Along with Ivy, Brittany had brought Sophia, another three-year-old she’d been babysitting, and they’d all spent the afternoon in the gorilla enclosure. The scene was hilarious, with Neema giving two tiny humans and one baby ape rides on her strong back and then the three youngsters competing to see who could spin themselves like whirling dervishes for the entire length of the barn floor. Kanoni always won, twirling long after the girls had collapsed. Short legs and long arms were clearly advantages when it came to spinning.
Grace smiled at the twirling playmates on the video. Even Neema and Gumu joined in for a few whirls before regaining their adult dignity. Then little Sophia collided with one of the many tree branches that littered the floor, tripped and fell onto her back, and started screaming.
At this point, the video footage swung wildly as she and Brittany had leapt to their feet, but after a few seconds, the camera focused again on the scene. Neema was first to reach Sophia, and the mother gorilla scooped up the wailing little girl. Neema gently cradled Sophia against her chest, while Kanoni clung uncertainly to her mother’s leg. Sophia hiccupped, staring in wonder at the huge gorilla face so close to hers, and then, when Neema pressed her rubbery lips to the little girl’s forehead, Sophia laughed out loud.
It was a precious moment, and a dynamite video. Grace needed to get Sophia’s mother’s permission to post this on the gorilla website; the clip would help with donations for gorilla care and maybe even with sales of the apes’ artwork. Yes, she really should encourage those sort of playdates more often, while the few human children she knew were still young enough to accept apes as playmates.
Neema had been born in a zoo, but she had lived with Grace from the time she was an infant. Kanoni had been born in this barn. Gumu had been born in the wild, but his mother had been killed and he’d been captured as a baby. Grace had no idea if the silverback had memories of being a free ape in Africa.
Would her gorillas be happier in a zoo with a larger band of apes? Grace was never sure. She didn’t know how to play the “what if” game with apes who had only experienced captivity with one another in her small compound. How could they even understand the choice?
Much as she loved them, she’d never intended to keep the gorillas forever. This was an unnatural life for great apes. And now that most of the educated world had accepted the idea that apes had thoughts and feelings, it was nearly impossible to get grants from educational institutions to continue her language research. But her gorillas didn’t know how to live in the wild, and she didn’t know of any place in the natural world where wild gorillas were safe. And she couldn’t just sell them to a private collector, because who knew what might happen after that? She couldn’t bear the thought of saying goodbye to Neema.
Kanoni noticed the clown mask in Grace’s hands and stretched her hands toward it. Remembering her goal for coming into the barn, Grace held the mask out of reach. “Bring me a toy, Kanoni.” Tucking the feather duster under her arm, she signed toy. “A small toy.” She made the sign for small and then toy again. “Trade.”
The baby gorilla had never made the sign for trade, but Kanoni knew the basics of this game and raced to the toy basket. Plucking out a black object, she barreled back to Grace to offer it up.
Matt’s sunglasses. Grace took them, pushed them inside her shirt for safekeeping.
“I want a smaller toy,” Grace told the little ape. “A tiny one.” She doubled the sign for small.
Kanoni raced back to the basket. She pulled the basket over onto its side, dumping toys onto the sawdust floor, and then sorted through them, picking up several and biting them. Finally, she came loping back.
Climbing Grace’s leg, the baby gorilla again reached for the mask, and Grace had to stretch her arm up to hold it out of Kanoni’s reach. “Trade,” she repeated. “For small, small toy.” She held her thumb and index finger close together to demonstrate the size.
Wrapping both legs around Grace’s waist, Kanoni leaned back and pulled an object from her mouth, offering it.
Grace took it. Yes! It was the finger bone.
“You want this toy?” Grace waved the mask above her head.
Give me, Kanoni signed, and then slipped another object out of her mouth and held it up toward Grace’s face. Taking the second object from the baby gorilla, Grace briefly held the mask over her own face to tease the little ape. Kanoni hooted and grabbed for the mask, and then leapt down and scooted away, holding the clown face in front of her little gorilla face.
Placing the new object in the same hand as the bone, Grace examined them carefully.
Uh-oh. Kanoni had given her another bone, this one fatter and shorter than the finger bone. Maybe a toe bone?
Where was the baby getting these?
She went to Kanoni, who was examining the mask, touching her lips to the red clown lips as if kissing them.
“Kanoni.” When the little ape looked up, Grace held the bones out in her hand. “Where did you get these toys?”
Kanoni grabbed for the bones, but Grace closed her fingers in time to keep them out of reach. Kanoni gave up and put the clown mask in front of her gorilla face, hooting loudly in excitement.
Grace feigned fear, waved the feather duster in the air, and allowed the baby to chase her around the barn with the mask for a few moments. In any case, it was probably useless to ask Kanoni where the bones had come from. Her sign vocabulary was so small.
After the little gorilla tired of the game, Grace approached Neema, who had climbed down to investigate the commotion.
Holding the bones out on the palm of her hand, Grace asked the mother gorilla where they’d come from.
Neema studied her keeper’s face for a long moment, then sat back and signed juice.
“After you tell me where these came from,” Grace insisted.
Yogurt, Neema signed.
Grace groaned. The big female gorilla loved nothing better than a good bargain. “Where, Neema?”
Neema plopped her rear end down in the dirt and crossed her hairy arms over her breasts, the epitome of ape stubbornness.
“I’ll give you juice after you tell me where,” Grace repeated, signing as she spoke.
Neema uncrossed her arms and signed up, jabbing her hand toward the roof.
“Up?” Grace asked, raising her eyes to the roof where the swallows were nesting. “Up?”
Bird, Neema signed.
Grace supposed it was possible that a bird had brought in the bones. Crows and seagulls had been known to carry objects long distances. But barn swallows? She’d never seen one with anything bigger than an insect in its beak. She’d have to ask an ornithologist.
Neema clutched at Grace’s thigh with one hand and signed with the other. Give juice hurry Neema good.
Juice, Grace agreed, nodding. Neema had been known to make up stories when she thought it would benefit her, and Grace wasn’t at all sure that Neema was telling the truth now, but it was nearly lunchtime anyway, so she slipped the bones into her back pocket, closed and locked the gate behind her, and strode toward the staff trailer to get juice for all three gorillas.
Two bones. Found somewhere in the barn, or brought in by a bird? When the agricultural inspector showed up, it would probably be best to keep this a secret.
But Matt would certainly be interested in this development. She sighed and rubbed a hand over her stomach, thinking about their times together, remembering the way he laughed as he ran his fingers through her hair. He was an entertaining companion, a tender lover. And he was the first man who was willing to accept her life as it was; her gorillas and her constant anxiety over money to care for them. But when Matt was on an important case, he lived for that case. Then he was simply gone.
And the search for two missing girls was certainly an urgent case. She wished Detective Matt Finn had more time to spend with her, but she recognized that he had an important career, a vital job in the community. Frankly, she was more than a little jealous of that.
Chapter 12
Tuesday
All four parents were clustered around a single laptop, studying the grainy security video of their girls in front of the concessions booth. With no sound, it was like watching a silent movie.
Darcy was wearing a skin-tight black T-shirt with a rose on the front of it over black tights with mesh inserts, and Mia sported a crop top that didn’t meet her low-cut jeans. The girls were bracketed by two young men. The encounter appeared friendly. All four of them were laughing as they approached the counter. One of the men had long hair and wore plugs in his earlobes; the other had tight curls of dark hair and a beard that needed trimming. The men bought flavored waters and French fries for the girls, soft drinks and fries for themselves, and then they all wandered away.
“Who the hell are those guys?” Paul Ireland asked the others.
“They’re not the ones I’m worried about,” Robin said. “Rewind, please.” She watched as the video backed up a few frames to the scene where the girls were standing in front of the concession counter. “There! Stop!” She poked a finger at the screen.
Finn focused on an inmate in the background. He was carrying a trash bag over his shoulder, his upthrust arm obscuring part of the GCDC lettering on his shirt. His head was turned toward the camera, his gaze aimed at the concession stand.
Robin wasn’t looking at the inmate. “I don’t know the boys on either side of the girls,” she said. “But that guy in the back, the one with the earring? He looks familiar to me.” She pointed.
The grainy video showed a youth waiting in line behind the girls. He was of average height with light-colored, cropped hair. The only distinctive feature was a blobby earring dangling from his right ear. Finn guessed that the blob might be a silver skull, but the video was not clear enough to determine that for sure.
Andrea shook her head. “Doesn’t look familiar to me. He looks older than our girls.” She leaned forward to peer closer. “Is he staring at Mia?” She turned to the other mother.
“Give me a minute,” Robin muttered, turning away from the screen to stare at the wall.
The two husbands exchanged blank looks.
After a few more seconds, Robin snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it. That boy is older. He was a senior at Stanton when Mia and Darcy were in ninth grade. He had darker hair, then. He was kind of a scary kid.”
Finn raised an eyebrow. “Scary?”
Robin met his gaze. “See, I volunteer-tutor special needs students. Back then I had this one really pretty girl, Taylor, a junior at the time. Very sweet and very naive. She was extremely dyslexic; that’s why I was working with her. That kid”—she pointed to the screen again—“stalked her. Taylor didn’t like him, but he wouldn’t stop leaving her candy and notes, and she told me he’d hide behind corners and jump out to surprise her. She was really scared of him. He was reprimanded multiple times but never seemed to get the message. After he keyed her car because she wouldn’t go out with him, the parents transferred Taylor to another school.”
Interesting. Finn turned to the Irelands. “Was that scratch on Darcy’s car when you last saw it?”
“I honestly don’t remember,” Andrea murmured. “Darcy never said anything about it.”
Paul remarked, “It seemed fresh to me, like it might have happened in the last few days.”
Andrea raised both hands to her face. “Oh my God, why didn’t I know any of this? That creep was at the festival with the girls?”
Robin glanced at the other woman but then continued her story. “After the problem with Taylor was solved, I thought it was over. But then, in a couple of later photos from school events, I noticed his eyes were always on Mia. I was just getting ready to complain to the principal when his family moved away, thank God.” She drummed her fingers on the desk. “What was his name?”
She moved her focus to the wall again for a long moment as she thought, muttering, “Connor something . . .” She abruptly snapped her fingers and swiveled back to Finn. “No, it was Cooper. Cooper Trigg! T-R-I-G-G.”
Finn glanced at Keith Valdez.
The man held up both hands. “Don’t look at me.”
Finn made a note on his pad, did the math in his head. “So this Cooper would be around twenty-one now?”
“Or maybe even twenty-two or twenty-three, depending on when his birthday is. A lot of parents hold back their boys for a year,” Robin informed him. “Boys are less mature, and Cooper certainly fit into that category.” She chewed on her thumbnail and stared at the computer screen, a worried expression on her face.
Stifling the urge to defend the males of his species, Finn wrote down the information. “When did you last see this Cooper Trigg?”
“Oh, gosh, his family moved away at least three years ago,” Robin told him. “I’m not sure Mia really knew him. Cooper was an oddball at the Academy; there on some sort of hard-luck scholarship.” She glanced again toward the image frozen on the screen. “I hope the girls didn’t run off with him.”
“Do you know where the Trigg family moved to?” Finn asked.
Robin shrugged. “No. I just knew Cooper was gone and I didn’t have to worry anymore.”
“But he’s here,” Andrea interjected. “And he keyed Darcy’s car.”
Her husband, Paul, rubbed her arm in sympathy or comfort. “Maybe he thought it was Mia’s.”
Robin frowned at him.
“We don’t know for sure that this guy is Cooper Trigg or that he keyed the car,” Finn reminded them.
“Maybe Mia and this boy are online friends?” Keith Valdez suggested.
“Maybe.” Robin nodded. “If he reached out to her. I don’t think she ever noticed him when they were both at Stanton.”
“Maybe Instagram?” Andrea said. “Darcy uses it nonstop. Oh, God. Do you think the girls are with this Cooper guy? Or whoever these two in front are?” She turned to Finn for an answer.
“No way to know for sure, but it’s a place to start. The girls probably met them here. And at the time of this video, it doesn’t look like either of the girls have even noticed Cooper. Can you get into your girls’ Instagram accounts?” Finn asked all of them.
Furrowed brows all around. Clearly, none of them knew how to do that.
“We could create our own accounts and follow them,” Paul Ireland suggested, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket.
Finn thought that would likely be a waste of time, but these parents needed something to do. “Might be a good idea,” he said.
His cell phone buzzed.
Deputy Wilder told him, “Your canine crew is here.”
“I’m on my way.” He pocketed the cell phone again. Bending down to squint at the computer screen, he made a note of the time stamp on the video. “This is from Saturday, so there may be more. Keep watching.” He pushed the notebook back into his shirt pocket. “I’ll let you know when I locate Cooper Trigg.”
Both sets of parents returned to their respective areas and focused again on the security videos.
* * * * *
The canine Search and Rescue teams were not what he’d expected. A chunky, middle-aged woman named Suzanne, dressed in jeans and a blue SAR T-shirt, held a beagle on a leash. A younger man, Tim, wore a matching shirt, and was partnered with a black Lab. After taking one glance at Finn’s skeptical expression, Suzanne chuckled. “Quit worrying, Detective. Maggie and I are the best tracking team east of the Columbia, and Tim and Shade here are a close second.”
“Hey!” The man elbowed Suzanne. “If we can’t find ‘em, no dog can.”
The beagle uttered one sharp bark, as if to emphasize the point. The Labrador retriever glanced sideways at the beagle like he was appalled by the noise.
“Okay, then,” Finn said. “We’ve got two missing teenagers.”
“When did they disappear?” Tim asked.
“Most likely around forty-eight hours ago.”
The dog handlers glanced at each other, their expressions grim. Then Suzanne said, “That’s a long time. H
undreds of people could have crossed this area since then, right?”
Finn nodded glumly. “That’s certainly possible.”
Tim met his gaze. “Well, we’ll try, but the odds are against us.”
“Understood.” Finn snapped on his latex gloves and pulled open the car door. “I presume clothing is best?”
“The smellier, the better.” Suzanne stepped forward.
He found two pairs of panties and two T-shirts so stained and wrinkled that the girls might have been living in them. “I can’t remember what belongs to which girl.”
“Doesn’t matter since we’re searching for both.” Suzanne took the items from him and held them out toward her dog.
The beagle pushed her nose into the bundle of clothes, still wagging her tail, and then made a soft noise that might have been a groan of satisfaction. The Lab was slightly more dignified, but thumped his tail and made an excited huffing sound, his eyes focused on his handler.
“Find, Maggie!” Suzanne ordered. “Find!”
Tim echoed, “Find, Shade!”
The beagle gave a yip of excitement and tugged at the leash. Tim shoved the clothing back into Finn’s hands.
“Okay to let them off the leads?” Suzanne asked.
Finn didn’t see any reason why not.
Tim and Suzanne unsnapped the leads from their dogs’ collars. All four of them took off, the handlers trotting after the dogs down a gravel pathway that led from the campground toward the amphitheater. Finn placed the clothes back into the car and then followed at a slower pace, keeping the dog teams in sight as he talked on his cell phone, asking Miki back at the station to locate Cooper Trigg and find out if he or his parents owned vehicles.
The beagle was in full bugling mode now, and Finn stopped to watch as the canine teams jogged across the grassy area above the amphitheater. At one point the beagle hesitated and zigzagged across the ground for a few minutes, then took off again down a sidewalk toward the concession stand. The Lab cruised the aisles of the amphitheater for a bit, then also headed for the concession area.
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