Improbable Cause

by J. A. Jance

  "See there?" Rachel announced with a sharp glance in Al's direction. "She's here. I told you she was."

  He shook his massive head. "All that means is she signed in. She could have done that any time—yesterday or the day before, for that matter. There's no time clock, no way to check it. And it doesn't mean she's still here, either."

  "So where do we start?" I asked, wanting to begin the search before Big Al could think of another reason to call the whole thing off or bring in reinforcements.

  "The north meadow," Rachel answered. "That's where the tents are. Maybe she's helping set up for the dinner or the auction."

  Finding a lost person at the Woodland Park Zoo would be a tough assignment on any ordinary day, but on the day of the Jungle Party, it was a joke. The Jungle Party is an annual affair, the zoo's one big fling of a fundraiser. The place was a madhouse.

  Rachel left the building and set off in a bee-line for a huge white-and-yellow-striped tent that had been erected in a clearing northeast of the activities center. To one side of the main tent were two smaller ones.

  "They're for the silent auction," Rachel explained as we passed the smaller tents. "The big one is for the dinner and the live auction."

  The large tent must have been at least 150 feet long by 80 feet wide. One side and one end were open. A raised stage ran the length of the open side. On it auction items were being displayed. Behind the short closed end, a caterer's caravan of trucks was setting up shop.

  Inside the cavernous tent itself a small army of workers erected tables and covered them with brilliant wine red underskirting and plush white table linen. Tall stacks of wooden chairs with padded seats were scattered here and there around the area, waiting to be put in place once the tables were dressed. The end result looked far more like the huge dining room of a fine hotel rather than the interior of an outdoor tent.

  Rachel beckoned for us to follow her as she threaded her way through various groups of workers. Now and then she stopped to ask someone if they had seen Daisy. The answer was always negative. We searched through all three tents to no avail.

  "She must not be working on setup.” Rachel admitted at last.

  "So what now?" Al asked.

  "Keep looking.” I said. "Rachel, you lead the way."

  Big AI grunted an objection, but he trudged along behind me as I followed Rachel out of the last tent. We moved north and east, leaving in our wake the three tents and all their feverish activity.

  I have no idea how many people were at Woodland Park Zoo that afternoon. Hundreds for sure, maybe even thousands. It seemed like that many.

  Aside from the people directly involved in preparation for the banquet, the place was alive with Parks and Recreation personnel putting a spit-and-polish face-lift on the grounds for the mayor's annual obligatory visit. Add to that the regular zoo staff members plus a whole wad of uniformed docents. All told, it made quite a crowd before you got around to counting the ordinary zoo-viewing public.

  The zoo-viewing public is a world unto itself.

  By the middle of July, frantic mothers all over the city had finally realized just how long they had to hold out before being able to send their little darlings back to schools and teachers, where they belonged. Desperate to get their children out of the house, even at the cost of going out in the rain, mothers by the hundreds had flocked to the zoo with their broods that soggy afternoon.

  The animals were locked up. Believe me, they should have been grateful. Hordes of children, very few on leashes or under voice control, were running loose and tearing the place apart. They were everywhere at once— in, over, under, around, up, and down—playing tag and war and screaming at the tops of their lungs.

  Evidently, Big Al was thinking much the same thing. Two howling children darted between us and one of them landed squarely on his toe.

  "These goddamned kids are the ones who ought to be in cages," he fumed. It was a private exchange, meant for my ears only, but Rachel picked up on it.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. "We don't call them cages here," she chided. "They're exhibits."

  If the situation hadn't been so serious, it might have been comical. I had to take my hat off to whoever was in charge of docent training. It was brain washing of the first water since Rachel's docent background was still fully alive and functioning on automatic, despite the grim circumstances.

  It was four by the time Rachel led us past the bison, wolves, elk, and deer. As she walked, she continued to regale us with a running commentary on the animals and the zoo as well. Al was impatient and wanted to shut her up, but I understood and encouraged her with questions. The constant chatter was a reflex, a defense mechanism that allowed her to move through the process without thinking too much about exactly what we were doing. Or why we were doing it.

  It started misting as we passed the snow leopards and the feline house, making me painfully aware that my lightweight summer jacket was neither water- nor weatherproof. The rain was falling harder by the time we got to the bear grotto, and it turned into a wholesale downpour before we reached the gorillas.

  We were all soaked to the skin and Big Al was surly as hell by the time we reached the inside of the gorilla exhibit and huddled under the roofed-over part for shelter from the rain.

  "This is stupid," Al muttered. "We've walked all over hell and gone and still no sign of her. Aren't you ready to give up yet?"

  "No," Rachel insisted. "Please don't quit looking, not yet. I'm sure we'll find her."

  Al shook his head in disgust while I kept my mouth shut. He had slipped off a shoe and was standing balanced on one foot while he massaged the sole of the other.

  "What say we call in some troops now, Beau," he began. "That way we can at least get some coverage on the gates. Doing it this way doesn't make sense."

  I walked over to the glass window of the exhibit. The gorillas didn't like rain any more than we did. They had come into their part of the shelter and were busily tossing loose hay around, making nests for themselves, and playing with a scatter of burlap bags left for casual games of tug-of-war.

  One of them, a big male, looked up at me sadly, our eyes meeting through the steamy glass for several long seconds before he looked dispiritedly away. Al was right in principle. Bringing in more officers would ensure our finding Daisy Carmichael before she had a chance to slip through our fingers.

  But calling for reserves would bring a pack of reporters in their wake as well. We'd be doing our job under much the same kind of scrutiny as that in which these gorillas did. I hated it—for the gorillas, for me, and, most of all, for Daisy Carmichael.

  "No," I said, hearing the stubborn insistence in my own voice. "No reserves. We'll find her. Go home if you want to, Al, but I'm going to keep on looking. I'm going to look till I find her."

  Big Al sighed. He wasn't a quitter, at least not yet. He put his shoe back on and straightened up. "All right, all right. Where to now?"

  The rain let up finally and we set out walking again. Rachel seemed to be following some habitual route. By then it was after five. In addition to the families still lingering in the zoo we were beginning to see a few groups of evening-clad couples, people dressed in tuxedos and long dresses, the first arrivals eager to catch a behind-the-scenes tour.

  One lady, a wildly red-haired one, wore a lush fur draped over one shoulder. Considering she was a visiting a zoo, that struck me as particularly tacky.

  By six, Big Al was again ready to throw in the towel. We had made still another full circle of the grounds and were back by the zoo entrance when he stopped dead in his tracks.

  "I'm not taking another fucking step," he whispered to me. "My feet are killing me."

  "Go, then," I told him. "Take the car back to the department. I'll catch a bus home later."

  Without realizing we were no longer following her, Rachel had walked on ahead. Now she returned. "What's the matter?" she asked.

  "Detective Lindstrom has to leave," I said. "He's going to take the
car and go back downtown. Why don't you call home and check with George to see if by any chance Daisy has shown up there?"

  "That's the first sensible thing anybody has said for hours," Big Al grumbled. Rachel headed for the ARC to use the phone. "Are you sure you don't mind if I bail out on you?" Al asked.

  "Not at all," I told him. "Go. Molly's probably waiting dinner. I've got nothing better to do."

  Al was gone by the time Rachel returned.

  "George says there's been no sign of her," Rachel said.

  That didn't surprise me. Like Rachel, I was still convinced that Daisy was somewhere on the grounds, but unlike Rachel, I didn't have a good feeling about it.

  "Is there any animal here that's a particular favorite of hers?" I asked.

  Rachel puzzled that one for a moment or two. "Daisy likes the giraffes," she answered. "The giraffes and the elephants both."

  We had already visited both compounds several times, but what we had done so far wasn't working. "Tell you what," I said. "You've been walking all afternoon. Would you like to catch up with Al and have him give you a ride home?"

  She stood there looking up at me for several moments, her eyes searching my face.

  "What's going to happen to Daisy when we find her, Detective Beaumont? Will she have to go to prison?"

  "I don't know, Rachel," I said, shaking my head. "Sorry. That's up to the courts. I'm a detective, not a judge. But she'll be a hell of a lot better off if you and I find her first, before the department issues an All Points Bulletin."

  I let Rachel think that one over. Now that it was just the two of us searching, there was a fifty-fifty chance that she would be the one to find her. If that happened, if Rachel found Daisy first when I wasn't around, there was a good possibility she'd warn her, let her get away. Maybe that's really what I wanted. Maybe deep in the bottom of my subconscious that's what I hoped would happen.

  Rachel Miller met my gaze without blinking or looking away. "What do you want me to do?" she asked simply. She was in for the duration and so was I.

  "You go to the savanna and look for her there. I'll hang around the elephants. If you see her, come get me right away, understand?"

  "All right," Rachel said. She hurried away.

  Once she was gone, I straightened my shoulders and pulled in my gut. My feet hurt, too.

  I was just too damn stubborn to admit it.

  CHAPTER 23

  I love stakeouts in the movies. They usually happen on fashionable streets, preferably ones with sidewalk cafes and lots of beautiful women. The hero sits comfortably at a table, casually pretending to read a newspaper and looking unobtrusive. Invisible, even. If no sidewalk cafe happens to be in the script, the hero still reads a newspaper, leaning against a nearby building.

  This is unobtrusive? When's the last time you leaned against a building to read a newspaper?

  The logistics of my finding Daisy Carmichael in the Woodland Park Zoo were a little more complicated than a Hollywood version of a stakeout. For one thing, we both knew each other on sight. If I recognized her, she would recognize me.

  And was it better for me to stand in one place in hopes she would wander past, or should I mingle on the outskirts of the groups gathering for the Jungle Party? In the end, I did a combination of both.

  I developed a pattern. After making a slow circle around the elephant enclosure and passing the prairie dog compound, I'd saunter over to the north meadow, past the pony rides, and into the tents. Booze flowed freely at the party. Everybody knows that tipsy auction attendees spend way more money than cold sober ones do. I'd make one pass through each of the tents, then wander back to the elephant enclosure again.

  It was boring, lonesome, tedious work, especially since all those other people seemed to be having such a good time.

  Not only that, I don't like zoos. Never have. Walking around and around it by myself that night did nothing to change my opinion.

  When the kids were little, Karen thought taking Kelly and Scott to the zoo on a Saturday afternoon should have been top on my list of favorite fatherly pastimes. Except standing on one side of a set of iron bars looking at someone or something on the other side isn't my idea of a diversion. It reminds me too much of my job.

  And zoos make me claustrophobic. They are built like mazes with no panoramic viewpoints where you can see from one end to the other. They're designed so each little piece of habitat is separated from all the others by a discreet hedge or a wall of trees or a curtain of bamboo shoots. It may be good for the animals' sense of privacy, but it sure as hell doesn't help when you're a police officer looking for a lady who isn't especially interested in being found.

  By seven the rain had finally stopped, but the air was still moist and heavy, as though Mother Nature wasn't quite through with us yet. For probably the tenth time, I walked around to the back side of the elephant compound where a docent, not Daisy Carmichael, was giving a talk on elephants to a group of wide-eyed children.

  They gasped and pointed with delight as one by one, four elephants came out of the barn into the moat-encircled compound. Two of the four were fully grown while the other two were obviously much younger. The smaller ones bounded into a round, elephant-sized swimming pool, playing and floating there briefly, while excess water splashed over the edges in foot-high waves.

  One of the children broke away from the group and went scrambling toward the concrete fence. "I want to pet Dumbo," he called over his shoulder. "Here, Dumbo. Here, Dumbo."

  The docent grabbed the kid by one arm and hauled him off the fence. "You mustn't do that! Ever! Elephants are very, very dangerous. This exhibit is their home. They don't like strangers coming into it."

  "Dumbo wouldn't hurt me," the kid insisted tearfully. "I know he wouldn't. Anyway, if he tried to, I'd run."

  "Elephants can run lots faster than people can," the docent explained.

  "Even faster than grown-ups?" the little kid asked wonderingly.

  "Faster than grown-ups," the docent replied, nodding.

  Grasping the recalcitrant youngster by the hand, she led the group away, announcing firmly that it was time to go see the ponies.

  "Way to go!" I said to her as she walked past me. "You handled that like a champ."

  She smiled her thanks and kept on going, still holding tightly to the little boy's hand.

  Time passed—how long, I'm not sure. Off and on I heard a distant rumble of thunder, a promise of more rain to come. Rain is common in Seattle. Thunder and lightning aren't. The elephants responded to each rumble by raising their heads, flapping their ears, and swinging their gigantic trunks from side to side. The biggest one, an African elephant, stood a good ten feet high and must have weighed nine thousand pounds. She ruled the roost in that compound. The younger ones, once they came out of the pool, were careful to stay at a respectful distance.

  They moved with a peculiar, ponderous grace, the weight of their bodies landing on their toes as they walked. The smell of their bodies in the damp air was sharp and pungent.

  Several groups of well-dressed visitors came through and were invited inside the glassed-in part of the elephant enclosure. Painted on the concrete floor inside was a yellow line marked danger. The visitors were careful to stand well back behind the yellow line with their backs to the windows while the handlers stood in what seemed to be nonchalant poses with their backs to their charges. Careful examination, however, revealed metal-and-wood elephant hooks tucked under the keepers' arms.

  Each time a group came into the barn, the elephants would come in from outside, too, as if on command. It didn't take a Philadelphia lawyer to figure out why. At the end of each lecture, the keepers allowed the visitors to hand out carrots, passing them one at a time to the four eager, outstretched trunks that reached through the bars.

  It was getting later, but still there was no sign of Daisy. And the smell of the food from the caterer's trucks was tantalizing. I hadn't eaten all day. On my next pass through the party area, I stopped at the do
or of the large tent where a sweet young thing in a bright blue dress was collecting invitations and marking off names on a sheet of paper. I waited in line to talk with her.

  "Your invitation, please," she said, smiling up at me.

  "I don't have one," I said, flashing my badge. "I'm working security."

  "Oh," she said. "Okay. Go on in."

  I did. I wandered in and out of the tent at will after that, always nodding pleasantly to the same ticket taker as I did so.

  By now, most of the ordinary people had left the zoo. Only partygoers remained. At seven-thirty a gong sounded, signaling the end of the first silent auction. It was followed immediately by a clap of thunder. I was standing outside the elephant enclosure, watching. At the sound of the thunder, their heads and ears came up, their tails twitched. The pending storm made them nervous, agitated. As the rain started in earnest, they headed for the barn, and I followed suit, dashing for the main tent, not only to get in out of the rain, but also because I was starved.