The Lincoln was no picnic to drive, wavy steering and poor visibility. The fact I couldn’t turn my head didn’t help. I pulled over before the freeway entrance and fussed with the side and rear-view mirrors until they could give me at least a clue as to what was behind and alongside. I didn’t ask anything tricky of the car, and it plowed out of Portland, floated over the broad Columbia River on the Interstate Bridge, and swooned off Interstate 5 onto the zoo exit.
I couldn’t see any reason not to leave it in the employee lot. No one would recognize it yet. I walked through the employee gate into the zoo proper in darkness, twitchy and hyper-alert. It was cooler than I expected, a breeze kicking up. I kept an eye out for the security guard, who wouldn’t be leaving for a couple of hours.
The Education offices were a disappointment. No Linda, no video cameras set up as discussed. I stood in the dark wondering what was going on. I headed toward the elephant barn. Shivering a little, I used the flashlight now and then, but mostly could manage without it. I stepped carefully—falling down would be ugly. The paths around the elephant exhibit looked empty. I took a risk and shined the flashlight around the undercover viewing area and found no one. Damrey and Nakri stared at me through the window, reflections bouncing around.
I walked back out. The clouds relented and an almost full moon gilded the shrubbery and the rail around the exhibit. The soft hum of the electric cart warned me. I stepped back into darkness until the guard passed. What was going on? Where was Linda? Flummoxed, I came back out and stood on the path, wondering what to do.
A voice hissed, “Iris!”
I startled in a way that sent stabbing pain through most of me.
“Here, giraffe barn.”
Linda. Relief flushed away terror and confusion. I hustled across the path and through the door into the shelter of the giraffe kitchen. She shut the door, and we whispered in the dark.
“You are crazy, you know that? How did you get here?”
“Stole a car. You are so going to pay for this. Why aren’t you in the Education office with the video monitors like we planned?”
“I am not invisible, and I am not an electrician. No way could I get a camera set up at Elephants without the entire world knowing it. Trust me. This is better.”
“We can’t see a thing.”
“Iris, when we are done yelling at each other, we will open the door and stand here and watch.”
“Oh. Let’s do that.”
She opened the door, and we stood inside and stared toward Elephants. After about thirty seconds, I fumbled around until I found a chair and pulled it quietly to the doorway and sat. She stood and I sat, watching darkness.
My eyes picked out a shape moving swiftly toward us. Heart thudding, I elbowed Linda. She said, “He’s late.” Denny found us, we shushed him, and he moved off to the Asian Experience construction site. Linda whispered that he would sit on the ground by the backhoe and watch the manure shed and the back fence.
We waited. A faint descending warble might have been a screech owl or my imagination. A lion coughed to announce that he or she was awake. The air was cool and fragrant with animals, full of night secrets. I shivered, but not from cold. We waited.
The corner of my eye caught movement from the construction site. Denny, jogging toward us. I was surprised and then angry. If he wrecked this…
He veered close to us and said, “Reptiles.”
I grabbed his arm before he could lope off. “What?”
“I set up a motion sensor. It sends my cell a text message when the door’s opened. Someone’s after the turtles again.”
Linda said, “Stay here,” and the two of them trotted away.
I made a half-hearted start after them, but running was out of the question. Linda was right. I was in no shape to tackle anyone, and they didn’t need me. I turned around on the path and looked toward Elephants. There was still a possibility…I returned to the doorway of the giraffe barn. Probably I’d guessed wrong and stealing turtles was the target. Probably I was wasting my time freezing in the dark while staring at a dark barn. I thought I saw movement in the strip of land outside the visitor perimeter, but it wasn’t repeated. I listened and heard only an insomniac mallard from the waterfowl pond. The lion coughed again, but didn’t escalate to roaring. The sky had lightened a little. Small dark birds flew overhead, unidentifiable.
And then the elephant barn wasn’t so dark. I didn’t trust what I was seeing. The dawn sun shining through a window in the back door, dimly illuminating the front stall? There was no window in the back door.
I slipped into the visitor area, keeping well back in the shadows. One light was on, in the back of the barn. I pictured it filtering over and around the stacked hay bales. Large dim shapes moved in the front stall, long rolling snorts echoed. I caught the pink blotch on Damrey’s trunk as she strode past the open door to the back stall. The other shape—Nakri—moved through the door, and I could see her backing up to the bars by the back hay rack.
I’d been right after all.
I flipped open my cell phone—bright in the darkness—turned to shield it with my body, and dialed Linda as fast as I could. It cut to voice mail immediately. Turned off. I dialed Denny. After way too many rings, voice messaging answered. “Come to Elephants right now,” I whispered, and clapped it closed. He had the volume turned off. Why, oh why, didn’t we all have our radios? Because radios were part of our work uniform, and we weren’t in uniform.
Whoever was in there had a choice of three doors to exit: through the viewing room where I stood, the back door in the work room, and the back door at the far end of the barn beyond the hay. No way could I cover them all.
I couldn’t take risks. I was in no shape to protect myself or my baby. But if I didn’t identify this person, someone was going to get away with murder and attempted murder. I knew the barn pretty well. I could get close enough to see who it was and then hide until they were gone. It felt reasonable.
I put the key into the door at the end of the visitor window and stepped into a warm fog of elephant smells, closing the door softly behind me. Next, the door to the work room. I eased that door shut and felt my way slowly through the narrow room toward the hay storage, toward the light bulb and the backside of the second stall.
“Hold still,” snapped a voice, and I juddered to a stop, adrenaline spiking. “Good girl,” said the voice. “That’s better.” Not talking to me.
I took a breath and eased around the corner, the same corner I’d dashed around with a bucket of produce when I was trying to rescue Wallace. There was the bank of levers for operating the doors. And there was Nakri’s butt pressed against the bars, shifting uneasily.
And Kayla.
I sighed, disappointed but not surprised, and eased back to where I could barely see. I would watch a few more seconds to confirm what she was doing, then tiptoe back the way I’d come. But Nakri whirled—Kayla snapping at her—and oriented toward me, ears out, trunk reaching through the bars, searching for my scent. Kayla turned and looked, then stepped swiftly toward me. I crouched and scuttled back, aiming for cover under the work table. She was on me like a serval on a mouse, yanking my sling. I stifled a scream and lunged toward her, staggering to my feet. She’d hooked the sling with an ankus. She disentangled it while I was standing up and grabbed the back of my neck, her hand sliding below the brace to grip my skin, the ankus half-raised in her other hand.
“Damn you, Iris,” she hissed. “Why do you always have to screw things up? Why the hell can’t you mind your own business.” She shoved me toward Nakri, toward the bars. “Why do you make me do these things?”
I stumbled forward, propelled by her iron hand, knowing she would hit me with the ankus, knees failing me, my neck muscles spasming. Damrey trumpeted out of sight and then crowded into the back stall with Nakri. Nakri roared. They circled within the stall, big bodies brushing each other and the walls, big feet pacing fast, ears and trunks shifting and w
aving in the dim light.
Kayla pushed me half-upright to the bars and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her raise the ankus. “Don’t kill my baby,” I gasped. “Don’t.”
Her face was frozen in rage and determination. “You’ll tell Jean.”
She would kill me with no more thought than she’d killed Wallace. I had no strength to fight, no place to escape to. An elephant collided with the bars and I felt them hum against my body. We were away from the narrowly spaced bars, away from safety, standing by bars spaced wide enough for keepers to slip through, bars where trunks could reach people. I lunged into them, jamming my thick body through, into the stall with the two elephants. Kayla shrieked and swung at me. The heavy stick came down on my shoulder, and I fell forward, into the melee of elephant feet. A leg brushed me and shoved me sideways. I caught myself with my good hand and was shoved again, pushed sprawling against the bars, my arm a searing agony. I twisted, desperate to get out of Kayla’s reach, blank with terror and pain, the elephants or my own mind roaring. I looked up to see the ankus rising up again, aimed toward my face, no way to evade it.
A thick gray leg crammed me against the bars. A blur of elephant. Trunk reaching over me, circling Kayla’s upraised arms, crushing her against the bars, then letting go and stepping back. Nakri, it was Nakri, with Damrey flapping her ears and trumpeting behind her.
Kayla crumpled next to me on the other side of the bars, her face two feet from mine, her eyes open and sightless, the ankus alongside her.
I lay paralyzed as the two elephants milled around, feet scuffling on the floor, squeaks and rumbles, Damrey’s trunk fumbling at my legs and then my chest. After a minute or two, they hadn’t stepped on me or grabbed me. I pulled myself up and squeezed out, dizzy and nauseated, half-tripping over Kayla.
I limped away and stopped to lean against the wall by the levers. Light switches. I turned them on. It made no difference. Still two elephants in the second stall. Still Kayla lying on the floor, her head at an impossible angle. I thought, I should pull her away from where the elephants can reach her. I couldn’t do it. I made it to the work room and sat shuddering on one of the metal folding chairs, my hand trembling on my belly, until Denny and Linda found me.
Chapter Twenty-nine
My friends needed only a few words to understand what had happened. Denny checked Kayla. There were no surprises. The elephants had moved to the front stall and left her body alone. They were quiet. Linda made phone calls, then she found acetaminophen in the first aid box, a drug I was actually permitted to take, and gave me two with a mug of water. She handed me damp paper towels to clean my face and hands and pulled bits of straw out of my hair. My mind began to clear.
“Baby okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “Moving around a little. Seems good.” Denny relaxed his hovering. “What happened at Reptiles?” I asked him.
“You gave me the idea, about those elephant collars texting the rangers. I bought a motion detector that does the same thing. Fifty dollars. I set it up at the door to Reptiles, and it texted me.”
“I got that,” I said. “Did she take the turtles? Where are they?”
Linda said, “They’re fine. We didn’t see a soul. I think Kayla assumed Denny was somewhere on the grounds and set off the motion detector to find out. Once we showed up, she knew we would be occupied at Reptiles and felt safe to come here. Probably never occurred to her that anyone else would be around, especially you.”
“How did she know about the gizmo?”
Denny said, “I had trouble setting it up, and she helped me. She was really into it.”
Of course. I sighed and said, “She wasn’t all that reassured—she used a back door to the barn, and she was on me in a flash when Nakri noticed me.”
I stood up shakily and rummaged in the work room until I found the bag of dried mango slices. I walked to the front stall, where the cows were hanging out, and said, “Nakri.” She came right over and seemed unclear whether she should turn around or not. I held out a mango slice, and she reached for it with her trunk tip, breath going in and out of the two air holes, the moist little finger on the end grasping the treat and ferrying it to her mouth. Her dark little eye gleamed. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.” For saving me. For not killing me. For being who and what she was, even though I could never really know her. I fed her slice after slice, one at a time, until the bag was empty, then I walked back to the work room and sat down again.
The pain had subsided into a collection of sullen aches by the time the EMTs arrived. Ian walked in a minute later, eyes wide. I checked my watch and was surprised to find it was almost seven-thirty. Linda gave him the short version. Ian looked at me in deep dismay. “You shouldn’t go in with them. Not safe. You were lucky.” His tone implied that I should know better.
Detective Quintana arrived next. Neal showed up excited, spewing questions and orders, but Quintana got there first and was in charge. Neal caught on and sputtered to silence before the detective had to yank his chain. Quintana told us all to keep quiet, checked in with the EMTs, then said to a woman officer in uniform, “Office Kurtch, keep these people separate and silent.”
Ian said, “I got work to do.”
Quintana wasn’t impressed. “Stay here with the others. Oakley, we’ll start with you.” He herded me out of the work room and into the keeper area by the front stall. Neal followed us. I leaned my back against the viewing window, the two men glowering at me. Quintana said, “What happened here?”
Neal said, “She looks like a train wreck.” He stuck his head in the work room. “Denny, get her a damn chair.”
I said, “I need to eat.”
Neal said, “And a carrot or something.”
Denny delivered. I sat down and handed back the carrot. “Wash it and peel it.” Who knew whether it had elephant slobber on it?
“What’s with all the bandages?” Quintana asked with no hint of sympathy.
“Car crash,” Neal said. Quintana looked at him from under his eyebrows.
“Car crash a few days ago,” I said.
Denny came back with a properly prepared carrot and a fossilized doughnut. “Coffee soon,” he said, and retreated. The officer stuck her head out and pulled the door closed after him. Quintana and Neal turned to me.
Quintana said, “So. A woman is dead. And it better not be because you didn’t mind your own business like I told you to. Start at the beginning.”
Did Kayla die because I’d set this trap? All that impulsive vitality ended forever in one horrific instant. I searched for reflex guilt and didn’t find any. She’d killed Wallace and was happy to let Damrey take the blame. She’d desecrated Rajah and abandoned Calvin behind bars. She’d done her best to kill me. “Sorry, what was the question?”
Quintana scowled. “What happened?”
I tried to pull myself together. “Kayla was selling zoo animals for traditional medicine, probably to people here in the U.S. She had connections in the Asian community from a previous job. I caught her in the act here at the barn, and she tried to kill me with the ankus. Nakri saw Kayla do that to Wallace. She stepped in and saved my life.” Ian and Cheyenne worked within range of that deadly trunk every day, no matter what Mr. Crandall dictated. “I don’t think Nakri meant to hurt her, just to stop her, so I wouldn’t die like Wallace did.” I had no idea what Nakri’s intentions were, but I owed her big time. I would cut her all the slack I could.
Denny brought me coffee, black, and some packets of white powder. “Nothing real in the fridge,” he said before I could ask for milk or cream, and left me to my suffering.
I took a sip for courage and said, “Kayla had expensive jewelry, with a story about how she got each piece for free since her pay wasn’t much. She probably started with the elephant hair, clipping their tails. The elephants are trained to back up to the bars, so it was easy and safe. That’s what she was doing when Wallace caught her and that’s what she was doing this morn
ing. Cambodians believe that an elephant-hair bracelet will protect their babies.” There was some kind of irony in that, but I couldn’t grasp it at the moment.
“And you knew she’d be here doing that?” Quintana looked at me in a way that made me wonder whether he could put handcuffs on a person with one arm in a sling.
“This week I told everyone that Ian was feeding the elephants red palm oil as a dietary supplement and that their tails had grown out again.”
“Is this true?” Neal asked.
“Quiet,” Quintana said.
“Yeah, it’s true. Dr. Reynolds approved it. Then I told everyone that you were going to secretly ship out the elephants on Monday morning.”
“Is this true?” Quintana asked.
“No,” Neal said. He looked at me sidelong. “How did you manage all this communication from home?”
I chewed on the carrot stub. “Phone.”
He and Quintana looked at each other.
I said, “The idea was to get word to the thief so he or she would come to clip the tails one last time before the elephants left. And she did. I wanted some back up—” I moved my sling in explanation “—so I made Linda and Denny help. We hid and waited to see who showed up. I thought she’d come over the back fence, but she probably didn’t this time.”
“Back fence?” Neal asked. “You can get in that way?”
I nodded, which made me wince. I looked toward Quintana. “He found it, too.”
“Did you plan to tell me about this someday?” Neal’s eyes did the laser beam thing, only with sparks.
“I was going to call you once we saw who it was. Both of you. This was all my plan, and Denny and Linda didn’t want to do it, but I talked them into it.” I tried dunking the ancient doughnut in the coffee. “We hid and watched, but Kayla set up a diversion at Reptiles. Linda and Denny went to check that out, and I stayed here.”
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