When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [32]
I blinked away the unbidden image of Kit Harrison, and walked to the window that faced back into the woods. I threw it open and breathed deeply. I could almost taste the pines and grass.
A faint morning breeze brushed across my damp skin. I began to feel better. I had started to turn away from the window when I heard it. A horrifying sound that chilled me to the bone.
Chapter 31
THE LONG, WAILING SCREECH that I heard coming from the nearby woods was ghastly. It took me only a minute to throw on jeans, workboots, the same T-shirt I’d worn the day before.
I stopped in the minilab long enough to fill a syringe with ketamine, and I put the anesthetic in my knapsack. Pip was barking loudly for breakfast, but he would have to wait. I couldn’t take the time.
“I’ll be back,” I shouted as I bolted for the door and burst outside.
The continuing sound of shrill screaming pierced my eardrums. The dew soaked my shoes and I slipped a couple of times but I kept on running as fast as I could.
I followed the pitiful sound, almost certain that I knew where it was coming from and what had happened.
The woods behind my clinic slope down toward a deep stream, almost a small river. Winter runoff had cut deep gullies into the woods. In summer the gullies are dry and partially filled with woodland debris. Choice places for predators to hunt for rodents.
Choice, too, for trappers to set illegal traps.
The high-pitched yipping got louder and then stopped abruptly as the animal panted for breath. When it started up again, the sound nearly broke my heart.
I made my way across the top of a gully and finally saw the fox. The beautiful, reddish-brown animal was dangling down in the gorge by one foreleg, scrabbling futilely with the other. It was a terrible, wrenching sight.
I saw what had happened.
A trap had slammed shut on the fox. It tried to pull itself free and had backed up over the edge of the chasm. The leg was gripped by the teeth and chain of the trap, and the fox’s body banged and scraped against the gully’s wall.
My stomach balled up. This was such needless, gruesome torture. For what? Somebody’s expensive coat in Aspen or Denver? The female was in agony; she was going mad, and why shouldn’t she?
“Hang on,” I said to the fox, in a low, unthreatening voice. “I’m coming.”
Oh, God, I’m not going to hurt you, little foxie.
The trap chain was double-looped and locked around the tree. I rattled the lock hard, but it wouldn’t release.
“Damn it!”
I thought of trying to haul the fox up by the chain, but she’d bite me. Besides, I had forgotten to take my gloves, and there was the possibility she might be rabid.
I hurriedly looked for a place to climb down. The gorge wall was lined with loose shale. I found what I thought was a good safe spot and decided to chance it. No good. The shale gave way and I made the ten-foot descent on my butt.
My noisy approach sent the fox into increased fear and frenzy. She was terrified, snapping her jaws and drooling from the mouth. I saw that the leg was completely engloved. The trap’s teeth were gripping bare bone.
“It’s okay, girl.”
I stood below the fox and looked for some way to inject her with the ketamine. There was a nearby ledge on a level with my shoulders, but it was obviously too thin and too narrow. I didn’t trust myself to hang on to it and get the needle into her leg at the same time.
The fox’s continual high-pitched whine was driving me crazy. Soon she’d go into shock, and very soon after that she’d die.
I knew I couldn’t save her by myself.
Chapter 32
KIT WAS SLUGGING a long, arcing home run high over the famed “Green Monster” wall in Boston’s Fenway Park. His two boys were watching from seats along the first-base line. Suddenly he was torn from his baseball heroics, the remnants of sleep.
There was a loud, insistent banging at the cabin door. He placed his hand on the rifle he kept under the bed, slid it along the floorboards.
“Yeah? Who is it?” he called. He pushed himself