The Only One Left

by Pamela Beason

  After the animals were fed and watered, he poured himself a finger of whiskey, moved to his study, and stared longingly at the watercolor he had only just begun. The photograph he was using as a reference sat to the side of the painting: a weathered, half-collapsed barn a few miles from town, surrounded by a field of wildflowers. His faint pencil sketch on the watercolor paper was complete, and his fingers itched to pick up a brush and fill it with color.

  He despised missing cases. There was always a ticking clock, always the thought that if he were clever enough, fast enough, he might find the victims alive. And if he didn’t measure up, if he was even a few minutes too late, it would be his fault.

  Sighing, he shut off the overhead light, showered, and set the alarm clock for five hours later. Then he fell into bed. Less than a minute after he stretched out, a canine sandbag settled over his legs, pinning him to the mattress. Then a cat draped itself across the pillow above his head. The other watched from the headboard, flicking its tail.

  Finn closed his eyes. While he wished for a phone call telling him that Mia and Darcy had returned during the night, he also worried that any sudden noise would unleash pandemonium and he’d end up in the emergency room trying to explain how he’d broken his leg falling out of bed and why he had claw slashes across his forehead.

  Chapter 10

  Tuesday

  The next morning, as Finn drove to the Gorge venue, he noticed a new flyer on the utility pole where he’d briefly parked the night before. missing, screamed the headline, in bright red capitals. From a photo below, Darcy Ireland and Mia Valdez smiled at the traffic on the road. Beneath the picture was a paragraph of smaller text that he supposed contained a description of the teens. At the bottom was the Evansburg Police Department tip line number, again in red. He was grateful the parents hadn’t posted his cell number.

  Another poster greeted him as he drove through the gate to the Amphitheatre. The department’s evidence technician, Jaime Rodrigo, accompanied by a Grant County Deputy, was already examining the girls’ Ford Edge when Finn drove into the campground. A Grant County Sheriff’s Department cruiser was parked near the girls’ campsite, along with Rodrigo’s SUV.

  Rex Brady watched from the open door of his camper. As Finn approached, a dog bounded out of the camper, barking. Baying was a more accurate description. It was a basset hound.

  “Wolf!” Rex reprimanded the hound.

  Finn raised an eyebrow. “Wolf?”

  The other man grinned. “Well, he thinks he is. But in any case, it’s short for Steppenwolf.”

  “Aha.” The basset sat in front of him, and Finn held out a fist for him to sniff. “Any movement here last night?”

  “A couple of coyotes trotted through. Wolf let us know about that at three a.m. That’s it.”

  The dog stood up and began sniffing Finn’s trouser legs, no doubt smelling a giant mongrel and a couple of orange tabbies. Finn glanced around the area. “Where’s your wife?”

  “She’s with Vaughn.” Rex inclined his head toward the trailer in the distance, and Finn noticed a small fleet of vehicles parked outside the structure. Finn winced when he saw the logo of the local TV station on the side of a blue van. “The news crew—a cameraman and a reporter—are in the trailer, too. And the parents.”

  Finn grimaced. “All of them?”

  “Yep.”

  This was going to be a circus. “I told them ten a.m.”

  Rex shrugged. “Could you sleep if your daughter was missing?”

  After a word with Rodrigo about when he’d be ready to release the car and tent, Finn reluctantly turned toward the administration trailer.

  “Hey, Detective!” Rex yelled. “Can we sleep at home tonight?”

  “I’ll let you know,” Finn yelled back.

  Inside the trailer, Brynne was pouring coffee for the Irelands and Valdezes, who had all taken the same seats they’d occupied the day before. An additional chair had been pulled up, and an African-American woman sat in it, holding a portable microphone in front of Andrea Ireland’s nose as Andrea said, “No, we’ve had no news about the girls as of this morning.”

  The cameraman leaned over Keith Valdez’s shoulder, filming from the other side of the table.

  As Finn shut the door behind him, heads swiveled and all eyes focused on him. So did the camera.

  “Detective Finn!” The reporter leapt up from her seat. “What can you tell us about the search for Darcy Ireland and Mia Valdez?” She shoved the microphone in front of his face.

  Finn hoped his hair was lying down and he didn’t have any shreds of his breakfast burrito stuck in his teeth. “We are pursuing every angle to find the girls,” he said.

  The reporter peppered him with questions. “Do you have search parties out? What do you think happened to Darcy and Mia? Do you have any suspects at this point?”

  “That’s all I have to say at the moment. Now please let me do my job.” He waited for the camera to turn away, but when it didn’t, he held a hand up in front of the lens and stepped away toward the desk.

  The reporter made a slashing motion across her throat to her cameraman, who shut down the camera.

  “I think we’ve got all we need for now,” she told him. Then she turned to the parents. “This report will be on the six o’clock news in Spokane and maybe even Seattle.” She strode toward Finn and pressed a business card into his hand. Lulu Hendrix, Broadcast Journalist. “If anything breaks, Detective, you’ll inform me?”

  “Check with the Evansburg Police and the Grant County Sheriff’s Department,” he told Lulu. “I’ll be a little busy.”

  After an annoyed intake of breath, the reporter turned to Brynne with a beatific smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Brady.”

  “We will do everything we can to help find the girls,” Brynne answered.

  The TV news team swept out the door.

  Behind the desk, a woman with short brown hair typed on a keyboard, her eyes fixed on the computer monitor in front of her. As Finn approached, she held up a finger toward him, her gaze never shifting from the screen. Behind her, on a table, a printer hummed to life and began to spit out pages. The woman directed her gaze toward Finn, stood up, and extended her hand. “Vaughn Boylan.”

  Vaughn was a woman?

  “Detective Finn.” He did his best to cover his surprise as he took her fingers in his. He’d thought because Boylan was in charge . . . The voices of a thousand women shouted inside his head: Never . . . make . . . assumptions, you—! Fill in the blank: dolt, nincompoop, sexist jerk. He could never admit this to Grace or Melendez or the department’s other female detective, Kathy Larson. He’d never said the word he in the same sentence as Boylan’s name, had he? He hoped not.

  Boylan turned and grabbed pages from the printer, then twisted back and handed the printouts to Finn. “All the contractors are listed here, along with their contact information, their tasks, and the locations they occupied.” She pointed out the column headings on the spreadsheet. Pulling out the page beneath the top one, she said, “These are the names of all parties renting campsites.”

  “Wow,” he responded.

  “Names and credit cards of ticket purchasers.” She handed him several more sheets of paper. “The numbers with checkmarks beside them are charges that are being challenged by the credit card owners.”

  His face must have shown his confusion, because she added, “It happens, a few with every event. It’s a risk of online transactions. Parents don’t know that their kids used their cards for a concert, people get confused by seeing ‘Gorge Events Inc.’ instead of the name of the event, and a few might actually be stolen cards.”

  “I see.”

  “And . . .” Boylan picked up three thumb drives from the desktop and thrust them in Finn’s direction. “The security camera videos from the festival. They’re all time-stamped.”

  The drives were neatly labeled by location. Boylan pushed a map of the site across the desktop. Several slashes of highlighter colored the pag
e. “Here are the locations of the cameras.”

  The woman’s efficiency was almost overwhelming. “Can you come to work for my department?”

  For the first time, Boylan cracked a smile. “Now, can I leave on vacation, Detective?”

  He eyed the small office. A laptop was closed on top of a file cabinet. “Any chance we can use both your computers?”

  “Passwords.” She handed him an index card. Nodding toward it, she said, “Guard that with your life. The financial info and contracts are all in special locked folders with different passwords. If you really, really, really need to see any of that for some reason, give me a call. I may not answer right away, but leave a message and I’ll get back as soon as I can.” She added a business card to his pile.

  “Thank you so much, Miz Boylan. Have a great trip. I’ll call only if I need your assistance.”

  Vaughn Boylan plucked a jacket from a hook on the wall and swept out the door. Finn turned in place to watch her go, the printouts and cards still in his hands.

  Behind him, Brynne laughed. “Vaughn has that effect on everyone. Coffee, Detective?” She waved the nearly empty pot in his direction.

  All four parents stood up from the chairs, talking simultaneously. The girls’ mothers, Andrea and Robin, flapped pieces of paper at him.

  Finn set his piles of information down on the desk and held up his hands. “Stop!”

  Jaws tightened. Foreheads wrinkled into frowns. Keith Valdez’s hands clenched into fists at his side.

  “I wasn’t expecting you all to show up so early,” he explained.

  That was an understatement. He’d expected to have time with Vaughn Boylan to develop an investigation plan before being besieged by the foursome. He wished Boylan had stayed; she seemed like the type to maintain order no matter what.

  Finn gestured at the chairs. “I know you have a million questions for me. Please have a seat and let me fill you in on what has been done so far.”

  “Excuse me?” Brynne Brady waved a hand, interrupting. “Can Rex and I go home?”

  “For now,” Finn told her. “I’ll call you later if I need you.”

  She turned toward the door.

  “Thank you for all your help,” Finn remembered to say at the last minute.

  He turned back to the parents and collected their bits of paper listing additional contact names and numbers of Darcy’s and Mia’s friends. After answering their questions with the little info he had, he set them to examining the videos from the Sasquatch Festival, the Irelands at Boylan’s desk and the Valdezes using the laptop on the table.

  Taking a breather from the tense atmosphere of the trailer, he walked back to the campsite.

  The deputy from Grant County—the nameplate on his uniform read Wilder—agreed to stay in place for the duration of his shift. “If nothing breaks today, I’ll stay tonight, too, just in case the girls—or other visitors—come back.”

  Finn was relieved. “That’s great.”

  “I could use the overtime.” Wilder hooked his thumbs in his duty belt. “Say, you got any new info on these arsons?”

  Finn shook his head. “My colleague, Detective Melendez, is following up on those. You know anything?”

  “We’ve only had one, and as far as I know, there’s two kinds of gossip going around about it: fun by some local kids, or the owner did it for insurance.”

  “The owner? Wasn’t the Grant County barn the second place to burn?”

  The deputy quirked an eyebrow at Finn. “Maybe the first one gave him the idea. Wouldn’t that make a second burn in a string of arsons even more plausible?”

  “Yes, I guess it would. Which theory do you lean toward?”

  Wilder shrugged. “Could go either way, I guess. Although the owner of our barn is eighty and hadn’t used that barn for decades, so it can’t be worth much. So it’s probably the kids. They just don’t have enough to do around here.” He focused his attention on the missing poster near the entrance gate. “I sure hope those girls are okay.”

  Finn studied the guy’s worried expression. “Do you have any suspicions about what might have happened to them? Any bad actors in your jurisdiction you want to tell me about?”

  The deputy thought for a minute. “We have the usual domestic disputes and thefts, and of course we got the same drug problems that everyone else has. But really, nothing memorable since Sutter got locked up.”

  “Sutter?”

  “Todd Sutter. You know.”

  Finn shook his head. “I don’t. I’m from Chicago. I’ve only been out here for a little more than three years.”

  “Chicago?” Wilder’s expression brightened. “I knew it—you’re that gorilla guy, aren’t you?”

  Finn snorted and rubbed a finger across his chin. It would be pointless to deny it. “I’ve had a couple of cases involving apes in my county, because there’s a research facility just outside of Evansburg.”

  Wilder snapped his fingers. “Yeah! You’re the big-city detective who got clues from a gorilla to find that missing baby.”

  “It was a little more involved than that.” Why was Neema the only thing people remembered about the Ivy Morgan case? All the credit for finding that baby went to the darn gorilla.

  “Cool!” Wilder rocked back on his heels. “Wish I’d get to work on a case that interesting sometime.”

  Finn briefly considered telling the deputy about the bone the gorillas found in Grace’s barn but said instead, “Hang in there. I’m sure you will. But back to this Sutter?”

  “Todd Sutter, serial rapist and murderer, multiple victims across two counties.”

  Finn whistled. “Jesus.”

  “Convicted in 2006; serving life if I remember right.” Wilder glanced toward the car and tent. “But the county’s been pretty quiet ever since he got caught.”

  “Finn! Detective Finn!”

  Finn turned to see Paul Ireland trotting their way, waving an arm in the air. “We got something on the video!”

  “Coming!” Finn yelled back. Turning to Wilder, he flipped a business card out of his pocket. “Here’s my cell. I’m expecting a canine unit to arrive sometime soon. Give me a call when they show, okay?”

  “Will do.”

  Chapter 11

  Tuesday

  Grace McKenna stood in the middle of the gorilla habitat, trying to envision it from the eyes of a suspicious inspector who would want to know that the “wildlife” in her care was safely contained and humanely treated.

  That wildlife was, at the moment, scattered around the former barn building. Neema sat on the second level of the aerial platforms, a children’s picture book about Africa open in her lap, paging through photos of wildebeest and elephants and lions. The gorilla had learned the signs for some of those animals, and when she crooked a finger in front of her broad black nose, Grace guessed Neema was studying a photo of an elephant. If only she had insight into Neema’s mind; who knew what a captive gorilla actually thought about an animal she’d never witnessed in real life?

  Kanoni sat by her mother’s side under Neema’s left arm, alternately sucking on Neema’s sagging breast and tapping the book pages with her feet.

  Gumu was hunched in a corner of the barn, fascinated by a bug in a beer bottle that Grace had brought in. Picking up a piece of straw from the dried grass scattered across the floor, he inserted it into the neck of the bottle and tried to dislodge the bug—a black beetle—from the side of the container.

  Grace hoped the gorillas would be this calm when the inspector came.

  Where could Kanoni have picked up that bone? And what the heck had she done with it? Grace walked outside the barn into the exterior portion of the gorilla habitat, where a large net stretched upward to the fencing that enclosed the area. She walked a zigzag pattern, scuffing her shoes in the dirt beneath the rope net. She found a few small sticks and some bird droppings, no doubt left by the crows that sometimes came in through the fencing overhead to see if the gorillas had left any food out. Ther
e were no bones and no holes where the apes might have been digging in the dirt.

  She walked back into the barn. Toys and blankets and pinecones, straw and leaves and small branches and other natural debris were scattered across the sawdust floor. She bent to pick up a clown mask from the dirt, along with an ostrich feather. She carried them toward the basket by the wall where she kept the gorilla toys.

  Kanoni, bored with “reading,” abruptly slapped the book pages hard with both hands, slipped from Neema’s arms, leapt to the ground, and raced to her father, leaping onto his outstretched leg. Gumu gently elbowed the baby away, but Kanoni grabbed for the bottle in his hands and a brief tug of war ensued. Gumu grunted and bared his impressive canines at Kanoni. The baby hooted in dismay, then scampered to Grace and clung to her leg.

  “Well, you asked for it, didn’t you?” Tucking the mask under one arm to free up a hand, Grace patted the baby gorilla on the head. When the inspector showed up, she’d need to lock Gumu in the outside enclosure to be sure that teeth-baring gesture was not repeated. Most people who had seen the silverback’s sharp fangs never felt safe in the same room with the massive male again.

  Kanoni was obviously bored. Grace felt a flash of guilt, as she often did when she was with her apes. In the wild, a baby gorilla would most likely have multiple playmates in her troop. Truth be told, Grace was a little bored herself. Last night had been a welcome break, a rare chance to spend time with adult humans. Heather and Tony and Tom had talked of movies and books and classes they’d taken, and Grace realized how much of the larger world she was missing.

  Her gorillas could use a larger world, too, or at least more varied activity. She was grateful that Brittany Morgan, her teen mom volunteer, occasionally brought her three-year-old daughter Ivy to play with Kanoni. Grace pulled out her cell phone to review the amazing video she’d filmed of a playdate a couple of weeks ago.