Murder on the Orient Espresso (15 page)

‘I've got this friend who brags he can eat a steak as big as his empty head, but these critters are the only things I've ever seen that are actually capable of doing it.' Hertel was just chock-jolly-full of culinary lore.

My foot had found the first wooden crosspiece under water and I stepped unsteadily out onto it. ‘Could you please get help from the train? Let them know that it's Lar … Laurence Potter.' The least I could do was to call the man by the name he preferred, given the indignity of his current circumstances.

‘Hey, isn't that the big-shot reviewer we had onboard?'

I forced myself to look more at the wingtips than the snake. It wasn't much of an improvement. ‘We think so.'

‘Now how in the hell do you figure he got out here?'

‘That is a very good question,' Pavlik said, not looking around. His tone indicated that messing with him would be even worse than messing with the snake at this point. ‘One we'll try to answer once we get him out of
that
.'

He hiked his thumb at the snake and, as if on cue, I swear the monster burped.

Potter's leg slid in to the ankle.

I gagged.

‘One down,' I heard Hertel say. ‘One—'

Ignoring the rest of it, I waded anxiously over to Pavlik. ‘Can you cut him out of there?'

‘I think so. With so much of Potter inside of this thing, I'm betting it can't constrict anything else.' A glance my way. ‘Like me or you.'

He looked at my flashlight. ‘Any part of that snake gets near you, wallop it hard with the business end and run.'

‘Gotcha.' Now that I was closer, I realized what I had imagined was Potter's movement was the snake's mouth and head absorbing the actually still body. Almost like a curtain being worked onto a rod – the snake the curtain and Potter as rod. ‘Please, God, he can't be alive in there, can he?'

‘Don't know, but I'm sure not leaving even a corpse inside that thing's digestive system.' Pavlik was not eighteen inches from the snake, stepping up on the wooden crosspieces that looked like the rungs of a macabre ladder with one end submerged in the water.

The snake did a kind of shimmy, assuming the shimmier was the length and girth of an I-beam. I splashed back into the water. ‘Be careful!' I called to Pavlik, who was trying to circle behind the snake as best he could, given the narrowness of the railroad bed.

Hertel began talking again. ‘I hear tell that these fellers tire easy. Or at least the Burmese do, though this beauty looks to be one of those bigger devils.'

‘You mean an African rock python?' I was trying to steady my nerves, though conversing with the engineer might not be the best way to do it.

Pavlik gave a backwards glance at my question, probably wondering how I'd know anything about snake species in the Everglades.

‘The very ones,' Hertel said. ‘Surprised you've even heard of them, cuz we ain't seen many around here yet. But to my eye, this queen bitch looks pregnant, so I have a hunch that's going to change.'

Wonderful. If the snake in front of us wasn't, in itself, a super hybrid between the Burmese and Rock pythons, we were messing with the mother ship.

‘Don't touch it!' I yelled at Pavlik, panic rising. ‘Did you hear what he said? If you cut the thing open they'll all come crawling out.'

‘No, no, no.' Hertel was practically chortling, like he'd been yanked back to his days of reading The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift. ‘This ain't no
Aliens
movie, you know. Snakes lay eggs. All you gonna find inside that one is what looks like the floor of a hen house.'

‘Chicken eggs,' I managed in a squeaky voice.

Pavlik turned around and put a hand down to help me. His words, though, were more for my psyche than physical well-being. ‘Steady, girl.'

‘You know what you might say?' Hertel went on. And on. ‘You might say this snake's done bitten off more'n she can chew.'

Honest to God, if I were within batting distance of the man, I'd have beaten him to death him with his own flashlight.

Hertel laughed at his own sick joke and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Last year, I spent some time with guys that went out on that python hunt. Which is how come I know so much, case you've been wondering.'

Slowly the snake stretched and then seemed to coil back on itself, the one leg and both multicolored shoes still protruding. I had a flash of my Uncle Gus after a huge Thanksgiving dinner, sucking on a festive toothpick.

And contemplating dessert.

Pavlik jumped back.

Hertel said, ‘If I was you, I wouldn't be practicing my dance steps on that—'

‘If you know something that will help, tell us!' I screamed at Hertel. ‘Otherwise, just … shut … up!'

Instead of being hurt or incensed, the engineer seemed gratified, even complimented. ‘Well, Sheriff, appears to me you've got yourself a feisty one there. But yes, ma'am. I guess I will leave you to it. Though they do tell me that these snakes – well, the Burmese, at least, and like I said, I don't know if this one—'

‘
Now!
'

Honest to God, it was like I was talking dirty to Hertel in bed. The nastier I got, the more he seemed to like it.

‘Yes, ma'am.' Now he was smiling widely. ‘Well, like I said, these snakes get tired out easy. In fact, the trappers treadmill 'em.'

‘“Treadmill”?' Pavlik asked, coincidentally saving my sanity.

‘Yup, they hold the tail of the snake and run their hands up along, under its belly. Makes the python think it's the one moving – escaping – so it tuckers itself out trying. Once that snake's exhausted, you can grab 'em by the base of the head and dump them in a pillow case.'

I looked at the snake. ‘Would have to be a big pillowcase.'

‘I don't intend to capture this one, so I wouldn't worry.' Pavlik had positioned himself behind the snake once more. Or, more precisely, behind the snake's head. If he was fully behind the snake he'd be standing another twenty feet down the railroad track. ‘Maggy, try and get his attention.'

I wondered if snakes could smell fear. If so, I figured I already had the python's undivided attention.

Heart thudding, my legs like jelly, I tried to get a grip of myself and moved to the front of the serpent's head, but as far away as I could get without stepping back into the water and inadvertently becoming some other critter's quarry. You know, like the goofball who steps into the street to evade a pickpocket only to be mown down by a truck.

‘Oh, and the other thing I found real interesting.' Hertel kept spewing his grisly little
bon mots
. ‘Snakes go dormant when they're digesting.'

Pavlik was watching me. ‘Ready, Maggy?'

I met his gaze and nodded. Since one eye was on each side of the creature's head, I had to pick left or right. Choosing the former, I waved at it. The snake turned the other way and looked at Pavlik, as if to say,
Is this broad serious?

Meanwhile, Hertel was still compulsively sharing. ‘Feller told me if you scare 'em right after a big meal, they—'

‘Try making noise,' Pavlik said out of the corner of his mouth. He was stone still, the knife unwavering in his hand.

‘Hey!' I yelled, jumping up and down. ‘Anaconda. Over here!'

The snake reared its head like the cobra in Kipling's
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
. Even though my brain told me this wasn't a venomous snake, my feet didn't believe it.

In fact, they had recovered impressively from their previous jelly-like state and were now backpedaling rapidly into the water, demanding to know why we believed Hertel's claim that this was a python at all. After all, we'd just met the man, and—

‘Blaaaaaaaah!' An explosion in front of me.

A full lower-third of Potter was now hanging out of the snake's mouth.

‘Holy shit,' I said, taking another half-step back. ‘What's—'

‘Blaaaaah!'

Now I could see Potter's belt.

‘Kill it, kill it!' I screamed in horror as I fell backwards onto the bank. ‘It's spitting out Larry Potter so it can eat me!'

‘Blaaaaah-blaaaaah.' The snake's eyes were huge and it looked … well, concerned?

‘Like I was saying,' Hertel had come from behind to help me up, ‘I hear tell you scare one of these things after a big meal and—'

‘Blaaah! … Blaaah … Blaaaah!'

Pavlik had the knife poised, but was holding fast. ‘Sounds like it's got something stuck in its throat.'

Under the circumstances, I couldn't think of anything to say other than, ‘the whole damn monster
is
its throat,' and anyway, speech had momentarily left me. I kept my mouth shut.

‘Yup,' Hertel said, ‘kind of like he's hockin' up a loogie. Or a “Larry” maybe?' The ancient engineer was laughing as he offered me his hand.

I pushed his helping hand away and got up under my own steam. ‘That's in poor taste.'

‘Taste,' Hertel was still chuckling. ‘Now there's another good one.'

I weighed the flashlight in my hand, considering which critter I should knock senseless – or more senseless, in Hertel's case – with it.

‘Blaaah – blaaah! … Blaaaah … BLAAAAAAH!'

I turned around in time to see the entire body of Laurence Potter erupt from the snake's mouth and land in the water, face-down, not two feet away from me.

‘Holy shit.' My stomach was heaving and I pleaded with whatever was in it – a little cake icing and a lot of espresso martini, probably – to stay down there.

‘No wonder the poor bitch had trouble getting your reviewer in. And out,' Hertel said, coming up beside me. ‘That thing there had to get hung up somewhere along her gut.' He pointed.

‘That thing there' was a staghorn handle, buried past the base of the blade in Laurence Potter's back.

‘I
guess we can eliminate “accident” as the cause of death.'

The statement was my weak attempt at bravado as the python – Burmese or African rock, with my money on the latter – shuddered its last on the opposite bank.

With me refusing to touch any part of Potter that had been inside the snake, the sheriff and I managed to drag Potter's body onto what passed for dry ground on the railway bed near the locomotive. We stood and watched while Hertel – finally, and mercifully – left us to climb onto the train in search of help, Pavlik instructing him not to provide any details to even the hoped-for helpers.

‘Unless that snake managed to hop up into the train and steal the knife from the cake,' Pavlik said, ‘I think we can assume Potter was stabbed and either fell or was tossed off well before it got hold of him.'

I shivered and glanced toward the gaping snake carcass. The python had split its sides – and not in the good way – during the final effort to urp up the reviewer.

Pavlik, who'd been crouched down examining Potter's body, rose to his feet. ‘The knife is plunged in so deeply a good portion of the handle isn't even visible. We won't know for sure until the autopsy, but I can't imagine a person being strong enough to do that.'

I lifted my eyebrows. ‘So we're back to the snake as cause of death?'

‘Not necessarily.' Pavlik waved toward the road bed. ‘If our decedent, knife already in his back, hit the ground a certain way, his own weight might have punched the blade deeper. Or, as you say, the snake's constriction might have forced the knife farther into the body.'

I felt sick again. ‘And that's what killed him?'

‘We don't know that yet.' Pavlik put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Potter might have already been dead from the wound. Or from drowning.'

You know you're in a bad place when the thought of somebody dying sooner rather than later cheers you.

But here we were. Welcome to the Everglades.

‘What's that?' I asked, moving closer to Pavlik.

‘The water dripping off the leaves and grass, probably,'

‘I hear that, as well, but this is kind of a tick, tick, tick.'

‘You mean like a clock? Inside a crocodile perhaps?'

Captain Hook's crocodile. My sheriff was channeling Peter Pan. ‘I know it's silly, but – there! There it is again.'

Pavlik listened. ‘Probably some kind of night bird. They have a lot of species down here that we've never heard or seen.'

‘And, of course, alligators, not crocodiles,' I said with a self-deprecating laugh.

‘No, they have crocodiles, too.' Pavlik was crossing the flooded breach back to our friend the python. ‘Just not as many as they do alligators.'

More great news. With a nervous look around, I followed him.

‘Did you get a good look at this thing's teeth?' I pointed a cautious toe at a portion of the snake's head. ‘They tilt backwards like those one-way exit spikes in parking lots. You know – the ones that cause “severe tire damage” if you back over them.'

‘A very efficient creation of nature. And from the looks of the maternity ward, Hertel was right about one thing: she was eating for about eighty.'

I looked into the belly of the beast and could swear that some of her eggs were rolling against each other. ‘We're not going to leave them here, are we?'

Pavlik eyed me. ‘Please tell me you're not that hungry. Or maternal.'

Ugh. ‘No, thank you very much, on the former. As to the latter, just the opposite. I know everybody down here is concerned about the population of pythons in the Everglades, and I think the ‘ticking' noise might be coming from inside the eggs. Maybe we – or better,
you
– should smash them or something.'

Pavlik shook his head. ‘I get your point, but outside of what Hertel told us, I have no proof that's a python. Nor that it's legal to kill whatever it is or its eggs.'