Chapter 32 Thursday, 0900 hours (9 AM)

During the chaos, Brian sneaked away to Joshua's office. He found the diary and read it. Evan was right. It would have been better had he not found out what Joshua intended for Kit. Brian tried to stop reading, but couldn't. When he got to the point where Joshua described the rays of the morning sun hitting Kit's dead body swinging from the gondola, Brian threw down the diary. He left Joshua's office for the last time, and slammed the door behind him.

The police were pretty good about things. The local precinct wasn’t large enough to hold everyone, so police vans took them over to some kind of barracks. People were processed efficiently, and the hostages were distinguished from the Calfers. Without Joshua, the Calfers seemed to be just likeable, committed college kids. But crimes were committed, serious crimes, and whether the police liked it or not, the Calfers had to be held to account.

The Calfers were interrogated about a half-eaten human body that the police came across in an remote part of the zoo, but the Calfers didn't know anything about it. Brian was horrified at yet another death, but he was baffled. It wasn't a hostage. The guy was armed though, and turned out to be an FBI agent. No one knew why he was there, not even his department. Evan thought he might have been one of the two men he saw in the zoo. But where was the other one? Brian was annoyed. Operation Zoo wasn't really over. There was still a mystery, and Brian felt his usual frustration at not having all the information.

The hostages left one-by-one as relatives came to pick them up. Derek and Jeffrey went home by cab, and when the only non-Calfers left were Rom and his scouts, Lori came in.

Brian and Lori didn't say much, and the cub scouts stared wide-eyed at the 'PG-13' rated kiss.