The Only Witness (34 page)

Brittany shifted her backpack. The water bottle inside of it was digging into her back, or maybe that was the sleeping pad or the rain jacket Grace had made her carry. She wished she had a fancier pack with a waist strap—that was supposed to make the shoulder straps work better. Her shoulders ached already and she had a blister on her left foot. Still, it felt right to be out here, doing something. Fighting. She rubbed her fingers over the ivy tattoo.

Grace stood straight again, and gestured at her to continue. After a few steps, Brittany heard a noise in the woods close by, a sort of snort, followed by cracking of sticks. She stopped. "What do gorillas sound like?"

"That was most likely a deer. Gorillas hoot and whimper," Grace said. "Gumu pounds his chest when he's trying to impress someone."

"Really?" Brittany said. "Like in the movies?"

"Yep," Grace said. "That is real gorilla behavior. Climbing to the top of the Empire State Building to catch planes is not."

Talking helped pass the time. She asked, "What's Neema's favorite food?"

"Hmmm, there are so many." Grace considered. "Oranges. Jell-O. Yogurt. Lollipops would top the list, I guess. Neema calls them 'tree candy.'"

"That's smart." Neema sounded like an especially bright gorilla. She'd be the key to finding Ivy.

They went on walking for another twenty minutes, scrambling over logs and slipping on pine cones and zigzagging among the trees. Brittany occupied her thoughts by trying to imagine Ivy sleeping in her bassinet, her little lips pursing in and out as she dreamed. No, better yet—Ivy sleeping in her arms, her velvet cheek nuzzling against her breast.

"We're here." Grace's voice interrupted Brittany's reverie.

Nothing looked different. Trees and more trees.

"Well, we're close by," Grace corrected, glancing at her GPS device and then at the surroundings. "We'll have to do a big spiral out from here. Look for apple trees, an old homestead cabin, a big willow."

Brittany turned to her left to begin, but Grace's hand stopped her. "Hang on a second."

Grace stared into the darkness and yelled, "Neema! Gumu!"

They waited and listened. Brittany flashed her light around. Just the tall straight trunks of Douglas firs. "I don't hear anything but water," she said.

Grace perked up. "You hear water?"

Brittany nodded. "Like a stream or a waterfall or something."

"Lead on, MacDuff!"

Brittany fumbled her way toward the water sounds. What was a MacDuff? In a few minutes, they found a little stream and followed it until they literally ran into the branches of a big willow. At that point, Grace got very excited and trotted around among the trees while Brittany waited, leaning against an apple tree. Were there gorillas out there in the dark, watching?

Her heart was beating fast. Neema. Then Ivy. When Grace returned, Brittany whispered, "Are they here?"

"Not now," Grace said.

The gorillas were not here? They'd driven that clunky old van, bouncing over miles of rutted roads, and walked all this way in the middle of the night, and the gorillas weren't even here? Oh, what was the fucking point anymore? Nothing worked. She couldn't stand it any longer. The heavy pack, the pitch-black darkness. She slid down to the ground. Bringing up her knees, she rested her forehead on them, wishing she could just disappear. Just stop
being
. Why couldn't she make that happen?

Grace knelt next to her and threw an arm around her shoulders. "Neema and Gumu are not here right now, Brittany, but they may not be far away."

May
not? Might as well say Ivy
may
not be far away! The 'Poor Brittany' crowd had been saying that to her for weeks now. The 'Damn Brittany' crowd said Ivy was dead.

"Neema and Gumu
were
here, Brittany. And not very long ago."

She lifted her head. "What makes you say that?"

Grace's headlamp shone in her eyes for a second, then Grace turned away, casting the beam onto the drooping willow branches. She parted the leafy greenery with her hand and shifted her head to light up some broken branches and—

"Is that poop?" Brittany asked.

"Gorilla feces," Grace confirmed. "They're relatively fresh." She shrugged off her backpack and crawled deeper into the shadow of the willow. "C'mon. We're sleeping here."

Brittany pushed herself to her hands and knees and crawled after her, making a wide detour around the poop. "Why? You said the gorillas weren't here."

Grace was already rolling out her sleeping bag. "Because," she said, "I think they'll be back."

Chapter
23

Eighteen days after Ivy disappears

As he walked from the police station to the courthouse the next morning, Finn could see that Reverend Jimson's press conference had been effective. Dozens of people milled about, divided into two factions. The pro-ape contingent was into individual expression.
LISTEN TO THE ANIMALS
read one poster carried by a student wearing an ARU T-shirt.
HUMANS ARE THE ONLY DUMB ANIMALS
read another. The inevitable
I DON'T EAT MY FRIENDS
from the vegetarians. And a few signs held simple marker messages such as
Go Gorillas!
and
Half of My Friends Are Apes
.

On the opposite side of the square, the anti-ape faction was seemingly more organized. Their posters were all the same matching white and came in only three varieties:
I DID NOT DESCEND FROM APES
,
GOD GAVE MAN DOMINION OVER ANIMALS
, or
TEACH THE CONTROVERSY
.

The college news crew was egging all the protesters on, of course, filming one side and then the other. Then they spotted Finn climbing the steps.

"Detective Finn! Detective Finn!" They all rushed him. "Is it true that you're using testimony from that gorilla lady?" "How is this related to the Ivy Morgan case?" "Why have you targeted Jimson Janitorial Service?" "Are you anti-Christian?" "What's the latest news on the gorillas?"

He wished he knew the answer to the last question. He tried to call Grace several times, but her cell phone just went to voicemail. She no doubt had it turned off to save battery power. Or there was no service wherever she was. According to Josh, she was still out in the national forest searching for Neema and Gumu, with Brittany Morgan in tow.

Finn plowed through the barrage of reporters with one arm upraised, trying not to break his teeth or bloody his nose on any of the outthrust microphones. They didn't belong only to the college news crew; some of the mikes bore ID tags of stations in Seattle and Spokane.
Great. Just great.

They followed him to the metal detectors, where the security officers pushed them back. Then he was finally through the gauntlet and into the quiet marble hallways.

He'd expected the reverend himself, but instead, Jimson's HR Director, Lisa Dvorak, awaited him in Sobriski's office. She was surprisingly pretty, in a tailored navy suit and heels, her blond hair cut into a chin-length bob. She was, however, just as bitchy in person as she had been on the phone.

"Detective Finn, ape whisperer, I presume," she said on first meeting him.

Finn smiled. "Play nice, this could take awhile."
Barracuda
.

"Got that right." She stepped out of the way to reveal a stack of four white cardboard boxes. "Have fun. When you've identified the records you want to keep, I'll be back."

"Wait!" Finn yelped. "What sort of order are these in? I may need your help."

She bared her perfect teeth. "We have obeyed the subpoena, Detective. We are certainly under no obligation to
help
you persecute our employees."

Finn looked to Sobriski, who shrugged. Damn.

"And the records do not leave the courthouse, correct, Judge?" The woman locked eyes with Sobriski, who said, "I've reserved a conference room for your use, Detective." Swiveling back to Dvorak, he said, "It will be locked at all times."

"It better be." She turned and abruptly left.

"Sweet woman," Finn murmured. Sobriski pretended not to hear.

A bailiff transferred the boxes to the conference room. Finn opened the first box. Inside were hundreds of personnel records in alphabetical order, each file labeled neatly with name, address, social security, skills, assignments, salary information, and one facial photo. Nothing on criminal history. No names of parole officers.

The records were in alphabetical order, not grouped by work location. Jimson had no doubt done that on purpose. Sweet mother of humanity, this was going to take years. They'd have to match employees to work locations, then match social security numbers to criminal records, and try to find links to vehicles and Charlie Wakefield.

Finn flicked open his cell phone. "Send Mason over here," he ordered.

Brittany woke up to a gentle warm breeze blowing across her face. When she opened her eyes, she nearly screamed. A leathery black face was only inches away from hers, so close she could feel the hot breath coming out of its nostrils. Red-brown eyes burned beneath a heavy black brow. The gorilla was gigantic.

"Grace!" she whispered. The ape hooted and reared back on its hind feet, then bared startlingly long, sharp teeth. Gorillas had
fangs
! Oh god, there was another huge black monster on the other side of Grace's sleeping bag. "Grace!" she squeaked.

Grace finally rolled over, said, "Wha—?" and rubbed her eyes. Opening them, she took a look around. "They're he-re!" she said in a singsong, obviously happy. She sat up. "That's Neema, beside you."

The gorilla tapped herself on her chest and waved a huge black hand.

"Neema fine gorilla," Grace said.

Neema was talking? Brittany pushed herself upright. "Ask her where Ivy is."

The larger gorilla on Grace's left side made what seemed like an obscene gesture.
Fuck? Prick?
Was there swearing in sign language?

"Gumu wants a banana." Grace watched the animals. "And so does Neema."

Banana, not penis
. Thank god she hadn't said anything out loud.

Neema leaned close, her breath hot on Brittany's neck. She stretched out a long black finger and touched Brittany's hair where it lay on her shoulder. "They have fingernails!" Brittany said. She looked down. "And toenails!"

"I don't know why that always surprises people," Grace said. "We have practically identical DNA."

Neema was still gesturing. "Yogurt, Jell-O, cucumber, banana, cabbage, milk," Grace translated.

Gumu repeated his earlier sign. Brittany pointed. "He just wants a banana."

Grace laughed. "Oh, believe me, he wants a lot more than that; he just doesn't know the signs for the other foods yet."

Grace pulled her backpack into her lap and extracted two bananas. She was immediately rushed by both gorillas. They snatched the fruit and plowed through the drooping branches.

"Quick," Grace said, "Get dressed and don't—"

A black hand snaked back through the branches, caught Brittany's backpack, and then was gone.

"Shit!" Grace yelped.

They both ran out into the daylight. "Hey!" Brittany shouted. "Bring that back!"

Hooting like jackals, the gorillas vanished into the woods on the other side of the clearing.

By noon, Finn was bleary-eyed after pawing through the files in the four boxes. Mason had come over and set up a computer and a scanner.

"OCR is your only hope," Mason said.

Finn briefly considered slapping him with a file folder to make him speak English, but instead laid it on top of the stack.

Mason noted the dirty look. "Optical character recognition," he informed him. "It turns scanned documents into text files that you can use with a word processing system. So, in other words, you can scan these pages and then search for names or terms on the computer."

Finn groaned. "Sounds like a hell of a lot of work."

Mason nodded. "It is. And OCR is notoriously buggy, so it won't work perfectly, but it'll still be faster to match names or social security numbers against NCIC." He made a face at the stack of files on the table. "You want to scan all those?"

Finn had pulled out the files of personnel working at the three schools in Evansburg, Coeur d'Alene, and Portland. "To start."

"Yeah, right." Mason headed for the door.

Finn panicked. "Where are you going?"

"To get another computer, and to shanghai Miki into scanning. Any objections?"

"Good plan." Finn waved him out. He shook his cell phone out of his pocket, speed-dialed Grace's cell and held his phone to his ear as he walked to the window. The demonstrators on the court steps had diminished in number, but when Mason appeared, they became more vocal. A reporter and cameraman, lounging against the side of an SUV, glanced his way with interest.