Mastermind: A Theo Cray and Jessica Blackwood Thriller Page 11

  “If he’s planning some bigger event, something to make the Void look like a warm-up, then there’s got to be some other pattern we’re not seeing. Maybe not one big one, but several interrelated patterns. Remember the collection of weird cases you showed me?”

  “Yeah, but we’re looking for a pattern. Those cases seemed pretty random.”

  “Yes, but you and your colleague selected them out of a huge number of weird cases. Why those particular ones? Were there some other criteria about them?”

  I weigh how much to tell him. Do I really trust him? I believe so. Do I need answers?

  Absolutely.

  “I have a friend. Sometimes he sends me information that was obtained in ways that are . . .”

  Theo holds up a hand. “I understand. What made these interesting?”

  I’ve only told one other person this. If Robert Ailes found out, he’d kill me. It goes against so many bureau directives, not to mention violating the law, even if I’m not the one actually violating it.

  To hell with it.

  “My friend was worried about my safety and afraid that the FBI wasn’t doing enough. So, he used a device to track cell phone numbers.”

  “Where?” asks Theo.

  “Heywood’s attorneys’ offices. We suspected that while his own attorneys may have been acting within legal boundaries, a clerk or someone else there who had access to Heywood wasn’t. So, we started tracking numbers and looking to see where they popped up.”

  “And anytime you saw a suspicious incident and a related number, or one associated to that, you put a pin in it?”

  “Basically. I was looking for weird stuff. Test runs, whatever.” I’m embarrassed to admit this. I may have broken not only the law, but my own ethical standards.

  “Clever. You created contact tracing for weirdness in order to find the Warlock’s hidden pattern,” he replies.

  “It was wrong.” My cheeks burn at the mere thought of Ailes knowing what I did.

  “Is it? I mean technically, yes. So is breaking a window. But if there’s a child suffocating inside a hot car, breaking the window and committing a crime is the only moral thing to do. Sometimes we have to take extreme actions with the hope that we’ll be judged for their impact and not the deeds. Or better yet, hope we never get judged.”

  I think about the allegation that Theo created an entire crime scene with body parts and wasted the FBI’s and local authorities’ time and resources. “Is this how you make decisions?”

  “Yes. And I’m always weighing them, unsure if I made the right choice. I don’t judge you for what you did. I’d do the same. In fact, I have, and more.”

  “So, do any of the cases stand out more than others?” I ask.

  “The miracle cures intrigue me, but the one I fear the most is your missing chimpanzees.”

  “What would Heywood do with a bunch of chimpanzees?” I ask.

  “Lots of things. Pound for pound, they’re one of the most ferocious animals you could encounter,” Theo replies.

  “Wait . . . Do you think Heywood’s trying to weaponize chimps?”

  “I wasn’t exactly going in that direction. But it is a horrifying thought. It could be another distraction, or it could be part of his bioweapon research. I don’t know. But I’d love to understand how over two dozen chimpanzees went missing without a trace.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  MONKEY VILLAGE

  Theo is on his knees, face-to-face with a young orangutan that has ventured to the edge of her enclosure to study the curious man. His arms are outstretched in much the same way that apes balance themselves. His head is slightly tilted back, and he moves his face from his lips and upper cheeks, forming a kind of smile. Baba the orangutan is amused by Theo and reaches a hand out to touch the glass near his nose. She smiles, backs up, and tries it again, delighted by the show the man ape is putting on for her.

  Theo sees me observing and says, “At this age, her brain and a human child’s are far more alike than we care to acknowledge. It’s not for another year that nature sets in and she becomes more orangutan and a human becomes more Homo sapiens. Same with chimps, bonobos, and gorillas. You could put all five of them together at the same age and they’d play, once they got over their shyness. The ironic part is the human kid would be the slowest one in the room, mentally.” He blows Baba a kiss. She puts her hand to her mouth and almost mimics the gesture. I wonder if she’ll master the action and if anybody will ever realize it was taught to her by one of the smartest people on the planet, who also apparently speaks orangutan.

  “You must be Jessica,” says a young man in a polo shirt and sunglasses, striding toward us.

  “Jack?” I reply, assuming this is Jack Soonsiri, son of the Thai owners of the Monkey Village amusement park.

  “Did they let you in without any problem?”

  “There were tickets waiting for us. Thank you,” I reply. “This is Dr. Cray.”

  “Nice to meet you. Sorry I couldn’t be at the front gate. We have so many animals. Lots of hungry mouths. What do you think of our park?”

  To be honest, it’s nicer than I expected. I don’t know how the captive animals feel, but I was afraid I’d find a lot of chains and exploitive demonstrations. “I think you’ve done a great job here.”

  “We love our animals,” he says before kneeling down to look at Baba, who has retreated to the arms of her mother. “Hey, Baba! How are you today?”

  Baba blows him a kiss. Jack looks at Theo and me with excitement. “Did you see that? I love you, too, Baba.” He gets to his feet. “Her whole family was going to be sold for meat. They lost their home when her forest was destroyed to make a palm oil plantation.”

  “That’s horrible.” I can’t imagine anyone wanting to eat something like an orangutan, but then I’ve never been starving and living in a world where people treated me as poorly as the animals around me.

  “But you’re not here about Baba. You’re here to help us find our missing chimpanzees,” says Jack. “Follow me.”

  Jack leads us down a tree-lined path with enclosures on either side. Part of what makes Monkey Village special is that most of the property is used for the animals, with the humans funneled through caged corridors. At the very least, it gives the illusion that the animals can roam freely.

  We reach an open space surrounding a recess in the ground with a cage running around the top edge. It’s probably a hundred meters across. Below is an island with a moat. Large boulders and trees landscape the area, along with a fake rock wall and cave.

  Signs around the enclosure in Thai, Chinese, and English warn people not to throw things at the chimpanzees. Which would be helpful if there were any chimps here.

  “This is it,” says Jack. “This was their home, and then one day, no more chimpanzees. People thought it was a publicity stunt. I thought maybe Safari Kingdom stole them. But chimps are a lot of work. We had the largest population in Asia.”

  Theo goes up to the edge of the fence. First he scans the area, and then he does something I’d never have thought to do: he smells the air. “No idea?” he asks.

  “None. Some people thought maybe the Chinese stole them to eat. I don’t like that theory. Plus, people blame the Chinese for everything. Too much pollution? Blame the Chinese, even though it’s our cars. Prices too high? Blame the Chinese. Without Chinese tourists, we’d be like the other zoos, making the orangutans kickbox and putting the chimps in bikinis. Imagine little Baba kickboxing? No. I want her to have a nice life. You want to take a closer look?”

  I glance at Theo. “Your call.”

  “There hasn’t been a chimp in here for a while. At least not living here.”

  “It’s safe,” says Jack. “No chimps. And ours are well trained, anyway. Nobody’s lost any fingers yet.”

  “It’s not losing my finger I’m worried about,” says Theo.

  Jack leads us around the fence to a gate that he unlocks. On the other side is a staircase that takes us down to the
back side of the chimpanzee island. Behind the facade is a large enclosed cage with several smaller cages and sliding gates.

  “During monsoon season we bring them in here. Otherwise they stay outside,” explains Jack.

  “Were they outside when they went missing?” asks Theo.

  “Yes. We have watchmen who keep an eye on things.”

  “What about cameras?” I ask.

  “Yes. But they don’t work very well. We had one that shows the outside. We watched the footage to check if we could see any chimps escaping. There’s another one.” He points to the corner. “It was watching inside here.”

  “And the only way out would be to climb the fence or through here?” I ask.

  Jack nods. “Which is why I get frustrated when people accuse us of doing this ourselves. Why would we leave the camera on in here? It’d be easier to believe someone just backed up a truck and stole them from back here.”

  “Can we look outside?” asks Theo.

  “Sure. This way.” Jack leads us through a side door that opens into a passage behind the fake rock cliff.

  We follow Jack down the narrow corridor. I keep glancing around, worried some hidden chimp will come flying at my face with its teeth bared. Intellectually I know it’s safe, but Theo’s stories and my own online research have me on edge.

  “Cages are confusing for animals,” Theo muses aloud. “They don’t understand the relationship between the cage and the person caging them. Also, from a psychological perspective, they don’t fully understand captivity, but it affects them . . . They don’t know where to direct their anger.”

  “I used to work with a tiger in my magic show,” I reply. “She was an adolescent. Still dangerous, though. If I knew what I know now, I never would have done that.”

  “How did your parents think that was okay?” asks Theo.

  “I had a weird childhood. My grandfather kept a pistol on him whenever the cat was around. So, there was that.”

  We reach the main area of the chimpanzee enclosure, the section where the chimps would hang out doing chimpanzee business among rocks and trees that look a lot less natural up close. Above us is the viewing area that wraps almost completely around. A family has stopped to look at us. A confused toddler in her father’s arms points at us and asks something in Thai. He laughs.

  “She wanted to know why the chimps are so white and wearing clothes,” says Jack, translating.

  Theo drops to all fours and scrambles on top of a rock and beats his chest like an ape. The little girl claps her hands, and the family laughs.

  “I don’t think your friend is all there,” Jack whispers to me.

  “Dr. Cray is unique.”

  I’m just glad he’s regaining his health.

  Theo stands up and surveys the enclosure, revealing the real reason he climbed on top of the rock. It’s weird how his brain works. He’s deadly serious one moment and then clowning the next, but then you realize that he decided to get from point A to point B by amusing a child.

  He examines the walls and the fence, then turns to me. “That back door still looks like the best option.”

  “We have footage,” says Jack.

  “Footage can be faked,” I reply. “Trust me. Besides, if not that way, then what? How do you steal thirty scared chimps that would just as easily maul you?”

  Theo kneels on the boulder. “Maybe you don’t steal them. Perhaps you just show them the door and they let themselves out? They’re quite clever. Captive chimps observe people opening doors and unlocking gates.”

  That has me thinking. I start walking around the enclosure, looking at it from a chimp’s point of view. I don’t know that I’d want to escape, but then again, I might be curious to explore. But all of them?

  I put that aside and think about it from a different perspective. Something Theo said. It’s not like we’re in the Louvre trying to figure out who stole the Mona Lisa. We’re at Alcatraz, trying to understand how an entire prison block escaped.

  My nose twitches, and I realize something. The curious part of my brain overtakes the rational, fearful part, and I act on a hunch.

  Jack is the first to speak. “Where did she go?”

  “Well, that’s interesting,” says Theo, trying to figure out how I vanished.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  TRAPDOOR

  Magicians have been using trapdoors to create illusions for centuries. What most people don’t realize is that in a good magic show, if you think the magician is using a trapdoor, she probably isn’t. When used poorly, trapdoors can make the performer look clumsy and undermine the effect. Used judiciously, they can add a dramatic touch to a trick.

  When audiences came to understand that the stage could be riddled with secret entrances and exits, magicians had to think of new methods to rule out the possibility of a secret door in the stage.

  I rarely had the luxury of performing in theaters with traps, so I had to use illusions that employed entirely different methods. For this reason, I rarely even consider trapdoors, thinking they would be too obvious, but my grandfather showed me that with the right misdirection, they could help you perform a miracle.

  The chimpanzees vanishing was a miracle because people made either one assumption or another. The chimps escaped of their own accord yet somehow managed to go undetected in the larger world. Or they were stolen from the enclosure.

  The truth, I now believe, is neither. Someone stole the chimpanzees by creating an opportunity for them to escape. That opportunity is the storm drain I’m now standing in.

  Its entrance is a metal grate that had been covered with weeds and rocks. The reason Jack’s handlers didn’t consider this is because there was a large rock on top of it and a lock on the grate that I picked while pretending to tie my shoe after sliding the boulder to the side.

  “Jessica?” Jack calls out above me. “Did your friend go back inside?” he asks Theo.

  I can see a shadow walking past the crack in the grate. I can visualize Theo standing there. Is he using the same method I did? The method that he demonstrated when we arrived at the enclosure?

  Smell.

  That’s what tipped me off. Even though the zoo staff must have washed the rocks off on a regular basis, plenty of chimpanzee poo and urine slid down here. It’s why the smell is unbearable and I’m seriously questioning how far I’ll go to prove a point.

  The grate opens, and sunlight pours down. Theo is looking down at me. “Clever. Very clever.”

  Jack pokes his head over. “This isn’t supposed to be here. They told me it had been filled in!”

  “Somebody unfilled it,” I reply, imagining chimps smuggling rocks out in their chimp pants.

  “Or they made it look like it was sealed,” says Theo. “Someone on the inside helped.” He calls down to me. “Jessica, you want to come back up?”

  I look down the dark tunnel at the bottom of the pit. “Yeah. We should get some flashlights. And nose plugs.”

  “And tranquilizer guns,” adds Theo. “We need to make sure none of our little friends are still down there.”

  “Oh shit,” says Jack.

  “She’s fine,” Theo replies, probably more to calm me down than to state an objective truth.

  I start climbing the rungs, slowly, then faster when images of chimpanzees pulling me into the darkness fill my mind.

  I reach the top, and Theo helps me out, then shuts the grate, snapping closed the lock I picked. “That was . . .”

  “Stupid?” I reply.

  “That, too. But interesting. Jack, can you get a couple of your people here so we can see where this little tunnel goes?”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Jack says, then pulls his phone out and starts speaking in Thai.

  “Is there a back exit?” I ask.

  “That way.” Jack points to a line of trees that ends at a wooden fence.

  Theo and I make our way out of the enclosure and toward the back exit. He already understands what I’m thinking. Instead of
waiting for them to explore the tunnel and possibly meet certain death if there’s a cult of chimpanzee doomsday preppers waiting to bite off any noses that come poking around, we can follow the general path of the tunnel and see where it surfaces—assuming that it follows a straight line and actually ends somewhere.

  We reach another door, where I pick the lock instead of asking Jack to assist. Before I can push it open, Theo stops me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Listen first,” he says. “General precaution.”

  “Oh, good point.” I put my ear to the metal door. A noisy truck passes. I’m pretty sure this is the street. When I push the door open, we’re facing a street and a row of industrial buildings on the other side.

  We run across the road, dodging small cars and motorcycles, and reach an alley on the other side, where we find a concrete manhole cover. I take out my phone and look at where we are in Google Maps.

  “Does it line up?” asks Theo.

  “Yep.”

  He kneels and inspects the cover. There are crowbar marks on either side that haven’t been weathered or stained over yet.

  “See those?” he asks.

  “Yep. Looks like we have an exit point. But I have two big questions.”

  “Only two?”

  “Well, for starters. Who builds a chimpanzee enclosure over a sewer tunnel? And how do you get a bunch of chimps to make the crawl all the way through here? These are chimps, not Mexican drug-tunnel workers.”

  “First, I don’t think it was always a chimpanzee enclosure. That moat looks like it had more water at one point. It may have been a crocodile pen,” he replies.

  “Okay. Then who the hell puts a crocodile pen over a sewer? How does that make sense?”

  “It’s not like they pick locks . . .”

  “I’m still putting that in the bad-idea file.” I look around for video cameras on buildings but can’t spot any.

  “I’m putting chimps in cages in the bad-idea file,” he replies. “As far as how you get them all in there? That’s easy: food. Getting them out? I suspect you scare them out.” Theo pauses, then stands up. He walks around the street, then kneels down by a concrete planter and sticks his hand in it.