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I wouldn’t sympathize, but it wouldn’t help matters if the little beast gave up and bit Albert in frustration. “I haven’t seen any wildlife reports of a nuisance animal, have you?” Officially, the state reports are available to all animal welfare professionals. In reality, I have no standing—and no means of getting access to them.
    “Of a mountain lion or whatever it is? Nuh-uh.” He shook his head vigorously. “That’s what’s so spooky. No warning, just…whoosh…like a ghost in the night. Like those lions in Africa? The mankillers? They get a taste for human flesh, you know.”
    “We don’t know that’s what happened.” Now it was my turn to fight frustration. “Very few animals kill humans by choice.” It had been a while since I’d studied the big cats, but basic animal behavior is pretty much the same the world over. “We’ve pushed into their territory. We’re the intruders. But—”
    I stopped, unsure of how much I wanted to share with the shaggy man before me.
    “We don’t even know if that girl was killed by a mountain lion, Albert.” I didn’t tell him she’d been moved. Or that Creighton wouldn’t have been so curious if the death was a simple case of person-meets-panther.
    He was shaking his head. “Deputy Johnson said she was, for sure,” he said. “Joe Carnovy did, too.” He looked up at me. “They had to look for evidence around the body, you know, before the medics took her away? They said it was pretty obvious. She had claw marks all down her front, like from an angry cat. Joe said she looked like this.” He faked a rictus. It wasn’t attractive. “Like it was really bad.”
    “Great.” Whether or not this was true, it wouldn’t make my job any easier. I’m for moving nuisance animals, not killing them, and I had the law behind me. Cougars were protected. However, a lot of contingencies would allow for an animal to be destroyed. If there were a public outcry, the best I could hope for was that the damned cat had moved on.
    “Watch out!” Distracted, I’d quit wiggling the pencil, and Frank had grabbed it. I smiled and pulled on it slightly, the better to give him a bit of a tussle. “This isn’t a game .”Those agile paws clasped the pink rubber of the eraser and his teeth bit down. But the dark button eyes remained on mine. “And big cats aren’t the only killers out there .”

Chapter Seven
    Maybe it didn’t matter who she was. The woman in the silk shirt was still dead. Now that she’d been moved from the preservation land to a hospital morgue, someone would identify her. Make the necessary preparations for her. Mourn her.
    I’d done my part, or Spot had. It was time for me to get back to work. Of course, those two things weren’t mutually exclusive. Especially, I thought as I eased my baby-blue GTO out of the parking lot, if one pursuit helped further another.
    Service dogs are new to me and that made the job more interesting. The training itself is pretty basic, in that it involves accenting—and cementing, in a way—the basic role of the domestic canine. Dogs tend to be human-centered; we’ve bred them that way and, as Wallis would be quick to point out, they’ve accepted that. It’s what they want now, believe me. Most times I get called in to help with a “problem” pup it’s not that he’s consciously misbehaving. It’s that he can’t figure out what his person expects of him. He’s getting mixed signals, often positive feedback for negative behavior. Or, less often, he’s bored. A dog, unlike a cat, needs a job.
    So basically what I’m doing is an extension of regular dog training. I’m teaching the animal to recognize and respond to the slightest clue: The small gesture that a wheelchair-bound person may be able to make with one finger. The hesitation a blind owner may feel approaching a street corner. On the flip side, I’m also teaching the animal to tune out any outside influence. Squirrel? Doesn’t matter. Cat? Forget