Finn flipped through the case file on the dead guy in the Mustang, and held out a copy of Kevin David North’s driver’s license photo.
“That’s Keno,” Redd confirmed. “But that’s got to be a really old photo, or else he was wearing a rug when he had it taken. He was bald as an ostrich egg when he worked here. I think he shaved his head, but there wasn’t much there to shave to begin with.”
“Did Keno and Zyrnek get along?” Finn asked.
Redd shrugged. “Far as I know. But then Tony’s real easy to get along with.”
Finn knew that better than most. For good measure, he showed Grant Redd photos of Ty Linero, Allen Whitehead, and Ryan Connelly. He was beginning to wonder if they were all linked in some way. Redd didn’t recognize any of those three.
“Tony’s not in trouble, is he? He’ll be back at work tomorrow?”
“Call me if he’s not,” Finn told him. And I’ll send everyone I can think of out to nail his ass.
* * * * *
With an ache in her heart, Grace observed as Neema persisted in her restless search through the barn. At least Neema’s pattern of activity was changing; maybe her violent acting out this morning had been cathartic. Neema hadn’t eaten, but she had taken a drink of water and she was moving again. She often stopped to gaze at the area where the blood stain had been. Maybe this was a normal grieving process that the gorilla would eventually emerge from.
While Grace had been at local television station recording a plea for Gumu’s return, Jon and his father had discovered an abandoned bolt cutter and lock out by the back road and reported it to Finn. Please, she prayed to whoever was listening, let that be a break that leads us to Gumu.
Near the back door, Neema bent over on all fours to examine an object on the floor. She flicked away sawdust, and then Grace saw a brief flash of red as Neema transferred a small object to her mouth.
Grace rushed to her. “Neema, what was that?”
The gorilla stared at her stubbornly, her eyes sullen.
“In your mouth. What did you put in your mouth?” She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
Neema obstinately transferred her gaze to the barn wall.
“Be good. Show me.”
Finally Neema faced her and opened her mouth. What looked like a piece of red paper lay on her tongue.
“Give it to me, please.”
Slowly, Neema extruded her tongue. Grace peeled off the object. It was a stick of gum, wrapped in foil and orange-red paper, now damp with saliva and dented with a couple of teeth marks. It was a stick of clove gum.
Grace’s breath caught in her throat. Neither she nor Jon nor any of the volunteers chewed clove gum. Or any kind of gum, for that matter. She didn’t allow gum in the presence of the gorillas. This had to have come from an intruder. She needed to call Matt. She turned and nearly collided with Caryn, who had walked up behind her.
“Boss?” The young woman held out Grace’s cell phone. “I cleared your voicemail box,” she said. “I know I should have asked, but I was worried that someone might be trying to call with information about Gumu.”
Grace bit her lip. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Had she subconsciously given up hope of locating the male gorilla alive? She held out her hand. “Thanks.”
“Almost all messages were from reporters, but a few were from Detective Finn.” Caryn’s cheeks pinked on saying that, and Grace wondered what Matt’s messages had contained. He had every right to be angry with her.
“It’s okay, Caryn,” she said.
The girl took a breath. “Anyway, there was this one other call that seemed important, so I called him back. I know you’re going to want to talk to this guy.” Caryn handed the phone to her.
“This is Grace McKenna,” she said hesitantly.
“Dr. McKenna, this is Steven Constello—Maria’s father. You truly believe you have Pepito?” His syntax was more formal than most Americans, and his voice held a trace of an accent—Hispanic? Brazilian? In the background Grace could hear the excited chatter of a girl.
Grace assured them that she did have the pygmy marmoset. The girl came on the phone. “Does he have a little streak of white fur on his head?”
“Looks like an exclamation point.”
Maria squealed at the top of her lungs, and Grace quickly yanked the phone away from her ear, smiling. It was wonderful to be able to share good news for a change.
The father came back on. “Thank you so much for this gift of happiness in a very sad time, Miss McKenna. When may we meet to get Pepito? We are happy to drive to you.”
She couldn’t invite them into the media circus surrounding her home. If any of the media saw the marmoset, she could be arrested. The Smiths had never reported the theft, which told her that the monkey was indeed stolen, but in the current climate of the county, she might be charged with having another exotic pet she hadn’t reported.
She checked her watch. It was late. She arranged to meet the Constellos the next afternoon in a state park about a half hour’s drive east along I-90. She’d miss the little marmoset, but she was delighted that Pepito would soon be back home.
Chapter 22
The next morning, Finn was impatiently waiting for initial fingerprint matches on the bolt cutter and lock. He hadn’t been able to locate Kevin David North. The guy’s cell phone had been disconnected, and he’d been evicted from his apartment six weeks ago. No news on either Ty or Ro Linero or Leroy Shane. It had been more than a week since Gumu had disappeared, and although he felt like he was getting a handle on who might be involved, he still didn’t have a clue what had happened to the gorilla.
His cell phone buzzed as he was in the process of instructing Miki to search for online stories of apes for sale or new apes in zoos.
“Look for anything involving apes or ape products,” he summed up as he fished for his cell in his shirt pocket.
The young technician scowled. “I’m not dense, Detective. I’ll figure it out. I’m planning to be a detective, too.”
The arrogance of youth. “You have to be a police officer first.”
She tossed her head. “I’m going to the academy this fall.”
“Good for you.” She seemed to think that achieving detective status would be a fast climb for her. Maybe it would be. In Evansburg, Miki had the home town advantage.
After the girl walked away to her work station, he put the phone to his ear. “Finn.”
“Hi, Matt. Sorry to bother you at work.” Grace.
He was glad to hear that she didn’t sound mad any longer. “I guess you know your parents left today?”
“Thank God. How’s your leg? And your face?”
“They both hurt. But I’ll live. How are Neema and Kanoni?”
“Not good.” Grace’s long pause told him the situation might be worse than he was imagining. He could feel her struggle for emotional control. “I don’t want to talk about that now. That’s not why I called. First of all, I need to say I’m sorry about how I behaved last night. I know I’ve caused you a lot of trouble, and I understand why you’d want to—”
“Grace, we need to talk.” Miki appeared at his elbow again. The expression on the twenty-year-old’s face told him she was intently eavesdropping. So was Mason at the next desk over. “But can we do this later?”
“Okay. Whenever it’s convenient for you. But I need to tell you about something Neema found in the barn. I sent a photo to your work email.”
As he listened, he refreshed his email list and pulled up the photo. Clove gum? That was unusual. The red-orange wrapper looked familiar. Red paper. The room suddenly felt like the air pressure had bottomed out as he realized where he’d seen that kind of gum before. He asked Grace to bring the stick of gum to the station.
After hanging up, he pulled up Tyrone Linero’s DMV photo and studied it carefully.
Miki laid two printouts on top of his keyboard. A gorilla skeleton had appeared for sale on eBay. And a zoo in Mexico City had acquired a new male go
rilla. He stared at them sadly and nodded at Miki.
This was going to be a bad day for a lot of people.
* * * * *
An hour later Finn was in the interview room at the police station, sitting across the table from Heather Clayton. “Heather, did Ty chew clove gum?”
She picked invisible pieces of lint from her skirt, crossed and then uncrossed her legs. Simply being in a police station made most people nervous, and apparently Heather was no exception. Her eyes widened. “How did you know?”
“I remembered you had some in your apartment.”
She looked nervously at her watch. “I need to be back at the office in a few minutes for a counseling session.”
“You might need to cancel that.” He held out the scrap of cloth the morgue technician had saved from the remains of the corpse’s shirt. “Do you recognize this?”
For a long moment, she stared at the fabric piece lying in the palm of his hand. Then she swallowed hard and reached for it, stretching it between her fingers. “This matches the shirt I gave him for his birthday in February.”
When she looked up, her eyes were filled with tears.
He felt like he was torturing her. He moved his chair around the table to sit beside her. “Did Ty have a small round scar on his forehead, and a pierced hole in his right earlobe?” After the corpse had been washed, these small details had been revealed.
A frown creased her forehead. “Why are you asking me all these questions? Why are you using the past tense?” She splayed the fingers of her right hand on top of the table as if she needed the support.
Finn put his hand on top of hers. “Heather, Ty didn’t leave you and Jenny.”
“Go on,” she whispered, not looking at him.
“I’m sorry to tell you that about a week ago, a body was discovered in a Mustang that crashed off of a forest service road.”
“I read that in the paper.” She shook her head violently. “But that can’t be Ty. He doesn’t have a Mustang.”
“The Mustang was registered to Allen Whitehead in Renton.”
“I’ve never heard of Allen Whitehead. I don’t even know where Renton is.”
“Do you know a guy named Kevin North?”
“No.”
“He used the nickname Keno. He got out of jail thirteen months ago. He worked briefly at the auto salvage yard here. We think the Mustang came from him.”
“Let me guess—this Kevin was one of Leroy’s or Ro’s lowlife friends.” She shook her head again. When she spoke, her voice was a hoarse croak. “So maybe that dead guy you’re talking about is Kevin. That can’t be Ty.”
He didn’t want to show her the morgue photo. But it seemed he had to. He carefully placed his thumb across the area beneath the corpse’s nose, hiding the missing jaw and protruding vertebrae, and then slid the picture in front of her downcast eyes.
“Oh God.” She turned her head away and buried her face in her hands. “He didn’t leave me,” she moaned, leaning toward him.
He put his arms around her.
“He didn’t leave Jenny.” She sobbed the words into his shoulder.
“That’s right.” Finn patted Heather’s back, glad he could at least give her that consolation. Tests remained to be concluded, but he was sure the blood in the barn would match Ty’s. Either Gumu had killed Ty, or one of Ty’s partners in crime had.
Over Heather’s head, Finn glanced at the window of the interview room. He’d hadn’t drawn the blinds tightly enough, and between the slats he saw Grace standing in the hallway watching, several pages of paper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, with Miki by her side. He’d asked Miki to photocopy the USA Today article on exotic pets for Grace. After spying him with Heather in his arms, Grace turned away and dumped the coffee into a nearby trash bin, then disappeared from sight.
Miki mouthed the word Sorry before she vanished, too.
* * * * *
“Why doesn’t your article say that Gumu was stolen?” Grace argued with an assistant editor at USA Today. “You made it sound like he escaped.”
“We didn’t say anything of the sort. The article simply says the gorilla vanished and left behind a pool of human blood.” The guy sounded irritated. “That’s true, isn’t it?”
“He vanished, yes,” Grace snapped, “because someone took him. And he did not ‘leave behind a pool of human blood,’ because he didn’t leave voluntarily. Gumu is not a dangerous wild animal unless he’s mistreated. And the poor gorilla has been mistreated by humans most of his life. It’s a wonder Gumu’s not a serial killer.”
Her phone bleeped, and she pulled it away to see Call Waiting – Matthew Finn. Ignoring that, she put it back to her ear and heard the editor insist, “We have no reason to print a retraction.”
“There’s a complete male gorilla skeleton for sale on eBay today. Where did that come from? And a zoo in Mexico is advertising that they have a new gorilla. Where did he come from? Great apes are being slaughtered and sold illegally all around the world.”
“Read the whole article, Dr. McKenna. It points out how animal trafficking is a multimillion-dollar criminal enterprise. And we did say the case was still under investigation. Thank you for calling USA Today.” He hung up.
She sat down in her desk chair, fuming, and checked the eBay site again. The bid was up to eighteen hundred and twenty dollars now for the gorilla skeleton, and there were still hours to go. The description said the bones were “historical,” whatever that meant. That had to be how the seller was slipping under the CITES radar. Gorillas hadn’t been classified as endangered until the late nineties. But in the photos, the bones looked fresh and white, not weathered and yellowed. Was she looking at all that remained of Gumu?
She pulled out the photocopied article about the new male gorilla in the Mexico zoo. Was the black ape in the photo Gumu? He was peeking out from behind vegetation; it was impossible to tell. How could she force both of these parties to give her a DNA sample? She needed an attorney, but with no funds and the rarity of the situation, finding one who would actually help was a tall order. She placed the photocopy down on top of the letter from Tacoma saying You deserved it. She covered those pages with the notice from the County Council that she had lost her permit and had ninety days to get rid of the gorillas. And then she topped off the stack with the official letter from the college board stating that they had decided not to renew her grant for the gorilla sign language project.
Excited shrieks penetrated her fog of despair. She went to the window. Sierra stood near the portable poultry pen as Pepito leapt around inside. They had only another couple of hours with the marmoset before she would take him back to his rightful owners.
Brittany was play-chasing Kanoni and her daughter Ivy around the yard. Neema had resumed her post at the top of the net.
On the desk, the phone buzzed. Matthew Finn. She didn’t feel like talking to him right now. Dr. Grace McKenna was going down like the Titanic, and he didn’t deserve to sink with her. She’d have to leave Evansburg. Matt belonged with that beautiful woman, Heather.
Was this the end of the road? Her mother had probably been right; a zoo would be glad to take Kanoni. But Neema, in her present condition, was more liability than asset. What institution wanted to take an unpredictable, suicidal gorilla?
For that matter, what institution would want Dr. Grace McKenna, who had now managed to lose two of the four gorillas in her care. And if Neema didn’t start eating, the loss of a third one might be only days away. If Neema died, would Kanoni quickly follow? Gorillas might be the largest of the great apes, but they were also the most delicate. Seemingly healthy survivors of gorilla massacres in the wild had been known to die of sorrow and loneliness.
Maybe Neema would be better off with someone else. Grace didn’t know how to save her.
She picked up the email printout her mother had left behind. Richard Riverton, her old college lover, now head of the Psych Department. Maybe it would be for the best, to leave this a
ll behind, get a fresh start in academia. Swallowing her pride, she called.
Of course his secretary answered, emphasizing the difference in their status. She was put on hold for a full six minutes of soft jazz before Richard came on the line.
“Grace! How are you holding up?” he asked.
“So you know what’s been happening?”
“USA Today is on my desk as we speak. It seems a bit unfair, given that the gorilla was stolen from you.”
“Thank you for saying so, Richard. Congratulations on making department head.”
“I’ve been here two and a half years.” Another reminder of how far behind she’d fallen in recent years. She had a hard time remembering what she’d found attractive about him. He’d always been a bit of a stuffed shirt, far more ambitious and political than she was. Detective Matt Finn was more her type.
She shook her head to clear out that thought. Matt was gone.
“Richard, I wanted to ask you about the email you sent to my mother, saying you had a position for me.”
There was a long moment of silence on the other end. Then, “Grace, I sent that email before all this news hit the national wire. I’m sure you understand that now...” He sighed. “You know how tight funding is these days, and the politicians have their fingers in everything.”
She waited for more, but he didn’t say anything. “Are you retracting your offer?”
“Actually, I never made a formal offer,” he said stiffly. “But Grace, I truly wish you—”
She clicked the OFF button and set the phone down. It buzzed again almost immediately. Matthew Finn. She watched the cell phone vibrate around on the desk until it went silent.
Forming her hand into a big letter L, she tapped her forehead with it. Loser. She contemplated drinking the bottle of tequila she had stored in the cabinet over her refrigerator. Loser, loser, loser.
Then she straightened, furious. She didn’t deserve any of this, and neither did the gorillas. If the newspapers wouldn’t print the real story of her gorillas, she would post it on the internet herself. She opened her word processing program and wrote about how Neema had witnessed the murder of her previous mate Spencer and now had suffered the loss of her second partner. She described how Gumu had been captured as a baby after his whole family had been murdered around him. And now he’d been kidnapped again and taken to God only knew where.
The Only Clue Page 26