Gone Wild by James W. Hall

Author:James W. Hall [Hall, James W.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Thrillers, Psychological, General, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9780440217817
Publisher: Dell
Published: 1995-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

Allison lay still for a long while, forcing herself to think rationally, to bring her focus to the White brothers, the logical next step, what to do tomorrow.

“I heard their voices,” she could tell the police.

“You heard their voices, but you didn’t see them?”

“That’s right, but I have a very good ear for voices.”

“A very good ear, Your Honor. Yes, Allison Farleigh is a woman with a very good ear for voices. She remembers exactly what her daughter’s killers sounded like over there in Borneo. What’s that, Your Honor? No, sir. No, I have no idea whose jurisdiction Borneo is. I don’t even have any idea where the fuck the place is located.”

Or go back one more time to Fish and Wildlife.

Sure.

“So you are claiming that one of these gentlemen, Mr. Raimondo White or possibly Mr. Orlando White, shot your daughter. And furthermore, you’re claiming that the Whites now have in their possession a wild-born orangutan illegally obtained from the very jungle where your daughter was murdered. All right, then, let’s assume that this is all true. Then please help us out with this, Mrs. Farleigh, how is the presence of an orangutan in the White brothers’ warehouse proof of murder? What is it, exactly, Fish and Wildlife are supposed to do? Interview the orangutan, see if we can get it to corroborate your story? Is that what you’re asking us to do? Interview an ape? Oh, yes, and by any chance is this the same ape, Mrs. Farleigh, that told you about Joshua Bond?”

As the first gray moments of sleep began to take her, she had a brief vision of her father. He was lying on his bed upstairs in the Coconut Grove house, the room darkened. A doctor in one corner, Allison’s mother weeping downstairs. Allison was nineteen. She kissed him on the forehead, brought her ear close to his lips. “I’m thirsty,” he said.

No wisdom sent back from the brink of eternity. No final blessing or admonition. Not even an I-love-you. Just that: I’m thirsty. Smacking his withered lips.

Nine months later she was married to Harry Farleigh.

***

“Key deer,” Patrick said, and looked up from his typed sheet. All business, giving Ray one of those impatient looks, like he was doing three or four other things in his head at the same time, using only a little fraction of his brain to deal with the White brothers.

Ray’s way of dealing with people like him was to slow way down, drag things out, make the guy adjust to his rhythms, not the other way around. A cornerstone of bargaining. Whoever controls the metronome wins.

“Okay, yeah, the best count we got on key deer is, there’s two hundred and fifty to three hundred left in the world,” Ray said. “All those are down on Big Pine Key, couple of hours south of here. We got a guy down there working on it. Old-time trapper. And what he’s telling us is, it’s not going to be all that easy, everyone is so Bambi-happy these days.

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