If only, p.1
If Only, page 1
If Only
A Sam Westin Mystery
With Characters from
The Neema Mysteries
by
Pamela Beason
Dedication
This book is dedicated to everyone who searches for missing hikers in our public lands. This includes many civilian volunteers, as well as park and forest service rangers, police officers, and sometimes teenage Scout troops, volunteer pilots, and military personnel.
Note from the Author
This is a crossover novel that includes characters and settings from my Sam Westin Wilderness Mysteries and my Neema Mysteries. If you are familiar with only one of these series, I hope you’ll check out the other one. Evansburg, Washington, the setting for all stories involving Neema’s gorilla family, Detective Matthew Finn, Dr. Grace McKenna, and the gorilla caretakers, is a fictional town in the foothills of the Cascades. North Cascades National Park Complex is a real location with wonderful scenery, miles of wilderness, and amazing hiking trails, many of which I have explored. But I have played fast and loose with Sam’s cross-country travel in this story. While I have explored off-trail in many parks, I have never strayed far from the popular hiking trails in this area. I am a writer of fiction. I make things up.
Chapter 1
Evansburg, Washington
A loud bang startled Blake out of his dream, where he was cutting hundreds of gerbera daisies for bouquets while fretting about how his greenhouse employer could possibly ship them all before the flowers wilted.
Had that been a clap of thunder? Now he heard horrific noises that could only be described as shrieks of terror. Shrieks that were not remotely human.
The gorillas! He was ape-sitting in Evansburg, hundreds of miles away from home in Bellingham.
Grace hadn’t mentioned anything about the apes being afraid of storms, and while the sky had been overcast when Blake had gone to bed, no thunderclouds had been in sight. As he groggily lifted his head off the pillow, he heard another loud bang. Throwing himself out of bed, his foot caught in the sheet and he landed on the floor. He pushed himself up and rushed to the window to stare out into the dark yard, his heart pounding.
The moon was obscured by clouds, and all Blake could decipher were black hulks rocketing around inside the gorilla enclosure. Was that a dark creature racing to the edge of the forest? Had the gorillas been attacked by a wolf? Or a cougar?
He tugged on jeans over his jockey shorts, grabbed the flashlight from the bedside table, and rushed outside, barefoot. This would have to happen, whatever this was, on his watch. He’d been ape-sitting here for more than two weeks without incident in this weird gig that had already morphed from a month to six weeks, and now the gorillas were in an uproar over something. The apes were often raucous when they chased each other in play or fought over food, but he hadn’t yet heard a cacophony like this. The volume of their alarmed cries was earsplitting.
He stubbed his big toe on a rock and then, cursing, hop-stepped on a patch of damp ground just before he reached the pole that held the switch. He flicked it on, flooding the gorilla enclosure with light. Gumu, the giant silverback, immediately rushed the fence, pounding his chest, stopping only inches away to bare long sharp teeth in a threat display that made Blake gasp. Despite knowing the heavy steel-mesh barrier had always held the apes, he backed up a few steps.
Use the feeding portal, but never let Gumu get close enough to grab you. Just pass the food through and let it drop into the bin below. Never go into the enclosure with the gorillas. Neema and Kanoni would never intentionally hurt you, but Gumu could rip off your head.
The warnings of Dr. Grace McKenna, the gorillas’ keeper and language researcher, had made a believer out of Blake. He stayed well clear of the small rectangular opening in the fencing and made sure his helpers, Maya and Z, did as well. Setting the flashlight down by his feet, Blake held up his hands to show they were empty. “It’s okay, Gumu. Whatever it was, is gone. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
The large female ape huddled, her long arms over her daughter, three-year-old Kanoni. Both mother and baby gorilla continued to loudly howl their distress.
“Neema, it’s okay now.” Blake tried to make his voice soothing. Could she even hear him in this din? “Calm down.” He bounced his open palms downward to sign what he meant, one of the few gestures he’d mastered.
The gorillas refused to believe his reassurance. The cacophony continued. Gumu grabbed his favorite toy, a massive, threadbare tractor tire, and hurled it into the far corner of the yard. The heavy tire bounced off the fence with a loud clang and rolled into the outside wall of the barn before thudding onto its side.
Across the yard, a door banged open. Jonathan Zyrnek, Grace McKenna’s part-time helper who called himself Z, and Maya, Blake’s young, wayward associate, stumbled out of the staff trailer, their clothes in disarray, hair hanging loose and tangled. They joined Blake beside the fence, and the three of them watched in horrified fascination as the silverback continued to ricochet around the enclosure, snatching up blankets and toys and throwing them in a fury. Maya clapped her hands over her ears.
The skunky reek of marijuana wafted from the couple. Weed was legal in Washington now, so Blake wasn’t surprised that the laid-back Z used. But Maya had recently weaned herself off some hard-core drugs, and Blake didn’t like Z leading her back down that path. He eyed his young comrades uncertainly. “Help?”
Maya wouldn’t have a clue what to do, but Z had worked there for years and was experienced in dealing with the apes. However, Grace had warned Blake that Z wasn’t always dependable. She’d hired Blake because she wanted “an adult in charge” of her beloved gorillas.
At this moment, Blake didn’t feel particularly adult, and he certainly wasn’t in charge of the situation. Recently he’d wondered if anyone else had even applied for this crazy temp job.
“What’s happening?” Z finally asked, blinking.
“I heard two loud bangs,” Blake told them. “At least, I think I did.”
“Neema,” Z signed as he shouted. “What happened?”
He had to repeat the question multiple times before the mother gorilla finally stopped her distress hooting, detached herself from Kanoni, and then rubbed her long arms across her chest a few times. She briefly touched the tips of her fingers together before she wrapped her arms around her daughter again.
“‘Baby, baby, baby,’ I think,” translated Z, frowning in concentration. “And then, maybe ‘hurt.’”
“Hurt?” Blake picked up the flashlight and switched it on, swept the beam toward the edge of the forest. “I was afraid I saw an animal run away toward the woods.”
The shaft of light revealed only fir trees, standing thickly shoulder to shoulder around the perimeter of the property.
“Could something crawl in through the feeding port?” Blake moved the flashlight beam to the rectangular opening. No incriminating tufts of an intruder’s fur were conveniently caught in the metal frame. Nothing seemed amiss except for the gorillas’ tantrums.
Moving the beam back, he shone it into the gorilla enclosure. Neema blinked at the glare and hid her face in Kanoni’s fur. The bright light enraged Gumu all over again, and the silverback charged the fence once more, slamming into the chain link so violently that Blake feared the fencing would rip loose from the steel poles.
He quickly redirected his flashlight, focusing the beam down by his bare foot. Why were his toes red?
“Wait.” Z snatched the flashlight out of Blake’s hand, and shone it back into the enclosure, illuminating a pool of darkness beneath the huddle of fur that was Neema and Kanoni.
“Oh, poor things. They’re so scared they peed all over themselves,” Maya moaned.
“I hope that’s only pee.” Z moved the flashlight beam back and forth.
Blake retrieved the flashlight from him and swept the beam back along the route he’d taken from his trailer. A couple of yards away was a pool of wet darkness, vaguely red in the dim light. Focusing the light on his foot again, he said, “I stepped in what looks like blood. I think someone was here, shooting at the gorillas. And it looks like whoever that was injured themselves at the same time.” He’d heard tales from his housemate Sam’s lover, FBI Agent Chase Perez, about inept criminals who caught their hand in the hammer of a revolver or accidentally shot themselves, thus providing convenient DNA evidence at the scene of a crime.
“Baby hurt.” Z’s eyes were on the mother gorilla. His fingers were curled into the wire mesh of the fence, his face tense. “Neema, come,” he urged. Releasing the fencing, he signed as he spoke. “Kanoni, come here.”
Blake redirected the flashlight beam back to the mother and baby gorilla, hoping that he wouldn’t see what he feared.
When Neema let go of her daughter for a moment, Z groaned. A large wet stain darkened the baby gorilla’s chest and abdomen. “Shit, looks like the shooter nailed Kanoni.”
“Christ.” Blake sucked in a breath and held it for a few seconds, trying to focus his thoughts. Gumu continued his frantic rushes and threat calls, and both mother and baby gorilla resumed their anguished hooting, only slightly softer now. The racket made it hard to think.
Turning to Z, Blake asked, “So let’s assume the little gorilla was shot. What’s the procedure?”
Scraping his shoulder-length hair back from his face with his hands, Z scrunched his face up in a frown. “Call the vet ASAP. Tell her to bring a tranq gun and supplies to knock out three gorillas. Then call the cops.”
Blake turned to go back to his tr
Z snorted in reply. Maya pressed her hands against the wire mesh, murmuring, “Oh, poor babies.”
“Step away from the feeding portal,” Blake reminded her.
She rewarded him with an annoyed glare, but pulled her hands away from the fence and stepped back, folding her arms across her chest.
Blake trotted back to his trailer, his heart pounding and his brain firing in all directions like a Fourth of July sparkler. Why had he taken this weird gig, anyway? Instead of this detour from normal life patching his broken heart back together, it just might fracture his sanity.
He really didn’t know much about animals except for Simon, his feline housemate back in Bellingham. And whatever his human housemate Sam had told him about her adventures with wildlife. If only she were here instead of hundreds of miles away in Bellingham, or maybe on her planned backpacking trip in the North Cascades by now.
But Summer “Sam” Westin spent her time in the American wilderness; she probably wouldn’t know much about exotic species like gorillas, either. The only person who really knew these apes was in Hawaii right now, on a rare vacation: Dr. Grace McKenna, the scientist who had trusted Blake to keep her three signing gorillas safe and sound.
Chapter 2
Kona, Big Island, Hawaii
Dawn had only begun to lighten the sky over Kona on the big island of Hawaii when Detective Matthew Finn heard his cell phone chime from the bedside table. Forcing his eyes open, he snatched it and slid out of bed in one quick motion, turning his back as he answered quietly. “Finn. What’s up, Dawes?”
Behind him his lover, Dr. Grace McKenna, turned over. “Matt?” Her voice was blurred with sleep.
“It’s for me,” Finn said over his shoulder. “Go back to sleep, Grace.” He padded away from the bedroom toward the small balcony, grabbing his robe from a chair back and shrugging it on one-handed as he went. Outside, the chorus of tropical birds that heralded daybreak was growing in volume. A scarlet bird he hadn’t noticed before touched down briefly on the railing before taking flight into the surrounding trees.
“Sorry to bug you on vacation, Finn, but we got a situation here.”
Finn checked the time on the phone. 5:12 a.m. So a little after eight in the morning back in Evansburg, Washington. His detective partner, Perry Dawes, would have just reached the end of his graveyard shift.
“Spit it out,” Finn urged. “Why call me? You got a whole police force there.” The Evansburg PD was small but should be able to handle anything short of a terrorist attack.
“The, uh, situation is at Grace’s compound. Someone shot the little gorilla.”
“The baby? Kanoni? Shit.” Finn turned to face the bedroom. Grace remained an inert form under the sheets. He pulled the glass slider shut behind him. “Did you nail the shooter?”
“Nobody even saw whoever it was. Just disappeared into the woods, apparently. But it looks like he got hurt, maybe cut his hand or shot himself in the foot or something. There’s blood on the outside of the pen as well as inside.”
“How’s the victim?” Finn asked, reluctant to say Kanoni’s name aloud again with Grace only a glass panel away.
“Vet says serious condition, but she—it is a she, right?—will probably pull through. You want I should call Grace?”
“Oh God, no.” His lover hadn’t had a break from taking care of those gorillas in at least a decade. Plus, she’d recently suffered a miscarriage. He and Grace had another week to spend in this peaceful condo overlooking the beach, and then they were planning another two exploring the island of Kauai. He’d banked all his vacation days to join her on this trip. “Are all the staff safe?”
“For now,” Dawes answered. “We got zilch to go on, not even footprints, so right now, we can only hope that the shooter doesn’t come back. The fruit and the freak that Grace left in charge are taking turns keeping watch.”
“Watch it,” Finn warned.
“Alrighty, then let’s be PC. Of course, I am referring to that guy Blake that Grace hired, who—or is it whom?—as far as I can deduce, usually works in a greenhouse and studies cooking for fun. And what’s-his-name, the hippie type who’s usually here, Zyrtek, Z—”
“Zyrnek.”
“Whatever he’s calling himself this week. I think they can keep an eye. And I’ll get the uniforms to cruise through a coupla times each shift. But you know a lot more about this ape business than any of us around here do. Didn’t something like this happen before?”
“No shootings. Another attack, back a long time ago.” Grace had lost her previous male gorilla, Spencer—one of the gorillas who could “talk,” as Grace had explained during a television interview about her interspecies communication project—to an outraged religious fanatic who had poisoned him because he believed the ape was an abomination. The man claimed he’d done the world a favor, because animals couldn’t think and certainly didn’t talk. God gave only humans souls and language.
It was a disturbing thought that the maniac, Frank Keyes, was already back in society. According to Washington State law, animals were property. Killing a captive gorilla was animal cruelty in the first degree, not murder, and the maniac had served four years of his five-year sentence and paid his $10,000 fine to the university that had actually owned Spencer.
Crimes involving humans and animals and the legal system were always complicated, and the results were rarely satisfying. Since he had met Grace and her gorillas, Finn had been tangled in several disquieting incidents that he didn’t care to examine too carefully. But this was the first shooting. And the shooter was still at large? Keyes had been out of jail for years now, and Finn hadn’t checked up on him for at least a couple of those. Had he returned to kill another “talking” gorilla?
Finn sighed. “I’ll be back on the first plane I can catch out of here. Keep ’em safe at the compound. Preserve all the evidence you can find.”
“You got it. See ya soon.”
Chapter 3
Evansburg
By the end of the day, Blake’s head ached from lack of sleep, and his neck was stiff with anxiety. After the shooting, which would probably scar the gorillas for life, Dr. Stephanie Farin had rolled out of bed when he’d called at 3:00 a.m. and shown up forty-five minutes later in her mobile vet clinic, carrying a pistol configured to fire anesthetic darts. She had requested that they close the rolling door between the outdoor enclosure and the gorilla barn before she arrived, but with the gorilla hysterics still going on, none of the humans was brave enough to risk going inside the fenced pen to do so.
Blake supposed that most frightened or wounded animals would have raced to hide in their safe space, but the apes didn’t disappear inside their barn. Gumu was determined to keep all humans outside the fence. Neema wouldn’t leave Kanoni, who hadn’t moved from her hunched position since she’d been shot.
Dr. Farin darted the silverback first. When the dart struck Gumu in the back of his shoulder, he roared like Godzilla and slammed into the fence, his long, sharp incisors bared in rage.
Next, Dr. Farin darted Neema, who immediately yanked the dart from her backside, but then succumbed to the anesthetic only a minute later, crumpling into a mound of black fur and leathery hands and feet. Emitting a mournful howl, Kanoni threw herself across her mother and clung to her, whimpering. She didn’t even seem to notice when the tranquilizer dart embedded itself in her thigh. She, too, was unconscious within seconds.
Gumu rocketed around the cage once, then reached for the bottom of the climbing net before he collapsed to the ground in a massive heap. The cacophony ceased, leaving all the humans in stunned silence.
Blake had never harbored a desire to go hunting, and this—shooting intelligent animals in a cage—felt way too close to that, except even more brutal. What kind of madman wanted to shoot a captive gorilla?
After a few minutes, Dr. Farin judged it safe to go in. With the help of Z and a very nervous Blake, she repositioned the tranquilized adult gorillas so they couldn’t suffocate on their own vomit. When Blake tugged on Neema’s arm, he was astounded at how long it was. Her leathery black fingers had the same joints and ridged finger pads and nails as a person. So human-looking. He couldn’t decide if that was more disturbing than seeing that her feet looked like hands. So nonhuman-looking.
