The officer held up his hand. “Excuse me, sir, but-”
I already had my creds out. “Patrick Bowers. I’m with the FBI.” I slipped the windbreaker on.
Rain boiled across the pavement, black grease frying in a dark, concrete pan.
He shifted his gaze from me to the facility. “The others are already inside.” The wind tried to swallow his words, and he raised his voice. “Did you hear? The perp, he set the chimpanzees on her-they chewed off her face.”
The news sickened me.
I pocketed my wallet.
Approached the building.
Stepped inside.
An expansive viewing area wound between eighteen enormous glass-enclosed areas, nine on each side. All of them were at least six meters high.
I shook off the rain, brushing my hand for a moment against the holster of my. 357 SIG P229. Most of the Bureau has switched to Glock 23s to make it easier for the gunsmiths and for interchangeability of ammunition in the field, but some of the senior agents had been allowed to keep their SIGs. I loved that gun, so I was thankful I was one of them.
Most of the law enforcement officers were clustered at the far end of the cavernous room, and I began walking toward them, taking in as much as I could along the way.
Three exit doors, including a stairwell that presumably led to the parking garage.
An elevator just to the left of the stairs.
Six video cameras, all non-panning, tucked into the shadowy nooks and crannies of the ceiling high above me. A few moments ago as I’d entered the building, I’d noticed two additional cameras covering the entrance to the parking garage, and I expected that there would be coverage above the emergency exits as well.
And of course, on both sides of me, behind the glass, the primates.
It didn’t seem like “cages” was the right word to describe the structures holding them. Habitats, maybe. Glass-enclosed habitats.
Each was nearly as wide and long as it was tall, and could be accessed through a door at the back of the ape-sized steel sliding doors that connected the habitats.
The constant chatter and shrieks of the primates filled the air.
Each habitat had a unique combination of rope swings and large canvas hammocks for the animals to lounge in. Some had tire swings or bars to hang from, others had blankets to hide beneath. All were lined with straw.
Agents Ralph Hawkins and Lien-hua Jiang stood conferring near a hallway that led to another wing of the center. Ralph’s densely muscled bulk stood in stark contrast to Lien-hua’s slim, willowy figure.
So.
The last I’d heard, she was working a case in Miami, and I hadn’t expected to see her here tonight.
Ralph saw me. “Pat.” His voice was low and gravelly, more of a growl than anything else. “Over here.”
Lien-hua and I hadn’t run into each other since our breakup. We gave each other a somewhat strained nod of greeting, then she averted her eyes to a nearby habitat. It appeared to be the one that contained Mollie’s body, but my view was obstructed by the Crime Scene Investigative Unit officers inside.
Even though Lien-hua wore jeans and had on a T-shirt and windbreaker, she looked as orientally elegant as ever. Thoughtful. Beautiful. Intelligent. Two strands of sable hair framed her face.
It wasn’t easy, but I shifted my gaze to Ralph. “Talk to me.” I slipped on the latex gloves. “What do we know?”
“One victim: Mollie Fischer, Caucasian, twenty-two. Attacked by two chimps. The keeper who found her put ’em both down.” His voice was steeped with thick anger. “The killer strapped the girl’s wrists to the tree limb. She didn’t have a chance. Still unclear why the crime occurred here. Mollie doesn’t have any ties to this place. That we know of.”
Lien-hua said, “The animals were injected with 1-phenyl-2-aminopropane.” There was anger in her voice too, but tempered with deep sympathy. “Basically, they were drugged to make them as aggressive as possible.”
“All right,” I said, bracing myself. “Let’s have a look.”
10
We entered the maze of hallways that meandered behind the habitats and past a series of glass-walled research rooms equipped with wire mesh partitions to keep the researchers safely separated from the primates. The back door in each habitat opened to one of the rooms.
Lien-hua walked beside me. Graceful. A gazelle.
I could feel the weight of the unsaid stretching between us, and I tried to think of a way to clear the air, but before I could land on the right words, she broke the silence. “Pat, our past needs to stay in the past.” She spoke softly, her voice rich with her Asian heritage, and though she tried to sound objective and detached, I could tell the topic was difficult for her to bring up. “This case, this is where we are. This is where we need to be.”
She was right, of course, but that wasn’t going to make things any easier.
“We can’t pretend that nothing happened between us,” I said, more for my sake than for hers. “That we weren’t…”
In love, I thought.
“Close,” I said.
A small pause. “I’m not suggesting we pretend, just saying we need to move on.” A thin thread of pain ran through every word, but I couldn’t help recall that she was the one who’d ended things, not me. “People do that, you know,” she said. “People see each other, they break up, they find a way to work together again.”
Yes. You’re right. People do that.
She looked my way. “We need to do that too.”
“I know,” I replied.
“Okay.” She took a breath, then added, “I’m glad you’re back in town, though.”
“It’s good to see you too.”
Lien-hua.
Cheyenne.
This was going to be a hard summer.
As we passed through the hallway, I noticed computerized testing stations, fMRI and CAT scan machines in the adjoining rooms. From a case I’d worked in San Diego last winter, I even recognized two MEG, or magnetoencephalography, machines used to study the magnetic fields that are caused by neurological activity.
There was definitely some big money behind this facility.
Lien-hua noticed me surveying the rooms. “We had a briefing before you got here.” Her tone was professional, that of a co-worker, and it hurt to hear her use it on me. “Mostly the research here focuses on primate cognition, but in this wing, they’re also studying primate aggression. The keeper arrived at 7:00 to check on the animals, found the security guard drugged, Mollie dead, and the chimps mutilating her body. She called it in. That’s about all we know. Metro police are interviewing her now.”
“Any indication she might be involved?” I guessed that Lien-hua would want me to mirror her cool, detached tone, and I tried to but failed pitifully.
“Not so far.”
“How was the drug identified so quickly?”
“They use it in their research.”
After a few more steps she said, “A personal question. Is that all right?”
“Sure.”
“How are you and Tessa doing?”
Although I hadn’t told Lien-hua about Paul Lansing, she was aware of my struggles connecting with my stepdaughter. At the moment I avoided the whole topic of Tessa’s father. “She’s good. Thanks for asking. Actually, she mentioned she was looking forward to seeing you this summer. Wants to talk to you about something called .”
A small moment. “Yes. That would be nice.”
I kept my curiosity to myself.
We arrived at the doorway to the ape habitat where Mollie had been killed. The door was wide, but low, and at six-foot-three I had to crouch to get through.
As I entered, I was struck by the stark smell of straw and feces and the rusty scent of blood.
Death in the air.
To get to Mollie, I had to walk past the two dead chimpanzees.
Both had blood-stained teeth and streaks of blood smeared across their faces and hands. The larger of the two had a single gunshot wound to the chest. The other had been shot two or three times, it was hard to tell, and lay closer to the door. An officer was interviewing a distraught-looking female civilian, possibly the keeper, but I tried to avoid making assumptions.