The Only Clue

by Pamela Beason

  “I turned off my phone,” Finn said mildly. “My court case got rescheduled to this afternoon. The hit and run from February. I’ll be filing for comp time, by the way.”

  “Fish and Wildlife want to know if they should have hunters out looking for that gorilla.”

  He pondered that for a second. There was still a chance that Gumu was out in the forested hills around Evansburg. He told the sergeant that, then added, “But it’s more likely that the gorilla was stolen or even killed, so mounting a big search could be a waste of taxpayer money.”

  He noticed a photocopy in his IN box and pulled it out. White-haired elderly woman. Rosemary Benson. The deceased lady whose body vanished from the nursing home. Melendez had written the date of death and her statistics at the bottom of the page. Rosemary was a tiny thing, only five feet tall.

  Carlisle put a hand on Finn’s desk and leaned close. “That dog tale was bullshit, wasn’t it?”

  From the next desk, Dawes laughed. “Good one, Sarge. Dog tale.”

  Carlisle’s face reddened. Ignoring the jibe, he shook the papers in Finn’s direction. “You knew that lab test was not for dog blood.”

  Finn held up two fingers, Boy Scout style. “I honestly didn’t know what type of blood it was.”

  “But you knew that McKenna’s gorillas were on the loose.”

  How to answer that one? “I knew that Dr. McKenna believed they were gone. But citizens around here don’t typically report every animal that disappears for a few days, so I didn’t feel that it was crucial.” He ran out of words and left it at that. It sounded lame even to his ears.

  “And when the lab report indicated the blood was human?” Carlisle bellowed.

  Miki stopped digging in the file cabinet to stare. Mason pretended to scrutinize a laptop he was testing, but his posture told Finn he was completely tuned in, too. Two uniforms stood in the door of the break room, watching, and another swiveled around from the computer station where he was writing an incident report.

  Then Mason abruptly turned up the volume on the laptop, and everyone heard the voice of Dr. Grace McKenna say, “Gumu could kill you.” And then, “Male gorilla canines are particularly impressive—Gumu’s are several inches long.”

  Oh sweet Jesus, some hot dog reporter had recorded Grace’s talk at the open house and edited it for maximum impact. Finn tried to remember why he had stopped in. Oh yeah, to run DMV records for Shane and Linero, and to see if fingerprints had come back on the burglary items.

  “Have you been sitting on a murder, Finn?” The sergeant tapped his fingers on Finn’s desk. “Did a gorilla kill someone in McKenna’s barn?”

  Finn kept his voice reasonable. “Would that technically be murder, if an animal killed someone?” he asked. “Not that I’m saying that’s what happened. Because there’s just no way to know right now. But we don’t charge sharks with murder when they swallow a swimmer, do we? And Kittling’s stallion, last year, the one that stomped that kid to death, he’s still standing at stud, isn’t he?”

  Carlisle looked as if his head might combust.

  “It’s my day off, Sarge.” Leaning close to the man, he murmured, “I’m working on finding that gorilla.”

  “Get outa here, Finn,” Carlisle growled.

  He had no choice but to fight his way through the reporters back to his car. He decided to check on Grace and make a few phone calls on his way.

  * * * * *

  He caught Sarah Melendez at home. He could hear what sounded like a party going on in the background. “It’s Stacey’s seventh birthday,” she told him. “We’re having a family picnic.”

  He apologized and asked her about Eddie. Cousin, not uncle, she told him. “Yes, I can believe he was picketing the gorilla event. I think the label ‘right-wing nutcase’ was invented just for him. You should hear him shout at the Nature channel on TV.”

  She gave him her crazy cousin’s phone number and wished him luck.

  Grace’s front gate barred the drive. A heavy chain and padlock hung ostentatiously from the top rail. Sierra Sakson sat on top of the heavy four-foot-tall post the chain was attached to. She stared pointedly into the far distance, swinging one booted foot idly and looking supremely annoyed. Two young males, no doubt student reporters, peppered her with questions, their faces level with her waist. When Finn drove up, she swung her foot out in a wide arc, and when the men stepped back, she jumped down and pulled out a key to let him in.

  “Detective Finn! Detective Finn! Is it true that a gorilla murdered a man here?”

  Finn didn’t even bother to differentiate who yelled what. He thrust his head out the car window and looked from one to the other. “You two better be gone when I come out. You’re trespassing on private property.”

  They stepped back onto the road.

  “Not anymore,” the shorter one said.

  “Freedom of the press,” the other one added.

  Finn nodded at Sierra and pulled through the gate. On the way up the drive, he passed a Fish and Wildlife pickup on its way out. The two men in the front nodded curtly at him through the window.

  When he stepped out of his car, he saw Neema sitting at the top of the net, in Gumu’s usual position. She had Gumu’s blanket wrapped around her like a cloak.

  Grace answered the door of the study trailer with the baby gorilla wrapped around her back and shoulders like a shawl, her hair in disarray, and blue shadows under her eyes. Kanoni clutched a rag doll in one hand and a hank of Grace’s tangled hair in the other. In the background, a cell phone chimed.

  The trailer was unusually messy, too. A chopped banana lay on the tabletop, along with a handful of Cheerios and a sprinkling of broccoli and cauliflower. Grace’s cell phone continued to chime. She grabbed it and switched off the ringer before tossing it back onto the table. “They never give up!”

  “I saw Fish and Wildlife pulling out. Are they searching for Gumu?”

  “No. Just alerting everyone for fifty miles around to be on the lookout for a gorilla. Fortunately the only hunting season open right now is for turkeys.”

  The cage area was empty.

  “How’s Neema?” he asked.

  Kanoni made a chirping noise at the sound of her mother’s name. Grace sighed and shifted the baby gorilla on her hip. “I’m worried about her. She wouldn’t eat this morning and she won’t nurse Kanoni.”

  “Sit down,” Finn said. “You look exhausted.”

  “I am exhausted.” Grace grabbed a handful of Cheerios and broccoli and they moved to the sagging couch, which was more than usually stained and hairy from all the baby gorilla activity it had hosted the past two days. She slung Kanoni around to her lap and then sagged back against the sofa cushion. “What did you do with Mom and Dad?”

  “The Mankins have them.”

  “That should be interesting,” she said. “Local Yokels take on the California Eggheads—who will prevail?”

  He was surprised at her meanness. “None of them is that bad.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “You’re right. I’m just having a bad day. No,” she said, “Make that a bad week. Two apes and one monkey found, one gorilla still to go.”

  “You still have the marmoset?”

  “Pepito. He’s in my personal trailer. I keep leaving messages for the owner.”

  Before he got into the big news, he had to ask the question that kept nagging at him. “Grace, who is Richard?”

  She looked over his shoulder at the far wall. “He’s not important. He’s nobody, except in my parents’ imaginations. I can’t afford to waste time thinking about him now.”

  That wasn’t really an answer, but he guessed it was as good as he was going to get at the moment.

  She leaned toward him. “What did you want to tell me? Do you have any leads on Gumu?”

  He gently laid a hand on Grace’s knee. “I got the results back on the blood.”

  Kanoni leaned forward to place her small black hand on top of his as if she were encouraging him. The
baby ape’s fingers felt cool and leathery. He stared at her small fingernails, torn at the edges, pink toward the middle. So human-like. Or maybe humans were ape-like.

  Grace held out a handful of Cheerios toward Kanoni. “Just say it, Matt. Neema had no serious injuries. So it has to be Gumu’s blood.”

  “The blood was human.”

  A series of emotions flitted across Grace’s face. Finally, her eyes brightened. “That’s encouraging.”

  Not the reaction he expected. “Why?”

  Kanoni peeled a Cheerio from her own lip and held it up to Grace’s mouth. Grace pressed her lips together and shook her head, and the baby gorilla put it back into her own mouth.

  Next, Kanoni picked up a piece of broccoli and shoved it toward Finn. Mimicking Grace, he pressed his lips together and shook his head. Kanoni squealed in disappointment, then jammed the broccoli into his chin. Finn snatched the broccoli out of the gorilla’s hand. He leaned down and picked up the rag doll. Holding the doll in one hand, he pressed the broccoli to its embroidered lips. “Ummm. Good!”

  Kanoni took back the doll and the broccoli and tried to force the toy to eat the vegetable. After a few attempts she settled for pushing the broccoli under the doll’s dress and then pulling it out with her lips and eating it.

  Grace rolled her eyes.

  “Why did you say that human blood was encouraging?” Finn asked.

  “It means that Gumu might still be alive.” Setting Kanoni on the floor, she handed the gorilla the last Cheerios in her hand.

  He hated to dampen Grace’s enthusiasm, but he had to say it. “The volume of blood we found means that someone probably died in your barn.”

  She grimaced. “I hope so. The bastard deserved it.”

  A prosecutor was unlikely to see it that way. And while it was easy to dismiss the passing of a faceless criminal, knowing that a real person had bled to death on your property might be a little harder to explain. When they found out who had been injured in the barn, there would be a name, a history, and family members to deal with. His thoughts flashed briefly to the haunted faces of Ryan Connelly’s parents.

  “If Gumu bit an attacker, it was self-defense.” Grace’s green eyes bore into his. “What happens now?”

  He thought about that for a minute. He checked his watch; he was due to testify in less than an hour, and it was a twelve-mile drive back to town. “The blood trail led to the parking lot; it’s possible that the person didn’t die, or at least not right away. No one has reported finding a body. I’ll look into that, but I need to get to court soon.”

  “I’ll call the hospitals.”

  He shook his head. “They won’t tell you anything. But they have to talk to a cop. I’ll see if anyone came in with heavy bleeding.”

  “And you’ll continue to check where Keyes was over the weekend?”

  Oh yeah. Keyes. “And continue to check on Keyes’s whereabouts over the weekend.” And check to see if Keyes had a connection with Eddie Melendez.

  “Would be nice if it was Keyes’s blood,” Grace said bitterly. Her face took on a cunning look. “That gives me an idea.”

  The muscles between his shoulder blades tensed. “What sort of idea?”

  She smiled faintly. “Probably best not to tell you.”

  “Not more animal stealing, I hope. Grace, have you seen the news?”

  She groaned. “Yes. McKenna loses gorilla. Again.”

  “There was a blowup at the police station about the lab report.” He smoothed his palms against the thighs of his pant legs. “Everyone in the place heard that the blood found in your barn was human.”

  She blinked and reached for the remote, then clicked on her tiny television.

  “—missing from Dr. McKenna’s research facility outside of Evansburg. And new evidence shows a large amount of human blood was spilled in the gorilla cage.” The female reporter turned to her male companion on the news desk.

  Catching her cue, the young man asked, “Does that mean what I think it does?”

  The female turned back to the camera. “It means we may have a man-killing gorilla prowling through our neighborhoods.”

  “Please take precautions out there,” the male said. “Safeguard your loved ones.”

  Then the screen went to what passed for a commercial break on the public access channel, showing a tour of a local restaurant that had recently been remodeled.

  “What?” Grace yelped. “They can’t leave it there! What about the break-in, what about someone attacking Gumu?” She reached for the phone. “I’ve got to set the record straight.”

  Finn knew the media storm was only going to get worse. He was more worried about how the county council might respond. The only way he could help was to find whoever had broken into the barn. At least with the real story out there, he could finally talk openly about the break-in and the missing gorilla, even if he wasn’t welcome at the station right now.

  When he left the study trailer, Kanoni was twirling in circles around the table and Grace was arguing for air time with a scheduler at the television studio. Before getting into his car, he took the time to call her staff into the courtyard for a brief talk.

  * * * * *

  As he listened to Detective Finn describe the case, Jonathan Zyrnek watched an ant crawl across a plank in the picnic table. The tiny black insect was carrying a chunk of something bigger than he was. Brittany sat next to him, her hand on his thigh like she thought he was her boyfriend. She was nice enough, but he knew she was looking for a father for Ivy, and he wasn’t ready for that. He’d spent most of his life living with families that weren’t his own. When he was ready to have a family, he wanted his own kids.

  Caryn and Sierra perched on the bench on other side of the table, both still smoldering for shutting them out of the secret.

  “Here’s the scenario as I see it,” Finn explained. “Around four-thirty last Saturday, Brittany saw Gumu crawl out of his nest, climb down the net, and go into the barn.” He dipped his chin, nodding in Brittany’s direction. She beamed like she’d won a prize.

  “That’s likely when Gumu heard someone breaking into the barn,” Finn continued. “There was a fight. Gumu was probably tranquilized, but not before one of the intruders was injured, possibly even killed.”

  “So the blood in the barn was human?” Jon asked.

  Finn gave them all a stern look. “Yes.”

  “Good for Gumu!” Brittany’s ponytail bobbed as she nodded. “He got him good.”

  Finn said intruders—plural—and it made sense that there had to be several. No single person could control Gumu. Jon asked, “How many intruders?”

  Finn shook his head. “We don’t know. But if one was injured, there had to be at least two others to get the injured man and Gumu to a vehicle. I would guess at least three or four people were involved.” He continued, counting on his fingers. “So the first question is, who did Gumu injure? It looks now as if Gumu was taken after the fight, and Neema and Kanoni escaped later through the same door. So the second question is, where is Gumu now? And the third one—who else was in on this?”

  Dropping his hands, he looked around their little group. “Concentrate on the facts: at approximately four-thirty, someone broke into the barn. There was a fight and someone was severely injured. Then Gumu was stolen and all participants drove away down the back driveway.”

  “The odds are that one or more of you saw something or heard something. Think about where you were between four-thirty and five o’clock last Saturday. Did you see a strange car? Did you notice activity on the back road or at the back of the barn? Do you know someone who was recently injured, or have you heard about someone who died unexpectedly? Do you know anyone who would want to take Gumu?”

  Grace joined them, holding Kanoni. Upon spotting Brittany, the baby gorilla promptly transferred herself to the redhead’s arms. Grace positioned herself next to Finn like they were two drill sergeants addressing the troops.

  “Please,” she pleade
d. “If any of you know anything that could help Gumu, if any of you has heard anything, please tell us. The tiniest clue might save his life.”

  Jon looked at the others. He hoped his expression was as blank as theirs were. When he’d finally gone home last night, he saw that his dad had a bandage on his hand. And then there was the lock and the bolt cutter. He’d left those in place by the road but covered them up with dirt. Evansburg Auto Salvage.

  What the hell had his father done? Could he find a way to save Gumu without sending his dad back to prison?

  * * * * *

  After his court appearance, Finn retired to his home office to make his calls.

  The emergency room clerk at Evansburg Hospital told Finn they had an injury in the right time frame. Maybe he was finally going to get a useful lead. “I need all the patient’s information.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said. “HIPAA rules.”

  Finn gritted his teeth. “Do you know that you can be charged with obstruction for preventing a police officer from investigating a case?”

  “You sure?”

  “Check the court rulings.” Why didn’t they teach this to medical personnel?

  “Just a minute.” The clerk apparently put the phone down on the desk, because he could hear voices and various office noises in the background.

  His unfinished painting sat on the corner of his desk. The poppies still needed shadows, he noted. It was still technically his day off, after all. He rummaged through his tubes of paint and found a tube of Prussian blue, then searched for raw sienna. And a light yellow; he’d need that, too.

  The clerk picked up the phone. She read him the case information.

  “What’s the patient’s blood type?”

  Unfortunately, the blood type didn’t match the sample from the barn. He thanked her and hung up. He checked the surrounding counties, but came up with no likely victims. Either Gumu’s victim had survived long enough to travel far away, or some unlucky hiker would eventually find a body in a shallow grave.

  Thinking about the possible intruders brought Jarvis Pinder’s smirking face to mind. The blood in the barn was likely to belong to an associate of his.