Chapter 15

Agent Alice Foster was more attractive than Finn remembered. His recall of her from three years ago was a polite but stiff woman in a gray pantsuit who was determined to do everything by the book. Today, her brown hair was not clipped back into her previous severe style but swung freely in a shining, chin-length bob. She wore a blue tailored blouse over white slacks and a tan jacket pulled over the pistol holstered at her waist.

She noticed his interest. Smiling, she put one hand on her hip and struck a pose. “I know. I look different.”

“Yes.” Finn was afraid to say anything else, lest it be regarded as sexual harassment.

“Chalk it up to being a newbie then, and having a starched shirt by my side at all times.”

“I saw all the missing posters on my way into town.” She rolled his visitor chair next to his seat, and then pulled out a notebook and pen from the leather satchel she carried. “What have we got, Detective?”

She might have changed her appearance, but Agent Foster was still all business. He filled her in on everything he’d learned so far.

“Yeah, but we’ve got limited personnel to monitor the tip line.” Only Micaela, to be precise. But he knew the aide fancied herself a detective and would much rather listen to all those messages than perform her usual clerical duties.

“Did I understand correctly that you assigned the parents of the missing girls to review the tapes from the festival?” Foster raised a sleek eyebrow.

He waved his hands in the air. “I know, I know. Hardly proper procedure. But we’re short-handed here. Detective Dawes is recuperating from knee surgery, and Detective Larson is away on her honeymoon. We need to proceed quickly, and the parents are most likely to recognize their girls.”

“Understood. But I’d like to see those tapes, too. I might spot suspicious activity that civilians wouldn’t be on the lookout for.”

“We can arrange that onsite.” He logged out of his computer, then noticed the paper file left on his desk. Finn was scrawled in black marker across the outside of the plain manila folder, and a Post-it note was pasted on the outside: What you asked for. Copy on Melendez’s desk.—Miki

“A list of females reported missing from this area for the last twenty years.” He shuffled the pages. “And a history of the Todd Sutter case. He was a serial rapist and murderer who was convicted and incarcerated here more than a decade ago.”

The FBI agent was right; it made no sense, based on what he’d learned so far. But there had been just too many killings in his jurisdiction for his comfort. He felt like he was missing vital information that he should know.

Sara Melendez walked in. Staggered in, was more like it. The poor woman looked like he felt, as if she’d been up most of the night. She held a large travel mug in one hand and a windbreaker in the other, and as she came through the door she groaned. “There were more bones, Finn. Not too new, not too old—”

She stopped when she spotted Agent Foster sitting at Finn’s desk. “Oh, hello.” Sliding the jacket and coffee cup onto her desk, she walked over and held out a hand. “Detective Melendez. You’re the FBI agent Finn mentioned. Foster, right?”

“Of course.” Melendez shook hands. “Not so many of us women that I’d forget.”

Finn briefly wondered if he should feel rejected, but chose to review the printout of missing women as he listened to Melendez and Foster. Their discussion, along with this list, might seem even more relevant if either the detective or the FBI agent knew about the bones found in Grace’s barn, but he wasn’t ready to go there yet. He was still hoping the bones belonged to a bear or to an ancient pioneer or Native American buried a century ago.

The list of missing females was short, and for once Finn was grateful to be working in a farming area with sparse population. There were only seven names from his county and the surrounding area.

2002—Heidi Skouras, 20. Missing from rural Kittitas county, last seen at a diner along I-90.

2002—Anna Moran, 18. Missing from Evansburg, last seen at a high school football game.

2003—Magdalena Aguilar, 20. Missing from Vantage. Last seen at a Gorge Amphitheatre concert.

2004—Angela Albro, 22. Missing from a migrant farm camp near Othello, last seen hitchhiking to a friend’s house. Discovered in the trunk of Todd Sutter’s car. TODD SUTTER—CONVICTION 2006 was noted after that name.

2007—Cristina Disanto, 16, missing from a migrant farm worker camp near Quincy.

2009—Sheryl Pratt, 19. From Spokane, last seen at a Gorge Amphitheatre concert.

2016—Colleen Kelly, 16, from Evansburg. Last seen hitchhiking east.

And if something didn’t break soon, he would need to add “Darcy Ireland, 17,” and “Mia Valdez, 17,” to the list.

He quickly skimmed the Sutter file, noted that while the man had been convicted of killing Angela Albro, he had also been accused of kidnapping and raping Skouras, but she’d vanished before a trial could be held. A notation from the Moses Lake Police Department described the suspicion that Sutter was responsible for Aguilar and Moran, too.

But Sutter had been sent to prison in 2006, so the next three were mysteries. The Disanto and Pratt cases might be related, but with a seven year gap between the last two, Colleen Kelly’s disappearance was probably not connected to the others. The fact that Aguilar and Pratt had both been seen last at the Gorge site was troubling. Maybe Agent Foster was right, concerts at the amphitheater provided hunting grounds for traffickers trolling for victims.

After the front-page list, Miki had copied the details of each case, and Finn thumbed through to the Pratt case to see if anything there might help find Darcy and Mia. Sheryl Pratt had hitchhiked to the concert, and her friends believed she’d also hitched out. But she never arrived home. No description of who might have picked her up. Not much to go on there.

He was gratified to see that dental records and likely sources for the young women’s DNA—hairbrushes and toothbrushes—had been collected and logged into storage for all the cases. If the storage had been careful and remains of the missing were ever located, they stood a good chance of being identified.

Agent Foster stood by his elbow, her leather satchel tucked under her arm. “I’m ready when you are,” she told him. “Carpool?”

After silently elbowing their way through a cluster of shouting reporters, they took Finn’s car and drove east. As they neared Grace’s compound, Finn remembered his promise to drop by and pick up the bones. He turned off on her road, explaining to Agent Foster, “I need to make a short stop.”

When they rolled up into the center of the compound, all three gorillas were in their exterior pen, chasing one another up and down the rope net and making so much noise that a blind man could not have missed their presence. Grace was inside with the apes, but when she spotted Finn’s car, she started for the gate.

Foster was entranced. “This is where Neema lives?” As soon as Finn parked, she reached for the door handle. “I’ve always wanted to meet the gorilla that solved a kidnapping case.”

Finn clenched his jaw in frustration but knew it was useless to protest that he’d had something to do with that. Foster herself had assisted in capturing the perpetrator and closing the case. The gorilla was always the most memorable aspect of the Ivy Morgan case.

Grace and Alice Foster shook hands, and then, at Foster’s request, Grace agreed to introduce the FBI agent to Neema and family. Before she led them into the enclosure, Grace stopped at the gate. “I need you to remove your weapon, Agent Foster.”

“The gorillas are fast, and they sometimes like to grab things,” Grace explained. “And they do have opposable thumbs.”

“We are the only humans here,” Grace promised. “Unfortunately, I have no volunteers helping today.”

Finn pulled his pistol from his holster and left it on the ground, covering it with his jacket. After a slight hesitation, Alice Foster did the same.

Inside the enclosure, Gumu climbed to the top of the rope net and stayed there, his usual antisocial self. Grace called Neema, and the mother gorilla eagerly loped over to meet the newcomer, Kanoni romping by her side.

After giving Neema a hello sign, Foster asked if Grace could have the mother gorilla sign something.

“She is.” Grace pointed to Neema’s hand, which she was twisting in the air. “She’s saying your blouse is blue. In ASL, the sign is supposed to be made by forming the letter B and then twisting like that, but gorillas aren’t good with spelling, so that’s Neema’s version.”

Neema leaned forward, placing her huge head close to Foster, who looked a bit alarmed but didn’t flinch. The gorilla’s nostrils flared as she took in the agent’s scent. Then she sat back on her haunches and fixed her eyes on Grace as she ground one hand into the other.

Grace laughed. “Cookie. Here.” Taking a small cookie from a bag she had in her jacket pocket, Grace handed it to Alice Foster.

Neema transferred her intense gaze to Foster and repeated the sign. Foster handed the treat to Neema. The gorilla made a quick thank you sign with one hand as she stuffed the cookie into her mouth with the other.

Kanoni immediately leapt forward, signing cookie cookie cookie and then tugging on Agent Foster’s jacket. Grace rolled her eyes but handed Foster another cookie, which the agent gave to the baby gorilla, laughing.

Grace bumped a hip into Finn. When he glanced her way, she slid her hand into his and transferred two small, hard bits to his palm. Oh yeah, the bones. He clutched his fingers around them as Grace withdrew her hand, then transferred them to his pants pocket.

Gumu barreled down the net, four hundred pounds of muscle-bound gorilla rocketing in their direction like a runaway locomotive. Foster took three quick steps backward and collided with the fence behind her, reflexively reaching a hand toward her holster. Finn was proud of himself for not flinching as the silverback rushed toward them.

Gumu stopped a couple of feet away. His nostrils flared, and his fierce brown-eyed gaze shifted from Grace to Agent Foster to Finn and then scanned back.

After a few seconds, the agent stepped forward and took the cookie. “Hell, yeah.” She regarded the silverback warily. “He doesn’t sign?”

“He knows a few signs,” Grace said. “But Gumu cooperates only when he feels like it, don’t you, Gumu?”

The silverback twisted one hand into the palm of the other, signing cookie, and then held out a massive black hand toward Agent Foster.

Grace’s jaw dropped. “I’ll be damned. Good, Gumu! Good gorilla!” She signed and nodded toward Foster, who gingerly held out the cookie.

Gumu snatched the treat and crammed it into his mouth. Kanoni grabbed handfuls of the fur on her father’s arms, hoping for a share, but Gumu studiously ignored the baby. Then all the gorillas sat back on their rumps and stared at the three humans, waiting.

Signaled by a grunt from Gumu, the gorillas climbed back into the net. Grace led the humans out of the enclosure, closing and locking the gate behind them, and Finn and Foster recovered their guns.

As they headed for their car, Grace abruptly said, “You nearly forgot what you came for, Matt.” She dashed into her trailer and emerged with his sunglasses in hand. “Here you go.”

He tucked them into his pocket, thinking, not for the first time, that sometimes Dr. Grace McKenna might be a little faster on the uptake than he was. Of course Agent Foster would be curious about why they’d stopped, and Grace guessed he wouldn’t have told her about the bones. “Thanks. Coffee next time, okay?”

Surprising him, Grace threw both arms around his neck and pulled him down into a fervent kiss. This was unusual behavior from his girlfriend. She rarely showed much affection in public. As a career police officer, he was not accustomed to such displays, either. It took him too long to put his arms around her.

Finally releasing him, Grace said, “See you later, Matt. Nice to meet you, Agent Foster. I hope you find those girls soon.” She strode off toward the gorilla barn.