The Only Witness (37 page)

Hell, she'd better learn to create and sell her own paintings; she might be unemployed soon. So far the university had stayed quiet when hounded by the press, other than acknowledging the existence of the ape language project. The fact that they were not defending her in any way did not bode well. The Tolliver Animal Intelligence Foundation had no comment, either. The silence from her supposed supporters was ominous.

Brittany had returned yesterday with her parents, who apparently judged Grace to be at least a benign influence, because she was back today by herself. Grace knew she was hoping for the magical breakthrough when Neema would tell her where Ivy was. No matter how often Grace explained that Neema had no way of knowing that, the girl still wanted to be near the female gorilla, as if the ape was a link to her baby. Now Brittany stood outside the barn enclosure, feeding Neema and Gumu carrots one by one through the wire mesh.

Brittany's hair fascinated Neema. This morning the girl wore it in her usual ponytail and the gorilla kept signing
red tail soft.
From the ARU trio, Brittany had learned the sign for baby, and she signed over and over
Where baby?

"Baby go snake arm bracelet," Grace translated for her
.
Unfortunately, Brittany didn't know anyone with a snake bracelet. Now, with the handful of carrots gone, the teenager raised her hands to her head in frustration and wailed, "Doesn't she know anything
more
?"

Grace put a hand on the girl's arm. "Oh honey. Green car, snake arm bracelet. I'm afraid that's it."

Red Tail cry
, Neema signed from behind the fence.
Skin bracelet pretty
.

Grace's jaw tensed.
Where skin bracelet?
she quickly signed.

Skin bracelet flower there.
Neema thrust out her lips toward the ivy design on Brittany's forearm.

When Neema meant ring, she signed
finger bracelet
.

Skin
bracelet
.

"I'll be right back," she told Brittany, then dropped the tub of food and ran for her trailer.

In the courthouse conference room, Finn's cell phone buzzed. Mason and Miki had yesterday off, the first day for three weeks, so he'd stayed home and twiddled his thumbs as well. Now they were all back searching for a connection between Jimson employees and Jimson vehicles.

The phone showed Grace's number. "Everything okay out there?" he answered.

"Matt! Skin bracelet!"

"What?"

"It's not a
jewelry
bracelet—Neema signed
skin bracelet
. She means a tattoo! Look for a tattoo of a snake on a man's arm." Grace hung up.

A tattoo was much more findable than a snake bracelet. "We're searching for a tattoo on a Jimson employee," he excitedly told Mason and Miki. "A tattoo of a snake, or something that looks like a snake."

Mason raised an eyebrow. "Another contribution from the gorilla woman?"

Finn chose not to respond.

"You know," Miki contributed, "Tattoos don't have to be permanent." She held out her own arm, which had the word LOVE stamped across the wrist. "My new boyfriend put this one on me last night." She gazed at it fondly.

From Mason came, "Who says that the tattoo was on the Jimson employee? It could have been on a friend, right?"

"I get it." Finn slapped his hand down on the table. "Let's focus on finding information about who drives the Jimson vehicles first." And then he'd look for a tattoo, even if he had to do it himself.

Two hours later, Mason had pulled up a list of traffic records containing the plate numbers for the green Jimson vehicles. There was an accident report in which a Jimson vehicle driven by a Susan Magret had been hit by a pickup near Seattle; a failure-to-yield ticket for an Oscar Jones in a Jimson van in the Okanagan area. He copied down Magret's and Jones's addresses and dates of birth to run through the computer. There were two speeding tickets near Spokane and another near the Oregon border for Abram Jimson; apparently the guy had a lead foot. A fender bender rear-end collision, also for Abram Jimson.

Looked like the good Reverend was a hazard to public safety. Finn studied the records more closely, searching for times and dates, and saw that one Spokane ticket had Sr. marked after the name. The other two Abram Jimson citations had Jr. noted.

"Does Abram Jimson have a son with the same name?"

Mason and Miki glanced up from their respective computer screens. "Yes," they said in unison.

Finn turned to the boxes of records and flipped through the folders to the Spokane group. Yes, there it was. Abram Jimson Jr. He had been so focused on reading the location of the employee assignments that he'd skipped right over the name. Junior's title was listed as Quality Assurance Officer.

Scott, his ex-father-in-law, had rhapsodized over the janitorial service's performance.
They even send a quality control man around...

"Mason," Finn said, trying to remain calm, "Does Junior have a record?" If he did, there'd be mug shots.

He paced as Mason tapped a query into the system. Then his hopes were dashed when the computer tech sat back in his chair. "No record."

Damn. Couldn't he catch a break in this case?

"Yes!" Miki clapped her hands.

They turned toward her. "I found his page on Facebook," she chortled.

"Photos?"

She grinned and turned her laptop around. A color photo of Abram Jimson Jr. lounging next to an expensive motorcycle took up most of the screen space.

"Well, hot damn, lookie there," Mason drawled.

Junior had black hair tied back in a ponytail. He was the man Finn had glimpsed with the janitor a couple of times at the high school. In the Facebook photo, Abram Jimson Jr. held his arms crossed against his chest. The arm on top clearly sported a blue ink drawing of a cobra that stretched from his elbow down to his wrist.

Finn grinned and said to Miki, "Print that page for me, would you?"

Mason reached for a notepad. "Guess we'll be asking Jimson Janitorial for more info about Junior's whereabouts on the day that Ivy disappeared?"

"Got that right," Finn agreed.

Miki held out the printed copy of Junior's Facebook photo, and Finn took it eagerly, pulling his car keys out of his pocket as he headed for the door. "Take the rest of the day off if you want. See you later."

"Where are you going?" Mason asked.

"I need to show this photo to a gor.." He only barely managed to change it to "Grace" in the last fraction of a second. The door closed behind him.
A Grace?
Maybe they hadn't noticed.

The protesters seemed to have forsaken the courthouse steps in favor of decorating the county road right-of-way in front of Grace's home. Public property. No laws broken, the Sheriff said, nothing could be done about it.
Where's Ivy?, Stop the Harassment, Save People, Not Apes; God Gave Man Dominion Over Animals; We are not Monkeys; God Loves Reverend Jimson,
and the ever-present
Teach the Controversy
. Grace was right to be worried about her safety. Finn mowed down four signs on his turn into her driveway.

The Sheriff had refused to provide a guard, claiming there was no money for it, but Grace told Finn she had friends helping now. A college kid in a black tee shirt with cell phone in hand had given him a thumbs-up after he drove over the signs. After watching Finn open and close the gate, he held the cell phone to his lips as Finn drove up the road.

"Oh yes," Grace told him minutes later. "That's Jared, one of the volunteers from the Animal Rights Union."

Finn could hardly wait for
that
tidbit to hit the local news. In the study trailer, he was relieved to see that Neema had recovered her quiet demeanor after her adventure. She wanted to know if he'd brought her another flower. He found a mint lifesaver in his pocket, and Grace let him give that to the gorilla.

He insisted that they set up two video cameras, and he took his time making sure the angle of each was perfect. Neema sat in the corner of her training trailer, engrossed in a children's picture book about zoo animals.

"No prompting," Finn told Grace. "No questions."

"We'll just show her the photo and see what she does," Grace agreed.

"Multiple photos," Finn said. "Like a lineup."

One by one, he held up four photos for the camera before placing them on the coffee table.

"Photo 1, Charlie Wakefield." He'd had Mason Photoshop the picture, adding Charlie's face to a torso and arm displaying his track team's lightning design on the sleeve.

"Photo 2, anonymous subject with facial features and dark hair similar to Abram Jimson Jr., no tattoo."

"Photo 3, anonymous subject with blond hair and features similar to Wakefield, twining tattoo on forearm."

"Photo 4, Abram Jimson Jr., sna—serpent tattoo on forearm."

It was far from perfect, but it would do for his purpose today. Finn sat on the couch, and stated his name and the date and time for the cameras. Then he turned toward the gorilla. "Neema."

She raised her head. "Come look at these pictures." She scooted over in his direction.

Neema bent over the coffee table, her nose practically touching the photos, examining each one. Suddenly she screeched and slid backwards, signing frantically.

"Bad bad snake skin bracelet bad," Grace translated. "Bad baby go cry. Bad snake arm man. Baby cry. Baby go."

Grace stepped forward to comfort her frightened gorilla.

"But she didn't identify a photo," Finn groaned. This would never work with a judge.

"Who bad snake arm man, take baby go?" Grace asked Neema, signing the words.

Finn frowned at the Tarzan language being recorded on the tape, imagining what a defense attorney would do with it. Neema sat huddled in the corner, her head bent toward the wall, her face hidden in her hands.

Grace tapped her on the shoulder. "Neema."

The gorilla turned her head. From his position, Finn could see the whites of her eyes.

"Who bad snake arm man take baby?" She pointed toward the coffee table and startled him by switching to actual English as she signed, "Go touch the picture of the bad man who took the baby."

Neema's huge hands flashed.

"Tree candy yogurt," Grace translated. "She's bargaining." She turned to Neema and said, "Yogurt."

The gorilla's big hands moved again. Grace stared at her for a moment. Neema gazed back toward her corner.

"Oh, all right," Grace grumbled, signing her acquiescence. "Yogurt
and
a lollipop, but only after you touch the photo of the bad snake arm man who took the baby."

Neema turned then and inched reluctantly toward the coffee table as if slogging through swamp mud. When she reached the edge of the coffee table, she raised her chin to look, then abruptly rose up on her hind feet and slammed her giant hand down on the lower right photo, slapping it so hard that it slipped from the table onto the floor. She quickly scooted to the door that led to the kitchen, hooting and hugging herself.

Finn recovered from the half-turned retreat position he'd automatically assumed when Neema reared up. He faced forward again, took a breath, and said for the video camera, "Neema has identified the photo of Abram Jimson Jr. as the man who took the baby. Interview ended."

As Grace went to the kitchen to get Neema her treats, he turned off the camera and retrieved the photo from the floor. "Gotcha," he said to Junior.

Chapter
26

Twenty-two days after Ivy disappears

"You have
got
to be kidding," Vernon Dixon said. The district attorney leaned back in his chair as if trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the video monitor. "You want me to issue an arrest warrant for Abram Jimson Jr. on the basis of hearsay testimony from an
ape
?"

Finn winced and held a finger to his lips. Dixon had shouted it loud enough to be heard down the corridor. "According to multiple citizens," Finn told him, "Junior was in Evansburg making the rounds of Jimson Janitorial clients on the day that Ivy Rose Morgan disappeared." He'd checked with his ex-father-in-law and verified that.

"So what?" Dixon asked.

Which was exactly what Abram Jimson Jr. had said, according to the Spokane detectives who had interviewed him. He hadn't denied being in Evansburg on that day; a stop there was part of his regularly scheduled rounds as a quality assurance officer for Jimson Janitorial Service.

Dixon steepled his fingertips in front of his chest and fixed his steely gaze on Finn. "You've got nothing else?"