Greg Iles - True Evil

Kaiser considered this.

Alex grabbed his arm. "What if Rusk killed her up there?"

"Rusk hasn't killed anyone yet, has he?"

"I have no idea. But Christ, for all we know, Tarver could have been up in Rusk's office today. You know?"

"I guess it's possible. Do you think they'd move so quickly against Thora?"

"Two words: William Braid."

Kaiser grimaced. "Damn it. All right, I'll get some people to start searching that tower."

"Officially?"

"No. But if we find a corpse, the case will break wide open. We can haul Rusk in and put his feet to the fire."

"I hope you find a very scared woman. Will Kilmer overheard Thora screaming at Rusk to cancel the hit on Chris. If she would turn state's evidence, we'd have Rusk by the balls. And I guarantee Rusk would cut a deal and give us Dr. Tarver."

"You really believe Thora would talk?"

"You show her the alternative, she'll crack. She wouldn't last a day in prison."

Kaiser squeezed Alex's shoulder. "I'm going now. It's time you got some rest."

Alex snorted in contempt. "You know I can't sleep with all this going on."

"Then I'll have the doctor sedate you."

"You can't sedate someone who has a concussion."

Kaiser shook his head in exasperation, but Alex could tell he was glad to see her healthy enough to argue with him.

"If you'll get them to discharge me," she said, "I promise I won't leave the hospital. I'll spend the night in my mother's room. That way, I can keep an eye on both her and Chris."

Kaiser stared at her for a long time. "Stay here," he said finally. "Stay right here, as in do not move. I'll see what I can do."

Andrew Rusk blinked awake to a hell beyond anything that his subconscious had ever spewed into his nightmares. Dr. Tarver had duct-taped him to the chair behind his desk. His mouth was taped shut. Lisa was sitting opposite him on the leather sofa, her slim wrists and ankles taped together, a silver rectangle of tape sealing her lips. Her eyes looked twice their normal size; more white than color was showing.

Tarver stood between Lisa and the desk, holding both arms high above his head. In his hands, twisting and curling about his muscular forearms, were two thick, black snakes with heads as big as a man's fist. A maniacal light shone from Tarver's eyes; some might have called it religious fervor, but Rusk knew better. Eldon Tarver was as far from God as a man could get. The doctor spun almost gracefully around the room, as though hypnotizing the serpents into passivity, yet the flexing tubular bodies never ceased their motion.

The room stank of urine, and Rusk soon saw why: Lisa's biking shorts were stained from her navel to her knees. Every square inch of his own skin was popping with sweat, but at least he hadn't pissed himself yet. The throbbing at the base of his skull had all but ceased, or maybe it had been blotted out by the agony radiating from his sternum. A bolt of terror shot through him when he saw the two spots of blood on his shirt, but then he saw a shining tangle of silver wire near Dr. Tarver's feet. Taser wires. Now he remembered the gun coming up in the hallway…the nearly point-blank shot at his chest. It was a stun gun. That was how Tarver had gotten him into this chair.

The doctor stopped his eerie dance and sat sideways on the desk, facing Rusk. The snake nearest Andrew was thicker than his forearm, with a diamond-shaped head and bulging poison sacs beneath its eyes. Cottonmouth moccasin, he thought. The knowledge made his sphincter clench. Unlike most snakes, cottonmouths would not retreat when humans approached. They were highly territorial and would stand their ground, sometimes attacking and even pursuing an intruder.

"I see you thinking, Andrew," said Dr. Tarver. "I'm sure by now you've worked out exactly why I'm here."

Rusk shook his head, but he knew all right. Eldon Tarver hadn't broken through a ring of armed FBI agents to do a fucking snake dance in Rusk's study. He wanted the diamonds. All of them.

"No?" said Tarver. "Perhaps you're a little distracted by my friends."

He stretched out his right arm until the nearer snake's head was within striking distance of Rusk's face. Rusk's throat sealed shut, locking his breath in his chest. The pupils of the moccasin's eyes were vertical ellipses, like cats' eyes. Rusk saw the heat-sensing pits that his scoutmaster had taught him to look for a quarter century ago. As though sensing his fear, the cottonmouth opened its huge mouth to reveal a puffy white oval topped with lethal two-inch fangs. The stench from its mouth was sickening-dead fish and other nameless creatures-but Rusk had passed beyond thought. When the doctor moved the snake closer, the ocean of piss Rusk had successfully withheld in junior high school flooded his khakis.

"The diamonds, Andrew," Dr. Tarver said in a voice of eminent reasonableness. "Where are they?"

Lisa was whimpering steadily on the sofa, but Rusk forced himself not to look. His inability to help her might unman him at the moment when he most needed his full faculties. He wished to God Tarver hadn't taped his mouth shut. He felt powerless without his voice. He was a lawyer, after all, a wizard in the art of persuasion-or so a reporter for the Clarion-Ledger had once written about him. Maybe that was why Tarver had taped his mouth.

Bullshit, said his father's voice. He taped your mouth so you can't scream and alert the FBI agents outside. Rusk hated that voice, but he knew he had to heed it. There was no room for illusion now. Dr. Tarver was back on his feet, spinning slowly, constantly changing the elevation of his arms as he did. Motion must have something to do with keeping the snakes from biting him. Or maybe it's just professional courtesy-one cold-blooded killer to another -

"Where are they, Andrew?" Dr. Tarver asked in a singsong voice. "Do you want an up-close-and-personal experience with these creatures of God? Perhaps your lovely bride likes serpents better than you do."

Tarver danced over toward Lisa. She huddled on the sofa in a fetal position, alternately shutting her eyes and opening them wide, unable to endure the horror but too afraid she would be bitten while her eyes were closed.

"These are sacred creatures, Lisa," Tarver murmured. "They represent both life and death. Death and rebirth. I'm sure through your provincial eyes, you see the serpent of the Christian garden, who so easily corrupted Eve"-he bent and caressed Lisa's thighs with a scaly tail-"but that's such a limited view."

The scream that burst from Lisa's diaphragm ballooned her taped-shut lips and trumpeted from her nostrils. A few more screams like that, Rusk thought, and she'll be bleeding from her nose. She'll drown in her own blood.

Laughing quietly, Dr. Tarver took two steps back and opened the mouth of a white croker sack with his foot, then dipped and thrust one of the moccasins into the bag. Stepping on the mouth of the moving sack, he pulled it tight with a drawstring. Then, caressing the head of the remaining snake, he came around the desk and addressed Rusk again.

"I'm going to partly remove the tape from your lips, Andrew. You will not scream. You will not beg. You will not plead for your life or hers. I know the stones are here. I know your escape plan, remember? I set it up. But it's time to let go of your banana-republic dream and save yourself, like the smart man you've always thought you were."

He reached out and pulled an inch of tape from the corner of Rusk's mouth. Rusk remembered his instructions, but he could not obey them. In a parched croak, he said, "You're going to kill me no matter what I do."

Dr. Tarver shook his head with an expression of regret, then walked to the corner and picked up a putter that Rusk kept there to practice his short game. Gripping the head of the golf club, Tarver began to tease the moccasin with its padded handle. He jabbed its snout again and again, causing the snake to bare its fangs and strike at the club.