CHAPTER 41
Kitally cupped her hands around her eyes and pressed her face against the windowpane. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she told Hayley.
Hayley felt the same way. They had been at the Perdue house for a few minutes already. The old house sat in the middle of about three acres of grass and trees. The next-door neighbors were well hidden behind all the greenery. There was a truck parked in front of the attached garage, but nobody was answering the door. There was also a barn in the back, but it was locked up tight.
“I’m going to go around to the back again,” Hayley said.
“I’m coming with you.”
Hayley tried the door leading to the garage. She knocked, waited, then turned the knob. Locked.
Kitally knocked on the sliding glass door leading into the back of the house. It was also secure. “Everything seems to be locked up tight. Didn’t you say this guy was married?”
“According to the records I found, he’s been married for five years.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth than they heard a crash.
“That came from inside, didn’t it?” Kitally asked.
“Sounded like someone dropped a glass.”
“All the blinds are shut tight. It’s impossible to see anything.” Hayley pulled a pick from her bag, went back to the garage door, and used it to wriggle the lock.
When that didn’t work, she pulled out a tension wrench. After she used a delicate touch and a lot of experience, a click sounded and the door opened.
She took a look inside. It was dark. A weird, musty smell wafted out to greet them. She stepped into the garage and felt around until she found a switch. Flipped it up. The place looked like most garages. There were boxes, old bikes, an extra tire, tools, and a Buick Encore.
“Anything in there?” Kitally asked.
“All the usual stuff people keep in a garage, including another car.”
“Maybe we should call the police.”
“You sound like Jessica.”
“Is that a bad thing? I like Jessica.”
Hayley came to an abrupt stop. She turned to face Kitally, who had just stepped inside the garage behind her. “Listen. If we call the police and something inside this house is not right, we’ll be suspects.” Hayley pointed a finger at her own chest. “I don’t want to be a suspect.”
Kitally nodded. “I get it. What about the crash we heard inside the house?”
“Let’s check out the garage first. One step at a time.”
“Look at this.”
There were four large aquariums on the far wall, large enough to keep a cat in. They were lined with newspaper, and two of them had real tree branches inside.
“I wonder what those are used for?”
“Snakes,” Hayley said, pointing to shed skin nearby.
An enormous shed skin.
“Gross,” Kitally said.
Hayley started working on the lock to the door leading into the house. She didn’t like the idea of finding that skin outside the aquarium any more than Kitally did.
Kitally started to hum, a nervous habit she’d been indulging in more and more often.
“Could you stop that?”
“I don’t like snakes. Never have.”
“Go wait in the car then,” Hayley suggested.
“I’m fine,” Kitally said with a sigh. “I’ll be quiet.”
At the same moment the door clicked open, they were met with a sound from behind that made Kitally jump.
“Is that what I think it is?” Kitally asked.
“Yes, it’s a rattler. It’s coming from the other side of the garage. You’re safe.”
Kitally squeezed into the house in front of Hayley. “What happens if we get bit by one of those things?”
“Swelling, internal bleeding, and intense pain.”
Kitally started humming again.
They were in the laundry room. “Anyone home?” Hayley called out.
She listened. Heard multiple voices.
Hayley unsheathed a knife from her right leg and held it in front of her as she continued on through the kitchen.
The television had been left on.
Kitally had let her pass and now followed at a safe distance, checking every nook and cranny for more snakes, no doubt.
Two dirty plates, a half-empty glass. On the floor, shards of glass. The other glass had rolled off the table and shattered.
It looked as if the couple had finished dinner, and then what?
Hayley stepped into the family room and had to suck in a breath. She’d never seen anything like it. Mr. and Mrs. Perdue were sitting on the couch.
Kitally pulled up beside her, gasped, and clamped a hand over her mouth.
A ridiculously large python had wrapped itself around Mrs. Perdue’s upper body and neck. Her face was a puffy mask—or what was left of her face was. From the looks of it, Mr. Perdue had tried to help his wife and had been bitten several times. There was no reason to check for a pulse. Clearly, they were both dead.
Before Hayley could tell Kitally that they needed to get out of there fast, Kitally screamed. When Hayley swiveled about, she found Kitally standing on a chair. On the floor under the table was a rat being eaten whole by a long, slender-bodied snake with a speckled design.
“Come on,” Hayley said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I can’t. I’m trapped.”
“The snake doesn’t want anything to do with you,” Hayley said. “Not until he finishes eating that rat. Come on!”
“No.”
“Look. I’m telling you he won’t bother you when he’s got that rat to work on. But when he finishes . . .” Hayley headed back the way they came. “I’ll be in the car. I’m going to call Lizzy.”
“You can’t leave me here.”
“I’m leaving you. You’re being ridiculous.” Hayley left her standing on the chair, humming a tune.
Another ten minutes passed before Kitally exited the house through the front door. Her face was ghostly white and her spine was stiff as she marched toward the car. She opened the door, slid in behind the wheel, and sat there, blank-faced.
“Lizzy is on her way,” Hayley told her. “She’s calling Detective Chase. She wants us to wait here.”
No response.
“Do not say anything to them about me picking the locks. We’ll just say the doors were unlocked. Got it?”
Kitally refused to look at her.
“What did you want me to do? Carry you out of there?”
“I don’t like snakes. You could have cleared a path for me.”
“Do I look like a snake handler?”
“That thing swallowed that enormous rodent whole. I’ve never seen anything so disgusting in my life.”
“Those snakes are the least of our worries. That woman is taking them all out—one at a time.”
“What? What are you talking about? Our woman—the one with the cookies? You think she did this?”
“She must have come here last night or the day before and mixed rat poison or something in their dinner. Or maybe she put it in their milk. I don’t know much about poisons and crap. I need to do some research and figure out how that all works.”
“I think you can safely blame the snakes on this catastrophe,” Kitally said.
“Open your eyes. Judging by all the cages and equipment in the garage, that man has been breeding snakes for a while. There’s no way his snakes would have been able to get to him and his wife unless they were both incapacitated somehow.”
“So you think she just set the stage to make it all look like a crazy snake attack.”
“That’s exactly what she did. There’s no doubt in my mind. The killer must have waited a certain period of time before she came back to let all of his snakes and rodents loose.”
“If that’s true,” Kitally said, “then she’s literally running from one city to another. Who’s next on the list?”
“Aubrey Singleton and Chelsea Webster.”
“How are we going to help them?” Kitally asked.
“I don’t know if we can.”