The Only Witness

by Pamela Beason

  Finn flicked on the television in the corner of the room. Or maybe it was a computer. He had a hard time telling the difference these days. All he knew was that it received the major television channels and could play DVDs inserted into a slot on its side.

  The discovery of gorillas rampaging through the countryside had been the major news story of the year for the local station, and they were still determined to pump it for all it was worth. Last night the mayor and the county executive were on the local news.

  "First Detective Finn was after my son," Travis Wakefield had said to the reporter. "And now he's hanging out with gorilla keepers and trying to pin something on Jimson industries? Seems like the police department is 'winging it' instead of doing real police work these days."

  On the screen now was a young interviewer deep in obviously scripted conversation with a gray-suited guest identified as Dr. Neville Orburton in a label at the bottom of the picture.

  "It's called anthropomorphic fallacy," the guest said.

  The interviewer appeared fascinated by his statement. "Can you explain that for the rest of us, Dr. Orburton?"

  "Anthropomorphic fallacy means attributing human characteristics to animals. This has happened over and over again. There have been many cases where it seemed as though animals could understand language and respond, but it's always been proven that the animal was merely performing a trick in anticipation of getting a treat."

  "And how would that be tested?"

  "Well, there are many ways, but the easiest is this: if only the animal's usual handler can understand the animal's 'language' "—Orburton put the word in air quotes—"then it's not real language; it's an anthropomorphic fallacy."

  "The most famous case is Hans the Clever Horse. He was rumored to be capable of solving math problems and answering various questions, but eventually it became obvious that he was merely responding to his trainer's cues, not actually thinking on his own. The trainer didn't even realize he was giving the horse those cues. That's probably what is going on in Dr. McKenna's so-called language project, too."

  "So you believe that Dr. McKenna's research is suspect?"

  "I didn't say that. But I'm not so sure that Dr. McKenna can be considered a reliable witness. If she saw something that could help solve the disappearance of Ivy Rose Morgan, why did she wait until now to reveal it to the police?"

  "So you think her timing is suspect?"

  "It's my understanding that Dr. McKenna's research project is on the chopping block right now, and her job may be as well. Choosing to point the finger at a well-known figure like Reverend Jimson guarantees plenty of media coverage."

  The host leaned toward him. "You mean that Dr. McKenna might be doing this to gain public sympathy and support for her project?"

  Dr. Orburton tilted his head and gave the host a smug smile. "You never know."

  Finn snorted. The media obviously thought Grace was the witness who had fingered Jimson Janitorial Service. Wait until they found out that a gorilla had accused Jimson. But it might be a moot point if Grace didn't get Neema back.

  The door squeaked open, and he quickly flicked off the television, expecting Miki back from lunch break. Instead, catty Ms. Dvorak closed the door and then leaned against it. "I hear you've reached the dead end I predicted."

  Finn squeezed the television remote so hard it emitted a cracking sound. He relaxed his fingers. He walked to the table, picked up a printed page and handed it to her. "We are requesting detailed timesheets for the last six months on these employees."

  She scanned the page. "Timesheets were not spelled out in the subpoena."

  "Covered under employee records."

  "We'll see what the judge has to say about that," Dvorak replied primly.

  Finn had an urge to throw the remote at her. He made himself put it down on the table. "We will also need the names of all the people who had access to these vehicles, and the times at which they had access." He handed her the list of green Jimson-owned trucks and cars.

  "Definitely not covered by the subpoena." Her tone was icy. "I'll speak with our attorney, but I can guarantee you're not getting that data without another subpoena. I'm not sure we even keep vehicle checkout information." Without lifting her eyes from the pages in her hand, she turned and left the room.

  As soon as the door closed, Finn threw his hands into the air. "Bitch!"

  The door opened. Under her drawn-on eyebrows, Miki looked at him through thick mascara and eyeliner. "What?"

  "Nothing." He lowered his hands and shoved them into his pockets. "Talking to myself." He paced his well-worn route in front of the windows—seven steps between the squeaky tile and the wall in one direction, eight in the other. There had to be a way around the company's stall tactics. Snake arm baby go cucumber car… The green company car was the key.

  "Miki," he said. "Can you run the plates of all those green vehicles with Jimson logos against the court records database?"

  One painted eyebrow rose. "You mean, like for criminal traffic citations in Evansburg?"

  "Like for speeding tickets, accident reports, anything in Washington, Oregon or Idaho." Aside from parking tickets, any report of the vehicle should also carry information about the driver.

  She stared at the computer as if considering its capabilities. "That's not a typical query. I don't know if that can be done. I mean, the systems aren't even the same in those three states."

  Damn! Finn gritted his teeth. If the public knew how often criminal cases were shot down by lame computer systems, they'd lynch the software CEOs.

  "But Mason could probably figure out a way," Miki finished.

  By mid-afternoon, the gorillas had not shown up at the old homestead site. Grace's cell phone could not be revived. Could it be true? Were Neema and Gumu the two large animal 'lumps' reported on the news last night? Her gorillas didn't understand what a highway was, and they certainly couldn't anticipate the consequences of running out in front of a semi. How could she ever forgive herself?

  Grace spent the morning combing the woods around the clearing, but there were no signs or sounds of apes. Her heart felt like a lead weight in her chest, and she struggled to keep her voice from cracking. "Neema! Gumu! Candy! Banana!"

  Brittany had strolled and shouted with her first thing in the morning, but now the girl was so depressed that she sat cross-legged on the damp ground, staring at nothing. Grace didn't want to know what she was thinking. Now she was afraid to take Brittany home, too. This outing had certainly done nothing to lift the poor child's spirits.

  "C'mon, Britt," Grace said, holding out a hand. "Let's head back. We've got to hustle if we want to make it before dark." She pulled the girl from the ground, watched as she shrugged on her shredded backpack, and then they began to walk in the direction her GPS device indicated.

  Grace struggled not to cry in front of Brittany. If Neema and Gumu were dead, she'd lost everything. Her two gorilla children, her credibility, her career. Maybe even her own reason for living. She was beginning to empathize with the sullen teenager walking behind her. Damn. She picked up the pace, lifted her chin, and bellowed, "Banana! Candy!"

  "Give it up," Brittany grumbled.

  "I'm not giving up until I know the situation is hopeless," Grace said. "Are you telling me you've given up on Ivy?"

  The girl shot her a look filled with rage. Brittany ducked her head and walked ahead a few steps before she stopped and yelled, "Neema! Yogurt!"

  Brittany was pissed off. They'd hiked all this way and slept out in the cold among piles of gorilla poop for nothing. Absolutely nothing. The gorillas were long gone. "Candy!" she yelled. "Bananas!"

  "Gumu! Neema!" Grace yelled. The only other sounds were the thuds of their footsteps and the rustle of their clothing as they moved through the woods.

  Grace had heard something awful over the phone last night. She wasn’t sharing, but her face was all stiff and it looked like she might burst into tears any second. Maybe the gorillas were dead and Grace was
going to pretend everything was all sweetness and light until they got back to town. And nothing would change. Ivy would still be gone, she'd still be the town baby killer, her parents would still treat her like a psycho. If Grace was pretending, maybe her parents were, too? Did they know things they hadn't told her?

  A low grunt sounded from the woods behind her, and she stopped and pivoted to look back. Nothing but trees, as far as she could see. She walked another fifty steps before there was another sound…

  "Do you hear that?" she asked Grace.

  The noise was a rhythmic rumbling wheeze, like a racehorse running for the finish line. Something big, running hard. Getting louder. Coming their way.

  Grace looked uptight, like she couldn't decide whether to be scared or happy or angry. "I think we'd better run," she said. And then she took off, leaving Brittany no choice but to gallop after her.

  "What is it?" Brittany gasped, pounding behind Grace. A moose, a grizzly—were there grizzlies this far south of the Canadian border?

  Grace didn't answer, just kept dashing between trees, her GPS tracker held out in front of her as she ran. Brittany glanced back over her shoulder. Two dark hulking shapes were following, huge black shadows blurred among the trees in the distance. The wheezing was getting louder. She ran faster, catching up with Grace.

  Grace looked back over her shoulder. "Gorillas," she panted, an odd sort of half-smile on her face.

  The huffing noises were right behind them now. "Why … are we … running?" Brittany struggled to get the words out between breaths.

  In the next second, her question was answered. She was struck from behind, and went down hard. She screamed. She couldn't help it. The gigantic gorilla rolled over her, but one of his monster hands was clasped around her ankle.

  He grabbed her backpack with the other hand. She couldn't get the shoulder straps off, and he was pulling a big hank of her hair in one giant black hand. What was next? Would he rip her head off, or sink those fangs into her neck? She shrieked again. The gorilla jumped back when she screamed, and she scrambled to her feet, pivoting to face him. He rose onto his hind feet and thumped his chest—pock, pock, pock—and bared his teeth like an enraged Doberman. Then he rushed toward her.

  "Gumu, no!" Grace shouted, stepping between them to confront him. He rushed past and flung himself into Brittany. She screamed again and collapsed in a heap, the gorilla hovering over her. Gumu grabbed the backpack, wrenched it from her shoulders, and retreated to a safe distance. Neema was sitting on the sidelines, whimpering and gesturing wildly, but now she followed Gumu.

  Grace held out a hand and helped her up. "You okay?"

  Brittany could feel tears sliding over her cheeks. She didn't want to be a wimp, but she was starving, her feet hurt, and now half of her hair had been ripped out of her head, and she was lost in the woods with violent apes and a crazy woman. "Aren't they supposed to be tame? Are they going to kill us?"

  Grace pulled her ahead, dragging her by the hand; they stumbled away from the gorillas. "They won't kill us," she said, although she sounded none too sure. "They're only hungry, and Gumu is not very well behaved."

  "No shit." Brittany rubbed her left shoulder.

  "I've still got food in my pack, so let's hustle. They'll follow." Grace took off again, jogging through the woods, checking her GPS as she ran. Brittany tried to keep up. Running in hiking boots was hard. "I can't…run…anymore," she shouted at Grace's back.

  Grace glanced back, looking beyond Brittany. "You can."

  A tree limb cracked behind Brittany, and she started running again. She was afraid to look back. The crashes and heavy breathing were right behind her. She ran for all she was worth, expecting to be attacked from behind at any moment.

  After what seemed like forever, they stumbled out onto the gravel road and dashed downhill to Grace's van.

  Grace rushed to unlock the doors. "Get in," she yelled, pointing to the passenger side. The gorillas were loping on all fours, coming up fast. Grace slid open the side door, shrugged off her pack, opened the flap, pulled out a bunch of bananas and a loaf of bread and tossed them inside. Huffing loudly, the gorillas leapt in, rocking the van with their weight.

  Grace slammed the sliding door shut and dashed to the driver's seat, started the engine. She pulled the gearshift, which waggled a little but refused to move from neutral. "Goddamn it," Grace growled. "Not now." She released the parking brake and the van rolled downhill as she continued to jerk at the gearshift. Grinding noises came from somewhere under the front seats.

  The van was picking up speed on the downward slope. They bounced into a chuckhole and out again. Grace continued to swear. Brittany's foot stomped a nonexistent brake on the passenger side. Were the brakes in this heap of junk better than the transmission? Was she going to die in a rollover accident, smashed in a van sandwich with two gorillas?

  Finally there was a clunk, the gearshift slid into a better spot, and Grace raced ahead in a spray of gravel.

  Brittany watched the gorillas anxiously in the tiny mirror on the back of the passenger visor. They were huddled on the floor, stuffing their faces with food. Why wasn't there a wire grill between the front seats and the back of this van, like cops had for prisoners? And she'd thought her Civic wasn't safe.

  "They'll settle down now." The way Grace said it sounded more like a wish than a statement, but she was smiling as she watched Neema and Gumu in the rearview mirror. Grace held up her right hand. "We got 'em, Brittany! Hundreds of searchers couldn't do it. But the two of us found them and we're bringing them home!"

  Put that way, it did sound pretty heroic, so she clapped her left hand to Grace's in an awkward high five.

  "We're champion gorilla wranglers!" Grace laughed.

  Brittany tried to sit up straight in the bouncing van, but she kept sliding around on the slippery vinyl seat and the belt kept getting tighter and digging into her sore shoulder. She dug her fingers into her tangled hair, attempting to straighten out the snarls. Gorilla wrangler. She couldn't wait to tell the Sluts at school. But her cell phone was gone for good, out there somewhere in the woods. The second one she'd lost in less than a year.

  Grace startled her by saying, "I'll get you a new cell phone."

  So they'd found the gorillas; that was something. But when would they get to the 'finding Ivy' part of this adventure? That was the whole reason she'd come.

  Grace's hand landed lightly on Brittany's left shoulder. "I promise that Neema and I will do our best to help find your baby girl."

  Apparently Grace could read minds as well as talk to gorillas.

  Brittany pulled down the visor and checked the mirror on the back. Big mistake. That dark streak in her hair better not be gorilla poop. She'd lost an earring somewhere. Over her shoulder, she saw a set of red-brown eyes watching her. Neema had buckled herself into a seat belt in the seat behind Brittany's; now that was a freakin' weird thing to see. One of Gumu's hands—or were they called paws?—clutched the back of Neema's seat. Brittany shifted the visor, and now she could see that the male gorilla was sitting on the floor in the cargo area, clutching the backs of both seats in front of him.

  Grace hit a washboard of ruts. Brittany grabbed the panic handle over her door. In the mirror, she could see the whites of both gorillas' eyes. This ride couldn't be over soon enough. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine how this would all lead to holding her baby in her arms again. Ivy, you're never going to believe this…

  A forest of signs had sprouted overnight at the junction of her driveway and the highway. Save People, Not Apes. We Did NOT Descend From Monkeys. Where's Ivy? There might as well be a neon sign flashing Gorillas This Way, Grace thought grimly. She wondered how Matt was coping. An egg-shaped Honda Insight was parked outside of the gate at the shoulder of the road. That didn't bode well. Grace made Brittany unlock the gate, and after she drove through, lock it again behind them.

  The yard was empty when she drove in, but three strangers lounged on the picnic table.
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  Grace slammed the van to a stop as close as possible to the barn enclosure, and she and Brittany jumped out. "Stay here," she told the girl. She strode toward the strangers. "You're trespassing."

  A boy stood up. Or maybe he was a man. The black goatee made it hard to tell. "We know, dude," he said. "But there's no other way to get to you."

  The two girls rose. Each had an eyebrow ring, and a silver nose stud gleamed from the flank of one girl's nostril. With their jeans and tee shirts and pierced faces, the three might have been college students from some institution far more liberal than the Evansburg college.

  Thankfully, there were no cameras in sight, and the strangers' clothing didn't look like they were concealing weapons. At least not weapons of any size. But there were three of them and one of her, and she couldn't count on Brittany for help; the poor girl was terrified of Neema and Gumu. Brittany stood outside the van now, staring at the gorillas inside. The girl with the nose stud walked toward her.

  Gumu pounded on the sides of the van, sounding like he had a sledgehammer. Bam! Bam! Bam! He'd break a window any second now. And then what—run back into the woods?

  "Do NOT open that door!" Grace shouted at Brittany and Nose Stud.

  The pounding continued, and now she could hear pock-pock sounds of Gumu beating his chest, and Neema's hoots of alarm. How in the hell was she going to get two out-of-control gorillas from the van into the pen by herself? Why couldn't Josh have been home?

  "Hey," the studded girl shouted. "This gorilla just signed milk." She gestured toward the van, signing friend.

  Grace's jaw dropped. She turned toward the man/boy.

  "Why did you want to 'get to me'?" she asked.

  He grinned, stretching the skin of his lower lip tight beneath a lip ring. "To help, of course," he said. "Jon Zyrnek, Animal Rights Union." He held out a dirty hand. Then again, it was cleaner than hers. And he was offering help, so she put her hand into his.