Slowly Danny nodded, and Wendy thought he was beginning to understand the problem. Still, it seemed that he wasn’t quite ready to give up the fantasy of keeping the two raccoons as pets. “I could build them a pen,” he said. “I can take some of my money out of the bank and buy wire and build them a cage like this one. Only bigger.”
“You could do that. But think about it, Danny. Would you like to spend your whole life in a cage? Or would you rather live in a place where you could run around and climb trees and maybe go fishing in the creek?”
He looked up at her in surprise. “Raccoons fish?”
“They do,” Wendy told him. “I’ve seen them.”
Danny was silent for a long time after that, watching the young raccoons nosing the corners of the pet carrier, looking for an escape.
“They want to get out,” he said at last.
“Yes,” Wendy said. “And we should let them out. Not right away, because they’re too young to be on their own. But in a few weeks we can let them go.”
“Where?”
“There’s a state park not far from here, where hunting’s not allowed,” Wendy told him. “That’s where I let my raccoon go.”
“If we let them go, and I went back there sometime, do you think they’d remember me, and not be afraid?” Danny asked wistfully.
“Maybe,” Wendy said. “But it’s better if they don’t. It’s better if they remember that people can be dangerous.”
7
THE WITNESS
Wendy slept poorly that night, half dozing, every sound bringing her wide awake. Once it was noise made by the raccoons scrabbling in the pet carrier on the back porch. They were nocturnal animals, and nature was telling them that they should be out and about. They were probably missing their mother, too. Wendy went into the kitchen, cut up an apple, and took it to them. But when she heard a car out on the street slow down, and thought it stopped, she hurried back inside and locked the door.
When morning came, after she had fed the animals and had her own breakfast, she drove to the hardware store to get a roll of wire and a few other things to build a pen for the raccoons. Just as she pulled into a space in the hardware parking lot, a car with two men pulled in beside her. She froze. Were those the same men who had held her up? Were they following her?
But no. The men barely noticed her. They got out of their car, laughing and talking, and went into the store. Wendy waited until she stopped shaking, then she went in, too. But the same thing happened when she turned down an aisle and saw a man standing there, examining an electric drill. The way he held it, at the end of an arm stuck straight out, made Wendy think of the way the robber had held the gun. Again she felt her heart thudding. Then a woman walked up, probably the man’s wife, because she said, “If it’s what you want, honey, go ahead and buy it.”
Wendy forced herself to continue shopping until she had all the items on her list. At the checkout, she got in line behind a man who turned and looked at her. It was just an ordinary look, the sort of mildly curious look you might give anybody in the checkout line. But when he waved to another man who had got into the line behind Wendy, once again she felt a sense of panic.
Don’t be silly! She told herself. Nothing can to happen to you in the checkout line in a store full of people! At the same time, another part of her mind was saying, But they look just like.… Then she reminded herself that she didn’t know what the robbers looked like. That was what she had told the police, because it was true. Why was she imagining that every guy in sight looked like two men whom she hadn’t even got a good look at? What she going nuts, or what?
Even though she knew she was being irrational, Wendy stayed inside the store until the two men left, and she could see out the front door that there were no other men between her and her car. Then she hurried out and drove home.
When she got there, Danny was sitting on the steps, waiting for her.
“Hi, Danny,” she called. “Want to carry this roll of wire around back?”
She opened the back of the Toyota RAV 4 and slid the roll of wire out. Danny tried to lift it, but it was too heavy for him to handle alone. Wendy took one end, and together they staggered around to the backyard.
Danny was more helpful than she had expected. “You’re pretty good with tools,” she remarked, watching him double-measure a board before making a chalk mark and starting to saw. “And careful.”
He finished the cut, then sat back on his heels. “I fix things around the house for my mom. Sometimes Butch lets me use his tools.”
Raccoons can both climb and dig, so the pen had to have a top and a bottom. It took most of the day to build it. Danny drove a final nail and stood back to admire their handiwork. “Looks good,” he said.
Wendy nodded. “As soon as I wire down this water dish to keep the little rascals from spilling it, we can put them in.”
Danny filled the food and water dishes. Wendy set the pet carrier inside the pen. She opened the carrier door and quickly closed the gate to the pen. The raccoons instantly came out and began running around the pen, looking for a way out.
“Keep your fingers away from the wire,” Wendy warned. “A raccoon bite is a terrible thing.”
Danny looked at her in surprise. “Why? They’re not big enough to hurt me.”
“Yes, but there’s a law. If a person gets bitten by a raccoon, it has to be reported. Then authorities cut off the raccoon’s head to test to see if it has rabies. If it does, the person who got bit has to get shots to keep them from getting rabies.”
“Even if it’s a little bite?” Danny asked in dismay. “They kill the raccoon?”
“They do,” Wendy confirmed. “That’s why we are very careful, and wear thick leather gloves if we have to handle them. Not just to protect ourselves, but to protect the raccoons.”
Danny did not answer, and Wendy could not tell what he was thinking. She just hoped he would remember what she’d told him, and be careful.
Wendy heard a car pull into the driveway, but didn’t tense up this time, because she recognized the sound of the engine. It was Kyle.
“Around back!” she called.
A minute later, Kyle came around the house. “Hi, Wendy. Hi, Danny.”
Danny cast Kyle a sidelong look, then fastened his gaze on the animals, with barely a mumbled, “Hi.”
“I see you two have met,” Wendy said, but she didn’t ask when or where. From Danny’s embarrassment and the meaningful look Kyle gave her, she guessed that it was one of the times when the police had been called to Danny’s house to break up a fight between his parents.
“I was on that stakeout most of the night,” Kyle said. “And went home from there. I didn’t hear that the robbery was at your bank, and you were involved, until I got to work this afternoon. You okay?”
Wendy gave a small shrug. “More or less.”
“I talked to the officers who handled the case,” Kyle said. “I can’t believe you didn’t get the license number! What were you thinking?”
Wendy put her hands on her hips and gave him a look. “I was thinking of getting out of there. What would you be thinking of if some guy stuck a gun in your face?”
“You could’ve got the license number when they were driving away,” Kyle insisted.
Wendy was on the verge of getting seriously annoyed with Kyle, who seemed to have forgotten he was her boyfriend. Instead, he was acting like a policeman, asking the same questions they had asked her half a dozen