A new watchfulness came into Tarver's eyes. "Yes?"
"I knew today would upset you. Especially the stuff about Morse."
"And?"
"Because of that, I felt I had to take steps to protect myself."
The doctor's eyelids dropped like those of some South American lizard sunning itself on a stucco wall. "What did you do, Andrew?"
"Take it easy, Eldon. All I did was make a simple and absolutely safe arrangement whereby if I don't do a certain thing every day, certain events will be set in motion." Rusk heard his voice quavering, but he had to go on. If he didn't, he'd never get it out. "Events which would insure you going to prison for multiple murder."
A strange light had come into the half-lidded eyes. "Don't tell me that you left some sort of confession with your attorney? Or put something in a safe-deposit box somewhere?"
"No, no, it's much more discreet than that! And much more reliable."
"What if you happen to die accidentally?"
"You'll have a couple of days to get out of the country. No more, though. And that's not so bad. We're already set up like kings. You'd just be leaving a little earlier, that's all. The bottom line is this: you can't kill me and stay in America. But why would you want to kill me? I'm making you more money than you could get any other way."
Tarver was breathing in long, rhythmic respirations. "That's not true. Your idea of wealth is very provincial, Andrew. The profits from my research will dwarf what we've earned. I consider our little operations piecework, like a student cutting lawns during medical school."
For some reason this irritated Rusk, who believed what they were doing to be a revolutionary business. But he didn't argue the point. He was still looking at the bag. There was definitely something alive in it.
"I need to get back to the city," he said.
Tarver reached down and unzipped the Nike bag. "Your idea of a city is provincial also. Jackson, Mississippi…my God."
As Rusk edged away from the fire, something black and yellow emerged from the opened zipper of the bag. It looked like a lizard's head. A black lizard with a yellow band across its head.
Too small for a Gila monster,
he thought,
unless it's a baby.
"Before you go," said Dr. Tarver, "tell me about the woman."
"The woman?" Rusk echoed, for some reason thinking of Janice and her muscular thighs.
"Alex Morse."
"Oh. She was a hostage negotiator for the Bureau. The best they had, until she fucked up."
"What was the nature of her mistake?"
"She let her emotions override her logic."
"A common pitfall." With an almost balletic fluidity, Tarver reached behind the black and yellow head and lifted a brilliantly colored snake from the bag.
Oh, shit…
The narrow, brightly banded tail was twenty inches long, and it coiled around Tarver's arm as though around the trunk of some pale, hairy tree. Rusk stared at the alternating bands:
red, yellow, black; red, yellow, black
—
His blood pressure dropped so rapidly that he thought he might faint. It was a goddamned
coral snake.
A stone-fucking killer! Unless, unless…there was a king snake that looked almost exactly like the coral.
The scarlet king snake!
He remembered a story about some guys scaring the piss out of a pledge with one during Hell Week. He tried to remember the rhyme he'd learned as a Boy Scout:
Red over yellow…kill a fellow?
Was that it?
Red over black, friend to Jack?
If he was right, then Eldon Tarver was holding a goddamn coral snake in his hand as casually as Rusk would hold a kitten.
"Where did you get that fucking thing?" Rusk asked in a quavering voice.
"I found him this morning. He's a shy fellow, like all his kind."
"He came right on out of that bag when you opened it."
Tarver smiled. "I think he wanted to warm himself in the sun. He's cold-blooded, remember?"
Just like you, you crazy motherfucker.
"Is Agent Morse married?" Tarver asked.
"Never."
"Interesting. Children?"
"Just the nephew, Fennell's boy."
"Are they close?"
"Very."
Dr. Tarver seemed lost in thought.
He's a rough old cob,
Rusk thought. Not freakishly ugly—except for the birthmark—but repulsive in small ways. He had big pores, for one thing. If you looked closely at his face, it was like looking onto a landscape of holes, like interior lining on the roof of an old Volkswagen. And he was pale the whole year round, as though the relentless Mississippi sun had no effect on him.
"Oh, one more thing," Rusk said. "I've got a potential client tomorrow. This guy is a total redneck, but there's nothing provincial about his bank account. And I know for a fact that he hates his wife. She might consult one of the local divorce sharks any day now, but Lisa tells me she hasn't yet. Any reason I shouldn't pitch him if he looks likely?"
"Greedy boy. What's the potential take?"
"We could each clear a million, I think."
Dr. Tarver held the snake's head mere inches from his eyes. "Really?"
"Hell, yes. It would cost him ten times that to get divorced."
"Then do it."
"No worries about Braid?"
Tarver shook his head. "Forget Braid. Focus on your sales presentation. That's your gift, Andrew. Sales."
Rusk laughed genuinely this time, partly because it was true, and partly because Tarver's last remark indicated that the doctor saw a future for him—one that did not include the coral snake coiled around his forearm. Rusk wondered absently if William Braid had a blind date with that snake, but the truth was, he didn't want to know. Snakes gave him the fucking willies, if he was honest about it. Even from a distance. "I really need to go."
Tarver smiled. "Say good-bye to my little friend."
Rusk shook his head. "No thanks."
"Take some tenderloin with you. For your ride back."
"Not hungry." Rusk had already backed fifteen yards away from the fire. "How will I know that Braid has been taken care of?"
Irritation flashed in Tarver's blue eyes. "Have I ever promised anything that did not become fact?"
"No. My mistake."
"Go away, Andrew. And remember—two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I want uncut stones—white crystals, but not that flashy stash you use to seduce college girls."
"Uncut white crystals," Rusk acknowledged, finally in the trees now. "You'll have them next week."
Tarver was mostly a silhouette now, but Rusk saw him hold up the arm with the coral snake coiled around it.
"I will indeed,"
he called.
Rusk turned and started running.
CHAPTER 15
Chris had been working nonstop for hours. The last face he expected to see when he walked into his private office for a break was his wife's. Thora was sitting behind his desk, typing on the keypad of her Treo. She wore blue silk pants and a white silk top so fine that he could see through it. At the rustle of his white coat, she looked up and gave him a brilliant smile.
"Hey," he said. "What are you doing here?"
She started to answer, but then her eyes clouded. "Chris? Are you all right?"
"Sure. Why?"
"You look green, baby. What's the matter?"
He closed the door behind him. "I just diagnosed a fifty-five-year-old woman with advanced carcinoma of the lung. She was a friend of my mother's when we lived in Natchez."
Thora pulled off the pale blue scarf she was wearing in her hair and laid it on the desk. "I'm sorry. I know that kind of thing tears you up."
"I'm really glad to see you. I'm just surprised."
"Well, I happened to be driving past on the highway, so I turned in here to see your face and get a kiss." She got up and came around the desk, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on the cheek. "Sit down."
He did. Thora moved behind him and began rubbing his shoulders. The soft scent of perfume reached him, and soon he was back in his studio, in the moments before she made love to him last night.
"Feel good?"
"This job really sucks sometimes."
"That's because you let it in. Doctors like my father shut it all out. They come in for the cutting, then take their check and move on."
Shane Lansing rose into Chris's mind: Lansing shared that trait with Lars Rayner.
"Relax," Thora said softly. "Just for a minute."
"I'm trying."
She kneaded the base of his neck, trying to ease his tension. He tried to go with it, but mostly to please her. A massage wasn't going to resolve any of his current problems.
"Oh, I ate lunch with Laura Canning at Planet Thailand," Thora said. "She told me the Alluvian had a cancellation this morning. They gave us reservations for the next three nights. The only catch is that we have to stay together—as in the
same room
together."
Chris leaned back and looked up at her inverted face. "You mean you're driving up there today?"
"No, no, tomorrow night. We won't leave until tomorrow morning."
He leaned forward again, absorbing this in silence.
"Don't worry, I'll still take Ben to school, and Mrs. Johnson can take him to Cameron's birthday party, if you can't get away."
Chris had completely forgotten the birthday party: a bowling party, like so many held by Ben's classmates.
Thora came around the chair and sat on the desk. His mood had deflated her excitement, but she looked more concerned than irritated.
"You're pretty quiet," she said, her eyes intense.
He wished he could do something about his mood, but after Alex Morse's accusations and a morning of dealing with terminal illness, it was tough to get excited about vacation plans. As he looked at Thora propped on the desk, something struck him with odd force. He'd actually noticed it last night, but his starved libido had relegated it to minor importance.
"How much weight have you lost?" he asked, staring at her concave belly beneath the silk top.
Thora looked flustered. "What?"
"Seriously. You look too thin."
A little laugh. "That's what running does to you."
"I know. And it can be unhealthy. Are you still menstruating normally?"
"I had a period two weeks ago."
Chris tried to remember any signs that this was true. "I want you to go in the hall and let Holly weigh you."
Thora reached down and squeezed his thigh. "You're being silly, Chris."
"No, I'm being serious. Come on," he said, standing, "I'll weigh you myself. I want to draw some blood, too."
"Blood?" Thora looked stunned. "No way."
"Look, you hardly ever come to the office. When was the last time you had a complete physical?"
She thought about it. "I can't remember. But Mike Kaufman checked me out during my last gyno visit."
"That was more of a focused exam. I'm worried about your general health. Plus, you weren't running nearly as much when Mike looked at you. That could be interfering with your ability to conceive."
Thora looked sober but said nothing.
"What are you worried about?" he asked with genuine concern.
"Nothing. I just don't like needles. You know that."
"That's no reason to put it off. Come on." He took her by the arm and walked her out to Holly's nurse's station. Leaving her sandals on, Thora stepped up onto the medical scale. Chris shook his head and told her to take the sandals off. After she did, he worked the black iron balances until the bar settled into a level position.
"A hundred and eleven pounds," he said. "How much did you weigh when we got married?"
Thora shrugged. "I don't remember."
"I do. A hundred and twenty-six."
"I never weighed that in my life."
Chris chuckled. She was definitely lying about that, but there was nothing sinister in it. "You're five feet six, Thora. You don't need to lose fifteen pounds when your starting point is one twenty-six."
She sighed and stepped off the scale.
Chris knew he'd never get her down the hall to the lab, so he sat her down and fastened a blood-pressure cuff around her upper arm. After he'd pumped it up, he dug into Holly's bottom drawer and took out one of the syringes she used for injections.
"Hey!" Thora cried. "What do you think you're doing with that?"
"Just sit back and be calm. I'm very good with a needle."
"He is," said Holly from behind him. "He could find a vein on an overweight elephant."
"I'm not sure that's relevant here," Thora said. "What gauge needle is that?"
"A twenty-one," said Chris.
She grimaced. "Can't I have a twenty-three?"
"Stop being a baby. Most people get twenty-ones, you know."
"I'm not most people." She pulled her arm away at first, but after a few evasions she sat back and let him draw ten ccs of dark venous blood into the barrel of the syringe. If they were in the lab, he would have filled several tubes, but this was better than nothing. "God," Thora said, clenching her inner elbow to facilitate clotting. "I come in for a kiss and I get violated instead. No wonder I don't come here very much."
Chris laughed, but he was thinking that something he'd always suspected about Thora's attitude toward his office was true: it reminded her of her father in some way, and she didn't want to be around it. "I thought you liked me violating you," he said.
"Not today." She got up and walked back toward his office.
When Chris got there, she had put her scarf back on and was slipping her Treo into her purse. "I've got a lot to do to get ready for my trip," she said, coming to the door.
"Will you be home when I pick up Ben?" he asked. "We've got baseball practice today."
"Practice?" Thora's eyes narrowed. "Ben has a game tonight, Chris. You're playing last year's championship team."
"Jesus, you're right."
Thora laughed with real pleasure. "I can't believe you forgot and I remembered. The world must be rotating backwards today."
"After the morning I've had, it wouldn't surprise me. I hope the rest of the day is better."