“Anyone ask about a timber rattler, refer to one, lately?”
Steve blinked slowly and sat forward, putting his elbows on the desk. “Yes.”
“I like that word, Steve. Expound.”
“Kind of. It was about two months ago. I was working the cash register, selling snake food. This guy came in and said he caught a timber rattler in his driveway, wanted to know how much we’d give him for it. Just a kid — fifteen, sixteen. I took a look in the coffee can and he had a little Crotalus viridis, which is our common western rattlesnake. I told him what it was and that we didn’t buy or sell venomous snakes. He said he looked it up and it was a limber rattler. I said there weren’t any timber rattlers in California, unless it was in a collection, or someone let it go. Either way, his was just a western.”
“Hmm.”
“That’s not the interesting part.”
Steve rolled back in his chair and folded his arms across his “Cold Blooded” T-shirt. “This is about The Horridus, right?”
I nodded.
It was strange to see the change in him, the way that his proximity to something as aberrant as The Horridus made him different. His eyes gleamed and the muscles in his face tightened. He studied me again, then rolled back to his desk and leaned toward me.
“This is the thing. The guy in line after the kid, he took a look in the coffee can while we were having our little discussion. I remember what he said because most of our customers aren’t knowledgeable about reptiles, and even the serious ones aren’t generally familiar with the Latin. He looked in the can and said, ‘Not horridus. It’s viridis.’ ”
“Describe him.”
His eyes were alive now, sharply focused and intently registering my face. “It was a busy day at the counter and that’s not the kind of work I enjoy about this business. I’m not a people person — I’m a reptile person. But I remember him as average height, on the thin side, short brown hair, kind of wavy maybe, coat and tie. He had a beard and mustaches, neat and trimmed. The beard was darker than his hair. Early thirties. Glasses. The overall impression I had was of gentleness. Hesitance. Shyness. Kind of like an academic type. He struck me — but remember this was just a quick impression — as being... meek.”
My heart was thumping. I felt that wonderful hyperalertness that adrenaline brings. This could be it.
“How well do you remember his face?”
“Not real well. The facial hair hid his features. Plus... well, he was just kind of forgettable looking.”
“What else?”
“That’s all I remember about him.”
“What did he buy?”
“Oh, right. He bought rats, mice and rabbits. He wanted them all alive. I don’t know how many, but quite a few — over twenty in all. I remember thinking he was feeding a fairly good-sized collection.”
“You can buy them dead or alive?”
“We’ll fresh-kill them for the customers, if they want. Or we have them frozen.”
“What else did he buy?”
“That was all.”
“Had you seen him before? Or since?”
Steve shook his head.
“When you remember him, is it a clear picture, one you could describe to a police artist?”
“It’s fairly clear. I’m a good observer. But like I said, he was kind of... nondescript.”
I told him about one of our artists, an extremely talented woman named Amanda Aguilar. Steve said he’d be willing to work with her, but really, he couldn’t remember much detail. I told him she could be at Prehistoric Pets at five-thirty, when he got off work. If possible, I like to have witnesses describe suspects to artists in the same setting where they saw them. It helps.
“How did he pay?”
“I don’t remember. I can check, but it would take some time.”
I leaned forward now, too. “Steve, I don’t have any time. He’s taken two girls and he’ll take more. I need you to find that record for me and I need you to find it now. Can you help?”
“You’re damned right I can.”
I went outside and used my cell phone to call Amanda Aguilar. She’s a freelance artist now, not on staff. After Orange County’s notorious bankruptcy of ’94, we cut positions to save money, and our full-time artists were lost. Amanda said she would be happy for work. I thought of the fat CAY budget I’d submitted to Jim Wade just weeks ago, and felt a pang of guilt when I realized that hiring back Amanda wasn’t a part of it. She agreed to be there at the end of Steve’s workday. I told her that Steve’s man would have a beard, and that I wanted one sketch with the beard and one without; and one with glasses and another without, also.
“Then we’re fishing,” she said.
“We are.”
When I got back to the Prehistoric Pets office, he had the sales slip. Four rabbits, ten rats, ten mice. Paid in full with cash on the sixteenth of March. Steve was smiling, for the first time since I’d introduced myself.
I pondered the odd purchase, then asked to see where the transaction took place. We went back out to the island counter and Steve took me inside. There were bins that slid under the space below the top. There were long shallow ones for newborn mice, taller ones for mature rats and deeper ones still for the rabbits. There were cardboard boxes for crickets and mealworms. At the counter, a young man ordered three large rats, fresh killed. The clerk pulled out the rat bin, lifted a big white animal and, holding fast to the tail with his left hand, used his right thumb and forefinger to form a collar behind the rat’s head, then yanked away from his body, hard. The rodent shrieked — a genuinely disturbing sound — and was dropped into a paper shopping bag. Splat. Then, two more. Steve looked on without apparent emotion.
“Why do some want live ones, and some dead?” I asked.
“It’s safer for the reptile if the prey is dead.”
“Can’t they kill them on their own?”
“Sure. But rats and mice have killed plenty of snakes, too. It’s just a precaution.”
The next customer wanted fifty small crickets. I watched the clerk fill the bag with crickets, then air from a pump, then tie off the top.
I asked Steve what he could tell me about our mutual friend’s collection, based on the food he’d purchased.
He nodded and led me out of the island and along the back wall of cages. “The rabbits are for big snakes, probably constrictors,” he said. “I’d guess seven feet and longer. If you keep a retic or a burmese python long enough, they’ll get fifteen, twenty feet long. A snake like that would need a lot of food — say, two rabbits a week, maybe three or four. The rats don’t really reveal that much, reptilewise. Most mid-sized snakes will take them. The mice are for smaller reptiles — most of the California native snakes live on mice. The fact that he was feeding his collection back in March means they weren’t in brumation—”
“—Brumation?”
“Hibernation. Or ‘overwintering.’ Basically, just cooling them off. Collectors will do that if they’re breeding reptiles. Sometimes they’ll do it just to replicate nature’s seasons. When the snakes are brumating, they don’t eat. So, this guy’s animals were eating. They were active.”
“What would adult timber rattlers eat?”
“Mice and rats. A big adult might take small rabbits but the rats are more economical.”
We arrived at the pond with the catfish and the turtles in it. Steve took a handful of food pellets from the dispenser and gave them to me. I tossed a few in, and watched the fish bend to take mem. I tossed a few more toward a turtle that was away from the group, over in the corner alone.
I was thinking. “You’ve only seen this guy once. He’s got a good-sized collection that’s active. He’s got to feed them every week or so. That means he’s getting food somewhere else, right?”