidy?”
“Yup, I’ll be there. I’ll need details later.”
“You need a ride to the station, anyway. I’ll fill you in.”
“I doubt if I need a ride. I bet Rusty pulls up before we get a chance to leave. I promised him I’d call when we landed.”
Lou handed me a sheaf of papers. “Welcome to the club. There’s a form for everything you can imagine in there. Have fun.” I helped people pack up any way I could, carrying, holding things while they unlocked their cars and trucks. I pushed a few buttons on my cell phone and Rusty answered on the first ring.
“Hey,” I said, “It’s me. I promised I’d call when I got back. How are you?”
“Relieved. You sound good. Guess you found your man?”
“Yeah, and a little more but we’ll talk about that later.”
I disconnected and turned around. Lou was waiting for me.
“I guess Michaels survived your day,” he said amused. “You’re lucky you did. What made you go into that clearing?”
“It was the only way to get a real rifle. I used the dart gun on the tiger twice but I was afraid he’d charge the guy before I got a bullet into him.”
“What would you have done if the guy hadn’t surrendered the rifle?”
“I’d have fired the rest of the darts hoping they did their thing fast. But I know that isn’t what you want to hear. Look, if you’re worried about me carrying I won’t carry a gun. We didn’t expect to need them for this case but we were lucky some came our way. I can shoot, though. In the Marines I went to sniper school. I grew up on a ranch. We did plenty of hunting, and we did a lot of target practice. You can ask Rusty. He’s seen me shoot; he’s seen me clean rifles. I don’t take them lightly. I don’t like having to use them, but I’m glad I was able to today. That guy was shaking so bad he couldn’t have hit the tiger if it had been the size of an elephant. His shots were going every which way. I thought he was shooting at us at first but all the shots were from missing the tiger.”
“Which brings me to my next question. Why did you advance when you thought someone was shooting at you?”
“Well, that’s a tougher one. I was really torn on whether to go forward because I knew the guys were following me. If it had just been me I wouldn’t have had a problem going in. I know how to stay out of sight. But I’d told Thez to stick to me because he had the tranquilizer gun and I knew he was the one authorized to use it. So I couldn’t advance without him but I couldn’t advance because of him. While I was battling that out it became apparent that the shooter was just desperate and that I needed to close in, gun or no gun. Thez wasn’t budging. He’d seen the tiger and he was scared of it, too. We needed Victor’s medical experience so I took the gun and went forward. I figured there was no use fearing the tiger until it went after me. As long as it was focused on something else I was safe. The guy saw me standing there but he didn’t trust me to be able to shoot the tiger so I shot it with a dart to prove I could do it. He didn’t throw me the rifle until the last second and I just did what I could. One shot right to the heart. I was lucky the rifle was built to take down a tiger.”
“Did you get a bruise out of it?” Strickland asked as he pointed to my shoulder.
“Any rifle built to take down a tiger is going to kick, but I knew what to do. I’ve shot bigger weapons than that. I wouldn’t want that gun for regular use, but it did the job.”
“Did you know I was in the background while all this was going on?”
“No, and you’re pretty good at it if I didn’t know.”
“The guys at the plane knew their job. They weren’t threatened in any way. I started closing in as soon as I heard shots fired. You almost didn’t get your shot at the tiger. Next time I won’t send you out with Thez. I didn’t expect trouble on this trip. I chose Thez because he is good at normalizing situations. You know how every hairdresser you go to you’re comfortable with because they talk about everyday things, and they don’t mind hearing the same stories over and over again?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s Thez. The chatter on the way out to the site? If he hadn’t been there everyone would have been tensed up. They would have been suspicious of you, but Thez has a way of toning those things down, smoothing them out, without really trying.”
“Why do they call him Thez?”
“Because he’s an actor. A thespian. Used to be a cop, and a firefighter. I think now he’s got his own business. But he’s useful occasionally. Thanks for helping out today. I’m glad it turned out well. Our passenger is getting patched up and I’ll send someone out to collect the tiger. I hope it doesn’t hit the news. If it does, we can expect the save-the-tigers foundation to jump on us but I know and you know we did what we had to. Meeting, on the fifteenth. I’ll call with the details.”
“Thanks.”
Rusty pulled into the parking lot and swung into a parking place. He was almost out of the truck before he shut off the engine. He stood there for a second and then came over, wrapping me in a big hug, the relief clear in every movement. He didn’t speak for a long time. He let me go and stood me at arm’s length looking me over. No black eyes, no bruises, no bullet grazes, no cuts… I was still in one piece. Considering what I usually came home with, it was a miracle.
“You’ll never guess what I did today,” I said. Might as well get it over with right at the start.
“What?” he asked, knowing it was going to be a doozie.
“I went tiger hunting. And I bagged a big one.”
“Okay, this I’ve got to hear. How about Zeke’s? I think I might need a beer to go with this story.”
When we were settled at a table in Zeke’s bustling pizza place the atmosphere returned to its former somber mood. I had tried to sound glib about the tiger but Rusty wasn’t fooled for a second. He understood how much I loved animals and knew that I would never have shot the tiger unless things were very close. He was also aware that I’d not been armed. He concluded that things had come up unexpectedly, so I continued from a different point of view.
“Why did Lou give me all these forms? There’s one for everything,
