Parks Canada warden Jenny Willson has left Canada to join an American colleague on a secondment to assist Namibian authorities trying to stem the loss of the country’s rhinos to illegal hunting. But the plan takes a dramatic turn when Willson finds herself in the crosshairs of a conspiracy involving wildlife poachers backed by a shadowy network of international buyers prepared to eliminate any obstacles in their way, including Willson and her new team.
While the Namibian assignment allows Willson to sidestep personal and professional questions that remain unanswered back home, she quickly recognizes that her decision to leave the Canadian Rockies could have deadly ramifications.
Parks Canada warden Jenny Willson has left Canada to join an American colleague on a secondment to assist Namibian authorities trying to stem the loss of the country’s rhinos to illegal hunting. But the plan takes a dramatic turn when Willson finds herself in the crosshairs of a conspiracy involving wildlife poachers backed by a shadowy network of international buyers prepared to eliminate any obstacles in their way, including Willson and her new team.
While the Namibian assignment allows Willson to sidestep personal and professional questions that remain unanswered back home, she quickly recognizes that her decision to leave the Canadian Rockies could have deadly ramifications.
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Overview
Parks Canada warden Jenny Willson has left Canada to join an American colleague on a secondment to assist Namibian authorities trying to stem the loss of the country’s rhinos to illegal hunting. But the plan takes a dramatic turn when Willson finds herself in the crosshairs of a conspiracy involving wildlife poachers backed by a shadowy network of international buyers prepared to eliminate any obstacles in their way, including Willson and her new team.
While the Namibian assignment allows Willson to sidestep personal and professional questions that remain unanswered back home, she quickly recognizes that her decision to leave the Canadian Rockies could have deadly ramifications.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781459740891 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dundurn Press |
| Publication date: | 09/28/2019 |
| Series: | Jenny Willson Series , #3 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 388 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Dave Butler is an author, photographer, forester, biologist, and a Royal Canadian Geographical Society Fellow. His first Jenny Willson Mystery, Full Curl, won the Arthur Ellis Best First Crime Novel Award. He lives in Cranbrook, B.C.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
MAY 24
Sam Mogotsi climbed to the top of a ridge, slowly, quietly. The dry, crystalline soil crunched beneath his boots. It was midday and the sun was high and hot, sucking the moisture from his skin. Since leaving his remote house at dawn, he had been driving and walking for more than five hours and was keen to be home by the time his two boys returned from school. After checking the ground for snakes and scorpions, he lowered himself and sat in the limited shade of a large boulder, his back against the rust-coloured sandstone. He could feel its warmth against the shirt of his uniform, its tan fabric dark with sweat.
Mogotsi began to search the opposite hillside with a slow pan of his 10x50 binoculars. He knew they were close. As he did each day, he'd been following their tracks since he'd spotted them on the road. They were old friends. If he was patient, he would eventually spot them.
Seeing nothing through the high-powered optics, Mogotsi dropped them to his chest and let his experienced eyes scan the slopes unaided, watching for the hint of movement that would reveal his targets against the rugged browns and greys. The rainy season had ended a month earlier, and already, most of the trees and shrubs on the far hillside — the acacias, mopanes, and shepherd trees — were showing signs of drought, their leaves drooping or edged with brown. Surprisingly, a few were still vibrant green. He used these as landmarks while his eyes moved in a practised pattern. He slid his Save the Rhino Trust hat from his head , its dark-green brim ringed with salty white. A slight breeze blew from the north, carrying with it the smell of heat, of parched grasses, of the baking rock at his back, of something vaguely organic.
His eyes continued the sweep.
After a few moments of silent observation, Mogotsi finally saw motion. He again raised the binoculars and watched as the creatures cautiously emerged from behind a grove of mopane trees. It was a pair of black rhinos, a cow and a calf. The pointed lip and lack of hump on the cow confirmed the species. They were moving from right to left , the calf behind and partly obscured by the mother's larger body. He saw the notch in the cow's left ear and knew it was Linda. The calf was Buhle, or "Beautiful." Mogotsi had been given the honour of naming her because he was the first to see her aft er she was born.
Linda was leading Buhle away from the shade of the trees, though they'd normally be napping at this time. Mogotsi knew Linda's eyesight was not keen enough to see him at this distance, so he wondered if she'd heard his footsteps as he came up the ridge, or if she'd caught his scent on a slight shift in the wind. Or had she detected the scent of something more dangerous?
Mogotsi smiled. Seeing wild rhinos always gave him pleasure, even though he saw them almost daily. Ten years ago, that pleasure had come from the thought of a quick payday. Then, he had carried a .303 rifle in his hand and a large axe in his backpack. Like today, he'd slowly stalked the animals, staying downwind. His goal would have been to get close enough to the cow so that he could shoot her and, as quickly as possible, hack the two horns from her skull, the larger one in the front, the much smaller one behind. On the two-hour drive to meet his buyer in the town of Kamanjab, he would not have given any thought to the fate of the orphaned calf.
But Mogotsi's days as a poacher were over. As a full-time rhino ranger hired by the local ≠ Khoadi-// Hoas Conservancy, he was a valued member of the team and could now comfortably support his family with a regular salary. Having grown up with a father and a grandfather who had both hunted illegally and sold horn and ivory to shadowy buyers, or used illicit bushmeat to barter with hungry neighbours, it had taken Mogotsi two years to shift his thinking. But he now understood the saying "A dead rhino will feed a family for a week; a live rhino will feed a family for a lifetime." He knew it, his family knew it, and so, too, did his community. His wife and sons no longer had to endure boom-and-bust cycles, with money for food or clothing there one day and gone the next. His family and friends respected him, and he was free of worry over going to jail or paying heft y fines. Life was better now.
In his notebook, Mogotsi recorded the rhino pair's condition and direction of travel, using a handheld GPS unit to determine their exact location. Even though he knew the animals by name, he sketched in the length of their horns, the size and shape of their ears, and descriptions of their tails. Most importantly, he noted his distance from them and their reaction to him at that distance. He knew that this data would be used to fine-tune the guidelines they followed when they brought out guests from the local eco-lodge to watch these and other rhinos.
Mogotsi rose, pulled his cap down low, and moved out of the shade. He began to walk parallel to the path of the animals, stepping carefully around rocks the size of soccer and cricket balls, moving downhill along the spine of the ridge he had climbed earlier. He looked toward where he expected the rhinos to be heading: a water hole in a low draw, visible in the distance as a copse of green trees. There, he saw a herd of elephant cows and calves, the adults feeding on acacia leaves above their heads, the youngsters cavorting in and out of a tiny pool of water.
Picking his way carefully along the rocky ridge while keeping his eyes on the rhinos and on the ground at his feet for any sign — tracks or scat — that other animals were around, Mogotsi almost missed it — something lay in an opening to his left . When he saw it, he knew that things had changed, suddenly and dramatically. After two days of searching as he'd shadowed the rhinos, it was the very thing he had hoped not to find.
Mogotsi froze, Linda and Buhle forgotten for the moment. Myriad tracks — he recognized those of black-backed jackals, spotted hyenas, and vultures — led to the gruesome pile. Though the bones were mostly picked clean of flesh, he knew they hadn't been there long; he saw traces of blood and sinew in their crevices. Where sharp molars and incisors had cracked open the bones, the marrow was still red. The action of the scavengers had most likely erased any evidence of the cause of death.
The only portion of the skeleton that still resembled its original structure was a length of spine, and only because the lobes, tongues, and planes of the vertebrae fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The circular pelvis sat next to it, as if resting, waiting for its owner to return. Turning in a slow circle, Mogotsi saw the rest of the bones scattered over a vast area. The skull there on the slope just above him, laying on its right side, empty sockets staring, the lower jaw missing, as was most of the left side of the skull. A lone femur lay a few feet away.
Mogotsi stood quietly, shocked by the ghastly sight, frightened of the implications it would have for the safari lodge and the lucrative wildlife-viewing program that brought new visitors to the conservancy each week. He had to report his find; if he didn't, someone else would eventually. But most of all, he wondered about the effect this discovery would have upon him and his family.
Deep in the Klip River Valley, the sun was dropping steadily toward the horizon, and Mogotsi scanned the scrub brush around him. Was he in danger of becoming the next meal for the area's predators and scavengers, which had tasted human flesh, perhaps for the first time?
Slowly, Mogotsi fished the portable radio out of his pocket and raised it to his lips. "Klip River Lodge," he said in a near whisper, "this is Sam. I have found what we have been looking for. I need you to send the police." He was purposefully obtuse in case any lodge guests were listening.
The voice of the dispatcher crackled in his ear. "What did you find, Sam?"
"I think ... I think it's Chioto."
"Where are you?"
Mogotsi gave the dispatcher the local name for the area — DuRaan East — and his coordinates from the GPS, just in case.
A response came five minutes later. "Sam, the police are on their way. I also reached the manager on the phone. He is in Windho ek but will come back right away. He wants you to stay there until the police arrive."
"I will," said Mogotsi, again turning slowly to look around.
The radio crackled again, but this time came the voice of his partner for the day, a man who was watching a second pair of rhinos about a kilometre away: "I copy that, Sam. I will come to where you are."
Mogotsi hesitatingly took a step toward the skull, respectfully. Knowing he shouldn't, but unable to help himself, he gingerly picked it up, turned it to face him, and stared into the empty sockets. "I am so sorry this happened to you, my friend." A clump of soil fell from the right side of the skull, revealing a hole the diameter of his thumb, opposite to where a chunck of the skull was missing.
For Mogotsi, there was no doubt that this was all that remained of Chioto Shipan ga, a fellow ranger who'd been missing for two days, the subject of an intensive search by friends, family, and colleagues. Mogotsi thought about his sister, Martha, and the devastation that his brother-in-law's death would cause, not only for her, but for their whole family.
CHAPTER 2MAY 24
The late afternoon traffic on Windhoek's Independence Avenue was heavy, with cars and trucks and motorbikes jostling for position at the end of the workday. Horns beeped impatiently. Engines roared and paused. Music blared from open windows. It could have been a typical rush hour in any city on earth.
Danny Trang sat alone at a cafe on the corner of Independence and Fidel Castro Street, the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk just inches from his right elbow. He'd finished his first full day of work in Namibia's capital city, a sprawling metropolis of more than three hundred thousand people. He felt like crap and was frustrated that his internal clock had been painfully slow to shift to his new time zone. He'd endured a nine-hour flight from Calgary, Alberta, to London, England, an eleven-hour flight from Heathrow airport to Johannesburg, and then a two-hour flight from there to Windhoek, but he was a seasoned traveller and had expected to hit the ground running, as he always did. It was a badge of honour for him. In his career as an adventure travel photojournalist, he'd learned all the tricks of the trade: changing his schedule before he left to match the time zone of his destination, using noise-cancelling headphones and compression socks on the plane, and going to bed when appropriate to the local time when he arrived. But despite having done all that, he still felt like a first-timer. The previous aft ernoon, in his first meeting — an interview with a source for his story — he'd yawned so many times that his jaw ached and he felt as though he'd gone eight rounds with a dentist.
When he left his hotel that morning, he was almost hit by a truck as he crossed the street; he hadn't yet remembered that vehicles drove on the left side of the road here. He'd have to constantly remind himself to look right instead of left when crossing the street.
He'd spent the day dragging his ass around to craft centres, the Parliament Gardens, the Independence Memorial Museum, the Supreme Court building, and the dramatic Christuskirche, the red-towered Lutheran church built in the early 1900s that dominated the downtown skyline.
Once he'd finished for the day, still feeling foggy and jelly-legged, he'd walked two blocks from his hotel to the coffee shop, intending to top up his caffeine level while getting a better feel for the rhythm of the city buzzing around him. It wasn't a quiet or particularly relaxing spot, but it offered him a good vantage point to watch the world go by.
Trang studied the plastic menu. He'd heard that Windhoek Lager was good, but knew he'd fall asleep if he had one at this time of the afternoon. Perhaps later, before bed. Instead, it was time for a big mug of strong, black tea with lots of sugar. Not that caffeine-free rooibos tea he'd heard so much about.
Trang twisted in his seat, trying to catch the eye of one of the roving servers. For the third time since he'd arrived, one of them glanced at him and his waving arm but quickly looked away.
Five minutes later, he tried again, this time waving with both arms. Aft er the same surreptitious snub from the same server, Trang ignored his Canadian tendency to polite nonconfrontation, stood, and walked directly toward her. If he was rebuff ed again, he would keep walking. "I'd like to order a big pot of black tea," he said quietly, almost apologetically. "I'm sitting at that table over there." He pointed. "And have been for at least ten minutes. But then, I think you already knew that."
"Oh yes, sir, sorry, sir," said the server, dropping her eyes to the fl oor. "I thought someone else had taken your order."
Trang returned to his seat, wondering when the drink would arrive, whether the water would be hot, what organic material might be in the tea bag. He gazed across the street at the shady retreat that was the city's Zoo Park, at the pairs of elderly men sitting on benches and the women and groups of children who were scattered around on blankets, claiming space among the trees where they were protected from the afternoon sun.
Trang had wandered into the park earlier that day on his way back to the hotel, pondering the elephant column, a bas-relief of an elephant hunt topped with a sculpted elephant skull. It was a reminder of why he was here. Pausing at the nearby German war memorial, he'd reflected on Namibia's history of more than one hundred years of foreign occupation, thirty years by Germany, then seventy-five under the rule of South Africa. Its independence had only recently been granted in 1990; the country had come a long way in a very short period.
With a bang, a china plate holding a pot of water, a tea bag, a large mug, and a spoon landed on the table. Trang had been jostled by locals on the sidewalk yesterday and again that morning, he'd been ignored by servers, and now one of them had served him as if he had somehow disrupted her entire day. He couldn't help but wonder if his arrival had somehow pissed off all the people of Windhoek. Even the taxi driver he'd hailed at the airport and the hotel clerk at check-in had been abrupt at best. As a journalist on assignment, he'd visited more than seventy-five countries and had never felt like he wasn't welcome. What was going on? His experience thus far didn't match the stories he'd heard about Namibia's hospitality, about the smiling, helpful residents who lived there. He'd have to ask someone about this — that is, if he could find anyone who would actually talk to him about it.
As he sipped his tea, Trang stared down the tree-lined street. Hints of German colonial architecture abounded. Windhoek resembled a capital city in northern Europe more than it did other African cities, with their frenetic pace and constant noise. Despite the clamour of the main street traffic, the city was refined, understated, and evoked a pleasant combination of history and anticipation of the future. At 1,700 metres above sea level — six hundred metres higher than his home in Kimberley, B.C. — and bordered by hills to the east and west, it was also much cooler than he had expected. But that would no doubt change the next day when he headed north to lower elevations.
Trang opened his book to review the notes he'd made in his meeting yesterday with the executive director of Namibia's community conservancy association, a key player in the country's approach to adventure travel. Unlike the servers and taxi drivers and the hotel clerk, the executive director had been not only friendly, but also very responsive to his many questions. She'd talked about how the conservancy model, which created self-governing local groups with responsibility for wildlife management, had opened the door for joint venture eco-lodges. Some of those lodges had built global reputations for the quality of their experiences and for their commitment to wildlife conservation. Her passion and pride had shone through, and Trang had left the meeting excited about visiting some of the lodges during his four-month stay.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "In Rhino We Trust"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Dave Butler.
Excerpted by permission of Dundurn Press.
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