The Night Serpent

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The Night Serpent Page 13

by Anna Leonard


  The day went faster than she expected; she finally got the deep cleaning of the kitchen done, and all of the laundry, and she was contemplating actually washing the floor, when the boxes arrived from the shelter. A hundred letters in one, a hundred envelopes in the other, with a huge roll of labels and stamps to go with it.

  “You did ask,” Nancy said half apologetically, handing the boxes over. Lily looked cautiously over the other woman’s shoulder, but didn’t see any news vans or stray reporters lurking.

  “Thanks. You want some coffee, or…?”

  “Nah, I gotta get back. And…Lil?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful, okay? Some woman came around the shelter this morning asking about you, and we’ve had a couple of phone calls. Reporters. Ronnie didn’t want to say anything, didn’t want you to worry, but…it’s only fair you know, I thought. We didn’t tell them anything, of course. Just that you were a volunteer and we didn’t give out names, and certainly not addresses, but…”

  “I’m careful,” Lily assured her. “And the police are doing regular drive-bys.” An Officer Stephens was on the day shift, with his partner whose name she hadn’t gotten, a dark-skinned, annoyed-looking woman. She hadn’t met the night shift, but she knew they were out there. “If anyone tries to stick a camera in my window, I’ll flash ’em.”

  Nancy laughed and left, reassured. Lily took the boxes back into the dining room and set them on the table. Some more coffee, and she should be able to get through this before it was time to make dinner.

  She carefully did not let herself wonder if Jon would show up for that meal.

  Chapter 11

  Agent Patrick ducked into the darkened room, barely the size of a supply closet, and shut the door behind him. “What’ve we got?”

  The room was filled with monitors; on two of them, tapes were running, the familiar black-and-white flicker of security tapes, the time and date running at the bottom right hand of the screen.

  “Security-cam footage. Came in this afternoon.” Petrosian tapped one of the technicians on the shoulder. “Run it again.”

  The tape flickered, blurred in rewind, and then started again from the beginning. Two views, one on each screen.

  “These are from our local zoo,” Petrosian said. “Not going to compete with the big’uns, but it has a few decent exhibits. Out in Dover, about ten-minute drive north of here. Our guy has a car.”

  “You sure it’s him?”

  The first tape showed a sweep of the exterior, one side of a low-slung building gray and black in the predawn light. “The monkey house,” Petrosian identified it. “If that is our guy, he did not do his homework.”

  A shadow flitted across the tapes. Tall, fast-moving and agile. No way to identify it, even with well-placed house lights. The camera clearly caught him jimmying the window, however.

  “Silent alarm,” one of the techs said. “Alerts the owners and the security company without freaking out the critters.”

  “Or letting the intruder know he’s been twigged.” Scaring someone away before they even got in was better security, but if an intruder was determined, he wouldn’t be scared off by anything short of a shotgun being loaded behind his ear.

  The second tape started rolling. This was inside a long open space filled with dead trees and what looked like—Patrick squinted—yes, old tire swings. What looked like a shallow pond lay at the far end of the space.

  “Tiger enclosure. Damn, he’s got balls. No way I’d go anywhere near there, not without a stun gun and backup.” The second tech shook his head, either in shock or admiration.

  At night, the cats were kept in a separate enclosure, but the intruder didn’t seem to realize that, looking into the wooden structures as though expecting to find a cat hidden there.

  “This guy may have done some research, but yeah, he’s not all that clued in, otherwise he wouldn’t be wasting his time there. And what does he think he’s going to do when he finds them, anyway?”

  “He’s not a pro,” Petrosian said. “Like a junkie tossing a house for whatever he can pawn fast, he’s going by gut and instinct. Here’s where it gets interesting.”

  The intruder lifted his head, as though hearing a noise, then turned and headed for a small door at the end of the enclosure. The tape stuttered, and then jump-cut to another location, this one an indoor hallway lit by fluorescent bulbs, with a handful of doors off to the left-hand side. The intruder walked quickly along, stopping at the second door as though pulled by a magnet.

  “That’s where the younger cats are kept,” Petrosian told Patrick.

  The guy knew. Not because he’d looked at plans beforehand, or read a sign on the door; he knew. Just the way Patrick knew the guy knew: not brain-knowing, but gut-knowing. Spooky-knowing.

  The intruder had just placed his hand on the doorknob when the door at the end of the hallway burst open, the lights flashed on, and two—no, three security guards came into the hall.

  Patrick noted absently that they had pretty good form, for rental cops. They didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t the fault of their training, what happened next.

  “Stop where you are!” the lead guard shouted, going low so his companions would have a clear shot over his head if the intruder decided to get cute.

  The unsub turned, his hand falling away from the doorknob, raising his hands as though to indicate surrender. The camera wasn’t advanced enough to zoom in on his face, but Patrick was pretty sure it creased up as though he’d tasted something sour, and then he started yelling. It was gibberish, nonsense words, but in a pattern that sounded as if he was saying something with meaning. Patrick frowned. It sounded…like the words that Lily had said last night. Or not the exact words, but in the same language.

  Connection. But what kind, and what did it mean? And was Lily keeping something from him? He hoped not. He really, really hoped not, and not only because it would make him seven different kinds of fool. “Do we have any idea what he’s saying?”

  “Not a clue. Was hoping your boys would be able to do something about that.”

  Patrick nodded; he had been about to request a copy of the tapes for exactly that reason. “Give me a copy, and an audio strip-out. I’ll see what they come back with.”

  “Already on digital. Give me an e-mail address and I can zip ’em over posthaste.”

  Some days Patrick really loved technology.

  “Hang on,” Petrosian warned. “There’s more.”

  The unsub’s left hand lowered, still over his shoulder and not looking as if it was reaching for anything, but suddenly there was a small object in his hand, about the size and width of a CD. He shook it at the guards as though expecting something to happen. When it didn’t, he let out a roar and rushed them, knocking the first one over and colliding with two and three. There was a strange spray of sparks where their bodies met, and then the guards fell to the floor, gasping and grabbing at their clothing, trying to put out the flames that had somehow started in the fabric.

  The intruder threw his head back and yowled something, waving the object at the ceiling, and then ran out the door.

  The tape ended.

  “What the hell?” Patrick asked, not expecting an answer.

  “Some kind of flamethrower, we guess. Butane torch, like they use in kitchens?”

  Patrick had used a kitchen torch before, in a miserable attempt to make crème brûlée. They didn’t look anything like that, nor did they throw sparks without visible flames, even when they malfunctioned.

  “Anyway, the guards are okay. But before the guy ran, he opened half a dozen cages. Hell, he stopped to do it, even with the alarms wailing. Freaked-out critters everywhere. Zoo staff is trying to round them up, and keep the predators from eating the other displays.”

  “Nice.” Patrick’s tone indicated he thought that it was anything but.

  “That guy’s nuts,” the tech who had earlier commented on his cojones said, this time far less admiringly. Nobody in the room dis
agreed.

  A few hours later, Patrick wandered out of the building to get some fresh air and clear his head. Something about what he’d seen was bothering him, but he couldn’t quite place what. Other than the fact that the unsub might have been speaking the same unknown language that Lily—a potential target of obsession of the killer—had muttered in during her dizzy spell. A dizzy spell that also included physical symptoms that were weird at best, and worrisome at most.

  All the pieces were important, Patrick was sure of it. Lily’s connection to cats, the Night Serpent’s need to kill them, the shared language, the physical symptoms…

  He just had no damn idea what any one of them meant, much less how they fit together.

  “Hey.” Petrosian, cigarette dangling from his lips, unlit.

  “Those things are gonna kill you,” Patrick said, indicating it with a jerk of his chin.

  “Only if I’m lucky,” Petrosian replied, the inevitable cop response. “Besides, bastards won’t even let me light up anymore.”

  He was going to make a wiseass comeback, but his phone vibrated, demanding his attention. “Patrick.”

  He shifted his cell phone to the other ear to hear better. “Uh-huh. Great. What’ve you got for me?” The worst part of the job was waiting for other people to do their job. The best part was when they came through, setting you on the next stage of investigation. That was when the blood surged, the brain leaped into overdrive, the neurons all fired and the case got solved.

  “It was what?”

  The voice of the FBI linguist came through the phone lines, clear, sarcastic and heavily put upon. “Ancient Egyptian, New Kingdom, around 1500 B.C. Do you know how long it took us to figure that out and find someone who could translate? This ain’t Stargate. We don’t have that kind of brainpower just sitting around twiddling their thumbs.”

  “But you guys are brilliant and figure it out anyway.”

  “No, we know enough to call the Smithsonian. And even they aren’t sure they’ve got it right.” The linguist rustled paper for effect, then read off the translation for the agent.

  “Jesus. You’re sure?”

  “Hell, no, we’re not sure. But that’s out best guess. It make any sense to you?”

  Yes. Yes, it did. And it made his blood run cold.

  The Way Must be Opened. Her Blood will Turn the Key.

  “Pack something. Basics, jeans and sweaters. Toiletries.”

  “What?” Lily stepped back to let Jon in, surprised to see two uniformed officers come in right on his heels. One of them was Stephens, of her daytime drive-by patrol. She knew him vaguely from previous cat-related cases. She gave him a small wave, and he shuffled his feet, clearly awkward with actually being in her home. The other was a man she didn’t know, who was carefully not looking at her.

  “You can’t stay here. He hurt people last night, Lily. Whatever he was before, he’s escalated. And he’s got you in his brain. I want you somewhere else, now.”

  “You want?” Lily stood in front of him, her hands on her hips. The solid build she had admired—caressed—the night before was now a barrier, a challenge to her. “What about what I want?” Her eyes widened, and she felt her fingers flex in sudden agitation. How dare he just drop this on her, as if it was all his decision and she had no say in anything at all. When did she become his property, just because they’d slept together?

  “Lily, please.” There were two cops with him. Would they side with her, or him? Jon—Agent Patrick—would rather they were federal agents, men he could boss around rather than play nicely with.

  She tried to rein in her anger. He probably had his reasons, she was sure he had his reasons. Pure logic said that if she was at real risk, he could protect her better somewhere else, somewhere he could control everything, someplace secret. Wasn’t that the point of safe houses, in every TV show she’d ever seen?

  Logic, though, seemed to have gone out the door the same time he came in and started ordering her around all the wrong way, and she couldn’t seem to stop herself from reacting badly.

  She was angry. No, she was furious. She was also, she discovered, more than a little turned on by the stubborn set of his jaw, and the way his eyes had gone flat not in anger, but determination. Lily was taken aback by that realization. She didn’t like men who were bossy, any more than she liked ones who were overly ambitious. But this was…it was the whole FBI-man thing. Power. Not ambition, which had made her uneasy, but a man aware of his own abilities and consequence, and not unwilling to use them.

  She reacted to it, yeah, okay. Male-in-Authority kink, check. But getting told what to do and don’t ask questions? Her spine stiffened like a steel rod in reaction against it. She was an adult, damn it. She had her own power, in her own right, and she would not let him ride roughshod over it. And if that made her unreasonable so be it. She was tired of men always deciding her fate.

  “No.” She shook her head, glaring at him. “This is my home. I’m as safe here as I will be anywhere, and a lot more comfortable. You have no idea that he’s actually going to threaten me, you said so yourself. He thinks I know something, something that he needs. That doesn’t sound like intent to commit violence. And even if he does come here, I have my security system, I have you, and now I’ve got two cops of my very own.” She assumed that they were here to protect her, and not just carry her suitcase to the car, anyway.

  “Damn it, Lily, it will be easier to protect you in a safe house.” He ran a hand through his hair and stared at something over her shoulder.

  “You don’t own me,” she said. “And you don’t get to order me around.” His gaze swung back to her and she was struck again by the intensity of his stare. Burning, focused and more than a little unnerving. The man who had made love to her was gone, and the man who tracked killers for a living was back.

  “It’s important for you to maintain control, isn’t it?” he asked, obviously trying to be reasonable.

  “Don’t try to analyze me,” she snapped. “I pay someone to do that. And years of therapy have told me that yes, I need control. I need to be the only one who makes decisions for me. If you have a problem with that—”

  He grabbed her arm and tugged her off to the side, away from the overtly eavesdropping cops. “I’m not going caveman on you,” he said. “I’m just trying to do my job. Lily. It’s only for a little while. Just to be safe.”

  She stared at him, then back at the cops. There was something he wasn’t telling her, and that cooled her anger even as determination solidified. “I can’t do this. I can’t…Post guards at my doors and windows if you want. But I’m not going anywhere.”

  She didn’t know why she was being so stubborn. But it felt right. This was her home, a place she had worked hard to afford, to make into a refuge, a place where she felt comfortable in a world that she never quite felt in sync with.

  Now he wanted to take her away from it, in the name of “safety.” Without telling her why. Even she knew that if there was no safety here, there wasn’t safety anywhere. No matter how safe a safe house might be. The Night Serpent wanted her, he would find her. It was that simple.

  The phone rang, and she broke away from him to answer it.

  “Who is this?” She looked at Jon, who had followed her into the kitchen.

  “You know.” The voice was flat, but somehow wired, as though it were about to explode. It made her skin crawl just hearing it.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes. You do. He’s there, so you know what’s happening. You can fix it, I know you can. She told me. She showed me. You’re the key. You’re the messenger. You have to tell me what I’m doing wrong. How do I convince Her to open the door? You know!”

  Seeing her agitation, Jon took the phone from her. “This is Special Agent Patrick. Who am I speaking with?”

  There was silence. “The Night Serpent. But you knew that already. Let me talk to the woman. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  The smart thing to do would be to kee
p him on the phone, keep him talking. But there was no way to track him—with all the fuss over federal phone tapping recently, he hadn’t wanted to open that can of worms to hook her phone up, hadn’t thought the guy would contact her like this. Lily was right; he had been so focused on the physical risk, he had overlooked the more passive threat, the indirect approach….

  The Way Must be Opened. Her Blood will Turn the Key.

  “The lady doesn’t want to talk to you. What makes you think she’d talk to a cat killer like you, anyway?”

  The Serpent took a deep breath, as though the accusation had shocked him. “We do things…that must be done. There is always a price. She understood. She showed me the way, through Her beasts. But I can’t open the door all the way. Let me talk to the woman, she’s here to show me how!”

  The Serpent’s voice was rising, almost a yowl, and Patrick made the instinctive decision to hang up before the guy got even more worked up.

  The moment the receiver was back in the cradle, he punched in *57. Somewhere in the phone company’s system, the caller’s number, and Lily’s number, were being recorded. Normally it took two or three calls to get the cops to do anything. Patrick suspected that he would be able to get a warrant for that number on just the one call.

  “He knows my number.”

  “You’re listed.”

  “I never thought…How did he learn my name?”

  He wanted to take her in his arms, reassure her that nothing was wrong, everything was going to be okay. “Media, probably. Someone didn’t see the harm in giving him the name of the cat lady the cops turn to. This guy, he looks normal. Sounds normal, if a little tightly wound. And you’re a local celebrity….”

  “Am not.”

  “You’ve been on TV, however unwillingly. To some people—” He broke off what he was saying and opened his cell phone, speed-dialing somewhere.

  “It’s Agent Patrick. The unsub just called the home of one of my consultants, made vaguely threatening comments. I’ve instituted a trace-back through the phone company. Yeah.” He gave her phone number to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Yeah, thanks. I figured. No, I have officers here with me now, I’ll arrange for them to…yeah. All right. Thanks.”

 

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