The Only Witness (18 page)

Grace quickly unlocked a drawer, unwrapped a lollipop and handed it to Neema. The thought that it was unwise to give in to a 400-pound gorilla flashed across her mind, as it so often did. She was a lax parent, raising a spoiled daughter. The trouble was, her 'kid' was capable of throwing her across the room if she so desired. It was hard to know where to draw the line.

Good tree candy
, Neema signed. She popped it into her mouth.

Josh smiled. "I still can't get over how she adds the word 'tree' as a descriptor for anything on a stick. I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes." He watched Neema suck on her lollipop for a minute. "Of course, three years ago I wouldn't have believed that gorillas could comprehend human language, let alone sign it. Nowadays I wonder if the birds are talking about me."

Grace knew the feeling.
Where this baby?
she signed to Neema, then tapped baby Ivy's photo again.

Store. Go store Coke
.

"No," Grace groaned. Did mothers of human kids suffer through conversations like this, constantly zooming off on tangents instead of sticking to the topic? "Where is this baby now?" she pressed, pointing to the photo. "Where did this baby go?"

Baby go,
Neema agreed.
Snake arm baby cry
. She crunched the candy between her teeth, and then pulled the naked stick out of her mouth and examined it closely to make sure she'd missed none of the sweet.

Snake on ground? Snake in car?
Grace signed rapidly, her lips pressed into a grim line.

Man snake arm baby cry
. Sensing that this was important, Neema decided to take advantage.
Candy more hurry
, she signed.

Josh leaned forward to connect with Neema's gaze. "Where is the snake?" His hand made a serpentine motion, two fingers pressed out like fangs. "Where is this baby?" He tapped the newspaper photo.

Neema eyed the kitchen drawer, signing
candy candy
.

"Blackmail." Grace reluctantly pulled out another lollipop and handed it over. As soon as Neema had it in her mouth, Grace asked again, "Where is the man snake? Where is the baby?"

Man snake go
.
Baby cry baby go
, Neema signed. Then she clenched her hands into fists, and rolling her lollipop around on her tongue, scooted back to her
National Geographic
.

Josh and Grace eyed each other.

"The snake business, the baby business—is it possible?" Grace stuttered.

Josh glanced at Neema, who now cradled her baby gorilla toy in her arms and held the magazine with her feet. "Sounds like she was trying to tell us what she saw."

Grace swallowed hard. "We
were
in the parking lot around the time that the baby supposedly was kidnapped…"

"Whoa." Josh's face lit up. "I've just found the perfect subject for my dissertation. Signing gorilla vital witness to crime."

Crap
, Grace thought. "I so hoped it wasn't true."

Neema scooted back over to them.
Cat baby cat
, she signed.
Want baby cat now now
.

"Good idea. Better than more C-A-N-D-Y." Josh rose from his chair. "I'll go get the kittens."

Grace groaned and leaned forward, resting her head on her arms on top of the table. She couldn't deny it any longer; Neema had likely seen a man take the baby from the store parking lot. She couldn't ignore the fact that her gorilla could be helpful in a criminal case.

But she'd have to be very, very careful. She couldn't risk another nutcase finding out about her gorillas. The kidnapper was out there somewhere. What if
he
discovered that Neema had witnessed the abduction? She couldn't get the image of Spencer's corpse out of her mind.

Spencer hadn't been involved in an important event like this. He definitely didn’t want the attention that came after one of her students made a video of Spencer and Grace conversing, complete with subtitles. Spencer had been one contented gorilla learning sign language. Until a zealot named Frank Keyes, outraged that anyone could believe that an ape could 'talk' like a human being, gave that innocent gorilla a cup of cyanide-laced Kool-aid. Keyes had received a sentence of only two years in prison for animal cruelty and a hefty fine for destroying university property.

Keyes was out walking the streets somewhere right now. Grace needed her alarm system in place yesterday. But how could she pay for it now?

Warm leathery fingers softly caressed Grace's arm. She raised her head. Neema sat only a foot away, cuddling Snow in one arm, an anxious look on her face. She signed,
Sad?

"A little," Grace admitted, holding thumb and forefinger close to show Neema how much. That poor Brittany girl, being arrested, nobody believing her. And her baby was out there somewhere. In whose arms? Snake man's?

Grace knew what she had to do. She needed to get off her butt, climb into her old car, and go do it soon. Lives could be at stake.

Neema leaned forward and brushed her black lips across Grace's cheek in a gorilla kiss, then sat back and held out the white kitten.
Grace love baby cat. Good now.

Neema was right. Holding the soft fuzzy kitten in her arms did help a little.
Thank you
, she gestured.

Neema Grace love good
, Neema signed.
Cat Gumu love. Gorilla love good.

Grace's heart melted. This giant hulk of a creature was so gentle, so loving. And so completely dependent on her for food, shelter, safety. For her very life.

Serena Kinsey lived with her grandmother Felicia Brown in an ornate Victorian house in Portland, Oregon. The authentic purple, pink, and gold paint colors and the antique rose beds told Finn that Mrs. Brown considered this her castle. Not what he had expected when he'd seen Serena's story on the news, he had to admit. He chided himself for the stereotypes his brain had filed away after so many years as a cop.

"I left Tika right there," the girl said, stabbing a finger at a playpen that still sat on the wide planks of the covered front porch. A lonely pink stuffed pony watched them from one corner of the netting.

Unlike timid weepy Carissa, Serena was dry-eyed and she was
pissed
. "Tika was sleeping, and I went inside to answer the phone, and when I came out, the playpen was empty. I think it was a set-up."

"Why?" He flipped back a page in his notebook. "Who was on the phone?"

"It was a wrong number. Grandma's number is unlisted, so we hardly ever get those."

That information had not been in the police report. Maybe Serena had good reason to be suspicious. "Do you have any ideas about who might have taken her?"

Serena glanced across the street. "At first I thought it might be Adrian's mother."

Adrian was Tika's father, according to the file Finn carried in his briefcase, and he lived across the street. "Why would you think that?"

Serena put her hands on her hips. "She hates me. Always has, always will."

"The woman believes that Serena got pregnant just to trap Adrian," Mrs. Brown said. "As if her precious boy had nothing to do with the baby. He'd always been planning on going to college here, not back east, as he'll tell you himself."

"How about your parents, Serena?" Finn asked.

Her wary brown eyes met his. "What about 'em?"

Mrs. Brown stepped forward. She wore a stern expression that promised she would rap knuckles with rulers if listeners failed to pay attention. "Serena's father died in Afghanistan three years ago. My daughter, Serena's mother, committed suicide six months later."

Now Finn understood why there was no information other than their names in the police report. This family seemed to be cursed.

A young man on a bicycle stopped across the street and laid the bicycle on the lawn. Adjusting the book bag he wore on his shoulder, he trotted across the pavement between the parked cars, and then galloped up the steps, pushing his light brown hair out of his eyes.

"What's up?" He threw an arm around Serena's shoulders and eyed Finn distrustfully. "You're a cop, aren't you?"

Before Finn could reply, the kid stepped forward and thrust out a hand. "Adrian Lomas, Serena's fiancé. And Tika's father. And you are?"

Finn introduced himself and explained he was looking for similarities in child disappearance cases in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

"That's more action than we're getting out of the local cops," Adrian said angrily. "Not to mention the press. Between you and me, I think it's because Serena's black."

Finn had no response to that.

"We're going on
America's Most Wanted
next week," he continued. "If the locals aren't going to help, we're going national. Won't the Portland cops look like racist hicks when someone reports they found our daughter?"

Finn held up his hands. "I'm just here to get your story. I'd especially like to hear about the school program, because the other girls belonged to that, too."

"What school program?" Serena said.

"Sister-Mothers Trust?" he enunciated carefully. It was no wonder Brittany had come up with Sluts on Toast. That, or the more natural 'smut,' was much easier to pronounce than the official name.

She made a face. "That's a high school thing they made me go to. I graduated last May. Now I go to the university."

"But you still communicate with other teen mothers via the YoMama website?"

"Sometimes," she said, her face softening into sadness. "They let you stay on until you're twenty. I don't know any other moms close to my age. Not many people can understand what it's like."

"Except for other young moms like Brittany Morgan and Carissa Adams," Finn said.

"Yeah, if anyone can understand what I'm going through, it's Brittany. I don't know Carissa, though." She shook her head, thought for a second, then said, "Oh wait, CariSad?"

He nodded. "That's her user name."

Serena rubbed a finger across her full lips. "I remember something happened to her baby, but that was a while ago."

Finn shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Last June. Her baby William disappeared during the summer."

"And you think there might be a connection with Tika?" Adrian asked.

Finn turned to face him. "It could be coincidence, but the SMT program and the YoMama website are connections."

"The website? Whoa." Adrian's eyes gleamed. "I'm studying computer science, with an emphasis on security."

Finn studied his young face for a minute, then told him, "Hack away. We need all the help we can get." He shot a look at Mrs. Brown and Serena. "You didn't hear me say that."

"Hear you say what?" Mrs. Brown asked.

Serena fidgeted with one of her long earrings while staring at Adrian.

"What?" the boy finally said.

She looked embarrassed. "We share a lot of girl talk on YoMama."

"You mean bitching about the baby daddies," Adrian guessed.

"Well, yeah," she said. "I guess you could call it that."

He touched her forearm. "I'll cope."

The two of them seemed like a more mature couple than he and Wendy had ever been. Finn turned to Serena. "Speaking of the daddies, do you know Charlie Wakefield?"

"Ivy's daddy, according to Brittany. College student at Eastern Washington U," Serena responded. "I've seen his photo, too. But I've never met him."

"Did Brittany ever say she was scared of him?"

"Nope," Serena said. "He sounded like a no-count to me, but she adored him as far as I could tell."

"Would he know you?" Finn asked.

"Not unless Brittany shared our emails," she said.

Damn. He just couldn’t make Charlie fit into the school scenarios. "I'd like to hear about how the Sister-Mothers Trust program worked at your high school. What you got out of it, how it was organized, and so forth. How you communicate on the YoMama site."

Serena, eyes glistening now, stood for a moment with her fingers wrapped around the top rail of the playpen, gazing down at the plush pony inside. Adrian put his hand on top of hers.

Mrs. Brown held open the front door. "Let's go in and chat. I don't know about those other babies, but plenty of people would want Tika."

Finn sat down beside her on a leather couch. "Why's that?"

Felicia Brown twisted, picked up a silver-framed photo from the side table. "Just look at her, Detective."

He studied the picture. The baby girl had black curls, olive skin, shining doe-brown eyes, and deep dimples in both cheeks. Tika was stunning.