Page 72 of Wild Wolf
The pilot spun us around and headed us back to base.
We touched down on the helipad at the sheriff’s office 45 minutes later. We disembarked under the swirling rotors and hurried inside. Daniels sent a deputy to the hospital to stand watch over the fugitive when she was out of surgery. In her current condition, she was not a flight risk anymore.
Denise found us. "I’ve got something you’ll want to take alook at." She showed me a print out of a screen capture. "I found that in a group on social media."
I took the print-out and examined it. Evan Driscoll had commented in a thread about the zoo break-in. Several in the thread had referred to it asOperation Liberation.
"I don't know about you, but that sounds like he's taking responsibility,” she said.
I read the comment aloud. “We liberated them once. We’ll do it again. No peace until all are free!”
It wasn't enough for a warrant, but it certainly merited a knock and talk.
“That’s the best lead we’ve got so far,” Jack said.
“I want to take a look at the security footage again,” I said.
We followed Denise to her desk and huddled around with the sheriff as she pulled up the footage. We watched the chaos unfold as perps stormed the grounds wearing all black, no logos, with latex animal masks covering their faces.
A bolt cutter sliced through a padlock on a security gate to kick things off. I’d seen the clip before.
The team of agitators flooded in. Some were tall, some were skinny, some were not so skinny—a mix of male and female troublemakers. The bolt cutter was a typical long lever with red steel handles.
I scrubbed back through the timeline to the snip. There was a sticker on the handle near the head—yellow with black lettering. The footage was high def, but it was dark and alittle grainy. It held up reasonably well under magnification. The sticker had been damaged, torn halfway off. I don’t know how I missed it on my first viewing. Then again, I had only watched clips on my phone.
The woman who used the bolt cutters wore a wolf mask, of all things. Her brunette hair fell to her collar, poking out beyond the edge of the mask. It wasn’t much, but it was something to go on.
We were cutting it close timewise, but I figured we could squeeze in a visit to Evan before we had to get to sound check.
"Is this Evan’s address," I said, pointing to the handwriting on the page.
Denise nodded.
"You've outdone yourself."
She beamed with pride. "I'll have you know, I've been sifting through comments and forums and message boards for the last few days, looking for something. Anything.” She sighed. “Please nail this guy.”
"We’re going to get more than just this guy. We’re going to get everybody responsible," I replied with a grin.
"They put lives at risk," the sheriff said.
Brenda hadn’t found any evidence to suggest any of the escaped animals attacked anyone on the island. But that didn’t get them off the hook for the breaking and entering, trespassing, reckless endangerment, and a host of other crimes.
Denise pulled up Evan’s full background. He had a pretty clean history—a few moving violations, a few parking tickets, but nothing criminal. He lived in the same apartment complex that Oren did and was a political science major at Vanden.
I figured we'd kill two birds with one stone while we were there.
We left the station and drove to the apartment complex. Jack parked at the curb, and we caught the pedestrian gate as someone exited. I grabbed it before it snapped shut. We hurried through the grounds to building A303. I put a heavy fist against the door.
Music inside filtered out. It sounded like somebody was home.
Nobody answered, so I knocked again, even louder.
Somebody turned down the music, and footsteps shuffled toward the door. "What do you want?"
"Are you Evan?"
"Who's asking?”
