Authors: Carlene Thompson
No, it wasn’t the boom box alone, he’d thought, suddenly pumping with adrenaline. There was all that stuff about “Snake Charmer.” Damn Dara Prince for starting that nickname. And who had told Winter about it?
Christine Ireland, that’s who. He remembered Sloane Caldwell going up to her and Jeremy after the funeral and her ignoring Caldwell to go tearing over to Deputy Winter and begin whispering urgently. Sloane had looked after her, clearly offended at being dismissed. Then that idiot Jeremy had blared out that Dara had called Travis Snake Charmer. He’d said that Travis didn’t like him, but he’d
sure
liked Dara.
That guy should have been institutionalized, Travis had thought savagely as he poured a shot of bourbon in a drinking glass and gulped it down. He didn’t care how unfashionable his ideas about treatment of the intellectually “inferior” were. He couldn’t stand them. They made his flesh crawl. Especially one like Jeremy, who looked so normal, even downright handsome, but was so lacking, so stunted intellectually and emotionally, and no doubt also a sexual pervert. He’d decided in that moment of fury at Jeremy that he would never be allowed to see Jan again. No matter what Bethany said, no matter what she did. Jeremy Ireland could never come
near
his little girl without serious consequences.
He poured another shot of bourbon, tramping back to his study room, breathing hard as he thought about damned Jeremy. And
Christine
. How much had Dara spewed out to her about him? How much had Christine been carrying around with her for three years and never said a word? Certainly it couldn’t have been much.
Or could it? He’d never disliked Christine, but he’d never trusted her, either. For one thing, she’d always seemed immune to his sex appeal, and that offended him. For another, she was too devoted to her brother. It was unnatural. Christine and Jeremy. What a pair. And they’d been the ones to find Dara’s diary.
When Travis learned the diary had been found, he’d been terrified. He’d wondered what was in it. He would
have stopped Christine from giving it to the police any way he could. But he couldn’t. Now, as he downed his second shot of bourbon after Winter’s visit, he wondered dismally what was coming at him because of that cursed diary. Was his whole world going to crash around him? Would he lose Jan and Bethany and all the security being married to a rich woman had brought him the last few years?
He sat gloomily behind his desk. He had work to do. Papers to grade. But he sure as hell couldn’t concentrate on grading now. He couldn’t read; he couldn’t watch television. His entire day was ruined. There was only one thing that could divert him. His snakes.
He started to open the drawer where he kept the keys to the snake house, then noticed that it wasn’t closed tight. Jan, he thought in alarm. Jan had been messing around in here and had gotten the keys. . . .
But both sets of keys rested in their usual places. He just hadn’t completely shut the drawer the last time he used the keys, he thought. He’d have to be more careful. Really, since Jan was getting older, he should keep this drawer locked, so she couldn’t even touch the keys.
As depressed as he’d ever been in his life, Travis grabbed a set of keys, looked in on a peacefully sleeping Jan, then walked back to his snake house. He opened the padlock, the dead bolt, and the regular door lock and stepped into what he called the entrance room. Here he kept the insects and rodents he fed the snakes. He also kept medical supplies. Vaseline and alcohol for ticks. Insecticides for mites. Sulfa drugs for mouth rot. Ivermectin and praziquantel for internal parasites. Penicillin and tetracycline for respiratory ailments. After all, the creatures had only one working lung. No veterinarians in Winston would treat poisonous snakes, so Travis had learned to perform his own medical care, and he was a good diagnostician if he did say so himself.
Travis walked into the main room. He wasn’t sure what made him stop in his tracks. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary at first, but something felt wrong. Very wrong. He stood still, listening. A whisper of sound came somewhere from his right. He looked over. A cage door was open. The cage door of the diamondback rattlesnake.
Never in the twenty years he’d been handling snakes had Travis carelessly left a cage door open. His father, who had passed on his love of snakes to Travis, had also passed on his absolute vigilance about their handling and maintenance. And Travis had learned well.
Heedfulness
had seemed etched in his brain. He knew he had not left that cage door open.
No time to worry about the cage door right now, he told himself. The important thing was to get the rattler back in his cage. The fluorescent lights were strong in here and the snake was large. “Hey, Hugh!” he called the badtempered, highly venomous snake he’d named after his father-in-law. “How about a rattle to let me know where you are?” Nothing.
Travis’s heart had picked up its pace. He looked around and froze. The triangular-headed death adder was not in its cage, either. What the hell was this? His gaze shot from cage to cage. No black tiger snake, no desert horned viper . . .
Maybe someone had gotten in here and stolen the snakes. If that was the case, he’d be furious. He might never get them back. But it would be better than—
Behind him he heard a hissing noise so loud it sounded like a car tire deflating. Travis actually let out a tiny shriek and jumped as he realized he was hearing the distinctive noise of the Gaboon viper, the species with the longest fangs of any venomous snake. Then pain seared his ankle. He looked down to see his tan-and-rust-colored pine snake sinking its fangs into his ankle.
He had to get out of here. He didn’t have a second to lose with all these snakes on the loose. He shook off the pine snake and made for the entrance room, for the door. Already his leg felt as if fire traveled from the ankle to the knee, but he wasn’t about to take time to stop the spread of the venom. Too many other poisonous snakes were on the loose.
He reached the door and flipped open the inner lock. The doorknob turned easily. Five seconds, he thought. Five seconds and I’ll be safe.
But the door wouldn’t open.
He turned the knob again. Nothing wrong there. He pushed on the door, but it didn’t give. And then it hit him. Someone had clicked shut the outside padlock he’d left hanging loose. Jan? Jan never came near the snake house.
No. No, the padlock could not be shut. Travis lurched against the door again and again. No, his mind screamed. No! Dear God,
no
!
Finally he heard the rattle of the diamondback. He whirled away from the door and headed for a long metal table in the middle of the room where he administered medications to the snakes. If he could climb on top . . .
He went down with a crash and realized he’d stepped on his own shoelace. Of all the damned stupid—
Pain scorched up his right hand into the wrist. The black tiger snake had struck, its head rising from its big body and the neck it spread when alarmed. When he looked at it from eye level, it seemed gigantic. And it didn’t just look deadly—it
was
.
Two bites. I can recover from two bites, Travis thought. He knew not to suck on the wounds, because oral flora could enter them, making things even worse by spreading the venom to his upper digestive tract. Local hospitals weren’t experienced with treating bites of exotic snakes, but they could contact a poison control
center. And he knew other things to do. He needed antibiotics and a tetanus shot. And he needed antivenin. But before the administration of antivenin, he needed an intravenous dosage of an antihistamine to limit an acute reaction to it. He had some of the medications he needed in a refrigerator, but he couldn’t begin to adequately care for himself while trying to escape the snakes on the loose.
“Bethany!” he screamed in the hope that she hadn’t stayed long at her father’s. “Beth, help me!”
But even if she was home, could she hear him? And what about the padlock? She would have to get the second set of keys, because one set was in his pocket. Or she could break it. There were rocks outside. One good blow could smash open that padlock and he’d be free. Now he had to get to the table, partially out of harm’s way—
“God!” he screamed. More pain. The death adder was at his thigh. It struck, drew back, and struck again. That leg was already blazing from the bite of the Gaboon viper. Travis made a weak effort to fling the snake off his leg. He didn’t look to see whether or not he’d been successful. He dragged himself to the metal table and grabbed one of its legs. He looked up. The tabletop seemed to loom fifty feet above him. He’d never make it up there. Never.
His whole body burned with pain. And he was so weak. And dizzy. But his mind still functioned. With horror he thought of what was going on inside him right now. Different venom had different effects. Some would be causing small hemorrhages. Others were killing healthy tissue, while some were depressing cardiac function. And then there were the ones blocking nerve impulses. If he didn’t get help, he would become paralyzed and his heart would stop.
Already Travis knew he’d sustained too many bites
and too much time had passed for him to make a full recovery. Panic abruptly vanished, to be replaced by a deep melancholy. He would probably never smell fresh air again. He would never feel the silken touch of a woman as she made love to him. He would never again hug and kiss the love of his life, darling little Jan. Warm, helpless tears ran from the corners of his eyes.
“Help me,” he moaned weakly as he lay on the floor, giving up his effort to climb onto the table. It was too late now. “Oh, God, please help me.”
His cloudy gaze traveled up to light, the sunlight pouring in through one of the unbreakable Lexan windows. He wasn’t sure if it was real or imagined, but there he saw the face of Bethany. She stared at him with her big brown eyes. “I’m sorry,” Travis murmured with his last, labored breaths. “I’m sorry for everything.”
According to the medical examiner’s office, there was no doubt that snake venom had caused Travis Burke’s death. No other signs of injury had been found on the hideously swollen corpse that had once been the handsome, charming professor. For a number of reasons, though, Michael Winter wasn’t satisfied.
For one, Travis Burke had been handling snakes since he was a teenager, almost twenty years. Everyone, even his wife, Bethany, who had hated his hobby, told Winter that Travis took every precaution he could. For another, Travis had just come under suspicion in the Patricia Prince case. Michael was always troubled by coincidences, and the timing of Travis’s bizarre accident was in Michael’s mind one hell of a coincidence.
Sheriff Teague was beside himself. He didn’t like trouble in his town. It meant he actually had to do something, although he was a master at delegating authority. His first move in this direction was to turn the Travis Burke case, which might prove to be a homicide, over to Michael Winter. After all, Winter had been the one who’d interrogated Burke
on the day of his death about the boom box found in the Prince barn loft. Less than twenty-four hours after Travis’s death, Michael found himself at the Burke house again.
Bethany Burke opened the door. Her long hair hung limply around her face, and dark circles surrounded her large brown eyes. Her face seemed thinner than it had at Patricia Prince’s funeral, if it were possible for a face to get thinner in one day. She gave him a tired, bleak look and invited him inside.
Michael had seen Christine Ireland’s car in the driveway when he pulled up. She and Jeremy sat on the couch Michael had occupied yesterday. Christine gave him a subdued greeting. Jeremy looked like a puppy ready to come over and lick him. Michael saw Christine blanch as she placed a restraining hand on her brother’s thigh after he’d blasted a delighted, “Hi, Deputy! Do you know who killed anyone yet?”
“No, Jeremy, I don’t,” Michael had said mildly. He turned to Bethany. “Could I see you alone for a few minutes? I have some questions.”
Christine rose abruptly. “Jeremy and I will be going.”
“Oh, please don’t! I want you to stay.” Bethany looked at Michael. “We went to my father’s right after . . .” She swallowed. “We had to because some of the snakes got out of the building when they went in for Travis. But Daddy’s cold has turned into the flu and I didn’t want to risk my daughter catching it. So we came back, but of course, Daddy couldn’t come. Tess can’t get here until later and I don’t want to be alone.”
“Christy and me could go in the kitchen and have some cake and coffee,” Jeremy said helpfully. “You wouldn’t believe how much food people have brought!”
“Standard procedure when a family member dies,” Bethany said dully. “You’re deluged with food when you least want to eat.”
Michael nodded. “All right. I don’t want to run off anyone.”
“Let’s go to the kitchen for a while, Jeremy,” Christine said. “You can have another piece of carrot cake.”
“Oh, great! I
love
carrot cake. I know there’s a bunch of Jell-O molds, but I don’t want any Jell-O. It’s squirmy.”
They disappeared with Jeremy still expounding on Jell-O. Bethany gave Winter a wan smile. “Thank you for letting them stay. They just got here.”
“I understand why you wouldn’t want to be alone right now.”
“Would you like something to drink?”
“No thanks, Mrs. Burke. I don’t want to take up more of your time than I have to. And I want to express my sympathy.”
“Thank you.” She gestured to the couch for him, then sat down in the armchair where her husband had sat the day before. “Travis was so strong. He always seemed indestructible to me, like my father. I just can’t believe this has happened.”
“I’m very sorry,” Michael said. He’d been called to the scene yesterday, but he hadn’t been able to question Bethany. She’d been hysterical and had to be sedated. But he’d seen Travis. He was barely recognizable from swelling and grotesque discoloration. “Mrs. Burke, when I arrived, the door to the snake house was shut and the padlock was closed.”
She winced. “Yes. I’d just gotten home from my father’s. I heard Travis screaming and I knew something was wrong. I just
knew
at least one of those horrible snakes had gotten out. So I looked through the window of the snake house. He was writhing on the floor. Snakes were all around him—” She shuddered. “I beat on the window, as if that would do any good. He looked up at
me. His eyes . . . they had a dying look. He was already mostly gone. Shaking. Contorting.” Her mouth trembled. “I ran to the door, but I couldn’t open it. The padlock was shut. I didn’t have a key. I just stood there and screamed like a ninny while my husband died.”