Years later he was still giving the same awkward response, only the truth behind his answer had changed. The truth was the killing had used to bother him a great deal, and he wished it still did. The transformation had happened surprisingly quickly, he realized looking back. One trip he had returned home and discovered that he hadn’t noticed any baboons, though they had surely surrounded his camp. On another, he found himself irritated by a tower of giraffes blocking the road. Eventually, even the elephants became invisible.

Nature had become his murder book. From A to Z—from the spiral-horned addax to Grevy’s zebra—he exposed crimes against endangered species in the pages of The Sovereign, and then, like a television detective with a season to fill, moved dutifully on to the next victim. One didn’t linger over the dead, in fiction or in life. One moved on.

Klay was a criminal investigator. He was selective in the stories he took on. Winnable cases only. He was no Don Quixote. He didn’t investigate crashing insect populations or stranded polar bears. He didn’t report on the global warming crisis for the same reason he didn’t investigate Russian money laundering, Mexican drug trafficking, or Wall Street’s financial crimes. Those stories weren’t winnable. He identified traffickers, designed investigations, reported his stories, and hoped the system did the rest. Enough of the time it did. But not always.

For years Ras Botha had run a continent-wide syndicate that defied categorization: Diamonds from Sierra Leone. Arms to Charles Taylor. Counterfeit pesticides to Kenyan farmers. Fake HIV meds to Nigeria’s poor. Botha controlled crystal meth labs. He trafficked Thai, Czech, and Russian prostitutes through his nightclubs in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Musina. Elephant ivory and rhino horn were sidelines for the South African, holdovers from a trophy-hunting business he ran with his brother.

Klay had tangled with Botha once before. Prosecutors cited facts from Klay’s story in their indictment, but corruption runs thick in South Africa’s courts, and days later Botha’s case was dismissed.

That was South Africa. This was Kenya. Kenyans would love to lock up a foreigner trying to kill their most beloved elephant, especially if that foreigner was the notorious Ras Botha.

And so, by broad agreement, if the Green Guardians captured Botha’s poachers tonight, Klay would be in the room for their interrogation. He would ask a few questions of his own, and then he would follow the trail back to take another bite of Ras Botha.

“Tuskah!” Lekorere managed to turn in his seat. The politician was looking at Klay, offering him a beer.

Klay forced a smile and accepted the bottle. When the politician turned forward again, Klay poured the beer out of the door and shoved the empty into the seat seam.