I head back out to help Gabriel, who’s squatting down to look at something. I hurry over to see what he’s found.
“I’m not seeing anything apparent, but they sure do have a lot of holes,” I observe.
He runs a gloved hand over a freshly filled one. “So you let the hyenas pick the body clean, eat what they’d like, and then you put them away, collect the bones and bury them. But where? It’d probably be risky to take the bones to another exhibit to hide them, right? But aren’t you at risk of the hyenas digging them up here?”
“Let’s get a cadaver dog out here,” I say.
“I’ll call for one, but who knows how quickly we can get it out here.”
I wander back to the entrance with Gabriel and turn to Pat. “How hard is it to let the hyenas in and out?”
“Not hard at all. This lot is very easy to work with. You want them back out?”
“I do,” I say. “I want to see if they are overly interested in anything out there.”
She shrugs and tells Greta to turn them back out, and within moments, the hyenas come trotting out. They go and search a few areas, likely expecting food to be waiting for them, before most of them head over to a rock that’s in the sun to sprawl out on. While they’re busy resuming their naps, one goes out to one of his many holes and begins digging. He’s very fixated on the spot and as I walk along the fence line, I realize that I can relate to that fixation. That desire to reach something no matter what it costs.
“Can you put them back away?”
“Sure,” she says, and soon their doorway opens. It takes the banging of a bowl of food to snap the remaining hyena out of it, and he trots back to the door and disappears through it. Only after Pat checks are we allowed back inside.
I head over to the hole and stare down into it before kneeling.
“Guess we don’t need the dog after all,” Gabriel says as I carefully brush some dirt away from a very thin bone that’s been shattered.
“Sure don’t.”
FOUR
Gabriel
“Please state your name,” I say. This has to be the tenth person we’ve sat down to talk to, and so far, we’ve gotten nothing of use.
The team is excavating the spot in the hyena’s pen to see what they can find, and Liam and I are stuck interviewing everyone. Bill came with a list of names of people who used to work in the butchery or still do. We compared the list to who was here yesterday and talked to all of them since they’re all present here today. It’s not like it’s a requirement, but with hundreds of employees, we have to start somewhere.
While we were dealing with that, Lacey came with a list of seasonal workers who were here yesterday. I asked her to call Nadine, the woman who’s missing work today, and get a reason why she’s not here, but Lacey told me that no one answered her call.
After sending an officer out to check Nadine’s house, I got the same information that she didn’t answer. So then I was back to asking Bill if Nadine has any knowledge on how to butcher, and he informed me that she’s never even stepped within fifty feetof the place because she can’t handle the blood, smell, or dead animals. She’s firmly worked in the office since she started here six years ago.
The whole time, Liam just sat there and listened carefully to every piece of it. He always sees things that I don’t, but at this point we have a missing woman and a dead man. The cameras offer us nothing good and show both Nadine and the man—who did indeed appear to be a seasonal worker—doing nothing out of the ordinary. The killer knew how to work around the cameras and how to move without being noticed, which just confirms that they’re an employee. The only thing that we get a glimpse of is the hyenas being let out around ten p.m.
“My name is George Pawne,” the man says, drawing me back to the interview.
“And your company was hired to put up the lights?” I ask.
“We were. We deal with the zoo’s seasonal decorations. We were called back in after a storm tore down some of the lights last weekend.”
“We believe that one of your employees has been murdered and we’re hoping you can confirm if the person is your employee. Would you be able to look at a photograph of the deceased?”
The man’s not surprised; he’s well aware of the reason he’s here. “Yeah, of course.”
“Thank you,” I say before sliding the phone across the table to him.
The way George’s face twitches tells me he knows him, and he almost immediately starts nodding.
“His name is Zach Peele. He’s been with the company about a year or so. He’s very hardworking. Good guy. Fuck.”
“I’m sorry this has happened,” I say as I pull the phone back. “Can you tell me what time your crew left?”
