The Only Witness

by Pamela Beason

  "Really?" Finn raised an eyebrow. "Wakefield…" The name seemed familiar.

  "Yep," Dawes said. "Travis Wakefield—our County Exec. Charlie's his son."

  Finn rubbed a hand across his brow. The County Executive wielded a lot of influence, especially in a rural area like this. He and Dawes watched Brittany weep in her father's arms. Her tears were real and plentiful, but Finn had learned long ago that teenagers could be consummate actors. Brittany's father—Noah Morgan—seemed completely lost. His eyes scanned the parking lot as if he could spot the infant out there. Finn made a mental note to get the man alone as soon as possible to quiz him about his daughter and granddaughter.

  "Where's Brittany's mother?" he asked Dawes.

  "Closing up at Washington Federal Bank. She's assistant manager there. She'll be here any minute now. Dad runs the county recycling center outside of town."

  "So all grandparents are accounted for?"

  "Looks that way." Dawes raised a hand to cover a yawn, then continued, "I've never had a missing baby. Had kids that wandered off before, had two snatched by the non-custodial parents, but they could all walk and talk. Kids and babies," he grumbled. "They should've assigned Larson and Melendez to this."

  "It happened before seven, so technically, it's ours. But don't worry; everyone will get pulled in on this until we know what's going on."

  "The women are good for the domestics, but not tough enough with real scumbags. They may be dicks, but they got no balls." Dawes chuckled at his own joke.

  Finn frowned. Surely the Evansburg PD required all their cops to take the same gender-sensitivity training he'd had to sit through in Chicago.

  "Remember how Larson and Melendez were with the Animal Rights Union?" Dawes continued. "They'd have let those ARU nuts off with a misdemeanor charge. But we nailed 'em."

  The way Finn remembered it, Dawes didn't start off with the intention of 'nailing' the radical students who'd freed all the rats and rabbits at the college laboratory. Instead, Dawes had dismissed the event as a hilarious student stunt. He and Dawes were about the same age, early forties, but Dawes, having spent his years on rural police forces in Washington, had less experience with major crimes than Finn. On the other hand, he had a lot more experience in dealing with the local population.

  "Now we're going to nail this, right?" Dawes broke off to answer his chirping cell phone, said "Got it, thanks," and snapped the cell shut again. "Shit. Charlie Wakefield's cell phone just goes to voicemail. His roommates said they think he's at the library, but so far the university police haven't confirmed that. They say they'll keep looking."

  "We need to ping Charlie Wakefield's cell phone to verify the whereabouts, locate his vehicle ASAP, and we need to verify all the grandparents' alibis," Finn stressed.

  Dawes grimaced. "The Wakefields won't like that."

  "So what?" Finn challenged him.

  Dawes squirmed under his glare for a moment before he extracted his notepad and pen from his shirt pocket. "Okay. I'll follow up on Charlie Wakefield and let you know when we locate him. And I'll ask his parents if anyone outside the family can vouch for their whereabouts."

  Finn nodded. "I'll check out the Morgans." A car raced into the parking lot. A woman wearing a blouse and skirt jumped out of it, and ran over to Brittany and her father. That had to be Mrs. Morgan.

  Dawes tapped his pen on his pad. "How 'bout the Morgan girl's friends? Could be a prank."

  "Are kids that cruel?"

  Dawes shrugged.

  Finn pointed to the Dinosaurs bumper sticker as the tow truck pulled the Civic out of the parking spot. "What's up with this debate on the school board? Are the two sides hot enough to come to blows?"

  "So far it's only been a lot of yelling. I don't understand why it's a big deal if they teach intelligent design and evolution." He shrugged. "Isn't that what science is supposed to be about? Keeping an open mind?" Dawes tried to slide his pen into his shirt pocket and missed, squinted and made it on the second try. Then he looked up again at Finn. "I don't even understand that sticker. Do you?

  It was Finn's turn to shrug. He wasn't about to try to make sense of trading T-rex for absolution.

  Dawes watched the tow truck pull the Civic across the parking lot. "Nobody would steal a baby just because of a bumper sticker, would they?"

  "People the world over kill for their beliefs." Finn glanced at his watch. This was going to be one long night. "I'll talk to Mrs. Morgan, then I'll send a uniform over to babysit the Morgans while I fill in Melendez and Larson. Can you get all available uniforms out searching dumpsters?"

  "Dumpsters?" After a second, Dawes's brain caught up, and he made a face. "Oh, jeez. Ya think?"

  Finn rubbed his brow. "I've seen it before. We need to do three zones to begin with. Here, the girl's school, and the family home. Spiral out from all three starting points."

  Dawes ran his fingers through his thinning blond hair, his eyebrows kinked in a frown. "We've never had one of those cases in Evansburg."

  "Keep an eye out for a baby's car seat, too, and an old blue backpack used as a diaper bag, a baby dress with a duck on it, and any other baby stuff. Have the uniforms make a list of the checked locations to compare against the garbage company's tomorrow; we don't want to miss any."

  Dawes groaned. "Tomorrow's garbage day."

  "Good. So everyone's putting their bins out tonight. Check regular family cans, too," Finn added.

  "No way we can cover the whole town by morning."

  "Then get trash pickup called off until this is resolved," Finn told him. His head was starting to throb. Delaying trash pickup meant the whole town was going to find out about this.

  "Garbage duty—the guys are gonna love this." Dawes rubbed his bony hands together and strode toward the trio of patrol cars clustered in front of the store.

  A KEBR TV News van careened into the parking lot, screeched to a halt right at the yellow tape. Two female reporters dashed in his direction, microphones in hand. "Allyson Lee!" the one in the lead yelled. "Detective Finn!" He had been ambushed by Lee before. The cameraman behind her was already rolling.

  "Rebecca Ramey!" the girl trotting behind Lee blurted, waving, as if he might pick her because of an alliterative name. Another camera operator, a girl this time, followed on her heels.

  Damn. Most towns the size of Evansburg had no television news coverage, but the local college offered a degree in broadcast journalism, and the students used the community access channel to do nonstop coverage. Eager journalism students constantly trolled the streets for stories, and they all came from the sound bite generation. Finn straightened his shoulders and tugged the hem of his jacket to smooth out the rumpled fabric.

  A blur of red-blonde hair streaked past him.

  "Help me!" Brittany yelled at the reporter. "Tell everyone to look for my baby right now!"

  Finn watched the girl's manic behavior. She clung to the reporter's arm as if Lee were her best friend. Had she been waiting for a news crew? Could this be a media-hound version of Munchausen's? Lee tucked Brittany in close beside her, wiped the teenager's face with a tissue and pushed the hair out of the girl's eyes, and then began to question her under the spotlight of the camera. Brittany's parents watched from the sidelines.

  Rebecca Ramey, resigned to second place, shrugged at her cameraman and gestured him toward the cluster of onlookers.

  Finn's turn would come soon enough. He pulled the horrible photo out of his pocket and looked at it again. He had a bad feeling about why Brittany Morgan had forgotten the diapers. He hoped he was mistaken. He'd really like to be proven wrong this time. But he feared that Ivy Rose Morgan had already met the same fate as Baby John Doe.

  Chapter 5

  Four hours after Ivy disappears

  Tickle, Neema signed. Gumu chased her, bowled her over in the sagging middle of the web and, cackling like a mad scientist, continued his gallop to the highest corner. The rope webbing creaked ominously as the two gorillas frolicked in the heavy
net stretched between steel posts. The silhouettes of the two apes against the tangerine sunset made a strange and beautiful tableau. Someday, Grace McKenna vowed, she would watch gorillas in their natural environment, nestled amid lush African vegetation, backlit by an African sun.

  Josh LaDyne dug the sharp point of the shovel he carried into the soil beside Grace's foot. Sweat streaked his copper-colored face. "That net's not going to hold 'em much longer."

  "Don't I know it. Gumu weighs almost twenty pounds more than he did when we moved in." Grace pushed her hair up off her sweaty neck. Even at sundown in early September, it had to be eighty-five degrees out.

  Josh watched the gorillas tumble across the webbing. "Neema still doesn't want to sleep in the barn with Gumu? They're still just playmates?"

  "Apparently." Grace sighed. "As best I can figure it out, Neema seems to regard Gumu as her brother. She says she wants a baby, but I don't know if she really understands how to go about it. I've shown her films of mating and giving birth."

  "Among gorillas?"

  She shrugged. "Chimpanzees. That was the closest I could find."

  "In the wild, other gorillas would show her how babies get made, right? So you really should demonstrate for her." He paused, his brown eyes solemn. "As a fellow scientist, I'd be willing to help."

  She feigned a right hook to his jaw. Laughing, he took a step back to avoid her fist. "Just a suggestion, Dr. McKenna," he said. "Or maybe I should have a man-to-man talk with Gumu."

  "Since he's learned only four signs so far, that might be difficult." Gumu had been orphaned in Africa, and had been kept in a cage from babyhood until he grew into the huge hulk he was destined to be. He had joined them a year ago, a traumatized ten-year-old ape who was only now learning to trust a few humans.

  Josh ticked Gumu's signs off on his fingers. "Give. Banana. Gumu. Neema. With a little rearranging, we could work with that." He thrust out his arms and beat his chest like a male gorilla.

  Grace laughed. "Quit that. You're confusing them."

  Inside the fenced enclosure, the gorillas had stopped their gymnastics to stare at them. Joke, Grace signed. Neema knew the sign and she certainly had her own childlike sense of humor, but there was no way to be sure if a gorilla understood the true meaning of the word.

  Banana, Gumu signed back.

  "See, what did I tell you?" Josh said. "I bet male gorillas think about their bananas even more often than male Homo sapiens."

  "Impossible." Grace counted herself lucky that Josh had been willing to stay with the project after they'd been shuffled off to Evansburg. He was twelve years her junior, a grad student working on his dissertation; he could have chosen to finish in Seattle instead of coming to the sticks with her. She enjoyed his company, but sometimes his teasing banter made her uneasy. She was in charge of the gorilla sign language project, he was her protégé. But it wasn't a normal academic situation by any stretch of imagination. They basically functioned as gorilla parents to Gumu and Neema. Their relationship was often misconstrued by observers, especially because Josh was a very attractive specimen of African American manhood. To get off the subject of sex, she asked, "How's the new enclosure coming?"

  "I dug the last post-hole this morning, so it's ready whenever the fencing crew gets here." He ran dirt-smudged fingers through his hair, leaving a trail of red dust through his tight black curls. "Thanks for all your help, by the way."

  What a waste of talent, to have a Ph.D. candidate digging holes. She had to get more help around the place, more assistants to observe and teach the gorillas. She longed for the good old days, when she had to turn volunteers away. The days when ape sign language was totally new and astounding, before the wackos crawled out from under their rocks and politicians somehow gained control over university funding.

  "Sorry," she groaned. "Neema wouldn't quit begging to go for a ride, so I took the van to the grocery store. I thought I'd never get it into reverse to get out of the parking lot. Then halfway home it wouldn't go into third, so I had to crawl back in second gear."

  "You need to get the transmission fixed."

  "Gee, ya think?" she retorted bitterly. "It's on the list. After building the fence and heating the barn and finding more help."

  The project definitely needed at least one more pair of hands, preferably a volunteer pair fluent in American Sign Language. She was spending all her time in animal care and property upkeep instead of writing research papers; that would not earn her any credit with the grant givers. Did she dare approach the biology or psych or special ed departments at the local college for volunteers? Was there a deaf students association?

  No, talking to any of those groups would alert the whole community to their presence. From what she'd observed of the residents so far, it seemed a pretty conservative place. Signing gorillas might be more than the locals could take. The project had been very public in Seattle and they'd paid the price. Neema still mourned for silverback Spencer, Gumu's predecessor. As did Grace.

  It would be better to lure another grad student for a semester. Better yet, two grads for two semesters. She could probably find another single-wide at a bargain price if only she could get a little more grant money.

  She sighed. Right. Additional funds were unlikely. The downturn in the economy couldn't have come at a worse time. The annual check from the grant foundation was due any day now and it couldn't arrive too soon; she was dipping into her meager savings to pay for supplies and groceries. The van would have to stay parked for awhile.

  She glanced around at the half-finished compound. "I'll help move rocks tomorrow, Josh."

  "All moved." He yawned. "I found a baby rattler underneath one of 'em, too."

  "Yikes. I'm glad Neema didn't see that. Did I tell you that she called me a snake this morning?"

  "At least three times."

  "Sorry." Surely he was exaggerating.

  "I forgive you; it was very creative of her. I'll watch for that insult from here on; 'snake' will be a nice change from 'poop head'."

  Both the gorillas now had their long black fingers woven into the wire mesh of the fence, their liquid red-brown eyes fixed on Grace and Josh. The sight of those intelligent eyes jailed behind wire mesh always gave Grace a pang of guilt. It's no different than using a playpen to corral toddlers, she told herself. These two youngsters were plenty capable of mischief.

  Neema and Gumu studied humans just as intensely as Josh and Grace studied them. Like human children, gorillas learned by watching. They could open cabinets and refrigerators, punch computer keys, wield tools with much greater strength than humans. They understood a vast amount of human dialogue, whether or not they'd learned the signs to show it. Right now the gorillas were clearly eavesdropping, because Neema, her eyes round with anxiety, pulled her fingers from the mesh to sign Where snake?

  No snake here, Grace signed.

  Snake make baby cry, Neema signed back.

  Grace frowned. Was Neema so often referring to babies now because she wanted a baby? Her favorite film was a National Geographic special featuring a gorilla family of five adults and three infants. Neema sometimes invented an imaginary baby or pretended her doll was a baby. Or referred to another animal as a baby. Or even to herself.

  You baby? Grace flicked an index finger toward Neema's chest.

  Neema huffed and signed here fine gorilla.

  Josh laughed. "No problem with self-esteem in that cage."

  Neema fine gorilla, Grace agreed. Grace fine woman, not snake.

  Neema stared at her for a second, then signed Josh snake. Gumu snake. She hooted at her own jest and then leapt onto Gumu's back. The two gorillas chased each other across the netting again.

  "Speaking of snakes," Josh said, "I'm fine. Thanks for your concern."

  Grace jerked her thoughts back to him. "Oh god, I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

  "Yep. I'm still three-dimensional. I can't say the same for the rattler. But I feel like a field hand. Next you'll have me pickin' cotton bolls."<
br />
  "Get real. There's no cotton in the northwest. You'll have to stick with moving rocks."

  The sun had set as they talked. Dusk triggered the security lights, which glowed dimly, outlining the perimeters of the three trailers set into a U-shaped formation—hers, Josh's, and the study trailer, where they worked with the gorillas and where Neema usually slept. The old horse barn with its attached fenced enclosure loomed in the forth corner, the gorillas dark shadows in the webbing.

  "Let them play," Josh said, reading her thoughts. "I'll put them to bed in an hour or so and lock up."

  "Have you had dinner, Josh? I have enchiladas we could share. It's the least I can do for all your work today."

  "Add a beer and I'll forgive you. But, none of that lite crap, you hear?"

  "Amber ale, iced mug, slice of lime?"

  "Sublime." He jerked the shovel out of the dirt. "Hey, I rhyme."

  "I swear, you're twenty-six, going on twelve."

  "And you're thirty-eight, headed for sixty." His hand landed on her shoulder. "Do us both a favor; relax the frown lines and lighten up for awhile."

  Headed for sixty? That hurt. Somebody had to worry about all the picky little details like bills and future funding, didn't they? Still, sixty? Did she really seem like an old lady to him? She swallowed painfully and gestured toward her personal trailer. "I'll try, Josh. Ditch the shovel and wash your face and come on in. We can discuss tomorrow's lesson plan for Neema and Gumu."

  He shouldered the shovel. "What the hell is a cotton boll, anyway?"

  Grace turned on the television in her living area as she poured their beers. She shoved the enchiladas into the microwave and settled at the counter on a kitchen bar stool next to Josh. On the television screen, police cars flooded the Food Mart parking lot. Grace turned up the sound as a female reporter stuck a microphone in front of a wild-eyed girl with a strawberry blonde ponytail.

  "My baby! Someone kidnapped my baby out of my car!" the girl sobbed.

  Grace grimaced. "That poor kid. She doesn't look old enough to even have a baby, let alone lose one." Having grown up in southern California, Grace was accustomed to hearing about all sorts of horrific crime, but babynapping seemed extreme for small-town Evansburg, Washington. Her eyes widened when the reporter estimated the time of the kidnapping.