The Only Witness

by Pamela Beason

  "Can I help you?" she asked again.

  "Does anyone assigned to this office drive a green Taurus with a Jimson Janitorial logo?"

  "What?"

  Finn repeated the question.

  "Mr. Pearson!" she bellowed over her shoulder. Through the open door behind her, Finn saw the corner of a desk surrounded by shelves holding cleaning solutions, towels, and sponges.

  Pearson emerged. He could have been a church deacon, with close-cropped gray hair and a button-down shirt. Finn showed him his badge.

  "A green car?" he echoed, after Linn repeated the question. He shook his head. "Nope. We got the vans for the cleaning crews, but nobody here has a company car. That's a perk reserved for the big guns, not for us lowly crew managers."

  "Do you know Travis Wakefield or Charlie Wakefield?"

  "I know who Travis Wakefield is," Pearson said. "Who doesn't around here? Is Charlie the son? I know he has one."

  That sounded like a dead end. "May I see your employee records?"

  Pearson frowned. "Like what? All we keep here are timesheets and employee phone numbers and such."

  "I need personnel files, with home addresses and previous employers." Dates of birth and SSNs were what he really needed to match up with criminal histories, but people tended to freak out when social security numbers were mentioned.

  After considering for less than ten seconds, Pearson shook his head. "I can't give you any files without permission from the head office."

  "This might help find Ivy Rose Morgan."

  The man was adamant; he couldn't give information without permission. "Besides," he said as he handed Finn a business card from the main office in Spokane, "I thought the mama did that baby in; wasn't that why you arrested her?"

  Finn explained for the twentieth time that Brittany Morgan had not been arrested for murder and Ivy had not been found, dead or alive. Pearson looked doubtful, as if he suspected that Finn was not telling the truth. He shook his head again. "Sorry, I can't help you without orders from above."

  Shit. Finn thought for a minute, trying to conjure up some sort of leverage to make the guy cooperate. He failed to come up with anything. Gritting his teeth, he headed to the station.

  Through an online corporate database and a directory information service, he managed to track down Jimson's HR manager in Spokane.

  Lisa Dvorak was surprised to be contacted at home. As he spoke with her on the phone, Finn could hear kids fighting in the background.

  "I can assure you that we never place employees with records of violence or crimes against children in any school situation," she told him. "That's our guarantee to the school districts."

  He repeated his request for all Jimson Janitorial employee records. "They could be of value in one or more criminal cases."

  "We've got eleven field offices and cleaning contracts for a hundred and twenty-seven schools in the Pacific Northwest. It would be impossible to compile a comprehensive list of employees for you, Detective."

  "You mean you don't have a computerized payroll service?" He failed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  Her tone turned icy. "What I meant to say was that it would require a court order. Now I really need to go, Detective." She hung up.

  Obviously the woman was not inclined to be cooperative. He'd have to find another way in, or get a court order. Right. See, Judge, I got these two clues from an ape, and when I tried them out on a cleaning lady, she seemed nervous. And the gorilla painted these J shapes to show it was Jimson. Finn put the receiver back into its cradle.

  Detective Kathryn Larson stood in front of his desk. "Isn't this your day off?"

  "Theoretically."

  "Why have you been holding out on us, Finn?"

  What the hell? Did she know about Neema?

  "Sssssssssssss," Larson hissed, forming her fingers into fangs and striking in his direction.

  Gossip blew across this town faster than dust from the wheat fields. She'd obviously heard of the snake bracelet he had discussed with Audrey Ibañez. He shrugged. "Might not be anything; it was an anonymous tip."

  She tapped on his desk. "Go home. The second string is here. We'll all be watching for babies in green cars, isn't that right? Oh yeah, I thought we'd tail the baby's daddy again, too. He's back in town for the weekend."

  "Good thinking," he said. "And check up on the analysis of the stuff we bagged in the parking lot."

  She rolled her eyes. "State Patrol won't be done with that anytime in the near future. In case you haven't noticed, this isn't CSI."

  He'd noticed. Evansburg had no crime lab, so like most small jurisdictions in Washington State, it used the Highway Patrol lab to process evidence. There were private labs, too, but those were available only when the jurisdiction was willing to pay for their services. "What's the standard processing time these days?"

  "I had a homicide that took a year." Larson tucked a strand of curly hair behind an ear. "And they haven't sent us the DNA results yet from an alleged rape seven months ago."

  A year? In a year, Ivy Rose Morgan could be anywhere. In a year, Ivy Rose Morgan would look completely different. He'd call agent Alice Foster and ask if there was any way the FBI could process the parking lot collection.

  "Go home," Larson told him.

  Instead, he went to the Captain.

  "Jimson Janitorial Service?" The Captain frowned. "Nobody's going to touch them with a twenty-foot pole."

  "Why not?"

  The Captain crooked a bushy eyebrow at him in disbelief, then stroked his hand over his bald head. "I keep forgetting that you're new to Washington State. Ever heard of The New Dawn Agency?"

  Finn quoted, "The New Dawn Agency was the brainchild of Abram Jimson, the founder of Bright Dawn Church, which has thirty churches statewide. The basic message is that all sinners deserve a second chance. New Dawn wants to give ex-cons jobs, so it spawns Jimson Landscaping, Jimson Oil & Lube, and Jimson Janitorial Service. So now all these ex-cons are gainfully employed and paying taxes."

  The Captain nodded. "I see you've done your homework. Everyone hires Jimson because they're cheap and reliable. Hell, they have the landscaping and cleaning contracts at the state capitol in Olympia. They take care of the greens out at the country club here. I think they do most of the state college campuses. Most of the ex-cons go to Bright Dawn Church to get extra brownie points. By the way, at least half the people in this town attend Bright Dawn. Including Travis Wakefield."

  So? Finn leaned on the desk. "What if Jimson was involved in the Ivy Morgan kidnapping?"

  The Captain looked him in the eye. "You're shitting me."

  Finn leaned back and crossed his arms. "I shit you not."

  "Involved how?"

  "We recently found out that Charlie Wakefield works for Jimson Janitorial Service. And we got a tip that Ivy was taken from the supermarket to a car with a Jimson Janitorial logo."

  "A good tip?"

  Neema's hairy visage swam into Finn's mind. "Anonymous," he fudged. "But it sounded credible enough to check out. And Jimson Janitorial has contracts at the schools in Idaho and Oregon where babies went missing."

  "Circumstantial," the Captain snapped. "They also have contracts at a hundred schools where babies haven't gone missing."

  "But it might provide the break we need," Finn argued. He tried for victim sympathy. "You know that Brittany Morgan is in jail right now?"

  "I know." The Captain made a face. "The girl's desperate. Or just plain crazy. We can't locate her parents and we can't release her without bail. How could the parents leave her in town on her own?"

  That was a good question, but Finn sympathized with Brittany's mother and father. The whole family needed a break. He redirected the Captain back to the subpoena request. "Don't you think we need to follow every lead in this case? Jimson is refusing to cooperate without a court order."

  "All you have is an anonymous tip about a Jimson car?"

  "And Charlie Wakefield working there."

&n
bsp; "Can you put Charlie together in Evansburg with a Jimson car at the right time?"

  Finn answered with a heavy sigh.

  "That's what I was afraid of." The Captain shook his head. "It's not going to be easy to get any judge to lean on Jimson Janitorial Service, because then some big state honcho is going to be leaning on that judge, you get me? Not to mention leaning on the local police captain. I'm sorry, but I'm not wading into that cesspool."

  The Captain turned away, flipped a page on his desk calendar as if dismissing Finn. "However," he said, his eyes still on the calendar page, "a new guy like you might be excused for his ignorance."

  Ah. He was going to have to go it alone.

  "Try Judge Sobriski," the Captain said softly. "He's new, too."

  "Thanks." Finn turned to leave.

  As he put his hand on the doorknob, the Captain's voice came from behind him. "Just so you understand, if you muck this up, you'll probably be headed back to your old job in Chicago."

  Finn turned. "There are no jobs in Chicago."

  "Then you'll just be unemployed."

  Now there was something to look forward to.

  "Go home, Detective. That's an order. Take the rest of the weekend to think it over. Your shift ended yesterday at five p.m."

  A reporter and cameraman were waiting for him at the back of the station. "No comment," Finn snarled as he walked down the steps.

  As he approached his car, a blue-jeaned youth stepped in front of him. "Detective Finn?"

  "No comment," Finn repeated.

  The youth shoved an envelope into Finn's hands. "You've been served," he said over his shoulder as he walked away.

  By the law firm's address on the front, Finn knew that he was holding divorce papers from Wendy. Stifling a curse, he tossed the envelope into his car and then slid in. The reporter and cameraman stood by his front bumper, filming. He honked at them and drove away.

  It never felt right to go home when he was working a missing person case. It was probably different if you had family, but all he had was the case he was working. And the animals that had taken over his house.

  Lok sat beneath the photo of Wendy and watched him expectantly. Finn recognized him now by a diagonal slash above one eye that gave him a skeptical expression. The cat swished his orange tail a couple of times.

  All animals communicate, Grace had said. Humans simply like to pretend they can't understand other species.

  Wishing it were a steel dart instead of a plastic toy, Finn picked up one of the wall walkers and lobbed it at Wendy's photo. It stuck on the glass over her left eye. Lok made a little chirping noise and watched the wall walker intently, swishing his tail. The suckers gave way and the toy began its slow crawl down the wall. The cat crouched and froze, his eyes glued to the toy. When the wall walker had completed its spastic descent to within a foot of the floor, Lok leapt up and batted it off the wall, snagged it with a claw in midair and pinned it to the ground. Picking the toy up in his mouth, the cat trotted over to Finn's feet, dropped the toy on the toe of his shoe, and then widened his green eyes.

  "Not again," Finn groaned. But he picked up the wall walker and tossed it again, nailing Wendy on the upper lip this time. Lok leapt after it. He gathered up the rest of the suction-footed toys and slammed them into Wendy's photo, one after another. Cheek. Forehead. Nose. Lok danced below in happy confusion.

  He took off his jacket and holster and laid his gun down on the dining room table, loosened his tie. Cargo waited for him in the kitchen, staring at the refrigerator as though he could will it to open. The other cat, Kee, sat on the counter and meowed.

  After putting down food for the animals, he changed his clothes, and then retired to his study and his sailboat painting. He squirted water on the little globs of paint in his palette partitions, squeezed a fair amount of burnt sienna into the center of the mixing area, and placed a large container of water on his desk. He picked up a brush and went to work on adding color to shadows in the billowing sails and in the Lake Michigan waves.

  Cargo padded in, wedged himself under the desk and lay across Finn's feet with a grunt. A cat—Kee, this time—jumped up on the desk and sat a few inches away, on top of the envelope of divorce papers. He switched his tail, watching Finn paint.

  "I suppose you're an art critic now?" The cat watched the brush as Finn mixed the paints on the palette.

  Gun cat dog man, a gorilla had named him. Or so Grace McKenna had told him. Unfortunately, the string of words pretty much summed up his life. There wasn't a lot more to add. Detective. Ex-husband. Sap. Amateur painter. Did Neema know signs for those as well as for cat and dog? He couldn't believe there were gorillas in his life now, too.

  Art soothes the mind, a psychologist once told him. Painting was a way to find serenity after a stressful day. The infinite array of colors entranced him. He had dozens of tubes of beautiful paints he had never opened, and every time he cracked a catalog, he wanted more.

  Did Neema and Gumu long for colors they had no way to ask for? What would Grace think if she knew that he painted as a hobby, just like her gorillas? Their artwork was already earning a minor fortune on E-bay. Hell, if a gorilla could do it, maybe he ought to give it a try. Might be a new career after he got fired from his current job. Then again, it would be humiliating as hell if nobody bid on his paintings.

  He couldn't believe his only witness on the Morgan case was a gorilla. His brain kept circling back to the details. Ivy was still missing. Brittany Morgan was in jail. Knock it off, Finn, he told himself. Forget work for a few hours. Enjoy your hobby.

  Kee's tail brushed across the manila envelope he sat on. Swish swish, swish swish. The divorce papers. Something else to forget for awhile.

  After adding dashes of crimson and cerulean, the sailboats began to appear three-dimensional. Finn held the paintbrush in the air, comparing the painting with the photo. The water was still too flat; if there was enough wind for racing, there'd be more movement to the water. He dipped his brush in a puddle of cerulean and touched the tip to the paper.

  Kee attacked, paws out to snag the paintbrush. Finn flung the cat away, caught the water container with his elbow and slopped a spray of water across the desk. Kee landed on the off-white carpet, hissing, and then dashed through the doorway to the living room, leaving a trail of blue and crimson paw prints. Cargo bolted to his feet, barking. Water trickled down the desk drawers to soak into Finn's pant legs.

  "Damn it!" Finn padded to the kitchen for a roll of paper towels. The painting could be salvaged, but he wasn't so sure about the carpet. He mopped up the water and emptied the container, dabbed at the paw prints with a folded paper towel.

  So much for serenity. His whole life seemed like a farce these days. God, he needed a drink. And someone to talk to.

  There was only one person he could think of. He shouldn't contact her. Then again, nobody knew about the connection between them. Heck, she wasn't on anybody's radar as far as he knew. She seemed lonely. And she was the only other human who understood the crazy situation he was in. He picked up the phone and called Grace McKenna.

  She was at his house by five, bearing a sack full of steaks, freshly made tabouli, bread, and red wine.

  The unusually hot streak of weather had finally broken, and it was bearable to be out under the October evening sun. Actually, it was quite nice in the backyard. He'd have to find a way to spend more time out here.

  After a quick perusal of the instruction manual, he fired up the grill like a pro. He found a long-handled fork in his mangle of kitchenware and slapped the steaks on the grill, sprinkling a little garlic salt and Worcestershire sauce on them. God only knew how long the sauce had been in the fridge, but he didn't think it could go bad.

  "Sit."

  He pivoted to see why Grace was giving him that order. She stood on the deck, holding a piece of dog food, her hand down at her side. Cargo stood in front of her on the lawn, his gaze fixed on her hand. A long string of drool stretched from his massive jaws
to the grass.

  Finn waited for the inevitable attack. Amazingly, Cargo lowered his hindquarters to the ground and transferred his attention to Grace's face, staring at her intently with shiny eyes. Aarrnnhh, he whined.

  "Good boy." Grace gave him the piece of kibble. "What a goof." She rubbed the dog's head.

  It was the exact same kibble that he poured into the beast's bowl every day. What made Cargo obey her for it? Probably the same thing that made Finn break out the grill when he usually nuked his own dinner.

  "What a nice dog." Grace made a fast two-handed slash motion, touched her hip and snapped her fingers softly. Cargo tilted his head, watching. Grace turned pink. "Oh lordy, I'm impossible! You can't take me anywhere." She clasped her hands together to keep them still.

  He laughed and picked up the bottle of Merlot. "More wine?"

  She picked up her glass from the deck and held it out for a refill. Sinking into a deck chair, Grace sighed contentedly as she put her feet up. "A night out. You have no idea what this means to me, Matt."

  Her comment sparked a little trill of electricity in his gut. Excitement, or fear? He flipped the steaks and studied her out of the corner of his eye. Obviously, she was pleased; did that mean she was attracted to him? She looked different tonight, scrubbed clean, her hair pinned back at the crown of her head, dressed in a green blouse and white slacks.

  She caught him inspecting her and raised a hand to cover the scar on her upper lip. Embarrassed, he turned back to the grill. He hoped she wasn't one of those needy middle-aged women seeking a husband. He wasn't ready to go down that road again, not by a long shot. He shouldn't even be having dinner with her.

  "Grace," he said.

  "Yes?" She smiled at him.

  "This isn't a date."

  Her smile faded and her eyes clouded. "Okay," she mumbled.

  Oh jeez, now he'd hurt her feelings. "I mean, it can't be. I'm a detective, and we're both involved in an open case."