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  He jerked upright and answered groggily, “Gosden.”

  “Oliver, it’s Ron. Were you sleeping?”

  “Just about.” Lauren still was.

  “Sorry. But we’ve got Isaac Cardwell’s killer. Sergeant Stanley told me you wanted to be in on the arrest.”

  Oliver Gosden sure as hell did.

  “Be there in ten—”

  The deputy chief heard a ripping sound at the back of his house — a door or window screen being slashed open. This was followed by a low growl. A chill ran the length of Oliver’s spine that tightened both his scalp and sphincter muscles.

  The mountain lion was in his house. He knew it with absolute certainty.

  “It’s here!” Oliver whispered urgently, his throat suddenly so dry he had to fight to get the words out. “The mountain lion is in my house!”

  That was all the time he could spare for the phone, but he had the presence of mind not to hang up. He laid the receiver on the nightstand so the line stayed open. Then he shook his wife once, firmly. When her eyes popped open and she recognized who he was, he covered her mouth with his palm.

  “The mountain lion is in our house. I’m going to get it. Lock the bedroom door behind me, and don’t open it until I tell you.”

  Oliver didn’t have time to dispel the horror that appeared in Lauren’s eyes. He grabbed his service weapon, and on instinct his Zippo lighter, from the nightstand.

  Then he ran into the darkened hallway outside his bedroom.

  Praying he got to Danny’s open bedroom doorway before the big cat did.

  Ron shouted at Sergeant Stanley to man line one on his phone, to maintain the connection to Deputy Chief Gosden’s house at all costs. Then he and Corrie Knox sprinted to her 4x4. Ron drove, and Corrie grabbed her Winchester 94 from its bracket. Her fingers danced nervously on the stock and barrel as she held it. With the streets deserted, Ron raced toward Oliver’s house without using his emergency lights or siren.

  Neither he nor Corrie said a word.

  Oliver was less than three feet from his son’s room when the mountain lion appeared around the far corner of the hallway. The cat stopped and fixed Oliver with a feral stare. Its eyes glowed hypnotically. Its jaw dropped open and the lion gave a shrill, keening yowl that froze Oliver’s soul.

  But not his gunhand.

  He raised his weapon to fire and —

  “Daddy, daddy!” Daniel cried. “There’s something bad outside my room! Come quick!”

  The deputy chief took his eyes off the cat for only a split-second to look toward his son’s room, and he knew instantly he’d made a terrible mistake. He felt as much as heard the cat leaping at him. There’d be no chance to get off a shot now. Maybe no chance to save himself at all.

  Out of pure reflex, he dove for the opening of Danny’s doorway, trying to hit it as low and fast as he could. He felt a blast of hot, fetid breath on his face. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the blur of the mountain lion going by above him.

  Time seemed to slow to a viscous crawl. Oliver floated through the air as lazily as if he were swimming just beneath the surface of a sunlit sea. The lion, having anticipated a stationary, upright target, drifted past high overhead, no more threatening than a fanciful balloon. All Oliver had to do to enter his son’s room would be to simply twist a few muscles, bend a few joints, and let the breeze carry him along.

  Suddenly, joltingly, painfully, the world rushed back to full speed with a bang. With a swipe so stunning it felt like his hand had been broken, the cat knocked Oliver’s gun from his grasp. Next, he felt a flash of pain as scalpel-sharp claws raked his left calf muscle. Finally, he slammed shoulder-first into the doorjamb of Danny’s room.

  But he was too charged with fear and adrenaline to let any of these traumas incapacitate him — especially when the mountain lion’s momentum carried it skidding along the polished hardwood floor affording him the opportunity to escape.

  Oliver scrambled on his hands and knees into Danny’s room and kicked the door shut.

  Just before the cat slammed into it, shook the door in its frame, and howled in rage.

  Ron pulled up at the Gosden house. Both he and Corrie heard the savage cry of the animal within the structure. But the lights in the house were extinguished and they couldn’t tell who was where. They exchanged a tense look.

  “Any other situation,” Ron said, “I want as much backup as I can get.”

  Corrie shook her head.

  “Cops aren’t trained for this. Too many guns, too many frayed nerves, and we’re more likely to shoot the Gosdens, each other, or some neighbor in her nightgown.”

  And lights in the neighboring houses were coming on in response to the lion’s continued uproar.

  “We’ve got to go in now,” Corrie said, “before we draw a crowd.”

  “Or a neighbor opens up with his gun.” Ron gave Corrie a quick description of the layout of the Gosden house. “Okay, I’ll take the front door, you take the back. But we have to do one more thing first.”

  Ron radioed Sergeant Stanley, told him to advise whomever he could raise on the Gosden’s phone line of their movements. He didn’t want Oliver to blow away either of his would-be rescuers.

  Oliver leaned his weight against the door to his son’s room as the big cat slammed into it with another thunderous crash. The deputy chief didn’t give way, but the hinges on the doorjamb were starting to yield. If the hardware went, keeping the beast out might be more than he could manage.

  Fucking thing had to be getting a running start from the bathroom across the hall, the deputy chief figured. Then he just threw himself at the door with everything he had. That, and bellowed and snarled for all he was worth.

  Oliver was past fear and in a rage himself. He wanted that motherfucker now. He was half-tempted to throw the door open, half-sure he could strangle the sonofabitch with his bare hands. The lion hit the door and howled again. Oliver roared right back at it.

  “Daddy, make it stop!” Daniel pleaded through a veil of tears. “Shoot it, shoot it!”

  If Oliver’d had his gun, he would have. Right through the door. Now, however, he had to think of something else. He wasn’t quite berserk enough to go the barehanded route. And he wasn’t going to open the door at all until Danny was out of harm’s way.

  There was a momentary lull. The cat had backed off and was quiet. Danny was sobbing softly. Oliver had a moment to look around and think. He saw a broom in the corner. His son had been earning his quarter a day keeping his room neat. At the same time, Oliver realized he still had his Zippo held tight in his left fist.

  “Danny,” he whispered. “Hand me that broom, son. Go on bring it to me.”

  The little boy looked bewildered, but he wasn’t going to question his father at a time like this. He brought him the broom. Then he stepped back and instructed Oliver quietly, “Daddy, you can’t hurt a lion with a broom.”

  Despite everything, Oliver had to smile.

  “Danny,” he said in a soft, soothing voice, “I want you to go into your closet now. Close the door and don’t open it for anything, unless Mom or I come to get you. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll be scared.”

  “The lion won’t be able to get you in there, son.”

  “I’ll be scared for you.”

  “Danny, we’re all going to be fine. And what I’m going to do to that cat, I don’t want you to see. Now, go on, son. Right away.” Oliver took a step away from the door to urge Danny on his way with a gentle pat on his bottom.

  He watched as his son ran into the closet and pulled the door shut tight behind him.

  Then he knew just what he had to do.

  But before he could do a thing there was a knock on the wall between the two bedrooms. Lauren told him Ron Ketchum and Corrie Knox were about to enter the house with weapons drawn.

  That changed everything. What he had to do now, Oliver decided, was sit tight.

  That plan lasted only the second it took for Danny
’s bedroom door to explode open, smack the deputy chief square in the face, and knock him on his ass.

  But once again the momentum of the mountain lion’s charge made it overshoot its prey. When it turned, however, Oliver was still down and trying to clear the cobwebs from his head. A stunned victim. An easy kill. In the split-second before the predator could pounce, however, Daniel Gosden, having heard the commotion, and sensing the big cat was near, screamed in fear from the refuge of his closet. Then Lauren Gosden shrieked from the next bedroom, voicing the horror a mother knows when her child is threatened. The two outbursts confused the cat.

  There was more prey nearby, but the lion couldn’t see it.

  But the cat heard the click-slam of a door being thrown open and footsteps racing toward it. Then there was another two-legged creature in the doorway of the room, joining the one that was just picking itself up.

  “Oliver, where’s Danny?” Lauren shouted, her eyes scanning the room and not finding her son.

  “Here I am, Mommy,” the boy called from the closet, not two feet from the cat. He started to open the door to run to his mother.

  The mountain lion immediately knew which of these creatures it would take first.

  But that was when the deputy chief flicked his Zippo lighter and turned the broom’s bristles into a blazing torch.

  Ron could wait no longer. He threw his shoulder into the Gosden’s front door with all his strength. The deadbolt held and so did the hinges, but the hollow-core door split right down the middle. The chief fell to his knees as it gave way. He quickly looked up to see if the big cat was bearing down on him. It wasn’t. He was safe for the moment.

  But there was an ungodly racket of screams, shouts, and snarls coming from the bedroom wing of the house.

  Corrie got there first, having slipped easily through the slash made by the cat in the screen door at the rear of the house. She saw Deputy Chief Gosden holding a flaming broom, backing the cat into a corner as it snarled and snapped at him, trying to bat the broom from his hand.

  But the deputy chief held tight, and suddenly a little boy burst from a closet in the opposite corner and ran screaming to his mother. The cat made a lunge for him and got its face singed for its trouble. The child made it to his mother’s arms, but the flames on the broom had almost consumed their fuel and the fire was dwindling, ready to expire.

  “Deputy Chief!” Corrie yelled. “Stand clear, give me a shot!”

  But before the fire went out completely, Oliver Gosden roared and charged the cat, intending to drive the broom handle right down the animal’s throat.

  The cat may have been old, but it was still far too quick to be taken by such a clumsy attack — and it, too, was enraged. It coiled itself into a compact ball and sprang from its rear legs. The big cat cleared the burning end of the broom … and there was Oliver’s throat right in front of it. The mountain lion opened its jaws and turned its head to rip away its prey’s soft exposed flesh in one savage bite.

  Ron skidded into the doorway of the bedroom just as Corrie Knox fired her Winchester. He saw the top of the lion’s skull cleave off as the round caught the animal in mid-air. It was, without question, a killing shot. But the slug didn’t have the stopping power to knock the big cat aside. The lion’s momentum carried it straight into the deputy chief and slammed him backwards to the floor.

  Even in death, the cat’s jaws still closed around Oliver’s face.

  Daniel Gosden screamed, but the three adults in the room raced forward to aid the fallen man. Ron and Corrie levered the mountain lion’s jaws open, and Lauren by herself dragged her husband, who outweighed her by eighty pounds, from beneath the cat’s carcass.

  At that moment, everyone finally heard the sirens of the emergency vehicles that were just then pulling up out front. The neighbors hadn’t opened fire, but they hadn’t sat by idly, either.

  Ron looked at Oliver, the dead mountain lion, and then at Corrie.

  “We ever need a SWAT officer around here, I know who I’m calling,” he said.

  Corrie Knox’s shot had deflected the mountain lion’s head just enough. Oliver Gosden suffered puncture wounds to his right cheek and the tissue just inside his lower jaw. Getting slammed to the floor had produced a moderate concussion. The lacerations to his calf were cleaned and bandaged on site. It wasn’t until the following day, when the deputy chief regained his senses, that anyone realized two of the metacarpals in his right hand had been fractured as well.

  Corrie Knox insisted she was fine. She sat down in an easy chair in the living room and let a paramedic take her pulse and check her heartbeat, but she insisted nothing was wrong. She even tossed back a shot of scotch Lauren brought her, though she said she didn’t usually drink hard liquor.

  But there was a twitch at the corner of her left eye that wouldn’t stop. Corrie wasn’t even aware of it, denied having it until one of the paramedics held up a mirror in front of her.

  The paramedics insisted on taking her to the hospital for observation.

  Ron added, “Wouldn’t want it to ruin your jump shot. Not when we’ve got that one on one game coming up.”

  The game warden rode in the same ambulance with the deputy chief, Lauren and Danny following immediately behind in the Gosden family car. While the cat’s body was being bagged, Ron called Clay Steadman. He told the mayor of the mountain lion’s demise.

  He also told him who had killed Isaac Cardwell, and when the mayor wanted to be in on the arrest, the chief of police told him no.

  “This is my job,” Ron said. “We’re going to do it my way.”

  Ron’s way was to be as careful as he could. He had units block off all the streets approaching Art Gilbert’s house. Gilbert’s three closest neighbors were contacted by phone. Over the course of ninety minutes, at irregular intervals, they quietly got in their cars and drove away. Ron gave his people their orders, and at exactly midnight he drove onto Art Gilbert’s property.

  Ron’s patrol unit set off motion detectors. Floodlights came on, making the vehicle a perfect target.

  The house wasn’t as grand as any of the estates or mansions at which Gilbert had toiled, but it was a cozy, well-maintained home nonetheless. A wood frame structure painted a pearl gray with a charcoal roof and trim, it was bounded on two sides by screened-in porches. The grounds weren’t large, but they were as impeccably landscaped as any property in town.

  Uneasy but undaunted, Ron got out of his patrol unit and walked toward the house. As he did, he tripped another motion detector. Another light came on. It pinned the chief like a bug on a board. Ron’s hand went to his handgun, but he didn’t pull it from his holster.

  “What can I do for you, Chief?” Art Gilbert called from the darkness of the near porch.

  Ron could barely make him out. Gilbert was little more than a denser inkblot in the blackness of the porch.

  “Step outside where I can see you. That’ll do for a start, Mr. Braddock.”

  For a moment there was no response to Ron’s use of the man’s real name. The timer where Ron parked his patrol unit clicked off the first floodlight. Ron knew if he stood still he’d soon be in darkness himself.

  He said, “I know you killed Isaac Cardwell, Mr. Braddock. My deputy chief knows, too. So does Mayor Steadman — and so do all the police officers who have your house surrounded right now. If you come with me now, peacefully, things will work out as well as they possibly can. When we get to the station, I’ll let you call a lawyer, or make your statement, before I put you in a cell.”

  “How did you find out?”

  The timer shut off the second light, leaving both men to continue their dialogue in the dark.

  Ron hadn’t really articulated his thought process for himself before that moment. He had to work it out before he could answer Gilbert. Braddock. He wasn’t even sure what he should call the killer.

  “The first thing that struck me,” Ron began, “was an inconsistency. I couldn’t reconcile how a guy who looked like you —
a seemingly upright, maybe even uptight, guy — could keep working at Jimmy Thunder’s place after he’d heard about something as heavy as money-laundering going on. It didn’t seem to fit. You remember how I asked you about that? But then it just wasn’t a flinty live and let live attitude, or loyalty to a client, was it?”

  “It was loyalty to my son,” Braddock said flatly.

  “I was glad to have your help at first, pointing the finger at Didi DuPree and, later on, at Colin Ring. I couldn’t believe my luck having someone close to Jimmy Thunder who could feed me information. It seemed too good to be true, and it was. Your little tidbits were meant to distract me from thinking about you. And for a while there, it worked.”

  “You still haven’t told me how you found out.”

  “Your work had a lot to do with it. You’re so damn good. Everything you touch, you make beautiful. Lawns, shrubs, flowers, trees. Every living thing.”

  The chief thought his man might respond to his last comment, but he didn’t.

  Ron continued, “Then people kept making these comments to me, or at least in my presence. Taken separately, they didn’t mean much. But at some subconscious level they meshed, and when they did it came at just the right place and just the right time. And I knew it had to be you.

  “The first thing I heard was from my father, of all people. He told me that Isaac Cardwell’s death wasn’t the work of your run of the mill, shit-for-brains racists. He said the picture he saw of the crucifixion was too artistic.

  “Then Ezra Tilden spoke out at our town meeting. He said he thought the killer should also be crucified, but it should be to a dead tree, so no living thing would be hurt.”

  That drew a grunt from the porch.

  “Finally, Clay Steadman told me you’d have made a great film director because you have a natural sense of visual composition. And the last time I saw the tree where you nailed Isaac Cardwell, there were four boys there staging a mock crucifixion, and I got to see just what a powerful image it was. A living person being nailed to a dead tree. It was only a few minutes later that everything clicked for me.”