The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (24 page)

The DJ continued, “Hello to all of you out there in the boondocks. Are you sure this is
from
the officer and not
for
him?” He laughed at his own joke, a deep, rich sound. Where the commercials had failed completely to engage Lucy’s attention, that laugh got her to look. She had started brachiating again, and she suddenly swung over the top to stand on the monkey bars, holding on with all four hands. Finally, the DJ stopped laughing and continued. “Officer Carmichael would like to hear Public Enemy’s ‘911 Is a Joke’. All right, Officer. This one is for you.”

Even before the lyrics began, even before the drums and backing bass guitar revved up, Lucy started heading our way. It’s hard to say whether she was coming to the song or the DJ’s voice, which she might have heard at Ace’s home, if he could pull in Columbus stations from wherever he lived. Behind the paddy wagon, Carmichael was squirming under the amused expressions of his subordinates. In front of it, Lucy started loping across the lawn.

This was a tricky spot. We hadn’t talked about what to do if it actually worked, whether we should get undercover or suggest that the officers do the same, and suddenly, we didn’t have time to form a plan. The cops on the blind side of the vehicle weren’t in a good place if Lucy overshot the goal, and Lance and I weren’t in a good place if she veered away from it.

But she came so quickly, when—oh mercy—we hadn’t expected her to come at all, that all we could do was stand still and watch. She only slowed for a moment in her approach to the paddy wagon, to pick up the blankets the detective had strewn. These, she tossed casually in the open door. Then, using the door for traction, she vaulted onto the top of the vehicle as easily as she had climbed up the monkey bars.

Detective Carmichael and all the police surrounding him looked up to find Lucy standing above them, staring down.

“Get back,” I whispered. “Back away.”

Before any of them had moved, Lucy uttered a single huff, turned her back on them, and gave her attention instead to the red radio. She picked it up and cradled it, then sat on top of the paddy wagon, holding it close, rocking it against her body until the song came to an end and the DJ came back on the air.

“Officer, I hope that lured your suspect out to you.” More laughter, as if the DJ couldn’t believe the enormity of the prank that was clearly being played on some ignorant cop. “But in case he’s still holed up, I’m going to give you another one for free. Here’s a little bit of Ice-T from High-T on a Saturday afternoon. I’m going to play you a little ‘Cop Killer.’ Seriously, people, this guy’s
murdering
me.”

We were all watching Lucy. It didn’t really matter what played at this point. We were so close to having her where we needed her. But, as my grandmother would have cheerfully pointed out if she hadn’t been on the other side of town getting ready for my wedding, “A near miss is as good as a mile.” Lucy on top of the paddy wagon was as much of a loss to us as Lucy over on the swing set.

Before we could regroup and adjust our plan, Lucy stood up and swung down from the roof, using the door to help herself in much in the same way she’d used it to get up. She didn’t put down the radio until she landed, and then she carefully added it to the stash she had started making when she casually threw in the bedding Lance had taken out. After that, she collected some of the watermelon that had gotten left behind when Lance smashed the big fruit open on the sidewalk.

Then, with a very careful look toward Lance and I, she walked into the paddy wagon and closed the door behind herself.

The detective rushed around to make sure it locked, and then we all stood there gape-jawed while Ice-T continued his muffled one-man protest, presumably from the arms of a great ape.

Finally, Lance said, “My God, we
owe
you,” to Detective Carmichael.

And he said, “No. If I’d done what I should have in the first place, maybe none of this ever would have happened. I owe
you
for giving me a chance to set some of it right.”

“It
worked,
” said Deputy Greene, who stayed a sufficient distance from the van.

“How are we going to get that radio back?” I asked.

“You can’t throw that like a disc,” the young deputy said. Then he repeated, “It
worked.
If I live to be ninety-nine years old, I’m never going to see anything like that again in my life. That was
something.
”

Yes. It was. It was something. The sense of hope I had felt when I first answered Olivia’s call blossomed into joy. I stood beside Lance, smiling madly. It
worked.
Something really was right with the world.

I got to enjoy that feeling for a little less than five minutes.

I turned my attention to the radio. How to get it out. While I was contemplating some way to arrange an exchange with Lucy, the police barrier opened up to admit Christian.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” he demanded. His face was red, and he kept clenching and unclenching his big fists.

Lance said, “What?”

“The cops,” he said, “wouldn’t know. But
you
!
You should have waited.
”

“We couldn’t exactly hold off,” I said. “There was no way to know if she was going to run away or . . .”

“If she didn’t take off when you came roaring up with half the police force in the county, do you really think she was going to go anywhere before I could get here to help you?” It was an amazing transformation from the calm of the night before. Where was the Christian who had persuaded an agitated detective to carry dart guns when Art’s six-month campaign on the same topic had produced no results? I was facing an enraged bull of a man who clearly thought we had handled Lucy’s capture all wrong.

“Christian,” I said. “We didn’t know. We couldn’t know. What if she got bored swinging and left?”

“Then you could have followed her,”
he snarled.

“Look,” I said. “It worked out. She’s contained. She’s safe.”

“And now you’ve got an orangutan with a radio,” he snapped.

I said, “Yeah, we need to get the radio back.”

“Orangutans are
curious,
” he said. “They take things apart. That thing has
batteries.
Do you ever put
batteries
into an enclosure?”

“Christian. I’m sorry,” I said. He expected me, perhaps to back down. Hard to say. But I had learned the hard way that cringing away from an angry man was no way to solve a problem. I often wondered how different things might have been if, the first time Alex lifted a hand to me, I had stomped on his foot and left. Christian hadn’t raised his hands, but he was right down in my face. I leaned into him, and we stood nose to nose. His awkward stance gave me an automatic advantage should things come to blows.

The police were all gathered in their own enclave around Detective Carmichael’s car. They looked like a mini-football huddle. They weren’t watching our confrontation at all. But I stood still, meeting Christian’s eyes, waiting. I felt, rather than saw, Lance step to the left and come in behind me. The comfort that small motion brought almost made me smile. Almost.

Lance asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

Christian looked above my head to Lance, but instead of continuing his tirade, he deflated. “I’m sorry,” he said, relaxing against the paddy wagon. “I’m sorry. This has nothing to do with her.” He pointed aimlessly at the vehicle that was holding Lucy. “I’m sure you handled it the best you could in the circumstances.” He looked over at the police, then walked a little bit away from us and folded up his enormous frame to sit down on the curb in front of the truck.

In my experience, big people don’t typically sit down where they won’t have leverage to get back up again easily. “Are you all right?” I asked.

Christian shook his head. “No. I’m not. I didn’t mean to come blasting in here like a cannonball. My God, you got one of them! You saved her. We’ll get her to your quarantine pens and hope she hasn’t taken apart the radio before we can trade out for it. She’s going to be fine. Probably. But so much has happened since you left, and one of us should have been calling you, but we haven’t had the time.”

I suddenly remembered that Olivia had tried to call the sanctuary before she dialed my cell, and that Lance himself had been hard-pressed to get them to pick up. “What’s wrong?”

Now that his face wasn’t so red, Christian actually looked quite pale. The bags under his eyes stood out dark against his white skin, and he tucked his knees up to rest his elbows on them.

Lance said, “What is it?”

Christian wasn’t answering. Lance and I glanced at each other, then sat with him on the curb, one on either side. Together, we waited. My euphoria at having rescued Lucy was completely gone, and in its place I felt only the knot of fear and tension that had been hurting my gut since Chuck arrived yesterday morning.

“I have bad news for you,” Christian said.

I asked, “How bad?”

“The worst.”

“Oh, no. Oh, that poor animal.”

“No!” Christian said. “Not that. We still haven’t found him. We heard another longcall right before things got crazy, but nobody could really follow up on that.”

“That’s some good, anyway,” I said.

At the same time, Lance asked, “What, then?”

The big man nodded. “I really don’t know where to start,” he went on. He sat still a little while longer, then blew out a breath and said, “After you left, a couple more of those cops came driving up in a hustle. They wanted one of you, but were willing to talk to me after a bit.” Again, Christian stopped. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he repeated.

“I think we may know some of it,” Lance said.

“Excuse me?” Christian said.

I explained. “We . . . ah . . . opened some of Art’s e-mail.”

“Then you know that he was expecting these creatures.” Lance and I nodded. “That he knew they were in pretty bad shape, that the female might be carrying.”

“She is.”

“Lance told me on the phone. Dear God, what was he thinking?” Christian demanded, some of the earlier color returning to his cheeks. “Why would he ever let an animal suffer? He only would have needed to call. I would have gotten them myself, and maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“We think,” Lance said, “that Art believed they were living in humane, if cramped, quarters with a trained keeper.”

“Why?” Christian asked. So Lance explained the chain of e-mails we had found, and told him about our phone conversation with Ace. Christian agreed. “It could have come about like that.” But then he continued, “But that’s not the worst of it. Not by half.”

My stomach muscles (which I had thought could not get any tighter) clenched, and I reached around Christian’s large back. I was trying for Lance, but when my hand got there, I found him also searching blindly for me. After we connected, we looped our clasped arms behind Christian’s neck, holding onto him while we held onto each other.

Christian went on, “The cops are acting pretty cagey. They don’t like to let out information. I had to pry pretty hard to get out that Art knew about the orangutans, and I think that’s something they wouldn’t have told one of you. They seemed to view me as sideways to the whole thing since I was in Columbus until sunset yesterday. The one thing they will tell me is they no longer suspect the orangutans of Art’s murder.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “What changed their minds?”

“They aren’t saying. Only that we should keep it quiet and continue our rescue efforts.” I nodded. Again, Christian said, “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

I wanted to scream,
“OUT with it already!”
But my stomach wanted me never to find out. It wanted me to take Lance’s hand and walk away to get married.

Finally, Christian went on. “The troopers wanted to know a lot of information about your enclosures, where each one was in relationship to the others, and if there were others off-site.”

“We think there might be,” I said. “Art was . . . planning a surprise.”

“Then they asked a lot of questions about the head of your board.”

“Stan Oeschle?”

“The same.”

“Why?” Lance wanted to know.

Christian shrugged. “Their questions weren’t nice.”

“What then?”

“They wanted to know if Stan and Art had any kind of falling-out recently. I said you would know that better than me, since I’m a visitor.”

I shook my head. “Not that I know of,” I said. The e-mail between the two of
them
that Lance and I found sounded perfectly normal.

Christian nodded, filing that information away. “Then they wanted to know whether there were any places in the buildings where Dr. Oeschle could have hidden something.”

“
Hidden
something?” I said. “Like what?”

Christian said, “They didn’t say. Actually, they said ‘stored an item discreetly,’ but it amounts to the same thing. I let them look around the place. I assume you don’t mind. I don’t guess they found anything, because after that, they wanted to walk the grounds some more, and they started back along the same path you showed me this morning, Lance.”

“The one Art followed in last night,” Lance said.

“Yeah,” Christian said. “I was going to call you, but almost as soon as they went back there, one of them came sprinting back out shouting at his two-way radio. That rattled pretty much everybody. He stopped by the barn long enough to tell us all to stay put, not to leave the barn for any reason. Then he got in his car. We could see him parked there, talking on his radio for a while.”

When Christian once more fell silent, Lance prompted, “What happened?”

“A lot of things all at once. About a dozen more emergency personnel showed up. More police and an ambulance. Trudy didn’t have much patience with the lot of them, and she went off to go tell them our volunteers needed to go home and that we didn’t appreciate being stuck in the barn when we should be caring for the primates. Then the ambulance crew took off down that same path with a stretcher, and when they came out, they were carrying somebody. I didn’t get much of a look, but Trudy did.”