At my car, I gave him the barbecued ribs as a peace offering, and even acquiesced to his arms; a brief hug that might have lingered, had I allowed it.
I did not.
Halfway home, though, I was quick to answer when Kermit’s name flashed on my phone.
“Something just crossed my mind,” he said.
“Are you still at the greenhouse?”
“You’ll think I’m an idiot. I went off and left those damn seeds. The late bloomers in the growing box. Guess I got flustered, seeing you, and everything else going on. Now the gate’s locked, so I’ll have to sneak in through the pasture. If Lonnie notices those pots missing, she’ll padlock me out of the greenhouse, too.”
It was nearly sunset. Clouds were glaciers of charcoal and rust on this, the eve of a cold front.
“I can try and talk to her,” I said.
“Don’t you dare. Stay away from that woman. But that’s not why I called. I have an idea, if you’re willing to listen.”
I was willing.
We were still discussing the subject when I pulled into the shell drive, relieved to see that Loretta was not on the porch. Sit there with a phone too long, my mother’s witching powers might divine the marital status of my caller.
TWENTY
What Kermit wanted to discuss was the python that bit me-and the weather. It was an odd combination until he connected the two, saying, “When the temperature drops near freezing, reptiles hole up. Dormant might be the wrong term, but this cold front could give you a one-day window. Possibly, two, according to my weather service. If you’re worried about snakes, why not go tomorrow? I’m not asking where, but I am offering to help. No strings attached, and whatever we find belongs to you. Think it over. No matter how cold it gets, you shouldn’t go alone.”
The idea had merit. Gators, as I knew from experience, become lethargic when the temperature falls below fifty. The same might be true of pythons.
Or was it?
I had two hours before Kermit arrived. I used the laptop on my boat and did research. A few years back, after a cold snap, “experts” predicted that more than half the exotic reptiles in the Everglades had been killed. Field surveys proved them wrong. Two years later, similar experts estimated the python population had grown to more than three hundred thousand. Some theorized that gradual exposure to cold weather might have created a stouter, more weather-tolerant hybrid.
There was other information I scanned through.
Pythons are the world’s third-largest snake, commonly growing more than twenty feet long, although a thirty-five-foot Burmese had been captured and killed in India. It weighed nearly three hundred pounds.
They were ambush hunters, equally at home on the ground or in trees. Excellent swimmers, too, which wasn’t news to me, but I was unaware they could lie submerged for thirty minutes or more while they awaited passing prey.
This caused me to think back. Had the snake that attacked Roberta been underwater, hunting, when it heard her wild splashing? The monster python we’d seen later might have been hiding on the bottom, too. If not thirty-five feet long, it was well over twenty. And two hundred pounds, at least, judging from its girth.
An image came into my head I did not want to linger. I continued reading.
Pythons were voracious feeders. They chose ambush spots based on the size of their preferred prey but were opportunistic. Hungry or not, they would strike and kill anything they could swallow. Proof of this was in a 2012 report done for the Department of the Interior regarding the Everglades. In areas where pythons were well established, foxes and rabbits had disappeared. Ninety-nine percent of raccoons and possums had been destroyed, and the white-tailed deer population was down by 91.4 percent.
According to the report, the problem began in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew destroyed a python breeding facility near Miami. Also to blame were pet owners who, after tiring of their snakes, had released them into the Glades.
The results were catastrophic. It was as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped, said one field scientist. Pythons-apex predators-were running out of food, so they were moving north, or seeking new varieties of prey.
The only reassuring certainty I found was that hunters-men who actually knew the woods-agreed the best time to find and kill pythons was during a cold snap. The snakes were sluggish and slow-moving. Their reptilian hearts required them to find a sunny spot in the open if they were to survive a drop in temperature.
Choking Creek. The name had stuck with me. I’d hoped never to go back. After reading what I’d just read, I definitely didn’t want to, but I had no choice. “The race is on,” Kermit had said. The Gentrys had implied the same thing, as had Lonnie.
I phoned Roberta and explained the situation. “I’m not asking you to get out of the plane, but can you land there and wait for me and another passenger? It has to be tomorrow, or, possibly, the day after. This could be the last cold front of the season.”
Roberta understood, but she had obligations at work. “It’s too bad you can’t get in there by boat.”
“That’s another option,” I said. “I think I can, if I carry a saw, and some heavy clippers. Or”-I had a chart in front of me-“we could hike in from the bay side, but that’s through a couple hundred yards of mangroves.”
“I don’t even want to think about it. As long as you don’t try it alone. Who’s going with you?”
I hadn’t made up my mind about that. My first choice was Marion Ford, if he’d returned from wherever it was he’d disappeared to. His pal Tomlinson was another possibility, although I doubted the man’s skill with firearms.
“I’ve got a friend who’s a deputy sheriff,” I said, referring to Birdy. “If not her-she usually works Mondays-there’s someone else. Do you remember me mentioning Kermit Bigalow? He’s offered to come along, but… I don’t know him that well.”
When I said this, part of me hoped Roberta would offer a glowing endorsement and thereby settle the matter.
Instead, she responded, “Take a shotgun no matter who you choose.”
Good idea.
In the attic of Loretta’s house, I found my uncle’s footlocker. I returned to my boat carrying a heavy pillowcase. Inside was a sawed-off double-barrel and a box of twelve-gauge shells I hoped weren’t too old to fire, if needed. I made another trip and came back with Jake’s ripsaw and the stout hedge clipper he’d used to cut the original tunnel. Behind a drawer was a lockbox containing another of Jake’s treasures. From it, I took an exotic-looking pistol, a rare 9mm Smith & Wesson that had been customized by Devel. It had clear Lexan grips and a chromium stainless finish. Since shooting the man who’d attacked me, I’d fired several hundred of rounds through it at gun ranges.
The pistol and holster went into my shoulder pack. The other stuff went into a canvas bag that could be stored aboard my skiff. As I packed, I made phone calls, and also kept an eye on the clock. I was nervous about Kermit’s visit and the decision I had to make.
The choice was quickly narrowed down. Birdy had to work. Tomlinson was en route to a Zen meditation retreat in Polk City. The biologist’s phone went instantly to voice mail. Seldom do I leave long messages, but, this time, I did. Lots of details.
It was a safety precaution that only a man like Marion Ford would understand.
That’s what I was thinking about-Ford’s unwavering eyes, his competence on the water, when another competent man came to mind.
I checked Previous Calls and pressed Redial.
Earlier in the day, Sabin Martinez had asked insightful, sometimes pointed questions about Larry Luckheim’s intimidation tactics. “I’ll look into it,” he’d said, which is the sort of help people often offer but seldom follow through on.