“Well, yes — it’s possible.”
He went on to explain that folklore and anecdotal literature were filled with unsubstantiated reports of snakes taking humans for food. But some of them were “reasonably authenticated” enough to be considered true. Three snakes — the anaconda of South America, the reticulated python and the African rock python — were the three most popular culprits. One report, he said, from Borneo, was documented well enough by local authorities to qualify as factual. There, a twenty-two-foot reticulated python had eaten a thirteen-year-old boy down by a stream. He said that the many reports of the African rock python predating humans were unlikely but possible, and usually involved children. He said that most of the incidents took place in remote villages and were all but impossible to authenticate. He added that lots of things happen in small villages that we in our cities rarely hear about, let alone believe.
“I examined an African python — dead, unfortunately — that contained a small leopard,” he said. “The specimen was thirteen feet long. If you doubled that length, which is possible in an older adult, you could conceive of it eating a small human. Entirely possible. But you have to understand that such instances would be aberrant. Humans are not their usual prey.”
“How, exactly, would they do it?”
“Like they eat anything else,” said Dee. “Surprise the prey. The teeth of big snakes can be quite long — maybe half an inch, and they hook backward, like some fish teeth. They’re quite sharp and they hold well. Their jaws are fairly strong. They kill by constriction — not by crushing bones, as people believe. Constrictors are immensely strong. The coils tighten and the victim can’t draw breath. It can happen quickly. Even the twelve-to-eighteen foot specimens we have here can require two or three men to handle them safely.”
“How big is the biggest snake you’ve got?”
“We have a twenty-two-foot retic from Indonesia. It takes four of us to handle it, if we have to.”
“What’s it eat?”
“Rabbits, ducks and pigs.”
I drove back to the Grantley house to wait for Sam Welborn.
Eighteen
I sat in room 21 of the Holiday Inn and stared for a while out the window. The sky had gone deep indigo and the breeze was still up. It was seven. Sam had invited me to the stock car races and I’d accepted, recklessly aware that I was disobeying still another order from my commander in chief. I figured, if they didn’t want me to go out and watch cars go around in circles, tough. Plus I’d had a nip or two from my bottle of tequila — I’d bought the second smallest one at the store, a pint — and its courage had begun to set in.
I called Donna but she was on assignment. I left a message from Skip on her voice mail. I called Melinda at home, and when Penny answered we talked very briefly. We were just getting past the hello, how are you stuff when Melinda cut in, asked me not to call the house like that and hung up. I still hadn’t thought of a way to tell Penny the truth without confusing and hurting her, so maybe it was just as well that Melinda cut us off. I resented Melinda for taking sides against me, but I respected what she had to do for Penny — maybe I would have done the same. I left another message for Johnny about the Gene Webb/Webster/Vonn/Grantley or Wanda Grantley home — told him to take the title search into Los Angeles and San Diego counties just to be safe. I blathered on about the Grantley house, Welborn, the great flat state of Texas. I was lonely. Johnny’s machine ran out of tape before I finished, so I had to call back to make sure he had it all, and to wish him good luck. I told him again that I thought they should release the drawing based on Brittany Elder’s description — the “sharp mean face” and the short white hair. After seeing the remains of Mary Lou Kidder, I was in favor of all the proaction we could muster: smoke him out, make him flinch, rattle his cage. I knew the risks, but I thought they were worth taking. I left the same information with Louis, just to double-cover. I did all this in the name of Frank. It made me mad to have to slink around the world as different people. It was demeaning and it implied guilt. That was one thing I wasn’t ready to shoulder, not on the scale that I was being asked to by... Ishmael? A Wade-Vega-Woolton cabal? I. R. Shroud?
Sam picked me up at seven-thirty and we rode out to the track in his sedan.
We sat in the grandstand and watched the cars go by. Sam waved to a half-dozen people on our way up the steps. We had hot dogs and giant beers and the captain had an extra cup for his dip. He had a friend driving in the third race.
“These things’ll get up to ninety-five on the straights,” he said, staring straight ahead as the cars spun past. He hadn’t said much on the way here and I knew why: the sight of Mary Lou Kidder had damaged him.
“You a family man, Terry?”
“Divorced. Had a son but he died when he was five.”
Sam turned and looked at me with his wide, quizzical face. “I’m awful sorry to hear that. Don’t mean to be pryin’.”
“It’s all right.”
The stock cars roared under the lights. I liked the reverberations in my chest and the whining of rpms in my ears. Three cars almost piled up on turn three but they veered out of it in a chaos of white smoke. The Copenhagen Smokeless Tobacco car — irony noted — came out ahead of the Budweiser and Marlboro cars and banked low and fast into the straight to build a two-length lead.
“That’s one of the reasons I started up the Crimes Against Youth unit,” I said. “For my son. Kind of like a tribute to him, or a memorial.”
Sam nodded.
I don’t know why I say things like that sometimes, usually to friendly strangers, bartenders, people I might like a little but don’t really know. It just comes out. Sometimes I say things just to see if I believe them or not.
“Was he a victim, your boy?”
“An embolism while he was swimming,” I lied. “It was an accident.”
“Shame, Terry.”
“You keep them alive inside, somehow.”
“I got three girls, and they’re the best things in my life. Them and their mother. Don’t know what I’d do if something happened to one of them.”
“I know exactly how you feel.”
“You see that Ford out there, the blue one? The guy that built those engines is a buddy of mine. Buck. He’s been workin’ on cars since he was about four. Think he could rebuild a Ford motor blindfolded if he had to.”
The blue Mustang was running fourth now, right up behind the Marlboro Camaro.
I offered Sam the tequila but he shook his head. “Don’t like the hard stuff anymore.”
I nipped and tucked.
“You mind telling me how a guy could feed a six-year-old girl to a snake? I just don’t get it, Terry.”
“I don’t either. Criminal scientists would say that he’s living out his fantasies.”
“Who’s got a fantasy like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s that really mean, though? Living out a fantasy?”
“In basic terms — it means getting off.”
He turned and looked at me again, then shook his head. “Sex?”
“Yeah.”
“Ah, man. Does he have sex with them first?”
“We’ll probably never know on Mary Lou, but I’d guess he did. In Orange County, he isn’t. He isn’t killing them, either. He takes them for a few hours, then lets them go out where there’s no people. He dresses them in old clothes, girls’ clothes — that’s what led us to Wichita Falls in the first place. And he puts these... well, these lacy kind of... robes on them. And he puts hoods on them. I suspect he photographs or tape-records them. Then he lets them go. And they wander around until someone finds them.”