Night Kill (22 page)

“That would require a financial motive, a big one. Or he needed to cover up something else,” Marcie said.

“I’ll find out,” Denny said, spinning on his heel and striding back.

The wisp of an idea dissipated into sleepiness. “Denny, shut up and hold still. I want to think.” The construction site. A metal wheel leaned up on a gate. Mud. I shook myself. I was looping out into space like Denny.

“Iris, spit it out,” Marcie demanded. “I can see the wheels turning.”

Denny sat down next to her and threw a leg over the sofa arm.

“Somebody opened the water valve at the Children’s Zoo a night or two after Rick died,” I started slowly. “They removed that heavy wheel that shuts off the water and leaned it up against the gate, so that all the petting zoo animals could get out and away from the water shooting everywhere.” I walked through the event in my head, trying to pull the fragments into a whole. “Diego is busy at the front end of the zoo. The security guard, too. Right—that same night, somebody dragged the elephant area’s hose someplace where it got muddy, like over to the construction site.”

Denny was up pacing again. “Sam bitched all day about his hoses. And that same day, the bulldozer gets stuck in the mud.”

“Yes! Because somebody hosed the hell out of the construction area and it was a lot soggier than the driver thought it would be.” Now I was up and pacing. “Destroying evidence or washing it out so it could be removed.” At last, pieces fitting together. “Rick finds artifacts in the mud. The killer offs Rick, checks out the mud the next day. Maybe can’t find anything, but worries about more construction activity turning up bones or whatever, comes back at night, creates a distraction, hoses it to reveal anything else, removes whatever he or she finds.”

“Plausible, but couldn’t anybody have done it?” Marcie asked. “Anybody could climb the fence.”

“Calvin says vandals usually cut a hole in the fence to get in,” I said. “He checked and couldn’t find anything. A zoo insider would have keys to get in. And would know about the water wheel.”

Denny nodded. “Definitely zoo staff.”

Definitely? Possibly was as far as I would go, but I let it pass. “The animals were let out to delay Diego longer while he rounded them up, or maybe whoever it was didn’t want them to get wet and chilled from the spray.”

“Right,” said Denny, “a killer who doesn’t want the dear little goats and pony to catch a cold.”

Made sense to me. Marcie nodded. Denny shrugged, conceding the point. Murder is one thing; neglecting an animal is another. More evidence for a zoo staffer.

“That gets the candidate pool down to—what?—fifty people?” Marcie calculated.

“It’s Wallace.” Denny was undeterred. “He suspects I’ve figured it out and that’s why he’s trying to get rid of me.”

“Trying to get rid of you?” Marcie inquired.

“He won’t. He’s not going to bluff me into quitting.”

I wondered what he meant. I hadn’t heard any gossip about Wallace gunning for Denny’s departure, but maybe the foreman was really cleaning house. Not just me?

“This would be more convincing if we actually knew what Rick found,” I said. “Where is it? Did he have it with him when he went to the zoo? Did whoever killed him take it or did he hide it somewhere?”

“Yes,” Marcie said. “Where’s the potshards or tibias or arrowheads?”

“He probably went to the zoo to meet the killer and turn it over,” Denny said. “We’ll never find anything.”

Oh. “Um, I have a possibility.” I rubbed my face. It had been a long day and brain fade was returning. “Denny, you remember when I cleared out Rick’s locker? The snake shed in the jar and the little tooth in the mud? I thought it was a deer incisor, but maybe not. Maybe he found a skull and stored it in his locker and the tooth fell off. It was small and hard to see.”

“A skull,” Denny said. He strode briskly from one side of the living room to the other like a pendulum. “Ancient gravesite. That’s got to be it. We need to get that tooth to an anthropologist. Wow! This could be another duel in the courts like over Kennewick Man. Tribes versus scientists, rebury the remains or study them.”

Marcie’s head bobbed enthusiastically.

“Uh, that might not work out,” I told them.

“Why not?” Marcie asked.

“I don’t have it anymore.” I gnawed on my lower lip. “Wallace said I had to turn it over to the Education volunteers. I didn’t intend to, but he caught me on the way out of the zoo and took the jar.”

We all stared at each other, wide-eyed. We had a real candidate as Rick’s murderer.

“Forget ever seeing that tooth again,” Denny finally said. “We’ll have to do without it.”

I needed time to think. Denny wanted time to find out whether Wallace had a financial connection to the construction. Marcie wanted to go to bed.

“Let’s not get carried away,” I said. “I’m beat. Let’s talk tomorrow. Marcie, thanks for dinner. And everything. Do you want to follow me out, or can you find your way?”

She said she could find her way. I stood up and started for the door.

Denny said, “Night, Iris.”

That was all, but “Iris” stopped me. Not “Ire.” “Hey, Denny. Thanks for helping.”

“Glad to oblige,” he said.

“Sleep well,” was all I could think to say, and left them.

The dogs were subdued on the ride home, but I felt a trickle of elation. Denny was on the team, his suspicions and energy no longer focused on my perfidy. That was a considerable relief. I had no stomach for mutual loathing.

And at last I had something to work with, some idea of what Rick might have been up to. The pieces might not fit together the way we’d outlined it, but at least there were pieces.

And, so far, none of them included Hap.

I carried the little bundle of Rick’s clothing into the house. Range forgot his good manners and reared up, forefeet at my waist, to shove his nose into them. I checked—they did still smell of Rick, smelled like warm arms and good music and sex. My tears were only salty, lacking the old bitterness.

Chapter Eighteen

“What’s up?” I’d clocked in a little late, but Calvin always got to the Penguinarium first. He should have been chatting with the penguins or laying out fish for their vitamin amendments. Instead he was standing at the low gate between the kitchen and the pool, hands clasped behind his back, watching the birds. They were hungry and braying at him, but Calvin just stood there.

The little silence gave me time to switch focus.

Ever since my bare feet had hit the rug next to my bed, I’d been sorting through the implications of Wallace murdering my husband. Over coffee and cereal, I’d concluded he was strong enough, especially if Rick was falling-down drunk. He could have let Raj out on me and he could have set the booby trap with the heat lamp. On the drive to work, I’d added Wallace pushing me to apply for a job elsewhere. Walking to the Penguinarium, I’d concluded that the scenario wasn’t perfect. Keeping the construction project going didn’t seem like a sufficient motive. Wallace breaking into my house made no sense, but perhaps it was truly unrelated and someone else entirely. There was still the problem of Rick drinking whiskey instead of beer.

Wallace was an unpleasant man, rough-tongued and ungenerous, but I felt no satisfaction in his possible guilt. At a fundamental level, I’d trusted him, as I did all my coworkers, trusted in his basic decency and his commitment to the zoo. Zookeeping had its dangers and we relied on each other. The thought of him picking up Rick and throwing him to the lions was nauseating. I’d been feeling that way often.

“Anything wrong?” I asked.

This time Calvin turned when I spoke and pointed with his chin toward a black plastic bag on the floor by the fridge. I squatted down and opened it. The black and white corpse, already stiff and dull-eyed, had a green band on the right wing.

“Ah, shit. Mr. Green,” I said, running a finger gently down the smooth, dense little feathers on his back. The bare skin under the bird’s eye was pale, not the healthy pink it had been. Yesterday Calvin had mentioned that the penguin was off his feed. He had looked fine to me, but Calvin had seen more. The birds were not interchangeable ornaments to him; each one was an individual with a personality and its own habits. Just as Raj was an old friend of mine, Mr. Green was an old friend of his.

I closed the bag and joined Calvin at the gate. “Mrs. Green okay?” She was at the far end of the island, away from the noisy crowd in front of us.

“She was standing by. Tried to keep me from taking him.” He turned away from the gate. “I should have talked Dawson into putting him on antibiotics. We should have caught him up and made sure he was hydrated.”

“Putting in a stomach tube is stressful. It might have done more harm than good. Maybe it was his time and nothing would help. Nobody’s fault.”

“He was one of the first we got here,” Calvin said, “probably the oldest. I brought pictures today to show you. Wouldn’t you know, on the day he dies.”

“Let’s do that this afternoon.” Like a wake, I thought. Maybe that would help us feel less bummed out.

Calvin nodded and shook his shoulders loose, ready to get back to work after allotting a moment for grief. “I got to take him up to the hospital. Neal’s last appointment with Dr. Dawson.”

“Neal?”

“We named him after the vet, before we had the wing bands.” He picked up the small bundle. I could see the head flop, the sharp beak threatening to poke through the plastic. Calvin carried him out.

The rest of the morning was feeding and cleaning, a familiar routine at last, the awkwardness and inefficiencies worked out. Pleasure in new competence, sorrow for the dead penguin, and anxious musings about Wallace eddied and churned.

Denny caught me on the way to lunch. “Ire, I want you to come talk to the foreman at the construction site.”

“Now? I’m hungry.” I was “Ire” again.

He was already striding off, assuming I’d follow. I trailed after him, wondering if feeling irked at Denny would ever change. It was an improvement on fury.

He led me to the future Asian Experience. A front loader sat idle off to the side. It looked clean and had different appendages from the machine that used to be half-sunk in the mud. Erosion control barriers, long sausages of straw-stuffed mesh, snaked across the mud. A slight dark-haired man in a white hard hat sat on the running board of a mammoth green crew-cab truck. He spooned up soup from a plastic bowl in his lap, intent on not spilling. A stainless steel thermos sat at his feet. Denny and I stopped and stood looking down at him.

“Mark, this is Iris,” Denny said. “I want you to tell her what you told me.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Mark said, looking a little alarmed. He set his soup bowl on the running board and stood up to shake my hand. He was about five foot eight, slender, with neat, sharp features in an intelligent face. Maybe it didn’t require brawn to manage a construction site.

Denny waited a heartbeat. “Tell her about Wallace.”

Mark looked definitely wary.

I gave him my best nonthreatening smile. “I’m Iris Oakley. I work in Birds. You guys have made a lot of progress here. What happens next—pouring cement?” Give the guy a minute to think.

Denny answered for him. “If the weather holds, they’ll pour next week. Nobody found any bones or artifacts, as far as Mark knows. Tell her about Wallace.”

“You’ve met our fearless leader?” I asked, working the smile again. “I hope he’s not interfering with your work. Wallace gives micromanagement a bad name.”

Mark managed a faint smile of his own. He looked at Denny, then me, and seemed to make a decision to get this over with. “Denny asked me whether Kevin Wallace has any connections to the project. I mean, except for his job at the zoo. This is Huddleston Construction.” His wave encompassed the mud and machines. “I told him that John Huddleston is married to Wallace’s sister. That’s all. It’s not illegal or unethical.”

Denny nodded several times. “Thanks, Mark. I owe you.”

Mark looked as if he seriously wished he’d kept his mouth shut. His eyes shifted, relief on his face. “Hap, how’s it going?”

I looked over my shoulder.

“Same old, same old,” Hap said. To us, “Checking out the field of dreams?” He turned back to Mark. “That front loader running right?”

“Yeah. Thanks for the help. My guy is useless for electrical.”

“He’ll learn,” Hap said. “I like getting my hands on big iron.”

Denny and I watched on the sidelines. Hap was his usual relaxed self, not full of injured innocence. He looked twice the size of Mark. I wondered if he had accosted Linda yet.

“I’d love to see that ’Vette you guys dropped the engine into,” Mark said, slurping soup where he stood.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Hap said. “Gotta go.”

He swung around on his heel and left, broad shoulders moving with his steady stride.

Mark looked surprised, possibly wondering, as I was, why Hap walked a considerable distance out of his way to join a friendly conversation, only to depart almost immediately.

“C’mon, Ire,” Denny said. “I’ve got to get back to work, but I want to talk first. See you around, Mark.” He walked fast and spoke fast, intense and certain. “His sister’s husband got the contract for the site preparation and a lot of the cement work on the new exhibit. Think ‘kickback.’ It’s got to be a major conflict of interest. I really, really doubt the zoo board knows about the connection.”

“Maybe the board does know and doesn’t care,” I said. “Maybe there isn’t any kickback.”

“No way. It’s got to be against some policy or other. And it gives Wallace a financial motive to keep the construction going.”

“I’d say it gives Huddleston a motive to keep the construction going. A legitimate motive.”

“Maybe they’re in this together.”

Left to himself, Denny was certain to promote this to everyone who would listen. At the door to Reptiles, I said, “Denny, keep quiet about the connection. This might be important and it might not. We don’t have any evidence. We need to work on this.”

“Let’s meet tonight.”

Not my first choice, but I didn’t see any way out of it. “Fine. Come to my place.”

“Yeah, that should work better than last night. Marcie cleaned up the blood.”