I walked over to the glass window of the exhibit. The gorillas didn’t like rain any more than we did. They had come into their part of the shelter and were busily tossing loose hay around, making nests for themselves, and playing with a scatter of burlap bags left for casual games of tug-of-war.
One of them, a big male, looked up at me sadly, our eyes meeting through the steamy glass for several long seconds before he looked dispiritedly away. Al was right in principle. Bringing in more officers would ensure our finding Daisy Carmichael before she had a chance to slip through our fingers.
But calling for reserves would bring a pack of reporters in their wake as well. We’d be doing our job under much the same kind of scrutiny as that in which these gorillas did. I hated it-for the gorillas, for me, and, most of all, for Daisy Carmichael.
“No,” I said, hearing the stubborn insistence in my own voice. “No reserves. We’ll find her. Go home if you want to, Al, but I’m going to keep on looking. I’m going to look till I find her.”
Big Al sighed. He wasn’t a quitter, at least not yet. He put his shoe back on and straightened up. “All right, all right. Where to now?”
The rain let up finally and we set out walking again. Rachel seemed to be following some habitual route. By then it was after five. In addition to the families still lingering in the zoo we were beginning to see a few groups of evening-clad couples, people dressed in tuxedos and long dresses, the first arrivals eager to catch a behind-the-scenes tour.
One lady, a wildly red-haired one, wore a lush fur draped over one shoulder. Considering she was a visiting a zoo, that struck me as particularly tacky.
By six, Big Al was again ready to throw in the towel. We had made still another full circle of the grounds and were back by the zoo entrance when he stopped dead in his tracks.
“I’m not taking another fucking step,” he whispered to me. “My feet are killing me.”
“Go, then,” I told him. “Take the car back to the department. I’ll catch a bus home later.”
Without realizing we were no longer following her, Rachel had walked on ahead. Now she returned. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Detective Lindstrom has to leave,” I said. “He’s going to take the car and go back downtown. Why don’t you call home and check with George to see if by any chance Daisy has shown up there?”
“That’s the first sensible thing anybody has said for hours,” Big Al grumbled. Rachel headed for the ARC to use the phone. “Are you sure you don’t mind if I bail out on you?” Al asked.
“Not at all,” I told him. “Go. Molly’s probably waiting dinner. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
Al was gone by the time Rachel returned.
“George says there’s been no sign of her,” Rachel said.
That didn’t surprise me. Like Rachel, I was still convinced that Daisy was somewhere on the grounds, but unlike Rachel, I didn’t have a good feeling about it.
“Is there any animal here that’s a particular favorite of hers?” I asked.
Rachel puzzled that one for a moment or two. “Daisy likes the giraffes,” she answered. “The giraffes and the elephants both.”
We had already visited both compounds several times, but what we had done so far wasn’t working. “Tell you what,” I said. “You’ve been walking all afternoon. Would you like to catch up with Al and have him give you a ride home?”
She stood there looking up at me for several moments, her eyes searching my face.
“What’s going to happen to Daisy when we find her, Detective Beaumont? Will she have to go to prison?”
“I don’t know, Rachel,” I said, shaking my head. “Sorry. That’s up to the courts. I’m a detective, not a judge. But she’ll be a hell of a lot better off if you and I find her first, before the department issues an All Points Bulletin.”
I let Rachel think that one over. Now that it was just the two of us searching, there was a fifty-fifty chance that she would be the one to find her. If that happened, if Rachel found Daisy first when I wasn’t around, there was a good possibility she’d warn her, let her get away. Maybe that’s really what I wanted. Maybe deep in the bottom of my subconscious that’s what I hoped would happen.
Rachel Miller met my gaze without blinking or looking away. “What do you want me to do?” she asked simply. She was in for the duration and so was I.
“You go to the savanna and look for her there. I’ll hang around the elephants. If you see her, come get me right away, understand?”
“All right,” Rachel said. She hurried away.
Once she was gone, I straightened my shoulders and pulled in my gut. My feet hurt, too.
I was just too damn stubborn to admit it.
CHAPTER 23
I love stakeouts in the movies. They usually happen on fashionable streets, preferably ones with sidewalk cafes and lots of beautiful women. The hero sits comfortably at a table, casually pretending to read a newspaper and looking unobtrusive. Invisible, even. If no sidewalk cafe happens to be in the script, the hero still reads a newspaper, leaning against a nearby building.
This is unobtrusive? When’s the last time you leaned against a building to read a newspaper?
The logistics of my finding Daisy Carmichael in the Woodland Park Zoo were a little more complicated than a Hollywood version of a stakeout. For one thing, we both knew each other on sight. If I recognized her, she would recognize me.
And was it better for me to stand in one place in hopes she would wander past, or should I mingle on the outskirts of the groups gathering for the Jungle Party? In the end, I did a combination of both.
I developed a pattern. After making a slow circle around the elephant enclosure and passing the prairie dog compound, I’d saunter over to the north meadow, past the pony rides, and into the tents. Booze flowed freely at the party. Everybody knows that tipsy auction attendees spend way more money than cold sober ones do. I’d make one pass through each of the tents, then wander back to the elephant enclosure again.
It was boring, lonesome, tedious work, especially since all those other people seemed to be having such a good time.
Not only that, I don’t like zoos. Never have. Walking around and around it by myself that night did nothing to change my opinion.
When the kids were little, Karen thought taking Kelly and Scott to the zoo on a Saturday afternoon should have been top on my list of favorite fatherly pastimes. Except standing on one side of a set of iron bars looking at someone or something on the other side isn’t my idea of a diversion. It reminds me too much of my job.
And zoos make me claustrophobic. They are built like mazes with no panoramic viewpoints where you can see from one end to the other. They’re designed so each little piece of habitat is separated from all the others by a discreet hedge or a wall of trees or a curtain of bamboo shoots. It may be good for the animals’ sense of privacy, but it sure as hell doesn’t help when you’re a police officer looking for a lady who isn’t especially interested in being found.
By seven the rain had finally stopped, but the air was still moist and heavy, as though Mother Nature wasn’t quite through with us yet. For probably the tenth time, I walked around to the back side of the elephant compound where a docent, not Daisy Carmichael, was giving a talk on elephants to a group of wide-eyed children.
They gasped and pointed with delight as one by one, four elephants came out of the barn into the moat-encircled compound. Two of the four were fully grown while the other two were obviously much younger. The smaller ones bounded into a round, elephant-sized swimming pool, playing and floating there briefly, while excess water splashed over the edges in foot-high waves.
One of the children broke away from the group and went scrambling toward the concrete fence. “I want to pet Dumbo,” he called over his shoulder. “Here, Dumbo. Here, Dumbo.”
The docent grabbed the kid by one arm and hauled him off the fence. “You mustn’t do that! Ever! Elephants are very, very dangerous. This exhibit is their home. They don’t like strangers coming into it.”