John Sandford - Escape Clause

“I asked about that and nobody heard anything mechanized,” White said. “The holes in the fence aren’t that big. There were fourteen people here on duty at the time, nobody heard anything unusual.”

“How many were out in the area of the tiger exhibit?” Virgil asked.

“Twelve of the people are basically cleanup and maintenance; two of them are security guards and the guards circulate. They don’t have any set routes, but they cover the whole zoo a few times a night.”

“Why didn’t they see the cut fences?” Duncan asked.

“Not that easy to see, in the dark,” McCall said. “I’m not defending the guys, that’s the fact of the matter. You can go out and look for yourself.”

“I already did,” White said, “and Mr. McCall is correct. It’s hard to see.”

“I’ll take a look,” Virgil said. “The big question is, how did they move the tranquilized cats? We have to figure out how and where they took the cats out of the zoo. This place is surrounded by houses, maybe somebody has a security camera.”

Duncan said to Virgil, “The crime-scene guys have been up at that Minnetonka home invasion, but they were due back this afternoon. I’ll check with Bea, see when she can get over here.”

Virgil asked, “Does anybody know if tranquilizer guns have to be registered? Or do you need any kind of prescription or whatever for the darts? I assume the things are dangerous… you wouldn’t want somebody shooting a human being.”

“No, you wouldn’t. The dose that would put Artur to sleep would kill a human,” Best said. “The rest of it, you’d have to ask one of our vets.”

“I’d like to get one of the vets to check your stock of darts and see if they’re all accounted for,” Virgil told Landseer.

She nodded: “I’ll do that right now.”

“One more question-this might sound stupid. Is it possible that the tigers are still here in the zoo, in some unused cage or den, and the thieves plan to take them out later? I mean, if they don’t seem to have gone through the only exit…?”

Everyone sat up, looked at each other and then the director, and Landseer said, “My goodness, nobody ever asked that question. I will have the zoo searched immediately. There are a few places where they could be kept. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? To find them here?”

“Might want to tell your searchers to be careful,” Duncan said. “Wouldn’t want to unexpectedly walk in on a couple of hungry tigers.”

–

Virgil turned to Best: “Could you show me around? I’d like to talk to the guy who heard the shots last night.”

“Joel Charvin. I’ve got him standing by, and Bob Moreno, he’s the one who spotted the cut fences.”

“Let’s go,” Virgil said.

“You gotta hurry,” McCall said. “Those tigers are in a world of trouble.”

Virgil and Best found Charvin and Moreno in a break room.

Charvin, a short thin man who looked like he might lift weights, didn’t have much to contribute, except the time frame: “I think it was right around one-thirty. I was collecting trash, and I heard the sounds, these pap pap pap sounds. I was on the other side of the zoo and I looked over toward where the sounds came from, that’s off to the west. The moon was going down, the bottom of the moon was touching the horizon. You should be able to check the time from that.”

“I was told these guns are fairly quiet… but you could hear them on the other side of the zoo?” Virgil asked.

“Sort of. I didn’t know what they were, never even thought they might be a tranquilizer gun,” Charvin said. “They were just… different sounds than what I usually hear at night. Could have been somebody doing a golf clap, like clap clap clap .”

“Three times, not two?” Virgil asked.

Charvin thought for a moment, his eyes half shut, then said, “Yeah. Three. Clap clap clap . There was some time between the sounds… maybe a minute.”

“Okay, good,” Virgil said. “Anything else?”

“Nope. I was working on the other side of the zoo, like I said, and didn’t hear anything more. There’s houses on the other side of the zoo fence and McAndrews Road is over there to the south, so there’s always some noise. I didn’t think any more about it until we found out the tigers were gone.”

They talked for a couple of more minutes, then Virgil let Charvin go, and he, Best, and Moreno walked around the animal containment areas to the edge of the tiger exhibit. A chain-link fence kept people on the path, and the tiger area itself was enclosed by a heavy black chain-link fence that Virgil estimated to be fifteen to twenty feet high.

Virgil didn’t immediately see the cut in the first fence, until Moreno pointed it out. Whoever had cut the fence had cut from the bottom up, a hole three and a half feet wide and two feet high, with the wires on the left edge left uncut so the fence could be swung open like a door.

When they left, the thieves had pushed the fence back in place and had fixed it there by taping some of the cut ends with narrow strips of silver duct tape, which were hard to see even if you knew what you were looking for.

“Anybody would miss that in the dark. Can’t blame the security guys,” Virgil said.

Best said, “They cut the hole in the tiger cage right over there.”

All three of them clambered over the pathway fence and walked to the tiger enclosure. They found the same shape hole cut in the tiger fence, but the cut ends were taped together with black duct tape.

“Somebody thought about this a lot; there was serious planning going on,” Virgil said. He got down on his hands and knees and examined the grass next to the cut, then looked up at Moreno and Best. “Take a look at this. Tell me what you see.”

The two men got down on their hands and knees and scrutinized the grass near the cut. Moreno spoke first. “There’s a line. You can barely see it.”

“Oh, yeah,” Best said. “I see it. It’s straight. Not a shoe print.”

“I think it’s a wheel,” Virgil said.

“They took them out of here on a dolly,” Moreno said.

“I think so. Keep people away from here, especially the grass. Our crime-scene people will want to take a look.” Virgil looked into the cage and asked, “Anything in there now?”

Best shook his head: “No.”

Virgil grabbed the fence and carefully pulled it free of the tape splices, not touching the tape. He told the other two not to touch it and to be careful where they put their hands, knees, and feet, and all three of them crawled into the tiger enclosure. The enclosure was a pleasant piece of rolling ground, well treed, with a small pond, but not a tiger jungle, Virgil thought. He wondered if the tigers knew the difference.

He looked at the pond and asked, “Tigers swim?”

“Yeah, they do. They’re not like house cats,” Best said.

Virgil led the way to the highest point and motioned back to the cut fence. “The tigers had to be between here and the fence; couldn’t see them from anywhere else. Which makes me wonder, how did they know the tigers would be up here?”

“I was talking to one of the keepers, not today, but a while ago, and he said tigers like to hang slightly below the top of a hill, where they’re not silhouetted, but they’re up high,” Best said. “From there, they can see and hear everything, but they’re hard to see themselves. An insider would probably know where they hung out.”

Moreno: “Only an insider would know that we were letting them stay outside on hot nights.”