Paw of the Jungle

by Diane Kelly

  While Bustamente moved to his cruiser, I contacted dispatch and provided the tag number for the truck. Meanwhile, the detective and I rolled out, heading for what we suspected was Fleming’s current residence to see if he might be there or what anyone there might know.

  Minutes later, Bustamente and I pulled up to the house in our separate cruisers. I retrieved Brigit, and the three of us stepped up to the door of the small house. Bustamente raised a hand and knocked on the door. Rap-rap-rap. When no one answered, he knocked again, louder. RAP-RAP-RAP. His efforts elicited a wail from a toddler inside the house, followed by a woman’s voice hushing the child.

  “Who is it?” she demanded from the other side of the door.

  “Fort Worth Police,” Bustamente called.

  She opened the door a few inches, revealing her scowling face and a blubbering toddler clinging to her side. He glanced our way with pink, puffy eyes before rubbing his wet face on the shoulder of her sweater.

  She tilted her coppery head to indicate the little boy affixed to her. “You woke my baby. I’d just got him down, too.”

  “Our apologies, ma’am,” Bustamente replied. “We’re looking for Trevor Fleming. Is he here?”

  She hesitated a moment and her eyes narrowed, wary and weary. “What do you want with him?”

  The detective was purposely vague. “We think he has some information that could aid us in an investigation. Do you know where he is?”

  “He’s putting in overtime at work.”

  “At his shop?”

  Her brows formed a puzzled V. “No. At the drilling site in Weatherford. He’s a welder for Cloud Point Energy. What shop are you talking about?”

  Bustamente and I exchanged glances. Evidently Trevor Fleming had failed to inform his girlfriend about his termination from the drilling company. Just as evidently, he was not out working in Weatherford.

  Bustamente was vague once again and, in fact, feigned ignorance. “Maybe I’m confusing him with someone else. I thought he had a bay somewhere in town, did some freelance welding work now and then? Maybe under the name King Midas?”

  She shook her head. “No. He just works for Cloud Point.”

  She looked from one of us to the other, and the wariness in her eyes was forced out by another emotion. Shame. As she processed things, her expression made her thoughts easily readable. She’d let her ex back into her life, and he’d led the police right to her door. Fool me once …

  She hesitated a moment before wincing as if in pain. “Is he … Is he in trouble again?” Her voice was tight and soft, a dolphinlike squeak.

  “Honestly?” the detective said. “He’s in some pretty big trouble. But if we don’t find him right away, things will be even worse for him.”

  She issued a soft choking sound before turning her head and pressing her lips to her baby’s temple and closing her eyes. She turned her face downward. “Once a screwup, always a screwup,” she whispered.

  SIXTY-THREE

  DING-A-LING

  Brigit

  The cat at this house wasn’t scared of Brigit like that other one had been. He’d been batting a ball around the place, the toy giving off a ding-a-ling as it bounced off the walls and playpen. But when he saw Brigit at the door, he abandoned the ball, sauntered over, and raised his head to sniff Brigit’s chin.

  She looked down at him. Hello, inferior species.

  Undeterred, he raised a paw and tapped her cheek. You’re it! He ran off down the hall, the only participant in his game of tag. Couldn’t the silly cat tell she was on duty right now?

  SIXTY-FOUR

  UP, UP, AND AWAY!

  Trevor Fleming

  Now that he was driving a constant speed, and had added some gas to his tank, his engine seemed to be doing better. His heart had nearly burst in his chest when he’d passed a couple of police cars, but none of the officers seemed to take an interest in him. He heard the whup-whup-whup of a police helicopter drawing near as he headed west on Interstate 20, but it had only circled overhead and angled off. It hadn’t hovered or followed him like it would have if they were looking for him. Maybe he’d panicked for no reason. Maybe that cop that had been behind him at the railroad tracks hadn’t been after him, after all. Maybe there’d been no reason for him to take the battery out of his cell phone and ditch it. He’d thought they might have been using it to track him, but it must have all been a crazy coincidence. Right?

  SIXTY-FIVE

  DADDY’S GIRL

  Megan

  Detective Bustamente and I were seated in Vicki’s small living room, explaining why we were there and why we suspected her boyfriend had been involved in the zoo thefts, when a sweet, soft voice sounded from off to the side.

  “Daddy stole Sarki? A rhino, too?”

  We turned to see a young girl standing in the hallway. She had her mother’s coppery hair, but while her mother’s blue eyes were full of regret, the girl’s hazel eyes were full of tears.

  Her lip trembled. “Daddy told me he was going to be good now.”

  Vicki waved her over and pulled her close, one arm wrapped protectively around the girl’s back and the other cupping her head. She bent her head down and spoke quietly into her daughter’s ear. “I’m sorry, Harper. Daddy messed up again.”

  While we realized the girl needed comforting, it would have to come later. There’d been no reported sightings of the truck and trailer. We needed to find Fleming now.

  Bustamente asked, “Do you have any idea where he might be, ma’am? Where he might be taking the rhino?”

  Still encircled in her mother’s arms, Harper turned to face us.

  Vicki shook her head and answered the question. “I got no idea at all.”

  Bustamente exhaled a loud breath. “But he’s in your pickup, right? The black Dodge with the camper shell?”

  “I suppose he is,” she said. “Only it’s not black anymore. Someone took a key to it a while back and he had it repainted white. They damaged the camper top, too, so he took it off.”

  I threw up my hands. “That’s why nobody’s spotted him!” Law enforcement had been looking for a black truck with a camper shell, not a white truck without one. I was fairly certain the person who’d scratched up the truck was none other than Fleming himself, but there was nothing to be gained by pointing out to Vicki what a deceitful man she’d been living with. She seemed to be getting that point all on her own.

  I pressed the button on my shoulder mic and contacted dispatch yet another time. “That black truck with the camper shell everyone’s looking for? Turns out it’s a white truck with no top on it.”

  Dispatch quickly issued an update.

  Bustamente and I exchanged glances. We both realized the blunder over the truck’s color had cost us quite a bit of time and given Fleming an advantage. He could be thirty or more miles from Fort Worth now, in any direction, increasing the search area exponentially. There were untold numbers of places to hide a rhino in that square mileage.

  Harper stared intently at me as I told Vicki how we’d tracked Fleming before coming to her house. “We pinged his phone and found him at Page Road, but we got separated when a train came through. After that, we lost the signal on his phone. He must’ve taken the battery out. We have no way of knowing where he and the rhino are now.”

  Harper spoke now. “You can tell where somebody’s phone is at?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “Cell phones give off a signal that can be traced.”

  She tilted her cute, coppery head. “So if my phone was in Daddy’s truck, you could find it?”

  Bustamente and I exchanged glances again. Hopeful ones, this time.

  I addressed Harper, keeping my voice upbeat and calm. “Is your phone in your daddy’s truck, honey?”

  She turned her head and looked up at her mother, her eyes bright with worry.

  Vicki ran a hand over her daughter’s hair. “It’s okay if you left it there. I won’t be mad this time.”

  Relieved, the little girl tur
ned back to me and nodded.

  Bustamente was already on his cell, calling the tech team back. “What’s your phone number, sweetie?”

  Harper stood up straight and proud. “I got it memorized.” As she called out the number, the detective repeated it to the techies.

  The detective drummed his fingers impatiently on his knee as he waited for them to give it a try. I was equally anxious, my knee bouncing like a railroad piston.

  A minute later, Bustamente said, “They’ve got it. He’s on the 820 loop at Camp Bowie Boulevard.”

  I updated dispatch with the information.

  “Roger that!” called the helicopter pilot over the airwaves.

  The loop ran through the neighboring suburbs of White Settlement and Lake Worth. I asked dispatch to give their departments a shout, too. We needed as many eyes as we could get looking out for Fleming and his endangered cargo.

  “Will do,” she said.

  We waited in virtual silence for word to come in that someone had Fleming in their sights. Come on! I willed my fellow officers. Get that bastard!

  Derek’s voice came over the radio a few seconds later, his siren audible in the background. “I’m on the loop near Chapin Road. I should be on him soon.”

  A flash of white-hot fury threatened to incinerate my insides. I’d busted my ass on this case, and Derek would get the glory? The same guy who’d summoned me to the Fiesta Mart claiming he’d spotted Fabiana and Fernando when all he’d seen were some parrot piñatas? I could handle another officer nabbing Fleming. But Derek? Grrrr!

  I took a deep breath, extended my baton, and twirled it to calm myself. Swish-swish-swish. I added my mantra. Peace be with me. Peace be with me. It didn’t help. I still wanted to take my baton to Derek like he was one of those piñatas.

  Bustamente, who was still on the phone with the techs, banged a fist on his knee. “Not again!” He turned to me. “They’ve lost this signal, too.”

  Harper looked from the detective, to me, to her mother. “What does that mean?”

  Vicki answered for all of us. “It means they don’t know where Daddy is anymore.”

  Harper turned to me. “Maybe he’s going out to that place with the horses.”

  The detective and I looked to Vicki for details. She shrugged. “I don’t know a place with horses.” She looked down at her daughter. “What are you talking about?”

  The girl toyed with a length of her hair. “Daddy took us out there last weekend,” she told her mother, “after we went to the zoo.”

  Bustamente asked, “Do you know why he went to the horse place? Did he talk to anyone?”

  Harper continued to run her little hands down her hair, a soothing mechanism just like my baton twirling. “I don’t know why. He didn’t talk to anybody. He just drove real slow and looked around.”

  Had he been scouting out a hiding place for Mubanga? Or maybe making a dry run to the delivery point? It seemed possible, even probable.

  “Where is the horse place?” Bustamente asked the girl.

  “It’s in the country. You go on that road between the airports.”

  The road between the airports … Was she referring to Highway 199? Also known as Jacksboro Highway, the road ran between the airfield at the military’s joint reserve base on the west side of Fort Worth and Meacham Field, a smaller airport northwest of downtown. The airports were miles apart, but the flashing beacons and the planes flying in and out of them would be visible from a car traveling Highway 199. The road intersected Loop 820 not too far north of where Fleming was last pinged. But from there it wasn’t far to county roads and open land with big barns where it would be easy to conceal a large animal.

  “Harper,” I said, “if we got in the car, could you show us where your daddy took you?”

  “I think so,” she said. “I always look out the window and see things.” In other words, she might spot some landmarks that would help us find her father and rescue the rhino.

  I stood. “Harper, do you want to help save Mubanga?”

  Her worried eyes brightened. “Yes!”

  I swung my finger to indicate the door. “Then let’s go!”

  SIXTY-SIX

  IT

  Brigit

  Megan rousted Brigit from where she’d been lying on the floor. Looked like they were heading out. But before she left, she had one small matter to attend to.

  She sidled along until she came up to the cat, who’d been sitting under the coffee table pouting because Brigit had refused to play tag with him. Brigit put out her paw and gave him a poke. Not it!

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  EYE IN THE SKY

  Trevor

  He’d nearly jumped out of his skin when Harper’s phone had chimed with a reminder to clean out her kitty’s litter box. But thank goodness it had! He hadn’t realized the phone had slid under the seat of his truck. How many times have I told her she needs to keep up with that phone?

  Her phone explained why the helicopter that had circled him earlier and flown off was now shining its spotlight on the loop only a mile or so behind him. He’d hurled Harper’s phone out the window, where it had promptly been pulverized under the wheels of a semi truck. Ping that, suckers!

  He took the exit for Jacksboro Highway, circled around the ramp, and headed northwest on the road. Only a few more miles and he’d reach the ranch, hand over the rhino, and collect his big bucks. He’d have to go into hiding after that, at least until he figured things out. But he could survive quite a while on fifty grand in cash.

  He’d made it a good way down the road when he heard the whup-whup-whup growing louder again. He arched his neck to look out his window. The police helicopter was back and seemed to be following the same highway he was on, running its searchlight over the fields and pastures along the sides of the road. He gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles threatened to pop clean out of his skin.

  What do I do now?

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  LANDMARKS THE SPOT

  Megan

  We made our way in Bustamente’s cruiser, the detective at the wheel and yours truly riding shotgun, with Brigit and Harper in the backseat. Harper was an incredibly observant little girl. She’d not only directed us to Highway 199, but continued to let us know we were on the right track.

  She pushed back the hood on her panda-themed coat and pointed up at the Lake Worth water tower. “I remember that water tower with the blue stripe around it.” A few miles later, she recognized another water tower in the city of Azle. “I remember ’cause it has three Ss on it.”

  The S shapes were intended to resemble the waves on Eagle Mountain Lake, which sat to the east of town.

  As we went along, the helicopter trailed us, scanning left and right with its searchlight, making sure we in the cruiser hadn’t missed anything. After all, we were confined to the pavement and had limited visibility in any direction, but those in the helicopter had much greater range and could see all over, into places not visible from the roads.

  Harper sat up taller in the back, her little hand curved around the top of my seat. “Can you go slower?” she asked the detective. “I need to look for the donkey. That’s where we turn.”

  Uh-oh. Any donkey she might have seen in the daylight last Saturday was unlikely to be standing in the same place tonight. We might not even spot him in the dark.

  I turned to address her. “What if the donkey moved? Is there another way you could know where to turn?”

  She shook her head.

  I fought the urge to scream. I needed to relieve some tension. Too bad I couldn’t twirl my baton in the cruiser. There wasn’t room.

  Harper’s hand shot forward, her little finger pointing. “There’s the donkey!”

  I needn’t have worried about the donkey moving. This donkey was a ceramic yard decoration that someone had set atop a stump. He wore a broad smile and a cowboy hat, and had a piece of straw clenched in his buckteeth.

  Detective Bustamente negotiated the turn and there, way off in
the distance, appeared two tiny red lights. But were they the lights on the back of some farmer’s car? Or were they the rear lights on Fleming’s trailer?

  SIXTY-NINE

  THE SCENT OF SUCCESS

  Brigit

  Even without the windows down, Brigit’s nose picked up the scent of rhino on the air. The thing had pooped in the trailer again, releasing that unmistakable odor.

  Brigit was excited about the thought of getting to see the big animal up close and personal. At the zoo, she could only watch from afar. Maybe they’d even become friends.

  SEVENTY

  A NICE NIGHT FOR A SWIM

  Trevor

  The helicopter was closing in. His mind whirled like the blades of the chopper. What do I do? What do I do? He couldn’t think straight. But if he had any hope of getting out of this, he had to ditch the rhino.

  He pulled over under a live oak tree, the lower branches scratching along the top of his truck and the trailer with a screeeeeee.

  He leaped from his truck, grabbed his mask, gloves, and tool from his truck bed and circled around the back of the trailer. Ugh! The rhino had unloaded again. The feces littered the floor and the stench filled his sinuses.

  He turned on the welder and, as quick as he could, cut through the metal bars that had held the rhino in place. A small herd of longhorn cattle who’d been grazing in the pasture wandered over to watch, chewing their cuds with idle curiosity.

  Once the bars were cut, he swung the doors open, yanked the ghillie suit off the rhino’s butt, and tossed it on top of the trailer, spreading it flat for additional camouflage. Maybe the chopper wouldn’t be able to spot his truck and trailer hiding under this huge tree.

  He scurried over to the fence. The bovine audience squinted against the harsh glow as he quickly cut through the barbed wire. When he finished, he tossed his mask and welder aside and ran to the truck. He grabbed the ramp from the bed and situated it behind the trailer.