The Only Clue

by Pamela Beason

  Finn suspected Brittany had a few painful reality checks waiting for her after graduation day. “Back to the open house,” he reminded her. “Did you meet Jon’s father, Tony Zyrnek?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been to Z’s place a couple of times, and his dad’s staying there. He’s nice, don’t you think? Z’s so happy to have him back. He was showing him all over Grace’s place.”

  She hadn’t seen where the Zyrneks had gone that day or what they’d done, and she hadn’t noticed the time when Tony Zyrnek left.

  Finn was running out of questions. “Did the gorillas seem upset to you?”

  “Of course,” Brittany said. “All those people. Gorillas are really very shy, you know. That’s probably why Gumu moved to the barn, to hide out.”

  Grace stiffened. “You saw Gumu go into the barn?”

  Brittany looked at Grace, then at Finn. “He was sleeping in the net, just like you told everyone. Then I saw him walk down the net toward the barn.”

  Grace asked, “What time was this?”

  “When everyone was walking toward the art gallery to look at the paintings. Gumu came out of his blankets, and then he went down the net.”

  “That would have been around four-thirty,” Grace told Finn.

  Finn wrote it down. Gumu could have been responding to the noise of a break-in in the barn. Between the crowd and the music, the event had been loud. That might have been an ideal time to steal the gorilla that was not on public display.

  The intruders might even have been hiding in the barn when Grace put Neema and Kanoni inside the enclosure. He was conscious of Grace tensing up beside him. She looked down at her lap and combed her fingers through her hair. Was she having the same thoughts?

  He had volunteered to handle security. Why hadn’t he checked the back parking lot and the perimeter of the barn? If anyone should feel guilty, it should be him.

  Brittany was watching Grace. “What’s wrong? Did something happen to Gumu?”

  Finn shared a brief uh-oh glance with Grace. She quickly looked away and patted Brittany on the knee. “We’re just trying to figure out where everyone was. It’s this darn dog thing. I was thinking that maybe Gumu saw the Weimaraner and went to chase him away. You know he doesn’t like dogs.”

  Finn’s cell phone buzzed. He didn’t recognize the number; it was a 360 area code used all over western Washington. “Thanks, Brittany. I’ve got to get to the station.”

  He briefly squeezed Grace’s hand before standing up. She didn’t squeeze back.

  “I need to go soon, too,” Grace said. “The college board wants to talk to me this afternoon.”

  He turned to look at her, eyebrow raised. In his hand, his phone continued to buzz.

  She shrugged and rubbed at the back of her neck, her expression already strained.

  Good luck, he mouthed at her. Then he answered the phone as he walked out the door. “Detective Finn.”

  “This is Officer Stremler, Tacoma PD. I checked on parolee Frank Keyes for you. He just arrived back at his apartment. Says he was camping on the Olympic Peninsula from Friday night to this morning. Alone. Paid his campsite fees in cash.”

  Great. The nutcase had no alibi. “You believe him?”

  There was a brief pause. “No reason not to at this point. What is this about?”

  “Do you know anything about Keyes’s history? He killed a gorilla in Seattle.”

  “You mean an actual ape?”

  How many different types of gorillas were there? “Yes, a real gorilla. The owner of the remaining gorillas has now relocated here outside of Evansburg. She has a no-contact order on Keyes. She thought she saw him on her property on Saturday.” That made the second time he’d told that lie.

  “I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you,” the officer promised.

  Frustrated, Finn stuffed his phone back in his pocket. Time was flying by. Tony Zyrnek seemed the most likely culprit, but he couldn’t yet rule out Frank Keyes. Zyrnek certainly had means and opportunity. But Keyes had the same crazy motive he’d always had; that teaching apes to communicate was sacrilegious and he was some kind of holy avenger.

  Instead of his field of suspects getting narrower, it was growing larger. And this wasn’t even an official case.

  Chapter 8

  At the station, Finn started his shift by swapping news with the early shift detective. Today that was Sarah Melendez. In the department’s complex scheduling system, the shifts of the four detectives overlapped by an hour so the outgoing detective could pass off information to the incoming detective. Early morning hours were not covered by detectives at all. If a detective was needed in the wee hours of the morning, the dispatcher rousted one of them out of bed with the promise of comp time in a mythological future where funding existed again.

  He’d left Melendez notes about his burglary case from yesterday, but Finn now filled her in on his dog case and the interviews with Tony Zyrnek and Grace’s staff. A guy never knew who might talk in this town.

  “What happened on your shift?” he asked.

  “Another burglary.” She pushed some papers aside and sat on the edge of his desk. “I think we’ve each caught at least one now.”

  “Any thoughts on the perps?”

  She hooked her chin-length brown hair with her index finger and tucked it behind her right ear. “I’ve got suspicions involving a circle of teenagers. And Sarge has me working that missing person.”

  “Yeah?” Finn had a vague memory of a missing person bulletin. He’d been a little preoccupied since Saturday.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Get with the program, Finn. The case was opened three days ago by Kathryn Larson. Everything’s online. Twenty-nine-year-old schizophrenic. The guy’s been gone for nearly six weeks.”

  Finn made a face. “They’re just now reporting him? Caring family.”

  “He’s flown and returned before, so maybe they’ve got an excuse. Can’t be easy to have a family member like that.” She abruptly straightened and hissed, “Uh-oh. Speak of the devil.”

  Finn raised his head. A worried-looking older couple had walked into the office, accompanied by the desk sergeant.

  “Ryan Connelly’s parents,” Melendez informed him.

  “Connelly?”

  “The missing schizo.” She slid off his desk and quickly snatched her purse from her desk drawer. “I’m off duty. They’re all yours.”

  He checked his watch. “I’m due in court in thirty minutes.”

  She waggled her fingers in the couple’s direction as she passed them on the way out. Their weary eyes tracked her exit before they turned and followed the sergeant. Today it was the nicer one, Carlisle.

  “Detective Finn will update you on the search for your son.” Carlisle shoved an extra guest chair in front of Finn’s desk.

  Finn leaned across his desk to shake hands. Mr. Connelly’s hand was callused and dry; the diminutive Mrs. Connelly’s was soft and moist. Their faces were tense. They both looked like they hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in years.

  “We’ve been talking to Detective Larson and Detective Melendez.” Mrs. Connelly glanced sideways at the two female detectives’ empty desks.

  Finn assured her that all department detectives worked on every case. Which was sort of true. One detective was always the primary and worked most on any given case, but they shared information and were at least aware of all open cases.

  He pulled up the Connelly case on his computer and quickly scanned Larson’s and Melendez’s notes. They had interviewed several associates about Ryan’s possible location. The guesses of where the twenty-nine-year-old might be were all over the map.

  “One friend said Ryan talked about joining a peace march in D.C.,” he reported.

  The parents looked at each other. “Yes,” the father said, “Ryan is very opposed to U.S. intervention in other countries.”

  “Another said that Ryan wanted to go camping in the mountains, and his girlfriend told the detective Ryan said he was d
riving to the coast.” Jeez, no wonder they couldn’t locate the guy.

  “Ryan is not allowed to drive,” the mother said.

  Finn checked the record. Ryan Connelly’s driver’s license had been revoked at the age of 23. There was no accompanying reason, but it was probably medical, either due to mental instability or his meds, or more likely his penchant for going off them. Or maybe for driving drunk; there were two DUIs listed. Apparently, like so many of the mentally ill, Ryan also had an alcohol problem.

  Finn turned back to the parents. “I see that Ryan has several citations for driving without a license.”

  The father sighed heavily. “He didn’t ‘borrow’”—he used his fingers to put air quotes around the word—“one of our cars this time. And none of our friends has reported a missing car.”

  But Ryan might have taken a stranger’s car. Or he might have hitchhiked to the mountains if the camping story was true. “Does he have camping gear?” Finn asked.

  The father nodded. “He took his backpack, tent, and sleeping bag with him. We told all this to Detective Larson.”

  The mother rummaged through her purse and eventually pulled out a small envelope. “I brought these other pictures of Ryan so you could see what he sometimes looks like.”

  “I’ll have them scanned into the record and returned to you.” Inside the envelope was a photo of a clean-cut Ryan similar to the one in the record, a photo of the young man with long hair and an unkempt beard, and a photo of him with shoulder-length hair and a mustache. Finn looked up at the couple. “I’m sure these will help.”

  They didn’t look as if they were sure of anything.

  “I’m sorry that we have no definitive leads at this time,” he told them. “But the appropriate bulletins have gone out and we all know what Ryan looks like, so all authorities are looking for him.”

  What he couldn’t say was that unless Ryan committed a crime, there wasn’t much hope of the young man being found. There were simply too many crazy people walking city streets and too many homeless people living in the woods these days for law enforcement to deal with. And Ryan Connelly was of average height and average build, with brown hair and brown eyes. Even the pictures of him with long hair and a beard could have been any of thousands of men he passed on the street every month.

  The three of them stared silently at each other for a long painful moment. Finn could feel their need for encouragement, for some shred of hope. The mother bit her lip, fighting tears. Mr. Connelly clutched the edge of his seat, his knuckles white with tension or anger, or probably both.

  “I am due in court in a few minutes.” Finn rose from his chair. “We’ll be in touch if there are any new developments.”

  The Connellys stood up.

  “We know our way out.” The father turned toward the door.

  “Please find our son,” Mrs. Connelly pleaded before following her husband.

  Finn sat down heavily. He’d rather work a murder any day than look for a missing person. Or a missing gorilla. Grace’s expression at the Morgan house had been as anxious and stricken as the Connellys. At least with a murder, you knew the outcome for the victim from the beginning.

  * * * * *

  To Grace, finding the gorillas in the woods now seemed like a crazy wish, but at least searching for them felt like doing something. She let Jon borrow her van to drive down nearby logging roads in the faint hope that he’d spot a gorilla.

  If the gorillas hadn’t escaped, they’d either been killed or kidnapped. While Frank Keyes had already proven he was capable of killing a gorilla, Grace didn’t know why he’d take the corpse of an ape. She didn’t want to believe that some people might pay to have them stuffed as trophies. Steeling herself to focus on another more likely possibility—that the gorillas had been kidnapped for sale—she researched internet sites advertising sales of exotic animals. There were ads for monkeys, lions, cougars, bears, tigers, snakes, spiders, lizards, frogs—the list seemed endless. It hurt to see all the photos of these beautiful animals in cages.

  But this was exactly the point that some outsiders made about her gorillas—they should be in the wild; they should be free. She wished Gumu and Neema and Kanoni had been able to live their lives that way. Sadly, her gorillas had no concept of how to survive in their native Africa, or in any wilderness setting. Neema had been born in a zoo to a disturbed mother that refused to care for her. Gumu had been captured by bush meat hunters when he was only a little older than Kanoni was today.

  Not knowing the whereabouts of her three gorillas was agony. Visions of gorilla corpses, maimed gorillas stuffed into tiny cages, and gorillas tortured and dying of cold and starvation constantly paraded through her brain. She felt simultaneously paralyzed and frenzied.

  She stared at the computer screen. Two chimpanzees were for sale. One orangutan. No gorillas. But this was a site for legal sales, and there were no doubt sites that only illegal traders knew about.

  She closed down the legal site and typed “gorilla for sale” in her browser search box. Twelve hits. Six were toys, one was a Halloween costume, and one was a YouTube video cartoon. But then—oh God—the ninth was a gorilla skull on an auction site, the bones laid out on a backdrop of black velvet. The current bid was three hundred and twenty dollars.

  The tenth link displayed a set of stuffed gorilla hands and feet, allegedly from Africa.

  Her heart ached. If Africans only knew how smart gorillas were, they’d understand that eating one was akin to cannibalism.

  The remaining two links were to articles about baby gorillas found for sale in markets in Africa, with prices as high as forty thousand dollars.

  She sat back in her chair. Forty thousand dollars? Good Lord. She’d thought the prices she’d paid for Gumu and Neema were high. That much money could ignite a reverse wildlife trade of captive animals shipped to Africa.

  Could her gorillas be en route to Africa? That would be ironic. And so tragic.

  * * * * *

  After his court testimony, Finn returned to the station and found a message from Grace on his personal cell phone informing him that a captive gorilla might be worth as much as forty thousand dollars. That certainly upped the ante for wanting to steal one. Apparently even gorilla bones were worth money.

  The fingerprints he’d submitted for the fictional Weimaraner case came back with matches for Sierra Sakson, Jonathan Zyrnek, and Grace McKenna; at some point they’d all touched the hasp of the barn door lock. Grace’s fingerprints were no surprise. Jon and Sierra might have been merely doing their jobs, closing the back door or checking to be sure the lock was secure. So he was still at square one on the gorilla case.

  He finished reading Melendez’s notes from her earlier shift. She’d checked the local pawn shops and eBay and Craigslist for the stolen items, including the guns from his case last night. The victims had all been interviewed; they hadn’t provided any leads. He couldn’t think of anything more to do for the moment on the burglary cases. None of the prints recovered so far matched any in the system, and she hadn’t left him any notes about the suspected involvement of local teens. So he was still at square one on the burglary case, too.

  He studied the photos of the missing Ryan Connelly, trying to memorize the young man’s appearance. Unfortunately, no matter the length of his hair or his whiskers, the guy had no distinctive features. Brown hair, brown eyes, five foot ten, 165 pounds. In other words, average in every way except for the voices in the poor guy’s head.

  Finn turned his thoughts back to the missing gorillas. No, the fictional Weimaraner, he told himself. Now he was hearing voices in his own head. He called the phone company and requested last month’s records for the Zyrneks’ landline as well as Jon Zyrnek’s cell phone. Then he ran the license plate number of Tony Zyrnek’s pickup through the DMV database. The patchwork pickup was registered to Evansburg Auto Salvage.

  According to licensing records, Evansburg Auto Salvage had been in operation for six years. It was the perfect sort o
f business for Zyrnek to meet other ex-cons; they often ended up in jobs that required physical labor rather than education. He ran a quick check on Grant Redd, the owner of the yard. Yep, Redd had stayed off the law enforcement radar in recent years, but he had spent nearly five years in a state prison for drug possession and assault more than a decade back.

  The rain and wind had stopped for the time being. He drove to Redd’s address outside of town with the windows down, enjoying the warm spring evening.

  The Redd house was a manufactured home, too, like the Zyrneks’, but a relatively new one in a tidy subdivision, with sweeping cedar decks surrounding the outside of the house.

  A plump teen girl in rolled-down sweatpants and a T-shirt answered the door. When Finn asked for Grant Redd, she bellowed over her shoulder, “Dad!” and then walked away, leaving the door open a few inches. The electronic sounds of a video game bounced around inside the house.

  After a minute, Redd appeared. He was at least fifty pounds overweight, and his muttonchop sideburns were a fashion statement from decades ago. “Yeah?”

  Finn flashed his badge. “I’m here to ask about your employee, Anthony Zyrnek.”

  Stepping outside in his stocking feet, Redd closed the door behind him, then motioned Finn to a chair on the deck. “Zyrnek do something? He seems on the straight and narrow to me.”

  “He probably is.” Finn pulled out his notepad and pen. “The department likes to check up on recent parolees.”

  “He’s a good employee. Works hard, reports on time.”

  “What’s his pay?”

  Redd raised a bushy eyebrow. “Not that it’s police business, but I pay a buck more than minimum wage.”

  “He work forty hours a week?”

  “The schedule’s variable. Kinda depends on intake and customer requests and such.”

  Convenient for a criminal to have a flexible schedule, Finn thought. “He drives a truck that’s registered to you.”