around. But if there's something there, we're not getting it from that
girl.'
Six.
I usually spend the day before a trial at my dining room table,
reviewing the entire file and practicing my open. I broke from habit
for Derringer. The case centered around Kendra Martin, and anything I
could do to boost her confidence on the stand would do far more for us
than a review of the file.
Everything had gone well in front of the grand jury. I got the
indictment in less than an hour, and Kendra did a good job with her
testimony. Afterward, to prepare her for the actual trial, I had shown
her a courtroom and even put her in the witness chair to run through
her testimony. But to make her feel as comfortable as possible
tomorrow under the circumstances, I wanted her comfortable with me.
It was an unusually warm day for the beginning of March in Portland, so
I decided to take Kendra to the zoo. I invited Grace, too. Kendra
seemed a little skittish about leaving her house, but she and Grace
seemed to hit it off from the start, and it was hard not to enjoy the
warm sun after months of chilling rain.
The Portland zoo is a natural habitat zoo. The advantage is obvious:
Instead of being confined in concrete bunkers surrounded by metal bars,
the animals get to roam freely on acres of land designed to replicate
their environments of origin. The downside is that the animals use
their oasis just as any reasonable person would if given the option: to
avoid any unnecessary contact with meddlesome humans.
As a result, our visits to the giraffe and lion areas were
unproductive. After staring at a boring mound of rocks for fifteen
minutes without a single indication of a lion's presence, I was ready
to pack it in to visit lizards, snakes, anything that was stuck in a
cage the old-fashioned way so that stupid humans could gawk at it,
whether it liked it or not.
Something passed through my field of vision, and I felt the hair on the
back of my neck rise. Turning around, I saw a man on a cell phone
standing outside the rain forest building. He wasn't looking in our
direction, but I realized I had seen him earlier at one of the other
exhibits and, come to think of it, he'd been alone then too.
I gave Kendra some money to buy us all red-white-and-blue ice pops
shaped like rockets. As I watched her walk over to the concession
stand, I lowered my voice. 'Don't make it obvious that you're looking,
Grace, but you see that guy by the rain forest? On the phone?'
She snuck a little peek. 'Sweetie, you do need to get yourself a man
if you're stooping that low.'
I looked at the guy again. 'Grace, no. Yuck. It's just isn't it a
little weird for a man to be at a zoo by himself?'
'Maybe his family's inside, and he left to make a call.'
'I saw him earlier, though, and I think he was alone then too. It
didn't stand out at the time, but now I think he was looking at us over
by the lions.'
'What lions?' She laughed.
'I'm not kidding, Grace. Maybe he's a little pervert who's at the zoo
to watch all the kids.'
'Or maybe he's just some suburban dad who's trying to keep up with the
office while he's on daddy duty at the zoo, and he was looking at us
because we aren't so hard on the eyes.' She slipped into a Mae West
routine.
'Hey, knock it off. I'm serious.'
'No, Sam, you're paranoid. You've got crime on the mind, and you're
especially uneasy about Kendra today. If you're really worried, we can
go say something to security. Tell them to keep an eye on him.'
I thought about it. 'Nah, you're right.' I looked back at the guy. He
was putting his phone away and walking into the rain forest. 'I'm sure
he's harmless.'
We polished off the rocket pops and headed toward the polar bears.
Grace and I were entranced, as usual, by Portland's swimming polar
bears, but I noticed that Kendra seemed a little distracted.
'You holding up OK, kiddo?' I asked.
She looked at me like I'd offered her broccoli, and then spoke
extremely slowly in the event I'd suddenly become extremely stupid.
'Um, yeah. Unless I'm missing something, the zoo's not exactly a high
stress kind of thing, Samantha.'
She was playing tough, but I knew the trial was weighing on her mind at
least as much as on mine. 'Very funny, wiseacre. Last time I checked,
I was going to be picking a jury tomorrow, and you were scheduled to
testify in a couple days. Do we need to talk about that?'
'No. I understand how everything will go. I'll be OK.'
