Did Not Survive (15 page)

“And an on-site vet with elephant experience?” I asked.

“A vet's available when needed.”

“Lame.” I still needed to get home, but this was interesting.

“Who inspects the facility?” Linda asked. “I haven't heard of a sanctuary accreditation program that's up and running yet.”

“It will be soon. Let's not forget that Finley Memorial Zoo is not accredited, either.”

“On the path to it,” Hap said. “It's conditional until we get the new projects done.” He sat down on the end of the bench that ran around the booth.

“Was a biological survey done on the hundred acres of natural land before they turned five elephants loose on it?” I asked. “It's not like they're a part of that ecosystem.”

“North America was full of elephant relatives at one time.” Thor was ready for that one.

“Yeah, and it was full of dinosaurs at one time, too. So what? The elephants will trash the place. It's what they do. Africa has had millennia to adapt to it. Kentucky hasn't.”

Thor tilted his chair back. “You should try opening your minds a tiny bit. It won't hurt as much as you think. Really, the thought of elephants roaming free has no meaning to you at all?”

“Not free,” Denny said. “A bigger pen. That's all elephants are ever going to get in the whole world. Africa is getting chopped up and fenced in, like the American West and the bison. Same with Asia only worse. Elephants live like outlaws with a bounty on their head, the poachers on their trail.”

“Freedom's a strange concept now,” I said. “Problem elephants wear electronic collars that send a text message to a ranger's cell phone if they come too close to crops. The rangers show up to chase them away so they don't have to be shot.”

Denny started to get wound up. “Like ankle bracelets. Elephants are too much for us, too much
like
us. We have to evolve into a new species ourselves to survive for the long term. Soon we can tailor our own DNA so that enlightenment is within reach of everyone and not only those who study for years. Then there's hope that—”

“I have to take a leak,” Arnie said. “Pardon my French, ladies.” He wandered off in the wrong direction. The bartender turned him around, waved a thick arm toward the Men sign, and went back behind the bar.

Ah, Denny…He was making a valid point about the future of wild elephants before his synapses went rogue. Thor briefly displayed the disoriented look people got when Denny did that. He set his chair back on the ground. “Have the police figured out yet who took a bull hook to your foreman?”

The papers had described it as “a heavy object.” Zoo staff knew it was an ankus. Who had told Thor—Ian? Or was it a lucky guess?

Thor didn't get an answer, only shrugs and silence. I scanned the table. Thor wasn't going anywhere. Linda, Hap, Kayla, and Denny were rooted and sullen. Arnie would be back soon. If anything interesting came up in conversation, Linda would tell me.

Ian slid out of the booth and so did I. “It's been real, Thor,” I said. I dropped bills on the table. “See you,” I waved at the others.

Ian muttered, “Bye.”

I followed him outside to his scruffy Jeep. He opened the driver door and looked up, surprised to see me watching him across the hood.

“Ian, tell me about working with Thor.” I kept my voice soft.

Ian shrugged, the flush rising up his throat again. “Nothing to tell. A few months, months at that sanctuary. Didn't work out.” He stood at the open car door poised to bolt, one hand on the door, one on the roof.

“Tell me what you think happened to Wallace. Was that Thor guy involved?” I tried not to sound challenging, but Ian acted as if we were in a little room with a single light bulb dangling by its cord, and I was slapping a baton into my palm.

“No clue. Truly.” The cloudy brown eyes were frustrated.

So much for that. I gave up. “Sam used to be a decent guy. I wish it weren't so ugly between you two. It must be awful to work together.” I meant only casual sympathy. Wariness wouldn't have surprised me, but the scarlet racing up to his brow did.

“I made, made a, a mistake. At the beginning. Stepped in it.”

Ah. “You didn't catch on quick enough that his life partner is not female.”

Ian's mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“You made some stupid comment that got you started on the wrong foot, then you kept telling him how to work the elephants, pressing him to train up to national standards. Right?”

Ian tried again. “Misunderstood what I meant. Just bullshitting with, with him. Don't care one way or the…Never gave me a second chance. I tried, tried to back off, but that didn't work. Either. Won't trust me with, with anything. Now it's like he blames me for Wallace.” He looked desperate.

“Where were you when it happened?” Hard to make that sound innocuous.

“Alone.” More words seemed to be trying to escape, but they failed.

I waited, but he slipped into his car, closed the door, and started the engine without looking at me. I stepped back to let him flee.

He rolled down the window. “You need to, to stay away. From me.”

A plea? I watched him drive off, bewildered. Stay away for his sake or for mine? I opened my car door and sat, wondering once again about Ian. I'd seen him pushed to anger. I couldn't guess what would trigger violence. He was so strange…Would he attack Wallace, his supporter and buffer against Sam? To eliminate a competitor for Dr. Reynolds, a woman he was terrified to speak to and had no chance with? Was sympathy for the outcast blinding me to reality?

One all-too-obvious reality was that Ian's social incompetence was a perfect mismatch for Sam's pride and sensitivities and that Wallace had made the situation a thousand times worse. What a train wreck. I could not imagine how this could ever be set back on the rails.

I turned the key in the ignition and glanced around before backing up. And nearly jumped out of my skin. Dale, Thor's sidekick, leaned his face inches away from mine, only the driver's window between us. I almost wet myself. He straightened up and stepped back, mission accomplished, his sullen, triumphant face framed by messy black hair. Mowing him down was almost irresistible. Back up, shift to Forward, crush him against another car…I flipped the locks down and pulled out of the lot. Murder had never seemed so reasonable.

Chapter Seventeen

My father sat in the Honda's passenger seat, unclear about what I was up to, but willing to cover my back. I told him, “She's Calvin's daughter, and I need to talk to her about zoo business. She's likely to get mad.”

“What are you up to?”

“I can't say without causing trouble. I should keep it confidential.” The last thing I needed was my parents panicking again about Wallace's death. He started in with the silence and the look that compels the whole truth. I scrambled out of the car.

The house was a shabby white bungalow in Lents, not the most prosperous neighborhood in Portland. I walked up an uneven path through an unkempt yard and studied the front door. An all but illegible note on a white card instructed me to knock, which I did. The doorbell had apparently perished long ago. That happened at my house and I fixed it with a twelve-dollar, no-wire, battery-operated doorbell in about ten minutes. Janet hadn't bothered.

Finding the address of A Team Mom had turned out to be simple. I sent an email saying I had information about Kevin Wallace that I needed to discuss. Period. She had taken the bait. A short phone call led to this meeting.

The surprise came when I put her first name and connection with Wallace together. She was Calvin's daughter and had worked at the zoo administration office before my time. Jackie told me all about her. Janet and Wallace dated until one day the gate receipts were found in her purse, and she was fired for theft. Several months ago I accidentally discovered that she was set up in an act of malice by another zoo employee, one who hated Wallace and wanted to ruin his romance. I'd told Wallace and Calvin, expecting that one or both would tell Janet that her name was cleared.

It was Thursday, my day off, and the first opportunity for this visit. While the dogs romped in the park, I'd thought about my appointment with a possible murderer. At the last minute, I'd abandoned the logic that Janet had to be smaller than my current size and therefore was no threat. I called my dad for backup.

The door opened and a woman said, “Yes?” The hair was still blond, with assistance, but the cute figure in Calvin's photos of the young Janet had become a series of overlapping spheres—breasts, belly, hips all rounded and flowing into one another. She was still short, but the confident grin was long gone. She wore a loose chartreuse blouse over stretchy black pants, black flats, a little makeup. Her hair was curly and neatly brushed.

I waved toward my car as I said, “I'm Iris Oakley. My dad wants to wait in the car.” She glanced at the Honda, not interested, and let me in.

She sent me to a sofa covered in gray vinyl. It skidded a little on the worn oak floor when I sat down. No rugs anywhere. A teenage boy sat at the dining room table hunched over a drawing with a pencil clenched in his fist. He didn't look up, and she didn't introduce him. All she said was, “My other son is out.”

She seated herself in a matching gray chair. “You're from the zoo. A friend of Kevin's?” Her voice wasn't friendly.

“Not a friend so much. I'm a keeper, so he's—was—my boss. I'm a bird keeper, so I work with your dad.”

The house smelled of air freshener underlaid with cooking grease. No sign of a cat or dog. She nodded and waited.

“The zoo has to conduct an investigation into his death. I have a few questions.” The first sentence wasn't a lie, exactly.

Janet sat back and crossed her legs. “A cop was here already. He asked a bunch of questions and swabbed all my shoes. So why you?”

I nodded as though that were old news. Points to Detective Quintana. “The zoo has to file its own reports on the death.”

Janet looked at me thoughtfully. “And they sent a keeper?”

She was no fool. I shrugged. “Like the job description says, ‘Other duties as assigned.'”

“Because you're pregnant and can't do the heavy work.”

“Right.” The all-purpose explanation. “I know that you worked at the zoo years ago and left under a cloud. Your dad must have told you that new evidence cleared you of the theft charge. I hope that Wallace—Kevin—apologized for the zoo and corrected your personnel file.”

Each hand gripped a corner of the chair seat, the fingers chubby and tight. “Apologize? Correct the personnel file?” It was my turn for silence. “That's rich. You're still young. You don't know what it's like to have God flick his finger and knock your world apart. You still think that things can be fixed.”

She had that wrong. I knew how fast life can change and that some things stayed broken forever.

Her upper lip curled with irony. “I thought I was strong. I should have been. I was pretty and smart back then, and my parents loved me. That should have been enough, right? Take a hit and bounce back, right? You don't know shit.”

I recoiled a little, and she smiled from some dark well of cynicism.

“I lost my job, my reputation, and my fiancé all in one hour. I was a thief—a criminal—and I was supposed to be grateful to get fired and not arrested. Kevin kicked me out,
bam.
No chance to figure out how that money got into my purse. I was set up, and I knew it, and I couldn't do a thing about it. Kevin adored me one minute and despised me the next. He never doubted for an instant. The only one who believed me was my dad.”

“Calvin was pretty bitter about it. He lost a lot of respect for Wallace.”

“Lot of good that did. He wanted to quit his job and Mom wouldn't let him, so I was to blame for them fighting and for him stuck in a job he hated. He thought she got cancer from the stress, and he blamed Kevin for that, too.”

Calvin liked his job, that I was sure of. I let it pass. “The truth came out. I hope that helps.”

“Yeah, my dad told me months ago, but Kevin couldn't be bothered, not then. After my entire life is down the toilet, I finally get a letter from him, and that's supposed to make it all better. It came the same week my second husband walked out on me. Nice timing, huh?”

“When did you get the letter?”

“A few weeks ago.”

Wallace had known Janet was innocent for six months. I wondered why he hadn't acted sooner. Then I wondered what
did
trigger him to write. Maybe starting a relationship with Dr. Reynolds. “So you got in touch with him?”

“Yeah. I'm in recovery—AA—and my group thought it might be a good idea. So I met him at a Starbucks. I'm fat now, but he knew who I was. We talked. It didn't change my life.”

“Why did you send him the email? The one about rotting in hell.”

“We talked, and I remembered that I once actually cared for him. My group said hating him only hurt me. But I came home, came back to
this
.” She waved a hand. “He never gave me the tiniest benefit of the doubt. He'd known me for six, seven months, worked with me, dated me, knew my father, said he loved me. We were engaged, for God's sake. I was twenty-one. You know I've never held a job for over a year? Not since then. Every time things would get tough at work, I'd quit so they couldn't catch me by surprise and fire me. I married the first guy who asked me, and he wanted me to work, wanted the income. I couldn't do it, not for more than a couple months at a time. So I drank, and he left.”

“You got home and the hate came back, so you sent the email.”

“Hate him? That's way too simple. What can you say about the guy who wrecked your entire life? He didn't mean it? It was all a mistake? My mother used to say, ‘Sometimes
sorry
isn't good enough.' What an understatement. Yeah, I wasn't going to let him think he'd fixed everything up nice. He hadn't done shit except stir it all up again.”

I looked and I couldn't see Calvin in her, nothing of that square, silent, kind man, except the ability to hold that same bitterness for years. “Um, Janet, do you think he deserved to die?”

She looked at me sharply. “That's for God to decide. And I guess he did, all right.”

“You wouldn't have wanted to help that along?”

Janet's mouth twisted, something between a smirk and a wry smile. “There was a time I would have, but it wouldn't do me any good, would it? It's not like me forgiving him or him dying makes any difference, does it? I'm stuck here on the A team.” She nodded toward the boy, who hadn't moved a muscle except for tiny finger movements on his sketch pad. “Aaron and Adam, autism and asthma. And me: alcoholic and abandoned.” The summation sounded rehearsed. It seemed to please her. “You're pregnant. Good luck with that.”

She sat still for a moment. Her face softened and aged. “I can't figure out whether I failed God's test, or I got caught in his struggle with the devil, and he forgot to come back and pick up the pieces. Either way, I'm on my own, no matter what AA makes me say.” She came back to the present and stood up. “I got stuff to do, if that's all you're here for.”

The questions I still needed to ask weren't enough to keep me in that house.

My hand shook turning the car key in the ignition.

“Go okay?” my father asked.

“Remember the Robert Frost poem about the world ending in hate and ice? That's the woman to do the job.” I drove to his shop in silence, checking carefully at all the intersections, and dropped him off. At my house, my house that smelled of bacon from breakfast and the peonies my mother had cut for me, I sat on the floor with Winnie and Range and let the dogs lick the bitterness off me.