Tess Gerritsen - Die Again

“You could,” observed Frost.

O’Brien laughed. “Naw, I’d rather stay and be a thorn in their side. Anyway, why should I? I grew up in Lowell, right up the road. Crappy neighborhood next to the mill. I stay here because it reminds me how far I’ve come.” He crossed to a liquor cabinet and uncorked a bottle of whiskey. “Can I offer you some?”

“No sir,” said Frost.

“Yeah, I know. On duty and all that.” He poured a few fingers’ worth into a glass. “I own my business, so I get to make the rules. And I say cocktail hour starts at three.”

Frost moved closer to the display of predators and studied the full-body mount of a leopard. It was poised on a tree branch, its body coiled as if ready to pounce. “Is this an African leopard?”

O’Brien turned, glass in hand. “Yeah. Shot that a few years ago, in Zimbabwe. Leopards are tricky. Secretive and solitary. When they’re up in the branches, they can take you by surprise. As cats go, they’re not all that big, but they’re strong enough to drag you up a tree.” He took a sip of whiskey as he admired the animal. “Leon mounted that one for me. You can see the quality of his work. He also did that lion, and that grizzly over there. He was good, but he didn’t come cheap.” O’Brien crossed to a full-body mount of a cougar. “This was the first one he did for me, about fifteen years ago. Looks so real, it still gives me a start when I see it in the dark.”

“So Leon was your hunting buddy and your taxidermist,” said Jane.

“Not just any taxidermist. His work is legendary.”

“We saw an article about him in Hub Magazine . ‘The Trophy Master.’ ”

O’Brien laughed. “He liked that piece. Had it framed and hanging on his wall.”

“That article got a lot of comments. Including a few pretty nasty ones, about hunting.”

O’Brien shrugged. “Comes with the territory. I get threats, too. People calling in to the show, wanting to stick me like a pig.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard some of those calls,” said Frost.

O’Brien’s head perked up, like a bulldog hearing a supersonic whistle. “You listen to me, huh?”

What he wanted Frost to say was, Of course I do! I love your show and I’m your biggest fan! A man who lived this large and flamboyantly, a man who seemed to delight in extending his middle finger to all who despised him, was also a man starved for validation.

“Tell us about these people who’ve threatened you,” said Jane.

O’Brien laughed. “My show reaches a lot of people, and some of ’em don’t like what I have to say.”

“Any of those threats worry you? Say, from the anti-hunting crowd?”

“You saw my arsenal. Let ’em try and take me down.”

“Leon Gott had an arsenal, too.”

He paused, whiskey glass at his lips. He lowered it and frowned at her. “You think it was some wacko animal lover?”

“We’re looking at all angles. That’s why we want to hear about any threats you’re getting.”

“Which ones? Every time I open my mouth, I piss off certain listeners.”

“Any of them say they want to see you hung and gutted?”

“Oh yeah, that’s so original. Like she’d ever come up with anything new.”

“She?”

“One of my regular dipshits. Suzy something, calls all the time. Animals have souls! Humans are the real savages! Blah, blah, blah.”

“Anyone else make that particular threat? About hanging and gutting?”

“Yeah, and it’s almost always gals. They go into great bloodthirsty detail, like only women can.” He paused, suddenly struck by the significance of Jane’s question. “You’re not saying that’s what happened to Leon? Did someone gut him?”

“How about keeping track of those callers for us? Next time you get a threat like that, give us a log of the phone numbers.”

O’Brien looked at his personal assistant, who’d just walked into the room. “Rick, can you take care of that? Get ’em names and numbers?”

“Sure thing, Jerry.”

“But I can’t see any of those weirdos following through on their threats,” O’Brien said. “They’re just a bunch of hot air.”

“I’d take any threat seriously,” said Jane.

“Oh, I’ll take it dead seriously.” He tugged up the edge of his billowing aloha shirt to reveal a Glock in his under-the-waistband holster. “No point having a CCW if I don’t keep one on me, right?”

“Did Leon say he was getting any threats?” asked Frost.

“Nothing that worried him.”

“Any enemies? Any colleagues or family members who might profit from his death?”

O’Brien paused, lips pursed like a bullfrog. He’d picked up his whiskey glass again and sat staring at it for a moment. “Only family member he ever talked about was his son.”

“The one who passed away.”

“Yeah. Talked about him a lot on our last trip to Kenya. You sit around a campfire with a bottle of whiskey, you get to talking about a lot of things. Bag your game, dine on bush meat, talk under the stars. For men, that’s what it’s all about.” He glanced at his personal assistant. “Right, Rick?”

“You said it, Jerry,” Dolan answered, smoothly refilling his boss’s whiskey.

“No women go on these trips?” Jane asked.

O’Brien gave her a look usually reserved for the insane. “Why would I want to ruin a perfectly good time? Women only screw things up.” He nodded. “Present company excepted. I’ve had four wives, and they’re still bleeding me dry. Leon had his own lousy marriage. Wife left with their only son, turned the boy against him. Broke Leon’s heart. Even after the bitch died, that son went out of his way to piss off Leon. Makes me glad I never had kids.” He sipped his whiskey and shook his head. “Damn, I’m gonna miss him. How can I help you catch the bastard who did it?”

“Just keep answering our questions.”

“I’m not, like, a suspect am I?”

“Should you be?”

“No games, okay? Just ask your questions.”

“The Suffolk Zoo says you agreed to donate five million dollars in exchange for the snow leopard.”

“Absolutely true. I told ’em I’d allow only one taxidermist to do the mounting, and that was Leon.”

“And the last time you spoke to Mr. Gott?”

“We heard from him on Sunday, when he called to tell us he’d skinned and gutted the animal, and did we want the carcass?”

“What time was this call?”

“Around noon or so.” O’Brien paused. “Come on, you guys must already have the phone records. You know about that call.”

Jane and Frost exchanged irritated looks. Despite a subpoena for Gott’s phone records, the carrier hadn’t delivered. With nearly a thousand daily requests from police departments across the country, it might take days, even weeks, for a phone company to comply.

“So he called you about the carcass,” said Frost. “What happened then?”

“I drove over and picked it up,” said O’Brien’s assistant. “Got to Leon’s place about two P.M., loaded the animal into my truck. Brought it straight back here.”

“Why? I mean, you wouldn’t want to eat leopard meat, would you?”

O’Brien said, “I’ll try any meat at least once. Hell, I’d chomp down on a juicy human butt roast if it’s offered to me. But no, I wouldn’t eat an animal that’s been euthanized with drugs. I wanted it for the skeleton. After Rick brought it back, we dug a hole and buried it. Give it a few months, let Mother Nature and the worms do their work, and I’ll have bones to mount.”

And that’s why they’d found only the leopard’s internal organs, thought Jane. Because the carcass was already here on O’Brien’s property, decomposing in a grave.