True Evil (30 page)

Her right hand flew to her face. There was blood there, lots of it. For a moment she was back at the Federal Reserve bank; she'd fallen on her back then, too, only the soundtrack had been the automatic weapons and grenades of the Hostage Rescue Team, not a Southern drawl uttered by a man in pajamas.

"Am I hit?" she asked. "I heard shots."

"You're not hit," said the man with the shotgun. "That fella fired one shot, but when I jammed my twelve-gauge through the door, he knew he'd better not shoot again. He slammed this pistol into your head, so I aimed my Remington center mass. He dropped the pistol and took off running."

"Did you see his face?"

"No, ma'am. He was wearing something on his head. Looked like a T-shirt or something. He looked like something out of
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
!"

Alex breathed deeply and tried to calm down. Her dilemma was simple: identify herself as an FBI agent or get the hell out of here. Her instincts told her to haul ass, but if her attacker turned out to be Grace's killer, she would have squandered a real opportunity to catch him.

"Did you call the police?" she asked.

"Hell, yes! They're on their way. The station ain't but a mile from here as the crow flies. What was that guy trying to do to you?"

Alex rolled over slowly, then got carefully to her feet. "Sir, I'm Special Agent Alex Morse of the FBI."

Pajama Man took a step back.

"My credentials are in my car."

"Maybe I ought to take a look at them."

As she retrieved her purse, a laser show of blue light ricocheted off the faces of the nearby houses. Then a squad car squealed to a stop in front of the house.

"Over here!" called Pajama Man. "In the driveway!"

Alex had her creds out when the cops trotted up. They were amazed to find an FBI agent at the end of their call. The homeowner's wife appeared and offered Alex a paper towel to wipe the blood from her face, which she did with enough theatrical toughness to impress local cops. She presented the situation as an attempted rape and practically ordered them to issue an APB for the white van. She repeatedly assured them that there was no chance of lifting fingerprints from her Glock, since her attacker had worn gloves, and in answer to their questions informed them that she was staying at the home of Dr. Christopher Shepard, an old friend from school. The last thing she wanted was Natchez cops walking into her room at the Days Inn and discovering what even rookie patrolmen would recognize as the tools and logs of a murder investigation. They practically insisted that she go to the emergency room to have her head laceration examined, but she protested that Chris Shepard could sew it up just as well and for free. When she promised to be available to answer questions in the morning, they were placated. After thanking Pajama Man repeatedly for saving her life—and leaving her cell number with the cops—Alex got into her car and drove past a crowd of shocked neighbors wearing nightclothes and back to Highway 61.

Her whole body was shivering.
Delayed stress reaction,
she thought. She pulled to the shoulder and took out her cell phone. Chris answered after six rings. She apologized for bothering him again, and then—before she could explain what had happened—she heard a sob escape her throat.
It's the sleep deprivation,
she thought.
I haven't really slept in weeks
—

"Where are you?" Chris asked.

"On the side of the road. In town. I think I need stitches."

"What happened?"

"I'll tell you in minute. I just…" She touched her face, which again was slick with blood.

"Can you get to my office?"

"Uh-huh."

"I'll meet you there in ten minutes."

"What about Ben?"

"I'll call Mrs. Johnson and tell her I have a medical emergency. She'll come."

Alex wiped the blood with her sleeve. "He's here, Chris. He's
here.
"

"Who?"

"
Him.
The guy who killed Grace."

"Did he attack you?"

"He almost killed me."

"Did you see his face?"

"He wore a mask. Take Ben to Mrs. Johnson's, okay? Your house isn't safe. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"And bring your gun with you."

"I am. If you think you're going to pass out, drive to the ER at St. Catherine's."

"I'm all right. Just hurry."

Alex lay flat on her back, squinting up into a surgical light like a blue-white sun. Chris had already cleaned her wound. Now he was stitching beneath her eye with surprising slowness.

"This laceration runs through some existing scar tissue," he said. "I don't know what your plastic surgeon will think about my work, but I guess you don't want to broadcast this injury to the world by going to the ER."

"Exactly. Why did you dilute the Betadine when you cleaned the wound?"

"That's a new thing. At full strength, it kills white blood cells that speed the healing process. The first responders, microbiologically speaking."

Alex said nothing. In less than a minute, Chris had tied off the last stitch.

"You can get up when you feel like it," he said. "No rush."

She eased onto an elbow, making sure that her inner ear knew which way was up, then rose into a sitting position. "Thank you for doing this."

"You have no idea who this guy was?"

"No. The question is, was he after me or you?"

"I think that's pretty obvious," Chris said.

"No. There's a good chance he went to Elgin to kill you, but unexpectedly found me there."

Chris shook his head. "He's probably been on your tail all day. In your sleep-deprived state, you wouldn't have noticed a herd of elephants following you."

Alex got to her feet. "You're still in denial."

"One of us is. Where to now?" Chris asked. "You're not still planning to drive to Jackson, are you?"

"I don't know. But I'd like you to do me one favor, if you would."

"Sure."

"Come with me to the Days Inn to get my computer? It's not far away, and I really need it."

"What about the guy who attacked you?"

"I don't think he'll be there. That's only instinct, but I have faith in it."

Chris turned and set his instrument tray in a sink. "If you promise to stay the night at my house, I'll go with you."

When she hesitated, he said, "Obviously I'm not talking about anything improper."

"I know." She took out her cell phone and dialed Will Kilmer's cell. He answered after two rings. After she had explained the situation, Will practically ordered her to remain in Natchez. "I'm in the lounge now," he said wearily. "She's not even conscious, Alex. There's no change at all. Hell, Margaret's just liable to fool the doctors again. She's a tough old bird, like me."

Alex hung up and turned to Chris. "Your house it is. Let's go."

The Days Inn's parking lots were silent but well lit. Most of the vehicles parked there were pickup trucks or bigger rigs. Alex parked the Corolla four doors down from her room, then waited for Chris to pull up beside her in his pickup. He climbed out of his truck with his .38 in his hand.

"I really appreciate this," she whispered.

He laughed softly. "We used to eat Sunday dinner at this hotel sometimes when I was a kid. It used to be called the Belmont."

"Everything changes, I guess. Even small towns."

"Yeah, but slower. I like it that way."

She took out her room key and handed it to him. "The room's one twenty-five, right down there. I'd like you to unlock the door and turn the handle, but don't go in. I'll be right behind you, and I'm going in hard. If anything crazy happens, use your gun to protect yourself, not to help me. Just get away and call the police."

Chris stared at her in disbelief. "You're kidding, right?"

She gave him a deadly earnest look. "No. No Southern Neanderthal heroics."

"You don't know what you're missing."

He eased down the side of the building, then inserted the key and turned the handle. When Alex heard the 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.