“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry!”
She ran to help him stand up. “You startled me. Are you Dr. Simmins?”
“No, no. I’m the one who should apologize,” the little man said in a high, nasal voice. He shook himself, dusted off the seat of his pants, stuck out one hand. “Yes, I’m Simmins. And you are…?”
He was just under five and a half feet tall, wiry and thin. He wore baggy Hawaiian shorts and a tight tank top that hugged his pot belly, making it look like he’d stuffed a bowling ball under there. His stork-like legs stuck out from the gaudy shorts and his gnarled toes were crammed into old yellow flip-flops. His thick, black-rimmed glasses were askew on his long, triangular nose. In what looked like a habitual gesture, he immediately pushed them up on his face. His eyes, made tiny by the glasses, were coal black. He regarded her with a feverish intensity.
“I’m Sandra McCormick.”
She held out her hand and the thin man took it. His grip was soft, damp, somehow tentative.
“Doctor, I really am sorry. I got spooked. The alligators…I’ve never seen them outside of a zoo.”
“Just some of my pets.” He smiled. Sandra noticed how his nose, long and pointed, twitched when he spoke.
They stared at each other. With the introductions out of the way, he didn’t seem to know what to do next. He kept smacking his lips. After an awkward moment he nodded toward the house.
“Come on in,” he said, stepping past her and walking along the fence.
“Uh, sure,” she said. She followed him through a corroded but still sturdy gate, keeping one eye cocked nervously in the general direction of the alligator pool. As she followed him along, she noticed a double set of indented scars in the back of his left calf. Probably a souvenir from one of his pets. She grimaced. Ugly thought…
He opened his front door and ushered her inside.
“You probably think my setup here is odd,” he said.
She remembered Dr. Dawes using the same adjective to describe Simmins. Well, he’d been right about that.
“I had to install the fence systems a few years ago to avoid any further contamination of the local ecosystem. I’d misplaced a Burmese python. The locals weren’t amused.”
“No,” she said faintly, “I guess they wouldn’t be.”
His living room held a few benches and innumerable National Geographics and scientific magazines stacked on every level surface, including the floor, most of them featuring reptiles on the covers.
She pretended not to notice the three geckos clinging to the wall by the light switch. As he led her deeper into the interior, she almost stepped on a lizard. It scurried under a nearby table where it did a series of quick pushups as it stared at her with calm, lidless eyes.
The enormous house seemed to be buried in clutter. Posters of dinosaurs, snakes, lizards, alligators, and jungles plastered the walls. Bookcases burdened by all manner of scientific texts were piled high in disarray.
“Come on through here,” he said, negotiating a path between teetering stacks of mud-spattered magazines on the floor. He led her though the kitchen, a part of which was cordoned off with a fine mesh wire cage. Sandra began to get the unnerving feeling that she was in a huge cage, as well.
“I put up the wire to keep the larger ones from getting into the cupboards.”
“The larger ones?”
“Iguanas.”
“Oh.”
“They like the saltines.”
They exited the kitchen and entered the den. More pictures and posters of reptiles, real and fictional, covered the walls, though the clutter was marginally less. She eyed several posters from the movie Jurassic Park that seemed to be mostly huge white teeth.
“So,” he said, gesturing for her to sit, “Dr. Dawes said you had something that stumped you. Something weird.”
“Yes,” she said. She opened her bag, reached in, and withdrew the vial containing the scale. She handed it to him. He raised it to the light and squinted.
“Um,” he said, “where did you get this?”
Sandra told him, explaining how Madrone had it in his sleeve when they’d found him murdered.
Simmins stood up, eyeing her sharply. “Do you know what this is? What it might be? I’ve been waiting for something like this for a long time.”
“Do you recognize it?” Sandra asked.
“Well, it’s a long story, but I used to have one. Well, a lot of them. An entire skin.”
“What?” Sandra stared at him.
“Uh-huh. A skin found in London in November,1888. A human-sized lizard. Larger than human sized. The scales were this same color, translucency…the same size, texture. No doubt about it.”
“Did they find the animal it belonged to? What was it?” Sandra tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice.
“For a couple of days, the London papers suggested that Jack the Ripper was a giant reptile. But that didn’t last for long. Anyway, a cold-blooded creature could never have lived in a climate as cold as England in autumn. Unless,” he shrugged, casually gesturing to one of the dinosaur posters, “Bakker’s theory about dinosaurs being warm-blooded is true.”
“What about the skin?” Sandra persisted.
“Well, I learned about all of this when I was studying in the Sorbonne in Paris. They had it in one of their archive drawers. A shame. No one ever paid much attention to it, and the skin was just rotting there, forgotten. So I…well, I…they let me have it.” He shifted uncomfortably on the couch.
Sandra shrugged. She didn’t care how he’d acquired it. “So do you still have the skin? Can I see it?”
“Well, um.” He shifted again, brought one of his skinny legs up to cross the other. His thin, gnarled fingers clasped his shin. “Not exactly. I sold it.”
“You what?”
“I know, I know.” His eyes were downcast. “I was young and foolish and, well, you know how the saying goes. You never know what you have until it’s gone. I had the skin for years. I had only told a few of my closest colleagues about it. For, um, certain reasons I didn’t want it to be public knowledge that I had it, but…then he showed up.”
“He?”
Simmins stared up at the ceiling. “Now that’s the strange thing. I can never remember his name. I have a hard time remembering his face, too. He was a very polite, very well-dressed Chinese gentleman. He visited my apartment in Paris and we got to talking. We must have talked for hours about my theories. In the end, he told me he wished to purchase the skin. Of course, I immediately said I didn’t have it any longer. But he insisted and finally I admitted that I might be able to put a hand on it. He told me the price he was willing to offer and, well…”
“You sold it.”
He nodded. “For a lot of money.”
“How much was it?”
“Enough to buy Jurassic Park. Or at least this research laboratory. And then some.” He paused. “You have to understand, Detective. I was poor. I thought about all the research I could do, all by myself, with no sponsor, with the money that he offered.”
He sighed. “I’ve never been able to decide whether I regret parting with the skin or not. Obviously it was the type of thing a person stumbles across only once in their lifetime. But then, so was the offer the Chinese gentleman made me.”
“So you don’t have any of it? Not any part of it?”
“No.”
“No photographs?”
“I didn’t think about that until it was too late. I can tell you basically what it looked like, though, if that will help. It was almost eight feet long. It had roughly the same shape as a human, except it had six limbs. Two that looked like legs, I suppose. Two that were arms, and then two that were wings coming out of its back. That’s what I assumed, at least. There were no wings along with the skin, only ragged holes in the back of the skin that suggested it. It was really the only evidence of a sixlimbed reptile ever discovered. There isn’t even any fossilized evidence of such a creature. Of course, such a large creatur
e could never fly. The condor principle, you see, times four. Never fly, unless, of course, my theory about the creature’s bones is right. They could have been formed of hexagonal protein crystals, and that would’ve made them light enough. That would explain any lack of fossilized evidence, if in fact these creatures existed in large numbers long ago.”
Silence fell again, and Sandra watched his face as he watched hers. She had no idea if he was telling the truth, lying, or delusional. Her private opinion was that he was a nut-ball and had been one for years.
“Could this scale have come from some large, trained lizard?”
“But…” Simmins looked puzzled. “I told you where it came from.”
She sighed. “Yes, an eight-foot, six-legged reptile with wings. A lizard man.”
“Well, that’s not completely sure. I mean, it’s only supposition that it was a lizard man. It could have been a completely separate evolutionary strain that just happened to be shaped very much like a human.”
“I see.”
“There may be one other possibility mentioned in the literature,” he said thoughtfully.
“Oh?”
“They’re called the Drakkers.” He scrunched up his face. “No…that’s not it. Drakmers…” Again, his face contorted into a disappointed frown. “No. The Drokpas! That’s it—the Drokpas.”
“The Drokpas?”
“It’s been well reported by those who have traveled there that there are dragon men who live in China. High up in the Himalayas. I’ve never seen photos, mind you, but there’s been enough talk for me to believe the story’s true. And there are many cites in respected journals. Older ones, of course, but…” His voice trailed off. There was a noise to his left and they both glanced in that direction. An iguana was making its way across a line of stacked books on the shelf under the window.
“Dragon men. In the Himalayas,” Sandra said. Her voice was flat.
He spread his hands. “Perhaps it’s a bit tenuous…” he said. “But I’ve told you everything I can think of.”
She rummaged in her purse and brought out the digital prints. “We found these at two of the crimes,” she said, handing them over.
He stood up, took them over to the window, and brought them close to his face. “Yes, yes. The same. See the triple claws, the way the arch is twisted slightly?”
She stood up, walked over, and joined him. He pointed out anomalies in the prints, how one claw was somewhat larger than the others, equivalent to a human heel. “This is no crawling lizard, Detective. Whatever it is, it stands on its hind legs.”
She shook her head in frustration. “But you don’t know what it is.”
“Well, the Drokpas I mentioned…”
“Right. Them.”
They stared at each other again. Finally his watery gaze dropped.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” he said softly.
She retrieved the scale and the prints, put them back into her bag. “Oh, you’ve been a help,” she said.
He brightened. “That’s good. Isn’t it?”
She felt a wave of sudden pity for this misfit living with his cold-blooded reptiles in the back of nowhere. “It’s a help,” she said. “I just don’t know what kind of help.”
He nodded. “Will you keep me informed? If you actually find anything?”
“Of course,” she said. She glanced out the window. The clouds beyond were now a vast purple bruise across the sky. “I’d better get going,” she said. “Looks like rain.”
He escorted her as far as the front gate. “Be careful now,” he called. “It’s not a good road.”
The last she saw of him, he was standing and watching her, one hand slowly waving good-bye.
She waved back, then plunged into the gloomy thickets that barricaded his house from the rest of the world.
“Chinese dragons,” she said. “Drokpas. Lizard men with wings.”
Some sort of sticker bush scratched a long tear in her already tattered hose.
“Jesus!”
It was three o’clock when she left her mad scientist’s lair. She drove down five miles of winding highway before she came to Fallbrook’s main street. The highway entered the town, weaved back and forth a little and then abruptly turned to the left onto a straight drag.
She stopped at a small Chinese restaurant, surprised but pleased to find one in such a small town. The place was practically deserted. The food was good, though nothing to compare with the best of Chicago’s Chinatown. She ate mechanically and stared out the window into the parking lot. It had finally begun to rain.
As she watched the water pour from the heavens, she allowed herself to think of Justin. She remembered his hands on her. How good it had felt to be touched. Maybe to be loved, if only a little, if only for one night.
Still thinking about her options—first, whether she had any options regarding Justin, second whether she wanted any—she glanced out the window next to her table. A man was looking at her car. He seemed familiar.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Where had she seen him before?
And then she had it. He was the middle-eastern man who had tried to dance with her at the blues club. The one who had stepped out of the bar and maybe caused the redhead to bolt.
What the hell was he doing staring at her car in a parking lot in Fallbrook, California? She’d come here almost on the spur of the moment. How had he gotten here?
Sandra watched him. She couldn’t see his face full on, only his profile, indistinct through the rain-blurred glass. Suddenly he seemed to sense her attention. He turned and vanished toward the side of the window, in the direction of the entrance.
A moment later he walked into the restaurant. Up close, it was him. He turned to face her, his gaze boring into her.
What had been a dismal failure of a day as a detective had suddenly turned into something else. What it had turned into she wasn’t sure. Not anything good. The hesitant, boorish persona the man had shown before, at the blues club, had vanished. Now he radiated danger.
He walked straight toward her, his eyes burning. Hidden beneath the edge of the table, her hand worked the catch of her bag and came to rest on the butt of her pistol.
“Hold it right there, pal,” she said to him. “No closer.”
The man—hadn’t he said his name was Omar?—wore a wide-collared shirt—a fad Sandra could’ve sworn had died in the seventies—and baggy bell-bottoms.
He looked down at her and snorted contemptuously.
“And if I don’t? Are you going to shoot me, Detective?” His voice was as dry as the desert, heavily laden with that piping accent. He stopped just in front of her.
Sandra suddenly, desperately wished she had stood up before he blocked her in the booth. She didn’t show it. “Stay right where you are and we’ll get along fine,” Sandra responded coldly. “I don’t—”
The man lunged for her.
She jerked out the pistol and pulled the trigger. The gunshot cracked and the man stumbled back, crashed into a glass-topped table. The glass shattered, scattering across the floor.
A woman emerging from the rest room screamed.
Sandra slid from the booth, took a shooter’s stance. Both hands gripped her pistol and she locked her elbows, staring straight down the barrel at the man.
He was lying on the ground, not moving.
Had she killed him? At that range she couldn’t have missed.
She remained cautious, keeping her distance. The restaurant had become deathly silent.
“Call 911,” Sandra commanded the terrified lady by the bathroom, coming around to where she could see the inert man’s face, never taking her eyes off him.
Then his eyes snapped open and he grabbed for her leg. Sandra fired again, but the man’s speed was unbelievable. She’d shot him again, she knew she had, but he kept coming after her, and she stumbled backward, careening into another table. It rocked and the glass plate slid off a bit, but did not fall over.
And then he had a grip on her arm, twisting with frightening power. She felt her bones grind together. Christ, he was fast! How had he gotten to her that fast?!
Sandra leaned into him, trying to dislodge his hand, but he let go and shoved her away from him, not with any fancy technique, just with raw power. His hand snaked out, chopping at her wrist. Sandra’s gun clattered to the tiled floor. She gasped at the pain raking across her wrist.
She lashed out with a low kick at the man’s kneecap, following it up with one to the balls. But what would have put any normal man on the ground, curled up, holding his groin and trying not to puke, didn’t faze him at all. He grunted softly and, without pausing, launched himself into the air. His feet rammed into her chest at the crest of his jump. The air exploded from her lungs and she smashed into the side of a table like a wrecking ball. The table went over with her on top of it. Glass shattered all around her.
She struggled to breathe, tried to raise her head. There was a vast ache like a vise around her chest, choking off her breathing.
Omar straddled her, then sat down hard on her belly, pinning her to the ground. His hands wrapped around her throat and squeezed. She struggled desperately, pounding at his face, but to no avail.
Seconds later, as she felt her consciousness ebbing, the man relented, relaxed his grasp on her throat.
“Listen,” she croaked, “you know I’m a cop, the police are on their way, and you’ve got witnesses, lots of them, watching through the front window! Get out while you still can!”
With one hand, the man kept her neck pinned against the floor. He used his other hand to spring the magazine from her gun and toss it away.
“If you have no gun, you are no longer the big cop woman, are you?” His Arabic accent was guttural and very pronounced.
“What do you want?” Sandra asked.
“I want you to stop looking for things you know nothing about,” he said.
“Thanks for the tip,” she said. “I didn’t realize I was getting close to something.” Sandra wanted to keep him talking, wanted to start a dialogue. The longer she kept him talking, the longer she stayed alive—and the more chance the local suits would come riding in to save her. She shifted her body a little, hoping to gain a bit of leverage she might use to throw him.
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