Ignoring protocol, Decker raced into the house and across the foyer, skidding around the corner and into the den. There he saw a surreal nightmare unfolding. Kev and Izzy were on the far side of the room, near some kind of splintered cage of wood and wire. Rearing up on his hind legs like a horse, the dog was thrashing wildly, whipping his head back and forth, struggling to shake something off his snout. A snake, realized Decker. A huge fucking snake! The triangle of the reptile’s head was like some awful reflection of the dog’s own angular head; the long, thick body disappeared beneath the edge of the broken cage. “No!” Deck heard Kevin scream again over the dog’s howls. “Izzy!” As Decker lunged across the room to help, he saw Boomer drop to his knees, hands scrabbling up the back of the snake, tugging at the neck, then — desperate to free the terrified dog — grabbing hold of the jaws themselves. He had just managed to pry the reptile loose when the dog — finally free to fight back — bit blindly, the powerful jaws closing on Boomer’s right hand. Now it was Boomer howling, first as the bones of his right hand snapped, then as the fangs of the snake sought and found his left wrist, piercing the pale skin and then the ropy blue vein. The vein that carried blood up Kev’s arm and into his lungs.
As Decker reached his brother’s side, he saw the knotty glands at the base of the snake’s head pulsing — once, twice, three times. “Kevin!” shouted Decker. “No!” Now it was Decker grabbing the snake’s jaws, prying ferociously, ripping tendons and ligaments with the force of his fear and fury. Gripping the reptile’s head with both hands, he smashed it to the floor, again and again and again, reducing it to a bloody, bony pulp.
On the floor beside him, the dog began to convulse, blood foaming from his mouth and nose, and Decker saw his brother lift the dog and clasp it to his chest, sobbing. “Izzy,” Kev gasped. “I’m sorry. Oh, God, Izzy, I’m so, so sorry.”
Then — as if stricken with guilt at his failure to repay the dog’s devotion with diligence and vigilance and safekeeping; as if the two were joined by bonds even stronger than family — Decker’s brother began to froth blood as well. Decker watched, paralyzed and helpless, as his younger brother toppled forward onto the twitching body of the dog.
Death crawls up the leash.
CHAPTER 42
Brockton
I was running overtime in my four o’clock Human Origins class, delivering a lecture on evolutionary changes in the human skull. “How many of you have seen the Coneheads, on Saturday Night Live?” I asked. Half the three hundred students raised their hands. “In another twenty thousand years,” I said, “if the cranium keeps getting taller and narrower, you and I will look just like the Coneheads.” The students were still laughing when a uniformed KPD officer came through the double doors at the back of the auditorium. Most anthropology courses were taught in the small, shabby classrooms in Stadium Hall, but the three big intro classes — Human Origins, Archaeology, and Cultural Anthropology — required a bigger venue, which I’d found in McClung Museum, a pleasant quarter-mile walk from the stadium.
The officer, a patrolman named Maddox, had been assigned to watch my back until Satterfield was safely in custody. Another officer was watching Kathleen, and a third was keeping tabs on Jeff. “So our brains have gotten bigger,” I continued, “as our jaws have gotten smaller—because our jaws have gotten smaller, in fact. Thirty-two used to be the normal number of teeth for adults, but as a species, we’re gradually losing our third molars, our wisdom teeth. So if you don’t have wisdom teeth, it doesn’t mean you’re dumb; it actually means just the opposite — it means you’re more highly evolved than some moron with a mouthful of teeth.” From the back of the auditorium, Maddox beckoned to me.
“Excuse me, class,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted. “It appears that the long arm of the law has finally caught up with me.” Heads swiveled, faces curious. “Y’all start counting your teeth. If you’ve had any pulled, or lost any, count those, too.” I beckoned to a girl seated in the front row. “Rebecca? Would you come up to the board and take a tally for us? In this sample of three hundred humans, how many have thirty-two teeth, and how many have only twenty-eight? What’s the breakdown, by number and by percentage?” As I started up the aisle, I saw students tooth counting — some using the tongue-probe method, others running a fingertip inside their mouths.
Maddox led me out of the auditorium and into the hallway. I searched his expression for some hint of what he had to say. “What’s up, Officer?”
“Got some news,” he said in a low voice. He glanced around the wide hallway, which was empty but exposed. “But let’s go someplace a little less public.” I took him down a narrow side hallway that led to the museum’s offices, stopping in a corner that offered privacy, as well as a good view of anyone approaching from either direction.
“From the look on your face,” I said, “whatever the news is, it isn’t good.”
“Some of it’s good, some bad. The good news is, the SWAT team went in, and the suspect’s dead.” The words sent a flood of feelings coursing through me: blessed relief, grim satisfaction, and guilt.
Suddenly my heart clenched as I realized just how bad the bad news might be. “Dear God,” I said, clutching his arm. “Has something happened to Kathleen? Or Jeff?”
He shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that,” he assured me. “But the scene turned into a total cluster-fuck, if you’ll pardon my language. Sumbitch had the place booby-trapped — that, or he ate a stick of dynamite. Blew his own damn head off. Nearly took the SWAT team out with him.”
“That’s awful.”
He made a face. “That ain’t the bad part. The SWAT guys are okay. But there was some kind of damn snake loose in the house, too — rattlesnake or cobra or who the hell knows what. Bomb-squad guy was in there with his dog, sniffing for more explosives. Damn snake bit the dog. Handler, too. Dead, both of ’em. Died quicker’n you can say Jack Robinson.”
“God in heaven. What kind of monster keeps killing even after he’s dead?” Maddox shook his head in sorrow and bafflement. “Do you know if my family knows about what’s happened at the scene? My wife and my son? If they don’t, I’d rather be the one to tell them. In person.”
Maddox radioed the officers who were keeping watch over Kathleen and Jeff. “No sir, they don’t know it yet. Your wife’s in a meeting, and your boy’s at cross-country practice.”
I nodded gratefully. “Could you relay a message to them? Ask them to be home by six?” He nodded. “And Officer? Please make sure they know I’m fine.”
I didn’t feel fine; I felt like I might be sick. But it seemed important to say it — to my family, and to myself. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.
CHAPTER 43
Kittredge
Kittredge frowned at the driver’s license the forensic tech, Bohanan, was holding between a gloved thumb and forefinger. Nicholas Eugene Satterfield, said the license, which had come from the dead man’s wallet. The face in the photo bore a strong resemblance to the artist’s sketch of the Cahaba Lane rapist — the Cahaba Lane killer. The frown-inducing problem was that Kittredge couldn’t match the face on the license or the face in the sketch to the face of the dead guy slumped in the La-Z-Boy, because the dead guy slumped in the La-Z-Boy had no face.
Bohanan tucked the license into an evidence bag. “We got dental records on Mr. Satterfield?”
“Not yet,” said the detective. “Military does, but we don’t. I’m still trying to find out who’s got ’em — the Navy, or the Military Personnel Records Center, in St. Louis.” The detective leaned in and peered at the bloody stump of spine. “Ick. What good will dental records do us, anyhow? We got no teeth.”
“O ye of little faith,” said Bohanan. “Just because his teeth aren’t in his head anymore—”
“His head’s not in his head
anymore,” Kittredge pointed out.
“Teeth are tough,” Bohanan persisted. “They might be somewhere in this mess. Some of ’em, anyhow. Parts of some of ’em. A bit of bridgework, maybe, or a weird-shaped filling.”
“What about DNA?” said the detective. “Everything I read these days goes on and on about how great DNA is. Genetic fingerprints, no two alike. The future of forensics, supposedly.”
“Exactly,” said Bohanan. “The future. Sure, it’s possible, in some fancy-schmancy genetics lab. But routine forensic casework, in Knoxville, Tennessee? That’s five years down the road. Maybe ten.” Bohanan rocked back on his heels, studying the corpse. “We got anything else to base an ID on? Anything that doesn’t require, you know, a head or hands? Surgical scars, tattoos, six toes, anything?”
Kittredge snapped his fingers. “Damn. Yeah — he’s got tats. Both forearms. A snake on one. A devil’s pitchfork on the other.”
Bohanan lifted the handless right arm and slid the shredded sleeve up to the elbow. On the inside of the forearm was a crudely inked image of an eagle, its wings spread, its talons clutching a ship’s anchor and a three-pronged spear. “Not a pitchfork,” Bohanan said. “A trident. Symbol of Neptune — god of the sea. I’ve got an uncle with one kinda like this. He was a SEAL during the Vietnam War.”
“That fits,” said Kittredge. “Let’s see the other arm.”
Bohanan reached across the recliner and raised the left arm. Stretching upward above the shredded remnants of the wrist was a snake. Like the man, the reptile had been decapitated by the blast.