The Only Witness (38 page)

"He was also in Portland the day before Tika Kinsey disappeared."

"The day before?"

Junior said he'd gone camping out on the Oregon Coast after doing his quality control rounds; there was no actual record of where he'd stayed the night before or the night after Tika vanished from her front porch playpen. Finn shrugged.

"No." The district attorney swiveled in his desk chair. "There's no way. We'd become the laughingstock of Washington State. Hell, with your current YouTube fame, we'd be the laughingstock of the entire world."

Finn fumed. But Dixon was right, he didn't yet have proof that would stand up in court; he had to find more. Finn's cell phone buzzed as he left the DA's office. Brittany Morgan. She called him several times a day. He didn't answer. How could he tell her that he was fairly certain about the identity of her baby's kidnapper, but he couldn't lay a hand on him? Brittany and her parents would feel even more tormented than they were now. He knew because he was feeling that torment himself.

What else did he have? The baby carrier and backpack had been wiped down, no usable prints. Brittany's car, likewise; all prints belonged to the family. The slimy bastard must have worn gloves. But that didn't seem likely, now that he thought about it; gloves would have covered up much of the tattoo on his wrist and hand.

He dialed Grace as he walked down the courthouse hallway. "Did Neema ever mention anything else about snake arm man?"

"I don't remember anything else. Want me to review the videos I made right after we went to the store?"

"As soon as you can, please." He didn't know what he was hoping for. Some detail he'd missed, something that someone else might recall seeing that day. He pushed open the door and stepped outside. Immediately, two matched sets of reporters with cameramen surged forward. "Detective Finn! Detective Finn!"

Allyson Lee
elbowed her competitor to the side and jammed the microphone in his face. "Is it true that the eyewitness in the Ivy Morgan case is not Dr. McKenna, but one of her
gorillas
?"

Her question was immediately followed by a roar of shouts from the small crowd gathered behind the reporters. Several cameras flashed.

Apparently Dixon
had
yelled loudly enough to be heard in the corridor.

He loped back to the precinct with the pack at his heels. He'd barely sat down at his desk when his cell phone buzzed. The readout said
Foster, FBI
. Finn snapped his phone open, feeling a little sick.

"I'm sitting in the Boise airport watching the Northwest News," Agent Alice Foster said. "And I see that you have an eyewitness in the Ivy Morgan disappearance? Why did you fail to inform us of this, Detective?"

"You know how unreliable eyewitnesses can be," he said vaguely. "It's a … young female … with the IQ of a five-year-old. All she identified was a green car with a particular logo and a man with a snake bracelet."

"And her identification is linked to this Jimson fellow?"

"The logo belonged to Jimson Janitorial, so we're searching employee records now to see if there's a connection."

"So at this point you
believe
it's a kidnapping?"

Finn thought about that for a second. He did believe it was a kidnapping, but he wasn't ready to say that yet. He still had no idea what had happened to that baby. If the FBI grabbed the case now, he'd lose all momentum. "I've been following up on the lead to see if it's a possibility," he told Foster.

Agent Foster's heavy sigh rasped over the airwaves. "Well, let us know if we can be of assistance. And by the way, the report on your crime scene debris just came back. Lots of prints and DNA on various items, none matched to known felons or to the Wakefields."

Of course
, Finn thought bitterly. Nothing about this case could be
easy
.

"Where would you like me to send the report?"

He gave her the department fax number. "Thank you for getting that processed, Agent Foster," he said.

"No problem. Please do keep us informed of any future developments, Detective."

He promised he would, and then ended the call. He wondered when Agent Foster would get the news that his eyewitness was a gorilla.

He stood up to pace, but after his second lap, he noticed everyone else in the precinct was staring at him. "I'm headed home," he told the dispatcher. "Call me if anything comes up."

Twenty minutes later he was out in his backyard, Cargo trailing in his wake as he wandered around his property, shouting over and over, "Lok! Come here, kitty!" The Lost ad he'd sent into the Evansburg Times had run for the last three days, but there had been no calls.

He sat on his deck, feeling exhausted, useless, and depressed. Some detective he was. Didn't know his wife was planning to ditch him. Didn't know a coyote would eat his cat. Couldn't find a way to finger the kidnapper that he knew was out there.

He tried to think from Junior's point of view. Why would the guy be kidnapping babies? He was most likely selling them to perverts or childless couples. What would it take to sell babies? A website? Maybe. There needed to be someplace to display your wares, so to speak.

Wares in this case would be photos, at least to start off with. Finn thought about the photos of mothers and babies in the schools. The same photos were on the YoMama website. But YoMama required an approved user name and password to get in, and neither Adrian in Portland or Mason in Evansburg had detected any unauthorized entries. It was a long shot, but… He called for a fingerprint tech to meet him at Brittany's school, and then he called the principal to come and let them into the building.

"The janitor can do that," the principal said.

"I'd rather that the janitor did not know what we're up to. We'll need private access to the hallway where the photos of the Slu…teenage moms and babies are displayed."

"So you're getting close to solving the Ivy Morgan case?" the principal wanted to know.

"I hope so." Finn flicked shut his phone.

When the principal met them at the side door, he told them, "I closed the doors at the end of the hall and told the night janitor that we were doing maintenance on the fire alarms in this wing."

"Smart thinking," Finn said.

The principal eagerly rubbed his hands together. "So what are we doing?"

"I'm sorry," Finn told him, "But I can't have a civilian here. Police only." He gestured toward the door at the end of the corridor.

The man was clearly disappointed.

"We'd really appreciate it if you could keep everyone away." Finn said. "And make sure this stays hush-hush."

The principal seemed pleased to have an assignment. "You got it. I'll await your call." He headed for the double doors.

"So what are we doing?" Guy Rodrigo, the fingerprint tech, asked after the principal had left.

Finn stopped in front of the photos of all the Sluts and babies, pulled out his camera and took a photo of the collection. Stepping back, he pointed to the photo of Ivy Morgan.

"I want this frame fingerprinted, as well as the back of the photo, and then put right back up."

The tech groaned. "The back of the
photo
? You mean I need to take apart the frame?"

"I'm afraid so." The frame may well have been wiped clean, but if Finn's hunch was correct, there might be prints on the photo of Ivy. "Glove up and get started."

Rodrigo snapped on gloves and dusted the frame. When no prints appeared on the wood or glass, he laid down his brush and powder and then tugged at the frame. "Shit. This is screwed to the wall."

"I noticed." Finn handed him the screwdriver he'd brought. "And just so you know, if I'm right about this one, we'll need to come back and do the rest."

Chapter
27

Twenty-four days after Ivy disappears

Unearthly shrieks awakened Grace. She sat up abruptly, reaching for her bathrobe at the foot of the bed. Her bedside clock read 3:29 a.m. The shrieking continued, punctuated by loud crashes. It sounded like the gorillas were fighting with an axe murderer in the barn.

Josh met her in the yard as they dashed to the barn enclosure.

The lock on the gate was intact. Inside, Neema sat hunched in the far corner, while Gumu frantically raced around the perimeter of the enclosure, leaping up to the net, racing across it to touch all corners, then barreling down, pausing now and then to beat his chest and shriek some more.

Inside, just to right of the gate, candy and cookies were scattered on the ground, some crumpled as if they'd been shoved through the fence openings. The fencing was bent outwards near the gate, which told Grace that Gumu had launched himself into the wire mesh toward someone standing outside.

Jonathan Zyrnek trotted up with a walkie-talkie in his hand, panting. "What the hell's going on?"

A second later, Caryn arrived.

"We had a visitor." Grace pointed to the snacks scattered across the ground. She took the key out of her pocket and reached for the lock.

"Shit," Jonathan said. "Caryn reported a car, so we went out to track it, but the driver must have already let someone out down the road."

Grace unlocked the padlock. A second before she pulled the gate open, Neema rushed over to the pile of goodies, grabbed a lollipop, and scuttled up onto the webbing.

"No!" Grace bellowed, dashing after her, Josh at her heels. "No, Neema, don't eat that! No! Give candy to Grace! Not for Neema!"

She struggled to lift herself into the webbing. Josh grabbed her around the knees and tossed her up. Below them, the two ARU volunteers walked toward the sweets, keeping a wary eye as Gumu continued to circle and screech. "Don't touch that candy with your bare hands," she screeched at Jonathan and Caryn. "It's poisoned!"

Josh pulled himself up on the rope webbing behind her.

"No, Neema! Bad candy!" Grace couldn't sign while she crawled across the rope net on her hands and knees. "Candy will make Neema sick!"

But Neema, in typical bad kid can't-stop-me fashion, had the lollipop in her mouth by the time Grace arrived. Grace reached for the stick between her lips, and Neema turned away, chewing. Then she dropped, inert, face down into the netting.

"No!" Grace wailed.

Josh helped her roll Neema's head sideways. The lollipop fell out of the gorilla's mouth down to the ground. Neema's eyes rolled back in their sockets.

"Who should we call?" Josh asked. "I didn't grab my cell phone."

"I have mine." She leaned across Neema and laid her head on the gorilla's furry back. Neema's heartbeat sounded strong, and so did her lungs. So far. Grace sat up and used the corner of her robe to wipe out Neema's mouth. Then she pulled the cell phone out of her robe pocket.

"Who you gonna call?" Josh looked at her.

Grace stared at the phone for another few seconds. She hadn't yet found a local vet for the gorillas. If she called 9-1-1, they'd be invaded by useless uniforms and infuriating reporters. She scrutinized Neema again. The gorilla hadn't twitched a muscle. Would she ever move again?

"I'm calling Detective Finn. I'll stay with Neema. Go check on Gumu." The big male had ceased his shrieking, but still circled the pen, intermittently beating pock-pock-pock threats on his chest. "Pick up that lollipop."

Josh moved off, crawling across the net. "Calm down, buddy," he called to Gumu.

She tapped in Matt's home number and pressed the phone to her ear. He promised to bring a vet with him and get there as soon as he could. After ending the call, she sat in the net, crisscrossing her legs to keep her feet from sliding through the ropes.

She could hear Josh's soft murmurs over in the furthest corner as he tried to calm down Gumu. The ARU kids had taken off, flashlights in hand, to track the trespasser.

It was quiet, too quiet. She picked up Neema's giant hand, holding it in both of hers. Was the gorilla's breathing slowing? How could this happen again? Grace bit her lip, trying to keep the tears from coming. Most human beings would never touch one gorilla in a lifetime. Was she going to lose
two
to murder?

The vet Matt brought with him forty minutes later was a surprisingly petite woman named Nan Brewer. She assured Grace that she was a large animal doctor who had volunteered at a zoo while in veterinary school. Brewer seemed unperturbed at having been yanked out of bed at four in the morning to crawl up into a suspended rope net to examine a comatose gorilla. Matt, on the other hand, looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"I was
so
hoping I'd get a chance to see these guys," the vet said, pulling a stethoscope from her bag. "Under different circumstances, of course," she added.

"This is Neema," Grace told her. "The other one, Gumu, is in the barn."

Neema was heavily anesthetized, the vet concluded. Her breathing and heartbeat were very slow, but both were regular. Brain damage was her biggest fear. "Sometimes anesthesia changes animals forever; we don't really know why," she said. "Unfortunately, there's no way to know how she'll come out of it without knowing what she ingested. I'd suggest an IV to protect against shock," the vet said. "Saline and glucose. I'll stay with her for awhile."