Leaving Time(24)

I did. I had just joined the force then. There were townspeople protesting the arrival of “bad” elephants—the ones who’d gotten kicked out of their zoos and circuses for acting out violently. Editorials every day chastised the planning board, which had allowed Thomas Metcalf to build his sanctuary, albeit with two concentric fences to keep the citizens safe from the animals.

Or vice versa.

Every day for the first three months of the sanctuary’s existence a few of us were sent over to keep the peace at the sanctuary gates, where the protests were centered. It turned out to be a nonissue. The animals adapted quietly and the townspeople got used to having a sanctuary nearby, and there were no complications. Until that 7:00 A.M. phone call, anyway.

We were waiting inside a small office. There were seven shelves, each filled with binders labeled with the names of the elephants—Maura, Wanda, Syrah, Lilly, Olive, Dionne, Hester. There was a mess of papers on the desk, a stack of ledgers, three half-finished cups of coffee, and a paperweight shaped like a human heart. There were invoices for medication, and squash, and apples. I whistled, looking at the sum total of a bill for hay. “Holy crap,” I said. “That could buy me a car.”

Donny wasn’t happy, but then, Donny was never happy. “What’s taking so goddamn long?” he asked. We had been waiting now for almost two hours, while the staff tried to corral the seven elephants into the barn. Until then, our major crimes unit could not collect evidence inside the enclosure.

“You ever seen someone who’s been trampled by an elephant?” I asked.

“You ever shut up?” Donny replied.

I was investigating a strange series of marks stretched along the wall, like hieroglyphs or something, when a man crashed into the office. He was skittish, nervous, his eyes frantic behind his glasses. “I can’t believe this happened,” he said. “This is a nightmare.”

Donny stood up. “You must be Thomas Metcalf.”

“Yes,” the man said, distracted. “I’m sorry to keep you here so long. It’s been crazy, trying to get the elephants secure. They’re quite agitated. We’ve got six of them in the barn, and the seventh won’t come close enough for us to entice her with food. But we’ve put up some temporary hot wire so that you can still get into the other side of the enclosure …” He led us out of the small building into sunshine so bright the world looked overexposed.

“Do you have any idea how the victim might have gotten into the enclosure?” Donny asked.

Metcalf blinked at him. “Nevvie? She’s worked here since we opened. She’s handled elephants for more than twenty years. She does our books, and she’s also the night caregiver.” He hesitated. “Was. She was the night caregiver.” Suddenly he stopped walking and covered his face with his hands. “Oh God. This is all my fault.”

Donny looked at me. “How so?” he asked.

“Elephants can sense tension. They must have been agitated.”

“By the caregiver?”

Before he could respond, there was suddenly a bellow so loud that I jumped. It came from somewhere on the other side of the fence. The leaves of the trees rustled.

“Isn’t it a little far-fetched to think that an animal the size of an elephant could sneak up on someone?” I asked.

Metcalf turned. “Have you ever seen an elephant stampede?” When I shook my head, he smiled grimly. “Hope that you never do.”

We led a crew of major crimes unit investigators, walking for five minutes before we came to a small hill. As we crested it, I saw a man seated next to the body. He was a giant, with shoulders broad as a banquet table, strong enough to commit murder. His eyes were red-rimmed, puffy. He was black, and the victim was white. He was well over six feet tall, and certainly strong enough to overpower someone smaller. These were the sorts of things I noticed then, as an apprentice detective. He was cradling the victim’s head in his lap.

The woman’s skull had been crushed. Her shirt had been torn away from her, but for modesty she was draped with a sweatshirt. Her left leg was bent at an impossible angle, and bruises mottled her skin.

I walked a few feet away as the medical examiner crouched down to do his job. I didn’t need a doc to tell me she was definitely dead.

“This is Gideon Cartwright,” Metcalf said. “He’s the one who found his mother-in-law …” He let his voice trail off.

I couldn’t peg the man’s age, but it couldn’t have been more than ten years younger than the victim. Which meant the victim’s daughter—his wife—had to be considerably younger than he was. “I’m Detective Boylan.” Donny knelt beside the man. “Were you here when this happened?”

“No. She was the night caregiver; she was out here alone last night,” he said, his voice breaking. “It should have been me.”

“You work here, too?” Donny asked.

The MCU drones had blanketed the area like a swarm of bees. They were photographing the body and trying to limit the area of their investigation. The problem was, this was an outdoor crime scene with no solid boundaries. Who knew how far the woman had been chased by the elephant that ran her down? Who knew if there were any clues that could point to the moment of death? There was a deep hole about twenty yards away, and I could see human footprints on the edge. There may have been shreds of trace evidence caught in the trees. But mostly there were leaves and grass and dirt and elephant dung and flies and nature. God only knew how much of that was important to the crime scene, and how much of it was business as usual.