Т Паркер - Where Serpents Lie

Then I called Jim Wade and told his secretary who I was. A moment later he was on the line.

“You’ve violated our agreement,” he said.

“I’m sorry, sir. But I’ve got the gold.”

I told him what I’d found and where I’d found it. I begged him to assign some more deputies to CAY and scour the county for Gene Vonn/Webb/Webster/Grantley and Wanda Grantley. He actually listened to what I was saying, and I heard his pencil scratching on paper.

“Is that actually possible? For a snake to eat a human?”

“I’ll be talking to—”

“—No, you won’t, Terry. This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to board the first plane back to Orange County that you can get. And you’re going to be in my office thirty minutes after that plane lands. Clear?”

“Sir — there’s so much work to—”

“—I can have an arrest warrant issued by phone in about ten minutes. I’ll do it.”

I watched the treetops swaying and thought of Mary Lou Kidder’s end in a heap of dung in Gene Somebody’s backyard. I couldn’t help but see those pictures of myself again; they were following me wherever I went, unshakable and determined as bloodhounds. I wanted a drink quite badly. And I realized something about myself in that moment: I was willing to sacrifice almost anything to get The Horridus. At least, that’s what I was doing. I felt so close. But how could Frances and Wade feel it? They hadn’t seen what I’d seen. They hadn’t smelled the smell and felt the feel.

“Let me work the rest of the day here,” I said. “I’ll take the first flight out tomorrow morning.”

“Isn’t there one tonight?”

“No, sir,” I lied.

“Where are you staying?”

“I’d rather not, uh... well... the Holiday Inn in Wichita Falls.”

“Call me when you get back there. And stay there until you leave in the morning. Those are direct orders.”

I told him I believed it was time to go public with the Brittany Elder description and the drawing by Amanda. I thought we should bring the water under him up to a boil. But Sheriff Wade must have had bigger things to think about, because he hung up.

Next I called Sam Welborn. I told him to get out to the old Grantley place in Hopkin, and gave him the address. “You’re going to need someone for prints and photos and video,” I said. “You’re going to need the coroner, sooner or later. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Be damned,” he said quietly. “ ’Mon my way.”

It was easy to get the reptile expert at the Fort Worth Zoo. The zoo receptionist was quite pleasant and she put me right through. His name was Joseph Dee and I identified myself as an Orange County Sheriff investigator working a kidnapping and sexual assault case that had led me to Texas. I asked him if it was possible for a very large snake to eat a small person. He said nothing for a moment, then:

“Well, yes — it’s possible.”

He went on to explain that folklore and anecdotal literature were filled with unsubstantiated reports of snakes taking humans for food. But some of them were “reasonably authenticated” enough to be considered true. Three snakes — the anaconda of South America, the reticulated python and the African rock python — were the three most popular culprits. One report, he said, from Borneo, was documented well enough by local authorities to qualify as factual. There, a twenty-two-foot reticulated python had eaten a thirteen-year-old boy down by a stream. He said that the many reports of the African rock python predating humans were unlikely but possible, and usually involved children. He said that most of the incidents took place in remote villages and were all but impossible to authenticate. He added that lots of things happen in small villages that we in our cities rarely hear about, let alone believe.

“I examined an African python — dead, unfortunately — that contained a small leopard,” he said. “The specimen was thirteen feet long. If you doubled that length, which is possible in an older adult, you could conceive of it eating a small human. Entirely possible. But you have to understand that such instances would be aberrant. Humans are not their usual prey.”

“How, exactly, would they do it?”

“Like they eat anything else,” said Dee. “Surprise the prey. The teeth of big snakes can be quite long — maybe half an inch, and they hook backward, like some fish teeth. They’re quite sharp and they hold well. Their jaws are fairly strong. They kill by constriction — not by crushing bones, as people believe. Constrictors are immensely strong. The coils tighten and the victim can’t draw breath. It can happen quickly. Even the twelve-to-eighteen foot specimens we have here can require two or three men to handle them safely.”

“How big is the biggest snake you’ve got?”

“We have a twenty-two-foot retic from Indonesia. It takes four of us to handle it, if we have to.”

“What’s it eat?”

“Rabbits, ducks and pigs.”

I drove back to the Grantley house to wait for Sam Welborn.

I sat in room 21 of the Holiday Inn and stared for a while out the window. The sky had gone deep indigo and the breeze was still up. It was seven. Sam had invited me to the stock car races and I’d accepted, recklessly aware that I was disobeying still another order from my commander in chief. I figured, if they didn’t want me to go out and watch cars go around in circles, tough. Plus I’d had a nip or two from my bottle of tequila — I’d bought the second smallest one at the store, a pint — and its courage had begun to set in.

I called Donna but she was on assignment. I left a message from Skip on her voice mail. I called Melinda at home, and when Penny answered we talked very briefly. We were just getting past the hello, how are you stuff when Melinda cut in, asked me not to call the house like that and hung up. I still hadn’t thought of a way to tell Penny the truth without confusing and hurting her, so maybe it was just as well that Melinda cut us off. I resented Melinda for taking sides against me, but I respected what she had to do for Penny — maybe I would have done the same. I left another message for Johnny about the Gene Webb/Webster/Vonn/Grantley or Wanda Grantley home — told him to take the title search into Los Angeles and San Diego counties just to be safe. I blathered on about the Grantley house, Welborn, the great flat state of Texas. I was lonely. Johnny’s machine ran out of tape before I finished, so I had to call back to make sure he had it all, and to wish him good luck. I told him again that I thought they should release the drawing based on Brittany Elder’s description — the “sharp mean face” and the short white hair. After seeing the remains of Mary Lou Kidder, I was in favor of all the proaction we could muster: smoke him out, make him flinch, rattle his cage. I knew the risks, but I thought they were worth taking. I left the same information with Louis, just to double-cover. I did all this in the name of Frank. It made me mad to have to slink around the world as different people. It was demeaning and it implied guilt. That was one thing I wasn’t ready to shoulder, not on the scale that I was being asked to by... Ishmael? A Wade-Vega-Woolton cabal? I. R. Shroud?

Sam picked me up at seven-thirty and we rode out to the track in his sedan.

We sat in the grandstand and watched the cars go by. Sam waved to a half-dozen people on our way up the steps. We had hot dogs and giant beers and the captain had an extra cup for his dip. He had a friend driving in the third race.

“These things’ll get up to ninety-five on the straights,” he said, staring straight ahead as the cars spun past. He hadn’t said much on the way here and I knew why: the sight of Mary Lou Kidder had damaged him.