The Only Witness

by Pamela Beason

  Finn nodded. "I know, sir. I found it hard to believe, too."

  "And you're asking me to believe that the gorilla told you this?"

  "I am."

  "I can see why the keeper would want to stay anonymous. A gorilla witness."

  Finn felt like the star of a spectacularly bad movie in which every other line would emphasize the word gorilla. He opened his notebook and extracted the folder that contained Grace McKenna's resume and academic papers on ape sign language and psychology. "The gorilla communicates in American Sign Language. Her trainer has a Ph.D. in Pyschology from Stanford, and is on the faculty at the University of Washington."

  The judge picked up the folder and thumbed through the pages, a scowl on his face. Finn waited patiently until Sobriski looked up. "The subpoena?" Finn dared.

  "I still want to hear from this—" Sobriski gestured at the computer screen—"this witness … and the animal's keeper. In person."

  Finn stifled a sigh. What were the odds that Neema would behave herself in the judge's presence? If she had to come to strange surroundings, she'd be so distracted that anything could happen. And it was hardly likely he could smuggle a gorilla into the courthouse without someone noticing. Without everyone noticing.

  "Let's do this on location," Sobriski said, proving he was on the same wavelength. "Tomorrow, at three p.m.?"

  Finn nodded, relieved. "I'll arrange it with Dr. McKenna."

  The judge lifted the phone receiver to his ear and pressed a button on the desk set. "I need to leave court early tomorrow. Arrange for an adjournment at two p.m., Ramey. I have a field trip I need to attend to." There was a brief pause and then he said, "No, I won't be needing you then. I'll take my own notes."

  He hung up the phone and turned to Finn. "I assume I can ride with you, Detective."

  "I'll pick you up at two-fifteen?"

  The judge nodded. "And I further assume this matter will remain just between the two of us for now, Detective? I would hate for the media to get wind of this."

  Thank god. "I feel exactly the same way, Your Honor."

  Brittany lay motionless in the hospital bed. She kept her eyes shut, wishing she was comatose like her parents thought. Why wouldn't they give her enough meds to really knock her out? It was too quiet. The overall hush made every teensy noise so irritating. Papers rustled behind her, where her father sat reading the newspaper. Her mother had pulled up a chair beside her, practically in bed with her, stroking Brittany's arm now and then like she was a cat. She wanted to roll over, pull away, but then everyone would know she was awake and want her to talk. She had nothing to say. She'd never have anything to say again.

  The door in the hallway outside her room unlocked with its habitual thunk, then swooshed open and shut again with another thunk as someone passed through the locked portal into the psychiatric ward. The footsteps were heavy and hard-soled, not soft like a nurse's. They stopped at her doorway.

  "Detective?" Her father sounded impatient, or maybe angry. So it was Detective Finn.

  "I'm here to give you an update," Finn said. "We don't have anything definite, but I wanted you to know that we have received a tip from a witness that has resulted in a promising lead."

  "Who's the witness?" her mother asked.

  Her father stood up. "What was the tip?"

  Brittany opened her eyes.

  Detective Finn looked right at her as he said, "I can't tell you anything more right now."

  What was the point of this, then? He was saying the cops still had nothing.

  "I want you to know that I'm still working hard to find Ivy," he said. "I'll keep you posted."

  It seemed for a second as if he wanted to say something more, but instead, he just turned and left. She closed her eyes before her mother turned around.

  Maybe Detective Finn believed her now, that someone took Ivy, that she hadn't killed her baby. So what? It didn't mean Ivy was coming back; it didn't mean Ivy was still alive. It didn't mean there was a God. If there was a God, he'd fix this somehow. Or maybe he had; maybe she had killed herself in jail. Maybe Hell was a too-quiet hospital room she'd never get out of.

  As he drove home, Finn debated about calling the FBI. They'd immediately want to grill Grace McKenna, and that was the last thing Grace wanted. He decided he'd call only when the Jimson lead panned out, or if Sobriski refused to issue the subpoena.

  Finn turned into his long gravel driveway. The grass on both sides was getting awfully tall. He'd have to find time to mow it, or more likely, weed-whack and bale the dang stuff. Or pay someone else to do it; could he afford that? His bank account was still reeling from Wendy's departure and being suddenly saddled with the entire mortgage instead of only half.

  Drinking a cold beer with his feet up sounded perfect. He was too tired to paint. He'd watch one of the brain-dead detective shows where evidence magically appeared, witnesses had perfect recall after twenty years, and the case was solved in an hour. And yes, he had to admit it, when he envisioned his home scene, it included a purring cat on his lap now.

  A flash of buff fur shot out of the tall grass in front of his car, and he had to slam on the brakes. After a brief glance his way, the creature vanished into the grass on the other side of the road. Coyote. This one had a splash of blood down its neck. Not a rare animal to see out here in the 'burbs. Once he'd seen one slinking across the road with a rabbit, still kicking, in its jaws.

  He heard the yips and howls of the coyote packs almost every evening. Before dawn this morning, they'd been particularly loud.

  He drove a hundred more feet before it hit him. The way Cargo stuck to the porch. Why Lok and Kee had been so reluctant to go out in recent days.

  After crunching to a stop in front of the house, he leapt out of the car. Cargo heaved himself off the lounge chair on the deck and came to greet him, saliva dripping from his red tongue.

  No cats. "Lok! Kee!" Shouting for them made him feel like an idiot. Did the cats even know their names? Or that they had names? Cargo whined and pressed his head into Finn's hand.

  He looked into Cargo's mismatched eyes. "Where are they, boy?" He walked around the perimeter of the house, saw only birds flitting from tree to tree in the yard. Damn. He returned to the porch.

  How had Wendy called them? "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!" Thank god he lived alone; it didn't sound like something a grown man should be yelling. Cargo whimpered and leaned against his leg. He tried again. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!"

  A strangled mew came from beneath his feet. He stepped down off the porch, knelt in the dry grass and peered beneath the weathered decking. Two green eyes reflected the dim light behind him. "Come on, kitty. C'mon."

  Kee pulled himself out from beneath the deck, covered in cobwebs and filth. Finn picked up the cat, then sat down on the porch, cradling the animal in his lap. He ran his hands quickly over the filthy fur. No blood. Kee purred and raised his head so Finn could scratch his chin. Cargo rested his head on Finn's shoulder and blew a huff of hot fetid air into his ear. The wetness he felt oozing down his shirt collar would be dog slobber.

  "Where's Lok? Where's your brother?" he asked Kee. Finn slowly scanned the yard for any movement, or god forbid, any scraps of orange fur.

  The cat stood up and turned in his lap, peering out into the yard with him.

  Chapter 21

  Sixteen days after Ivy disappears

  Reporter Rebecca Ramey was careful to keep a car between her Civic and the detective's Ford. She was on the tail of an exclusive, thanks to her law-clerk brother. Something big going down; something about a witness in the Ivy Morgan case. She'd borrowed the smallest camcorder available from the studio. This could be her senior project and her big break; then it would be her instead of Allyson Lee standing up in front of the local news cameras. Then she could move on to someplace like Montana or Idaho, and then maybe to a major station like Seattle or San Francisco.

  The Ford left the highway and turned down a gravel road. Detective Finn got out, opened a me
tal gate, drove through, and closed the gate behind his car. Rebecca slowly drove on past like she wasn't in the least interested, noting in her rear view mirror that the Ford proceeded up the gravel road and disappeared into the woods. She circled back and parked on the shoulder. She jammed her cell phone, notepad, and two pens into her pockets. Clutching the video camera to her stomach, she crept across the field toward the thick stand of trees, praying the landowner didn't have any vicious dogs on patrol. The field had been plowed at some time in the not-too-distant past and then abandoned. The ground was uneven, hard to walk on without stumbling, and the blackberries were vicious, reaching out with clawed canes over her head. The weeds came up to her waist, cloaking most of a barbed wire fence at edge of the woods. A rusty sign nailed to a tree declared No Trespassing, but she crawled through the fence anyway. All in all, it took her a good half hour to sneak up on the location. By the time she got there, she had stick-tights covering the legs of her jeans and snarling her hair. This story better be worth it; if she ended up with nothing but poison ivy and blackberry scratches, she was going to kill her brother.

  The place gave her the creeps. She stood beside the detective's Ford in the shadow of a small two-story barn, panning the camera around the site. It was not a normal house, but a compound of some sort in a clearing carved out of the woods. Three single-wide trailers were arranged in a U-shape around a patchy square of grass. The barn formed the other side of the square. In front of the barn was a fenced enclosure with wire netting that stretched out and up toward the peak of the roof. Looked like an aviary. The air was ripe with a musky animal smell—manure? It didn't smell like horses or cows—maybe the farmers here kept ostriches? Did ostriches stink? But ostriches couldn't fly, could they? So why an aviary? She peeked through the slats of the fence. The barnyard was empty. Maybe this was some sort of animal rescue place, for eagles or owls or whatever.

  Which trailer had the detective and judge disappeared into? She carefully examined the windows of each. There—the trailer on the right. A curtain flicked at the window. She started to move closer, but she'd only taken three steps when she heard a noise above her head. Startled, she glanced up. It was a weird sound, between a growl and a grunt. Beyond the wire mesh she could make out a rope net stretched horizontally above the ground. In the far corner was a tangle of what looked like blankets. Something was moving in them. Or someone? Was that a hand?

  She couldn't quite make it out. Was there a person sleeping up there in the netting? What kind of psycho place was this that kept people imprisoned? Human trafficking? Now that would be a scoop. She had to find a position where she could film this. The hasp on the gate was held shut by a sliding bar. A padlock hung from the ring, but it wasn't quite closed. She slipped the lock out and pulled open the gate. Standing behind the gate in the enclosure, she zoomed her camera on the moving lump up in the net. Finally the camera focused and she could make out the image. In the shadow between wadded-up blankets, a red-brown eye stared back at her.

  Finn, Grace, and Judge Sobriski exited the study trailer. LaDyne, leading Neema on a leash, followed a short distance behind.

  Finn thought the interview had gone well, but Sobriski still hadn't rendered a decision on the subpoena. Surreptitiously, Finn checked his watch. If only he could quit feeling guilty about the damn cat at home. He'd stayed up until one a.m. searching for Lok, but hadn't heard or seen any sign of him. He'd shut both Kee and Cargo up inside the house this morning, which meant he'd better be getting back at a reasonable hour or he'd need to hire his own janitorial service to put the place back together.

  Grace had started out the interview as a nervous wreck, but Neema had mostly behaved herself. Except for calling LaDyne a poop-head when he refused to give in to her begging for candy. The judge had been appropriately skeptical but surprisingly open-minded. The rose that Finn had provided for him as a gift for Neema had helped win over the gorilla, too.

  Sobriski turned to ask Grace, "What did she call me?"

  "Scrub hat." Grace made the signs for him, a scouring motion followed by a tap on the head.

  "Clever." Sobriski ran a hand over his gray crew cut. "I've read about projects like yours, Dr. McKenna. Years ago, I had the privilege of attending a lecture by Jane Goodall. Fascinating. But I must admit that I never really appreciated these studies until now. I would not have believed Neema had created that painting without witnessing your video."

  He glanced at the gorilla, who curled her fingers around her collar and tugged at the leash as a butterfly flitted past. She dragged LaDyne a few steps in the wake of the insect, until the butterfly lifted high above their heads. LaDyne then held out a hand in her direction, and she docilely placed her giant black paw in his and they continued toward the barn.

  "Where do you think your research will go?" Sobriski asked Grace. "Will we be able to talk to wild gorillas using Neema as an interpreter?"

  "That might be possible," Grace said. "If there were funding to set up that experiment. Right now I—"

  She stopped, staring at the enclosure gate, which gaped open a foot. "Josh? Did you leave—"

  A series of loud pock-pock-pock sounds caught their attention and they all looked up at Gumu as he raced down the rope net. His descent was accompanied by high-pitched screams, half gorilla, half human. Then a young woman fell through the gate opening, scrabbling on the ground, a video camera cradled in one arm. A huge black mass rolled over her, huffing like a steam engine, and dashed past them in a wave of hot skunky scent. Neema joined in with her own alarm shrieks and leapt after Gumu as he passed, jerking LaDyne to the ground and ripping her leash from his hand. The two gorillas, rocketing forward on all fours, disappeared into the forest.

  "Shit!" Grace and LaDyne shouted in chorus. They galloped off after the apes.

  Finn's carefully scripted scene roller-coastered from control to total chaos in less than two seconds. As Grace and LaDyne dashed into the woods, the intruder picked herself up and raced down the driveway, her running shoes crunching in the gravel.

  "Stop!" Finn took off in pursuit. "Police!" In his dress shoes, he really wasn't prepared for a chase. The girl dashed over the mown strip into the woods and disappeared between the trees. "Stop!"

  The intruder clearly knew where she was headed; he, on the other hand, didn't have a clue. She was also at least twenty years younger. She nimbly darted between trees and dove through strands of barbed wire. By the time Finn had climbed over the fence, she was halfway across a lumpy weed-eaten field, and by the time he had extricated himself from the blackberry canes that grabbed his pant leg and shirt sleeve, he heard a car door slam and tires spinning on gravel.

  He trudged back, sticky seeds glued to his pants and cockleburs digging into his socks. His shirt was drenched in sweat and he had a blackberry scratch that wrapped around the back of his neck. Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed the college and asked to be connected with their television station.

  He identified himself to the news producer and then told her, "Some hotshot girl reporter is going to come in with a video of a gorilla."

  "A gorilla?"

  "That video was illegally obtained by trespassing on private property. If I see it on the air, I will have you and everyone else at your station arrested."

  "A gorilla?" the woman asked again.

  Finn wiped away a trickle of sweat from his forehead. "What is your name? Did you hear what I just told you? Do I need to talk to the station manager?"

  "I'm Heather Anderson. No, sir, you do not need to talk to the station manager. I'll take care of it, Detective."

  He called Grace's cell. It went to voicemail. He'd seen the phone on the table in the trailer; it was probably still sitting there. He left a message telling her that he'd headed off any news coverage. Small consolation, but it was the best he could offer.

  He trudged back through the woods, emerging into the clearing between the study trailer and Grace's living quarters. All was quiet. Grace, LaDyne, and the gorillas were no
where in sight. No sounds came from the woods. Damn. Thousands of acres of Forest Service land surrounded the compound. How far would the gorillas run?

  Judge Sobriski rested in the shade, reclining against the hood of the car. Finn put a foot up on the front bumper and gingerly picked cockleburs from his sock.

  "I don't know when I've had such an interesting afternoon," Sobriski said. "But I think I'm ready to call it a day. How about you, Detective?"

  Finn snorted. "Amen to that." Unfortunately, he needed to return to the station. He switched feet to pick the burrs out of his other sock. The sticky seeds that covered his trouser legs up to his thighs would have to wait until later.

  "Let's go back to my chambers and write up that subpoena duces tecum, shall we?"

  Thank god. Finn put his foot back on the ground and grinned at the judge. "Gladly." He pulled the passenger door open for Sobriski.

  He couldn't help Grace corral the gorillas, and even though he'd stopped the news broadcast, he had no doubt the girl would spread the word of gorillas loose in Evansburg. But he'd at least be able to go after the Jimson Janitorial records first thing in the morning.

  Back at the station, Finn faxed the subpoena to the Spokane Police Department, where tomorrow morning, an officer would deliver it in person to that bitchy HR manager at Jimson Janitorial headquarters. He couldn't wait to see her marching up the steps of the courthouse with the records in hand. Forty-eight hours; that's all she had.

  Finally, he was making progress. Now if only the records would lead him to Ivy's kidnapper. And to Ivy. Be nice if they led him to the other two babies' whereabouts, too.

  He called Grace's phone again. It kicked into voicemail. He hung up. Damn. Still not back. It was getting dark now. Should he drive back out there to see if she'd recaptured the gorillas? LaDyne was with her; surely they'd be okay. Besides, she was probably more than a little peeved with him right now. She had a right to be. He'd checked his rearview plenty of times. How had he missed a reporter tailing him out to Grace's compound?