Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Koala Killer Seventeenth Installment


Cass pulled up a chair and started organizing her, like he'd done so often before. He said, "I'll pull out the photo in each file for you. Just concentrate on the flash of memory of the man in the hospital hallway."

He held out the first one.

"No."

And so on for the first five. On the sixth, she hesitated. The driver's license picture was bad. He set that one aside and went through each of the rest. The one set aside turned out to be the only possibility.

The man was different physically from the rest of the male employees. He had the face of a wrestler. And with two possible exceptions, he looked older than most of them.
She didn't know him. From the green sticker on his file she knew he was a Keeper. The date he started working at the zoo was also marked on the tab. May 5th. About a month ago, so he was still working for the zoo on a trial basis, since everyone had to work for ninety days and be evaluated before being hired permanently and getting benefits. He had experience with elephants, his file said. That's as much as she got from the file before Bill took it down the hall to get Annie to make copies for the police.

"Cass," Mari said, "I had just gone past the elephants the night the cart ran me down."

Cass answered, "It doesn't look good for ole Carl."

"Who's Carl?"

"The fellow you just identified."

"Wait a minute. I wouldn't call it an identification. He's just the most likely candidate."

"Well, the most likely, then. Didn't you see the name on the file?"

"No, I saw the date he started, that he was an experienced elephant keeper, but I didn't think to look at the name. I wouldn't make much of a detective, would I?"

"Well, I saw the name. It's Carl Bergen."