THE ONLY WITNESS: A Mystery/Suspense Novel

by Pamela Beason

  * * * * * *

  Two hours later, Finn gawked at the scene at Grace's compound. On the other side of the fence, next to the barn, the two gorillas were—unbelievably—painting. Neema's canvas was perched on an easel, and the other, larger gorilla sat on the ground with his canvas between his feet. Or were they hands? Gorilla feet looked like hands, with opposable thumbs and nails on all digits.

  Grace and a young black man guarded buckets filled with bright colors of paint. At the moment, both humans and gorillas studied Finn through the wire mesh.

  Apes painting. Who would believe it? "I suppose they write poetry in their spare time," he said.

  "Only during the winter months," the black man replied.

  "Should I come in?" Finn moved toward the gate.

  "No!" Grace yelped. "I mean, stay out there, please. Gumu's not well socialized; he can be unpredictable."

  The black man said, "I can be unpredictable, too."

  Grace made a noise in the back of her throat, then said, "Detective Matthew Finn, this is my colleague, Josh LaDyne. And the other big male is Gumu."

  "Dr. McKenna sometimes finds it difficult to tell us apart," LaDyne told Finn.

  Grace gave LaDyne an exasperated look. Finn laughed and nodded in LaDyne's direction. "Glad to meet you."

  Grace gestured to the gorillas, a sign that mimicked painting with a brush. Neema and Gumu focused on their canvases again. Finn had thought that Neema was big, but Gumu was nearly twice her size. LaDyne hovered near the giant male but remained out of the gorilla's reach. What exactly did 'not well socialized' mean? Was 'unpredictable' code for violent? As in At any second, Gumu might decide your head would make a great beach ball?

  The gargantuan beast did not appear in the least violent now. Gumu sat, butt against the ground, gripping his canvas from the sides with his fingerlike toes. He reached up to the small table beside Grace and dipped a wide paintbrush into a pail of fuchsia paint. Finn moved around to the side of the pen to view the big gorilla's painting. Gumu froze, paintbrush held in the air. His eyes followed Finn until he stopped outside the fence. After a moment, Gumu added two delicate pink flourishes to his canvas, which was crisscrossed with bold strokes of yellows and greens. Then he sat with his paintbrush held between his teeth for a moment, studying his artwork. His fierce overhanging brow and neckless hunched posture made it difficult to tell if he was pleased or disappointed with his painting.

  Fascinating. These apes painted as well as most students in the abstract workshop Finn had taken. What that said about abstract painting or the students, he couldn't decide.

  "We're almost done here," Grace told him, hooking her fingers in the fence mesh. "Then we'll take Neema inside."

  Balancing on one knuckle with paintbrush poised in front of a low easel, Neema's painting method appeared more traditional, but the results were not. Her canvas bore a block of green with two hook-shaped swishes of purple near one corner, an undulating streak of blue, and a blotch of orange floating in space.

  The whole scene was surreal. "Mind if I take a photo or two?" he asked Grace.

  "I guess that would be okay, as long as you don't plan to advertise our location."

  Finn removed the camera from his pocket and snapped three photos from different angles. Who would believe this? Gorilla artists. He expected at any moment that one or both animals would gulp down a bucket of paint or start slinging it around the pen. "Do they know what they're doing?" he asked.

  "Probably as much as most artists," LaDyne said. Then he stepped toward Gumu's painting. "What's that, Gumu?" he asked, pointing and gesturing.

  The male gorilla gestured quickly toward his nose with a monstrous hand.

  "Flower," Finn said simultaneously with LaDyne. Incredible. He had just understood a gorilla sign.

  "We're putting these paintings up for sale on E-bay," Grace said. "Maybe I can ransom Neema and Gumu from the University."

  "The University won't consider the paintings their property?" Like an employee's work, Finn reasoned.

  Grace held a finger in front of her lips in a hush sign. Then she said, "The hell with the University. I am not letting Neema and Gumu go to auction, even if I have to smuggle them to Mexico."

  "I didn't hear that," Finn said. He'd hate to have to testify against her in court. "Who knew gorillas could paint?"

  "Neema's been painting for years; Gumu, about six months," Grace told him. "E-bay was Josh's brilliant idea. We sold three of Neema's old paintings there just yesterday, made seventeen hundred bucks."

  "The buyers know the paintings were created by gorillas?" Finn asked.

  "We include a DVD of the artists at work." LaDyne pointed to his left, where a video camera was strapped to the fence.

  Gumu let his canvas fall to the ground at his feet and plopped the fuchsia paintbrush back into the matching pail. Then the gorilla dipped a finger in a pail of red, sat back and painted scarlet dots on his toes. Neema scooted over, purple paintbrush between her teeth, to assist in Gumu's self-decoration.

  "And the artists, easily bored with traditional canvas, turn to new media." LaDyne stepped to the fence and switched off the camera.

  "We're done here." Grace hurriedly grabbed the two paintings and moved them out of harm's way. As she walked toward the paint pails, the gorillas made rapid huffing noises that escalated into shrieks as Neema chased Gumu up into the suspended netting, paintbrush still clutched in one hairy black hand.

  Grace unlatched the gate and handed the paintings out to Finn. Above them, the gorillas tumbled in the netting, cackling like hyenas. They bounded from one spot to the next almost as easily as his cats.

  "The big guy's going to be purple from head to foot," Finn observed.

  Grace handed a pail of paintbrushes out through the gate, saying, "Thank god acrylic paint washes off gorilla fur with soap and water."

  "They take baths?"

  "They like to spray each other with the hose," LaDyne said. "It's not pretty." He shoved buckets of paint and the easel through the opening.

  After Grace carefully padlocked the gate, they carried the paintings and supplies to a storeroom, where LaDyne dumped surplus paint into large plastic jugs while Grace cleaned the paints and brushes.

  Finn studied the wet canvasses propped against the wall. "Speaking as a fan of impressionism, I can see the flowers in Gumu's painting." He moved to the other. "But what the heck is Neema's supposed to be?"

  "I'm surprised you don't recognize it, Detective," Grace said. "It's Neema's rendition of the kidnapping."

  "Seriously?" Now that she had said that, he could see a blue snake streak, a green block that might represent a car. The orange blob—Ivy's strawberry-blonde hair? "Did you ask her to paint this?"

  "No. But I told Neema you were coming again to talk to her about the baby and the snake arm man."

  "So it was on her mind." It was disturbing to think that gorillas could dredge up memories at will. The intelligence of five-year-old children, he reminded himself. It was a hard fact to wrap his head around.

  Wiping her hands on a towel, Grace came to stand beside him, facing Neema's painting. "Yes, she was obviously thinking about it."

  LaDyne joined them.

  The crude splotches of green and purple and orange on the canvas were haunting. Or was that just his imagination because he knew what they represented? "Okay if I get this image on film?" he asked.

  Grace nodded, and he pulled out his camera again and shot a few frames of the painting, zooming in on different parts.

  They went back to the outdoor enclosure and stood for a minute outside the fence, watching the apes play in the hot afternoon sun. They'd stopped shrieking, but were still rolling around in the netting, cackling and grabbing each other and making huh-huh-huh sounds. If they'd been kids, Finn would have said they were tickling each other.

  Grace said, "Now Josh is going to clean up Gumu and give him his signing lesson while we interview Neema."

  "How are you ever going to
get them in?" Finn shielded his eyes with his hand to watch the gorillas frolicking above them.

  Grace stepped toward the fence. "That's easy."

  "Snack time," LaDyne said in a low voice.

  The two gorillas instantly stopped rolling, sat upright, and turned to watch them. Gumu made a sign like he was peeling a banana. Neema put her fingers to her lips over and over in a gesture that clearly had something to do with eating.

  Grace smiled. "See? When it comes to food, gorillas hear as well as bats."

  A half hour later, after watching the gorillas consume an odd variety of vegetables and muffins, Finn, Grace, and Neema were inside the study trailer where he'd first met Neema. He announced the time and parties present for his digital camcorder, then set it on the table in the corner of the room to capture the interview. He sat on the couch facing the gorilla, slightly more relaxed than he had been the last time. He trusted Grace, if not Neema.

  The gorilla's red-brown gaze scoured his face. Up close, Neema seemed like King Kong, so massive and powerful that it was hard to remember she was female.

  "When did you see this girl?" Finn used his right hand to point to the photo of Brittany Morgan that he held up against his left shoulder so the camera could film it. He couldn't make himself stop speaking louder and more slowly than usual, as if he was talking to someone hard of hearing.

  Neema stretched out one of her giant black fingers and touched the photo. For some reason it bothered him that she had humanlike fingernails. She flipped both hands at him as if telling him to go away, and then sat there, looking him in the eye. Finn turned to Grace.

  "Store," Grace interpreted.

  "But the question was 'when.' On what day?"

  "Gorillas don't watch calendars, Matt."

  Neema's hands flashed. She touched her own chin and stabbed the air in front of her. Next she made several odd motions with both hands.

  "Hot banana store red soft tail," Grace translated.

  Finn groaned.

  "She means that it was hot that day that we went to the store for bananas, when she saw the girl with the red ponytail," Grace said.

  "Of course she does." That translation would never stand up in court. He thumbed through the photos he brought, searching for Ivy's picture. Neema continued to wave her hands.

  "Store candy candy coke banana yogurt. She's listing all the things she likes to get from the store."

  Great. He pulled out the photo of Ivy and faced Neema again. "Did you see this baby?"

  Beside him, Grace signed. Neema gestured in response and then scooted away.

  "Baby baby go glove hot snake arm." She turned toward Finn. "The very idea of snakes upsets her."

  Neema hooted softly and repeated a motion that looked vaguely like a snake striking and then stirred her hands around some more.

  "Snake skin bracelet snake bad arm baby cry go."

  "Where did the baby go?" Finn enunciated loudly, staring into the gorilla's massive face.

  Neema knuckled her way to the window and stared out through the glass.

  "She's not deaf. Don't yell at her."

  "Sorry." He shifted in his seat, tried to relax the knot between his shoulder blades. "This is a little weird for me."

  Neema glanced over her shoulder at them. Her mouth opened in a yawn, showing two-inch long canine teeth.

  "Ye gods," Finn said.

  "You should see Gumu's." Grace got up, grabbed Neema by the hand and led her back to sit in front of Finn. "Deep breath, both of you. Start again."

  "Where did the baby go?" he repeated more softly to the monstrous ape face in front of him.

  "Baby baby snake arm cry cucumber car go."

  "Which means?" he pleaded. He needed some sensible language recorded on the videotape.

  "Snake arm made the baby cry and took her to a green car."

  "Who is Snake Arm?"

  "Snake arm gorilla?" Grace asked, signing simultaneously.

  Neema hooted again and waved her arms and pounded on her chest.

  "Me fine gorilla."

  Neema suddenly swung her bulk toward Finn, stopping only inches away. She swung her gigantic head forward and sniffed before she stirred the air with signs. "Dog cat gun man," Grace said.

  Oh good. Now that was on the tape, too.

  Grace repeated the question, "Snake arm gorilla?" Neema twirled in a circle and gestured. "Snake arm bad man."

  Finn held up a photo of a forearm adorned by a silver snake bracelet, hoping Neema would not notice the arm was female. "This Snake Arm?" Shit, now he was starting to talk like Tarzan, too. He rephrased. "Does this look like Snake Arm?" The gorilla ignored him. He held out an enlargement of the zigzag lightning design on Charlie's track team uniform. "Snake Arm?" he repeated.

  Neema made a snake gesture, abruptly shrieked and bounded on all fours for the corner, tipped over the easy chair, then galloped in a circle around the room. Finn bolted up from his seat. Grace grabbed a handful of his sleeve and jerked. "Down!"

  He sat. Grace plopped down beside him on the couch and they sat stiffly side by side. Neema ended her tirade perched on top of the toppled chair, hugging herself and hooting.

  "Sorry," Grace said, relaxing. "But the calmer the humans stay, the quicker the tantrum ends. You do not want to wrestle with a gorilla; it's no competition, believe me. They hit, throw feces, and even worse—they bite when they're really upset."

  Finn blanched, remembering the canines Neema displayed in her yawn. The gorilla had tossed the chair as if it weighed a few ounces instead of forty pounds. He hoped he'd never witness the creature in a full-blown hissy fit.

  "Was it the last photo?" he asked Grace. If Neema had recognized the lightning design from Charlie's track uniform, maybe he was really onto something here. "Did she recognize the picture?"

  Grace grimaced. "Hard to say. I think she's just had enough for now. Too many S-N-A-K-E-S in this line of questioning."

  Neema signed something that made Grace laugh. "She wants a drink. Care to join us in some orange juice?"

  "Uh, let's turn off the videotape first, okay?" He reached for the camcorder. "Detective Matthew Finn, two forty-five p.m., interview ending now." He stuck it into his pocket.

  This had probably been a complete waste of time.

  Chapter 16

  Ten days after Ivy disappears

  There was a new case on Finn's desk when he came in to work.

  "Sorry," the sergeant told him. "I know you're still working the Morgan case, but the jobs have been stacking up in the last week. I'm dividing them up four ways."

  It was actually a relief to focus on the more straightforward investigation of a drug theft from a clinic. Finn rushed to get there before the clinic opened for patients. The female manager walked him through the building. Besides the two of them, at this hour only a nurse assistant and a janitor were present. The nurse assistant was setting up examination rooms, and the janitor—a young black man in the now familiar Jimson Janitorial coverall—was cleaning bathrooms.

  According to the manager, there were no signs of a break-in after hours. They kept the drugs in an always-locked room, and only three people had a key to that room: herself and the two lead nurses.

  "Those keys will be the connection," Finn remarked, to her dismay. He'd seen this many times; it was amazing how careless people tended to be with keys. They worked out a schedule for Finn to interview all clinic staff on their breaks over the coming few days.

  "That's it." The manager raised her face from her computer screen. "All fourteen of us."

  Finn asked, "And the janitor's name?"

  She blinked at him, surprised. "His uniform said Marc, didn't it?"

  Finn had noticed that the coverall had Marc embroidered on the chest pocket. Didn't necessarily mean that the man inside was named Marc. "So you don't know him?"

  "I recognize him; I know he works here. Jimson doesn't always send the same ones."

  "They have keys to the clinic?"

  "Of c
ourse—they need to get in after hours. But none of them have keys to the drug room." She frowned. "You don't think—?"

  "He's probably not your thief, but I need all the janitors' names to account for everyone."

  Unfortunately, the janitor had left, according to the nurse assistant.

  "He went out the back door only a second or two ago." She pointed.

  Finn rushed out the back door in time to see a white van pulling out of the lot. It had a Jimson Janitorial sign on the back with distinctive purple mops forming the Js.

  The manager joined him on the asphalt. "I'll call Jimson and get the names of all the janitors assigned to us."

  Four cars drove into the parking lot, one after the other.

  The manager glanced at her watch. "We open in ten minutes. See you at one-thirty, right?"

  That was his first scheduled interview with a lead nurse. "Right."

  He walked to his car. Something about the disappearing Jimson Janitorial van was bugging him. No, it wasn't the van itself; it was the sign on the back of it. The dancing purple-handled J-shaped mops. Whimsical. Memorable. Distinctive.

  Where had he seen that sign before?

  Wait. Did he remember correctly? He opened his trunk and pulled out his camera, clicked back through the still photos. There. Neema's painting. The green blob—the 'cucumber car.' And in the lower right corner of the green blob, two side-by-side purple J-shaped swishes. He swallowed hard, staring at them, tamping down a surge of excitement. Stay calm, he told himself. Stay analytical. There were no other repeated patterns in Neema's art. Two purple J shapes. On the 'cucumber car.' The odds against this being a coincidence were astronomical. Weren't they?

  Finn slid into his car, found the address of Jimson Janitorial Service with the locator app on his phone, and turned on the engine.

  The branch office of Jimson Janitorial Service was a nondescript one-story brick building that looked as if it had been a car repair shop or a gas station in a previous life. The gravel parking lot held only a white Ford van and two cars, a scratched up blue Chevy and a silver Nissan. Only the van had a company sign on the back door featuring the dancing mops of Jimson Janitorial Service. Finn pulled out his camera, squatted on his heels, zoomed in and took a photo of the sign.