True Evil

mechanism open, she crashed through the door with her Glock leveled, sweeping it from side to side.

'Clear!' she called, moving toward the bathroom. Halfway there, she stopped cold. Grace's cat lay stretched on the carpet, its mouth open in a rictus of death. Alex saw no blood, but she knew that Meggie was dead. She started to kneel, but then she heard a sliding sound from behind the bathroom door.

'What the hell?' Chris cried from behind her.

Alex motioned toward the bathroom with her Glock, then waved Chris back. After he'd knelt behind the far bed, she yelled: 'FEDERAL AGENT! THROW OUT YOUR WEAPON AND COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!'

Nothing happened.

'I'm Special Agent Alex Morse of the FBI! Come out or I'll shoot!'

After five seconds of crazed silence, she heard the sliding sound again. In her mind she saw a shower curtain sliding along the side of a bathtub.

'Maybe the water's on,' Chris said.

Alex cursed to herself, then charged forward and kicked open the bathroom door, ready to blast a hole in anybody she found there.

She saw no one.

The sliding sound came again. She looked down, then leaped backward in terror. A brilliantly colored snake was writhing on the floor beneath the commode, its head biting empty air, its body twisting wildly through figure eights and whipping back upon itself as though it had been run over by a car.

'Chris!' she hissed.

He jerked her out of the doorway and thrust himself in front of her.

'What is that?' she asked.

'It's a goddamn coral snake. The deadliest snake in the U.S.'

'Are you sure?'

'Positive. See the red bands touching the yellow ones? They teach you a rhyme in the Boy Scouts: ‘Red over yellow, kill a fellow, red over black, venom lack.''

Alex shuddered. 'Is that what killed Meggie?'

'Has to be. The scary thing is, nobody would go to that trouble to kill your cat. That snake was put here for you.'

Even in its current distress, the snake had an almost hypnotic beauty. 'What's wrong with it?'

'I'd say Meggie gave as good as she got. Cats are good snake hunters.'

'But it still killed her?'

'Coral snakes aren't like rattlers or moccasins. They carry neurotoxic venom, like cobras. They have short fangs, but one good bite to an animal as small as a cat, and it's lights out.'

Chris grabbed a pillow off the near bed and blocked the open door with it. Then he went out to his truck and came back carrying a tall, white bucket filled with baseballs.

'What are you going to do with those?' Alex asked. 'Stone it to death?'

He held up the bucket with both hands, then leaned over the pillow and smashed the bucket's bottom down onto the snake with all his strength. He ground the wounded reptile against the tile floor, then lifted the bucket and slammed it down again. The next time he lifted it, the snake came up with it, stuck to its bottom like a bug on a windshield.

'Is it dead?' Alex asked.

'Dead is a subjective state with a snake. Their nervous systems continue to function after death. People have died after being bitten by a dead rattlesnake.'

'What about this one?'

Chris examined the half-exploded serpent on the bottom of the bucket. 'Dead as a hammer.'

He carried the bucket outside and tossed it into his truck bed. Alex heard baseballs roll everywhere. While she gathered up her computer and her case materials, Chris loaded Meggie's remains into a trash bag. 'I'll take a look at her when we get back,' he said, 'see if I can find any bite marks.'

'You're sure I won't cause a problem with Ben?'

'He's at Mrs. Johnson's house. Let's get out of here.'

Alex started to get into her car, then paused. 'Is the coral snake native to Mississippi? I mean, I grew up here, but I don't remember any.'

'They're native to Mississippi, all right. But not this part of Mississippi. You'd have to drive two hours to reach coral snake territory, and you could still search for a week and never find one. They're very shy.'

'So there's no way it could have simply wandered-'

'No way in hell. Somebody put that snake in your room. And that answers your question once and for all.'

'What question?'

'The guy who attacked you in that carport came here for you, not me.'

CHAPTER 25

Eldon Tarver nosed his white van through a thicket of bushes blocking the rutted track. This was the fourth route he had tried, and this time he felt lucky. Reaching the river wasn't difficult. Every fifty yards or so, dirt tracks led from the gravel road to the broad sandbar bordering the Mississippi south of Natchez. The problem was that at the end of those tracks, the sand was soft and the river shallow. Dr. Tarver needed a shoulder of land that would bear the van's weight right up to the river's edge, then a good ten feet of water in which to sink it. The river's powerful current would do the rest, rolling the van downstream with a force guaranteed to make it disappear by morning. But if he stuck it in the sand, it would still be standing there in the morning for any redneck or jig with a johnboat to see as they sped past in search of catfish and gar.

Dr. Tarver had known better than to run for Jackson. Agent Morse could easily have ordered roadblocks on the main routes leading out of town. For this reason, he'd driven back roads all the way from the subdivision where he'd fought her to the asphalt road that ran past the colossal husk of the old International Paper mill. A vast soybean field marked the place where pavement turned to gravel. The gravel paralleled the river; it it led to a string of oil wells and a federal game reserve south of town. Eldon had learned all this from studying topographical maps- one small part of the intensive preparation he put into every operation. Experience had taught him that preparedness was the key to survival, and he never let himself down in that regard.

In the back of the van was a tangible symbol of the doctor's readiness for every eventuality: a Honda motorcycle designed for both street and off-road riding. Eldon had carried the Honda with him on every operation he'd undertaken for the past five years, and tonight every drop of sweat he had ever put into loading and unloading that bike would prove worth it.

The van's headlights refracted off a thousand leaves as branches stretched, then snapped back into position with a scream along the van's sides. He had always viewed the van as disposable. He had another exactly like it, except for the color, safely garaged at his primate lab in Jackson. Suddenly the twin beams shot out into unobstructed space, a pure blackness that changed to dark blue when he extinguished his lights.

As he stared into the night sky, tiny red lights on the massive towers that held telephone cables suspended across the river announced themselves. Lower down-much lower and to his right, about a mile distant-he saw the lights of a barge churning toward him. If he stayed where he was, it would soon pass him.

He shut off his engine, climbed out of the van, and walked slowly forward, his eyes never leaving the sandy earth beneath his feet. He had a sense that he was above the river, but how far above he could not tell. An armadillo bolted from beneath his feet. He watched the moonlight on its armored back until the creature vanished into waist-high grass. Starting forward again, only ten steps carried him to a cliff.

Twenty feet below swirled the dark waters of the Mississippi River. He pulled off his blood-soaked shirt and tossed it into the current. The woman had stabbed him well and truly in the throat, but with a blunt weapon. Probably a key. Had she used a knife, he would already be dead. As it was, his beard was matted with blood.