The Only Witness (5 page)

Both the gorillas now had their long black fingers woven into the wire mesh of the fence, their liquid red-brown eyes fixed on Grace and Josh. The sight of those intelligent eyes jailed behind wire mesh always gave Grace a pang of guilt. It's no different than using a playpen to corral toddlers, she told herself. These two youngsters were plenty capable of mischief.

Neema and Gumu studied humans just as intensely as Josh and Grace studied them. Like human children, gorillas learned by watching. They could open cabinets and refrigerators, punch computer keys, wield tools with much greater strength than humans. They understood a vast amount of human dialogue, whether or not they'd learned the signs to show it. Right now the gorillas were clearly eavesdropping, because Neema, her eyes round with anxiety, pulled her fingers from the mesh to sign
Where snake?

No snake here
, Grace signed.

Snake make baby cry
, Neema signed back.

Grace frowned. Was Neema so often referring to babies now because she wanted a baby? Her favorite film was a
National Geographic
special featuring a gorilla family of five adults and three infants. Neema sometimes invented an imaginary baby or pretended her doll was a baby. Or referred to another animal as a baby. Or even to herself.

You baby?
Grace flicked an index finger toward Neema's chest.

Neema huffed and signed
here fine gorilla
.

Josh laughed. "No problem with self-esteem in that cage."

Neema fine gorilla
, Grace agreed.
Grace fine woman, not snake.

Neema stared at her for a second, then signed
Josh snake. Gumu snake
. She hooted at her own jest and then leapt onto Gumu's back. The two gorillas chased each other across the netting again.

"Speaking of snakes," Josh said,
"I'm
fine. Thanks for your concern."

Grace jerked her thoughts back to him. "Oh god, I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

"Yep. I'm still three-dimensional. I can't say the same for the rattler. But I feel like a field hand. Next you'll have me pickin' cotton bolls."

"Get real. There's no cotton in the northwest. You'll have to stick with moving rocks."

The sun had set as they talked. Dusk triggered the security lights, which glowed dimly, outlining the perimeters of the three trailers set into a U-shaped formation—hers, Josh's, and the study trailer, where they worked with the gorillas and where Neema usually slept. The old horse barn with its attached fenced enclosure loomed in the forth corner, the gorillas dark shadows in the webbing.

"Let them play," Josh said, reading her thoughts. "I'll put them to bed in an hour or so and lock up."

"Have you had dinner, Josh? I have enchiladas we could share. It's the least I can do for all your work today."

"Add a beer and I'll forgive you. But, none of that lite crap, you hear?"

"Amber ale, iced mug, slice of lime?"

"Sublime." He jerked the shovel out of the dirt. "Hey, I rhyme."

"I swear, you're twenty-six, going on twelve."

"And you're thirty-eight, headed for sixty." His hand landed on her shoulder. "Do us both a favor; relax the frown lines and lighten up for awhile."

Headed for
sixty
? That hurt. Somebody had to worry about all the picky little details like bills and future funding, didn't they? Still,
sixty
? Did she really seem like an old lady to him? She swallowed painfully and gestured toward her personal trailer. "I'll try, Josh. Ditch the shovel and wash your face and come on in. We can discuss tomorrow's lesson plan for Neema and Gumu."

He shouldered the shovel. "What the hell is a cotton boll, anyway?"

Grace turned on the television in her living area as she poured their beers. She shoved the enchiladas into the microwave and settled at the counter on a kitchen bar stool next to Josh. On the television screen, police cars flooded the Food Mart parking lot. Grace turned up the sound as a female reporter stuck a microphone in front of a wild-eyed girl with a strawberry blonde ponytail.

"My baby! Someone kidnapped my baby out of my car!" the girl sobbed.

Grace grimaced. "That poor kid. She doesn't look old enough to even have a baby, let alone lose one." Having grown up in southern California, Grace was accustomed to hearing about all sorts of horrific crime, but babynapping seemed extreme for small-town Evansburg, Washington. Her eyes widened when the reporter estimated the time of the kidnapping.

Josh noticed. "You know that girl?"

Grace shook her head. "No. But Neema and I were parked in that same area just a few minutes earlier. Thank god we were gone before this happened."

Brittany looked like a lunatic on the ten o'clock news, with hair sticking out everywhere and her face blotchy with tears. But wouldn't any mother whose baby had just vanished look a little psycho?

Then, after watching her interview in the grocery store parking lot, Brittany stared at the image of their neighbor, nosey Mrs. Kay, talking to a reporter in their own neighborhood.

"Well, I don't like to speak ill of the poor girl. Brittany's only a child herself. But once I walked into the house and the baby was lying on the carpet in the middle of the living room. Anything could have happened." Mrs. Kay pursed her lips like she was proud of all those old-lady cracks around her mouth.

Brittany threw her pillow at her tiny bedroom television set. "You damned old crone! Ivy was sound asleep. It's not like she can fall off the floor!" And she'd been just on the other side of the wall, getting a soda. This was just like the car thing. It was unbelievable how everyone kept harping on that. Some maniac had kidnapped Ivy and people were talking about
her
like she was a criminal.

Ivy's photo and statistics filled the TV screen. At least that was something; everyone would be watching for her baby. Her friends already knew; Cynda and Joy and Karleen had called to tell her the cops had visited them. All her friends had promised to get the word out about Ivy's kidnapping on Twitter, too.

She muted the sound on the television and walked to the window. So dark. She should be out there, searching for Ivy. But where? How could you know where to start looking? In her mind, she could hear a faint wailing. Was Ivy crying in hunger? Was she all alone in the dark? Brittany's stomach clenched again as horrible images raced through her head, but she'd already thrown up everything, there wasn't anything left down there but acid. Her breasts were another story. They hurt, so full that she should go use the pump but that would mean that she believed that Ivy wasn't going to be home any time soon.

Brittany couldn't think of anyone who hated her so much they'd take Ivy. Nobody could hate a little baby, could they? Okay, maybe Charlie was a little cold right now, but that was because he was away at school. He hadn't even seen Ivy yet, and guys weren't that much into babies anyway. No matter what Joy said, Charlie didn't hate her and he didn't hate Ivy. Nobody hated their own flesh and blood.

"Such a beautiful baby," people said, every time they saw Ivy. The kidnapper had to be some deranged woman who was walking by and saw this beautiful baby and wanted Ivy for her own. Probably one of those poor women who couldn't make their own babies. Like all the other pregnant girls, Brittany had gotten the lecture about the "selfless gift of adoption" from the school nurse. How could any mother do that? Her daughter could never be anyone else's daughter.

Brittany pressed her hand to the window pane. The glass was so warm that her fingers didn't even leave an impression. Like she really didn't exist. Maybe this wasn't really happening. Maybe Joy's brother Clay had slipped her some acid like he had at Joy's party a couple years ago. Then she'd seen butterflies everywhere. Everyone still laughed about it. She closed her eyes; opened them again. No butterflies. And her mind seemed to be working fine, because now she remembered that Clay had been sent off to juvie jail a year ago for peddling X at parties.

There was a soft knock at her bedroom door. The door opened before she could ask who it was, and Detective Finn walked in. Her dad stopped in the doorway behind him.

Finn's clothes were wrinkled and his graying brown hair was messed up. He made it worse by running his fingers through it. "Okay if I look around your room a little?"

He walked around the changing table and pulled open the louvered closet doors. He studied the folded stacks of baby clothes in the cubbies and glanced back at her, probably surprised that she was so neat with Ivy's clothes. Hers were another story—she'd tossed a pair of stretched out jeans, a stained T-shirt, and yesterday's bra and panties in the far corner. Her peasant blouse had slipped off the hanger again and now lay on top of her running shoes.

The police officer downstairs had taken photos of the whole house and told Brittany not to move anything in her room, like
she
was a criminal. She found the remote on her bed and clicked off the television. Did Detective Finn have the right to paw through her underwear and criticize how she didn't hang up her clothes? "What if I said it wasn't okay?" she asked.

"Britt." Her father filled the doorway like he was blocking her escape to the hallway.

Finn shut the closet doors and turned to smile at her. "It's just routine; we always do this. Your parents already gave us permission." He stared at her sewing machine in the corner, closed up in its cover. Next, he studied the Diaper Genie for a minute as if trying to figure out what it was. Wrinkling his nose, he moved on to her bulletin board, where he looked over her colored pencil sketches of baby dresses and rompers. "What are these?"

"Designs by Brittany." She was especially proud of the yellow and black numbers—they made the girl babies look like butterflies and the boys like sweet bumblebees. "I design 'em and sew 'em. I design matching outfits for us moms, too."

"You're good," Finn said.

Like a police detective would know anything about fashion. But it was nice to hear anyway. "I'm going to go to design school after I graduate." She felt her father's glare land on her when she said that, so she added, "At night, probably, because I'll be working during the day."

"I see." The detective focused on her desk and then her laptop. "We'll have to take your computer." He walked toward it.

"What?!" She could understand the car because of fingerprints and all that, but why take her computer? "I need it to tell everyone about Ivy. I need it to print flyers."

"Looks like you already did that." Finn tapped a finger on top of the stack on her desk. "How'd you do it so quickly?"

She barely kept herself from saying
duh
. It had been
hours
. "It only takes a minute—just paste in the picture and type."

"I see." He snapped her laptop closed and jerked the cord out of the surge protector. "We'll need it just for a little while. It's all routine. We'll need your cell phone, too."

"I don't have one." Turning, she frowned at her father. She'd had one for six months, but he refused to replace it when it disappeared.

"No cell phone?" Finn asked. "Droid? Blackberry? I-Pad?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "I wish. I can't even text, if you can believe
that
. This isn't one of those rich houses, in case you haven't noticed. The computer's all I've got; I really need it for school." Not to mention it was her only lifeline to keep up with what was going on. "Why isn't everyone out looking for Ivy? Why are you treating
me
like I'm a criminal? Why do you need
my
computer?"

"We're all working to find Ivy." Finn stopped coiling the computer cord long enough to meet her eyes. "Brittany, someone might have been spying on you through the computer."

No way.
"I hardly ever use the camera thing."

"You don't have to," he said.

Now there was a creepy thought. She'd heard about moles and spyware that could record your keystrokes and find your passwords and credit card numbers. Could someone out there read all her email?

"It might help us get Ivy back, Brittany. You want us to check, don't you?"

He made it sound like she was being selfish or something. Her cheeks were hot. "Yeah," she said. "Check."

Downstairs, the doorbell rang. A minute later, footsteps climbed the stairs. Could it be Charlie? Or maybe Joy? She could really use a friend right now.

"I know it's late, but I've asked someone to come along, someone I think you'd like to talk to." Finn gave her another smile.

And then in walked her mother with the very last person on earth she needed to see right then—Micaela d'Allessandro. Wearing a cop uniform, no less. Brittany stared at the tall black-haired girl and clutched Ivy's plush pig more tightly to her boobs, which were starting to feel like petrified wood and were probably already leaking through the pads.