The Only Clue by Pamela Beason

Author:Pamela Beason
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gorillas, great apes, animal communication, exotic animal trade, Neema the gorilla, sign language
Publisher: WildWing Press
Published: 2016-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Grace spent a sleepless night with a traumatized baby gorilla in her bed. At first light she carried Kanoni into the forest, moving in the general direction from which the baby gorilla had come. She alternated between shouting “Neema!” and asking the baby, “Where’s Neema? Where’s your mom?”

Kanoni clung to her with both hands and feet as she peered through the trees with terrified eyes. Grace made the sign for Neema over and over again, but the baby didn’t sign back. Kanoni became more agitated as Grace walked deeper into the woods, her rapid breathing turning to whimpers and then finally to loud shrieks. When Grace let go of her back to make the Neema sign again, Kanoni screeched and crawled up Grace’s chest and buried her face against Grace’s neck.

Grace stopped walking, wrapped her arms around Kanoni again and patted the shivering animal on the back. “It’s okay, baby. We’ll go home.”

Despondent, Grace turned back to her compound. What had she expected? Kanoni was an infant, and she was torturing her. Whatever the baby gorilla knew about Neema and Gumu, she was incapable of communicating.

Grace was happy to have Kanoni back safe, but the baby gorilla’s return increased her fears for Neema and Gumu. She was certain now that Neema was either captive or dead; she would never have intentionally left her baby alone.

* * * * *

Thanks to Guy Rodrigo’s ‘headless horseman’ remark, Finn dreamed about discovering a corpse face down in Grace’s barn. When he turned the head to view the face, the head broke off in his hands. Heavy brow. Massive jaw. Gumu.

Finn woke up, his own jaw aching from grinding his teeth. His sheets were damp with sweat. And no wonder. His huge Newfie mix had his head flopped across Finn’s thigh, snoring as he drooled on the blanket. Lok and Kee regarded Cargo with slit-eyed feline disdain from opposite corners of the bed.

Finn sat up and threw off the covers and the animals. He wasn’t scheduled to work today, but as usual, he couldn’t stop thinking about his open cases. The burglars had either gotten wind of the police discovery or spotted Scoletti in the woods; they hadn’t returned to their storage depot. Today the department would clean out the old farmhouse, try to identify owners of the stolen merchandise, and route all the lifted fingerprints through AFIS. The fingerprint identification system generally reported back within minutes, showing the closest matches in the system, but then a human had to examine the candidates to determine if any were truly a match and the matching individual was a likely suspect for the crime. The whole process could take days.

The murmur of voices came from the kitchen. Grace’s parents. Cargo barked and bounced out of the room to investigate, no doubt forgetting he’d met them the night before. Finn threw on some jeans and rushed to save the professors from his amnesiac mutt. But when he reached the kitchen, Cargo was eating calmly out of his bowl, the coffee was perked, and Maureen was making French toast.

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