Leaving Time: A Novel Read online

  But that’s not what happened. Instead, the Amboseli elephants were equally attracted to the three skulls. They may have known and lived with and even deeply mourned an individual elephant, but that behavior was not reflected in these results.

  Although the study proves that elephants are fascinated by the bones of other elephants, some might say it also proves that an elephant experiencing grief for an individual must be a fiction. Some might say if the elephants did not distinguish between the skulls, the fact that one of those skulls was their own mother wasn’t important.

  But maybe it means that all mothers are.

  VIRGIL

  Every cop has one that got away.

  For some, it becomes the stuff of legend, the story they tell at every department Christmas bash and when they have a few too many beers with the guys. It’s the clue they didn’t see that was right in front of their eyes, the file they couldn’t bear to throw away, the case that was never closed. It’s the nightmare they still have every now and then, from which they wake up sweaty and startled.

  For the rest of us, it’s the nightmare we’re still living.

  It’s the face we see over our shoulder in the mirror. It’s the person on the other end of the phone, when we hear that mysterious dead air. It’s always having someone with us, even when we’re alone.

  It’s knowing, every second of every day, that we failed.

  Donny Boylan, the detective I was working with back then, told me once that his case was a domestic dispute call. He didn’t slap cuffs on the husband, because the guy was a reputable business owner everyone knew and liked. He figured a warning was enough. Three hours after Donny left the house, the guy’s wife was dead. Single gunshot wound to the head. Her name was Amanda, and she was six months pregnant at the time.

  Donny used to call her his ghost, the case that haunted him for years. My ghost is named Alice Metcalf. She didn’t die, like Amanda, as far as I know. She just disappeared, along with the truth about what happened ten years ago.

  Sometimes, when I wake up after a bender, I have to squint because I’m pretty sure Alice is on the other side of my desk, in the spot where clients sit when they are asking me to take pictures of their wives in the act of cheating, or track down a deadbeat dad. I work alone, unless you count Jack Daniel’s as an employee. My office is the size of a closet and smells of take-out Chinese and rug-cleaning fluid. I sleep on the couch here more often than I do at my apartment, but to my clients, I am Vic Stanhope, professional private investigator.

  Until I wake up with my head throbbing and a tongue too thick for my mouth, an empty bottle next to me, and Alice staring me down. Like hell you are, she says to me.

  “This,” Donny Boylan said to me, ten years ago, as he popped another antacid tablet into his mouth. “This couldn’t have happened two weeks from now?”

  Donny was counting the days until his retirement. As I sat with him, he gave me a litany of all the things he did not need: paperwork from the chief, red lights, a rookie like me to train, the heat wave that was aggravating his eczema. He also did not need a call at 7:00 A.M. from the New England Elephant Sanctuary, reporting the death of one of their caregivers.

  The victim was a forty-four-year-old long-term employee. “You have any idea what kind of shitstorm this is going to cause?” he asked. “You remember what it was like three years ago when the place opened?”

  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