The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (3 page)

With that much experience, Art knew that the animal at our gates couldn’t possibly understand him. His conversations with the staff always came back to the fact that we needed to follow established patterns of positive reinforcement using rewards and target and clicker training to achieve desired behaviors in our own captive population. It wasn’t that the primates lacked intelligence. Rather, they didn’t think like humans, and we, as their caretakers, had a responsibility to communicate with them in ways they could understand. But Art, in spite of what he knew, still believed the right tone and body language could convey a complete message. He was still healing the little kid who had to donate his own pet to save it from euthanasia. He was still personally rescuing all the other primates facing down similar fates.

He took seriously his role as a caregiver to unwanted creatures who had outgrown social roles they never should have been assigned. He wanted them to know they had found a true home at last when they entered our enclosures. Which was fine, except when he did something stupid.

Lance muttered, “You’re going to get yourself killed, Art.” But he spoke so softly that even I barely heard him. Art was too far ahead. Reaching out to pull him back was impossible. And none of us wanted to spook the animal the man was trying to cozy up to. Not to mention nobody brought a dart gun to the party.

We owned them. Sometimes, especially if we were called into a bad situation by the police, wary animals could only be sedated with darts. But estimating the weight of a full-grown orangutan would have required seeing it first. Not to mention that this whole adventure had started with honking. That creature arrived in a car, and it was in the middle of an adrenaline rush, which could completely neutralize the tranquilizer. A dart would probably only startle it and make it mad. I was relieved we’d forgotten the guns.

But then, it was pretty clear we needed
something.
The orangutan didn’t look or smell like it was having the most winning day so far. Even from a distance, I could see that its orange hair looked dull and dirty. More than that, the hair was obviously tousled and matted, the back hair trailing down to the ground in dreadlocks that must have been collecting excretions. A rank odor of feces and decay emanated from the animal so strongly that I couldn’t imagine coming into close contact with it without first putting on several layers of facial mask. It was like standing next to garbage.

Possibly, it would be so exhausted that Art could coax it through the gate, and we could get Art into Darnell’s SUV to talk about the situation. If it was conditioned to humans, it would consider the fence a barrier, even though it could easily vault over it. Maybe we could get it in and work from there. It wasn’t a healthy animal, and I wished I could recall the list of diseases it might be carrying. I found myself simultaneously hoping that its bad health would prevent it from hurting Art and fearing that those conditions would make it more likely to lash out. But Arthur Jamison Hooper was not considering these things. He was walking forward with the very clear intent of getting the newcomer in.

“Jesus, Art,” I muttered.

The center was Art’s creation. It was his baby. He was a true conservationist who understood that monkeys and apes are not at all like the differently-sized humans television shows and films would have us believe. Even as youths, they can have behaviors that seem erratic to untrained eyes. But youngsters are smaller, less likely to break skin and bones when they act outside human expectations. And this was no youth. Yet Art was an impulsive man, somewhat unpredictable himself, and quite convinced of his own charms. Like all of us, he talked to the animals in our care while he tended to them. But he was demonstrating his most prominent trait right now, a complete lack of common sense. Or rather, a complete inability to prioritize common sense over love. Art considered himself personally responsible for everything that happened at the center. He thought he could fix anything. Rather than wait for the rest of us to arrive after his hurried call on the radio, he had taken action.

“Where can we even put it?” Trudy whispered.

That was another problem. We weren’t equipped for orangutans. We had no enclosure, except for the one already home to fifteen chimpanzees, that could house a primate this big for any long term. And we couldn’t dump a new housemate on the chimps. The newcomer needed to be quarantined until we could get him, if not directly to Florida, then at least to a zoo.

In fact, a zoo sounded like an excellent idea. All of the regional zoos had orangutans. Perhaps one of them could house this animal until the folks from down south could collect it. Our first call would be to the Ohio Zoo, where our friend Christian Baker worked as a keeper. He and his staff had been part of the crew that had intervened to save the lives of several animals when a couple of angry former employees in Michigan managed to turn loose an entire private zoo. Many animals were shot when they gamboled into town, but the keepers had saved a few. Perhaps
they
could lure in and trap this orangutan.

We had acted as intermediaries in the past, when an orangutan in an Indiana roadside zoo had suddenly become an inappropriate attraction. But again, in that case, we’d quickly gotten help from our friends at the Ohio Zoo.

The orangutan turned. The plate-like cheek pads that gave the top half of the animal’s face its squashed appearance rotated away from the crate and toward our director. Art shifted his own body seamlessly into reverse. The big ape took one step, then another, and a third to follow before it stopped again, looking around at its environment in complete befuddlement.

And then it bellowed, a furious belch vocalization that startled me backwards several steps.

The animal’s meaning was clear. It considered Art an intruder into its territory and wanted him out. When Art suddenly stopped moving backwards, the orangutan charged, screeching threats as it ran. It used both its hands and feet to surge forward. Before any of us could act, one great hairy arm shot out and batted Art out of the way before the animal passed him and bolted into the trees, still vocalizing loudly.

Art staggered a few feet and landed beside the road with a soft whuff. Darnell shoved open his door and jumped out to race forward with Lance. Art jumped up almost as soon as he hit the ground and hobbled toward the SUV, his common sense seemingly restored by the rough landing. So Darnell scrambled back in and leaned across to open his passenger door instead, while the rest of us piled gracelessly into the back.

Art reached the vehicle as I dragged myself out from under the pile of me, Lance, and Trudy. Art was scolding us: “You came too soon! You came too soon!”

The orangutan had stopped short at the tree line, and it now stood huffing at our vehicle, deciding whether or not it was, in fact, a threat.

Art and Lance slammed their respective doors simultaneously, suddenly dampening the ape’s noise and cutting back the smell.

“We came too soon?” Lance said. “You wanted us to let that thing mangle you in the cart?”

“What?” Art seemed to shake something off to hear Lance. “I wanted you to . . . no . . . no . . . of course I needed help.” Then, Art’s face cracked open in a grin. “Did you
see
that? It was so
gentle
putting me in my place. It could have
killed
me instead of pushing me out of the way. Ha ha!” He ended on a gleeful laugh that suggested he hadn’t learned much of a lesson from getting too close.

“We need to lure it down to the barn,” Art went on, strategizing now. “It’s not ideal. But until we can . . . until something more appropriate . . . with food . . .”

While Art was talking, the orangutan offered one last shout at the SUV, then took off into the trees.

“There he goes,” Lance said as we watched it vanish. “Now what?”

“It’s fine,” Art said. “It’s all right. It looks half starved. My God, it needs our help. Did you see its backside? I think it should be pretty easy to draw in. I thought, but I never expected . . . something like
this
to happen. Darnell, can you take us back up?”

Darnell put his SUV in reverse, but he stopped immediately when we all felt a thump.

“Oh damn,” Lance said. “We forgot about the carts.”

I hadn’t set the brake, so the golf cart rolled back a few feet and one wheel bumped off the road. We waited until we were at least reasonably sure the orangutan wasn’t coming right back, and then Lance and I got out and pushed the one cart back onto the road while Art returned to the other. Lance performed a cursory inspection. “It’s fine.” We led the parade back up to the barn.

By the time we arrived, Art’s good humor had been fully restored. He zipped around to park first, then jumped down and clapped his hands. “Now,” he said, leading us all into the barn. “Here’s what we need to do. Noel and Lance, you’ve only got a couple more hours today. This could take all afternoon.” He paused, laughing. “Did you see that beauty?” he asked us. “My God, when we get him back in shape he’ll be three hundred pounds. He was so close. He touched me.”

“I’ll say he touched you,” Darnell said. “He almost ripped your head clean off.”

“No, no, no.” Art chortled his way over to food prep, where he continued the work Trudy had been engaged in before the orangutan’s arrival. “That’s the thing. It
didn’t hurt me.
It could have done exactly that, Darnell. One smack. Boom. I’m gone. It pulled its punch, on purpose. It spooked,” he said. “If it hadn’t . . . Well, we’ll find him.”

I didn’t cut in. Now wasn’t the time for lectures, but Art had one coming. I met Lance’s eyes, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. If anyone else on the staff had precipitated such rank stupidity, personal affection wouldn’t have stopped Lance and I from firing that person on the spot. Art was very lucky he outranked us both.

Now that he was happy again, Art began zestfully hacking a number of fruits while giving us instructions. It didn’t seem to matter to him that the food had not yet been organized or that others would be arriving in the near future to address this project. His hands clearly wanted for action. Lance backed quietly away from the tables and into our office. I followed him as Art began to think out loud.

“I’ll get a call in to Florida,” Art said. He meant he would call Richard Norris, our contact at the sanctuary we would be sending the orangutan to once we caught him. Art had more ideas. But I didn’t hear him because I shut the door.

“Talk fast,” I told Lance, “because he’s going to want us back out there in a minute.”

But Lance seemed disinclined toward conversation, instead pausing to breathe deeply, arms crossed over his chest. Art might have recovered fully from his encounter, but Lance was still frightened. Me, too. I walked around behind my fiancé and reached up to rub his shoulders. Slowly, his muscles relaxed, and he rolled his neck from one side to the other.

We could see into the barn through an internal window. Art was using the butcher knife as a pointer to indicate people as he spoke. Since he only had two people to indicate, he waved it back and forth between Trudy and Darnell until he buried it in a watermelon. Lance shook his head. “This is extreme. Even for him.”

Our office had a good view of the rest of the barn. We could also see pretty clearly out into the woods, thanks to the vehicle doors that we still hadn’t bothered to close. Through these, we watched the fruit truck lumber up the employee drive to the parking pad with our weekend delivery. “We need to warn Olivia to watch out,” I said.

Lance nodded agreement, and I left him alone in the office.

“Trudy and Darnell, get ready to come with me,” Art was proclaiming, as I went through the barn. He wanted to talk to me, too. “And you two, Noel, Lance,” he said. He had dislodged the knife from the melon and was using it as a pointer once more.

“Not now,” I snapped. “Fruit truck’s here, and I want to be sure the driver doesn’t get any surprises.” Even as I spoke, Olivia swung the truck around to back it up to the open doors. The orangutan was riding on her tail, standing on the back lift holding onto the door’s handles like he was taking a ride on a trash truck.

“Noel, you have to—” Art began again.

“Art!” I snapped. “Dart gun.”

“What?”

I glanced his way, then pointed. When his eyes followed my gaze, they widened.

“Look at that” he breathed. “So smart.”

“So dangerous.” I cut quickly away from him and ran toward our medical clinic, hoping I could sedate the animal before Olivia even knew her danger. “Lance! Come out! I need help!”

“He knows,” Art said, not referring to Lance, but delivering Trudy and Darnell a classroom lecture about an animal that was going to come charging through the doors in a few seconds. “He associates us with food, and he knows the food comes on a truck.”

Lance didn’t emerge, and I couldn’t worry about why he wasn’t listening to me right then. “Trudy, Darnell, shut the door before it gets in.” Their feet thumped rapidly across the floor. If the orangutan associated the sight of the truck with food, I could only imagine what it would think of our prep tables.

I ducked into the clinic and reached for one of the two dart guns stored on the wall. Although it was similar to a rifle in appearance, its long barrel meant it was unlikely to be mistaken for a firearm. We kept the immobilizing agents in a locked cabinet, and I fumbled with my keys in my hurry. Cabinet open, I took out two darts and a dart-loading syringe, hoping that I was guessing the animal’s weight accurately. I prepared a dose large enough for a full-grown male chimp, but I couldn’t be sure it would work for the behemoth out front. I needed two shots if I was going to be sure.

Then Lance joined me.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming for a minute there,” I told him.

“I had a couple of calls to make,” he said. “I got Olivia on the phone and now she knows to sit tight.”

That coupled with the sound of the doors sliding shut brought me a measure of relief. We had contact numbers for our vendors and volunteers, but mostly we needed them for more mundane reasons. This was about as far from mundane as things got. Personal safety was the number-one concern when dealing with apes, and I knew that even if my hastily assembled darts reached their intended target, there was a possibility that I would not have prepared a strong-enough solution, and that I would only make the orangutan angry or woozy.