by Sandra Balzo
‘Blaaah! … Blaaah … Blaaaah!’
Pavlik had the knife poised, but was holding fast. ‘Sounds like it’s got something stuck in its throat.’
Under the circumstances, I couldn’t think of anything to say other than, ‘the whole damn monster is its throat,’ and anyway, speech had momentarily left me. I kept my mouth shut.
‘Yup,’ Hertel said, ‘kind of like he’s hockin’ up a loogie. Or a “Larry” maybe?’ The ancient engineer was laughing as he offered me his hand.
I pushed his helping hand away and got up under my own steam. ‘That’s in poor taste.’
‘Taste,’ Hertel was still chuckling. ‘Now there’s another good one.’
I weighed the flashlight in my hand, considering which critter I should knock senseless – or more senseless, in Hertel’s case – with it.
‘Blaaah – blaaah! … Blaaaah … BLAAAAAAH!’
I turned around in time to see the entire body of Laurence Potter erupt from the snake’s mouth and land in the water, face-down, not two feet away from me.
‘Holy shit.’ My stomach was heaving and I pleaded with whatever was in it – a little cake icing and a lot of espresso martini, probably – to stay down there.
‘No wonder the poor bitch had trouble getting your reviewer in. And out,’ Hertel said, coming up beside me. ‘That thing there had to get hung up somewhere along her gut.’ He pointed.
‘That thing there’ was a staghorn handle, buried past the base of the blade in Laurence Potter’s back.
SEVENTEEN
‘I guess we can eliminate “accident” as the cause of death.’
The statement was my weak attempt at bravado as the python – Burmese or African rock, with my money on the latter – shuddered its last on the opposite bank.
With me refusing to touch any part of Potter that had been inside the snake, the sheriff and I managed to drag Potter’s body onto what passed for dry ground on the railway bed near the locomotive. We stood and watched while Hertel – finally, and mercifully – left us to climb onto the train in search of help, Pavlik instructing him not to provide any details to even the hoped-for helpers.
‘Unless that snake managed to hop up into the train and steal the knife from the cake,’ Pavlik said, ‘I think we can assume Potter was stabbed and either fell or was tossed off well before it got hold of him.’
I shivered and glanced toward the gaping snake carcass. The python had split its sides – and not in the good way – during the final effort to urp up the reviewer.
Pavlik, who’d been crouched down examining Potter’s body, rose to his feet. ‘The knife is plunged in so deeply a good portion of the handle isn’t even visible. We won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but I can’t imagine a person being strong enough to do that.’
I lifted my eyebrows. ‘So we’re back to the snake as cause of death?’
‘Not necessarily.’ Pavlik waved toward the road bed. ‘If our decedent, knife already in his back, hit the ground a certain way, his own weight might have punched the blade deeper. Or, as you say, the snake’s constriction might have forced the knife farther into the body.’
I felt sick again. ‘And that’s what killed him?’
‘We don’t know that yet.’ Pavlik put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Potter might have already been dead from the wound. Or from drowning.’
You know you’re in a bad place when the thought of somebody dying sooner rather than later cheers you.
But here we were. Welcome to the Everglades.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, moving closer to Pavlik.
‘The water dripping off the leaves and grass, probably,’
‘I hear that, as well, but this is kind of a tick, tick, tick.’
‘You mean like a clock? Inside a crocodile perhaps?’
Captain Hook’s crocodile. My sheriff was channeling Peter Pan. ‘I know it’s silly, but – there! There it is again.’
Pavlik listened. ‘Probably some kind of night bird. They have a lot of species down here that we’ve never heard or seen.’
‘And, of course, alligators, not crocodiles,’ I said with a self-deprecating laugh.
‘No, they have crocodiles, too.’ Pavlik was crossing the flooded breach back to our friend the python. ‘Just not as many as they do alligators.’
More great news. With a nervous look around, I followed him.
‘Did you get a good look at this thing’s teeth?’ I pointed a cautious toe at a portion of the snake’s head. ‘They tilt backwards like those one-way exit spikes in parking lots. You know – the ones that cause “severe tire damage” if you back over them.’
‘A very efficient creation of nature. And from the looks of the maternity ward, Hertel was right about one thing: she was eating for about eighty.’
I looked into the belly of the beast and could swear that some of her eggs were rolling against each other. ‘We’re not going to leave them here, are we?’
Pavlik eyed me. ‘Please tell me you’re not that hungry. Or maternal.’
Ugh. ‘No, thank you very much, on the former. As to the latter, just the opposite. I know everybody down here is concerned about the population of pythons in the Everglades, and I think the ‘ticking’ noise might be coming from inside the eggs. Maybe we – or better, you – should smash them or something.’
Pavlik shook his head. ‘I get your point, but outside of what Hertel told us, I have no proof that’s a python. Nor that it’s legal to kill whatever it is or its eggs.’
‘Pavlik, it was eating another member of our species, and you’re going to risk letting its offspring grow up to slither in Mommy’s footsteps? Not to mention following her dietary habits?’
The whole thing was starting to feel surreal. Whatever were we doing stuck here, talking about this, while standing next to … that? I averted my eyes.
‘I get it, Maggy. And if the creature hadn’t ruptured, I would have happily slit the thing’s throat if I could find it. As it is, though, I’m not sure I feel right about smashing the eggs. We’ll let the authorities decide on that when they arrive.’
‘Unless the eggs hatch first, overrun the cars and Murder on the Orient Espresso gets made into a sequel to Snakes on a Plane,’ I muttered. ‘Then all the “authorities” will find of us is our shoes. Maybe.’
‘Good flick,’ Pavlik observed as the rain started to fall heavier again. ‘A classic, in fact. But I have to say, if these eggs can hatch themselves, make their way up and into the train and then kill us all, we deserve what we get.’
Terrific. Now Pavlik was Charles Darwin.
On the opposite side of the breach, the engineer came around the locomotive’s corner. ‘I tapped the first two I saw. Will they do?’ He hooked a finger toward Boyce, the coffeehouse owner, and Markus, the librarian.
‘Jesus,’ Markus said. He was looking at the flooded track. ‘What do we do?’
‘I didn’t tell them nothing,’ Hertel said to Pavlik. ‘Like you said.’
Pavlik nodded. ‘Sadly, the track’s not our biggest problem.’ He gestured toward Potter’s body in the shadow of the locomotive.
Boyce stepped forward. ‘Isn’t this one of our passengers?’
I realized the coffee man wouldn’t necessarily know Laurence Potter by face.
‘How in the hell did Potter get out here?’ Markus asked, not seeming to know what to make of it all.
He could join the club.
‘Apparently he fell off the train and,’ Pavlik waved toward the python in front of us, ‘was attacked by a snake.’
It was true as far as it went, but it didn’t fool Boyce, who had begun to circle the body. ‘A snake carrying a knife?’
Pavlik’s eyes narrowed, as if he was appraising Boyce. ‘Time on the job?’
‘Military police, two hitches, one tour in Iraq.’
I didn’t quite see why it took a specialized background to notice a knife in a man’s back, but I’d grown accustomed to the fact that people who’ve
served in the military or law enforcement seem able to recognize each other. Pavlik had explained it to me as an awareness, displayed by a way of carrying oneself and cold calmness in being ready for anything.
My opinion? This was a big anything.
‘That’s a python – African rock, I think,’ Markus said, coming to join us on the opposite bank. ‘Did he explode?’
‘She,’ Hertel corrected. ‘But “explode” is a fair description. Full of eggs, I might add.’
Since Markus seemed to know something about pythons, I was hoping he was willing to share the facts, sans Engineer Hertel’s colorful embroidery. ‘Can those eggs hatch?’
‘You mean right this second?’ Markus pursed his lips, squatting down to get a better view of the snake. ‘The female would need to lay them first and then coil her own body into a nest to keep them warm.’
‘Doesn’t look like that’ll happen,’ Boyce said.
‘A good thing, too,’ Hertel said. ‘You don’t want to be around a Mama Python protecting her eggs, ’specially if you and me are right and this is one of those African rock jobbies.’
‘Bigger and meaner,’ Markus concurred. ‘Do you think Potter was protecting himself with the knife and somehow got it in the back during the struggle?’
For a second I thought Pavlik might go along with the theory for expediency, but then he seemed to reconsider. ‘Pretty unlikely, I’d say. He—’
‘What in the world are you all doing out here?’ Zoe Scarlett had rounded the locomotive and come up behind the engineer and Boyce. She stopped short and Missy, following on her boss’s heels, nearly rear-ended her.
Then both of them looked down at Laurence Potter.
‘Oh, dear,’ Missy Hudson, the mistress of understatement said. ‘Is he …?’
‘Dead,’ Hertel said, flatly. ‘Stabbed and squeezed, then swallered and ree-gurgi-tated for good measure.’
Missy turned green, but it was Zoe who fainted dead away.
EIGHTEEN
I registered a benefit of the train having already reversed on the tracks so it now pointed east and back toward the station in Fort Lauderdale: the sleeping car, where Pavlik wanted to stash Larry Potter’s body, was the closest one to us.
Leaving Missy, Markus and the recovering Zoe to continue on to the club car entrance at the rear of the train, Pavlik and Boyce had carried Potter’s body to the exit where I’d found the matchbook. They stood waiting while I slid open the door.
‘You may just have to count to three and sling ’im up there,’ Hertel said from behind them. ‘This train doesn’t have no steps to pull down, because the station’s got high platforms and that’s the only place people will get on and off.’
We all looked down at Potter. Pavlik had hold of the reviewer under his arms and Boyce had hold of the feet. I couldn’t see how they were going to “sling” him – one-two-three, heave! – and have him land inside the train as opposed to splattered up against it.
‘Fireman’s carry is the best,’ Boyce said, setting down his end. ‘I’ll get him.’
‘You sure?’ Pavlik asked. ‘We can—’
‘Yup.’ Boyce leaned over, wrapped his arms around Potter’s waist and levered him up onto his shoulder. ‘Gotta keep in shape.’
Straightening up, the coffee man swung himself and his burden up and into the train, seemingly effortlessly.
‘Your tongue is hanging out,’ Pavlik growled to me. ‘Put it back where it belongs and climb in.’
‘Yessir,’ I said, swinging myself up ahead of him. Zoe’s swoon at the sight of Potter’s body, while understandable, had made me feel absolutely plucky by comparison.
‘Don’t you want a … pristine room?’ I asked, as Pavlik slid past me to open the first door on the left for Boyce, who was waiting patiently. ‘This is where you – and Potter, if my theory is right – were earlier.’
‘Which makes it the perfect place now,’ Pavlik said. ‘Any evidence was already trampled over during our little play and this way we don’t chance contaminating another possible scene.’
‘Murder scene?’ I asked, as Boyce went to deposit his load.
‘He was stabbed somewhere,’ Pavlik pointed out. ‘There must—’
‘Oops,’ Boyce said as Potter slipped off his shoulder and onto the bunk. ‘He’s kind of slippery.’
‘Probably python tummy juices,’ Hertel said from the doorway. ‘Not to mention the rain. It’s coming down cats and dogs again out there.’
As if the Everglades themselves were writing our stage directions, lightning flashed through the window, illuminating the body.
‘Let’s keep him up on his side,’ Pavlik said, assisting. ‘We don’t want to jam the knife any deeper into his back.’
‘Not going to matter much now,’ Hertel opined, clicking on the roomette light.
We ignored him as the two other men settled Potter onto the bunk, facing away from us toward the window.
I suppressed a shiver. Given my new-found ‘pluck,’ I attributed the reaction to the fact that my sundress was rain-damp. With the window closed and air conditioning on, the sleeping space felt like an icebox. And it smelled none too sweet, as well. ‘What do we do now?’
‘I asked Markus, Missy, and Zoe to keep this to themselves, but have everyone convene in the passenger car.’ Pavlik hooked a finger in the direction of the next car. ‘We’ll need to explain the situation and outline our options, assuming there are any.’
Then, to Hertel, ‘I assume, since the track is underwater, we’re stuck here?’
‘You’re plumb right about that. We can plow through a little water, but it looks to me like the railroad bed might’ve washed away under the tracks and sunk ’em, which is why we have that gulley between us and where the snake had ahold of him.’ He nodded at Potter.
I looked at the dead man, who could easily have been curled up in bed ‘with his trousers on,’ as the old nursery rhyme goes.
One shoe off and one shoe on. Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John. ‘Should we cover him or something?’
‘I’d rather not,’ said Pavlik. ‘The less we tinker, the happier the crime-scene people are going to be when they get here. In fact, we should clear this car and post a guard to keep everyone out.’
He looked at Boyce. ‘Will you take first watch?’
The coffee man née military policeman nodded.
I was relieved Pavlik had found a comrade-in-arms in Boyce, especially since his next choice probably would have been me. Much as I appreciated the trust, being left alone guarding a dead body – especially one that had been headfirst in the digestive tract of a very pregnant nightmare – was beyond creepy, even bordering on sci-fi.
Besides, I told myself, much better that I be present when the sheriff briefed the rest of the passengers. That way I’d know what he had and hadn’t told them and, therefore, what I was free to say. That was the kind of judgment – or lack of judgment – call that had gotten me into trouble before.
Moving to the warmer corridor, Pavlik waited for the rest of us to follow him out before sliding the door closed behind us. Then he and Boyce went room to room – one opening the door, the other entering, then alternating for the next one just like you would see in the movies.
Satisfied no one was in the sleeping car besides us, Boyce asked, ‘Do you want me posted here in the hall?’
‘Let’s go through to the next car,’ Pavlik said, leading the way into the vestibule.
‘Wait a second,’ I said, backtracking. ‘I don’t think we closed this exit door completely when we brought the body in. That’s probably why it’s so toasty warm in the hallway.’
‘Stop!’ Pavlik barked, but I’d already grabbed the handle and went to slide the door closed.
My hand came away, sticky.
NINETEEN
The rumble of voices could be heard as Pavlik slid open the door of the passenger car.
‘It must be blood,’ I whispered to Pavlik as I slipped past him into the restroo
m to wash my hands. ‘That’s also the area where I found Potter’s matches.’
‘Time and forensics will tell us just what the substance is,’ the sheriff said, maddeningly reasurred. ‘As for the matches, are you sure they’re his?’
‘Yes.’ I dried my hands on a paper towel before plunging one of them into the pockets of my sundress to retrieve the empty matchbook. I held it up. ‘See? These were the matches he had at the table in the dining car. At first, Missy and I thought he might have opened the door to smoke and fallen out.’
Pavlik took the matchbook. ‘“Titanium”?’
‘Apparently it’s a “gentleman’s club,” or at least that’s what Missy called it. Knowing her gift for sugar-coating, it could be a brothel, or even an S&M dungeon, for all we know.’
‘I think we’ll position you in here for now,’ he called back to Boyce, who was still in the vestibule talking with Engineer Hertel.
The two men joined us. ‘I assume people can use the restroom here in the passenger car?’ Boyce asked.
‘Yes, but nobody goes through the vestibule into the sleeping car.’ Pavlik nodded toward the door that had just closed behind the engineer. ‘I’ll see if I can find you a chair so you can sit with your back up against the door to the vestibule, facing into the rest of the passenger car.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Boyce said, taking up the position. This time even I could see the military in his bearing. I felt, rather than saw, his hand itching to rise in a salute.
Guard stationed, Pavlik, Hertel and I paused. I could hear the buzz of speculation coming from the rows of seats beyond the restroom.
‘After we settle down the passengers,’ Pavlik told the engineer, ‘you and I will go to the locomotive, where we’ll call the authorities. You’d have a better idea than I do which jurisdic—’
But Hertel was shaking his head. ‘Sorry, but as I told your girl here,’ he hooked a thumb back to me, ‘we’re purely in-commun-i-cado out here.’
‘What do you use?’ Pavlik asked. ‘Radio?’
‘Well, now, this being a new line and our being a little off the grid, official-wise, I have this.’ He held up a cell phone, and not even a very smart one.
