Paw of the Jungle

by Diane Kelly

“No problem.” Greer stepped into the space and unlocked each of the cabinets, revealing small bottles of pills and liquids, syringes, and other items similar to what one would find in a doctor’s office, but no monkey.

  After we’d taken a look at the rooms, Camilla turned to the inner gate. “This leads into the monkeys’ enclosure.”

  Like the outer gate, this gate was secured by a card reader and bordered by brick on the top and sides. In other words, there’d be no way to go over, under, or around the gates without going through the brick or concrete floor. Nowhere on the route had the brick or concrete shown signs of damage or repair. All of the card readers had appeared intact, too. Ditto for the locks.

  Camilla stood by the gate until we had all made it through, and closed it behind us, giving it a tug to make sure it had latched just as she’d done with the previous gates. I glanced back to see if there was a security device on the inside of the enclosure. Bustamente did the same, our gazes meeting as we turned our heads. The detective lifted his chin to acknowledge my actions. He’d always said I had good instincts.

  Though a manual lock release was in place, there was no electronic security system on the inside of the gates. In other words, while a badge was needed to enter this area, none was needed to exit. The arrangement was typical in commercial structures, designed so people would not be trapped in the event of a fire or other emergency.

  Greer stepped up beside Camilla. “Why don’t I keep an eye on the monkeys while you show them around?”

  “Good idea,” Easley said.

  The detective and I followed the three zoo professionals farther into the enclosure. I found myself staring out across the space toward the visitor viewing decks, wondering what it would be like to live on display like this, with people watching you go about your life. I looked up into the carefully designed forest and saw four sets of eyes looking back at me, waiting to see what I might do next. So this is what it feels like. Of course spectators wouldn’t be much interested in watching me eat organic oatmeal in the morning, issue traffic tickets all day, and read books in bed at night.

  While the veterinarian stood near the trees and watched the monkeys watch us, Camilla took us on a tour of the enclosure. She explained that the base of the back wall was several feet thick, and showed us the small opening cut into the wall that led to a cave of sorts, offering the monkeys a private location to spend time out of the public eye. As she’d said, the wall appeared devoid of any vines or footholds that Sarki could have used to climb out. We ambled down the concrete slope into the gulley, circumnavigating from one end of the horseshoe-shaped ditch to the other. Again, no vines or footholds were evident along the outer walls. No signs of damage, either. All I saw were dry, brown leaves that had blown into the enclosure and the occasional small mass of dark, slimy poop evidencing the monkeys’ high-fiber diet.

  Looking up, I mused aloud. “Someone could have come over the back wall on a rope or ladder. Or they could have lowered a rope or ladder into the channel from one of the viewing areas.” Once inside, they’d have been able to seize the monkey and go back the way they’d come, or easily exit through the gates.

  “Possibly.” Bustamente cut me a sideways glance that said he had other theories, as well. He turned his gaze on the keeper. “Who came in with you when you fed them earlier?”

  “Nobody,” Camilla said. “I take care of the feeding alone.”

  He pressed on. “Is there any chance someone could have followed you through the gate without your knowledge?”

  “No.” Her tone was confident. “I always check to make sure the gates have closed behind me.”

  She’d done exactly that when she’d led us into the enclosure. It seemed to be a natural habit for her.

  Easley chimed in on the subject. “Checking the gates is part of zoo protocol.”

  Bustamente dipped his head. “I see. Good rule.” As we circled back around to the gate to exit, the veterinarian fell in line with us. The detective asked him essentially the same questions. “Who came in with you when you examined the female monkey? Did you bring an assistant?”

  “No,” Greer replied. “It was just me. These monkeys are small and docile, so I can handle a single specimen on my own. Of course it’s a different story when I’m dealing with a chimp or gorilla.”

  “Could someone have followed you into the enclosure without your knowledge?”

  “Absolutely not,” the vet said. “I always try the gates to make sure they’re shut all the way after I use them.”

  As we stopped in front of the gate, a question popped into my head and out of my mouth. “What would happen if someone forced the gate open from the outside?”

  Easley answered my question by pointing at two thin sensors, one mounted at the top of the brick wall, the other mounted on the outer surface of the metal gate. “Those sensors detect when the gate has been opened. An alarm would sound if it was opened from the outside without a key card.” She pointed up to a speaker mounted above the gate. “The system would also send an immediate notification to the security team.”

  Given that neither safety alert had been activated, as well as the fact that none of the locks appeared damaged, it seemed we could rule out that someone had come through the gate without a key card. Even so, they could have exited without one.

  The detective glanced around one last time before turning to the director. “I think Officer Luz and I have seen all we need to see here.”

  We ascended the walkway, Easley and Greer taking the lead, with Camilla closing and checking the gates behind us. Brigit stood and wagged her tail, glad to see me return to the courtyard.

  As I rounded up my partner, Bustamente asked a final question of the zoo staff. “Did you take the monkeys anywhere today other than the enclosure or the exam room?”

  Each of them answered in the negative. But were they telling the truth? Or was one—or both—of them lying?

  FIFTEEN

  ROUND AND ROUND

  Brigit

  When Megan issued the command for Brigit to trail from the metal gate, Brigit wasn’t sure which disturbance Megan wanted her to follow. There was more than one here. One of them smelled like the lady who’d just left. The other smelled like the man who’d gone with her. For not the first time in their partnership, Brigit wished Megan could give her more specific instructions. Too bad Megan doesn’t speak dog.

  Brigit did the best she could. She followed the lady’s scent first, leading Megan, Detective Bustamente, and the woman in the big coat back to a building near the zoo entrance. When Megan opened the door, Brigit could smell the trail more clearly given that the wind hadn’t been able to blow it away. She followed the trail all the way to the door of the room that smelled like the woman in the coat. The trail backtracked there to the monkey exhibit. They ended up back where they started.

  Megan gave her a “good girl” and a liver treat before telling the woman in the coat, “She must have been on the keeper’s trail.”

  Brigit’s partner instructed her to sniff around some more, which meant she was to look for additional trails. She picked up the vet’s trail and did her best to follow it. It wasn’t easy on a windy day like today, when the breeze scattered the scent. More than once she lost the trail and had to raise her nose in the air in an attempt to find it again. She led Megan from the monkeys to the gorilla exhibit.

  The woman in the coat spoke this time. “She must be tracking Dr. Greer. He checked in on the gorillas after examining Zawadi’s tooth.”

  Megan took her back to the courtyard a third time, and directed her once again to scent for a trail. Sheesh. Give a working dog a break, will ya?

  Brigit sniffed her best sniff, flexing her nostrils as far as they would go. She’d smelled the monkey dung behind the snow cone cart earlier, but with this extra effort now she also detected just a hint of a scent on the fence near it. She led Megan over and sat down next to the poop, facing the fence to put Megan on notice.

  Her partner bent dow
n next to her and looked at the poop. That was weird. Megan normally issued sounds of disgust when Brigit showed interest in excrement and pulled her away from it. Humans are so fickle.

  SIXTEEN

  MONEY FOR MONKEY

  The Poacher

  The monkey cowered in the back of the plastic pet carrier, its chest heaving and dark eyes shining with fear. The Poacher had never felt like more of a shit in his life.

  His baby girl’s voice echoed in his head yet again. “You’re gonna be good this time. Right, Daddy?”

  He wanted to be good. Really, he did. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Harper still looked at the world in black-and-white, like that panda jacket she wore all the time. Someday, when she grew up, she’d realize few things were so clear-cut. His family came first. If he had to be bad to take care of them, then he’d do it.

  He handed the carrier over, taking the thick white envelope in return. He opened it and did a quick count. Three grand in hundred-dollar bills. It’s all there.

  As he turned to go, the man called after him. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Don’t bother.” The job had been risky, and he couldn’t take another poor, frightened animal looking at him that way. “I’m not doing this again.”

  The man had the nerve to laugh. “That’s what they all say.”

  SEVENTEEN

  WHO DUNG IT?

  Megan

  When Brigit sat and issued her passive alert, I spotted another deposit of monkey scat near the bottom of the fence. Maybe Sarki wasn’t lifted out of the exhibit. Maybe he was taken out this way. Yep, the doo-doo could be a clue-clue. It was smeared, though, as if it had been stepped in. Unfortunately, there was no discernible footprint or sole pattern that could be traced to a particular shoe. Whoever had stepped in the scat must have turned their foot.

  “Detective? Brigit found something.”

  Bustamente came around the snow-cone stand and followed my gaze down. “Aha.”

  Easley did the same, frowning when the significance of the excrement struck her. “This doesn’t look good, does it?”

  “Proof that the monkey was taken through a staff-only area with no apparent breach of security?” Bustamente said, staring down at the icky goop. “No, it does not.” He raised his head. “Could we go to your office so we can speak privately?”

  “Of course,” Easley said.

  Dusk set in as we followed Easley, retracing our steps to her office in the administrative building near the front entrance. The warmth was more than welcome after the extended time we’d spent outside. A standard desk and high-backed chair sat in the back corner of her office, while a coffee table, a couch, and two end chairs sat at the front, forming a more casual space. Easley took a seat in one of the end chairs, Bustamente in the other. That left me to perch on the sofa. Brigit flopped down at my feet.

  Once the three of us were seated, Bustamente leaned forward, his arms resting across his thighs. “Ms. Easley, I hate to tell you this, but in situations where property is missing from a business it’s most often an employee who took it. The evidence so far is flimsy at best, but it points to Ms. Bellafiore or Dr. Greer. Maybe both of them.”

  She let out a slow, loud breath. “I feared you might say that. But why would either of them take Sarki?”

  He raised a shoulder. “The only reason I can imagine for someone stealing zoo animals is to keep them as pets or sell them for money.” His brows rose in question. “Do either of them seem like viable suspects to you?”

  She shrugged this time. “They’ve both worked here for years and have good performance records. That said, the zoo has hundreds of employees. I don’t know these two well, so it would be a stretch to say I could completely vouch for them.”

  “I understand,” Bustamente said. “I’d like to speak to their immediate supervisors and coworkers, any staff who are responsible for the birds or monkeys, see if they might be able to provide any insights. Can you get me a list of these people and their contact information?”

  “It’ll take me an hour or so to pull that data together,” Easley replied, “but it won’t be a problem.”

  “What about the custodian who was fired?” I looked from the detective to the director. “Danny Landis? Could he have come back to the zoo and taken Sarki?” I told them how I’d run into the man in the parking lot with his family after he’d been terminated. “He said he was using the free passes he’d been given when he was hired.”

  “If he was a custodian,” Bustamente said, “that means he’d know his way around the zoo, both the public and restricted areas. He’d be familiar with the routines, too. But unless he was in cahoots with the vet or the primatologist, it wouldn’t explain how he’d gotten through the secure gates.”

  He could have scaled the six-foot fence, though. It wasn’t hard. I’d had to do it myself on more than one occasion when chasing a suspect, as well as in the academy training.

  I drew a circle in the air with my finger. “And that brings us back to the possibility that he climbed into the exhibit to steal the monkey during the overnight hours. Maybe he climbed into the courtyard with Sarki when he saw a security patrol coming.” I looked down at my partner. It was too bad her tracking skills hadn’t led us to any definitive answers. But if someone had stolen the monkey overnight, it was understandable that she could no longer find the trail given the amount of time that had elapsed and the blustery wind working against us.

  Bustamente began to wrap things up with the director. “To make sure we’ve covered all the bases, I’ll get a crime scene tech out here to dust for prints. Please instruct your staff to stay away from the employee areas of the exhibit until I give you the all clear.”

  While the detective placed a quick phone call to the crime scene division, Easley used a walkie-talkie to address the zoo staff, letting them know the restricted area at the colobus monkey habitat was off limits until she said otherwise.

  Their external communications concluded, Bustamente said, “I’d like to speak with the head of security. Is that person on-site and available now?”

  “I’ll check.” Easley picked up the receiver on her desk phone and tapped three digits. After a brief conversation with someone on the other end, she said, “He’s in. His office is right down the hall. I can take you there.”

  “Thanks.” Bustamente stood and Brigit and I followed suit. “In the meantime,” he told the director, “it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put the word out over the zoo networks, let everyone know Sarki is missing, ask them to gather as much information as they can and notify us if anyone tries to sell him to another facility. Same for those blue macaws.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said. “Unfortunately, though, there’s quite a few of those roadside zoos run by unscrupulous folks who put profits ahead of animal welfare. Some shady traveling circuses, too. They’d buy a monkey like Sarki in a heartbeat and not think twice about it. They get little oversight from the state or the USDA, and even when they’re found to have violated the Animal Welfare Act, they rarely get more than a slap on the wrist. Regulation in other countries isn’t any better, if there’s any at all. If Sarki ends up in one of those outfits, God help him. He’s not likely to fare any better if he’s sold to a private collector. Most people get exotic pets for the novelty and don’t have the knowledge or funds to properly care for a monkey. Besides, he won’t be happy alone. Primates need to be part of a social system.”

  My heart writhed in my chest, hurting for Sarki, hurting for the birds, too, wherever they were.

  Easley escorted us down the hall, where she passed us off to the chief of security I’d met before. After we exchanged names and handshakes, we took seats and Bustamente launched into a line of questions about the zoo’s security systems and procedures.

  The first question the detective posed was, “Can you confirm whether Danny Landis’s key card was canceled?”

  “I can,” the CSO said. He typed something into his computer and turned the monitor so the detecti
ve and I could see it. On the screen was an alphabetical list of names. “These are the people with currently active key cards. You’ll notice Landis isn’t on it. Not only did I deactivate his card in the system, but I shredded it immediately after he turned it in.”

  “Is anyone missing a card?” Bustamente asked.

  “Not to my knowledge,” the man said. “Whenever I’m notified that a card is lost, I immediately deactivate it and issue the employee a new one. On occasion, a staff member has gotten by for a shift or two by asking others to open secure areas for them, but we’ve cracked down on these breaches. I send regular reminders to the entire staff that gaining access with someone else’s card is grounds for both parties to be dismissed.”

  Bustamente offered the man a nod in respect. “You run a tight ship.”

  “I do my best,” the man said.

  The detective asked about the card access records next. “Is there any way the devices or your computer system could be tampered with to delete a card reading?”

  “No computer system is entirely immune from hacking,” the man acknowledged, “but we’ve got several safeguards in place. The data is password protected and encrypted. I’ve seen no evidence that any of our devices or data have been tampered with, from the outside or the inside.”

  Bustamente turned the subject to the security cameras. “Officer Luz mentioned that the only security cameras are around the perimeter. There aren’t any on the exhibits?”

  “That’s correct,” the CSO confirmed.

  “Could we watch the footage from each camera, starting right after closing time last night?”

  “Certainly. I’d planned to take a look myself. We can do it together.”

  Once again, I found myself gathered around the desk, watching security camera footage on the oversized monitor. We spent the next two and a half hours carefully reviewing each feed.

  As for the night footage, most of the cameras showed little more than the trees at the edge of the parking lot swaying wildly in the rough winds and various items of trash blowing by. Another showed a pair of possums parading along the exterior wall before dropping out of sight inside the zoo. Yet another showed a homeless man pushing a loaded shopping cart along the asphalt, his head down and back bent against the wind as he rolled his belongings into Forest Park.