Mark was the last. Before he exited, he turned back, looking uneasy.
“Dr. Preston?”
“Yes?”
The boy seemed about to say something, but then he shook his head. “Thanks. You were all right.”
Michael nodded.
“Come back sometime,” he told Mark, wondering if he meant it or not.
“Yeah.”
The door closed behind Mark.
The hatchlings began to squeak.
Chapter Three
In the gift shop, Josh began to play with a two-foot-long plastic alligator. “I’ve got five dollars,” he told Ben. “Think this looks real?”
“Yeah, it’s cool,” Ben told him.
Mark walked up to the pair in the corner of the shop. He still looked a little pale—they had all been kind of spooked, the old lady had been really, really creepy, scarier than the alligators—but he was kind of swaggering again, which Ben was sure meant that Mark was all right.
“That don’t look real, Josh. Not compared to this!”
Reaching into the pocket of his baggy, oversize jeans, he pulled out one of the hatchlings. The little creature’s mouth was opened wide. Tiny teeth were already chillingly visible.
“Mark! You stole one of the hatchlings—” Josh began.
“Shh,” Mark protested.
“Oh, man, you’ve got to give that back,” Ben said.
“No way,” Mark said. “Look at him!”
The jaw opened, snapped.
Mark shoved the hatchling toward Josh, who jumped back. “Don’t do that, Mark.”
“He’s going to eat you all up,” Mark said, laughing as he started to stuff the creature back into his pocket.
But suddenly he cried out, his hand still in his pocket.
“Oh, shut up,” Ben commanded. His cousin was big stuff around school; he had looked up to Mark, and he’d wanted to be like him. But Ben had never been on an outing like this with Mark before. Mark was always on, like maybe there were always girls watching or something. Now the way people were staring was just embarrassing. “Come on, Mark, stop it. People are looking—”
Mark jerked his hand from his pocket. “Get it off! Get it off!” he screamed. The hatchling had his forefinger in its mouth. To Ben’s amazement, there was a trail of blood dripping down his cousin’s finger.
Instinctively, he reached for the hatchling. But Mark started screaming again. “No, no, don’t pull. You’ll tear my whole finger off!”
People were beginning to stare. Ben pushed Mark toward a rear door. It read No Admittance: Staff Only, but Ben ignored that; the way the buildings were set up, he could tell that the door led back into the hallway where the labs were housed.
“What are we doing? Where are we going?” Mark cried frantically. “Oh, my God, it hurts! He’s eating me!”
“Shut up, shut up, we’re taking him back!” Ben said. He moved Mark faster and faster down the hall, pushing back into Dr. Preston’s lab without knocking at the door.
Dr. Preston was there, thankfully, standing almost where they had left him. He started when they entered, standing taller in his lab coat. He wasn’t very old for a doctor; he was tall and nice-looking, with sandy hair and green eyes, and if Mark hadn’t been such a jerk—and if the old lady hadn’t freaked out—he might have spent more time with them and told them a lot more neat stuff.
“What the—” Dr. Preston began.
“Mark took one of the babies, but it bit him and we can’t get it off and we’re real sorry, honest to God, we’re real sorry, but can you help—”
Preston helped. Right away, he knew where to pinch the hatchling so that it let go rather than ripping. He dropped the hatchling back into a tank. By then there were tears in Mark’s eyes, ready to spill down his face.
“Come over here,” Preston said to Mark, taking him back behind his workstation, washing the wound at a sterile-looking sink, then covering it with some slimy cream. “We’ll have to take you to the nurse and tell your folks—”
“No, please, no!” Mark protested. “I’m here with Ben’s parents. If my parents ever found out I—that I tried to steal from this place, they’d...”
Preston stared at Mark, then at Ben, and then at Josh, who had followed them, silent and so white that his freckles stood out on his face.
“Mark, you were bitten—”
“It’s a tiny hole. Look, you can barely see it.”
“Yes, but—”
“I’ve had a tetanus shot, honest.”
“Mark, there’s always a rare chance that reptiles can carry disease—”
“Not alligator-farm reptiles!” Mark said. “Please, please, please don’t say anything. You don’t know my dad.”
Preston hesitated.
“Please,” Mark whispered. “Please.”
Ben held his breath. Preston was staring at Mark, studying his face.
The door behind them quietly opened and closed. Ben jumped, turning around. It was their first guide, the really pretty lady with the dark hair and bright blue eyes.
She didn’t say anything, just leaned against the door, watching the situation. Dr. Preston looked at her. He lifted Mark’s fingers. “They were trying to leave with a souvenir.”
“Ah...” she murmured to the boys. “What were you going to do? Drop him in your hotel swimming pool?” She turned to Dr. Preston. “I need to look at that, and then we need to file a report.”
Mark went pale.
“I was thinking about letting him go. I think he already paid enough of a price,” Dr. Preston said.
Ben was surprised to see that the beautiful nurse was the one who seemed to think they needed the authorities. She was staring at Dr. Preston. “We really shouldn’t take the chance. Just in case there are consequences, an infection...”
Dr. Preston stared back at her. “This is one of the cleanest labs you’re ever going to find.” He sounded indignant.
The nurse, however, wasn’t backing down. “I don’t know....”
“Please,” Mark begged.
“Hey, I’d never let anything happen to a kid,” Dr. Preston swore. “Though this one...all right. Call in the authorities.”
“No, please,” Mark begged.
The woman stared at Dr. Preston for a moment longer.
Then she looked at the boys. They were staring at her with downright prayers glittering in their eyes.
She nodded, a smile twitching at her lips; then she walked over to look at Mark’s finger. Her glance at Michael assured him that it was a minor injury. “We have some antibacterial medicine to put on that.”
Preston stared at Mark. “You know, Ms. Fortier has a point. This is against my better judgment. I could lose my job. I could be sued. Who knows, maybe I could go to jail. Lorena, could I go to jail for this?”
“I don’t know, but there’s a cop outside. Jesse Crane.” She made a tsking sound. “I’ve heard that he feels passionately about people messing with things like this. The Everglades, well, this place is his passion. So I’ve heard.”
“I’ll never say a word, never, even if my finger drops off—even if my whole hand explodes!” Mark swore.
Lorena pulled a tube of cream from her pocket and dabbed some of the contents on the injured finger.
She took a bandage from another pocket and covered the bite. When she was finished, though, she was in a real hurry. “I’ve got to get back to the office. I just came by to make sure everyone was okay. That poor woman is still...well, in bad shape.”
“This is just a tiny bite,” Mark said apologetically. He gulped. “Thank you, Nurse,” he murmured.
She took off. Preston watched her go.
Ben was surprised and pleased to see that Dr. Preston was actually smiling when he said, “Mark, you take this as a lesson. And if your hand swell
s up, don’t keep it a secret. Tell the doctor you stuck your hand in the tank and got bitten by a hatchling, and then you have them call me right away, got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Mark swore.
He turned, flying for the door. Ben ran after him. At the door, Mark stopped. Ben crashed into him. Josh, always close, crashed into Ben.
Mark didn’t notice the pileup. He was staring back at Dr. Preston. “Thanks, Doc. Honest. I’ll make it up to you one day.”
Preston nodded at him.
“Okay. I’ll hold you to your word.”
The boys hurried back out to the gift shop. Ben plowed right into his mother.
“There you are! Thank God. If you’re buying anything, do it now. I can’t wait to leave this place. Honestly, Howard,” she said to his father, “couldn’t we have taken them on an overnighter to Disney World? I can’t believe we’re going from here to an airboat ride and a night in one of those open-air chickee things!”
“It will be fine, dear,” Ben’s father said. He winked at Ben.
“I knew I should have gone with Sally and the Girl Scouts,” she said.
Ben flashed a quick smile to Mark. Mark smiled back. It was going to be all right.
No one was in trouble. The alligator farm wasn’t going to call the police or Mark’s parents; Ben’s folks weren’t even any the wiser.
The day was saved.
The airboat ride was next.
* * *
JESSE HAD PULLED into the parking lot at the alligator farm already tired. He hadn’t found Billy Ray. Where the hell the man had crawled off to, he didn’t know. He would need lots more time to comb the swamp to find Billy Ray.
Just what he needed to be doing when two friends had been shot down in their own yard for no apparent reason.
And now this.
A call because a woman had gone into a fit while visiting the alligator farm.
Lots of tourists, he noticed. That was good. Along the Tamiami Trail, a lot of the Miccosukee Indians depended on the tourist trade for a living. Along Alligator Alley, stretching from Broward westward across the state in a slightly more northerly route, a lot of the state’s Seminole families depended on the tourist trade, as well. The big alligator farms pulled people in, and then they stayed and paid good tourist dollars for airboat rides, canoe treks along the endless canals at sunset, and even camping in traditional chickees. The locals made money, which was good, because they needed it.
Of course, the biggest earner in the area was the casino. Still, there were a lot of other good ways to make a living from tourists. Either way, it was money honestly earned, and to Jesse, the setting alone was worth the price of admission. The Everglades was a unique environment, and though civilization was steadily encroaching on the rare, semitropical wilderness, it was still just that: a wilderness. Deep in the “river of grass,” a man could be so entirely alone with God and nature that civilization itself might not exist. There were miles and miles, acres and acres, where no one had as yet managed to lay a single cable or wire; there were places where even cell phones were no use. There were dangerous snakes and at times the insects were thick in the air. But it was also a place of peace unlike anything else he’d ever experienced. Every once in a while he thought of himself as a rare individual indeed—a man finally at peace with himself, satisfied with his job, and certain, most of the time, that he was the best man for it.
At least, he usually felt at peace with himself and as if he could make a difference in his work.
Today...
Today the world didn’t make sense. That a couple as fine and hardworking as Maria and her husband could meet such a fate...hell, what good were the police then? Even if they solved the crime, his friends were still dead.
But thanks to his work, he wasn’t powerless. He would find the killers and see justice done. That was his job, and it was one worth doing.
He wasn’t making a fortune or knocking the world dead, but he didn’t need money. He needed solitude, and the opportunity to be alone when he chose. And he needed to feel that he had some control over his own life and destiny, and this job certainly gave him that. Sometimes, he was very much alone, but that was a choice he had made, consciously or perhaps subconsciously, when he had lost Connie.
“Jesse!”
Harry Rogers, major stockholder and acting president and supervisor of Harry’s Alligator Farm and Museum, hurried toward Jesse, who got out of his car. Harry was a big man, six foot two by what sometimes appeared to be six foot two of girth. He’d been born in a Deep South section of northern Florida, and he was proud of being a “Cracker,” even if he’d gone on to acquire a degree in business administration from none other than such a prestigious Yankee institution as Harvard.
“Thank God!” Harry exclaimed, clapping him on the back. “We got a lady went berserk in the middle of Michael’s speech, started screaming that he was going to get eaten up, and going on and on about how dangerous the gators were. I didn’t want the Metro cops coming in here with their sirens blazing and all...and God knows, we don’t need the community up in arms about the gators any worse than they already are, but...”
“Where is she?”
“My office, and is she a loose cannon or what? I’m telling you, she’s downright scary. I’ve got Lorena, the new nurse, with her. We made her some tea, Lorena’s talking to her, but she’s still going off every few minutes or so.”
Harry stopped talking and looked at Jesse closely. “Hey, what’s the matter? You look grim.”
“I am. An old Cuban couple in that new development east of here was murdered.”
“How?”
“Shot.”
“That your jurisdiction?” Harry asked, scratching his head.
“No, but they were friends.”
“I’m sorry. Real sorry. Were they into drugs?”
That was the usual question, especially in a shooting. “No, it had nothing to do with drugs.”
“You sure?” Harry asked skeptically.
Jesse gritted his teeth. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“Well, if I can help...but at the moment, you’ve got to be a cop here for me, since this is your jurisdiction.”
“All right. I’ll see what I can do, but if this lady has really lost her mind, we may need some professionals out here, and we may have to call in the county boys.”
“I hate the county boys.”
“Hell, I like to settle our own problems, too, Harry. You know that.”
“Sure do,” Harry said. “’Course, you’re the only man among us I’ve seen put those boys down.”
“There are good county cops, Harry. We’re a small community out here.”
“We’re an Indian community,” Harry said dryly.
“Doesn’t matter. We’re small. You have to have the big boys around when you need real help. Hopefully, we don’t need it now. Do you know where this woman is from? Has she said?”
Harry shook his head. “Every time we ask her, she goes on about her friend who was eaten. She’s got to live near a lake somewhere, but that could be half the state. Don’t that just beat all? The old broad has a friend eaten by a gator—so she comes to visit a gator farm. Folks are weird as hell, huh?”
“Folks are weird,” Jesse agreed without elaborating. The whole thing was weird, he thought. The woman here had a friend who’d been eaten by an alligator.
A piece of an alligator had been found where two innocent people had been murdered.
He followed Harry in through a side entrance to the administrative buildings and down a long hallway.
The place might be an alligator farm out in the swamp, but Harry knew how to furnish an office. It was at the end of a long hallway. A single door opened onto a room with a massive oak desk surrounded by the best in leather sofas and chairs. To the rear were more seats, a large-screen TV, and state-of-
the-art speakers for his elaborate sound system. Harry loved the Everglades; he even loved reptiles. He was part Creek, not Seminole or Miccosukee, but he’d worked his way up from cotton picking at the age of three to millionaire businessman, and he liked his creature comforts. His office might have been on Park Avenue.
Jesse could hear the woman as he followed Harry in. She was speaking in a shrill voice, talking about how nothing had been found of “Matty” other than a hand with a little flesh left on the fingers. Jesse glanced at Harry, then walked over to the woman, who was standing in a corner, flattened against the wall. Her hair was silver, her eyes a soft powder blue. She was trim and very attractive, except that now the flesh around her eyes was puffy from crying, and she gazed around with a hunted, trapped look of panic on her face.
In front of her, trying to calm her, was a young woman in a nurse’s standard white uniform. Jesse couldn’t see her face because a fall of sleek, honey-colored hair hid her features, but before she turned, he knew that he’d already met her.
And she was certainly the last person he’d expected to see at Harry’s.
A woman who looked like that and drove a car like that, pedal to the metal...
To get here?
She stared back at him for a fleeting moment, instantly hostile—or defensive?
“You’re going to get eaten!” the woman was shrieking, pointing at the nurse. “You’ve got to get out of here. Don’t help these people breed monsters. They’ll kill you, too. Crush you, drown you... Oh my God, a hand, a hand was all that was left...some flesh, just bits and pieces of flesh....”
“Hey, now, ma’am,” Jesse said, stepping forward, trying to remember what he had learned in Psychology 101. “It’s going to be all right, honest. Calm down. The alligators here are being raised as food. They’re no danger to anyone on the outside—”
“They’ll get loose!” the woman protested. But she had given Jesse her attention. He had kept his voice low, deep and calm—Psychology 101—and his firm tone seemed to be working with her. He stepped closer to her, reaching out a hand.
“They’re not going to get loose. No one’s going to let them get loose.” He smiled. “Besides, Harry here is a charter member of the National Rifle Association. He and his staff wouldn’t hesitate to shoot any gator that moved in the wrong direction. He’s not out to save the gators, ma’am, he’s out to make money off them.”
Tangled Threat ; Suspicious Page 22