If She Should Die (40 page)

“There was nothing you could do.”

“I could have broken that padlock, but I went blank. I didn’t do
anything
!”

“Mrs. Burke, as cruel as it sounds, with all those snakes loose it’s better that you didn’t get that door open. If you’d managed to get in, your daughter would have lost both parents.”

“I know. But still . . .” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ll always remember that I did nothing. As usual. Helpless Bethany. It was several minutes before I even ran to the house and called nine-one-one. Time seemed . . . I don’t know. Suspended.”

“Even if you’d called immediately, it would have still been too late, Mrs. Burke. The ME’s office has confirmed that there was a massive amount of venom in your husband’s blood—too much venom for him to have survived even if the EMS had arrived at the same time you did. And even when they got here, they couldn’t enter until the Department of Natural Resources arrived to get the snakes under control. You don’t have anything to feel guilty about.”

“I have
always
detested those snakes,” Bethany said fiercely, wiping at one tear-filled eye with a fist like a child. “I can’t bear to look at them. They scare me half to death! I’ve never set foot in the snake house. I begged Travis to give up that awful hobby. I knew he had it years before we got married, but I thought he’d abandon it if I pleaded with him enough, especially after we had a child. But he could be so stubborn! He wouldn’t give in. I don’t understand how he could be so entranced by a bunch of
snakes
, for heaven’s sake! They’re repulsive!”

“I guess they weren’t repulsive to him.”

“Oh no. He thought they were beautiful.” A small, ragged laugh escaped her. “I suppose beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.”

“You kept saying yesterday that your husband was always so careful with the snakes. Yet after the Department of Natural Resources went into the building to collect all the snakes, they found almost every cage open. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t. Travis kept that place locked, padlocked, and dead-bolted. And when he went inside, he locked the door from the inside so that no one could wander in on him when he was handling a snake. The windows are unbreakable.” She lifted her shoulders. “I don’t know, unless someone actually broke the locks to get in. But Travis would have noticed broken locks.”

“The police and the Department of Natural Resources had to break down the door to get in, but they looked at the locks first. There was no damage to them. No one broke into the building. So they had to have a key.”

Bethany rubbed a line between her eyebrows as if her head was beginning to hurt. “There were three keys—one for the lock, one for the dead bolt, one for the padlock. Travis kept them in his desk drawer.”

“There was only one set of keys?”

“No. There was an extra set, also in the desk drawer. It’s still there. I checked when we got back around noon.”

“Your husband had one set of keys in his pocket. So that accounts for both sets. Are you sure there wasn’t a third set?”

“If there was, I don’t know about it. I don’t know why he’d want a third set. He always took one out with him and left one inside.”

“He left one inside in case he ever got locked in the snake house?”

Bethany looked surprised. “No. He had a second set made in case he ever lost the first, although I don’t know how that could have happened. He didn’t carry them around like car keys.”

“But the padlock on the outside of the door was shut. Someone locked it
after
your husband went in.”

Bethany nodded. “I know. But who? There aren’t kids around here.”

“Didn’t Mr. Burke ever worry about something like that happening? Why didn’t he take the padlock off the door while he was inside?”

Bethany frowned. “I think he usually did. Besides, he usually took his cell phone in with him. If he did get locked in, he could call me and I could get the second set of keys.”

“Except that this time he went in when you weren’t home. And he didn’t have his cell phone. And he did leave the padlock hanging on the outside door. Quite a set of unfortunate coincidences.”

“Yes,” Bethany said vaguely.

“You don’t think your daughter, Jan, could have shut the padlock, do you?”

Bethany’s gaze suddenly grew sharp. “No, she didn’t. I won’t have people suspecting my baby of such a thing!”

“It was an innocent but reasonable question, Mrs. Burke. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“That’s the kind of accusation that can follow a child around, warp her for life!”

“I didn’t make an accusation. I just asked a question. We’ll drop it for now.”

“We’ll drop it forever!”

“All right. Please calm down.” She looked hostile but too angry to be on her guard. “What do you know about your husband’s stolen boom box?”

Her voice rose. “His boom box? It was stolen?”

Michael thought Bethany’s color rose, but he couldn’t be certain. Her words definitely revealed strain, though. “He didn’t mention it to you?” She stared. “I suppose not. Well, he didn’t mention it to the police, either. He told me it had been taken out of his unlocked car about two weeks ago. He said nothing else was taken or damaged, so he didn’t want to make a big deal over it.”

“Oh.” He waited for her to ask why he was bringing up the boom box now. She continued to stare. Then she managed, “I gave him that boom box.”

“The one that was stolen?”

“Uh, yes. I mean, he only had one.”

“But he didn’t tell you it had been stolen.” She shook her head. “Maybe he thought you’d be upset.”

“Maybe.”

Michael waited a few seconds. He had the impression Bethany was coiling like one of her husband’s snakes. “I stopped by here yesterday while you were at your father’s to tell Mr. Burke the boom box had been found.”

“Oh. That’s good.”

“In the Prince barn. Up in the loft. It was playing when Patricia Prince’s body was found.”

Bethany seemed to swell, her face growing red, her throat working, her chest coming forward as she pulled air into her lungs. He watched, fascinated, not knowing what move to make next, waiting for her to set the tone. At last she said, “Well, isn’t that odd?”

Michael felt as if he were going to fall off the couch from the anticlimax. He wondered what he had expected. For her to leap up, declare, “Yes, I knew my husband was having an affair with Patricia Prince, so I turned his snakes loose so they could kill him”? Maybe not something so dramatic. But some sign that she knew about Travis and Patricia, because he was certain they’d been having an affair. And he was
almost
certain Bethany suspected it.

But she sat without another word, her gaze daring him to push her further. He wasn’t going to get anywhere, he thought in disappointment. Not now, at least.

He leaned forward in sincerity. “Mrs. Burke, do you know of anyone who would want to hurt your husband?”

“Hurt him?
Murder
him? You think he was murdered?”

“I’m sure your husband didn’t open all those cages of poisonous snakes at the same time. Someone wanted to set those snakes free.”

“Like animal rights people?”

He looked at her closely. Did she want him to think she was stupid? Or too stunned by the thought of murder to have even considered it? “I can’t see animal rights people freeing a bunch of highly venomous snakes for your husband to walk in on. I know some of those rights people are dangerous fanatics, but I’ve never heard of anyone like that around here.”

“Well, that’s good.” Back to vagueness. “It would be awful to think of people like that just wandering around.”

“Yes, it would. Mrs. Burke, did your husband have clashes with anyone lately?”

“Clashes? What kind of clashes?”

“Arguments. Even with a stranger. Let’s say he had a run-in with someone suffering road rage. Anything like that?”

“Not that I know of,” Bethany said slowly. “Of course, there was a lot he didn’t tell me.” She immediately looked as if she wished she could swallow those last words. She seemed to coil again. “But if there was trouble of any kind, he couldn’t have kept it from me. We were so in love and I knew him so well.”

Michael had been on the verge of letting the interview drop, but the attempt to blind him with sugary words and a sticky sweet smile urged him on. “Mrs. Burke, at the
cemetery Jeremy Ireland said loudly that Dara Prince had called Travis ‘Snake Charmer.’ He said that Travis certainly liked Dara. You obviously overheard, and you looked like you were going to cry.”

Bethany hesitated, then said stoutly, “Who said I looked like I was going to cry? That’s ridiculous.”

“I saw you, Mrs. Burke. It was my observation that you looked as if you were going to cry.”

“Well, you misread me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yes, you did.”

“All right. But did you know Dara Prince called your husband ‘Snake Charmer’?”

“I think a lot of students did. So what?”

“Did you know Dara Prince?”

“Slightly. Through Christine.”

“What did you think of her?”

“I didn’t care for her. She was spoiled. Arrogant. Awful to Christine.”

“Did your husband know Dara?”

“I think she was his student.”

“Did he like her? Jeremy said he liked her a
lot
.”

Bethany flushed. “Sometimes Jeremy gets carried away. He probably knew Dara was Travis’s student.”

“He said Travis had shown Dara his snakes.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Oh, maybe she told him that to impress him, but Travis wouldn’t have taken a student into the snake house.”

“He’s never had a student interested in herpetology?”

“Well, yes. He’s shown the snakes to
serious
students. Males.”

“He’s never had a serious female student.”

Bethany’s lips compressed. “Deputy, I feel like you’re making fun of me.”

“I’m not.”

“I think you are. I
know
you are!” She stood up. “I don’t want to continue this discussion. I’m tired and I’m sick with grief and I’m—”

Jeremy strode into the living room. “Bethany, I didn’t mean to eat so much, but there’s only one piece of carrot cake left. Do you or Deputy Winter want it?”

Christine appeared behind him. “Jeremy! Honestly, I turned my back for a second and you’re gone. We’re supposed to stay in the kitchen.”

“But I just wanted to ask—”

A high-pitched shriek from outside cut off Jeremy’s explanation. Every bit of blood seemed to vanish from Bethany’s face as her eyes flew wide and her hand went to her throat. “That’s Jan,” she croaked. “She was watching cartoons in the den, but that sound came from outside.”

Bethany whirled to look out the back window, which was raised a couple of inches. Winter was right behind her. Outside, four-year-old Jan Burke sat huddled on an old, spindly lawn chair.

“Mommy, it’s Daddy’s Gabby wiper!”

“Gabby wiper?” Michael echoed.

“Gaboon viper,” Bethany said in a strangled voice. “Oh, my God!”

And then they saw it raising its head, testing the distance from the ground to the low-seated chair. Jan’s eyes fastened on the snake in terror, her body drawing into a ball.

“Do not move, Jan!” Michael called, already reaching for his gun. “Do not move one tiny bit!”

Jeremy seemed to move like quicksilver, Michael thought later. He was already headed out of the living room as Michael drew away from the window, his mind clicking a hundred horrible pictures of his missing the snake and shooting the child instead. A little girl. Just the age his own daughter would have been . . .

With horror he felt a tremor in his hand. He couldn’t shoot at a snake with a shaking hand, he thought, outraged by his own body. He strode ahead, though, vaguely aware of Christine and Bethany behind him, one of them crying. When they got outside, the snake would be between them and the child. He
had
to shoot it.

Another shriek. “Mommy, it’s coming closer!”

Another tremor. He
couldn’t
shoot it. He’d kill Jan. He knew it. “I need a hoe! Or an ax!”

“What?” Bethany wailed. “I don’t know where—what?”

“A weapon!” Christine yelled over Bethany’s cries. “He needs a weapon. Beth,
please
!”

“I can’t think!”

“Mommy!”

Bethany pushed past Michael and ran out the back door, heading directly for Jan. Michael grabbed her and pulled her back.

“Let me go!” Bethany screamed.

“The snake will strike you or Jan.”

“I have to get her!”

Michael looked at the snake raising its head, which was now only inches away from the terrified Jan, who had begun to shake, drawing its attention. Then he saw Jeremy, moving with the graceful stealth of a panther, circling behind the child.

Bethany broke free of Michael and dashed to the side of the porch, grabbing up a shovel. She ran into the yard, directly toward the snake. “Beth, no!” Christine cried.

The snake’s head was motionless as it poised to strike Jan. Its bite would be fatal to such a small child, Michael thought as he raised his gun, his hand suddenly steady, reliable. And then Bethany moved directly between him and the snake.

“Oh God,” Christine moaned. “Oh no.”

Jan let out one tiny, hopeless whimper. Then, just as the snake’s head darted toward her, Jeremy swooped down and in one incredibly fast movement, so fast it seemed almost a blur, he scooped Jan up into his arms.

The snake lunged at the empty chair as Bethany began to strike at it with the shovel, missing time after time in her frenzy. The upper part of the snake’s body turned. Its mouth now faced her. It tensed. Bethany swung wildly again as it prepared to strike.

Jeremy took three steps back from the chair, looking at Michael. “Shoot it!” he yelled as Michael aimed. The thing coiled so close to Bethany. So fatally close. He turned, shut down his anxiety, and focused only on the snake as he raised his gun. Aimed. Pulled the trigger.

Bethany shrieked as the gun went off. She fell backward and Michael thought he’d hit her. He stood rooted, ready to shoot at the snake again so it couldn’t bite the fallen woman, but then Bethany raised her head and Jeremy shouted, “You got it! You killed it, Deputy!”