Sleeping With The Fishes

Chapter 17

As soon as I got home I went out into the stable to check on the birds and to show them the photo. They were doing well; Charlotte had come by earlier that afternoon and let them out for a few hours. They’d flown around the area and marvelled at its beauty, and expressed surprise when I told them that their homeland was at the other end of the ocean which they’d flown over.

“My word, the climate here is so different!” Coolidge said.

“Yes, it’s the same ocean, but it’s the largest ocean in the world. It would take you weeks to fly back home from here; it’s thousands of miles away.”

“What is this ‘mile’ you speak of?” Cherie asked, tilting her head.

“Umm, one mile is one and a half kilometers, or so,” I replied, remembering that they use the metric system in Australia.

“Ah,” Coolidge said, nodding. “That certainly is quite the distance.”

“I’m glad you got to fly around though,” I told them, pulling the pictures Chief Gary had printed out for me from my pocket.

“Oh as are we,” Cherie said. “It was so empowering, to get to spread my wings once more.”

“I’m going to be calling the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife soon, and someone will come to take you back to Australia,” I told them. “You should be home in a few weeks. But first, I’m wondering, if I show you a picture of the smugglers, could you tell me for sure if it’s them?”

“Of course,” Coolidge replied. “We remember their faces.”

“It will be nice to get home,” Cherie said wistfully. “I don’t mean to insult your home, dear, but it is rather cold in this part of the world.”

“No offense taken,” I smiled. Despite Oregon having pretty mild winters compared to large parts of America, I could definitely understand how a bird from Australia would find it practically frigid.

“Yes, those are your smugglers,” Coolidge told me with confidence.

“I agree with Coolidge,” Cherie replied. “You must truly be intelligent to have surmised their identities based only on the little bit of information provided to you,” she told me, obviously impressed.

“Thanks, but with the technology we humans have today it wasn’t that hard,” I replied with a smile. “If it wasn’t for the two of you, I never would have managed to find them.”

I made my way back into the house, where Sophie was busy putting the toppings on a home-made vegetarian pizza. My mouth watered just looking at it, but I had some information to look up. Grabbing my iPad, I started searching different social media accounts for the three names I had. While Thomas Schiff didn’t seem to be the social media type, both Palmer siblings had accounts, and they used them frequently.

Scrolling through Kerry Palmer’s feed, I was amazed at how much traveling she did. There were pictures of her in front of the Eiffel Tower, pictures of her standing under cherry blossoms in Japan, pictures of her with African children. It made me sick to realize just how many trips overseas this woman made, and how many animals she must have smuggled back. I looked through her pictures, trying to get any evidence that there were smuggled animals in her pictures, but unfortunately I had no such luck.

One picture in the feed, however, stood out to me more than the others. It featured Kerry and her brother standing in front of a dark green sign with yellow lettering that read ‘Karibu Tena “Welcome Again”’ and below had the information for contacting the warden of Tarangire National Park. My heart skipped a beat. This had to be it! This had to be the trip where they had taken Lucy! We had the right smugglers!

I looked through Kerry’s feed for a little while longer, then moved to her brother’s. He used Facebook a lot more than Instagram, and I checked out his most recent posts. His most recent post was two hours earlier. He posted a picture of pure desert behind a sign for US Highway 95, and the caption “Heading North. Canada, here we come!”

My heart skipped a beat as I opened Google maps. I was pretty sure… yes! I confirmed with Google maps that taking Highway 95 north from Nevada led straight into Oregon. I looked at the map–they were most likely planning on taking Highway 95 into Idaho, where it linked up with I84, then linked up with I5 in Portland.

I did some quick calculating. They were probably going to drive through the night if they had any smuggled animals with them. After all, it was much too risky to spend the night at a hotel if they had illegally smuggled animals. Animals tended to be unpredictable, and presumably there were at least two of them; Tom’s photo of the highway sign had been taken from the passenger seat of a car.

I immediately called Jason.

“Uh oh, a phone call and not a text? What’s wrong?” he answered jokingly.

“I think the smugglers are going to be in Oregon tonight, and I’m pretty sure I know along which route.”

“And let me guess: you want to drive to somewhere in the middle of nowhere, watching thousands of cars go by on the off chance that you see the one you’re after, and follow them with the aim of getting them to admit to their crimes?”

“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds ridiculous,” I muttered.

“Not at all. I’ll come pick you up in five.”

My heart leapt. I knew it was completely ridiculous, logically, but I had to try. After all, as Chief Gary said, I wasn’t allowed to leave the state. I jumped up and grabbed my purse.

“Jason and I are going to go hunt the smugglers,” I said.

“Aw, can’t I come?” Sophie complained.

“Well, it’s mainly going to involve sitting by a highway all night and hoping we find the right car.”

“Oh, that sounds boring. Never mind. Have fun!”

I grinned and said goodbye as I headed outside, where Jason was already waiting, with two six-packs of Red Bull and about four large bags of chips on the rear passenger seat. I gave him as kiss as I sat down. “Not your first stake-out, I assume?”

He smiled at me in return. “Definitely not. First one in a while though. I’m actually excited about it! At least, I will be for the first fifteen minutes or so, until I remember just how boring stake-outs tend to be. So what do you know?”

I recounted everything I’d found out with Chief Gary, and then discovered on the smugglers’ social media profiles. “So I figure if we get onto I84 they’ll eventually drive past us to get to I5.”

“That’s probably correct. We’ll find an exit with a bridge, park there and look down at cars heading west on I84. If we see their car, we’ll follow it. How’s that sound?”

“Great,” I nodded enthusiastically. “The only thing is, I’m not sure what kind of car they’ll be driving.”

“What about the post he did from the desert?” Jason asked. “Can you get any information from that?”

“Hmmm,” I said, opening the post again on my phone. We were in luck! The steering wheel on the phone, which was obviously in view, showed that the car being driven was a Toyota. “Ok! We know it’s a Toyota. And it looks to be kind of high up off the ground, so I’d say a truck or SUV rather than a sedan.”

“All right, so now we have something. Go through the rest of the photos and see if you can find a picture that might have it on the outside, if we can narrow down the model and color I think we’ll be golden; traffic in the middle of the night won’t be that heavy, and we should be able to approximate when they’ll show up.”

I did as Jason asked as we drove out of Willow Bay. Sure enough, I eventually found in Kerry’s Instagram feed a picture of her with a red Toyota Rav4–newish, but not brand new–in the background.

“Ok, we’ve got it. We’re looking for a three-to-five-year-old red Rav4.”

“Awesome,” Jason grinned. “We’ve got ourselves a stake-out!”

As much as I’d like to say the entire trip to the interstate was interesting, the fact of the matter was I was completely exhausted after barely sleeping the night before and having a pretty exciting day today as well. I ended up passing out before we even reached the highway leaving Willow Bay, and when I finally woke up, the clock on the dashboard read that it was just after midnight.

“Well hello there, sleepyhead,” Jason told me as he sipped from a Red Bull. I’m glad you’re up, this means I can open the chips without feeling bad about waking you up,” he said, reaching behind him and grabbing the bag.

“Urgh, where are we?” I mumbled, still feeling half asleep.

“We’re in the Benson Lake parking lot,” Jason replied. I looked out the window and saw headlights in the distance; a moment later a truck passed about twenty feet in front of us. “We’ve been here for about an hour. Don’t worry, I’ve kept an eye out. No red Rav4s yet.”

“Thanks,” I told him. “Sorry for falling asleep. I guess I’m not the greatest stake-out buddy ever.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jason replied, reaching in and grabbing a handful of chips. “You were obviously completely exhausted. I had Red Bull, and even if I didn’t, I don’t really have anything to do tomorrow. It’s better that you get some sleep.”

“I feel better now,” I replied, grabbing a Red Bull myself and drinking half the can in a single gulp. I stared out the window and realized just how good a spot Jason had chosen.

“Wow, you’re basically a stake-out expert. This is great! I never would have thought to come here.” The parking lot for the lake was literally in the middle of the highway; pedestrian tunnels allowed people parked here to access the lake. Directly in front of where we were parked was the westbound highway, and this exit had streetlights lining the road as well so we could see clearly the make, model and color of any car coming past.

Jason grinned. “You’re going to love me even more. I went out to stretch my legs when we got here, and I found an old abandoned construction zone sign on the shoulder of the highway, along with an old traffic cone. I made sure no one was coming and went and put it up, so most cars will possibly slow down just a little bit when they drive past.”

“Geez, why have I been taking Sophie with me on adventures? You’re so much better at this stuff than she is,” I said, and Jason laughed.

“All right. Now all we have to do is sit and wait, and hope they actually come this way.”

I reached for a bag of chips of my own.