She shut off the car and walked up the bowed wooden steps to knock on the screen door. The inner door was open, the interior vague shadows of an overstuffed chair, the edge of a table. The smell of mold and mildew hung in the air.
She slipped a hand inside her jacket pocket, her fingers coming into contact with the rough cloth of the wanga Strata Luna had given her. Had she been reaching for the reassurance of the charm? Or her gun? Elise the cop would say her gun, but the daughter of a conjurer wasn't so sure that was the truth.
From the belly of the house came the sound of a fall, followed by a muffled curse and footsteps. A silhouette appeared on the opposite side of the screen. The door swung open on creaking hinges.
A man.
About thirty, shirtless, barefoot, wearing a pair of ancient jeans hanging on a thin frame. The smell of sweat and alcohol wafted from his pores. His hair was dark and wild and matted. Despite his appearance, he somehow managed to exude something-a kind of strange, patronizing superiority, if one could call it such a thing when he was so lacking in personal hygiene.
He was one of those lovely occurrences of nature that sometimes came from mixtures of light and dark blood. His skin was golden; his eyes were blue. And red at the moment. He continued to stare at her as he clung tightly to the door, quite obviously stoned out of his mind.
Elise pulled out her ID, introduced herself, then folded and pocketed the leather case. "I'm looking for Professor LaRue," she told him. "He lives in the area, but I'm afraid I may have taken a wrong turn. Do you happen to know how to get to his place from here?"
"LaRue?" the man asked, thick dark eyebrows drawing together in puzzlement while his hand rubbed an unshaved chin. "Nobody around here with that name." He was sweating profusely. Water globules clung to the tapered ends of his hair.
"Perhaps I was given the wrong information. I was under the impression he'd retired on a family lot here on Tybee Island. James LaRue."
"LaRue. Sounds familiar, come to think of it. Maybe we can figure it out."
He gestured with one hand, waving her inside, then turned and shuffled into the dark interior, walking as if he had stomach cramps.
High as hell.
She caught the screen door, but remained in the doorway. Instinctively she felt the urgent need to leave, but logically he'd given her no real reason to be afraid.
There was a darkness coming from him that often accompanied drug addicts. It was a crippling, frightening hopelessness. The man in front of her was a mess. A much bigger mess than David Gould.
"He's an expert on tetrodotoxin," she explained. "Maybe you've heard about the poisonings we've had in Savannah."
While she talked, her ears strained to hear any sound that would signal the presence of another person. Her gaze swept the small room with practiced ease and nonchalance.
She took two steps inside and was immediately in the kitchen and living area. Off the kitchen was an open doorway that appeared to lead into a bedroom.
Were there any other rooms? From outside, it had been hard to tell.
He shuffled to a wooden table strewed with food wrappers and trash, stopped, and glanced over one hunched shoulder. "I don't get a paper and I don't listen to the news."
This time she felt for the reassurance of not the wanga but her gun. In his present condition he seemed fairly harmless, but she could have inadvertently stepped into the middle of a crank-making enterprise. People were killed for that kind of thing. Killed and fed to the alligators. She was beginning to regret her strictly emotional decision to leave Gould behind.
"It's hot," the man stated, acknowledging the obvious in the way of someone drunk or stoned.
"If you don't know where LaRue lives, then I'd best be going."
"I'll draw you a map."
"So you do know where he lives?"
"Sit down." He motioned toward the table.
"That's okay. I'll stand."
He walked to the sink and turned on the water. "Why'd you say you were looking for LaRue?"
"He's an expert on tetrodotoxin."
He filled a glass with water, then handed it to her. "You look like you could use a drink."
"Thanks." She accepted the glass. It looked clean.
He shuffled around a little more, found a coffee mug, dumped the contents, and filled it with water from the tap. He drank and refilled it twice before pulling up a chair at the table.
He dug through the litter to tear off the corner of a brown grocery bag, then used it to draw a map.
"It's easy to get all twisted around back here," he explained, penciling heavy dark lines to signify roads.
"This is north." He pointed to the top of the paper. "Here's the road you came in on that runs along the sloughs."
The water seemed to have revived him a little. His movements weren't as sluggish, and his voice seemed stronger.
"Here's the Y where you turned right. Remember that spot?"
"My directions said to turn right. Was I supposed to go left?" She lifted the glass to her mouth and took a swallow. Then another.
He stared at her much longer than was socially polite. "No," he finally said.
"No?" She didn't get it.
That's when she became aware of a strange tingling on her lips and in her mouth. The tingling in her mouth created a searing heat that rushed down her esophagus to her belly.
Sweat erupted from every pore, and in a matter of seconds a rivulet was trailing along her spine, soaking into the waistband of her pants.
From what seemed an observer's position, she was aware of the glass slipping from her fingers. She tried to clench her hand tighter, but her body failed her.
The glass shattered to the floor.
It was hard to breathe; her lungs didn't want to expand.
She imagined lifting a hand to her throat, but was unable to do so. /
The floor shifted beneath her.
The room slanted. And kept slanting… until her face was smashed against the gritty wood of the kitchen floor, her body pressed down, seeming ten times its weight.
It was such a relief to be horizontal, such a relief to be over the fall.
Her eyes were wide open. She tried to blink but couldn't.
LaRue-because of course the disheveled man in front of her had to be LaRue-arranged himself beside her on the floor so he could look into her open eyes. With his face inches away, he said, "I've found that the best way to learn about TTX is to experience it firsthand."
She was going to die.
How strange.
For some reason, she found the whole situation hysterically funny. She would have laughed if it had been physically possible. A shame, because she needed a good laugh.
"I'm not what you expected, am I?" LaRue asked. "Not what you expected from a Harvard graduate? That's okay. Don't feel bad. I've never been what anybody expected. I don't take it personally."
She knew people were often chameleons, ever changing, never what they seemed, even to themselves. She would have liked to apologize, explain that it wasn't his appearance or circumstances that had thrown her; it was his age. She'd been expecting someone much older.
"Close your eyes," he said, still on the floor beside her.
He reached out and forcefully pushed her eyelids down with his fingertips.