The Only Witness

by Pamela Beason

  In other words, they still had nothing. Finn rubbed his burning eyelids. Ashley Kowalski's limp form falling from the refrigerator flashed though his brain. The farm dog digging up baby John Doe. Tiny corpses. Shit. Why couldn't he turn off that mental video player?

  Kidnapping or murder? Where was Ivy Rose Morgan? He remembered a list of special services posted at the station. He made another call to the station, held up another five fingers in Taylor's direction, and keyed in a phone number.

  "Mrs. Morgan," he began when he got Brittany's mother on the line.

  "It's Ciscoe, actually," she said. "I didn't change it. But never mind; do you have any news?"

  "Not yet, I'm afraid. We're bringing in a special canine team from Spokane. We'll come to your house this afternoon."

  "Canine? A dog? Like a search dog? Ivy disappeared from the car in the Food Mart parking lot, not from our house."

  "We tried a dog in the parking lot. It couldn't find anything more than thirty feet from Brittany's car. But now we think it could possibly be useful to bring this other specially trained dog to your house, walk him around the neighborhood. He might pick up a trail we haven't thought of yet. In past cases, missing children have been found at a neighbor's house."

  Susan Ciscoe seemed doubtful, but said okay. He didn't tell her that he didn't need her permission. He also didn't volunteer that the missing children he'd mentioned had been found dead, and that this dog from Spokane was trained to sniff out cadavers.

  Chapter 7

  Eighteen hours after Ivy disappears

  On the video monitor, Grace McKenna studied the image of a white kitten scampering across the shaggy landscape of a gorilla belly. Neema, lying on her back, threw one huge arm over her head and chuckled in delight. Snow tickle Neema, she signed.

  Grace moved away from the screen and sat down on the braided rug next to Neema, crossing her legs. She signed Where snow?

  The gorilla cupped a gentle hand around the kitten. This snow, she gestured with the other. Then, soft baby.

  So Neema had decided to name this kitten Snow. Just to be sure, Grace signed, Snow is dog?

  Neema's gorilla eyes flashed a look that implied Grace's species was the one with limited intelligence. She signed Snow dog here.

  Before she had worked with Neema, Grace would not have believed that an ape could be sarcastic. It was great to get this sort of 'talk' on tape to demonstrate that gorillas had rich imaginations and associations and memories, much like children.

  "You don't like dogs," she said, simultaneously signing the words. "I'll take the dog away." She reached for the kitten.

  Neema clasped the tiny furball to her chest as she abruptly sat up. Neema's baby. She hurriedly drew her fingers out from her mouth, mimicking whiskers, thumped her chest and then curled her hand across it, then pulled imaginary whiskers again. Cat my baby cat.

  "Ah, now you know the difference." Best cat? Neema keep Snow?

  Neema drew the basket of kittens closer, gripping the wicker rim between her feet. All cats play.

  "One." Grace held up a finger. "You can have one. Which one do you like the best?"

  All stay Neema.

  "One."

  The white kitten squirmed against Neema's chest and mewed softly. The gorilla bent and brushed it with her lips, and then set it carefully on the floor. Next, she gently plucked a calico kitten from the basket and lifted it for a kiss.

  What color that cat? Grace signed.

  Nest.

  Grace frowned and spoke while signing simultaneously. "It's not time for your nest now. Not time for sleeping. It's morning," she said, gesturing a sunrise. "What color is that cat? Blue? Red?"

  This nest.

  "You want to take the cat to your nest?" Grace asked. "You want to sleep with that cat?"

  Play now.

  Grace sighed. "Talk now," she insisted. "You must answer when I ask you a question. What color is that cat?"

  Nest.

  Grace gritted her teeth. Neema could be incredibly stubborn, especially when she was bored with answering routine questions.

  "Yellow? Green? Brown?" Grace persisted, flashing signs one after another.

  "Dr. McKenna," Josh interrupted from the doorway. "Take a look at Neema's nest."

  Grace glanced at him over her shoulder, then turned and studied Neema's nap area in the corner. She'd created a gorilla sleeping nest, but instead of using leaves and grasses as she would in the wild, she'd used an old black rug, a white blanket, and a few orange and yellow towels.

  Black. White. Orange. A calico nest. Turning back, Grace regarded the calico kitten in Neema's hands.

  "And some people think apes are slow," Josh said dryly.

  Neema echoed, signing slow.

  Josh laughed. "Good thing she doesn't know the sign for clueless."

  "She's repeating, not agreeing," Grace retorted. "And the tape is rolling."

  He looked at the camera mounted near the ceiling. "Well, Dr. McKenna, you're the Ph.D. You would recognize the difference between repetition and agreement."

  "Either get lost or come on in," Grace muttered. To Neema, Grace signed, black white orange cat black white orange nest.

  Nest, Neema agreed.

  "So it's finally time for a new pet." Josh knelt on the floor beside Grace. Neema now had both the white and calico kittens in her lap and was laughing her soft huh-huh-huh at the feel of their tiny claws on her legs. A gray kitten from the basket leapt up to bat at the black gorilla toes wrapped around the rim. Neema hooted with delight.

  Which cat for Neema? Josh signed.

  All cats stay. Play. Neema plucked the gray from the basket and added it to her lap.

  "One cat," Grace insisted. Should she make the decision for Neema and remove the rest of the kittens? Or would that touch off a temper tantrum?

  Some days it was hard to remember that she had a Ph.D. in Psychology. She should be teaching at a university, be Professor McKenna, with a roomful of dewy-eyed students looking up to her. When she'd first taken on this sign language project, she imagined working with Neema for a few hours each day and then retreating to her office or the lecture hall. Teaching gorillas sign language was a fascinating project, but the day-to-day process was grueling. When had she become this drudge, this weird mix of academic, zookeeper, and mommy? She never dreamed she'd be raising two gorilla children for the indefinite future. It was a lonely business. If only there was another gorilla mom to compare notes with.

  A soft 'hunh' from the barred area behind Neema drew their attention. Gumu, confined to the 'cage' area for now, stretched his long black arms through the bars toward them. Then he stepped back and slapped himself on the chest.

  Neema regarded her gorilla companion for a moment, and then signed cat Gumu. Gumu thumped his right hand against his chest, and then thrust the hand through the bars toward her.

  Grace turned to Josh. "Do you think Gumu can be trusted w—"

  Before she could get out the rest of the sentence, Neema scooted across the floor with a gray tiger kitten in one hand and the calico in the other. She sat down just out of reach of Gumu and cradled the kittens between her legs.

  "Uh-oh." Grace started across the floor. Neema had always been gentle with other animals. But Gumu was a huge male, younger, less 'humanized.' And male gorillas had been known to kill smaller animals in their territory.

  Josh grabbed Grace's arm. "Wait."

  Baby, Neema signed. Soft soft.

  Give Gumu. The thump the gorilla gave his own chest was so loud that both the kittens and the humans in the room startled at the sound. He insistently held out his hand, the huge black fingers curled upward.

  Soft, Neema signed again. Baby. Then she held out the gray kitten and gently dropped it into Gumu's giant palm.

  Grace groaned as Gumu pulled the kitten back into the cage. He held it up in front of his face. The kitten squeaked. Neema hooted softly, slashed an arm through the air, then held both arms briefly across her stomach. No snake.
Love baby.

  Gumu inspected the mewing kitten, gently holding the tiny animal to his nose and sniffing. He thrust his other hand through the bars toward the calico kitten Neema still held.

  Nest soft baby, Neema signed.

  Give Gumu.

  Grace gasped as Neema handed him the calico kitten.

  The male gorilla compared the kittens, one grasped in each giant black hand, blowing on their fur and running his lips gently over their tiny bodies.

  Baby soft. Neema hooted softly again as she signed.

  "It's as if she's telling him to be careful," Josh murmured.

  Gumu set the tiny gray kitten on the floor. It scampered between the bars and pounced on its white sibling next to Neema's leg. Grace could almost breathe again.

  Gumu cradled the calico against his pot belly. Its purr was audible. He placed his arm horizontally against his chest, then tapped himself again. Baby Gumu.

  "When did you teach him baby?" Grace asked.

  "I didn't." Excitement raised Josh's voice half an octave. "Neema did."

  Neema had taught Gumu a word! What other sign language conversations were they having when she wasn't watching? Clearly, she needed to film the gorillas in the barn and play enclosure as well as during their lessons. That meant more cameras and hours of videotape to review. As soon as her grant check arrived, she'd see about buying more equipment and recruiting more help.

  Neema turned to Grace and Josh, signing Nest Gumu. She scooped up the white kitten and signed Snow baby Neema.

  Josh expelled a breath. "Think Gumu agrees his kitten should be named Nest?"

  Grace shrugged. "No way to tell unless he picks up the sign."

  "What was that snake business?"

  "Maybe she was telling him not to treat the kitten like a snake, but like a baby?" Grace guessed.

  "Or maybe she was telling Gumu not to be mean like a snake."

  Snake bad baby cry, Neema signed.

  "Well, there you have it," Josh chuckled. "Gumu learned a word from Neema, Neema's obsessed with snakes, and we have two new pets."

  Grace laughed. "I think the gorillas made it pretty clear that those kittens are their pets, not ours."

  Two cats play, Neema agreed. Then she cuddled her ivory bundle of fluff even closer to her chest, pressing it gently to her leathery black nipple as if she expected the kitten to nurse.

  "Good session. The Foundation should really appreciate that video." Grace stood up, stretching. "Time for lunch."

  Neema's gaze bounced to Grace. The gorilla balanced Snow on her hairy protruding belly as she used both hands to quickly sign her list of favorites: Jell-O lettuce yogurt banana.

  Gumu too looked up from the calico kitten. Give banana baby, he signed.

  "How altruistic of him," Josh said.

  "Right. Go ahead and feed them, but keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't actually try to make that kitten eat a banana. I'll take the others back." Grace pressed the three remaining kittens into the basket and tossed a towel over them.

  Josh grabbed the basket from her. "You feed, I'll take them. I'm going out, anyway."

  "Thanks," she said. "Tell the Canos that we're giving the kittens a good home. Do not mention gorillas."

  "Will do." He snapped off a salute. "Then I'm heading into town to grab a bite to eat with a friend, okay?"

  The friend, Grace knew, would be young and female and pretty. "Go for it," she said.

  "I'll be back in two to three hours. Can I bring you anything?"

  A winning lottery ticket? A handsome professor bearing a gourmet picnic basket and a bottle of good Chianti? You're the Ph.D. in charge of this project, Dr. McKenna, she told herself. Swallowing her self-pity, she answered, "No. We're good, aren't we, guys?"

  Jell-o, Neema signed. Yogurt jell-o.

  As the door closed behind Josh, Gumu grunted and signed Banana give.

  Grace sighed.

  Brittany's mother was dry-eyed, but a deep furrow was carved across her forehead, and her reactions seemed slow. Sleep-deprived. Finn could identify with that.

  "You stayed home from work," he observed.

  "I went in this morning while Noah stayed here. Now he's out at the plant. It's hard to focus on work, but it's sort of a relief to be able to actually do something useful."

  He nodded. That was why it was routine to post an officer with a victim's family in the first few hours—they started cleaning house, doing the laundry, cooking, and so forth, just to keep busy, sometimes mucking up a crime scene in the process. A female uniform had spent the night with the Morgans and left at dawn, reporting no unusual activities in the house.

  "Brittany's out with friends posting flyers," Susan Ciscoe told him.

  Finn hoped that was true. Belatedly, he realized he should have assigned someone to tail the girl. His career had been filled with moms and dads who had no inkling that their Ethan made pipe bombs with his friends, or that their Emily traded sex for the latest fashions from The Gap. In one shocking case in the 'burbs, eight teens had formed a vampire club, drinking each other's blood. The parents had gone blithely about their own lives while their seventeen-year-olds spread HIV around their intimate circle.

  He detested this stage of an investigation. Dealing with the initial confusion was like wrestling an octopus. It was hard to keep track of what every arm was doing; hard to constantly juggle all the possibilities in his head. After a clear suspect emerged, building a case would be much more straightforward.

  "So Brittany's out posting flyers," he repeated. There was a stack beside them on the front porch, weighted down with a smooth rock from the stone borders along the Morgans' front walk.

  "I believe so," Susan said, confirming his suspicion that she really wasn't keeping tabs on her daughter.

  "And your son, Danny?"

  "I sent him over to our neighbors." She pointed to the white house across the street. "They have an eleven-year-old boy, too."

  Eleven. Certainly old enough to get rid of an unwanted squalling niece. Another possibility he needed to check out. He made a note on his pad.

  "Is Brittany your husband's child?"

  The glare Susan gave him could have melted a glacier. "Of course. Danny, too. Just because a woman doesn't change her last name on marriage doesn't mean she's got a wild past, Detective. Good lord, what is it with this town? Is everyone stuck in the 1950s?"

  Ouch. He knew that the Morgans had moved to Evansburg five years ago from Denver. "I know how you feel," he said. "But I have to ask these questions."

  She reached a hand up under her shoulder-length auburn hair to knead the back of her neck. "I didn't mean to bite your head off. I didn't get much sleep last night."

  "Me neither," he sympathized.

  "We were sorry to hear about your wife, Detective Finn."

  He stared at her for a long awkward moment. Did the whole frigging county know? Had he missed an announcement Wendy had placed in the paper? Hey, Evansburg, I'm ditching my clueless husband Matthew Finn to run off with the love of my life! –Wendy Mankin

  "The police officer, last night…" Susan let the words trail off.

  He'd have a word with that female uniform, but he knew it wouldn't stop the gossip. He tapped his pen impatiently on his notebook. "How does Danny get along with the baby?"

  She grimaced. "It's hard to get him to notice anything that's not in a video game. Or on a plate in front of him."

  Video games. He made another quick note to check out the kid's favorites for violence. "How did you feel when you found out Brittany was pregnant?"

  When he looked up from his pad, Susan was frowning. "How would you feel if your sixteen-year-old daughter got pregnant?"

  It was difficult to imagine being in that situation. Especially now.

  Susan continued. "I didn't plan on being a grandmother at thirty-nine. I have an MBA, for heaven's sake; Noah has a degree in mathematics. We never dreamed we'd end up working at mediocre jobs in a small town, let alone have a pregnant tee
nager who has absolutely no desire to go to college."

  "It must be hard," he said.

  "Brittany was nearly five months pregnant when we found out, so abortion wasn't an option," Susan volunteered, answering his unasked questions. "I did encourage her to give the baby up for adoption, but I wasn't going to force her. We do insist that Brittany takes care of Ivy…" Her voice caught. "…took care of Ivy…oh, mercy." She raised a hand to clutch at her shirt front, and tears pooled in her eyes. "We might not have wanted a grandchild so soon, but Noah and I love that baby so much."

  Both of them glanced at the stack of flyers again, where Ivy Rose Morgan's round baby face smiled at them, her right eye hidden beneath a river rock paperweight.

  "I understand that Charlie Wakefield is the child's father?"

  Susan nodded, and a tear spilled over from her left eye.

  "Have you heard from him?"

  "Never."

  "Does he pay child support?"

  Wiping the tear away, she shook her head. "He doesn't want anything to do with the baby. At first we decided that we simply wouldn't include him in any way in Ivy's life, keep it simpler, you know?"

  He nodded again.

  "But now that both Noah and I have had our hours cut back, we really need the financial support. So last week we went to the Wakefields."

  Finn perked up. "And their reaction?"

  "The cold shoulder. They agreed to share responsibility if we could prove that Charlie was Ivy's father."

  Finn waited for Susan to continue.

  She sighed. "Brittany thought that was insulting. She refused to bring Ivy into the clinic for the paternity test. Noah and I were talking to her, trying to bring her around, maybe just do one of those home mail-in jobs, but now…" Another tear escaped and slid down her reddened cheek.

  Finn's heart rate sped up. Now that the baby was missing, there would be no paternity test. Unless the techs somehow managed to get DNA from some baby item they'd collected from Brittany's room, there would be no way to prove Ivy was Charlie's child.

  A Subaru station wagon pulled up in the driveway. Brittany got out, tottering on platform sandals that curiously were now as popular as they had been when Finn was a kid. His mother had worn lime green leather nailed to stacked wooden soles.