Both Jack and Phin did and both of them froze at the images set side-by-side, going down the length of the page. "They're all big," Jack whispered.
"They're not big," Phin said. "They're chunky monkeys. Chubby hubbies. Fattie McFatties. Some of these guys make your boy Herb look downright svelte."
Jack stared at the images and said, "What about snake venom? Is there anything else to link them to Herb's case?"
"Of course not," Frank said. "Because nobody ever really looked for them the way you looked for Herb. It doesn't mean there's no connection. It just means that whenever Mrs. Jason Wale walked into her local Chicago PD precinct and said, 'My husband's missing,' the desk sergeant said, 'Sorry lady, we'll put it on file' and that was that."
They turned their pages again to see a Vietnamese passport photograph of a beautiful woman with smoldering, almond-shaped eyes and long black hair. Phin held the page closer to his face and let out a soft whistle and grinned.
"Li Xiao," Frank said. "I had to do some serious digging to come up with this picture, and Jack is probably going to be getting a very grumpy phone call from the boys at Immigration when they find out their system was hacked, but it was necessary. There's no record of her being in Chicago. No contacts with the police, she's not registered with the city for a car, a voter registration, nothing. She's totally under the radar. However," Frank said, pausing while he turned his page to a grainy image of a document written in Arabic. "I managed to dig up an import, export license in her name for rare and exotic animals along the African coastline."
"This is our girl," Phin said, tapping Li Xiao's photograph. "And just to make sure, I'm going to give her an extensive, in-depth interrogation all by my lonesome as soon as you guys cuff her … and find Herb, of course. We're talking strip-searches, cavity searches, light bondage, the whole nine."
"Just stick to the plan," Frank said. "We'll talk to her up front, while you go in from the rear to locate Herb."
"That's what I was hoping you'd say. I love going in from the rear."
"You're going to either find Herb or get us enough evidence to get a search warrant," Frank said.
"Listen, can I at least have a cool codename if I'm doing this secret squirrel stuff? Like, Red Five, or Ghost Shadow, or something?"
"How about Dickie Blue Bag?"
"Only if you're Saggy Gut Gimp."
Jack tossed her ops plan on the table and pressed her hands over her eyes like she was trying to keep them from shooting across the room. She took a deep breath and dropped her hands and stared at both men without speaking.
"What do you say, Jack?" Phin said. "If you aren't up for this, me and Frank can go check it out on the sly. No big deal."
Frank nodded, then said, "But I think you'll want to be there if we find the big man, one way or the other."
"I'm taking a shower," Jack said. "After that, I'm getting dressed. Then the three of us are going to pay a visit to this bitch and find out what she did with my partner."
Frank smiled and said, "That's a girl."
Phin snapped a cockeyed salute at her and said, "Roger that, Gold Leader."
"I'll be back down in twenty minutes, be ready to go," Jack said.
Phin watched her leave and called out, "It would be quicker if you let me come in there with you! I could scrub your back while you wash your hair. Just to save time."
Frank looked at Phin and said, "What happened to taking advantage of her when she's vulnerable?"
"It's different when I do it," Phin said, lifting his coffee to his lips. "She likes it when I do it."
15.
"Are you there?"
Herb's head snaps up at the sound of the man's voice, the response Pavlovian. Uncontrollable. As soon as he hears the second phrase, he lowers it again, knowing what is to come.
"Are you there? Can you hear me?"
It is the third time he's heard the recording. The third time he's listened to a man whose name was Jason Wale, die screaming.
He knows what's coming like it's a script he's been studying. Like it's the scene from one of the sick torture-porn movies people seem so fond of lately. Millions of dollars coming in from all around the world to watch college kids get mutilated and serial killers build elaborate traps for unsuspecting victims.
"Is anyone there?"
Herb never understood the allure of horror movies. He figured people who liked seeing blood on screen had never seen blood for real. He figured people who enjoyed seeing the bad guys win and innocent people ground up like hamburger meat had deep-seated psychological issues and were engaging in some sort of wish-fulfillment in watching some axe-wielding psychopath hack up a bunch of nubile teenagers.
"Can you hear me?"
Herb had interviewed a renowned psychologist early in his detective career, trying to get a feel for what makes serial rapists, murderers, and torturers tick. He wanted to know how late was too late to save somebody from going down that dark path. If you took a kid who was mutilating puppies and put him directly into psychotherapy, could you save him? How early on did the wackadoo in him have to be detected and suppressed?
"My…my name is Jason Wale. I have a wife. I have two sons. They need me."
He'd never forget what the doctor told him, either. The doc looked at him, paused to consider the question, and said, "Well, I once had a client from Florida who told me his favorite masturbatory fantasy was kidnapping a woman, staking her to a remote bank in the Everglades, covering her in barbeque sauce, then videotaping the scene as the alligators came up out of the marsh and began to eat her from the feet up. I'd think that once he's made that sexual connection to his deeds, once he's completed that circuit, it's too late."
"I don't want to die in here. I think I might if no one finds me though."
It's too late.
"You're goddamn right it's too late," Herb had said to the doctor. "You can't un-ding that bell."
The wine soup was up to his waist now, shriveling his skin, curing him like a piece of fatback. The vapors stung his eyes and nose like ammonia. Hell, it probably is ammonia, Herb thought. The only good thing is that I won't feel it if the snake bites me anywhere below the waist.
Jason Wale was moaning again, begging and pleading for his life. His pleas would fall on deaf ears. Nobody would hear his wife's name or his last lamentation for being unfaithful. It was the last gasp of a doomed man who went out whimpering, and hearing it made Herb disgusted. Jason Wale's cries had put an end to any thought of Herb Benedict's going out with a simpering whimper. Not me, he kept telling himself. Whatever happened, nobody would be listening to any recordings of Herb begging, and when the snake came, they were going to fight. The damnable thing was in for a shock of its own.
He heard something large and wet land on the floor in front of him and he narrowed his eyes, trying to see. The king cobra emerged from the darkness, weaving swiftly as its tongue repeatedly struck the air in search of food. The snake swirled around in a tight circle in one place on the floor. He watched it as the creature carefully lowered its head several times before bowing and opening its mouth wide. Herb saw the cobra's massive, curved fangs sink into a pile of bloody meat. The snake tore off pieces of it and whipped its head back, swallowing them whole. The snake gorged itself, eating until the center of its long body was bulging with the contents of its meal.
As if sensing his intent stare, the snake turned its hooded face toward Herb and glided across the floor toward him, bending to stare through the glass, its hard black eyes fixed on Herb's, as if reading his thoughts, taking in his fear. But the snake was not alone. Someone was walking up behind the cobra, a nude body rippling behind the sweating glass of Herb's prison.
It was a woman, naked except for a strange grey mask fixed to her face. The mask was a cross between a welder's mask and a flight helmet, with a circular speaker over the place where her mouth should be. Her long neck and narrow shoulders were pale and elegant, and as she came closer, her large, teardrop-shaped breasts pressed sligh
tly against the glass.
Herb stared in wonder at the woman and the snake, unable to do anything more than blink, until she spoke, and he realized her voice was being distorted by the mask. She was the keeper. She laid her right hand on the back of the cobra's head and stroked it gently, petting it like a dog. "I looked through your wallet and found your badge. I thought it might be interesting to see what you thought."
"Go to hell," Herb snarled.
"Do you know why I play Naja the tape?"
Herb looked at the cobra, seeing bloody strands of meat still dangling from its pointed maw. The snake had not moved when the woman approached. It had done nothing but stare at him. It hurt his throat to talk, but Herb swallowed and ran his dry tongue over his cracked lips, trying to give them enough moisture to move. "You play the tape to condition it. You want it to associate human screams with feeding."
"Very good," the keeper said. "Is that what they taught you in your police school?"
"Nope. I learned that one from Thomas Harris." When the Keeper didn't respond, Herb said, "Red Dragon? Silence of the Lambs? Nothing? What, that's not required reading when you go to psychopathic bitch school?"
The keeper's breasts undulated when she laughed and Herb stared at her, forcing himself to see her for what she was. Just a woman in a mask. Nothing special. Another fruitcake who likes to mess with people, the same as he'd been dealing with for years. And the snake? Just an animal, he told himself.
I'm not going to be this woman's victim.
The words flared across his mind, burning hot and red in the darkness, drawing all of his thoughts and fears into one fine, focused point.
"So tell me something, detective," she said. "With all of your training and experience, what do you make of this? What do you make of me?"
And there it was, Herb thought. She's standing there in her mask, her naked, flawless body exposed for him to see, trying to mess with his mind and send all of his thoughts and emotions crashing into one another until he was nothing but a puddle of useless snot. She's got her snake, and her little villain's lair, and she thinks she's hot stuff, and now she wants to hear me say it. She wants me to tell her she's something special. Herb sneered at the woman and said, "Honey, you're just another day at the office."
"Is that right?" the Keeper chuckled.
"That's right. You're just another sick puppy who gets off hurting people because your daddy did bad things to you, or your mommy abandoned you, or somebody broke your Barbie doll and… you didn't have the common sense to get over it," he panted.
The Keeper's head tilted slightly as she regarded him, intrigued by his words. By the end of his speech, Herb's face was turning a light shade of blue from not getting enough oxygen. He was sucking wind through pursed lips, trying to keep himself from passing out.
"Others have thought the same thing," the Keeper said. "They have tried to reason with me, to beg, to plead, to threaten. All of them failed, and do you know why? Because none of that is true. It is much more simple. Much more obvious. In order to satisfy my snake, I must feed him human flesh, and I simply select the largest specimens I can find in order for the meal to last the longest. The wine you've been lapping up like a dog wasn't for you, you gluttonous imbecile. It contains a very specific pheromone that will both help his digestion and improve the yield of his venom. Today, Naja ate the last remaining pieces of Jason Wale, and he is so very hungry." She gently ran her hand down the back of the snake's neck and added, "He already shows great interest in joining you inside your cage. He knows fresh meat is coming, and soon, he will grow too hungry to control and your suffering will come to an end."
"Let him in now," Herb said, staring defiantly at the snake. "Better yet, you come in here first."
"I think not," the keeper said. "Regardless, you have not been prepared just yet. But soon enough you will feel Naja's soft kiss, I promise. And when you feel Naja's fangs sink into your flesh, and his venom begin to seep into your heart, remember this. I did not pick you because of anything my father did to me, or because you fit a particular victim profile that ties into my childhood. I picked you because of your size."
The Keeper let her words sink in, watching their dark effect on Herb's face. When he did not respond, she shrugged and turned to leave, calling for the snake to follow her. She stroked the back of the cobra's head as it followed her, its shining black skin dappled with faint yellow rings, when a realization struck Herb so suddenly he had to use all his might to take in enough air to shout it. Herb called out, "How about this? I know what the mask is for. And the voice distortion."
The keeper stopped and looked back at him, the muscles in her back flexing slightly in a way that made her left buttock plump up and she said, "And what is it you think you know?"
"You're that snake's original captor. If it sees your face, you're dead."
The keeper's head twitched at his words, but the mask covered her face too completely for him to be sure if his words found their mark. Instead she reached for Naja's face and stroked it gently, tickling the snake under its jaw and said, "How would you like to eat him now, beautiful one? After that, I will milk you."
The snake raised its head in response and swallowed several times, forcing the lump of meat stuck in the center of its body down further and further to make room for another meal.
Oh shit, Herb thought. Me and my big mouth. Sweat dripped from his armpits down his sides and his last vestiges of bravery and resolve evaporated like the fumes from the swamp that surrounded him.
The keeper came toward Herb's tank and placed her hand on the glass surface, tapping it eagerly and said, "Up you go. Time to feed."
Herb struggled as the snake approached, raising its head as high as it could and pressed itself flat, inching up toward the top. Herb could feel raw panic overtaking him, making his body shake so hard the handcuffs rattled on the steel hook above him. He swung forward and tried to kick the glass, splashing wine everywhere, sending it over the top like a child sends waves out of a swimming pool.
The Keeper reached out her hands to help hoist the snake up, but just as the snake neared the lip of the glass, she stopped and looked back into the warehouse. The snake seemed confused, stretching and trying to wiggle out of her hands to get its head over the side and manage to hoist itself up the rest of the way, but instead the Keeper held it firmly and said, "Down! Get down, now. Back in your cage."
The cobra's tongue flicked over the side above Herb's head, as if wanting to taste his scent, but finally it relented and slid back down the glass. Herb strained forward to hear what was happening and then it came, the very faint sound of someone knocking on a door.
16.
Frank pressed his ear against the warehouse's front door and said, "Nothing yet. You aren't knocking loud enough." The warehouse was an old two-story affair with rusted aluminum siding with long ripples in the surface that stretched from the ground to the roof. It was small compared to the rest of the buildings surrounding it, and set far in the back near the water. Waves crashed along the harbor's wooden docks and gulls cried as they circled the air above, looking for food.
Hanley Harbor was in the working district and dirty-looking men were scattered along the piers, fishing day and night. They weren't the yuppie fishermen from Montrose Harbor who tied bright colored sweaters around their necks and wore leather shoes. There were no rich housewives jogging past with their dogs. The fishermen looked hungry. They looked like they were trying to catch dinner.
The water smelled and Frank wondered if maybe it was such a good idea to eat anything caught in there. He looked around the side of the building, inspecting the tall metal fence rimmed with rolling waves of razor-sharp steel that would tear the flesh off a man's bones if he got tangled in it. "Knock again, but this time, do it like you mean it."
"I know how to knock on a suspect's door," Jack said. She made a fist and bashed it against the door's heavy metal surface again and again.
"That's the point. You aren't supposed to
knock at all." Frank grabbed the door handle with both hands and kicked the bottom of the door several times, shaking paint chips off the outer walls and denting the door in the lower right corner. He looked back at Jack and said, "That's how we do it when we go to Kensington."
"I'm surprised you knock at all," Jack muttered.
They heard a woman's voice inside the building call out, "Stop banging! If you break my door I'm calling the police."
Instinctively, both of them moved to the side of the door, getting out of the fatal funnel. Jack reached in her pocket and pulled out her badge wallet just as the door cracked open and she held it up and said, "Too late. We're already here."
The woman smiled awkwardly as she opened the door, dressed in nothing but a light silk robe that she pinched around her chest to keep it closed. The fabric was thin and cream-colored, showing the dark areolas of her breasts and cut high above her thighs. Jack glanced sideways at Frank, who kept his eyes glued firmly on the woman's face. A clown could have popped out between the woman's legs and started honking a vaudeville song and Frank would not have looked. "Miss Li Xiao?" Frank said.
"Yes, can I help you?" she said.
"We need to speak with you in reference to a complaint about your property."
Jack stayed quiet as Frank talked, letting him stick to the script they'd concocted as she tried to look past the woman and into the building, to get eyes on as much as she could. There wasn't much to see. The woman was standing in a dark front office that had no windows and the door to the warehouse was shut behind her.
"What kind of complaint?" Li Xiao said, tucking a long ring of dark hair behind her ear. "That doesn't sound right. I have no problems with anyone."
"I'm sure it doesn't," Frank said softly. "Listen, a lot of times, these complaints are lodged by people just looking to start trouble for hard-working people. I have no doubt there's nothing wrong. Why don't you let us come in so we can explain the process, we'll sign off that everything's okay, and you can go about your business – whatever that business is."
Jack Daniels and Associates: Snake Wine Page 14
