The Only Clue

by Pamela Beason

  “We have to find him first. Anything else going on I should know about?”

  “Possible lead on that missing schizo, but nothing definite yet. Ditto with our serial burglars—an anonymous tip reported two guys packing goods from an apartment into a gray Kia Soul in the middle of the night. Oh, and someone stole a body from the Sweet Song Nursing Home.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Rosemary Benson. Ninety-five years old. The body disappeared from her room before the undertaker could pick it up.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Who would kid about a thing like that? It’s disgusting. Now a family can’t lay great grandma to rest.”

  “You think it’s a prank?”

  “That would be pretty cruel. More likely some enterprising soul is going to chop her up and sell the bits and pieces. Body parts are big business. Right now on eBay, a complete human skeleton is going for nineteen hundred.”

  “Damn.”

  “You can say that again. You’re lucky it’s your day off.” Her sharp exhale rasped through the speakers. “Why do I catch all the weird cases?”

  If she only knew.

  “Good luck. Thanks for letting me know about the lab report.” He pressed the disconnect button on his steering wheel to end the call.

  The blood sample came from a human? What the hell had happened in Grace’s barn? Feeling slightly nauseous, he focused on the highway ahead. He might be able to explain covering up the death of a gorilla, but how was he going to defend not reporting a murder?

  Chapter 14

  Grace spent much of the day pacing around her compound with a baby gorilla glued to her hip while her mother graded papers and her father wrote on his notebook computer. How that was supposed to indicate their support for her, she couldn’t figure out.

  Uncertainty about everything was driving her crazy. There were too many questions. Had Kanoni escaped her captors somehow? Was Neema imprisoned somewhere nearby? Was she dead? How far had Kanoni traveled? Grace stared into the baby’s mahogany eyes, wishing she had some way to get the answers that were locked into that little primate brain. Kanoni’s response was to clamp her fingers around Grace’s earring and try to pull it to her mouth, painfully reminding Grace that gorilla mothers should never wear jewelry.

  She’d worked only with captive gorillas. She had no idea if a gorilla could normally find its way back home from a distance, especially a baby. Who could she ask? Only Dian Fossey’s name came to mind, and that poor woman had been murdered long ago in Africa.

  Finn had already nixed the idea of getting a police canine unit to trace the gorillas, but maybe she could hire a private dog tracker service just to trace Kanoni’s path. She could pretend it was part of a scientific project. The only business she found online that sounded even remotely similar used bloodhounds to track wounded game, and that business was in Texas. She called Finn to ask for a recommendation but got only voicemail.

  “He probably can’t take cell phones into a prison, Grace,” her mother reminded her. “He seems like a nice man. Are you and he an item?”

  Why did her mother insist on talking like she’d been born in the Victorian era? Grace said, “Not in the way you mean. Not yet.”

  “Then you are friends with benefits?” Her mother gazed at her over her reading glasses.

  “Mom! Matt and I are not teenagers. We are consenting adults.” She’d hit forty next year—would this parental evaluation never stop?

  “Where did he get his degree?”

  Grace realized she had no idea whether Matthew Finn even had a college degree. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “What was the gift that Richard sent to you?”

  Grace hadn’t even looked. She went to the closet and retrieved it from the pocket of her smock. Pulling the silver bow loose, she fingered off the top and set the little box on the desk in her mother’s view.

  Inside, on a nest of white cotton, was a silver chain and a pendant, the silhouette of a redwood emblazoned on top of a letter S inside a circle.

  “Oh, how pretty!” Her mother picked the necklace up. “The Stanford symbol. What does the note say?”

  Grace unfolded the tiny white slip of paper. “With fond memories,” she read.

  “I told you he misses you.” Maureen carefully folded the chain and laid the necklace back in the box. “He wishes you were still there.”

  You wish I were there, Grace thought bitterly. Knowing Richard, he’d sent the pendant to remind her of the vast distance between her current life and his. She shoved the box into her desk drawer.

  And so the morning went. When Maureen volunteered to feed Kanoni, Grace enthusiastically accepted and tried to lose herself in more computer research on the zoo trade. Most information available on the internet was cheerful news aimed to encourage donations; there was little public data about where animals came from or where they went when they left the zoos.

  Her mother, unfortunately, chose to sit with Kanoni and her sippy cup in a rocking chair near Grace’s desk. And she continued to talk.

  “I’m sure that many zoos would be willing to take Cannoli.” Maureen patted the gorilla’s back as if she were burping a human infant.

  “Not happening, Mom.” Grace kept her gaze fixed on her computer screen. “And her name’s Kanoni. It’s Swahili. She’s not a dessert.”

  “Isn’t Swahili spoken in East Africa? I thought gorillas lived mainly in West Africa, in the mountains.”

  Grace made an effort to unclench her jaw. “Those are mountain gorillas. My gorillas are lowland gorillas. The Democratic Republic of Congo has lowland gorillas and Swahili is an official language there.” Besides, Swahili was the only African language she had a dictionary for, but she wasn’t about to say that.

  “I see.” Maureen sniffed. “Well, I guess I learned something today.”

  Grace sighed and switched her gaze from the computer screen to her mother. “Sorry I snapped at you, Mom.”

  Finishing her drink, Kanoni scampered from Maureen’s lap to Grace’s and slapped her hands against the keyboard. Grace grabbed the baby gorilla’s hands in one of hers and used the other to switch the display to a cartoon jungle scene. Kanoni pointed to the colorful animated birds flying across the screen and chattered to herself. Grace looked around the room. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s outside at that table you have in the yard. He said something about writing a press release for you.”

  “Crap!” Grace leapt up, dumping Kanoni into her mother’s lap. “He doesn’t have a phone with him, does he?”

  She dragged her father into her personal trailer and then explained the entire embarrassing situation to both parents.

  Her mother was shocked. “You mean you don’t have the support of the community?”

  “Think about it, Maureen,” her father urged. “Would you be thrilled if gorillas lived next door to us?”

  Her mother’s chin rose. “If it was a valuable research project and if they were under control, I’d be very supportive.”

  The operative phrase there was under control. Grace could hardly argue that her gorillas were. She didn’t even try to defend herself. She sent her parents off to the local library to quiz the reference librarian about how zoos purchased and traded animals, and then to the grocery store to restock the kitchens in Grace’s personal trailer and the staff trailer. Glad to have a defined mission, they departed in their rental car.

  Shortly thereafter, Kanoni discovered Pepito in the cat carrier, and the two spent a half hour chirping and chattering at each other. When Kanoni decided to shake the marmoset out of the cat carrier—all the better to play with him, she supposed—Grace carried the baby gorilla into the study trailer and tried to settle her in a blanket nest in the cage area. “Nap time.”

  Kanoni was having none of it. She wrapped her arms and legs around Grace’s torso as if she’d never let go and screeched each time Grace tried to detach her. Grace’s head throbbed.

  She returned to her t
railer and her internet searches, her chin resting atop Kanoni’s head, typing awkwardly around a gorilla in her lap, determined to track down at least one clue that might lead to Neema and Gumu. Kanoni slept against her chest, but woke when Grace’s cell phone bleeped in the late afternoon. She picked it up without even looking at the caller ID.

  “Dr. McKenna, are you missing a gorilla?”

  Kanoni wrapped her long fingers around the phone and tried to pull it out of Grace’s hand. Grace held on and pulled back. Hope and dread battled in her chest, preventing her from breathing. Then, recovering both the phone and her composure, she pressed the phone to her ear. “Who is this? Why do you ask?”

  “This is Officer Ninen from Fish and Wildlife. Can I send a photo to this phone number?”

  “Send it to my email address.” She told him how to do it and in a few seconds, the picture came through. The dark eyes of a frightened gorilla were barely visible through heavy grillwork. Neema!

  Relief and joy washed through her like a flash flood. For a second, she thought she might pass out. She’d been preparing herself for a tragic ending.

  Tamping down her giddiness, Grace grabbed a pencil and jotted down the location Ninen gave her. “I’ll be there with a half hour. Please don’t do anything before I arrive. I’m on my way.” She stuffed a bottle of water, a few apples, and some of Neema’s favorite cookies in a pack, and then called Jon.

  He was at her door in minutes.

  “They’ve found Neema!” She peeled Kanoni from her front and wrapped the baby’s arms around Zyrnek’s neck. “She’s alive!”

  The youth’s face lit up. “Who? Where?”

  “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Don’t you want to take Kanoni?”

  “I don’t know what’ll happen.” She had no idea what sort of condition Neema was in, or how Fish and Wildlife might respond to catching a gorilla in their trap. She was afraid for the baby to see her mother injured or knocked unconscious with tranquilizers. She was afraid to be happy yet. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Spots danced before her eyes as she drove, and she had to remind herself to breathe now and then. It took her twenty minutes to find the unmarked dirt road Ninen had mentioned. Then the van slipped and slithered through muddy ruts, moving deeper into the thick trees. When she spied the cab of a Fish and Wildlife truck among the trees, she slid to a stop. The truck had backed off the road into the forest to hook up to a culvert bear trap.

  She introduced herself to Ninen and his colleague. At the sound of Grace’s voice, Neema vocalized from inside the trap, hooting loudly. The gorilla was a pitiful sight. Breathing heavily, Neema pressed her face against the grillwork. She repeatedly signed out Neema out and pointed to her teeth and made a clawing motion. Teeth? Claws? Then baby. Stroking her fingers down the front of her throat, she signed thirsty. Then eat eat and then out out and baby again.

  Kanoni is with Z, Grace signed. I have water. I have food. Neema be good.

  Oblivious to the silent conversation taking place between Grace and Neema, the officers talked.

  “You can imagine how surprised we were.”

  “This was the last critter we expected to catch.”

  “How long has this gorilla been on the loose?”

  She wasn’t about to answer that last question. Instead, she checked the forest around them for a black hulking shape. If Neema and Kanoni had both been loose in the woods, maybe Gumu—

  Ninen stepped in front of her, blocking her view into the trees. “Are you missing more than one gorilla, Dr. McKenna?”

  Offense seemed to be the best solution. She glared at him. “Did you leave any water in this trap? Let’s get her out.”

  Out out out, Neema signed. The strange teeth and claw signs again. Then Neema twined her fingers and toes through the heavy mesh. The nails on her fingers were torn and bloody. She hooted mournfully, her voice unusually raspy. Had she been calling for help for days? She rattled the door, shaking the whole trap.

  Officer Ninen grabbed the rifle at his side.

  “You won’t need that.” Grace signed Neema good quiet in the gorilla’s direction.

  “It’s loaded with tranquilizer darts,” he said by way of explanation. “The dosage for bear should be about right.”

  “You won’t need it,” Grace repeated. “Just open the damned door!”

  Ninen’s eyes squeezed shut. He pushed his cap back and pinched the bridge of his nose, losing patience with this crazy woman.

  Grace added, “Neema is signing that she’s really thirsty and hungry. Look at her poor fingers and toes. And her face. She got separated from her baby; she’s desperate to get out.”

  Ninen’s colleague turned in a slow circle, scrutinizing the forest around them. “Where’s the baby?”

  “Back at my place.” Grace motioned toward the door again. “Please. Just open the door and stand back.”

  Both men wore skeptical looks. “You sure? We can’t be held responsible if—“

  “She’s mine. I know her. Just let her out.”

  It took both men to lift the heavy door on its track. As soon as she could fit, Neema squeezed through the opening and hurled herself into Grace’s arms. Grace braced herself against the onslaught, hugging the gorilla and staggering backward to keep from falling down. Out of the corner of her eye, Grace saw Ninen raise his rifle.

  “Don’t shoot!” she yelped. “She just needs reassurance.”

  “Would you look at that!” Ninen’s colleague pulled out a cell phone and took a photo.

  When Neema had calmed down enough to put her feet back on the ground, Grace told her, “There’s food and water in the van.”

  The gorilla turned in that direction, but stood staring at the surrounding woods, signing teeth claws, teeth claws baby baby claws eat.

  “Oh, you poor thing, what did you see?” Teeth claws?

  “Huh?” one the men said.

  “Kanoni is at home.” Grace signed while saying the words. “Your baby is safe. Your baby is with Z.”

  Neema huffed once as if she were skeptical.

  Where’s Gumu? Grace asked in sign language.

  Neema huffed again and looked around uncertainly. Grace tried again with Gumu here?

  Gone baby teeth claws thirsty thirsty baby gone. Neema raised herself up onto all fours, looking as if she were about to bolt into the woods again.

  Grace pointed to the van. “Let’s go home and see your baby. Let’s get food and water.”

  Neema, abruptly deciding to trust Grace, beat her back to the van. She crouched beside the vehicle, signing open open Neema thirsty food good open food.

  Grace let her into the back of the van and gave her the bottle of water and the food, then shut the door and walked back to the officers. Both had their gaze glued to their cell phones. Ninen was typing with his thumbs, and the other was sliding his fingers across the screen.

  “Thank you for calling me,” she said, interrupting their internet moment. “You can see how gentle Neema is; she didn’t do any harm.” At least she hoped that was true. “I’d really appreciate it if you guys could keep this quiet.”

  “Uh.” Ninen exchanged a guilty glance with his colleague.

  Damn it. This would be all over the internet and the local news within minutes. If it wasn’t already.

  On the way back to the compound, she called Finn. “Two things. Fish and Wildlife found Neema.”

  “That’s great news! Is she okay?”

  “She will be.”

  “What about Gumu?”

  “No sign of Gumu. Here’s the second thing: The game wardens took photos with their cell phones.”

  He paused only a fraction of a second. “The shit storm is about to hit.”

  “Batten down the hatches.”

  His groan reverberated across the airwaves. “I just crossed over Snoqualmie pass. I’ll get to your place as fast as I can.”

  Chapter 15

  An unfamiliar beige SUV was park
ed in Grace’s usual spot at her compound. Gad, the media tornado had touched down even faster than she expected. Then she saw the sign on the side door. United States Department of Agriculture. Crap. She’d completely forgotten about the inspector coming today.

  Her shoulder muscles tightened with anxiety. The good news was that now she had two of her three gorillas back. What could she say about Gumu? Think, McKenna, think. USDA inspectors were used to dealing with livestock. Would they believe that she’d loaned her male gorilla out as a stud? She quietly led Neema across the grass en route to the study trailer, hoping to settle the mother gorilla into the cage there with her baby before confronting the inspector.

  Halfway across the courtyard, loud voices emerged from the barn behind her.

  “That is a large volume of blood back there. Whose is it?” Grace didn’t recognize the woman’s voice.

  “Dr. McKenna will have to tell you about that.” Jon Zyrnek.

  “The public has a right to know what goes on out here. Was a gorilla killed in that barn?”

  “Talk to Dr. McKenna.” Jon again.

  Grace quickly pushed Neema into the study trailer ahead of her and yanked the door shut behind herself. Neema rushed to the refrigerator and pulled at the handles, then spied Kanoni in the cage. Spread-eagled as she clutched the bars with fingers and toes, Kanoni issued hopeful chirps, her eyes fixed on Neema. When Neema chuffed back at her, Kanoni bounced and shrieked to get out. Grace unlocked the door, and the baby rushed to her mother, leaping the last few feet to land on Neema’s belly. Neema sniffed her and licked the baby’s head as if to reassure herself that Kanoni was hers, and then sat down and signed to Grace around the bulk of the baby. Yogurt milk red drink bread Neema hungry hurry.

  Grace smiled. If Neema had known the word for anything, she probably would have signed I’ll eat anything. Kanoni dug her fingers into her mother’s fur and sucked on Neema’s left nipple like she’d never let go. Even Neema gazed down at her with concern, like Kanoni was a leech that had clamped onto her body.

  Grace settled the gorillas in a corner of the cage, with a nest of blankets and toys and an array of food before them. Then, steeling herself for a confrontation, she walked outside to meet the inspector.