Murder Came Second

by Jessica Thomas

  Betty bathed and dressed Tina for the day. While Alan straightened the house, she set out some junior foods and other tidbits Billy might feed Tina for lunch, and left him a note telling him to help himself to whatever was in the fridge. Finally, it was time to go. Alan brought their car out of the garage just as Billy’s mother dropped him at the end of the rather long driveway, which curved prettily up the small hill from a brackish pond across the road.

  Tina was fussing about her parents’ departure, and Billy took her for a little toddle around the yard, pointing out different flowers and letting her pick one for herself. The sun was hot, so at the end of their walk, he placed her in her shaded outdoor playpen, and went into the house to get them both something cool to drink and to check what Mrs. Atwood had left for Tina’s lunch.

  He poured some juice and a little water into a bottle for Tina and popped a soda for himself. Then he glanced out the kitchen window onto a scene so horrifying he knew it could not be true, even as he realized that it was.

  A large alligator was waddling up the driveway toward the playpen where Tina awaited her bottle.

  Whom could he call? Where could he run to get help? All of a sudden, Billy grasped the truth that it all came down to him. There was no time for explanatory phone calls or running to the neighbors and convincing them to grab some sort of weapon and run back with him. So he did a most courageous thing.

  He scooped up everything in the kitchen he could carry. A couple of pans, a skillet, the toaster, the coffee carafe, surprisingly heavy jars of baby food, a bowl, two plates, the blender jar. He took them all in his arms and burst through the back screen door, yelling and running down the driveway toward the ever-nearing alligator.

  Billy had a pretty good throwing arm. Most of his homegrown artillery shells were landing on or quite near the alligator, and they were making a lot of noise. They crashed, they shattered, they rattled and rolled. They weren’t doing the gator any serious injury, but they distracted him. The hefty whomp! of the blender jar on his nose stopped him for a moment to reassess his approach. And that gave Billy just enough time to grab Tina and sprint for the house.

  They made it inside and he dropped the baby unceremoniously to the floor, howling. He ran around the house, closing and locking all the doors and windows. Then he shut himself and Tina in the bathroom and dialed 911 on the walk-around phone he had snatched from the hall.

  He was terribly frightened and shocked and winded, and by then almost totally incoherent. The 911 operator couldn’t be sure just who he was and who, or what, was about to kill the baby she could hear screaming in the background, but she managed to get the name Atwood and the address out of him. In seconds, patrol cars were on their way, followed by a fire truck and an ambulance, just in case.

  Either the bop on the nose or the approaching sirens sent the reptile back to the temporary safety of the pond, for there was no sign of him when police finally coaxed a white and shaking Billy and a red-faced, hiccupping toddler from the bathroom. But the cops didn’t doubt his story. They didn’t think anyone could have made this up. There was stuff thrown all over the driveway, and the boy was a wreck. And, they soon recalled, there had been that naked lady up in that tree, and Harmon’s rabbits, and the old tomcat . . .

  The Atwoods arrived home to this nerve-shattering scene and were told what had happened, and what would doubtless have happened except for a very brave fourteen-year-old. They found themselves crying and laughing and trying to hug Tina, and each other and Billy, all at once.

  And Provincetown had a new hero.

  By afternoon the media had arrived. The Atwoods were cooperative at first, posing with the pretty little girl, telling and retelling the event, praising Billy’s courage. But by a little after four, with Betty’s tooth beating like a drum, they got the police to give them an escort out of town and went down to Betty’s mother’s place in Sandwich for a few days.

  The Madeiros family soon found their yard surrounded by a myriad of TV and newspaper cameras and reporters, calling out a battery of questions. Billy had a hard time of it, still shaken, losing his composure, trying not to cry. Finally, his father had enough and ordered everyone off his property. He then latched the gate and let out the family Rottweiler, an aging and docile old lady who snuffled and grumbled all around the fence line, in ever-fading hopes someone would offer a treat. But the media didn’t know that, retired, and left the Madeiroses to a peaceful evening.

  The alligator was also getting considerable attention. Provincetown Police sent out a call for help with their voracious visitor, and people eventually arrived from the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut and, less helpfully, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, on hand to guard the alligator’s rights. The local Coast Guard station sent over some hefty young men and women who were good-humored and willing and quite adept with ropes. Well-meaning volunteers and not so well-meaning rifle toting hunters were restrained with difficulty.

  The pond was baited with large chunks of raw, slightly smelly meat, and the alligator’s would-be captors retired a fair distance back from the pond, where they waited silently. Around midnight, the gator finally came forth to dine and was, after a great scramble, many misses with various nooses and many suggestions by the DEP, successfully roped onto, of all things, a surfboard. He was then placed in a temperature and humidity-controlled box truck for his ride to Mystic, where he would be carefully tended until a Florida home was found for him.

  Unofficially, he measured five feet, four inches in length. Mrs. Withers’s guess hadn’t been so far off, after all.

  The person or persons who brought the reptile to Provincetown, their reasons for doing so and how they accomplished the feat, have never been discovered.

  Unless, of course, Harmon was right.

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