The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) Read Online Free

adrenaline rush, which could completely neutralize the tranquilizer. A dart would probably only startle it and make it mad. I was relieved we’d forgotten the guns.
    But then, it was pretty clear we needed
something.
The orangutan didn’t look or smell like it was having the most winning day so far. Even from a distance, I could see that its orange hair looked dull and dirty. More than that, the hair was obviously tousled and matted, the back hair trailing down to the ground in dreadlocks that must have been collecting excretions. A rank odor of feces and decay emanated from the animal so strongly that I couldn’t imagine coming into close contact with it without first putting on several layers of facial mask. It was like standing next to garbage.
    Possibly, it would be so exhausted that Art could coax it through the gate, and we could get Art into Darnell’s SUV to talk about the situation. If it was conditioned to humans, it would consider the fence a barrier, even though it could easily vault over it. Maybe we could get it in and work from there. It wasn’t a healthy animal, and I wished I could recall the list of diseases it might be carrying. I found myself simultaneously hoping that its bad health would prevent it from hurting Art and fearing that those conditions would make it more likely to lash out. But Arthur Jamison Hooper was not considering these things. He was walking forward with the very clear intent of getting the newcomer in.
    “Jesus, Art,” I muttered.
    The center was Art’s creation. It was his baby. He was a true conservationist who understood that monkeys and apes are not at all like the differently-sized humans television shows and films would have us believe. Even as youths, they can have behaviors that seem erratic to untrained eyes. But youngsters are smaller, less likely to break skin and bones when they act outside human expectations. And this was no youth. Yet Art was an impulsive man, somewhat unpredictable himself, and quite convinced of his own charms. Like all of us, he talked to the animals in our care while he tended to them. But he was demonstrating his most prominent trait right now, a complete lack of common sense. Or rather, a complete inability to prioritize common sense over love. Art considered himself personally responsible for everything that happened at the center. He thought he could fix anything. Rather than wait for the rest of us to arrive after his hurried call on the radio, he had taken action.
    “Where can we even put it?” Trudy whispered.
    That was another problem. We weren’t equipped for orangutans. We had no enclosure, except for the one already home to fifteen chimpanzees, that could house a primate this big for any long term. And we couldn’t dump a new housemate on the chimps. The newcomer needed to be quarantined until we could get him, if not directly to Florida, then at least to a zoo.
    In fact, a zoo sounded like an excellent idea. All of the regional zoos had orangutans. Perhaps one of them could house this animal until the folks from down south could collect it. Our first call would be to the Ohio Zoo, where our friend Christian Baker worked as a keeper. He and his staff had been part of the crew that had intervened to save the lives of several animals when a couple of angry former employees in Michigan managed to turn loose an entire private zoo. Many animals were shot when they gamboled into town, but the keepers had saved a few. Perhaps
they
could lure in and trap this orangutan.
    We had acted as intermediaries in the past, when an orangutan in an Indiana roadside zoo had suddenly become an inappropriate attraction. But again, in that case, we’d quickly gotten help from our friends at the Ohio Zoo.
    The orangutan turned. The plate-like cheek pads that gave the top half of the animal’s face its squashed appearance rotated away from the crate and toward our director. Art shifted his own body seamlessly into reverse. The big ape took one step,