Monkey See Monkey Murder Page 3

  “What’s wrong?” Haley asked.

  “I’m not sure and that’s what has me spooked,” I said. “You don’t think Peyton actually closed down the film, do you?”

  Haley shook her head. “There’s no way. He needs the money. He only gets paid if the film comes in. It was something the producers put in his contract to make sure he wouldn’t walk out on the deal.”

  I looked around outside the sloping windshield. “It looks like he walked.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “Wait here.”

  I got out of the van holding the 9mm down against my right leg. I moved slowly, taking a few steps towards Haley’s trailer and stopping. I trained my ears but heard nothing except traffic drone. I looked back at Haley in the van. I could tell she was scared. I went over to her side of the van and opened the door.

  “Where’s your dad?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Call him. Ask him where everyone went.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Checking out a few things. You stay here. Keep the doors locked unless it’s your dad.”

  Haley nodded. I think she expected me to kiss her but I closed the door. I heard the click of the power lock as I turned away.

  The lot was still, too still. Even with no one else around I felt like Haley and I weren’t alone. As far as I could see, there was no other life around in the immediate area. Funny thing was, I felt like I was being watched.

  I started with Peyton’s trailer. Other than a couple of empty bottles of his favorite brand of scotch it didn’t look like anyone had been in there.

  I left his trailer and went to Haley’s. Hers was a different story. The entire interior had been trashed, and I don’t mean chairs were turned over and clothes were strewn about, I mean trashed. The cupboard doors had been pulled off their frames and splintered. The front sofa had been ripped away from the front of the trailer. The collapsible table lay broken in two, the half still latched to the wall hanging flat against it and the torn away half propped up against the booth.

  And of course, there was the blood, a lot of it. The entire trailer smelled as if someone had been dressing a deer.

  I brought up the gun. I don’t know why. Instinct, maybe. I knew I was alone in the trailer and I was pretty certain of what I was going to find.

  Down past the short gap where the refrigerator faced opposite a standing closet, I saw the mussed up white comforter and sheets of the queen sized bed. The two throws were covering what appeared to be a lump. The blood, fresh when the attack had happened, now appeared like large, dark stains. I moved into the extended room slowly, gun poised, as I reached for the corner of the blankets.

  I lifted it up to find a badly mutilated body. The face was so badly mutilated I couldn’t recognize it. All I can say is it looked like someone had grabbed the poor vic and pulled him or her apart, ripping off the face. Some of the deceased’s fingers had been crudely broken off at the lowest knuckles. I didn’t take time to look for the digits.

  The tight space and the heavy smell of gore made my stomach churn and my head spin. I took a step back. My foot came down on something that had been beneath the edge of the comforter heaped on the floor. My weight cracked it in half. I felt the give beneath my shoe. I lifted the heavy blanket from the floor. A hands-free head set I’d seen the day before on the head of the overzealous assistant Bobby lay in two pieces.

  Was that who lay mutilated in Haley’s bed?

  I didn’t have time to think about it. Outside the trailer, the van’s horn blared.

  I hurried from the trailer and stopped on the landing of the attached metal porch. Haley sat wide eyed in the van, screaming and pointing at something above me. I didn’t hesitate. I swung my gun hand up and around and pointed it directly between the eyes of Butch the chimpanzee.

  He stared blankly at me. One of his hands absently rubbed at a brass button on his little kid denim over-alls that covered his red, white and blue striped shirt. Butch clapped his hands and made his hoots before turning and disappearing on the other side of the Airstream.

  I kept my gun raised behind me and made my way to the van. The door was still locked and I had to bang on the glass with my left palm to get Haley to let me in. Her long, narrow fingers fumbled with the electric lock toggle. After an eternity, the lock popped up and I pulled open the door, slamming it behind me before I pushed down on the plastic toggle to relock the doors.

  “We’re getting out of here,” I said. I turned the van around and headed for the exit. Haley didn’t say anything and didn’t ask me if I found anything. I was just about to tell her what I’d seen when I slammed on the brakes

  The gates were closed. A heavy chain had been looped several times through the diamond fencing and around the gates’ poles. We were not getting out that way.

  “You can ram it,” Haley said. “Or does that only work in the movies?”

  “If I had a truck, I would probably do it,” I said. “But there’s no way I’m ramming a chained fence in a minivan. The chain alone would decapitate us.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “Were you able to reach your dad?”

  “I left him two messages. I was going to leave him a third when I saw the ape on the top of my trailer.”

  “Chimp.” I said. I looked in my rearview mirror. Butch scampered across the lot behind us. “Where’s his handler?”

  “I don’t know,” Haley said. “Al hardly ever leaves Butch on his own.”

  That troubled me. It also troubled me that Haley’s dad had sent her a text and she had yet to speak to him that day. Maybe that was how they related to each other. I didn’t have time to ask her about their daddy-daughter relationship. Right then I had a mutilated body in a trailer and a monkey on the loose behind us.

  I took out my own cell and put in a call to the only cop in Detroit I knew who wouldn’t think I was pranking him: Detective Rashid Rasmussen.

  “What you do this time, Hack?”

  “Sheed, I need your help.” I said.

  “I figured since you called me.”

  “I’m locked in an old warehouse lot.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I was working security for a studio in town to shoot a low-budget comedy.”

  Haley slapped my arm. “Lucchi Studios gave us ten million,” she said. Her voice was a harsh, anxious whisper. She went back to text her dad. When she sent the text, she put her phone in the slot under my radio.

  “I take it you aren’t alone,” Rashid said.

  “No. I’m with the star, Haley Goslin.”

  “This is going to cost you an autograph and a picture for my daughter.”

  “Sheed, hold on. You’re not getting it. We showed up today for her to wrap the film but we got here and the place was empty. It spooked me so I checked out the trailers on the lot.”

  “You found something hinky, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t want to tell me with the girl sitting there?”

  “Right.”

  “Body?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me where.”

  I gave him the directions. I took a breath and he asked what else I was into. I told him about Butch.

  “All right, now you’re just messing with me,” he said.

  I assured him I wasn’t.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sit tight in the van.”

  A red Dodge Ram truck with the largest chrome grill I’d ever squinted at turned off the street and headed up the drive towards the back lot. Behind the glare of the sun off the front end, I recognized the square head silhouette. Haley recognized it as well. She was already opening the door before I could tell her not to. Daddy Goslin got out of the truck and walked up to the closed gate.

  “Daddy!” she said. Haley sprang from the van.

  “Haley—don’
t!”

  I looked into the rearview mirror. Butch became aware of the commotion. He rocked back and forth on his knuckles. I looked back out the windshield. Haley spoke frantically to her dad through the fence. He looked around the van but he couldn’t see what I saw, which was a chimpanzee slowly moving around in a circle, dragging its knuckles, clucking its teeth as it stared at Haley.

  I got out of the van holding my 9mm. I moved slowly towards the fence, the gun raised and pointed to the far side of the van’s rear.

  “You need to get out of there,” Daddy Goslin said.

  “Little hard when the only exit is locked,” I said.

  “Get back. I’ll ram it with my truck.”

  Behind us Butch let out a war cry that rattled my bones. I grabbed Haley and pulled her back to the van. Butch came at us moving like a juggernaut bent on crushing us. Daddy Goslin began firing his pistols although at the time I wasn’t sure where he was aiming.

  I pushed Haley in on her side and slammed the door. I moved as quickly as I could around the long, sloped nose of the minivan. I felt Butch’s hand come down on the small of my back like the head of a sixteen pound sledgehammer shot from a cannon. He grabbed at my leg. I kicked away at his arms but his free hand was there to grab my wrist. He had succeeded in slowing me down and I succeeded in getting caught by a chimpanzee. I swung my gun hand around and pointed the barrel at Butch’s forehead.

  I’d yet to kill a man in my career, hoped I never would, knew one day I’d have to. Nothing was going to stop me from killing the primate about to pull me apart.

  Haley jumped out of her side of the van and came around to mine. She yelled Butch’s name. The chimp looked at her. Haley put her right hand over her left fist. “Butch, stop.” She repeated the gesture. “Butch. Stop.”

  Butch let go of my wrist. He looked up at me with his puppy dog eyes and his dopey grin. Without any reason I could discern, the chimp did a somersault and scooted off towards the warehouse.

  My lower back felt heavy and throbbed where Butch had struck me. I slid down against the side of the van.

  “You let him get away,” Daddy Goslin yelled. He stood on the roof of his Dodge Ram, his pearl-handle pistols drawn, the barrels smoking. He was taking aim at the chimp scurrying away when a police siren blared.

  “Sir, put down your guns,” a voice said. It came out over a speaker. Daddy Goslin slowly lowered the fancy guns to the roof and raised his hands. Haley helped me into the back of the van. The twenty feet she drove to the gate were more harrowing than staring down a crazed chimpanzee.

  Two of Sheed’s men were busy helping Daddy Goslin down from the roof of the cab. Another ran up to the fence with a pair of bolt cutters. He snapped off the padlock as Sheed pulled on the links. I pushed open the gates. Haley ran to her father’s arms.

  Sheed turned back from the scene to look at me.

  “I take it he’s not the chimp you were talking about,” he said.

  “No. That one is in the warehouse.”

  “So what are you saying? I should have brought animal control?”

  “Go take a look in that second trailer over there, Sheed, then you tell me.”

  FOUR

  Haley got into her dad’s truck. I watched the two of them leave. Daddy Goslin had thanked me for saving his darling daughter, even though he probably knew full well where she had been the night before and would have gladly pointed his pearl-handle pistols in my direction had the circumstances been different. I had heard him tell Haley he’d lost his phone the night before when she asked why he didn’t call her back.

  That wasn’t good. Whoever had his phone had used it to lure her to the set. Bobby the assistant might have been collateral damage, except why would he have been in Haley’s trailer?

  Several of the Detroit police stood about the lot with heavy fire power, mainly shot guns, watching the shadows for a runaway monkey. I had warned Sheed about the strength of a chimpanzee. Most of the cops standing there had been young men or rookies when one of the chimps at the Detroit Zoo tried to get across the moat and nearly drowned. A guy there with his kids had jumped in and carried the primate to the far shore before zoo personal hurried to the rescuer’s rescue. Later it was all over the news, nationally, about his heroic deeds. The zoo director cautioned people, telling them about the super strength of a chimp and how they had been known to eviscerate humans. NatGeo and Animal Planet had run episodes detailing some of these attacks.

  Sheed stuck his head out of Haley’s trailer. He had that Denzel Washington “some-bad-shit-happened-here” look on his face. From just looking at him I knew he wanted me to join him back inside. I sucked in some fresh air and headed back to Haley’s trailer.

  “You know who it is?” Rashid asked.

  “I’m thinking from the ear piece I stepped on and from the mass of curly hair I saw, I think it was Will Peyton’s assistant. A guy by the name of Bobby.”

  “You got a last name on Mr. Bobby?” Rashid asked. I shook my head. “You know anyone else on the set?”

  “I know the second unit director is named Annie Galt. And the animal handler’s name is Al.” I stopped. “The chimp.”

  Sheed knew I was going to say something else. He raised his eyebrows at me. “What about the chimp?”

  “His name is Butch.”

  Rashid turned his attention back to the bloody mess in the bed. “This is one jacked-over situation,” he said.

  A young female officer in SWAT gear came into the trailer. She stopped and gagged at the smell.

  “You have something, Officer Bevan?” Sheed asked. The officer nodded and went back outside. Sheed followed her and I followed him to let the coroner try to put Bobby together again.

  Outside, Officer Bevan took several breaths before she spoke. “Sorry, sir.”

  “It’s all right, Sarah,” Sheed said. “What did you find?”

  “We went into the warehouse and located the monkey. He was safely locked away in a cage.”

  “How the hell is that possible” I asked.

  “The bigger question is, ‘Who is the dead man laying next to the cage?’” Officer Bevan said.

  “There’s another vic inside?” Sheed looked over at the warehouse.

  “Yes, sir,” Officer Bevan said.

  “Is he like the vic in the trailer?” Sheed hooked his thumb over his shoulder but kept his gaze fixed on the warehouse door.

  “No, sir,” Officer Bevan said. “Single bullet to the back of the head.”

  Sheed slowly turned to look at me.

  “I never fired my weapon,” I said.

  “What about the cowboy?”

  “He emptied a couple of clips but the bullets went all over out here.”

  Sheed looked from the gate to the warehouse. He rolled his jaw back and forth the way he always did when he was doing what he called “considering.” “How close to the entrance of the warehouse is the cage?”

  “No chance for a stray bullet, detective,” Officer Bevan said. “Besides, the angle of the wound suggests the perpetrator stood directly behind the victim.”

  “Just to be sure,” Sheed said. He turned to me again. “What caliber would you say the cowboy was shooting?”

  “Forty-fives. With pearl handles.”

  Sheed watched the officers moving around the lot. They dropped little orange triangles with numbers on them wherever they found casings from Daddy Goslin’s guns. I looked from the stretching lines of orange points to where my van had been and saw that several of the shots had come dangerously close to it. Maybe Daddy Goslin did have thoughts about where his little girl spent the night.

  Sheed’s jaw slowed. He started for the warehouse. Officer Bevan and I followed him inside.

  The set looked pretty much as it had the day before. The only difference was Butch was in a cage on the back of a flatbed golf-cart sized tractor and Al the trainer was dead on the floor near it. Butch watched us passively, his knees drawn up to his chin. Butch looked like a little boy outside
the principal’s office.

  Sheed slowly walked over to the cage. Butch eyed him, turning his head away slightly but keeping track of Sheed’s movements from the corners of his eyes. Butch let out a small hoot.

  “It’s okay, little guy,” Sheed said. He leaned up to the cage. Butch swung his face around at Sheed. I saw Sheed’s jaw move. He took a pen from his shirt pocket and lifted the padlock on the cage door. It was a Master and needed a key. I doubted Butch had it on him.

  “Sarah, get someone in here to dust the cart for prints,” Sheed said. He pulled out his cell phone. His thumb moved over the keypad. “Yeah, this is Detective Rasmussen. I need a number for the Detroit Zoo.” Sheed waited.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Monkey’s got blood on its over-alls.” Sheed turned his attention back to his phone. “Hello. This is Detective Rashid Rasmussen with the Tenth Precinct. I’ve got a situation at a crime scene and I’m going to need your help. Well, ya see, it involves a chimp.”

  Thirty minutes later Dr. Eve Zavislak was escorted into the warehouse. She was a thin wisp of a woman with short blonde hair and pair of icy blue eyes. Khaki doesn’t always flatter its wearers but Dr. Zavislak managed to make it work for her.

  “This is the chimp,” Sheed said.

  Dr. Zavislak smiled. She tucked some of her short hair behind her ear and went over to the cage. “I’m going to need to give him a tranquilizer. Do you have a key to open the cage?”

  “If this is what you mean by a key,” Sheed said. He lifted the bolt cutters the police had used to open the gate.

  Dr. Zavislak cocked a grin. She opened the small case she carried with her and pulled out a small vial, shaking a couple of pills into her hand as she approached the cage. She held them out to Butch. When he didn’t take them, Zavislak added a third pill to the two in her hand, but this time it came from a tube of candy. Once more she held out the pills. Butch hesitated and Zavislak started to pull her hand back. Butch put a hand on the cage, curling his long fingers around the rods. Zavislak held out the pills again and this time Butch took the pills.