Darker Than Any Shadow

Chapter Twenty-seven

I started explaining before he could even say hello.

“It’s a long story, but it comes down to this—I found Lex’s missing SUV. It’s behind Frankie’s gallery. I’m watching the area right now from the front parking lot, but Debbie’s called the property manager on me—I think—so I’m about to be in big trouble—pretty sure—but if I leave, then Debbie can shimmy that vehicle god-knows-where, and then it’ll be my word against hers.”

He digested the story much more quickly than I expected. “Are you sure it’s Lex’s?”

“She admitted as much.”

“Then you need to call the authorities.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I maybe got my fingerprints on the damn thing. Or hair. Or doughnut glaze thick with my saliva.”

A long pause stretched into a taut silence. Trey could work a silence like no one I’d ever known. His silences had heft and edges.

“Stay there. I’m on my way.”

A tapping on the window startled me. It was Golf Shirt Guy, looking all aggrieved in a corporate way. Behind him, the curtain in the gallery window fluttered, and Debbie peered out.

I lowered my window. “Yes?”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, ma’am.”

“But I’m just sitting here!”

“At this point, you’re trespassing on private property.”

“But—”

“Don’t make me call the police, ma’am.”

I cranked up the engine. “Fine.”

I swore under my breath as I pulled out of my space. The air conditioner coughed out stale hot air as I called Trey back.

“Change of plans,” I said. “I’m meeting you at the shopping center across the street. Just hurry, okay? And no lectures.”

***

And that was how I ended up staking out an art gallery in a Ferrari with my pissed-off boyfriend giving me the cold shoulder.

“Jeez, why did you agree to come if you’re going to be this way?”

“Because you compromised a key piece of evidence in a murder investigation.”

“It was an accident.”

“Immaterial.” He shook his head. “I can’t find a way to get around calling the authorities.”

“Of course you can’t. Improvisation is not your strong suit.”

He didn’t argue. Unfortunately, I had nothing to offer either.

The lights in the gallery remained off, and the Suburban stayed hunkered behind the building—I could see it down the sliver of alley. I’d been concerned. There were about ten different ways in and out of that back lot, and we could only cover so many.

Unfortunately, Trey wasn’t interested in covering anything. He sat there, seething, as I explained the sequence of events from Cricket showing up at the store to the property manager giving me the heave-ho.

“I could wipe it down real quick?”

“Absolutely not.”

He sat there some more, one hand resting on the steering wheel. I could sense the gears in his brain meshing and turning, but finding no purchase. No protocol for when your idiot girlfriend maybe plasters her fingerprints all over key evidence in a murder investigation.

“We have to call the authorities,” he said finally, not looking at me.

I tipped my head back and stared at the roof of the car. “Fine.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know.”

“But I have to.”

“I know.”

He got out his phone as the curtain in the window fluttered, and the black cat careened into the front window display, upsetting a trio of vases. I watched it claw its way up the curtain, in full feline panic.

Trey cocked his head. “Why would a cat do that?”

“I have no clue.”

“Neither do I. Wait here.”

He got out of the car and headed for the front door. I ignored his command and followed, which didn’t seem to surprise him one bit. He didn’t spare a glance my way until we’d reached the entrance.

Trey held up one finger. The thumping noise increased, culminating in a muffled whomp, layered with the hiss and mewl of the cat from the top of the curtain.

Another crash. Trey pushed the door with one foot. Like a flash, the cat dropped to the carpet, shot between his feet, and bolted for the parking lot.

“Is anyone in here?” he called.

A dense silence smothered his words. No response.

He pulled out his gun. “Call 911. Now.”

This time I did as I was told. Trey moved one hand inside the door jamb, looking for the light switch. He found it, and the overheard lights flared and hummed as he made his way to the other side of the semi-dark room.

I eased inside, phone to my ear. The room was deserted, and except for the cat damage to the display, exactly as it had been the day before. I heard the operator pick up on the other end of the line. “911, what is your emergency?”

“Don’t know yet. Hang on a sec.”

Without warning, Trey wheeled on me, his gun pointed at my feet.

I threw my hands in the air. “What the hell—”

And then I felt it, like someone laying a bag of cornmeal on my foot. I looked down, the operator’s voice yammering indistinctly, and caught my breath.

Of course. I’d known it would show up eventually.

An enormous snake as thick as my bicep looped around my ankle in a ripple of muscle and scaly tapestry. Like a richly patterned log come to life, it uncoiled from around one leg of the display table, its triangular head oozing forward along my instep.

I heard the click of Trey’s gun as he engaged the squeeze cock, and looked up to see that he had both me and the snake locked in the crosshairs.

“Trey! Stop pointing that thing at me!”

He didn’t drop his aim, didn’t say a word. But I saw the tiniest tremor in his hand. Adrenalin. Not good.

I tried to sound calm. “Put the gun away, Trey.”

He didn’t reply. The snake wound around my leg, its body seeking purchase, its tongue flickering in and out, hypnotic and rhythmical.

“It’s a python,” I explained. “My ex-boyfriend used to have one. It’s not going to hurt me.”

Trey didn’t drop his weapon, which unnerved me more than the snake. Snakes I understood, even big ass constrictors. Trey, however, was a wild card. I’d never seen him panicked before, but this was coming close.

“Trey Seaver, unless you wanna be my ex-boyfriend, you put that gun away right now!”

At that moment, a police car pulled up into the parking lot, no lights, no sirens. Two officers I didn’t know got out of the cruiser and stormed the front door, guns drawn. I put the phone to my ear.

“Did you send a unit?”

“I need an address, ma’am, I can’t dispatch without one.”

“So it wasn’t you?”

“No, ma’am.”

Trey didn’t reply or break eye contact with the snake. He didn’t drop his weapon either. The cops saw him and reacted accordingly, both weapons now covering Trey.

“Sir, drop your weapon and put your hands up. You too, ma’am.”

“It’s a cell phone,” I said, holding it higher.

They didn’t care. Trey pointed his gun at the floor and held his left hand up, palm forward, but he didn’t drop anything. “I’m not aiming at her,” he said, and gestured with his chin. The officers followed his eyes and then whipped their guns in my direction too.

“Jesus Christ!” one said.

“Python,” I corrected.

They didn’t get the joke. One of them snatched out his radio and started barking out a request for back-up. The other held the snake at gunpoint and started firing orders at me. “Step away from the snake, ma’am!”

I was getting tired of this command. “Only if you people put your damn guns away. This animal is not dangerous. See?”

I slipped off my sandal and ran my foot along the snake’s back. It was a gamble. Pythons could be kinda jumpy, more so than the average snake, especially when people were leaping around in testosterone-fueled panic. But this one was a p-ssycat.

“It’s somebody’s pet,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“Because pythons aren’t native to Atlanta. And this one wasn’t wild caught. See how calm it is?”

Nobody moved. The three men stared at me, Trey with his head cocked, the cops with increasing puzzlement.

I was getting annoyed. “I swear, if any of you harm this snake, I will have PETA on you so fast—”

“We won’t shoot the snake. Just step away, ma’am. And sir, you need to drop your weapon now.”

Trey looked at the snake, then at me.

I met his eyes. “Trust me on this one.”

He considered. Then he laid his gun on the floor and stepped away from it, the second cop scooping it up fast. Both officers lowered their weapons as well.

I exhaled, hard and sudden, hands still up. And then I knelt, the better to pull my ankle free without disturbing the big reptile. A disturbed python was a dangerous python, and for a snake as big as a tree branch, they were fast. And they did bite.

But this one remained gentle, even as I dumped it off my foot. It wasn’t huge, not by python standards, but it wasn’t a dwarf variety either. I peered under the display table to take its measure.

And then I froze. And then suddenly I wasn’t okay.

I stood abruptly, shaking now. “Oh shit.”

The cop moved closer. And then he saw too. “We’ve got a body under there,” he said to his partner.

It was Debbie. And she was dead, very dead, that was easy to see, even if most of her body was obscured by the snake’s coils, loops and loops of reticulated muscle, lying like ropes on top of her.