Chapter 4: Jim Visits the Zoo

Jim decided that he needed to pay a visit to the zoo. He had negotiated a deal with his new client that paid him nearly twice his normal rate. In addition, he nabbed himself a bunch of other perks that he normally didn't get when searching for runaways or adopted kids' birthparents or following cheating spouses. His client agreed to pay him a per diem for any days where he only worked on this case and he was promised that, while any abnormal expenses had to be approved in advance, money wasn't going to be an obstacle to getting this job done. So, Jim's other clients were quickly relegated to second class citizens so that Jim could concentrate on finding this gorilla, at least until his new benefactor's granddaughter fell in love with a pony or a panda bear and nobody cared about the gorilla anymore. 

Jim started his new lead assignment by doing a little research on the internet. It didn't take him too long to find a bunch of snarky stories online and some heavily edited video footage from the zoo's surveillance cameras. From the looks of things, two people wearing masks to hide their identities from video cameras walked into the zoo in the middle of the night, long after it had closed, walked up to the gorilla cage, opened the cage door and walked out with the gorilla. Nobody could figure out how the two people got into the zoo or how they were able to open the cage. The police didn't find any signs of forced entry or even any signs that they had picked the locks. Speculation ran rampant that it was an inside job but only a few people had keys to the animal cages and all of them had rock solid alibis. 

To Jim, the craziest part of the whole affair was the video footage. Jim could only find about two minutes of it on-line and it was a bit grainy since it had been a particularly dark night. The video that was on the internet showed the perpetrators walk up the cage door and fiddle with the lock for a couple of seconds (from the angle that the camera was aimed it was impossible to see exactly what they were doing to the lock). When they got the door open, the gorilla was just standing there, like it had been waiting for them. Then it walked calmly out of the cage. The two men close the door behind the gorilla and the three of them began walking away together like Dorothy walking down the yellow brick road with the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. None of the other gorillas in the cage made any sort of protest or tried to escape or even made a noise. Then, the zoo or the cops or somebody had spliced together intermittent clips from that other cameras mounted around the zoo showing the three of them, the two men and the gorilla, walking out of the zoo. Each shot was the same-the three of them walking casually along the paths through the zoo, the two perpetrators on two legs, the gorilla on his back legs and front knuckles. Then the three of them walked out of a side entrance together and the footage ended.

Jim didn't know where to start on job like this. His regular MO was to start by interviewing the friends of the missing person but he didn't think he'd get very far interviewing the other gorillas. Still, Jim figured that, if nothing else, the zoo had to have more video footage and, even if it wasn't going to help him, Jim wanted to see it. After watching the short clips of footage that he'd found on the internet, he needed to see more. 

Jim made a few phone calls before he was able to get in touch with the head zookeeper. The zookeeper was pretty tight-lipped at first. Jim guessed that he'd been getting a lot of inquiries from the press. Then there were the inside job rumors-people surmising that a low-paid zookeeper could make a lot of extra money selling exotic animals on the black market. It couldn't have been a fun couple days at the zoo. Jim eventually got the zookeeper to agree to meet with him by dropping his client's name. Jim even told the zookeeper that he could maybe, possibly get him and his wife tickets to a big movie premiere if he'd help out. They set a time.

During the drive down Interstate 5 towards San Diego, all Jim could think about was that video footage. He had done a little research on gorillas. The gorilla that was stolen was an adolescent female, eight years old. It weighed nearly 200 lbs and, according to everything Jim read, could tear a man apart with its bare hands without even thinking about it. This particular gorilla, unlike most of the adolescent gorillas at the zoo, was born in the wild. She was captured by a poaching party in Africa and eventually recovered by the authorities. She had been injured so they didn't think they could reintroduce her directly into the wild until she recovered fully. Still, she had wilderness tendencies. She had only been at the zoo for six months. She was basically wild. Knowing all that, Jim just couldn't shake the images of her walking so docilely through the park with those two shadowy figures. Jim was former LAPD. Thirteen years on the force and then five more as a private detective. Jim had seen a lot of shit but he'd never seen anything like this before.

The zookeeper told Jim that he wasn't supposed to be talking to anyone-by orders of the zoo and the police-so asked if they could meet in front of the goat exhibit. He said foot traffic there would be light and they could find a good place to talk. Jim paid his entrance fee like everyone else, made his way through the batches of clamoring children, grabbed a map of the zoo and headed for the meeting place. He passed a number of other animal exhibits on the way but only took a moment to glance up at them as he walked. Kangaroos. Giraffes. Monkeys. Every time he looked up he had an eerie feeling that the animals were looking back at him, that they were the ones watching him. 

Once Jim found the goat exhibit, he stood there and watched the goats. Most of the other people didn't even bother stopping to look at the goats. Those that did seemed only to stop because they thought the goats were food for other, more exciting animals. The lion cage wasn't too far away. Jim was a couple of minutes early for his meeting so he just stood there and watched the goats. He couldn't remember ever seeing a dumber looking animal. Their eyes appeared completely devoid of conscious thought. They were like big furry pigeons. Still, they ate and they bred and they survived. How much dumber could they be than the rest of us?

"Mr. Elkerlich?" a voice said from behind Jim after Jim had been standing alone for a few minutes. Jim turned and saw a young man in a zoo uniform standing behind him. Jim expected someone who looked older. The zookeeper looked at least ten years younger than Jim. That wouldn't really help anyone judge the zookeeper's age though since Jim didn't wear his age very well.

Jim introduced himself to the zookeeper and they found a bench where they could sit and talk without being bothered. Jim spoke first, telling the zookeeper about his client and about how much his client's granddaughter loved this gorilla and about how his client was worried that the police were going to give short shrift to this case since it only involved an animal. Then Jim added, trying to make it sound like an afterthought, that, if he found the gorilla, he could help clear the names of anyone wrongly accused of being involved. What Jim didn't tell the zookeeper was how transfixed he had been by the video. He wanted to see more footage but he knew he'd have to work his way to that slowly and carefully. Then Jim passed the ball. "So what can you tell me about this gorilla?"

"This is all off the record, right?" the zookeeper relied.

"I'm a private detective, not a reporter," Jim replied. "I don't even have a record for this to be on. Nothing you say to me goes beyond me." He looked at the zookeeper with as earnest a face as he could muster. They sat there, only a few feet apart, on the bench surrounded by jungle noises emanating from the different manmade jungle scenes all around them. Mostly, though, Jim just heard the goats. 

"Fair enough," the zookeeper replied. "Most of what I can tell you about the gorilla you've probably read already. She was eight years old. Been here a little over six months. She had a pretty nice temperament with the other gorillas. She didn't like people much though. It was holdover from the poaching experience. She was still getting used to people. She was fine with the regular zoo visitors since they were at a safe distance, but if anybody got too close to her, she freaked."

"Really?" Jim said, genuinely surprised.

"Yeah," the zookeeper replied, nodding. 

"But she just walked out with those two guys?"

"I know." It quickly became clear to Jim that the zookeeper wasn't talking to him because he wanted movie tickets. The zookeeper was talking to him because he wanted to talk to somebody. He must have been just as amazed by what he'd seen as Jim was. Like Jim, the zookeeper wanted to find someone who could explain this whole crazy thing to him. He wanted to help Jim figure this out so Jim could tell him what happened.

"What can you tell me about how they got in and out?" Jim asked.

"There's a regular lock on the gate leading out of the park that we know they used because of the video but, if it weren't for the video, you never would have known it. There were no marks on the lock or anything and they locked the door after them when they left. Same with the padlock on the door to the gorilla cage. They didn't go to any other cages. They didn't take anything else."

"So they must have had a key, right?" Jim thought that maybe the zookeeper knew more than he was letting on.

"I guess. I don't know how they would have gotten one. I think everybody here's pretty shocked."

"You don't think it was an inside job?"

"No," the zookeeper replied without hesitation, "but I really don't know what to think."

"How many people had keys to the cage?"

"I don't know. Seven. Maybe eight."

"And did anybody here have a special relationship with that gorilla?" Jim couldn't hear any of the animal noises surrounding them anymore. He couldn't hear anything. He was in a trance.

"No." The zookeeper replied. He answered every question like he'd prepared his answers ahead of time. He answered them like he had been asked them before, probably because he had been asked them before. "Not like that." Jim knew what he meant. Not in a way that would make the gorilla walk out of the zoo with them like a house pet. "If a stranger got anywhere near Sammy, she would be more likely to rip their arms out than to follow them around. That goes for some of the staff too."

"Is there more footage?" Jim asked. "I mean, more than what's on the internet?"

"Sure, there's like a half an hour of it but it all looks the same."

"Can I see it?" Jim asked. The zookeeper paused for a minute and Jim continued before the zookeeper could answer, "You haven't shown it to anyone else have you?"

"Just the police."

"I'm not going to tell anyone I saw it," Jim said. "I used to be a cop too. I know how this works."

"You were a cop, huh?"

"Thirteen years in the LAPD."

The zookeeper looked around them as if checking to see if they were being spied on. "Okay," the zookeeper said, "I'll show it to you but you gotta keep this quiet." Jim didn't reply, he just lifted his hands, palms up, and raised his eyebrows to demonstrate how easy silence was for him. The zookeeper stood up and starting walking away. Jim followed him.