Gone Wild (Thorn Series Book 4)

by James W. Hall

  She looked around the room again, this time fixing her gaze on Allison. Holding her with such fury that Allison could not endure it and looked away. When she looked back, Sean had turned and was on her way out of the church.

  Allison stood and struggled past Harry's knees, hobbling into the aisle, her ankle throbbing. She watched Sean march away, then she swung around to face the minister.

  He sighed heavily.

  "And you have something to add, Mrs. Farleigh?"

  "Yes."

  She heard Harry groan, and looked over. He'd bowed his head, covered his eyes with his right hand, a prayer to the god of professional embarrassment.

  "I know who did this thing," she said. She heard a few gasps, the stir and muted babble of voice. "From the moment Winslow was shot, I've known. And I'm not waiting another second. I'm going after the son of a bitch."

  Allison glanced again at Harry. He was staring at her, unblinking, mouth sagging. She turned and limped after Sean, out toward the November light. Behind her the minister was trying to carry on with his benediction over the murmuring of the congregation.

  ***

  Normally the orangutan slept from sundown to sunup. Every night in the jungle its mother made a new nest of branches and leaves. She even formed a primitive roof because orangutans disliked being wet. Her young son clung to her as she snapped branches loose and formed the fronds and twigs into a soft bed.

  When it was dark they slept together. The young male was usually restless for a while, climbing up and down his mother's body, inspecting it, familiarizing himself with her strong toes, her long, hairy legs, her crotch full of rich smells.

  When he finally grew sleepy, he would nestle close to her head. He had learned that if he slept at her breast she might turn over in the night and lay her weight uncomfortably against him. But near her head he was safe from her sleep movements. His mother used him as her pillow.

  Usually when the sun rose, the two of them opened their eyes and lay around for another hour or so waking up. With the sun well over the horizon, his mother would begin foraging for food. This hunt would last all day. Sunup, rise. Sundown, sleep. A leisurely life, simple.

  But since the men had taken him on the river and across the bumpy water by boat and put him in a cage with all the birds in other cages, and then the long, cold ride in the airplane, and then the new metal cage with the straw floor, where hardly any sunlight came through the windows, the orangutan with the silver streak was confused.

  He no longer knew when to sleep or when to rise. He was always tired, always restless. He felt as he sometimes had when first rising with his mother, irritable, drowsy. Only now he felt this way all the time. Not hungry either, but weak from lack of food. Not thirsty, but his mouth and lips were cracking.

  The ape lay in his straw, neither fully awake nor able to sleep. He looked out of his cage, up at the light through the windows. The sun was no longer where he was, shining only through those few bright squares. Outside, inside. Something new. Something he was learning about. The sun outside, the orangutan inside.

  He played with the straw, lifted up a handful, let it fall on his belly. Lifted another handful, let it fall on his belly. Burying himself in straw. Deeper and deeper till it was nearly dark. Trying to sleep in that dark, but unable to.

  CHAPTER 7

  Allison came to a halt in the red marble lobby of the Crandon Building. There was a long line of businessmen waiting to give their names to the check-in guard. Allison listened to the protocol. A phone call upstairs for each visitor. Mr. Jones to see Mrs. Smith. Yes, Mr. Jones is harmless, he can come up. The security guard scribbles Jones's name on a lapel badge and away he goes. Two dozen aggravated people in front of her. Easily a twenty-minute delay.

  She hesitated for a moment at the end of the line, then headed for the front. A heavyset bald man in a blue pin-striped suit was just peeling away from the desk, sticking his badge in place beneath a red silk pocket kerchief. Allison slid her arm through his.

  The large man turned his head and looked her over. He was in his middle forties, maybe a year or two older than Allison.

  "I know you?"

  "Sure," she said, and nudged him toward the narrow lane of the security checkpoint, a chrome turnstile. "Chicago, last spring. That little bar on Michigan Avenue."

  "Never been to Chicago in my life."

  "New York then," she said. "West Village. Bleecker and MacDougal. That little bar."

  She almost choked on the fumes of his bitter aftershave.

  "I been to New York exactly twice," he said. Dubious, but moving ahead. "And I sure don't remember you."

  "You were drinking," Allison said. "Budweiser, I believe."

  "I do drink Bud." The man looked at her, his smile at half-mast, not sure what brand of joke this was. Whether he was in on it or the butt of it.

  Moving closer to the checkpoint, arm in arm, an awkward dance.

  "How come you never called me again? Like you said you were going to do."

  Allison had the sudden urge to bat her eyes, but fought it off. The security guard watched them approach. She tightened her grip on the man's arm, snuggled in. The man took another careful look at her, then smiled to himself.

  "I guess I must've lost your phone number," the man said. "I'm pretty damn sure I would've called if I'd had it."

  "I've got a new one now anyway."

  The guard nodded at them as they passed through the turnstile, Allison first, her escort following.

  "She's with me," the man said, and the guard nodded.

  As they approached the elevator, Allison said, "What floor are you going to?"

  "Twenty."

  Safer now, on the inside, but with two beefy security men standing within earshot, arms crossed, watching them.

  "I'm going to twenty-five," Allison said.

  "Well, maybe I should just check out twenty-five too. We can talk some more about old times."

  He pulled his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and dabbed at the sweat growing on his forehead.

  "What kind of business you doing here?" the man said.

  They waited for the elevator to arrive.

  Allison turned to him, stepped close.

  "My daughter was murdered in the jungles of Borneo. Right now I'm headed upstairs to confront the man who did it. He's an animal dealer."

  The elevator arrived and Allison stepped aboard.

  "Aren't you coming?" she said.

  "I'll wait for the next one," the man said.

  Allison nodded at him as the doors closed.

  ***

  Joshua Bond's company, International Primates, had a suite on the twenty-fifth floor, just down the hall from the offices of Roy Rothstein, the attorney who'd been suing Allison on behalf of Bond for the last three years.

  Tortuous interference, an offense she willingly admitted to. Yes, Allison Farleigh had knowingly and willingly interfered with Mr. Bond's business practices. Her only regret was that she hadn't interfered with them more effectively.

  Bond had been doing business in Miami for forty years, long before there were laws governing the animal trade, and in that time he'd established an excellent reputation for delivering healthy specimens in a timely fashion to clients all over the country. His customers were private research institutes, government testing labs, even a few Hollywood animal trainers. In those four decades Bond had grown rich and respectable from buying and selling chimps, gibbons, every kind of monkey and ape. Now he was the golf partner of federal judges and congressmen. His photo showed up in the society pages, his name floated as a candidate for political office. He'd visited the White House, slept over.

  He first came to Allison's attention four years earlier, when on an unannounced USDA inspection of his warehouse Bond was cited for a long list of infractions. The government inspectors found his cages filthy and cramped, the garbage Dumpsters filled with rats, and several of his caged animals sick or malnourished. The list was extensive, but worse than an
y of those violations was the discovery of fifteen gorilla pelts, and the skulls of six orangutans. All fresh kills, a week, two weeks at most. Five of the skins were from babies, as were two of the skulls. Whether Bond murdered the animals himself or not, he most certainly was guilty of obtaining and importing them illegally. Encouraging their slaughter.

  But there wasn't as much money in the skin trade as in the pet trade. A live orangutan was worth far more than the sum of its parts. But hunters couldn't always capture them alive. Often both mother and child were killed in the fall. For every live one captured, a half dozen died. So the hunters harvested the carcasses, got what they could in the skin trade.

  After learning of the infractions at Joshua Bond's warehouse, Allison immediately went to work gathering a list of names of all companies doing business with International Primates. Then she began a letter-writing campaign, urging her members to bombard their congressmen, state senators, and local politicians with outcries over Bond's sordid dealings. Was this the kind of man who should be supplying animals to government laboratories? The kind of man who should be welcome in the White House?

  Within a week after her first round of letters went out to his customers, Joshua Bond sued Allison Farleigh for six million dollars. An injunction was filed. Two days later, federal marshals showed up at the Gables house with subpoenas to seize all Allison's newsletters featuring stories about Bond. All her notes, the early snooping she'd done on the paper trail of the gorilla pelts, showing where they were bought, how they were knowingly misidentified as brown bear skins. Correspondence, faxes, or phone notes pertaining to her attempt to disrupt the commercial enterprises of the honorable Joshua Bond.

  In the four years since she'd been at war with the man, she'd been able to document a dozen instances in which Mr. Bond knowingly bought and shipped to his Miami warehouse endangered wild-born primates. Though she had only a small amount of hard evidence, she had numerous eyewitness accounts, photocopies of suspicious bills of sale, faxes to Malaysian suppliers that were clearly written in code, and a host of other incriminating information.

  But no one was interested in her evidence. State's attorney, Fish and Wildlife, customs, USDA, the Miami Herald, all were very polite when she presented her stacks of information, but there was only silence afterward. A conspiracy of laziness.

  She had severely angered the great man, smirched his reputation, left her claw marks on his flesh. He'd tried his best to shut her up, but had failed. Of all the men she'd exposed in the last seven years, Joshua Bond had the most to lose, and was the most bitterly pissed off. Six million dollars' worth. He wanted Allison silenced, had the means to accomplish it, and was just depraved enough to want to pull the trigger himself.

  Without a clear idea of what she would do when she faced him, she rode the elevator to his floor, and headed down the hall.

  ***

  A young woman entered Bond's office a few steps before her. Allison pushed through the office door a moment later, stood impatiently behind the girl, fighting the urge to barge past her and into Bond's office.

  "I'm Gretchen Garcia," the young woman said, not noticing Allison. "From Flower Circus."

  "Oh, yes," the secretary said. "I have Mrs. Bond's list right here."

  Allison shifted her feet and watched as the stem, silver-haired secretary shuffled through the papers on her desk, found the one she wanted, and handed the slip to Gretchen. The young woman studied it for a moment and nodded several times.

  "I realize it's short notice," the secretary said. "But the florist Mr. Bond usually does business with had a fire two days ago, and all their stock was destroyed."

  Discreetly, Allison took a seat off to the side. "This is a wedding?"

  "Anniversary," the secretary said. "Time and address is at the bottom there."

  Gretchen was in jeans, a white T-shirt, work shoes. Her ponytail was held by a red bandanna, and she gave off a loamy smell.

  "We can handle it," she said, tucking the slip of paper into her back pocket. "No problem."

  "You need a check?"

  "Usually we get half up front, the rest on delivery. But since it's Mr. Bond, however you want to handle it is fine with us."

  "Bill us, then. That would be easier."

  "So if it starts at nine, I'd need to get started, say, five, six o'clock."

  "I'll make sure they know you're coming."

  Gretchen thanked her again, and without a glance in Allison's direction she left. Allison leafed through the magazine she was holding, set it aside.

  "Can I help you, ma'am?"

  Allison looked up. The secretary was eyeing her warily. Maybe a wanted poster on the walls of the coffee nook. Watch out for this one.

  Allison said, "Is Mr. Bond still out of town?"

  "Do you have an appointment, ma'am?"

  "No, I'm sorry," Allison said. "I'm from the Herald. I'm finishing up a story on Mr. Bond."

  The secretary made a polite smile.

  "Well, if he's busy ..."

  "You're from the Herald?"

  "Yes."

  Smiling brightly, Allison glanced around the office.

  "I should have called first. I mean, I wasn't even sure if he was back in the country."

  Allison kept her eyes on a painting on the far wall.

  "Yes, he's here, but he's busy."

  "He must have been back for two or three days now?"

  "Two or three, I suppose," she said grudgingly. "If you'd like to wait, I'll ring him when his conference is over."

  "Where was it Mr. Bond went? He told me, but I forget. Was it Borneo this time?"

  Exasperated, the woman rolled her pencil between her hands.

  "Djakarta, I think it was. Is that in Borneo?"

  "Close enough."

  Allison stood, came over to the desk. The secretary straightened.

  "Mind if I take one of these?"

  Allison reached out and plucked a business card from a small silver tray on the edge of the desk. Then she headed for the door.

  "Ma'am?"

  "Never mind," Allison said. "Don't bother the great man."

  She sprinted the last fifteen yards, and jammed her hand into the closing doors of the elevator. Gretchen was standing in one corner of the car, a Metro-Dade policeman in the other.

  "Shew!" Allison said as the car began to descend. "Nick of time."

  The young woman stared blankly at her. Allison handed her Bond's card.

  "I'm awfully sorry, Gretchen, but Mr. Bond told me to chase you down. I'm Julie, his private secretary. Mr. Bond's changed his mind about the party."

  "Changed his mind? About his anniversary?"

  "Well, he was called out of town. He forgot till just a minute ago. He's like that, Mr. Bond is. So he'll just have to call you when he gets back and reschedule the delivery then."

  Gretchen gave her a careful look.

  "Maybe I should go back up, talk to him."

  The cop was peering at Allison as well.

  "And look, here's something for your trouble."

  Allison found three twenties in her wallet, folded them in half and handed them to Gretchen.

  "I couldn't," she said.

  "Please, it would make . . . Mr. Bond feel better."

  With a grimace of thanks Gretchen took the bills.

  "So if you could let me have that list."

  "The list?"

  "What he wanted you to do."

  "Maybe I should hold on to it," she said. "For later."

  "Mr. Bond said something about wanting to make some changes. So he'll need it back. He didn't keep a copy for himself."

  Gretchen groaned and dug the page out of her back pocket, handed it to Allison.

  The car stopped on the eighth floor, a man in a gray suit got on, abruptly Allison got off. The policeman stepped out behind her.

  "Sorry, Gretchen." Allison waved through the closing doors.

  "So, lady," the cop said, edging close. "Tell me something."

  "Yes
?"

  "You in an acting class? This some kind of assignment?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  " 'He's like that, Mr. Bond is. Here's something for your trouble.' The girl seemed to believe you, but that story, naw, it sounded phony as hell to me."

  The cop slanted his head, studying her.

  "There's just something about you doesn't feel a hundred percent kosher."

  "Is this what's happening?" Allison said. "The police are running so low on work, you've started interrogating complete strangers? That's what this is? Out trolling for lawbreakers?"

  He kept staring at her, a half-smile flickering on his lips, trying to place her.

  She turned her back on him, and casually walked to the end of the hall. At the last door she glanced back, and the cop was watching her intently. Allison reached out, opened the door, and stepped into the office of Dr. Irving Sharp, urologist.

  For ten minutes she dallied, fending off the questions of the receptionist and the stares of two uneasy men in the waiting room. When she finally got her nerve back and went out into the hallway again, the cop was gone.

  CHAPTER 8

  It took Allison all Saturday morning to assemble the flowers Mrs. Joshua Bond wanted for her anniversary party. She hit three flower shops in the Gables, one in South Miami, nearly cleaned them out.

  Just after lunch, while she was storing the bundles and bouquets inside the house, Harry confronted her in the downstairs hallway, asked her what the hell was happening to her, the way she was acting, it was damn strange. Lying in bed for a week grieving, then all of a sudden there she was, gunning all over town, her Jeep full of flowers. What in God's name were all those goddamn flowers for? And what the hell had she meant about knowing who killed Winslow?

  "I know," she said.

  With an armload of gladiolus, she pushed past him and entered the back bedroom, where she'd set the window air conditioner as low as it could go. The guest bed looked like a funeral pyre, a foot deep in roses, poppies, daisies, carnations. Bunches of tulips, baby's breath, decorative palm fronds and ferns.