Sleeping With The Fishes

Chapter 16

As soon as I had a minute, I took care of Hehu, who I had left inside one of the kennels during the day. The painkillers I’d given him were making him sleepy, and he snoozed away through most of the day, until I finally managed to put his wing in a bit of a sling, and bandaged up the wound along with giving him antibiotics to prevent infection.

“I feel so castrated,” he complained as he tried–and failed–to flap his injured wing.

“Well, at least it’s not permanent, so long as you don’t keep trying to do that,” I replied. “It will heal, it’s just going to take some time.”

“I know, but complaining makes me feel slightly better,” Hehu said sadly.

“Well in that case, complain away,” I told him. I knew what he meant, I wanted to complain about my wrist hurting constantly. Although, I had to admit, my wrist was definitely healing faster than I’d expected it to. If this kept up, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I could start using magic again in just a couple of days.

A few hours later it was time to go home; I gave Hehu some more food and decided to let him sleep in the vet clinic overnight; it would be safer for him than even inside the stables at the property.

Before heading home, however, I stopped by the police station to see if Chief Gary was in. I was in luck; the receptionist had gone home but he was in his office, and as soon as he saw me in the reception area he waved me over.

“Angela, come on in,” he told me. “I’ve been meaning to come and see you.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, trying to act casually. After all, I was well aware that I still had to be a suspect in a murder investigation he was conducting.

“Yes. See, this morning I was going through the daily bulletins that we get from other police stations across the state. It appears that yesterday in Sisters there was a car chase between a local resident named Richard Steele and a blue Mazda 3.”

He peered at me above his reading glasses. “I think it would be quite a coincidence for Richard Steele to be involved in an incident involving a car similar to yours, less than twenty-four hours after I gave your boyfriend the man’s information.”

I fidgeted in the chair. I hated lying to Chief Gary, so I opted for something different. “How about, um, you give me a few days and then ask me again,” I answered. “I’m really close to getting all of the answers I need.”

“You’re not going to get the answers you need if you’re maimed–or worse–in a car crash,” Chief Gary replied.

“I know. Things, uh, didn’t go exactly according to plan in Sisters,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to see Richard Steele at all; we were just supposed to see if he had any other exotic animals on the property, and then we were going to leave and figure out what to do from there.”

“And I assume that’s not exactly what happened.”

“Not exactly. But I got more information than I could have possibly hoped for. In fact, that was the reason I came to see you, I was wondering if you could help me with it.”

Chief Gary sighed. “I feel like you’re getting in too deep here. You could always call the right department and have them raid Steele’s home. They’d take any animals that are there and ship them back off to wherever they belong.”

“Yes, I know,” I said hurriedly. “But please, not yet. The amphibians will be fine, the cockatoos and the kea will be fine–although the latter is injured and currently in the vet clinic–but the giraffe is too young. I need to find out exactly where she was taken from to find her mother.”

“Wait, what’s a kea?” Chief Gary asked.

“An alpine parrot from New Zealand.”

“Wow, ok. Look, I’ll help you, but you have to promise you’re not going to go out to Sisters again.”

“I promise,” I said. “I’m finished there. If this new information I have pans out, the next time I see Richard Steele he’ll hopefully be in a jail cell.”

Chief Gary leaned back in his chair and nodded. “All right, what do you need to know?”

“I need to look up some people, but I’m not sure if you can do it. I only have first names, a vague description and a home state.”

“Well, I can access the national crime database,” Chief Gary said. “If there’s an active warrant out for them, or if they’ve been arrested for a crime in the past they’ll be on it. What do you know?”

“There are three of them, but I only have two first names. They all live in Nevada. The woman is between thirty and forty years old probably, and the first name I have is Kelsey. The man is likely fifty to sixty and named Tim. The third man, well, I only have an age and description for him.”

“Anything else? Identifying marks?”

“Oh, yeah, the woman has a tramp stamp of a heart with an arrow through it.”

Chief Gary typed away at his computer for a few minutes and I did my best not to fidget. After all, I really needed this information. Finally, he looked at me and shook his head. “Sorry, nothing. Let me try again, though.”

“Ok,” I replied, my heart racing in my chest. A minute later, a small smile crept up on his face. “Do you have a physical description of the woman?” he asked, and I thought back to what the cockatoos had told me.

“Um, yeah. Brunette, wavy hair, bored-looking eyes.”

Chief Gary’s smile grew as he turned the screen toward me. I was looking into the face of a woman who looked, well, surprisingly normal. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected an animal smuggler to look like, but her mug shot looked like any old passport photo. Hell, her haircut looked like it cost more than mine did.

“This is Kerry Palmer,” Chief Gary told me. “Luckily the national database allows us to search wildcards and identifying marks, so by searching for anyone with brown hair and a heart tattoo who lives in Nevada and has a first name starting with the letters ‘Ke’, I was able to find this one. Now, let me look at any known associates.”

Clacking away at the keyboard for a few more minutes, and with me giving him the physical description of the other two men, I was eventually able to put a face and an identity to the three people involved in the smuggling ring. Kerry Palmer was a thirty-four year old woman who had previously been convicted of check fraud and fraud over five thousand dollars. The older man, Thomas Schiff, had so many little misdemeanour charges against him that it would have taken at least two pages to print them all out. The younger man was Trevor Palmer, Kerry’s brother. He had a similar conviction record to her, and I nodded when I saw the photo and it matched the birds’ descriptions.

“Could you print out a picture of their faces for me please?” I asked Chief Gary. “I just want to be able to confirm that it’s them.”

“Sure,” Chief Gary nodded, tapping a button on his computer, and the printer behind his desk whirred to life. “However, I know they live in Nevada, but I do have to ask you not to leave the state, ok?” he told me. “After all, as much as I hate to admit it, you still are a suspect in Matt Smith’s murder since you have no alibi.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on it,” I told him, and my heart sank at the realization that I couldn’t go and speak to the three smugglers myself, and also with the confirmation that I was definitely still a suspect. I mean, I knew that I was, but it was different to have Chief Gary actually tell me that I was a suspect.

Still, I had the names of the people who had smuggled Lucy and the other animals into the country. I was definitely getting somewhere!