Jennie

by Douglas Preston

  I don’t know how much time passed, but then there were voices and they were prying her off me and I could feel my buttons popping and my shirt being ripped right off my back by her grip. Then she started to scream that terrible scream again and I—I didn’t know what was happening really—Oh shit—shit—shit—[Editor’s note: At this point Sandy became distraught and the interview was suspended until the following morning.]

  twelve

  [FROM an interview with Dr. Pamela Prentiss.]

  When I heard about the horrible incident with Sandy, I flew down to Florida. Dr. and Mrs. Archibald were also flying down. Mrs. Archibald had been unspeakably abusive to me on the telephone. I can’t even repeat the things she said. I will never forgive her.

  Sandy had threatened Dr. Gabriel and forced his way into Jennie’s cage. It was just what I said would happen. Jennie had to be sedated, for everyone’s safety, and then Sandy became violent and abusive and Dr. Gabriel had to call the police. I must say it is to George Gabriel’s credit that he did not press charges.

  At Dr. Gabriel’s insistence they took Sandy to the hospital instead of the county jail. He should have gone to jail. It was criminal what he did. That happened in the morning, and I arrived in the late afternoon and met Dr. Gabriel in his office. He was shaken up. This was—let me see here—on May 17, 1974. He was worried about what was going to happen when the Archibalds arrived.

  We had a signed agreement over the care and responsibility for Jennie. We had legal ownership of Jennie—technically, of course. Sandy had been trespassing on Tahachee grounds. Dr. Gabriel, as far as I could see, had acted properly. It was just as we had warned over and over again. We told them exactly what would happen if Jennie had any contact with the Archibald family. We were absolutely right. It was all their fault but we got blamed for everything.

  What was alleged in that magazine, that we refused to relinquish Jennie, is a bald lie. It is a libelous statement and if I’d had the money I’d have taken them to court. They never once asked us for Jennie back.

  Anyway, nobody had been hurt. Jennie was sedated in her cage, sleeping peacefully. Sandy wasn’t hurt either. All in all, I pointed out to Dr. Gabriel, we’d been fortunate. He shook his head and said that he’d been searching his mind trying to see where things got out of hand.

  Late that evening the Archibalds finally called from the hospital. I talked with Dr. Archibald, who was calm and collected. He apologized for what had happened. He said they would like to come by the center in the morning to discuss the situation. He hinted that he might be coming alone, and I hoped that would be the case, since Mrs. Archibald was clearly mentally unbalanced at this point. I agreed and we set up an appointment for ten o’clock that morning.

  The next morning . . . The next morning . . . Did you read the Esquire article? Well, you can forget everything they said. Not a word of it is true. I wrote a reply but they never published it.

  You know, you worry me. I really don’t know what you’re after. I’m just warning you that I’m not going to be the fall guy yet again for what happened to Jennie. If it was anybody’s fault, it was Sandy’s fault. Sandy did it. We told them again and again what would happen if they visited Jennie.

  Where was I? We were supposed to have a meeting at ten o’clock that morning. But then . . . Excuse me, on second thought I would rather just . . . finish. That’s right, end the interview. I’ve said all I wish to say. Don’t misunderstand me: I have nothing to hide. I’ve said all I want to say, that’s all. You must have ten hours of me on that tape. And you haven’t even read all the papers I gave you. Don’t think that I’m going to spoon-feed you everything. Go find out the rest of the story from someone else. Ask Harold to fill you in on the details. He’s the one who wants this damned book. Turn that goddamn tape recorder off. I mean it. Now.

  [FROM a telephone interview with Joseph Finney, former caregiver, Tahachee Center for Primate Rehabilitation, June 1993.]

  Yeah, I remember that chimp. Jesus. What, you writing a book? You get paid for something like that? How much? I heard about a magazine article once about that. I was there, and nobody else was. But nobody ever asked me anything. They didn’t call me. I never told my story to nobody. Right? I mean, they didn’t pay for shit at Tahachee, and then they laid me off after two years on the job. I never made a dime out of that job. And those chimps were dangerous as hell. Especially that one.

  So what do you want to know?

  My name is Joseph Finney, and I used to be a caregiver at the Tahachee Center for Primate Rehabilitation. Is that the kind of thing you want? That’s what they called us, caregivers. That was my job title.

  My address is . . . Okay, no address. I don’t know when it was, when they brought that chimp down. I can’t remember its name. We had a hell of a time trying to get it inside the cage. See, I’d been working over Boca Grande, cleaning swimming pools. But the guy who ran the business was a real joker. He was ripping off the customers, you know. Like most of them only came down a few months out of the year, so he’d bill them for all kinds of summer work he never did. So he got caught, and I was out of a job.

  I saw this ad. Taking care of animals. Experience helpful. What the hell, I thought. See, I grew up in the Bronx, and I used to shovel monkey shit at the zoo. [Laughs.] I always liked animals, you know, dogs and cats. I like ’em. I had a snake when I was a kid. So I went in there, got the job. Mostly the night shift. Ten to six. This was before I got married. They had a bunch of guys for the two day shifts, but at night there was only me. I didn’t have to do much, just go around, check the place out, you know, punch a few clocks. It was all chimps. And they slept at night, most of the time, so it was pretty quiet. I worked there about a year when they brought that chimp in.

  Look, I wasn’t one of those guys who sleeps on the job. Or drinks. Even with a piece-of-shit job like this, I do my best. And nobody ever said otherwise. When I was laid off, it was a budget cut or something. I got my unemployment, then I went to work for Marine Magic. Over on Long Boat Key.

  When they brought down that chimp, they put it in one of the cages. It was really nuts. I mean, those other chimps’d bite you in a minute, but this one wanted to kill you. You didn’t want to get close to its cage, or it’d reach out and try to tear off your frigging arm. No kidding. I didn’t have to feed them, that was the day crew, but I saw sometimes those guys would have to toss the food in, like, from a distance. I mean, that chimp was always there. Waiting to kill you. Jesus.

  It screamed all the time. Especially when people came by. On my rounds, see, I had to punch a clock in the barn. That’s where they kept the cages. I’d try to sneak in, keep the light off. But see, I had to turn this little key in the clock, and when it heard the click it always started screaming bloody murder. Rattling the cage. You’d hear this Wham! Wham! and it’d be hitting something in there. Jesus. I was scared out of my mind it’d get out and tear me to pieces. Hey, it did get out once. Sat in a tree for two days, screaming its head off. That was one crazy animal. I don’t know what they were doing with it there, or what was wrong with it. Probably got messed up in some experiment.

  Gabriel? Yeah, well, he was kind of a jerk. I hardly saw him. He didn’t know who I was. He didn’t make an effort. Like on some jobs, the top guy makes an effort. He didn’t. He wasn’t my boss, though. My boss was a guy called Oscar. Oscar was okay, and most of the time he wasn’t around. Like I said, I was the only guy worked the graveyard. There was another scientist that was there a lot. Blond woman, a real looker. Not too friendly.

  Lemme see. I guess they had that chimp for about two, three weeks. Maybe a month. So I come to work, ten o’clock, and there’s a big deal going on. Someone broke into the chimp’s cage. Some kid. I don’t know how he did it, I mean he must’ve had guts. By the time I got there, he was gone, and they’d knocked out the chimp. It was in the cage, sleeping. No problem. I’m doing my rounds, like usual. Then, like around three o’clock, I was heading for the barn. I heard this chimp sc
ream. That wasn’t anything unusual. But when I got inside, I heard this other noise. Like a flopping sound. So I turn on the light. And there’s this chimp, like, flopping on the floor of the cage. You know, twitching. I thought it was from the drugs, being knocked out. Coming to, you know? But then I see this blood. Like there’s a trail of blood, and this chimp’s crawling, leaving this trail across the cage. And it started making this sound, like snoring.

  It kind of freaked me out. But I wasn’t going in there. No way. So I went over to the house and woke up Gabriel. That lady scientist had an apartment there too. So anyway she calls the vet while Gabriel comes running down.

  He goes, “Who did this? Did you do this?” Like I would go and kill this chimp. “Hey,” I said, “take it easy. I found it like that.”

  He was all over me. “You let someone in. You let that kid in, didn’t you? That son of a bitch, look what he did. I’ll get that son of a bitch.” Saying stuff like that. I was really getting pissed off. I don’t have to take that kind of shit. I told him so. Nobody had been around, or I would have seen him. I hadn’t seen nobody, but he didn’t believe me.

  He was really ripped. And this chimp is like snoring, and then it starts crawling across the cage. To the door. And it gets to the door and reaches up, like, grabs the handle. And then it falls back and starts flopping again and twitches. So Gabriel tells me to stay there, and he goes back and calls the cops. And while I’m waiting, the chimp coughs or something and goes still. Like, it died.

  And then, it was really weird. That lady scientist comes down, and she goes in the cage and she’s holding the dead chimp and screaming her head off. Getting blood all over her. And kissing it. No shit. I mean, she was still in her nightgown. And then she’s looking at her hands, with the blood on them, and slapping her own face and hitting herself. Jesus. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I swear to God you never seen anything like it. I swear to God.

  Then everyone comes, and they take it away. So the cops want to talk to me, and they’re asking me all these questions like Who did this? Who was around? Did I go to sleep? Had I been drinking? I mean, it really pissed me off and I told them so. Even with a shitty job like that, I’m a responsible guy. I don’t have to take shit like that.

  Then the next day it was all cleaned up. It was like nothing happened. A week later they asked me a bunch of questions, but it was different. They were a lot more friendly. See, they were afraid I was gonna quit. I mean, who were they gonna get to work nights at three fifty an hour? That’s what they paid, three fifty. They wanted to know what I’d seen. Hey, I said, I keep telling you I didn’t see nothing or nobody. Just what I said. Like, why would I lie? And that was it. So later they told me it was an accident, the chimp fell and hit its head.

  Yeah. So I worked there another year and then they laid me off because of some cutback somewhere. That’s when I got the job at Marine Magic.

  [FROM an interview with Lea Archibald.]

  There isn’t much to tell after that. The story’s over. You can finally shut off that tape recorder. Jennie was dead. It was done. And legally they owned her, she was their property, so who could we sue? Who could we complain to? They had killed our daughter and there was nothing we could do. Nothing. Anyway she was dead.

  So there was Jennie’s body laid out there in the veterinary hospital, on a stainless steel table, dissected. Her whole face and skull had been opened up. I was the only one to see that. No, Sandy saw her later, I believe. I kept Hugo and Sarah out. You know, it wasn’t that shocking, really—because it just wasn’t her. For the first time, she looked like an animal to me. All the life was gone and she looked like somebody’s big black dog run over by a car. If there is such a thing as a soul, it was long gone.

  Sandy was released from the hospital that day. The psychiatrist said he was upset but in good mental health. George Gabriel, fearing a scandal, no doubt, declined to press any charges. We had Jennie’s body cremated, and we took the ashes back to Boston.

  Sandy had already made his peace. Learning of Jennie’s death didn’t throw him for a loop the way we thought it would. He accepted it with a fatalism that, well, kind of scared us at first. It was almost as if he’d already said good-bye to her. I guess he had.

  [FROM an interview with Harold Epstein.]

  Now where was I? You know the story. They found Jennie on the floor of her cage. Unconscious. While Dr. Gabriel administered emergency first aid to Jennie, Dr. Prentiss called Roger Kuntz, who was the D.V.M. used by the center. Although Dr. Gabriel was a veterinarian himself, Dr. Kuntz had more experience with trauma. He arrived ten minutes later and tried cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but by that time it was clear that Jennie was not merely unconscious. She was dead.

  Now I know that Esquire reported that Jennie might have been murdered. Let me address that. This utterly ridiculous falsehood stemmed from the fact that, in her very distraught state, Dr. Prentiss made some thoughtless allegations against Sandy. Jennie had been found lying in her cage with a fractured skull. And Pam didn’t see, at first, how that could have happened. She asked Dr. Kuntz to photograph and remove the body and perform an autopsy. Once made, the allegation was out, and it took on a life of its own. It was sensational. A macho red-blooded journalist like that fellow from Esquire, well, he just couldn’t resist.

  Dr. Kuntz quickly dispelled the idea that the death was anything but accidental. Mind you, they seriously examined the possibility of foul play. Dr. Prentiss insisted on it. What they found was crystal clear. The door to the building was locked. The cage was locked. There were no signs of a break-in or tampering. The night watchman had not fallen asleep or been derelict in his duty. All his clocks had been punched and this was, apparently, an unusually reliable fellow.

  Sandy had quite definitely been in the hospital all night. When everyone finally calmed down we realized that it had been an accident, a freakish accident.

  Apparently what happened was this. During the night she had had a fall, undoubtedly while the sedative was still clouding her mind. Normally chimps can fall twenty or thirty feet out of a tree and be unhurt. I might add, however, that Goodall did observe chimpanzees falling to their deaths from trees. Jennie fell from above and just happened to land on her head on some hard blunt object—we believe it might have been the edge of her cement water bowl. A severe cranial fracture followed by cerebral edema ended her life very quickly and mercifully, without suffering.

  When Dr. Prentiss returned to Boston a week later, she came into my office. She was a changed woman. Her love for that chimpanzee was as powerful as any mother’s love for her daughter. That tragedy changed her life. And you know what? She’s never been the same since. Don’t print this, but she’s been treated for depression. That’s why it burns me up to hear accusations leveled against her merely because she isn’t, on the surface, the warmest and most socially graceful person in the world. I hope you will not be another one of those people casting stones. I’m asking you to have a little compassion. I also hope you’ll be gentle with Sandy. He was a lovely, kind boy and he was just crushed by this whole thing. He is suffering terribly out there in Arizona. I think he blames himself. And Hugo’s death, I think, had something to do with this whole thing. It ruined him as a scientist. He lost all perspective. He just seemed to give up on life. Of course, I’m not implying suicide of any kind, but one doesn’t normally die from a simple gallstone operation. It was a routine operation; he just never woke up from the anesthetic.

  Look, we’re all good people here: myself, Dr. Prentiss, Lea, Sandy, and of course Hugo. Hugo was a wonderful man. We are kind people. To be sure, we’re human beings, but we’re not evil scientists. So, where did we go wrong? I really don’t know the answer. I really don’t.

  [FROM an interview with Lea Archibald.]

  We decided to bury Jennie’s ashes on Hermit Island. It was the happiest place of her life, the only place where she could be herself. We put them in a clay jar that Sandy had made as a child, a big clunky th
ing colored in big green and yellow stripes. Sandy had been so proud of that jar when he brought it home. We kept it on the windowsill of the kitchen ever since. It was just about the only thing Jennie hadn’t managed to break. It was indestructible.

  We went to Hermit Island two weeks later. It was late May, but it was still cold and blustery. Hugo got the boat out of the barn and fixed up the engine—it had broken over the winter somehow—and we put it in the water in Franklins Pond Harbor on Saturday morning. It looked like bad weather, so we bundled up in sweaters and slickers. There was quite a chop out in the sound and I made the mistake of musing out loud that perhaps it might be just a little dangerous? Well! Sandy just about had a fit. So we loaded up the boat and set out.

  The air still smelled of winter, it was that cold. On the way over it started to drizzle, and the water in Hermit Cove was black. Just as we got there the Monhegan foghorn began blowing, making these long soundings that rolled across Muscongus Bay. Ever since, I’ve associated that sound with burying Jennie on Hermit Island. So low and sad, like some lost lonely creature of the deep.

  We hiked about the island, all through the wet grass, and got soaking wet. Sandy scattered a handful of ashes here and a handful there. He strewed some along the rocks and at the base of a spruce tree Jennie liked to climb.

  We buried the jar with the rest of Jennie’s ashes in the hole in the back of the fireplace where Sandy found the secret letter. We fitted the stone back in place, and then we lit a fire and made some hot tea. And we talked about Jennie, and we toasted her. We cried a little, but we tried to make it a happy moment. In a curious way it was a release. What kind of life would Jennie have had, if she lived? If she couldn’t get along with other chimpanzees? And you know, she never would have accepted other chimps. I really believe that now. So what kind of a life was she going to have? Locked up in a cage? Put in a zoo? I’ve come to feel, over the years, that maybe her death was a blessing in disguise. She was too . . . too free for the world of people. Although chimps and humans are supposedly so closely related, there is still a gulf there—a vast gulf. We almost bridged that gulf, but in the end it didn’t work.