True Evil

CHAPTER 24

Alex turned left out of the driveway across from Chris's house and headed toward Highway 61. It was nearly a mile to the turn, with much of the narrow lane threading between high, wooded banks. Thankfully, she didn't see a single headlight on the road, nor any vehicles parked in the darkness on the few driveways she passed.

Turning north on 61, she soon passed St. Stephen's Prep, then half a mile farther the Days Inn. She felt an impulse to stop and get her computer, but since she already had fresh clothes in the bag from her earlier trip, she decided to go on without stopping. If her mother died tonight, she could use Uncle Will's computers for any necessary e-mail. If by some miracle Margaret survived the night, then Alex would probably be back in Natchez by noon tomorrow.

As she passed the fork where Highway 84 veered away toward the Mississippi River, she realized that a pair of headlights was pacing her from behind. Her first thought was "cop," because the car seemed to have come up suddenly, then remained at a uniform distance behind. He was probably radioing her tag in now. But after watching the lights for a while in her rearview mirror, Alex decided they were too high off the ground for a police cruiser. More probably a pickup truck or a van.

A Baptist church with a tall steeple drifted by on her right. Then the road narrowed to a single lane-construction where a new stretch of the Natchez Trace highway intersected Highway 61. Alex could see the Super Wal-Mart ahead on her left. She accelerated steadily, then whipped the Corolla across the oncoming lane of traffic and into the Wal-Mart lot.

The vehicle behind kept on at a constant rate of speed. As it passed the turn, she saw that it was indeed a van-a white van covered with patches of mud and primer. The driver's window appeared almost black. She didn't have the angle to see the license plate, but something told her that mud would be covering it.

She parked thirty yards from the store, the nose of the Corolla pointed toward the highway. What do I do now? she wondered. She could call the local police, complain of harassment, and have them stop the van-if they could find it-but she didn't want to do anything that would force her to reveal her FBI credentials if she could avoid it. But neither did she want to blindly begin a hundred-mile journey to Jackson over a mostly deserted highway. She needed to know if the van represented a real threat or an overactive imagination.

The idea that Grace's killer might be in that van was almost too much to hope for, but she cradled her Glock in her lap nevertheless. Occasional cars passed on the highway, and two turned into the parking lot, but she saw no further sign of the van.

"That's long enough," she said aloud.

She put the car in gear and drove out to the highway, but there she turned right instead of left, which would carry her away from Jackson. She hadn't gone more than fifty yards when an approaching vehicle made a U-turn between orange-and-white traffic barriers immediately after passing her. She hadn't seen the make, but she made a quick right turn anyway, which put her on Liberty Road. If memory served correctly, this road would take her past a few of the town's premier mansions, then into the heart of downtown.

A set of headlights appeared behind her. They sat high enough to be a van. She took the first right turn she came to, this time into what appeared to be a residential subdivision: tract homes that looked as though they'd been built in the 1950s. She gunned the motor for five seconds, then waited to see if the headlights followed her into the neighborhood. They slowed, stopped, then rolled into the road behind her.

Alex wrenched her wheel left, sped up a low incline, then took another left into a lane that wound beneath a pitch-black canopy of trees. A mansion like something out of a Technicolor period piece materialized out of the darkness on her left. She could almost see gray-clad officers and ladies in hoop skirts strolling across the wide veranda. She idled past the broad front steps, then accelerated and found herself at another intersection. She sensed this was the same road she had been on before, looping around the estate at the center of this strange subdivision. As she pondered which way to go, the high headlights floated toward her from behind.

Sensing that a left turn would carry her back to Liberty Road, she jerked the wheel right and sped around a curve that swept through 180 degrees. At the end of the curve, she turned left, then right, and reduced speed again. The headlights had fallen farther behind, but they were still there. There could be no doubt now.

She drove thirty more yards, then on impulse turned into a long driveway beside a one-story ranch house. The driveway actually ran past the house, which was set far back from the road. She shut off her engine and got out, moving quickly underneath a carport that held two American-made sedans. She'd worried that the occupants of the house might wake up, but no lights came on.

She cycled the slide on her Glock and waited.

The headlights glided up the road, then passed the driveway without slowing down. Alex leaned back against the clapboard wall, her pounding heart resonating through the wood. Was she going crazy? Her left hand went to the cell phone in her pocket. Who could she call? Chris? He couldn't leave Ben. Even if he did, he wasn't trained for this kind of situation. Will Kilmer was too far away to help. Christ, even if she called 911, she couldn't direct help to her exact position. She only knew where she was in general terms. In the last ten minutes, she had broken half the rules in the FBI book.

"They ought to fire me," she whispered.

Her heartbeat slowed steadily and, when no headlights appeared, stabilized at something like high normal. To pass the time, she counted the beats per minute: seventy-five. As she stood there waiting, it occurred to her that the driver of the van might only have been insuring that she was out of the way before attacking Chris.

"Fuck," she muttered, digging out her cell phone. She dialed Chris's cell phone, and this time, thankfully, he answered.

"Hey, you doing okay?" he asked.

"No. Listen to me. The white van followed me after I left your place. I'm parked in a neighborhood off Liberty Road, and he took off about five minutes ago. He couldn't be at your place yet, but it's possible that he could be headed there. Are you still in the studio?"

"Yeah."

"Your gun close by?"

"In my hand. Should I call the police?"

"It wouldn't hurt. You could just say you saw a prowler."

"I've done that before. It took fifteen minutes for anybody to show up. This is the country, not the city."

"Make the call now."

"Okay."

"I'll call you back in a few minutes."

"What are you going to do?"

"Find the van. Anybody approaches that studio, you shoot to kill."

"Alex-"

"I'm hanging up now."

She was reaching into her pocket for her keys when her threat radar redlined. There was no warning, no sound, nothing tangible to make her freeze-yet she had. Something had changed while she was on the phone. Her conscious mind had not registered it, but deep in her reptilian brain, some ancient sensor had been triggered. Adrenaline was flushing through her as though she had an infinite supply. It took all her self-control not to burst into panicked flight. A normal person would not have been able to resist the urge, but Alex's training had set deep; she knew that to run was to die.

Her heartrate had doubled. Thirty yards away, the asphalt street was dimly lit by the spill from a distant streetlight. The nearby houses had single bulbs on their porches, nothing more, and there was no moonlight to speak of. Her world was black and gray. She crouched and moved swiftly to the inside corner of the carport, sweeping the area with her Glock as she moved. It took an act of will not to push the doorbell button beside the screen door.

Her ears were attuned to the slightest sound, but she heard only the steady thrumming of air conditioners in the humid darkness. Then it came: a percussive skating sound, like a stone skipping across cement. Her pistol flew to the right, where the carport opened to the driveway. She stared into the blackness like a trapped miner searching for light. She stared so hard that she was almost entranced when a leather-gloved hand seized her throat.

Before she could react, another hand slammed her Glock against the carport wall. She fought with every fiber of muscle in her body, but her struggles had no effect. She couldn't even see her attacker; his enormous bulk blocked out the light. She tried to lunge upward with her right knee, but this only revealed the helplessness of her position. Her assailant had pinned her lower body against the wall. She tried to scream, but no air could escape her windpipe.

Think! What can you do? What weapon do you have? One free hand-

She struck again and again where she thought a face should be, savage blows, yet they had no effect. Her fist collided with flesh and bone, yet her attacker didn't even move to avoid her blows.

He was choking her to death. In seconds she would lose consciousness. Fear welled up with debilitating force: she was stunned to realize that it had no limit. It shot up into terror and rocketed free, like a missile breaking away from the earth's gravity. She tried to gouge the invisible eye sockets with her fingernails, but the man simply drew back his head, putting them out of reach. Had she heard an appreciative chuckle? Tears of rage blurred her eyes. The already faint image of the distant street began to go black…

A ringing crash of metal on metal heralded a barrage of canine fury. A huge dog had launched itself against the Cyclone fence at the end of the driveway. The animal was fifteen feet away, but his thunderous barking made an attack sound imminent. The grip at Alex's throat lessened for a moment, and the massive thigh pinning her to the wall torqued away. With all the strength left in her body, she twisted into the attacking shadow and hammered her knee into the apex of faint light at its center.

Testicles crushed beneath her knee, and an explosive grunt burst from the shadow. The grip at her throat loosened, and she screamed with the piercing shriek of a panicked five-year-old. Even the dog fell silent. But before she could exploit the instant of uncertainty, the glove closed around her throat with redoubled force, and the hand pinning her arm slid down toward her Glock.

If he gets my gun, I'm dead…

The hand tried to wrench the pistol from her grasp. In desperation she thrust her left hand deep into her pocket, dug past her cell phone, and jerked out her car keys. Raising her hand high, she stabbed again and again, like Norman Bates in Psycho. She felt the Glock tear loose from her hand, but her next blow struck something vital-something soft and yielding anyway-and a gasp of pain gave her hope. Praying she'd hit an eye, she whirled away from the blast of her Glock.

In the same instant, the carport light switched on.

What she saw disoriented her: not the face of a man, but a huge maroon shape sitting on a massive pair of shoulders. A door flew open behind her. A man shouted a warning, but the Glock flashed up to her face with eerie slowness and blotted out the light.

"Hey, miss? Hey! Are you okay?"

Alex blinked her eyes open and looked up at the face of a bald man wearing pajamas. In his right hand was a pump shotgun, in his left her Glock 23.

Her right hand flew to her face. There was blood there, lots of it. For a moment she was back at the Federal Reserve bank; she'd fallen on her back then, too, only the soundtrack had been the automatic weapons and grenades of the Hostage Rescue Team, not a Southern drawl uttered by a man in pajamas.

"Am I hit?" she asked. "I heard shots."

"You're not hit," said the man with the shotgun. "That fella fired one shot, but when I jammed my twelve-gauge through the door, he knew he'd better not shoot again. He slammed this pistol into your head, so I aimed my Remington center mass. He dropped the pistol and took off running."

"Did you see his face?"

"No, ma'am. He was wearing something on his head. Looked like a T-shirt or something. He looked like something out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre!"

Alex breathed deeply and tried to calm down. Her dilemma was simple: identify herself as an FBI agent or get the hell out of here. Her instincts told her to haul ass, but if her attacker turned out to be Grace's killer, she would have squandered a real opportunity to catch him.

"Did you call the police?" she asked.

"Hell, yes! They're on their way. The station ain't but a mile from here as the crow flies. What was that guy trying to do to you?"

Alex rolled over slowly, then got carefully to her feet. "Sir, I'm Special Agent Alex Morse of the FBI."

Pajama Man took a step back.

"My credentials are in my car."

"Maybe I ought to take a look at them."

As she retrieved her purse, a laser show of blue light ricocheted off the faces of the nearby houses. Then a squad car squealed to a stop in front of the house.

"Over here!" called Pajama Man. "In the driveway!"

Alex had her creds out when the cops trotted up. They were amazed to find an FBI agent at the end of their call. The homeowner's wife appeared and offered Alex a paper towel to wipe the blood from her face, which she did with enough theatrical toughness to impress local cops. She presented the situation as an attempted rape and practically ordered them to issue an APB for the white van. She repeatedly assured them that there was no chance of lifting fingerprints from her Glock, since her attacker had worn gloves, and in answer to their questions informed them that she was staying at the home of Dr. Christopher Shepard, an old friend from school. The last thing she wanted was Natchez cops walking into her room at the Days Inn and discovering what even rookie patrolmen would recognize as the tools and logs of a murder investigation. They practically insisted that she go to the emergency room to have her head laceration examined, but she protested that Chris Shepard could sew it up just as well and for free. When she promised to be available to answer questions in the morning, they were placated. After thanking Pajama Man repeatedly for saving her life-and leaving her cell number with the cops-Alex got into her car and drove past a crowd of shocked neighbors wearing nightclothes and back to Highway 61.

Her whole body was shivering. Delayed stress reaction, she thought. She pulled to the shoulder and took out her cell phone. Chris answered after six rings. She apologized for bothering him again, and then-before she could explain what had happened-she heard a sob escape her throat. It's the sleep deprivation, she thought. I haven't really slept in weeks-

"Where are you?" Chris asked.

"On the side of the road. In town. I think I need stitches."

"What happened?"

"I'll tell you in minute. I just…" She touched her face, which again was slick with blood.

"Can you get to my office?"

"Uh-huh."

"I'll meet you there in ten minutes."

"What about Ben?"

"I'll call Mrs. Johnson and tell her I have a medical emergency. She'll come."

Alex wiped the blood with her sleeve. "He's here, Chris. He's here."

"Who?"

"Him. The guy who killed Grace."

"Did he attack you?"

"He almost killed me."

"Did you see his face?"

"He wore a mask. Take Ben to Mrs. Johnson's, okay? Your house isn't safe. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"And bring your gun with you."

"I am. If you think you're going to pass out, drive to the ER at St. Catherine's."

"I'm all right. Just hurry."

Alex lay flat on her back, squinting up into a surgical light like a blue-white sun. Chris had already cleaned her wound. Now he was stitching beneath her eye with surprising slowness.

"This laceration runs through some existing scar tissue," he said. "I don't know what your plastic surgeon will think about my work, but I guess you don't want to broadcast this injury to the world by going to the ER."

"Exactly. Why did you dilute the Betadine when you cleaned the wound?"

"That's a new thing. At full strength, it kills white blood cells that speed the healing process. The first responders, microbiologically speaking."

Alex said nothing. In less than a minute, Chris had tied off the last stitch.

"You can get up when you feel like it," he said. "No rush."

She eased onto an elbow, making sure that her inner ear knew which way was up, then rose into a sitting position. "Thank you for doing this."

"You have no idea who this guy was?"

"No. The question is, was he after me or you?"

"I think that's pretty obvious," Chris said.

"No. There's a good chance he went to Elgin to kill you, but unexpectedly found me there."

Chris shook his head. "He's probably been on your tail all day. In your sleep-deprived state, you wouldn't have noticed a herd of elephants following you."

Alex got to her feet. "You're still in denial."

"One of us is. Where to now?" Chris asked. "You're not still planning to drive to Jackson, are you?"

"I don't know. But I'd like you to do me one favor, if you would."

"Sure."

"Come with me to the Days Inn to get my computer? It's not far away, and I really need it."

"What about the guy who attacked you?"

"I don't think he'll be there. That's only instinct, but I have faith in it."

Chris turned and set his instrument tray in a sink. "If you promise to stay the night at my house, I'll go with you."

When she hesitated, he said, "Obviously I'm not talking about anything improper."

"I know." She took out her cell phone and dialed Will Kilmer's cell. He answered after two rings. After she had explained the situation, Will practically ordered her to remain in Natchez. "I'm in the lounge now," he said wearily. "She's not even conscious, Alex. There's no change at all. Hell, Margaret's just liable to fool the doctors again. She's a tough old bird, like me."

Alex hung up and turned to Chris. "Your house it is. Let's go."

The Days Inn's parking lots were silent but well lit. Most of the vehicles parked there were pickup trucks or bigger rigs. Alex parked the Corolla four doors down from her room, then waited for Chris to pull up beside her in his pickup. He climbed out of his truck with his.38 in his hand.

"I really appreciate this," she whispered.

He laughed softly. "We used to eat Sunday dinner at this hotel sometimes when I was a kid. It used to be called the Belmont."

"Everything changes, I guess. Even small towns."

"Yeah, but slower. I like it that way."

She took out her room key and handed it to him. "The room's one twenty-five, right down there. I'd like you to unlock the door and turn the handle, but don't go in. I'll be right behind you, and I'm going in hard. If anything crazy happens, use your gun to protect yourself, not to help me. Just get away and call the police."

Chris stared at her in disbelief. "You're kidding, right?"

She gave him a deadly earnest look. "No. No Southern Neanderthal heroics."

"You don't know what you're missing."

He eased down the side of the building, then inserted the key and turned the handle. When Alex heard the mechanism open, she crashed through the door with her Glock leveled, sweeping it from side to side.

"Clear!" she called, moving toward the bathroom. Halfway there, she stopped cold. Grace's cat lay stretched on the carpet, its mouth open in a rictus of death. Alex saw no blood, but she knew that Meggie was dead. She started to kneel, but then she heard a sliding sound from behind the bathroom door.

"What the hell?" Chris cried from behind her.

Alex motioned toward the bathroom with her Glock, then waved Chris back. After he'd knelt behind the far bed, she yelled: "FEDERAL AGENT! THROW OUT YOUR WEAPON AND COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!"

Nothing happened.

"I'm Special Agent Alex Morse of the FBI! Come out or I'll shoot!"

After five seconds of crazed silence, she heard the sliding sound again. In her mind she saw a shower curtain sliding along the side of a bathtub.

"Maybe the water's on," Chris said.

Alex cursed to herself, then charged forward and kicked open the bathroom door, ready to blast a hole in anybody she found there.

She saw no one.

The sliding sound came again. She looked down, then leaped backward in terror. A brilliantly colored snake was writhing on the floor beneath the commode, its head biting empty air, its body twisting wildly through figure eights and whipping back upon itself as though it had been run over by a car.

"Chris!" she hissed.

He jerked her out of the doorway and thrust himself in front of her.

"What is that?" she asked.

"It's a goddamn coral snake. The deadliest snake in the U.S."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. See the red bands touching the yellow ones? They teach you a rhyme in the Boy Scouts: 'Red over yellow, kill a fellow, red over black, venom lack.'"

Alex shuddered. "Is that what killed Meggie?"

"Has to be. The scary thing is, nobody would go to that trouble to kill your cat. That snake was put here for you."

Even in its current distress, the snake had an almost hypnotic beauty. "What's wrong with it?"

"I'd say Meggie gave as good as she got. Cats are good snake hunters."

"But it still killed her?"

"Coral snakes aren't like rattlers or moccasins. They carry neurotoxic venom, like cobras. They have short fangs, but one good bite to an animal as small as a cat, and it's lights out."

Chris grabbed a pillow off the near bed and blocked the open door with it. Then he went out to his truck and came back carrying a tall, white bucket filled with baseballs.

"What are you going to do with those?" Alex asked. "Stone it to death?"

He held up the bucket with both hands, then leaned over the pillow and smashed the bucket's bottom down onto the snake with all his strength. He ground the wounded reptile against the tile floor, then lifted the bucket and slammed it down again. The next time he lifted it, the snake came up with it, stuck to its bottom like a bug on a windshield.

"Is it dead?" Alex asked.

"Dead is a subjective state with a snake. Their nervous systems continue to function after death. People have died after being bitten by a dead rattlesnake."

"What about this one?"

Chris examined the half-exploded serpent on the bottom of the bucket. "Dead as a hammer."

He carried the bucket outside and tossed it into his truck bed. Alex heard baseballs roll everywhere. While she gathered up her computer and her case materials, Chris loaded Meggie's remains into a trash bag. "I'll take a look at her when we get back," he said, "see if I can find any bite marks."

"You're sure I won't cause a problem with Ben?"

"He's at Mrs. Johnson's house. Let's get out of here."

Alex started to get into her car, then paused. "Is the coral snake native to Mississippi? I mean, I grew up here, but I don't remember any."

"They're native to Mississippi, all right. But not this part of Mississippi. You'd have to drive two hours to reach coral snake territory, and you could still search for a week and never find one. They're very shy."

"So there's no way it could have simply wandered-"

"No way in hell. Somebody put that snake in your room. And that answers your question once and for all."

"What question?"

"The guy who attacked you in that carport came here for you, not me."