Paw of the Jungle

by Diane Kelly

  It was no wonder. The perimeter of the zoo comprised miles of fencing. It would take humans a significant amount of time to inspect the entire outer fence and find the welding marks. But my partner could take us right to the thieves’ exit point.

  “This way, girl.” I led Brigit to the secured entrance of the rhino habitat and ordered her to trail the disturbance.

  The bright look in her eyes said, Sure, boss. She put her furry head down, snuffled, and picked up a trail right away. Off we went, the others trotting along behind us, leading our own little entourage. Fortunately, since the rhino’s disappearance had been discovered before the zoo opened for the day, the trail remained undisturbed by zoo visitors. Brigit led us on a direct route to a relatively short stretch of fencing.

  The detective and I inspected the metal fence supports. Sure enough, they bore the telltale signs of having been cut and welded back together.

  Derek put a foot up on the bottom rung and his hands on the top of the fence, raising himself up to look over it. “The street’s blocked off here. There’s signs and a bunch of orange cones. Some are knocked over.”

  I looked up at him. “I’m not aware of any construction on McCart Street. Are you?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t see any trucks or a road crew, either.”

  We hurried to the zoo exit and jogged our way along the fence. The chief and Derek were out front, running side by side, the CSO not far behind. Brigit and I were on their tail, my partner’s pace limited by my capabilities. Detective Bustamente, who probably hadn’t exercised in decades, lagged behind, as did the zoo director, though a glance back told me she may have been maintaining the detective’s slow pace so as not to embarrass him.

  The chief and Derek reached the road first, and started scouring the dried grass and street for clues. When I arrived, my heart pumping double time and my lungs panting, I issued the order for Brigit to continue to follow the trail from the outer side of the fence. While I caught my breath, she snuffled along the fence until she caught the trail again, and followed it a few feet into the street. She sniffed around in circles, telling me the thieves had walked around in the area, probably loading the rhino into a truck or large trailer. When she realized the trail stopped there, she sat and stared ahead, issuing her passive alert.

  I ruffled her ears and fed her three liver treats. “Good girl!”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  I KNOW A RHINO WHEN I SMELL ONE

  Brigit

  Yummy treats! Brigit wolfed them down and nuzzled Megan’s pocket to see if she might get another. She did. Megan was such a pushover.

  While the humans put up police cordon tape and looked around for clues, Brigit basked in a sunny spot on the dried grass. She might appear to the others to be lazily staring off into the distance, but her nose and mind were actually processing quite a bit of data. Brigit smelled the rhino here. Two men, too. She’d also caught a strong smell of the rhino and one of the men at that garage Megan had taken her to earlier. The animal and the man had been inside, but he hadn’t come to the door when Megan knocked. Brigit had noticed that sometimes people were quiet and still when Megan knocked on their doors. But Brigit knew they were there on the other side.

  There’s no hiding from me and my nose.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  KNOCK-KNOCK. WHO’S THERE?

  Trevor Fleming

  He wasn’t sure who had knocked on the door of his shop this morning. From the voice, he could tell it was a woman. There’d been a jingling sound, too. Keys, maybe? She was probably a solicitor. He was constantly finding flyers with coupons stuck in the door frame of his shop, advertising some lunch place or another in the area. Knowing people came by and might peek inside, he’d leaned a piece of scrap sheet metal against the door so nobody would be able to see in through the glass.

  With both his truck and trailer inside the garage, there wasn’t much extra space. He also doubted whether he’d be able to load the rhino back into the trailer himself. He’d left the animal inside while he’d welded metal bars across the back of the trailer. The torch was virtually silent, so it didn’t seem to bother the animal. The fumes were another matter. It wasn’t a good idea to weld in an enclosed space, but he didn’t have much choice. When it became too much, he raised the garage door a few inches to allow a minimum of ventilation.

  He finished with the bars, opened the bay door, and backed his truck out. He drove to a trailer dealership and bought a hydraulic jack and two new tires. He’d learned his lesson about not carrying a spare. He returned to his garage to install the tires. But even though he’d be done preparing the trailer in just another hour or two, he wouldn’t dare venture out with the rhino until dusk. Going out in broad daylight was too risky.

  When he raised the bay door to put his truck back inside, he was met with fresh, funky fumes that had nothing to do with welding.

  “Holy cow!” He waved his hand in front of his face and looked down to find a heaping pile of rhino dung behind the trailer. More lay inside the trailer, between the rhino’s feet. This is what my life has come to. A steaming pile of shit.

  He grabbed a dust pan and a garbage bag and set to work.

  FIFTY-SIX

  GETTING THE POOP

  Megan

  While the chief left the zoo early on to call an urgent press conference, a crime scene team arrived to collect evidence and search for clues the rest of us might have overlooked.

  As the evidence team looked around, I told the detective about Trevor Fleming. “He’s got a welding business, and he did time in the Darrington Unit at the same time Bruno Molina was serving his sentence there. Fleming was released only a short time before the animals started to disappear.”

  “What was he in for?”

  “Theft,” I said. “He stole merchandise from stores where he worked.”

  Bustamente’s lips pursed in one direction, then the other as he thought things over. “I’d say it’s a long shot. Criminals tend to stick with what they know, repeat the same type of crimes. But there’s always the occasional exception. When we finish up here, we’ll swing by.”

  The crime scene team left an hour later, having found next to nothing. They’d taken the cones and signs with them in hopes of lifting prints that might identify the poachers, but we’d have to wait for the results.

  The security cameras on the rear of the businesses that backed up to McCart Street had also been coated with flocking. As before, the thieves had donned ski masks and sprayed fake snow on the lenses of residential security cameras in the area, too, though in a different pattern than last time. This pattern seemed to imply that, rather than driving south, the poachers had headed north with the rhino, probably aiming for I-30. Once they hit the interstate, it was unclear which way they’d intended to go. The rhino could be halfway across the country by now, or south of the border in Mexico.

  After the crime scene team left, Detective Bustamente and I swung by King Midas Metalworks. We listened at the doors and knocked, but once again it appeared nobody was on-site.

  We spent the rest of the day visiting businesses on the presumed escape route to watch their security camera footage. Unfortunately, nothing on the video streams jumped out at us.

  It was growing dark when we reluctantly called it a day. The lab had called. Though they found a number of prints on the cones and road signs, none could be identified. If any of the prints belonged to the rhino thieves, they had never been arrested and their prints did not appear in law-enforcement databases. We had no clues to explore, no leads to follow up on. Though someone had called in a possible sighting of the rhino on a livestock transport truck near the Texas–New Mexico border, the El Paso County sheriff’s department followed up and confirmed that the truck carried only large hogs headed for a slaughterhouse.

  As we parted in the station’s parking lot, Bustamente gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Go home and relax, Officer Luz. You’ve been going the extra mile for weeks. You’ve earned it.”

 
I was heading home, planning to follow the detective’s advice and relax in a warm bath with a glass of wine, when I thought, What the heck. I’ll swing by King Midas one more time, see if anyone might be there. I wanted to feel like I’d made some progress, even if it was just checking Trevor Fleming off my list.

  For the third time that day, I found myself knocking on the door and getting no response. Ditto for the bay. It was dark enough outside now that I’d be able to tell if there were lights on inside the place. But no telltale illumination shined around the edges of the sheet metal that blocked the window. An ear to the doors yielded no sounds coming from inside.

  Brigit put her nose to the ground and began to snuffle. When she’d edged far enough away that her leash tugged my hand, I said, “Let’s go, girl,” and turned to head back to the car. But she didn’t follow me. Instead, she pulled on her leash and woofed, insisting I go with her. Hmm.

  I looked in the direction she was trying to pull me. All I saw was an uncovered metal dumpster at the back of the lot. She’d probably smelled a rat or a piece of trash with a food remnant stuck to it, but it couldn’t hurt to indulge her. “Okay, girl. Show me what’s got you interested.”

  She led me over to the garbage bin. Whoa. I waved a hand in front of my face. I’d expected a stench, but this odor was particularly rank.

  Brigit reared back, put her front paws on the edge of the dumpster, and sniffed along the edge. When she reached a certain garbage bag, she grabbed it with her teeth and tried to pull it out. It was sunk down among other bags and too heavy for her to lift. She turned pleading brown eyes on me and whined.

  “If you think I’m going to pull out a bag of garbage for you, Brigit, you are sorely mistaken.” There were a lot of things I’d do for this dog, but dumpster diving was not one of them. “Let’s go.”

  She refused to budge, nipping at the bag and tugging with her teeth again until it tore open. When it did, she sat down next to the dumpster, issuing a passive alert. Are there drugs in the bag? Is that what she’s trying to tell me?

  I pulled out my flashlight and shined it into the hole she’d just torn. Holy crap! The bag was filled with enormous turds. Quite possibly rhino-sized turds.

  “Good girl!” I tossed Brigit a liver treat and ran her back to the car. She complied now that I’d discovered the clue she’d led me to. I put her in the cruiser, rounded up an evidence bag, and ran back to the dumpster. I turned the bag inside out and improvised a glove with it, reaching in and plucking a poop from the pile, much like I gathered Brigit’s droppings. I turned the bag right side out again, and ran back to my car.

  I grabbed my cell phone and called Detective Bustamente. “I’ve got the poop on Fleming!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I found droppings in his dumpster. Huge ones! I’m pretty sure they’re from a rhino.”

  “You were supposed to be relaxing,” he said, though I knew he didn’t expect me to apologize for my overzealous work ethic. “Could the droppings be from a horse?” he asked. “Or a cow?”

  What a party pooper. “I suppose they could be.” My hopes faded. Fort Worth’s nickname was Cowtown, and the city hosted a never-ending lineup of stock shows. It was possible someone had mucked a stall and thrown the refuse out here. But still, this garage bin was off the beaten path. It seemed an odd place for someone to get rid of a bag of animal excrement. I pointed this out to the detective. “The rhino could be in his garage right now!”

  “We’ll need to have someone identify the scat before we can get a search warrant. I’ll contact Sharon Easley, see if she can put us in touch with a keeper.”

  “All right. I’ll head to the zoo.” It was after dark now, and the zoo was closed to the public for the day. Would a keeper still be around? I crossed my fingers.

  We ended the call. He phoned me back a minute later. “She’s got a keeper coming, but it’ll be half an hour before he can get there.”

  The rhino’s life could be at stake. We didn’t have time to waste!

  The words of Danny Landis echoed in my mind. “I’ve learned more about animal dung on this job than I ever wanted to know.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Let’s ask Danny Landis. He used to clean up this stuff. He’ll be able to tell if it’s from a rhino.”

  “It can’t hurt,” Bustamente agreed. “We can stop by his place and still be at the zoo in half an hour if he can’t tell us. I’ll meet you at his house.”

  I turned on my flashing lights, hooked a left turn, and punched the gas. In minutes, Detective Bustamente and I stood in front of Danny Landis.

  He scoffed and raised credulous brows. “First you accuse me of stealing those animals, and now you want my help trying to save them?”

  Bustamente ducked a contrite head. “That’s pretty much the long and short of it.”

  Landis cut a scathing look at the detective before turning it on me.

  “Sorry.” Really, what else could I say? I held out the bag. “Here’s the poop. Can you please tell us if it belongs to a zoo animal?”

  He took the bag, unzipped it, and jerked his head back as the stench hit him. “Hoo-ee, that smell takes me back.” He peered down into the bag. “Yep, that crap belongs to a zoo animal. A rhino, to be exact. You can tell by the type of grass and leaves in it.”

  Bustamente extended a hand to Landis and I did the same, giving it a firm and grateful shake. “Thanks so much!”

  Landis offered a nod. “Nail those sons of bitches.”

  * * *

  One whiff of the poop and the judge issued a search warrant posthaste. Bustamente, Brigit, and I returned to the garage and knocked on the doors for the fourth time. There was still no answer. But this time we didn’t have to take no answer for an answer. We were legally authorized to break into the place and search for evidence.

  While the burglar bars at the glass were too tightly placed to stick a hand through, my nightstick should fit.

  “Stand back,” I told the detective as I pulled my baton from my belt. I flicked my wrist and extended it with a snap! I slid the stick through one of the small squares in the bars and jabbed at the pane. Bam! Bam! Bam! Eventually, the glass splintered. One more solid jab and it shattered, tinkling to the concrete inside. With the bars so closely placed, I couldn’t reach through to unlock the door. But if the sheet metal wasn’t held in place by something heavy, I could use my nightstick to move it from blocking our view. I gave the sheet metal a jab to see if it would budge. The sheet fell backward and crashed to the floor with a tinny clang. Bustamente and I shined our flashlights into the space, banging heads as we both went to look inside. I pulled back, deferring to my superior.

  “Is Mubanga there?” I cried. Please say yes!

  Bustamente backed away, shaking his head. My heart sank.

  I peeked inside. There was no rhino. No trailer. No truck. There was nothing other than the cheap piece of scrap sheet metal, an overlooked plop of rhino poo, and the pink construction-paper heart on the wall. When did Fleming leave with the rhino? And where has he gone?

  The detective turned to me. “You got a cell phone number for this guy?”

  “I might be able to get one.” I whipped out my phone and ran a quick Internet search for King Midas Metalworks. When a phone number popped up, I dialed it. There was no telltale ring from inside the shop, meaning the number didn’t belong to a landline here. I hung up, not waiting for an answer. No sense letting Fleming know we were on to him. He might disable his phone.

  I gave Bustamente the number and he made a call, asking for the department’s technical division to ping Fleming’s phone. If we could find his cell phone, we’d find him, too.

  “In the meantime,” the detective said, “let’s swing by Fleming’s residence, see if he’s there.”

  We slid into our cruisers and raced to the address listed for Fleming in his driver’s license record. We arrived at the rundown complex in mere minutes. My eyes scanned the lot, but I saw no black Dodge pickup at
all, with or without a camper shell. No trailer, either. Has he hidden them somewhere? Has he delivered the rhino to the buyer already?

  Brigit and I darted up the steps to the second floor of the apartment complex, Bustamente coming up after us.

  A light was on in the window. Someone’s home. I banged my fist on the door. Bang-bang-bang! “Fort Worth police! Open up now!”

  A few seconds later, a click and a sliding sound told me someone was releasing the dead bolt. The door swung open to reveal a young couple in their early twenties, both wearing bewildered expressions.

  “Where’s Trevor Fleming?” I demanded as the detective stepped up next to me, huffing slightly from the climb.

  “Who?” the young man asked.

  The woman turned to him. “That’s the name of the guy who lived here before us.” She turned back to me. “We get his mail sometimes. It’s all past-due notices.”

  “When did you move in?” I asked.

  “About a year and a half ago,” she said.

  There was no on-site management, but it was questionable whether they’d be of help anyway. From what I could glean, Fleming had left the apartment to serve his time in prison. His forwarding address was likely the Darrington Unit, if he’d bothered to provide one at all. The tenants gave me the property manager’s phone number. I thanked them and dialed the number as Bustamente and I headed back down the stairs to our cruisers. All I got was a voice mail. The property manager didn’t seem too concerned about potential emergencies.

  “Dang it!” I spat.

  Bustamente’s cell rang. He put the phone to his ear. “Oh, yeah?” He turned to me and quirked his brows, offering a thumbs-up that told me the tech team had tracked Fleming through his cell phone. “Where?” He paused for a second. “All right. Stay with me.” Bustamente turned the bottom half of his phone away from his ear. “He’s in town. Just a few blocks from here.”