Blood of Cain

24

The taxi driver looked up in the rearview mirror and said, “This is it. Gibsonton. Know where you wanna go?”

Courtney nodded. “Just let me out at the corner.”

“You have family here?”

“No.”

“Okay. The corner seems like as good a place as any in Gibtown. I don’t get too many customers comin’ out here. They got some funky zoning laws in this town. They call it residential business zoning, which means you can keep a freakin’ elephant in your yard. The town’s made up of mostly all carny and circus people, retirees and whatnot. Used to be a hellava lot of ‘em back in the fifties. At one time, the fire chief of Gibtown was an eight-foot giant, and the police chief was a three-foot midget. My old man once told me he pulled up to a traffic light here, and in the lane next to him was the Bearded Woman behind the handle bars of a motorcycle and sitting in the sidecar next to her was the Lobster Boy.”

The taxi eased to a stop at the corner of Maggie Street and Alice Avenue. Courtney paid the fare and the got out. She walked west through a neighborhood of 1950’s-style ranch homes, some with remnants of Dodge-‘em cars and rusting animal cages in the front yards — yards filled with crabgrass, weeds, and decomposing monuments to the sideshows of a departed era in America.

Within three blocks, she was standing at the entrance to ShowTown Fish Camp. She walked down a dirt and gravel road, pockets of dark shade cast from thick oaks and long-leaf pine trees, green acorns scattered underfoot. There were about a dozen 1950’s vintage Airstream trailers, their shiny humpback exteriors smudged from age and tree sap. Cicadas hummed in the branches, and a mockingbird darted through the dappled light and low-hanging limbs, following Courtney with a series of vigilant screeches, each one sounding different.

The office was a small, free-standing cinderblock building, Army-green paint peeling from the blocks, large sunflowers on either side of the screened front door. A bumblebee hovered above one flower, the drone from its wings as loud as the cicadas in the trees. A dog barked somewhere behind the building. Courtney entered the dimly lit office, the smell of cigarettes and bug spray in the room. The walls were made from shellacked board cypress, adorned with carnival posters and old black and white framed photos of carny icons, the world’s smallest woman, Samantha, and the Siamese twins.

A television was on in the back room. Courtney rang the bell on the front-desk counter.

“Behind you,” came a man’s voice.

Courtney turned around and saw a dwarf with a snake draped over his shoulders. The little man had a bulbous red nose, a bald head dotted with age spots the color and size of pennies, and thick arched eyebrows over sorcerous dark eyes. He wore a purple and gold vest, Bermuda shorts, and no shoes. His long toenails resembled the talons of a hawk, curled and the shade of mustard. The dwarf stroked the snake’s yellow and white skin, its black tongue coiling in and out of its mouth, eyes like red pearls. The man and said, “Welcome to Gibtown, the best-kept secret on Florida’s west coast.”

“Are you the manager?

“At your service, Courtney.”

“How’d you know my name?”

“I knew of your description from my dear friend Isaac. I figured you have to be Courtney Burke. I’m Boots Langley. Don’t let my size trick you. Although I don’t have Samson’s girth or prowess, I do have his inner strength, or so I’ve been told.”

“What kind of snake is that?”

“A ball python. She’s an albino. That’s why her eyes are red as rubies. I was just about to feed Sheba a fat rat. Would you like to watch? Most people do like to watch, you know. They say they don’t, but in reality they enjoy seeing the life literally squeezed from vermin. Maybe it’s the shrieks from the dying rat, too. Would the same sentiment prevail if the dinner was … umm … a cat, the natural-born adversary of the mouse?”

“I hope not. I love cats.”

“But do cats love you? Is the feline brain capable of emotional attachment, let alone love? We humans perform janitorial work for cats, and what is their reciprocity, beyond sitting atop a piano and refusing to socialize unless it’s caused by a culinary bribe. ALF was one of my favorite TV shows.”

“Isaac said you were a little different?”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Courtney smiled.

“Isaac told me what happened. How does a young woman like you get in the middle of not one, but two killings? You seem like a dove. Are you a hawk at heart?”

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

Boots studied her for a moment, his eyes impish. “One of the former police chiefs in Gibtown used to say ‘sometimes some people needed a good killing.’ He kept the peace quite efficiently, I do recall. And he was shorter than me.” Boots’ tongue flickered once through his pursed lips like the snake around his shoulders.

Courtney blew out a breath. “Maybe I should go someplace else.”

“Butterfly, where are you going to go? As long as you weren’t followed, this is a great place to hide out. And you will, by no means, be the first seeking refugee here from the long arm of the law. Isaac told me Carlos Bandini is looking for you, too. I’d be more concerned about him than the police. Come, child. And since I’m older than dinosaur dirt, I can say that. I’ll show you your castle, not by the sea. But by a place known as Bullfrog Creek.”

Boots led Courtney through a curtain of multi-colored beads hanging in a doorway. They walked down a short hallway and onto a screened-in back porch overlooking a wide creek at the end of a long, sloping yard. Inside the enclosure was a rattan table and two chairs. Blooming petunias grew from three hanging baskets. A television, tuned to CNN, sat on a small wicker table in front of a brown rattan couch. In one corner, a large white cockatoo perched on a T-stand dropped a strawberry, and started barking like a dog.

Courtney smiled. “That bird … I heard barking just like that when I was walking up to the door. I thought it was a big dog. That’s amazing.”

Boots smiled, his eyes playful. “Shhh, don’t let her hear that she’s not a dog. I had a Rottweiler for six years. Clementine, up there on her perch, sounds identical to my sweet Eve before her untimely death.”

Courtney looked at the snake, its eyes trained on the cockatoo rocking back and forth on the stand. “What happened to your dog?”

“The serpent got to her.”

“What? Your snake?”

“No, not Sheba, of course. It was a moccasin down by the creek. The serpent struck Eve on her chest. It was sort of a debauched homecoming in a post-Eden kind of way, I suppose.” He stroked the snake’s head. “I worked circuses, carnivals, and sideshows for fifty years. I bought this property in 1975 with the intent to retire here, rent out a few trailers, fish, and watch sunsets over the Gulf of Mexico.” He pointed to an Airstream trailer down by the creek. “That trailer is yours. It’s the most remote one I have. Sits less than twenty feet from the creek. Stay as long as you want. Isaac vouches for you, and that’s more than good enough for me.”

“Thank you.”

“Just be mindful of water moccasins. Especially at night.”

As they turned to walk out the door, a news anchor on CNN said, “In Florida, police have a manhunt underway for a young woman who is a suspect in two murder cases. Both are involving carnival workers who were killed. Police are searching for nineteen-year-old Courtney Burke, last seen at the county fairgrounds not far from Daytona Beach. Investigators haven’t officially confirmed whether she’s also a suspect in the deaths of two more carnival workers earlier this year. If so, she would be one of the youngest female serial killers in the nation’s history.”

Courtney stared at the TV screen. “Oh my God! That’s so wrong. I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

“Come, I need to hear your story. You’ll be safe for a while here. But people talk. Stay in your trailer as much as possible. Another thing, if you ever hear Clementine barking real fast, consider that a warning. She has a slow bark which you heard when you were arriving. Her fast bark is when danger is closer. She may be able to imitate sounds, but in her tiny bird brain she has a sixth sense about real threats. Heed her warning.”