Page 31 of Trees Take the Long View

"It's not necessarily trafficking," I said. "The big cat might just be trying to get some money and that's a good way of bilking rich people."

"Yes, that's another theory. We'll look into both angles. I'd rather not start off accusing the possible victim, but it definitely occurred to me as well. After all, if our tiger can escape a cage, they can escape a trafficker, one would think."

I nodded, right there with him. "Except."

"Exactly. Except that there could be extenuating circumstances that we might not know about—coercion, kidnapping, all that nasty shit. Best not assume guilt first thing."

"Honestly, I don't feel sorry for any rich person who gets bilked for buying tigers anyway. They belong in the wild, or with experts who know how to take care of them."

He tapped the wheel a little as he drove, a sign he was thinking. "I'm not going to disagree with you. I've got to keep an open mind for this, and I've got to be friendly and civil, but privately, I agree with you."

I pounced on that opening. "If the tiger is a hundred percent involved here, and we find him, are we going to arrest him?"

He laughed. "We're not the cops, Alec. We can choose to pass on whatever we have, or give a verbal warning and offer to hook the guy up with a good job instead, if we so choose. It'll all go in the report, one way or another—but that report doesn't go to the police unless someone up the chain decides they want to share."

"Sounds like we're on the same page, then," I said, ignoring the part about the good job. Fuck if working with the cops was a good job!

#

The estate was huge. It was about as big as the entire golf course where Freddie worked. The landscape was manicured to within an inch of its life. Even though there were a lot of interesting trees and bushes around, they all that that certain lifeless, contained look of being very primly pruned and hacked into submission. It felt oppressive being there to me, even before I saw the animal cages—but perhaps it was because I knew why we were going there. All the same, I was very glad Dean hadn't thought my idea was a good one. I definitely would not want to be in a cage here. Or anywhere, really.

We both walked with the owner through the cages. It was like a miniature zoo in some ways. At least the donkeys seemed happy in their pen, and came rushing over to get a treat. Then they smelled me and their nostrils flared, nervous yet dangerous looks in their big, usually soft eyes.

It hadn't been planned, but this was a good chance for me to veer away and go have a sniff round on my own. With the apology that "donkeys don't like me, I'm afraid," I excused myself to wander back the way we'd come.

I stopped at the now-empty big cat enclosure, all heavy wire, even fencing in the sky, and took a few good, deep sniffs. It confirmed what I'd already thought.

I'd never actually smelled a tiger before, not being a fan of zoos, and never having met a tiger shifter before. But it was pretty easy to tell what I was smelling: a kind of cat, huge, masculine, and powerful.

To the best of my ability to guess, there had been a big cat shifter in this cage just recently. The slightly rank odor of cat still lingered, and under it the smell I associated with a creature's being a shifter, the slightly human smell under the animal smell. Just as the donkeys could tell I was a wolf even in my human form, I could tell pretty well when someone in animal form was also human.

It's a subtle thing, but pretty clear if you've grown up around shifters and are one. It's protected more than one of us, in the dark days when revealing who you were to a non-shifter could mean a brutal and violent death. You needed to be able to tell who was another shifter and who wasn't, in case you needed help, or were hunting and ran across another shifter...all sorts of scenarios. It was a very helpful thing to be able to smell.

I caught up with them at the meerkats, who were also ready to give me a few dirty looks, and then some, if I got any closer. I gave Dean the nod, and he smoothly transitioned the conversation toward our leaving. The lady had had a lot to tell him, and I hoped he'd gotten something out of it. But I wished she wouldn't stand quite so close to him or look like she wanted him for her menagerie.

"What a charming young man," I could imagine her saying to one of her friends. "I wonder if..."

He wasn't that young; and yes, he was charming, but he was also mine and I would mind very much.

"You're awfully quiet," said Dean as he drove us away from that horrible place.

"Am I?" I played ignorant, not wanting him to think I was stewing over her being just a little bit too into him. "I guess I didn't like it there."

"Me neither."

I relaxed slightly.

He drummed his fingers on the wheel, thinking hard, and said nothing more.

The second stop took much less time, since the guy who lived in a lavish top-story-of-the-building-is-his-whole-apartment place didn't really want to talk to us. I smelled cocaine residue and a couple other drugs I wasn't quite as sure of, and he definitely didn't want to talk Dean's ear off and maybe convince him to stay. I couldn't get away from the two of them to have a sniff around—the guy was determined to keep it very short and probably only let us in because it would be more suspicious if he didn't. But no more than that was necessary, for me.

The gilded cage where he'd kept his white tiger smelled exactly the same as Donkey-and-Meerkat Lady's had. Same tiger. Almost certainly a shifter. I gave Dean the subtle nod, and we got out of there as quickly as we could—and not a second sooner than the guy wanted us to leave.

"Well, he seemed like a creeper," I said, trying to be more cheerful, because I hated letting Dean read me so easily and see I wasn't happy. He could definitely tell. "Maybe it was all the drugs."

"I doubt telling the cops would do anything, but we can if you wish." Dean cut to the chase.

"You're right, a guy like that probably owns half the department."