The Only Witness

by Pamela Beason

  "Yeah?" Finn sounded as if he didn't believe her. He studied Neema while the gorilla stared back at him. "How does she know about guns?"

  Grace returned to her chair. "Television. Movies. I usually try to screen out the violent ones, but I've let a couple slip through. The worst was Tarzan. I didn't know it had a scene where hunters K-I-L-L-E-D some chimpanzees."

  Where chimpanzee? Neema signed, scraping her hands up and down her sides while she looked around the room.

  "No chimpanzee here," Grace told her. "Just talking."

  Neema returned to her position on the other side of the coffee table and inspected Finn again for a long moment. Then she signed Cat where man cat?

  "Neema wants to know where your cat is."

  Detective Finn jerked his gaze toward Grace. "Why would it—she—think I have a cat?"

  Grace asked Neema in sign language why she thought of a cat.

  Neema leaned forward and stretched a black hairy arm across the coffee table. The detective froze as the gorilla's leathery fingers touched down on his khaki-clad thigh. Neema deftly plucked an orange hair from his trouser leg and held it up in front of her nose, signing cat.

  "There's your evidence, Detective."

  "You're kidding." Finn watched as Neema stuck the cat hair on top of her nose and then stared at it cross-eyed.

  Grace laughed.

  Neema stuck out her bottom lip and puffed out a big breath, blowing the cat hair off her nose. She signed What man this.

  "Finn," Grace said aloud, frowning.

  He turned to her. "Yes?"

  "Neema wanted to know what your name was, but I need to come up with a sign for it. She doesn't spell." F? No, Neema's fingers weren't dexterous enough to form the letter.

  Neema signed Gun dog cat man.

  "Okay," Grace said. "Neema wants to call you Gun dog cat man."

  Finn looked startled. Gun. Dog. Cat. Man. Grace made each gesture slowly, a hand formed into a gun, a hip pat and finger snap for dog, pulled out whiskers for cat, and then a forehead touch followed by a chest tap for man.

  "I get the gun and the cat man," Grace said aloud, signing to Neema, "but why dog?"

  Neema quickly touched her hip and brought her fingers together in the air and then circled her fingers in front of her nose.

  "Really?" Grace sniffed the air.

  Finn watched her, frowning. "What?"

  "She says you smell like a dog."

  "Damn." Dog, Neema signed again. He raised an eyebrow. "Am I being insulted by a gorilla? Do you think I smell like a dog?"

  Grace said, "I can't smell anything, but gorillas have more sensitive noses than humans. You do have a dog?"

  "Sort of," Finn said, still staring at Neema. "Make her do it again."

  Grace bristled. "Neema's not a trick pony, Detective."

  Where pony? Neema signed. She scooted over to the window and peered out, signing pony, pony.

  Finn looked at Grace. "Can you ask Neema to sign 'gun' again, please?"

  Neema pivoted away from the window, hooting softly as she repeatedly signed gun bad gun, her gaze jumping to Finn's pistol in its holster.

  "She's doing it now. She's saying gun bad gun." Grace did the signs slowly for him, forming her hand into a gun and jerking it in front of her chest as if shooting it, then shoving her hand down for bad, then making the gun sign again.

  Finn watched carefully and then looked back at the gorilla. Neema jerked her right hand in front of her chest, hooting softly. Her expression was anxious.

  "It's okay, Neema," Grace told her. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to leave your pistol outside, Detective?"

  "It stays with me." Finn frowned. "She's not making the same signs you did."

  "Gorilla hands are not as agile as ours. Neema's signs are modified American Sign Language; as close as she can get."

  Neema continued to hoot softly, her eyes round with worry. Grace could see from the gorilla's body language that Neema was revving up for a tantrum. When she was frightened or angry, she could be destructive, even violent. When gorillas felt threatened, they often attacked the threat. In the wild, this usually came in the form of charging the intruder while shrieking and hurling sticks or leaves or even feces. Detective Finn had no idea what was coming.

  "Neema's upset." Grace stood up. "We need to go outside to chat, Detective. Right now."

  Finn rose from the couch and took a step toward the door. Neema raised her arms above her head with a screech of alarm. Grace hurriedly moved between them, touching Neema gently. The gorilla wrapped her arms around Grace and tried to climb up her legs as she had when she was a baby; Grace staggered under the adult gorilla's weight.

  "What the—" Finn muttered behind her back.

  "I'm okay," Grace yelped into Neema's furry shoulder. "I need you to go outside right now. I'll be out in a minute."

  Between Neema's increasingly loud hoots, Grace heard the door close behind her. She patted Neema and made soothing noises. After the gorilla finally calmed down, she led her through the door into the cage area, and settled her with a blanket and a carton of yogurt and her favorite ABC book. Finally, Grace went out the side door of the trailer.

  Finn whirled as she approached his back, his hand on his pistol grip again. She held up her hands. "Easy, Detective," she said. "I'm still unarmed."

  His face was unreadable. The lines around his eyes and mouth were deeply etched into his tanned skin. His eyes were an eerie light blue. Right now, he was handsome in a rumpled, world-weary sort of way; but she could see that he might appear frightening if he failed to shave or comb his hair.

  She tried to imagine how he felt; coming to meet a deaf child and finding a gorilla instead. "What's going on inside your head?" she asked.

  "Dr. McKenna—" he started.

  "Grace."

  "Grace," he said. "Tell me about your van. Is this Talking Hands Ranch?"

  She winced. "No. The van belongs to the University of Washington, and Talking Hands Ranch was a research center they used to own; we did primate language research there. They sold that property and moved us out here. We're sort of in exile. Or maybe swept under the rug," she said bitterly. She'd have to tell him about Spencer and the crazies now so he'd understand the importance of keeping all this quiet.

  "When I arrived, you were crying. Can you tell me why?"

  Oh god. She'd forgotten about that for a little while. Her thoughts suddenly plunged into a crevasse of emotion. She tried to bounce them out, but her vision blurred and her throat swelled too tight to talk. Moving to the picnic table, she snatched up the page she'd left there. She stumbled back because she couldn't see the ground through the haze of tears. She pushed the letter at him and stood there in the pool of porch light, her arms crossed in front of her chest, sobs overtaking her. She was mortified to be caught blubbering like a little kid.

  He squinted at the page. The letter was from the University of Washington. OFFICIAL NOTICE — TO BE SOLD AT AUCTION was the heading at the top, followed by a long list. Lab equipment, quite a few trailers and vehicles, video cameras, dozens of white mice, rats, rabbits, spider monkeys. Somewhere in the middle was:

  RESEARCH SUBJECT 1021 – Female Lowland Gorilla, 12 years of age

  RESEARCH SUBJECT 1022 – Male Lowland Gorilla, 9 years of age

  He stopped reading and looked at her. "Does this mean what I think it does?"

  "The university's planning to sell Neema and Gumu," she managed to gasp before she completely fell apart. She suddenly felt dizzy and reached out to grasp his shirt sleeve.

  He stepped forward and took her into his arms. She buried her face against his chest. She could feel the heat from his skin beneath his shirt, the muscles of his biceps loosely clasped around her. She smelled his deodorant and sweat. This was insane. Humiliating. She had to pull herself together. Apologize. She raised her chin.

  "Detective ..." That was all she managed to get out before she started sobbing again.

  Nobody at the univer
sity knew her gorillas. Nobody knew that Neema was frightened by the rustle of paper bags, that Gumu adored the color fuchsia. Nobody else remembered how Neema refused to let go of Spencer's cold hand for a whole day after he'd died.

  To the university, the gorillas were in the same category as desks and microscopes—surplus equipment. Where would they end up? What the hell was she going to do? She gave way to the horror of it all, sobbing uncontrollably while this stranger stood and held her in his arms.

  "You may as well call me Matt," he finally said.

  Chapter 15

  Nine days after Ivy disappears

  The regular janitor for the Sisters-Mothers Trust wing was Audrey Ibañez. Dawes had interviewed three other members of the cleaning staff yesterday and gotten little out of them, but Ibañez had been off on sick leave for several days.

  "They were full of complaints about having to clean up dirty diapers and baby barf in a high school," Dawes told him. "Guess condoms and tampons are more to their liking? They didn't want to hand over driver's licenses, either."

  Ibañez was no different from her colleagues, seeming annoyed at his request for identification, and dragging her heels to her locker. Finn noted that Audrey was actually her middle name—Luisa Audrey Ibañez—as he copied her driver's license number. He handed back her billfold.

  "It's just, you know, you never know where that information is going to wind up these days," Ibañez explained, placing the billfold in her lap. "My sister had someone steal her ID and run up a terrible bill on her credit cards."

  "The companies can't bill your sister for that."

  Ibañez rolled her eyes. "Try telling that to a collections agency."

  "We'll protect your information." He slid the report form up and clamped it into his clipboard.

  He leaned back, forgetting there was no chair back behind him, almost slipped off the bench and sat up again, feeling foolish. They were sitting on the lowest level of the foldout bleachers in the empty gymnasium; the teachers' lounge had way too much traffic to hold an interview there.

  He held his pen poised over his notepad. "You know who Brittany Morgan is?"

  "Of course I know who Brittany Morgan is. Who doesn't, now? I see that she's back in class. Poor thing." She tucked a few more black hairs into the braid she wore at the back of her neck. "But of course I knew who she was before this happened. I know a lot of the girls."

  Ibañez told him that Brittany seemed like a caring mother. Then her forehead creased. "Most of the time she seemed good, anyway. But you never know what these teenagers can get up to. One time I saw that girl Joy give a marshmallow to her son." She shook her head. "Do you know how quickly a baby can choke on a marshmallow?"

  He'd never really thought about it. But now he could imagine how dangerous that could be—soft and fluffy, the perfect thing to fill a little throat that didn't have the strength to swallow it down. No way to grab a glass of water; not even the words or gestures to indicate what was happening. Could Ivy have died from such a simple accident? "Did you ever see Joy or Brittany give Ivy a marshmallow?"

  "No. I gave Joy a good lecture about that subject." She shook her head again. "I've seen girls give their babies Coke and potato chips, too. Brittany once, I saw her let Ivy suck on this bird necklace she had. Who knows what that might have been made out of—could have lead or who knows what in it." She made a clucking sound with her tongue. "Sometimes the girls treat the babies more like pets than babies."

  The word pet made him think of Neema. Although the gorilla hardly seemed in the same category as a cat or dog. Not really a pet. She'd eaten his rose and then thanked him for it. Or at least that's how McKenna had interpreted Neema's gestures. Dr. Grace McKenna, a good-looking, interesting woman. Crying in his arms. You may as well call me Matt? What the hell had gotten into him? Damn good thing nobody had witnessed that totally inappropriate scene. McKenna could be a nutcase. He gave himself a mental shake.

  No matter whether the tips were the gorilla's clues or McKenna's, he owed it to Brittany and Ivy to give them a shot. Green car. Snake bracelet. He leaned toward the janitor. "Do you know anyone around the school that drives a green car?"

  Ibañez snorted. "I know at least a dozen people with green cars. Don't you?"

  He shrugged and waited for her to go on.

  "Those light green Priuses are real popular; some of the staff and teachers have them. And those lime green Fords; whatever they call those cheap little models—lots of kids have those." She shook her head again. "Lucky devils. I never had a car when I was in high school, did you?" When he didn't respond, she sighed and looked toward the corner where she'd left her mop and bucket. "I really need to get back to work, Detective."

  "In a minute." He leaned forward again. "Can you name some owners of green cars?"

  She gave him four names: two teachers, a maintenance man, and a student. "I could probably find out some of the others." Her eyes brightened. "Did a green car have something to do with Ivy disappearing? Didn't the police say that baby was probably dead?"

  He said carefully, "There have been letters to the editor to that effect in the newspaper. The police have said nothing. We don't know what happened. But a couple of witnesses thought they saw a green car peel out of the parking lot of the Food Mart." Better to make the witnesses plural, he thought; that way it would be harder to pinpoint one person. Or one gorilla.

  Her eyebrows lifted. "Really? You think someone in a green car kidnapped that baby?"

  "A green car was seen speeding away. It may have nothing to do with Ivy, but we've got to follow every lead."

  "I should hope so." She folded her arms across the blue coverall she wore. Jimson Janitorial Service was stitched in three red lines across the upper sleeve. Was that the name of the company that Charlie Wakefield worked for? He'd have to check.

  "You think that someone at the school had something to do with this?" she asked.

  "Could be anyone in town." He tapped his pen on the clipboard. "Do you know anyone who wears a snake bracelet?"

  Her chin jerked up and her forehead creased into a frown. "What?"

  "A bracelet in the shape of a snake."

  She lowered her eyes to her clasped hands. "What sort of bracelet?"

  Was he reading too much into it, or did Ibañez seem suddenly nervous? Finn kept his face and voice bland. "I don't know much about jewelry," he said.

  She studied the floor for a second. Then she sat up and unfolded her arms. "There are wraparound bracelets." She demonstrated, twirling her right hand around her left wrist. "Some of the girls wear those, and they look like snakes. And then there are bangle bracelets." His expression must have been blank, because she explained, "They're circles that you slip over your hand. Some of those might be snakes, too. I used to have one where the snake was biting its own tail—it was supposed to be Egyptian. But that was a while ago. Your best bet would be to ask the girls. Or maybe Miz Taylor."

  "Doesn't have to be someone in the pregnant girls' class," Finn said. "How about staff or other teachers? Any of them wear snake bracelets?"

  She thought about it for a minute. "I can't remember any offhand."

  "Know any men who wear a snake bracelet?"

  "Men? With bracelets?"

  "Some men wear bracelets," Finn said. "A medical bracelet has the caduceus symbol, which has two snakes in it. Or maybe a watch with a snake design watchband?"

  She chewed on a ragged thumbnail and studied her knees for a few seconds. Finally she raised her head. "I can't think of any men who wear bracelets, snakes or any other kind. Who said they saw a man with a snake bracelet?"

  What would she say if he told her a gorilla had reported it? He fixed his eyes on his notebook for a second, quelling a smile. "I didn't say anyone saw a man."

  "Oh. I guess I just assumed…" She frowned, swallowed hard, and put her hands on her knees. "Well, okay, I'll keep a lookout for a snake bracelet, too."

  "Do you know this young man?" He shoved Charlie Wakefield
's track team photo toward her.

  She took it, squinted at it. "He seems sort of familiar, but I don't know his name. I think he was a student, maybe last year? I haven't seen him around lately. Hey—it's not a bracelet, but how about snaky looking sleeves?" She pointed at the design on the uniform shirts.

  Shit, Ibañez was right. The zigzag might be mistaken for a snake. Especially by a gorilla. "It's supposed to be a lightning bolt."

  "If you say so," she said. "Is this kid a suspect?"

  "I can't tell you that."

  "Right," Ibañez huffed, insulted. She handed him the photo and glanced toward her mop again.

  A figure appeared in one of the windows at the top of the double gymnasium doors. A young man wearing a red tie, his dark hair neatly banded back into a ponytail, peered in, stared severely at them for a moment, then withdrew.

  "I need to get back to work now," Ibañez said.

  "Is Jimson Janitorial a good outfit to work for?" he asked, thinking about Charlie's Wakefield's job.

  "The best." She nodded enthusiastically. "They really believe in their workers."

  That seemed an odd way of putting it—how many people would say their employers believed in them?

  "But they check up on us, too; that was one of our quality control guys just now. So I really gotta get back to work." She pushed herself up from her seat.

  He stood and fished a card out of his shirt pocket. "Call me if you come up with more names or think of anything else."

  "Course I will." She waved at him over her shoulder as she pushed the rolling mop bucket through the doorway.

  He planned to ask the principal about green cars and snake bracelets, too, but first he walked to the parking lot and copied down the licenses of all the green cars there, just in case one of them vanished.

  Two hours later, Finn gawked at the scene at Grace's compound. On the other side of the fence, next to the barn, the two gorillas were—unbelievably—painting. Neema's canvas was perched on an easel, and the other, larger gorilla sat on the ground with his canvas between his feet. Or were they hands? Gorilla feet looked like hands, with opposable thumbs and nails on all digits.