Eviscerating the Snake - The Complete Trilogy

by Ashley Fontainne

  For the next fifteen minutes, Nicole talked non-stop about the twisted triangle between Ralph, Piper, and Piper’s ex-husband, Nick. As her words sunk in, they became the concrete that fully set my newly formed pieces of the pie together, providing a rock solid understanding into Piper’s psyche and the disgusting tentacles that tied all the deviate monsters together, forming one cohesive mass of pulsating evil, each feeding off of the others’ pain.

  And it made me hate Olin even more, which I never thought would have been possible. My mind was truly overwhelmed by all of this newly acquired information, my stomach in one gigantic knot from this startling revelation. I sat in stunned silence and just listened, absolutely petrified for poor Gabrielle if she truly was in the midst of these monsters’ plans.

  At 6:10, we finally pulled into the parking lot at Zargento’s and hurried inside, Nicole rambling on about whether or not we missed Mrs. Lancaster. I had tried calling her cell phone twice, but it just went straight to her voicemail, so we were both a bit concerned that she had become angry and left. As we walked inside and requested our table, the host informed us that she called only moments before, saying she was experiencing car trouble and would arrive shortly.

  “Well, thank God for small favors,” Nicole said as we headed to our table. “After all that girly bonding shit, I need a drink. Whiskey, on the rocks please!” she said as she flopped down on the supple leather seat, scooting around to the middle of the u-shaped booth. “Chop chop!”

  For the next hour and a half, we went over our presentation once and then, in between drinks and ordering some incredible dish that I couldn’t begin to pronounce, we found ourselves discussing Ralph again as the drinks loosened both of our tongues. I looked at my watch and realized it was almost eight o’clock, that we were both trashed, and that Mrs. Lancaster had stood us up.

  “Well, I hope her husband takes all their fucking money,” Nicole said, her words slurred and her southern accent melding them together, which apparently, it did not only when she was angry, but drunk as well. The waiter came over with the check and offered to call us a cab, to which Nicole replied, “Honey, I am more than capable of driving anything with a stick right now, including you and my car.” The poor waiter turned three shades red and turned to leave the table with the two crazy drunk women.

  “No, no, wait, please do,” I said, catching him before he scurried away in his embarrassment.

  I was tipsy and just past the point of being able to drive, but Nicole was absolutely sloshed and could barely walk, and it was no wonder. Her miniscule frame was full of about six shots of whiskey and at least two glasses of wine. She was loudly berating the rudeness of the “bitch” that stood us up as I tried to give directions to the cabby to my house, and I had to shush her twice.

  As the driver made his way toward my house, I internally scolded myself for drinking too much, but then again, I wasn’t going to be driving to Summerset—Steve was—so I tried to cut myself some slack. After all, the last two days had been full of such an emotional roller coaster ride, it was actually surprising that I wasn’t a raving lunatic at this point. And even though Nicole was a bit over the top for my tastes, I was beginning to discover that she possessed a wicked sense of humor, and God knows, I needed a good laugh.

  The cabbie finally pulled us into the driveway and up to the gate, and as I punched in my pass code, the gate slowly rolled back. As we wound our way up the steep driveway to the front door, Nicole blurted out, “Oh boy, cat hair!” Then she burst out laughing.

  The cabbie helped me get her out of the car and up to the front door while I fumbled for my key fob in my purse, and in my furious searching, I guess I pulled too hard on the strap and it ripped, spilling the contents of my purse all over the entryway and into my pea gravel flower beds. I bent down to search for the stupid thing and finally found it at the edge of the concrete and pressed the button, not realizing that the cabbie had propped Nicole up on the front door while he was helping me search for the key, and Nicole immediately fell forward, arms and legs flying as she landed just inside the doorstep flat on her face. In my inebriated state, I couldn’t stop the laughter that escaped my lips at not only her ungraceful entrance into my house, but the look on the cabbie’s face as he quickly retreated and said, “No charge.” He slammed his car door and flew down the driveway, probably thinking it was high time to leave before somehow he ended up being blamed for the two drunks really hurting themselves.

  I turned around and stepped over Nicole’s thrashing body as she tried to stand, but she was so out of it that it came out more like a baby’s crawl, so I set my purse on the chair by the front door and reached down to grab her elbow. She was laughing so hard that she had the hiccups now, and I smiled and said, “Well, good thing I cleared the air earlier and apologized, or we would still be enemies, and I wouldn’t be here helping you stand up.”

  She finally stood up, threw her arms around me, and put her face within inches of my own, as drunks tend to do, and said, “One apology does not a friend make, Audra. Oh, wait, who am I kidding? You are so funny, and I could use a good laugh now and again. And, I’m sorry too, Audra…really, I should have stopped him. But girl, you got him good!” She then dissolved into a sputtering pile of giggles once again.

  Eventually, I maneuvered her over to the chair by the front entrance, her body almost as pliable as melted rubber and told her, “Stay put. I have to go get my stuff off of the porch.”

  Her head was rolled back and resting on the wall and her eyes were now closed, her hand covering them as she moaned, “Oh, not to worry. I have the spins.” And then she passed out.

  As I walked back out the front door and began retrieving the spilled contents that exploded out of my purse, I started smiling at the look of shock that would be on Steve’s face when he finally arrived to pick me up. Not only had he never seen me drunk before, but the fact that Nicole was here would probably be just as unreal to him as it was to me.

  I grabbed the last little straggler and stood up, eager to get inside and lock the door. But just as I turned to close the door, I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck as I realized, a split second too late, that I wasn’t alone. The rustle from the bushes announced his presence, and then suddenly, he was on the doorstep facing me. In that split second, I realized I recognized him, and my first urge was to say hello, but then I also realized that he shouldn’t be there, and my mind sort of stuttered; in my confusion, I said, “Kevin? What are you…?”

  But that’s all I was able to get out before his fist exploded into my jaw, knocking me backwards into the foyer. My head slammed down hard on the marble floor, and my vision swam in a mixture of darkness and bright and colorful flashes of light as I heard him say, his voice gravelly and distant, “That one was for what you did to me. Wait until you see what’s in store for what you did to my family.”

  And then I heard no more.

  “IT LOOKS AND SMELLS like she hasn’t been here in months.”

  I looked over at Detective Vargas, who was holding one of his meat hooks—it functioned as a hand when not pummeling something to death—up to his nose, his eyes immediately blinking as the smell hit him with full force. It was the pungent mixture of rotted food and garbage, which was rather disgusting, but for a Phoenix detective to have such a low threshold for smells, it was pathetic. Geez, where did they find these guys?

  I stepped past him into the kitchen, my flashlight illuminating the various array of bugs that quickly scuttled away from the intruding beam, and Nick followed behind me. He had remained quiet up until this point, but once the smell reached his nostrils when we finally made it completely inside, he grumbled under his breath, “Oh, dear God.” We stopped and listened for a moment and heard nothing—no sound except for the scurrying feet of insects. Nick reached over to the wall, turned the kitchen light on, and gasped, “Holy shit!”

  The mess was unbelievable. It was like stepping into an episode of Hoarders, just with more room to walk. Pile
s of rotted food littered the countertops and overflowed onto the floor which crunched under our feet from months of neglect. The refrigerator door was open and all the contents inside were a ruined mass of stinking liquid. We quickly picked our way through the kitchen and into the formal dining area. “Oh my God,” Nick mumbled the entire time as each step brought us in contact with more filth.

  The dining and living room were just as cluttered, except it was piles of newspapers, books and magazines, some stacks as high as two feet. I heard the sadness in Nick’s voice each time he commented on something, the shock of the deplorable conditions of his former home and the depths of madness that his former wife was obviously in hitting him hard. Had he not been such a manipulative prick, I might have felt some sympathy for him, but as it was, I didn’t.

  All I felt was jittery and apprehensive, eager to find something to lead us to Piper.

  Detective Vargas remained in the doorway into the living room and radioed for backup as Nick and I continued to sweep the house, Nick’s continual comments on the state of it beginning to wear on my nerves. Finding nothing other than clutter, we headed up the stairs to the main bedroom, which, considering the disgusting display downstairs, was actually clean. Obviously, Piper spent most of her time in this room, which meant that if any clues as to her whereabouts were to be unearthed, the most likely spot was here.

  I scanned the room quickly, trying to pick up on anything that I thought looked out of place or odd. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I holstered my gun and walked over toward the dressing table to retrieve the wastebasket that was sitting next to it, hoping some sliver of paper might have been carelessly thrown aside, but it was empty. Nick was struggling with maintaining a control on his emotions and sat down on the edge of the large, king sized bed, his arms reaching up and cradling his guilt ridden head in his hands as he slowly shook his head back and forth, mumbling quietly to himself as the notion of just how fucked up his life was hit him square in the face.

  I set the empty garbage basket down in its original spot and pulled out my rubber gloves before rifling through her drawers. Their loud snap, which made Nick almost jump out of his skin, reverberated through the quiet room. The black shadows that settled under his eyes reflected just how much stress he was experiencing, and his overly exaggerated reaction to a small, sudden noise told me how frazzled his nerves were.

  Serves the idiot right. I mean really, who are these people? All of them were demented, playing with each other’s lives like they were controlling life-sized dolls for their sickening amusement.

  I gently opened the drawers that contained more makeup than I had ever seen in one place in my entire life, except maybe for a department store. Growing up with a single mom, I knew what most of it was or had a vague idea of which part of the face it was supposed to go on, but the amount in front of me was staggering; nonetheless, it was just makeup, and it didn’t tell me much other than the fact that this Piper chick had some serious issues with her looks.

  Suddenly, Nick jerked his head up, focused his eyes on the closet to my right, and immediately stood up and walked over to it as he said, “I just remembered the closet!”

  Baffled, I queried, “What about it?”

  “It has a hidden room,” he said as he jerked the door open to reveal a closet that was as big as my bedroom. “She thought she had it secretly installed while I was out of town on a case,” he said, his hands fumbling around the walls, knocking clothes off their hangers as he went, “but I ran into the builder not long after, and he asked me how she liked it.” He was almost out of breath now as he was frantically searching for something.

  I was a bit amused at his sudden burst of energy, and it was rather humorous to watch him run around in circles in the closet, but this was wasting precious time, so I stepped inside and grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to turn around and face me.

  “Nick…stop. Look at the mess you’re making. Whatever you’re looking for will be all that much harder to find if you proceed with pulling all of her clothes off the hangers. What are you looking for?”

  “The button to open it.”

  “You don’t know where it is?” I said, dumbfounded that he wouldn’t know everything about his home, especially something as important as a button to a secret room for Heaven’s sake.

  “No. I never asked Bill,” he said, his eyes scanning the walls while he answered, “I didn’t want to arouse any suspicion by asking him questions that I should obviously know the answer to. I didn’t want him telling Piper.”

  What? I thought as I shook my head in disbelief.

  Apparently, Nick read my face and said, “I tried to give her as much space as possible, remember? Oh, it doesn’t matter now. Just help me find a way to make the door open.”

  “Nick, we can’t go about this like crazed drug addicts looking for a fix. Now, stop for a minute, and let’s think,” I said, trying to keep my voice from betraying the irritated edge this man was driving me to. “Think about the design of this room and the layout of the rest of the house. The room has to be located on the other side of that wall,” I said, pointing behind him. “There’s no other place that it could be, which means the button or lever must be over here somewhere.”

  I moved past him and slowly ran my hand around the door jam, feeling nothing. I looked around quickly and noticed there was no stepping stool of any kind, so I asked Nick, “How tall is Piper?”

  He looked at me like I just spoke in another language before answering, “Uh, around 5’4”, I think.”

  I turned back around and lowered my gaze to what I surmised would be her maximum extended reach, reaching behind the clothes as I went, and just as I made it all the way around to the left side and was about to just take my gun out and start shooting holes in the wall, I felt it. Silently, I pushed in on the indentation and with whisper quiet stealth, the back of the closet opened up, revealing a room just as big as the closet.

  As the door finished sliding open, the room lit up automatically, revealing what to me looked like the backstage of a theater. There were hats, shoes, dresses, purses, and even costumes, all arranged by color and style, along with a rectangular table down the middle that served as not only a staging area for numerous pairs of glasses and wigs, but held numerous drawers underneath it as well. I heard Nick sigh heavily under his breath as he followed in behind me, realizing that this room was used for much more sinister purposes than what he always had envisioned.

  As Nick stared at the clothes and rummaged through some of the more worn purses, I focused my attention on the drawers. I pulled open the long middle one only to be greeted with dust from the emptiness inside, but something told me to reach in and feel around all the way to the back, and that’s when I felt the small knot in the pit of my stomach immediately tighten. When my fingers touched something, I pulled it out.

  It was a tattered section of an article that looked like it had been ripped it out of a magazine and then crumpled up and shoved inside this small drawer. Gently, I set it on top of the dresser and began to smooth out the wrinkles as easily as I could without tearing the worn section. Most of the writing was illegible, but one part stood out as a glaring beacon of guilt—the name of Dr. Moore circled in red ink. As I continued to peer at the crushed paper, Nick finally noticed I wasn’t moving or saying anything, and his curious legal mind finally took over. He strode over to where I was, his voice shaky as he asked quietly, “What is it?”

  “The nail in Piper’s coffin,” I replied.

  OH MAN, MY HEAD is throbbing! How much did I have to drink last night? Why am I so sore? I don’t remember doing anything strenuous? Oh yeah, I did have to lift Nicole off the floor, but wait, that wasn’t too hard….Oh, Jesus, what is that smell? Why can’t I move my arms? My feet? What is that stench?

  Then suddenly, my blurred vision burst through the vaporous mists of alcohol and pain, and I immediately had full clarity. I remembered Kevin standing in my doorway and the image of his fist coming toward my
face, his eyes black with anger, and then nothing, until now. Some primal fear deep inside me told me not to open my eyes or move a muscle, which was nearly impossible as my panic started to rise from within my chest, its cold, icicle-like fingers paralyzing my body as they ran rampant through my veins and gripped my heart like a frozen vice. Oh Jesus, think Audra, think.

  Okay, I needed to assess the situation. I needed to rely on all my other senses at the moment since I was petrified to let on to whomever might be watching me now that I was conscious. I felt a chair under me and realized that I was sitting. My arms were tied behind my back and something was wrapped around my ankles. Obviously, Kevin hit me quite hard, enough to knock me to the ground and render me unconscious for…oh God, how long had I been out? What time did Nicole and I make it to my house? Eight? Nine? And why in the hell did Kevin hit me? What was he doing at my house? What was that horrific smell? Where the hell was I?

  I felt my blood pressure rise exponentially, right along with my heart rate as it thumped loudly and fear overtook me. I forced all of my energy to my ears, making myself listen to my surroundings rather than to the rush of blood pumping in my ears, promising myself that if I could determine I was alone, I would open my eyes. It was quiet save for a light, rustling sound coming from my right, sort of like feet shuffling with slippers on a slick floor. I heard the lonely, distant cry of a coyote from my left and realized it must still be night, but that cry didn’t help me in terms of my location, for God knows those things were all over the state, which meant that I could be anywhere.

  I heard a light groan from behind me and recognized it as that of a woman, one still asleep but in obvious pain. Was that Nicole? It was almost impossible to tell since all I heard was a brief moan followed by the faint sounds of struggling respirations. I held my own ragged breath for as long as I could, straining to hear any other noise that would indicate someone was near me or provide some fleeting clue as to where I was, and finally, hearing nothing, I slowly opened my eyes to view my prison. For a split second I completely panicked because I was in utter darkness, but some small voice of reason whispered in the back of my mind to give my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness.