The Only Witness (22 page)

Nine days after Ivy disappears

The regular janitor for the Sisters-Mothers Trust wing was Audrey Ibañez. Dawes had interviewed three other members of the cleaning staff yesterday and gotten little out of them, but Ibañez had been off on sick leave for several days.

"They were full of complaints about having to clean up dirty diapers and baby barf in a high school," Dawes told him. "Guess condoms and tampons are more to their liking? They didn't want to hand over driver's licenses, either."

Ibañez was no different from her colleagues, seeming annoyed at his request for identification, and dragging her heels to her locker. Finn noted that Audrey was actually her middle name—Luisa Audrey Ibañez—as he copied her driver's license number. He handed back her billfold.

"It's just, you know, you never know where that information is going to wind up these days," Ibañez explained, placing the billfold in her lap. "My sister had someone steal her ID and run up a terrible bill on her credit cards."

"The companies can't bill your sister for that."

Ibañez rolled her eyes. "Try telling that to a collections agency."

"We'll protect your information." He slid the report form up and clamped it into his clipboard.

He leaned back, forgetting there was no chair back behind him, almost slipped off the bench and sat up again, feeling foolish. They were sitting on the lowest level of the foldout bleachers in the empty gymnasium; the teachers' lounge had way too much traffic to hold an interview there.

He held his pen poised over his notepad. "You know who Brittany Morgan is?"

"Of course I know who Brittany Morgan is. Who doesn't, now? I see that she's back in class. Poor thing." She tucked a few more black hairs into the braid she wore at the back of her neck. "But of course I knew who she was before this happened. I know a lot of the girls."

Ibañez told him that Brittany seemed like a caring mother. Then her forehead creased. "Most of the time she seemed good, anyway. But you never know what these teenagers can get up to. One time I saw that girl Joy give a marshmallow to her son." She shook her head. "Do you know how quickly a baby can choke on a marshmallow?"

He'd never really thought about it. But now he could imagine how dangerous that could be—soft and fluffy, the perfect thing to fill a little throat that didn't have the strength to swallow it down. No way to grab a glass of water; not even the words or gestures to indicate what was happening. Could Ivy have died from such a simple accident? "Did you ever see Joy or Brittany give Ivy a marshmallow?"

"No. I gave Joy a good lecture about that subject." She shook her head again. "I've seen girls give their babies Coke and potato chips, too. Brittany once, I saw her let Ivy suck on this bird necklace she had. Who knows what that might have been made out of—could have lead or who knows what in it." She made a clucking sound with her tongue. "Sometimes the girls treat the babies more like pets than babies."

The word
pet
made him think of Neema. Although the gorilla hardly seemed in the same category as a cat or dog. Not really a pet. She'd eaten his rose and then thanked him for it. Or at least that's how McKenna had interpreted Neema's gestures. Dr. Grace McKenna, a good-looking, interesting woman. Crying in his arms.
You may as well call me Matt?
What the hell had gotten into him? Damn good thing nobody had witnessed that totally inappropriate scene. McKenna could be a nutcase. He gave himself a mental shake.

No matter whether the tips were the gorilla's clues or McKenna's, he owed it to Brittany and Ivy to give them a shot. Green car. Snake bracelet. He leaned toward the janitor. "Do you know anyone around the school that drives a green car?"

Ibañez snorted. "I know at least a dozen people with green cars. Don't you?"

He shrugged and waited for her to go on.

"Those light green Priuses are real popular; some of the staff and teachers have them. And those lime green Fords; whatever they call those cheap little models—lots of kids have those." She shook her head again. "Lucky devils. I never had a car when I was in high school, did you?" When he didn't respond, she sighed and looked toward the corner where she'd left her mop and bucket. "I really need to get back to work, Detective."

"In a minute." He leaned forward again. "Can you name some owners of green cars?"

She gave him four names: two teachers, a maintenance man, and a student. "I could probably find out some of the others." Her eyes brightened. "Did a green car have something to do with Ivy disappearing? Didn't the police say that baby was probably dead?"

He said carefully, "There have been letters to the editor to that effect in the newspaper. The police have said nothing. We don't know what happened. But a couple of witnesses thought they saw a green car peel out of the parking lot of the Food Mart." Better to make the witnesses plural, he thought; that way it would be harder to pinpoint one person.
Or one gorilla.

Her eyebrows lifted. "Really? You think someone in a green car kidnapped that baby?"

"A green car was seen speeding away. It may have nothing to do with Ivy, but we've got to follow every lead."

"I should hope so." She folded her arms across the blue coverall she wore.
Jimson Janitorial Service
was stitched in three red lines across the upper sleeve. Was that the name of the company that Charlie Wakefield worked for? He'd have to check.

"You think that someone at the school had something to do with this?" she asked.

"Could be anyone in town." He tapped his pen on the clipboard. "Do you know anyone who wears a snake bracelet?"

Her chin jerked up and her forehead creased into a frown. "What?"

"A bracelet in the shape of a snake."

She lowered her eyes to her clasped hands. "What sort of bracelet?"

Was he reading too much into it, or did Ibañez seem suddenly nervous? Finn kept his face and voice bland. "I don't know much about jewelry," he said.

She studied the floor for a second. Then she sat up and unfolded her arms. "There are wraparound bracelets." She demonstrated, twirling her right hand around her left wrist. "Some of the girls wear those, and they look like snakes. And then there are bangle bracelets." His expression must have been blank, because she explained, "They're circles that you slip over your hand. Some of those might be snakes, too. I used to have one where the snake was biting its own tail—it was supposed to be Egyptian. But that was a while ago. Your best bet would be to ask the girls. Or maybe Miz Taylor."

"Doesn't have to be someone in the pregnant girls' class," Finn said. "How about staff or other teachers? Any of them wear snake bracelets?"

She thought about it for a minute. "I can't remember any offhand."

"Know any men who wear a snake bracelet?"

"Men? With bracelets?"

"Some men wear bracelets," Finn said. "A medical bracelet has the caduceus symbol, which has two snakes in it. Or maybe a watch with a snake design watchband?"

She chewed on a ragged thumbnail and studied her knees for a few seconds. Finally she raised her head. "I can't think of any men who wear bracelets, snakes or any other kind. Who said they saw a man with a snake bracelet?"

What would she say if he told her a gorilla had reported it? He fixed his eyes on his notebook for a second, quelling a smile. "I didn't say anyone saw a man."

"Oh. I guess I just assumed…" She frowned, swallowed hard, and put her hands on her knees. "Well, okay, I'll keep a lookout for a snake bracelet, too."

"Do you know this young man?" He shoved Charlie Wakefield's track team photo toward her.

She took it, squinted at it. "He seems sort of familiar, but I don't know his name. I think he was a student, maybe last year? I haven't seen him around lately. Hey—it's not a bracelet, but how about snaky looking sleeves?" She pointed at the design on the uniform shirts.

Shit, Ibañez was right. The zigzag might be mistaken for a snake.
Especially by a gorilla.
"It's supposed to be a lightning bolt."

"If you say so," she said. "Is this kid a suspect?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Right," Ibañez huffed, insulted. She handed him the photo and glanced toward her mop again.

A figure appeared in one of the windows at the top of the double gymnasium doors. A young man wearing a red tie, his dark hair neatly banded back into a ponytail, peered in, stared severely at them for a moment, then withdrew.

"I need to get back to work now," Ibañez said.

"Is Jimson Janitorial a good outfit to work for?" he asked, thinking about Charlie's Wakefield's job.

"The best." She nodded enthusiastically. "They really believe in their workers."

That seemed an odd way of putting it—how many people would say their employers
believed
in them?

"But they check up on us, too; that was one of our quality control guys just now. So I really gotta get back to work." She pushed herself up from her seat.

He stood and fished a card out of his shirt pocket. "Call me if you come up with more names or think of anything else."

"Course I will." She waved at him over her shoulder as she pushed the rolling mop bucket through the doorway.

He planned to ask the principal about green cars and snake bracelets, too, but first he walked to the parking lot and copied down the licenses of all the green cars there, just in case one of them vanished.

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.