“Now will you call my sheriff and get him out here?” Louis asked.
Zeedler lowered his hand. His eyes grew even smaller, like shiny drops of oil. “Yeah, I’ll call your sheriff. And I’ll be surprised if you even have a job when he gets a load of all this crap.”
Louis suspected Zeedler was probably right, but he said nothing. Job or no job, he didn’t regret a moment.
Zeedler grabbed his radio and told his dispatcher to contact Sheriff Mobley. He added that he would be transporting a suspect to the hospital. Then he jammed the radio back in his belt and pointed to Keno.
“Untie that man,” Zeedler said. “I’m arresting him for kidnapping.”
“There was no kidnapping,” Katy said. “I went with him willingly.”
Louis glanced at Katy, not surprised she didn’t want Keno arrested. During the long night, Louis had wandered in and out of the hot fetid shack but Katy had stayed inside, watching Grace and the kittens but also talking to Keno. Even standing outside, Louis could hear the soft murmur of their voices. Keno would clam up every time Louis came back inside. Louis didn’t know exactly what Keno had told Katy but he had the feeling they had reached some understanding about Grace and some forgiveness about what Keno had done to Katy.
Zeedler stared at Katy for a moment then looked back to Keno, who was now paying attention to what was happening. He looked terrified.
“Then I’m taking him in for poaching an endangered animal,” Zeedler said.
A new voice came from behind them, deep and commanding. “I don’t think so.”
Everyone turned to the doorway. Moses Stanton stood there, arms crossed.
Like Zeedler had done, Moses took in the interior of the shack, his eyes resting a long time on Katy and Grace. He stepped inside and slowly took off his hat.
“Who the fuck are you?” Zeedler asked.
“Moses Stanton, executive assistant to the Seminole chief.”
“And who the hell called you?” Zeedler asked.
“Smoke signals,” Moses said, with a small smile.
“Very funny, Stanton,” Zeedler said.
“Let’s get to the point,” Moses said. “You have no reason to be here, sheriff.”
“The hell I don’t. We’re in my county,” Zeedler said. “And that panther over there is a federally protected animal. That means no one can hunt it. Not even Indians.”
“You’re wrong, sheriff,” Moses said. “May I remind you of a 1985 case right here in Hendry County. A Seminole man killed a panther and the state charged him with a felony for killing an endangered animal.”
“I remember that,” Zeedler said. “He got off because the court ruled old treaties said you could hunt anything you wanted on the reservation. But this panther is not on your land.”
“The lawyers said the treaties gave us the right to hunt anywhere, not just on our own land,” Moses said. “And it was argued that the Seminole had the right to kill the panther to use in a religious ritual.”
Louis glanced at Katy. She gave him a small shake of her head as if to warn him not to ask any questions.
“It doesn’t matter what the fucking lawyers said,” Zeedler said. “The case was dismissed.”
Moses nodded. “Do you want to spend the next two years fighting about this again?”
For a moment, Zeedler looked so angry he couldn’t draw a breath. But then the anger faded to simple frustration. He looked down at Keno and then at Grace in the cage.
He shook his head. “All right,” he said. “I’m not going to the mat over a fucking cat.” He looked at Louis. “Mobley can deal with this — and you.”
Zeedler pushed by Moses out the door. Louis turned to watch him as he stalked back through the tall grass toward his swamp buggy.
“I will be taking Hachi with me,” Moses said.
“I can’t let you do that,” Louis said.
“Why not?”
“Because I shot him,” Louis said.
Moses nodded. “He probably deserved it,” he said.
“That’s not the point,” Louis said. He wiped his sweating forehead, his head clouded from exhaustion. “I’m a cop,” he said. “I’m looking at a shit storm because of this.”
Moses smiled slightly. Then he turned to Katy.
“Did Hachi hurt you?” he asked.
“He didn’t mean to,” Katy said.
“Did he hurt the panther?”
“He didn’t know how to help her. That’s why he brought me here.”
Moses went to Keno and knelt by his side. He carefully removed the cloth Katy had put on Keno’s bare shoulder and examined the wound. Then he tilted Keno forward and looked at his back.
“It doesn’t look bad,” he said, looking up at Louis. “The bullet went right through.”
Moses rose and began to search for something, running his hand along the wood planks near the door. Louis realized he was looking for the bullet.
“It’s to your left,” Louis said.
Moses pulled out a pocket knife.
“Leave it there,” Louis said.
Moses popped the bullet out of the wood.
“You just contaminated the crime scene,” Louis said.
Moses looked at him. “There was a crime committed here?”
“There was a shooting, damn it!”
Moses gave him a small smile then put the bullet in his mouth and swallowed it.
“What shooting?” Moses said.
Louis stared at him, stunned.
Zeedler was suddenly back. He thrust a radio at Louis’s chest. “Mobley wants to talk to you,” he said. “You’re on a secure channel.”
Moses slipped out of the shack. Louis stood in the doorway watching him.
“Kincaid! You there?”
Louis keyed the radio. “Yeah…yeah, I’m here.”
“Sheriff Zeedler tells me you’ve got a mess out there. You shot the suspect?”
Louis rubbed his face. “Yes, sir. He’s okay.”
The radio was silent and Louis knew Mobley was thinking that this was going to be shit storm for him, too.
“You stay put,” Mobley said finally. “I’ll call the reservation and talk to Chief Gilley. Maybe I can save your ass.”
Louis looked outside at Moses. He was just standing there, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the sky.
“I don’t think you’ll need to, sheriff,” Louis said. “I don’t think the tribe is interested in prosecuting me. I think they consider this a family thing.”
“You telling me they don’t care you shot one of them?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you, sir.”
Mobley was quiet again.
“How’s the woman?” he asked finally.
Katy was still sitting on the floor by the cage. Her head was down on her knees.
“Katy’s fine. But I need to get her out of here.”
“And the cat?”
Louis moved over to the cage. Grace seemed to be sleeping. One of the kittens had crawled away. It was the one Louis had delivered. He could tell because it had more spots than the other one. It raised its tiny head and looked up, its eyes as blue as the sky. He wanted to think the kitten was looking at him but he knew it was probably only attracted to the sunlight coming from the door.
“The cat is fine, sir,” Louis said. “So are her kittens.”
“Kittens?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a long silence.
“They have blue eyes,” Louis said. “They’ll photograph well.”
There was no response and Louis thought Mobley had just clicked off, probably satisfied that he wasn’t going to have to wade through the jurisdictional swamp of the Seminole sovereign nation thing over one of his deputies. No, not even a real deputy. A private eye he had semi-hired during an alcoholic haze and sent him on a joke of a case so he could justify not giving him a real chance to wear a badge.
There was a huge spider web in the corner of the open door. Louis stared at it, watching the yellow and black spider move slowly toward a squirming exhausted fly.
A burst of radio from the radio brought him back.
“You still there, Kincaid?”
“Yeah, I’m still here.”
“Well done, deputy Kincaid,” Mobley said. “Well done.”