The Only Clue Page 9

  Redd squinted at him for a second. “Damn, I need to fix that. But the truck’s his, mostly. He built the thing out of spare parts he matched up from my yard. It’s only got my name on it because he’s making payments, but I need to fill out the sales thingamabob so he’ll be the registered driver. I’ll fix that right away, Officer.”

  “Do that.” The guy seemed to think he was there about the truck, which was a good lead-in for his next question. “The truck has a canopy over the back?”

  “I think Tony found one somewhere, yeah.”

  “That truck was seen at the open house event held last Saturday by Dr. Grace McKenna.”

  Redd nodded. “Tony really wanted to meet The Gorilla Lady and see those gorillas. He talks about them all the time; he’s real proud of his boy that works there. I drove him out there on his lunch hour ‘cause he loaned the truck to his kid to pick something up.”

  “When did he drive it back?”

  Redd stared at his blue-jeaned knees for a few seconds. “Can’t say that I noticed. I was out of the office the rest of the day, delivering parts.”

  “How many other employees work there?”

  “I have a gal who works nine till two six days a week in the office and then another guy who works Monday through Thursday out in the yard.”

  Finn wrote down the other employees’ names, although neither one of them had been there on late Saturday afternoon. “Your salvage yard’s a big place. How often do you take inventory?”

  “We don’t. We keep the cars in sections by type and we list everything in a database. We need a certain part that’s still on a wreck, we hike out to that section and locate it for the customer.”

  In other words, there could be a herd of buffalos living in the back corner and Grant Redd might not have noticed. “Can Zyrnek get into the salvage yard after hours?”

  Redd shrugged. “He has the key code to the front gate. But why would he want to?”

  Finn shrugged back.

  “Hell, I’ll give you the key code if you want to check. I don’t want any trouble.”

  Finn held out his notepad and pen. After scribbling down the numbers, Redd handed it back. He rubbed at a frown line on his forehead. “Let me know if you find anything that’s not right. I mean, I think I’m doing a public service giving these guys a job, but I can’t lose my business, you know? I’ve had to kick a few of their butts out over the years. Zyrnek doesn’t seem like that type, but—”

  “You probably have nothing to worry about. Like I said, we just check up on recent parolees in our jurisdiction. Err on the side of caution.” Finn stood up and extended his hand. “Thanks for your cooperation.”

  He walked down the steps to his car. With the crappy pay and the knowledge that a gorilla might command a big price as an exotic pet, Tony Zyrnek had motive. He also had opportunity. At the salvage yard, he had a loose schedule and access to any tool he needed for a challenging task like cutting through a padlock. Plus, he had the perfect vehicle for transporting unconscious gorillas, and the perfect place to store them temporarily. And nobody could vouch for his whereabouts on Saturday afternoon.

  Finn called the evidence tech on duty and told him to meet him at Zyrnek’s.

  * * * * *

  When he rolled up to Zyrnek’s lot, darkness was descending on Brigadoom and the yard light was on. Tony Zyrnek was outside, grilling over a little hibachi stove set on top of stacked cement blocks. The burgers smelled enticing.

  “Detective!” Zyrnek waved his barbecue tongs in Finn’s direction. “Nice evening, isn’t it? Right now, I only got two burgers on the grill here.” He winked and tilted his head toward the small grass plot that surrounded the trailer. A round cafe table was set up with a tablecloth and a glowing candle centerpiece, place settings for two, and accompanied by two folding chairs. “I can throw on another if you’re staying for dinner.”

  A woman stepped out of the doublewide’s door. Her long black hair was thick and glossy. Her dark eyes had an Asian slant to them, and her skin was either tanned or naturally olive. The overall effect was Polynesian, although she wore the jeans and long-sleeved tee typical of the Evansburg area. Her eyelashes were clumped wetly together, and she carried a wadded tissue in one hand. Pausing on the bottom step, she glanced uncertainly at Finn.

  “Detective Finn, this is Heather Clayton. Heather, meet Detective Finn. He usually stops by to watch Jeopardy and have a bite, but tonight he’s here to observe my excellent grill work.”

  Finn snorted at Zyrnek’s description, and then nodded in Heather’s direction. How did an ex-con rate a woman like that? Did she know who she was dealing with?

  “Hello.” She smiled and took the last step down onto the ground.

  He turned back to Tony, who was grinning. “Hey, Finn, bring Grace over sometime; we’ll have a double date.”

  “I’m here on the job, Zyrnek.”

  “I guessed that. Can I get you a beer? A soda?”

  Smooth. A lot of women fell for that sort of con man charm.

  “Say, Finn, have you seen Jon today? He called to say he was doin’ okay, but it seemed like he was afraid to tell me something.”

  Finn was thankful to see Rodrigo pull in behind his car. “We need to look at your truck,” he told Zyrnek.

  “I didn’t hit a barn or anything else with it.”

  What? “That’s an odd comment.”

  Zyrnek rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. “Jon said something about damage to the back of the barn. That’s not what you’re here about?”

  Damn, what else had Jon told his father? Finn said, “I only know about the dog. What did Jon tell you?”

  “Nothing. So this is just more Weimaraner business?” Zyrnek stroked his moustache as if deep in thought. “I guess a dog could have jumped in yesterday without me knowing about it.”

  Finn didn’t respond. Zyrnek wasn’t a dim bulb; he knew that as a parolee, his vehicle and living quarters could be searched pretty much any time law enforcement felt like it, no warrant needed.

  Zyrnek clacked his tongs together like castanets. “Knock yourself out. I hauled some compost in the truck after work”—he pointed at a heap in the corner of the yard—“but I hosed it out just about an hour ago down at the car wash, so you shouldn’t get too dirty. C’mon, Heather, the burgers are done and our beer’s getting flat.”

  The gorgeous woman joined Tony Zyrnek at the table and they talked about their jobs and about someone named Jenny. It seemed odd that Heather didn’t ask any questions about what was going on. Most women would be curious if a couple of cops showed up during dinner. He needed to look into Heather Clayton’s background and interview her later.

  “Cheerful guy,” Rodrigo murmured.

  “Way too cheerful,” Finn whispered back.

  “I’d be cheerful too, having dinner with a woman like that.” Rodrigo squinted and bent over, sighting down the length of the pickup bed. “What am I looking for?”

  Finn raised his voice to be sure Zyrnek would hear. “Check for hairs, blood.” He straightened and nearly whacked his forehead on the corner of an awning protruding from the doublewide. Recovering, he pointed his flashlight at the pickup canopy tilted sideways up against the trailer a short distance away. “There, too.”

  Rodrigo pulled on a headlamp, snapped on gloves, and asked in a normal tone, “Still looking for that Weimaraner?”

  “Sounds like a country western song,” Zyrnek commented from the table. Then he sang in an off-key twang, “That’s my story and I ain’t lyin’, there’d be no use in denyin’, you wonder how I got this shiner? I was looking for a Weimaraner.”

  Heather burst out laughing, and a snicker escaped from Rodrigo before he stifled it. Finn grimaced. Had Jon Zyrnek told his father about the missing gorillas, or did they both already know where the apes were? Finn suspected that Zyrnek knew exactly what was going on. The man was playing him.

  * * * * *

  An ad for a baby monkey on the local Craigs
list site caught Grace’s eye. She clicked the link. The blurry photo showed a shadowy black creature in a cage; huge terrified eyes ringed by white looked out from behind bars. She couldn’t tell for sure what type of simian those haunted eyes belonged to. Kanoni?

  The timing was right; the ad had been posted yesterday. Damn, there was no phone number, just an anonymous email address. She saved a screenshot of the photo and then sent a message using her JaneAfrica gmail address. When can I see this baby monkey? I’ve always wanted one! She included her cell number.

  Finally feeling like she might be on the trail of something important, she ran more general searches on the net, including the words gorilla, ape, and monkey. The term gorilla resulted in a long list of annoying links to articles about marketing strategies and videos of wild sex.

  She found articles about dwindling ape populations in Africa, and new studies on the reasoning capabilities of apes, which reminded her that she should write more articles about her gorillas’ language skills. Which reminded her that she no longer had her gorillas. Swallowing painfully around a sudden constriction in her throat, she moved on to articles about monkeys, and clicked on a newspaper article from Spokane titled More Than a Missing Pet.

  Ten-year-old Maria Constello misses her best friend Pepito every moment of every day. Pepito is a pygmy marmoset that Maria’s father brought for her from Brazil. Maria was born with spina bifida and is confined to a wheelchair. Pepito disappeared from his cage when the Constello house was burglarized on April 17. The family is offering a reward for information leading to Pepito’s recovery. 509-555-5201.

  An accompanying picture showed the tiny marmoset clinging to a child’s hand and chewing on an apricot that was as big as it was. The creature had an odd vertical white stripe like an exclamation point above its left eye. The mark gave his little face a quizzical expression.

  When Jon Zyrnek knocked on her door, she was surprised to see the sun had already set. Unable to absorb any more sad photos and stories, Grace shut down her computer. She picked up her cell phone and found a text from Finn saying prints hadn’t panned out but he was working on some leads. She hoped he was making more progress than she was. She went outside to confer with Jon, painfully aware that this was the third night the gorillas were gone.

  * * * * *

  The cab of Zyrnek’s pickup yielded no blood traces, and only a few hairs. From the crevices of the pickup bed, Rodrigo plucked out a few more. Finn wondered how easy it was to distinguish animal hairs of different types. He couldn’t exactly ask if they came from a gorilla, could he? Or maybe he could—Jon worked at Grace’s compound, and he could tell the techs that gorilla hairs might be transferred into the pickup, but they were especially looking for dog hairs.

  But if gorilla hairs were found in the bed of the pickup, he was going to haul both Zyrneks in for questioning, no matter what Grace said.

  Dispatch called him on the way back to the station. Another burglary. Rodrigo duplicated his U-turn, and they both swung by a house shared by four college students. The place looked like something from the Hoarders television show. The only items the students could definitely say were missing were an I-Pad, an MP3 player, around two hundred dollars in cash, and a bottle of tequila. A couple of the students were squirmy; Finn guessed there were some illegal substances on the list of stolen items, too.

  So now Evansburg had burglars out there who were probably drunk and high and had at least two guns. The college kids had no clue who might be responsible, but they’d all been away at the same party when the break-in happened, so maybe the party was a place to start. Finn wrote it down and left it for Sarah Melendez to pick up the next day.

  He was washing his hands in the men’s room when Scoletti emerged from a stall. The rookie looked at him in the mirror. “How come you haven’t asked me about this Weimaraner?”

  Finn was sick of that dog. He reached for a paper towel. “I was getting around to it. Did you see the dog?”

  “Nope.” Scoletti turned on the water.

  “Notice anything suspicious going on?”

  “Couple of near misses in the parking lot. Some old coots can’t park worth a darn.” He turned off the water and shook out his hands, drying them on the thighs of his jeans. Then he grinned. “And a couple of Gorilla Woman’s volunteers are hot.”

  “I hope you’re talking about the female volunteers,” Finn quipped. “Because I’m pretty sure Jon Zyrnek is straight.”

  He dodged the balled-up paper towel Scoletti threw as he backed out the door.

  At his desk, Finn reviewed the arrests and stops the uniforms had made for the evening, keeping his eyes open for Melendez’s missing Ryan Connelly. A drunk with no ID seemed like a possible, so he strolled down to the jail. No, the guy snoring in the cell looked older and had an old scar streaking through the growth of whiskers on the underside of his chin. The parents had told him their son had no notable scars.

  Grace hadn’t called with any updates, which meant there was no news. At one a.m., he texted her. Thinking of you, sweetheart. Call if you’re still up. When his cell phone didn’t buzz with a response, Finn drove home, feeling like he was on a slow road to nowhere.

  Chapter 9

  Just after dawn, Grace woke from a horrible nightmare in which the apes grew increasingly tinier and fainter as they became more and more distant. She stared at the ceiling fan above her bed, trying to get that spooky vision out of her head. She felt guilty for sleeping.

  Thirteen years ago at the beginning of her graduate studies, she had adopted year-old Neema as a research project and created the gorilla sign language study. She had managed the project all of her professional life, teaching only a few seminars now and then, writing a few papers about her work.

  Without the gorillas, she didn’t have a project. She wasn’t a professor or a researcher. Without the gorillas, she wasn’t even an animal keeper. She was only the renter of a questionable property owned by the University of Washington. She was no longer on their faculty. If she didn’t get the gorillas back, she wouldn’t be associated with any educational institution, so the UW would soon boot her out and she’d be homeless, too.

  Her parents and colleagues had often criticized her for letting her life revolve around the gorillas. That criticism had been right on target. Without the gorillas, she was, apparently, nothing.

  It had been hard to sit through the college board meeting yesterday. Just as she suspected, her comment about Gumu’s sad history and his ability to kill had been noted and were roundly criticized. There was a brief debate about whether the college deserved part of the proceeds from art sales. But overall, the board deemed the open house a success. She nearly broke down in tears at that point, and excused herself by claiming a migraine was coming on.

  She’d given herself four days to focus on finding the gorillas before announcing the disaster to the world. Tomorrow would be day four. If they weren’t home by then, she’d have to face her staff, then the community, and then the world. And admit that she was a total failure.

  Snow mewed outside her window. She was the vocal cat. Nest was probably sitting beside her silently, but just as upset by all the changes in routine. Their sea-green eyes held secrets. If only she could converse with Snow and Nest like she could with Neema. The cats often hunted for mice in the barn; they often slept there. Had they seen what happened on Saturday evening? If only she could just take their small fuzzy heads in her hands, press her forehead to theirs, and read their thoughts.

  These were probably not thoughts that passed through the minds of people with normal lives.

  She had never thought of her gorillas as her babies. But now she felt a kinship with mothers everywhere, because this had to be how mothers of lost children felt. One moment you thought your life was under control, you knew your children were safe. And then your loved ones were simply erased from your world and you weren’t a mother anymore and you couldn’t stop imagining all the horrible tortures that they might be suffering whi
le you were lying in bed, powerless.

  Like Brittany Morgan had done when Ivy was lost, Grace wanted to get in her van and endlessly cruise the roads of the county, on the off chance of spotting a gorilla careening through the pastures or woods. She wanted to question everyone she met. “Seen any odd sights lately? Bigfoot? Funny looking bears? Any large black creature?” She wanted to post questions on Facebook and Google Plus, put an ad on Craigslist, make a plea to the public on the news.

  Right. That would definitely alarm the locals. She’d nearly lost her right to keep Neema and Gumu last time they’d escaped.

  The ceiling fan had no advice for her. Snow was getting louder by the minute. Grace made herself climb out of bed and, dress, and feed the cats. She didn’t even want to face Jon Zyrnek. She checked her email—nothing from Craigslist—then put on her boots, and went to search the grounds and the nearby woods again.

  Reminders of the gorillas were everywhere. That broken branch under the alder had snapped when Gumu swung on it. Kanoni had dropped those pine cones when she found a fuzzy caterpillar more interesting. Grace picked up a twig with a splintered end and leaned against a tree for a moment, letting her eyes fill with tears. That fuzzed-out, flattened end had been chewed by Neema.

  Her cell phone chimed just as she came out of the woods. She grabbed it eagerly, hoping for the Craigslist baby monkey seller. McKenna, Maureen.

  Shit. She’d totally forgotten to make her regular phone call to her parents in California yesterday. She pressed TALK. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  Conflicting emotions raced through Grace’s mind. She wanted to share her fears, but she knew confiding in her mother would most likely lead to advice to call the police, as well as an unspoken I told you so.

  “Grace?”

  She finally elected to be vague. “There’s a new problem with the research project.”

  “Funding?”

  “That’s nothing new, Mom. That’s always a concern.”