Gary Alexander - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 86, No. 6. Whole No. 511, December 1985

“I understand,” said Wendy. “Where does van Leuck live, anyway?”

“Upper Thomson Road. Why?”

She shrugged. “I just wondered where a person like that would live. One always wonders about people like van Leuck. They’re morbidly fascinating, like some of our reptiles at the farm. The venomous ones.”

“I imagine Louis can be venomous, all right,” Alan agreed. “Especially if anyone crossed him.”

“You still don’t think there’s a chance they’d let you pull out?”

He shook his head. “It’s too far along now.” He took both her hands. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you this past week. Gone mad, most likely.”

When Alan and Dao arrived at van Leuck’s house the following morning, they were surprised to find a police car, an ambulance, and a plain, unmarked panel truck there ahead of them.

“We have trouble,” Dao said. He instructed his grandnephew, who was chauffeuring them, to keep driving and park around the corner. Then he sent the young man back on foot to investigate. The grand-nephew returned within five minutes, an expression of shock on his face.

“Mr. van Leuck is dead, Great-uncle,” he said. “A most tragic occurrence. A python somehow got into his house last night, wrapped its body around Mr. van Leuck’s head and face, and smothered him. The panel truck you saw in front is from the reptile farm. They sent two keepers to capture the snake. Alas, for the unfortunate Mr. van Leuck it is too late.”

“As it also is for us,” Dao said quietly. “Take us back to my shop.”

The three men rode in silence back to Chinatown. Only when they arrived did Alan ask the obvious question.

“Will you try to find the tunnel yourself, Fu qin?”

“I think not,” the old man said. “The snake was a sign. It came out of the jungle to tell us that the tunnel belongs to the jungle, not to us. Perhaps the snakes now use the tunnel for their home. In any event, I think we will listen to the snake.”

Alan saw a look of enormous relief come over the face of Dao’s grandnephew. So, he thought, I was not the only one terrified of that hole.

“It shall be as you wish,” Alan told Dao.

He shook hands with the old Chinese and left. On South Bridge, he caught a taxi and rode up to Serangoon where he had his cheap little room. Wendy was waiting in her BMW out front.

“I have your things,” she said. His canvas bag was in the back seat. “And I settled your bill. Let’s get away from this filthy place.”

Alan got in beside her. She drove away, calm and unruffled as if she had not committed murder.

“Was it Apollo?” Alan asked.

“Yes. I told you, didn’t I, he likes human warmth?”

“Yes, I recall you saying that.” Alan s mouth was suddenly dry. “Well, what now?” he asked as casually as he could manage.

“You’ll come live with me,” Wendy said. “You can have Daddy’s chair. I’ll be your little girl. Just like I was his.”

Alan stared at her without blinking.

“All right?” she asked.

Wrapped its body around Mr. van Leuck’s head and face —

“Of course,” Alan agreed. “Whatever you say.”

Inside, his ulcer reminded him it was still there.

At 5:00 P.M. Weare filtered out the door, never looked back — clean getaway.

Two great old films were showing at the great old Fox Theater on Main Street four blocks from the Courthouse: Suspicion and Dial M for Murder. As a Hitchcock buff, he was looking forward.

First show was at 7:00 — he’d have dinner.

An April wind muscled him as he hurried through the big parking lot behind the Courthouse to his ’77 red Pinto and a few minutes later he was westbound toward El Camino, and Heine’s Hofbrau.

At the Greyhound on Brewster he swung in — when in the neighborhood he usually browsed it. A few times he had spotted someone he was looking for, about to ramble to far places.

Four or five citizens were waiting in the wide area behind the depot. No one he knew. But a scrawny kid with a backpack raised a tentative hand. Weare pulled off to the side, out of the way if a bus came charging through, and watched the kid meander toward him. The face was mainly nose, two small wary eyes at the top. “You’re Sergeant Weare.” Weare nodded. “I saw you in jail. A guy in my tank said who you were. I thought he was kidding. You look more like a minister.”

Weare, small and grey, had started professional life as a minister in Ohio. Seven years later he was in California, a juvenile probation officer. Seven years later, working good connections, he became San Mateo County’s oldest living sheriffs rookie. Now seventeen years later, he was a detective-sergeant, more or less in charge of homicide though Captain Losey had the title. But Losey’s job was mostly to talk at civic luncheons and impress people involved in county funding, leaving not much time to run investigations. So Weare had gradually taken over that function — fine by Losey.

“Do you know a dude named Frank Reese?”

Weare did.

“He has a sawed-off shotgun.”

Weare asked, “Want to get in out of the wind?”

“My bus is about due. I just thought that maybe you ought to know. I mean that Reese has a shotgun.”

“Have you seen it?” If the kid had, he’d be the first direct witness to it. Other dopers who had mentioned it seemed to have never actually seen it, just heard about it.

The kid said that he’d never actually seen it.

“Do you know anything else about him I should know?”

“Sometimes you read in the paper that a body’s been found — then if you see Reese that night he’s grinning and spending money and passing out good dope.”

The kid wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t heard from other dopers, adding up to nothing. “What were you in jail for?”

“Why?”

Weare shrugged.

“Dope. They dropped the charges.”

“So you’re clear.”

“Uh huh.” A San Francisco bus came pounding around the depot. Weare called, “Thanks.” The kid waved, loped away, and jumped aboard.

Weare drove a mile south on El Camino to Heine’s.

Savoring prime roast beef, he let his idling brain turn to his last talk with Reese.

Two months ago, about 10:00 P.M., he had spotted a battered, rump-sprung LTD painted dead-black in the parking lot near the S.P. station in Lindenvale. Reese was in the donut shop on the corner, at a table alone.

Weare had showed him a drawing that was a reconstruction from a photo of the remains of the face of a dead young man found buried on a little-used beach south of Half Moon Bay a few days before, where the M. E. guessed he had been disintegrating probably since last fall. Two .22 shotgun shells were in the back of the skull.

Reese, black-bearded and burly, thirty years old, in his standard uniform of black denim jacket, black jeans, and black stomper boots, studied the drawing and said he didn’t know the guy. Weare said that some people he had talked to had thought the drawing resembled someone they had seen last October or so in Reese’s car.

Reese nodded. “Figures. Every time a body’s found, my name comes up.” His brown eyes could look flat and dull or somewhat amused, like now. “Know who started all those rumors about me?” Weare said he hadn’t thought about it. “Me, couple of years ago. I began dropping hints that I had a shotgun, that a dope mafia operated on the Peninsula, and the less known what I did for a living the better.”

What Reese did for a living Weare hadn’t nailed down. Reese had told him that he had inherited money, which he’d invested. His smirk said that if Weare didn’t believe that, okay by him. Weare hadn’t pushed the matter — no point at the time or since.