“Did Gail Scanlon put these helmets on?”
“I doubt it. I think it must have been Munch or Wulf.”
Ranger approached the huddled monkeys, removed the helmets, and gave them to Hal.
“Put these in my SUV,” he said. “If Wulf wants them back, he can talk to me.”
We wrangled the remaining monkeys into the compound. We set food out and made sure there was fresh water. We closed and locked the door.
“Eep,” Carl said, monkey fingers curled around the chain-?link fence, looking out at me.
I opened the door, let Carl out, and relocked the door.
“He doesn’t belong with the rest of the monkeys,” I said to Ranger.
“No doubt,” Ranger said.
We went into Gail Scanlon’s house and took stock. It seemed exactly as I’d left it.
“I’m going to leave you here,” Ranger said to Hal. “Make sure the monkeys have food and water. As soon as I get phone reception, I’ll dispatch someone to bring in a couple days’ supplies and communication.”
Hal seemed okay with that. He was out of the monkey truck. Life was sweet again.
Ranger, Carl, and I left the compound. Ranger stopped when he got to the paved road.
“Do you want to look for Munch or Gail Scanlon?” Ranger asked.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin. They’re here somewhere, but I have absolutely no direction. We did aerial surveillance and couldn’t find anything.” I pulled Gordo Bollo’s file out of my bag. “This is the guy who threw the tomatoes at me. He lives in Bordentown, and since it’s a weekend, he might be home. I’d love to catch him.”
Ranger looked at the file and punched the address into his navigation system.
“What’s the charge on this guy?”
“His ex-?wife remarried, and I guess he had unresolved marital issues because he ran over the new groom with his pickup truck, twice.”
A half hour down the road, Carl was squirmy in the backseat.
“Puh,” Carl said. “Puh, puh, puh.”
Ranger’s eyes flicked to Carl in the rearview mirror.
“Does he want to live?” Ranger asked.
“Eep,” Carl said.
The nav system got us to Ward Street, and it didn’t look any more promising this time than it had last time. A cemetery ran down one side, and on the other was scrub field and the ceramic pipe factory. Ranger drove the length of it, turned, and drove back. He stopped at the entrance to the cemetery.
“Babe, there aren’t any houses here.”
“Connie double-?checked this address.”
Ranger called in to his office and asked them to run Gordo Bollo. Minutes later, the same address came back.
“I’m sitting here, and there’s no house,” Ranger said. “It’s a field next to a ceramic pipe factory. Go into the tax rec ords and see who owns this land.”
Ranger waited for the answer, and when it came, he disconnected.
“Gordo Bollo owns 656 Ward, but it’s a lot. No house.”