Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(61)
53
THUNDER SOUNDS LIKE kettledrums in the distance, and clouds roll past the waning moon.
Bev will not head back to Dutch Bayou until the storm passes if it moves this far southeast, and the forecast on the car radio doesn't call for that. But she isn't ready to return to the boat landing. The lamb in the forest-green Ford Explorer has followed an interesting route for the past two hours, and Bev can't figure it out. She-whoever she is-has cruised streets and especially parking lots for no reason that Bev can tell.
Her guess is that the lamb had a fight with her man and refuses to go home right now, probably to worry him sick, one of those little games. Bev has been careful to keep her distance, to turn up side streets, to pull off in gas stations along Highway 19, then speed up. Several times, Bev has passed the Explorer in the left lane, going ahead at least ten miles, pulling off the highway and waiting for her prey to get ahead of her again. Soon enough, they pass through Baker, a tiny town with businesses that have strange names: Raif's Po-Boy, Money Flash Cash, Crawfish Depot.
The town vanishes like a mirage, and the stretch of highway becomes pitch dark. There is nothing out here, no lights, only trees, and a billboard that reads: You Need Jesus.
54
GATOR EYES REMIND BEV OF periscopes fixing her in their sights before vanishing under water the color of weak coffee.
Jay told her gators won't bother her unless she bothers them. He says the same about cottonmouths.
"Did you ask them their opinion? And if it's the truth, then how come cottonmouths come crashing out of the trees, trying to get in the boat? And remember that movie we watched? Oh, what was it called...?"
"Faces of Death," he replied, on this occasion amused instead of annoyed by her questions.
"Remember that game warden who fell in the lake and right there on camera, this huge gator got him?"
"Cottonmouths don't fall into the boat unless you startle them," Jay explained. "And the gator got the game warden because the game warden was trying to get him."
That sounded reasonable enough, and Bev felt slightly reassured until Jay smiled that cruel smile of his and did a complete about-face and explained how she can tell if an animal or reptile is a predator, and therefore an aggressor, and therefore the fearless hunter.
"It's all in the eyes, baby," he said. "The eyes of predators are in front of the head, like mine." He pointed to his beautiful blue eyes. "Like a gators, like a cottonmouth's, like a tiger's. Us predators are going to look straight-on for something to attack. The eyes of non-predators are more on the sides of the head, because how the hell is a rabbit going to defend itself against a gator, right? So the little bunny needs peripheral vision to see what's coming and run like hell."
"I've got predator eyes," Bev said, pleased to know it but not at all happy to hear that gators and cottonmouths are predators.
Eyes like that, she realized, meant somethings on the prowl, looking to hurt or kill. Predators, especially reptiles, aren't afraid of people. Shit! As far as Bev's concerned, she's no match for a gator or a snake. If she falls in the water or steps on a cottonmouth, who's going to win? Not her.
"Humans are the ultimate predator," Jay said. "But we're complicated. A gator is always a gator. A snakes always a snake. A human can be a wolf or a lamb."
Bev is a wolf.
She feels her wolfish hot blood stirring as she glides past cypress knees jutting from the bayou like the ridges of a sea monster's back. The pretty blonde woman hog-tied on the floor of the boat squints in intermittent early morning sunlight. Wherever cypress roots break the surface, the water isn't deep, and Bev is vigilant as she motors slowly toward the fishing shack. Now and then her prisoner tries to shift her position to ease the terrible pain in her joints, and her labored breathing flares her nostrils, the gag around her mouth wetly sucking in and out.
Bev doesn't know her name and warned her not to say it. This was hours ago, inside the Cherokee, after the lamb realized she couldn't get out the passenger door, and if she tried to climb over the seat, Bev was going to shoot her. Then the lamb got chatty, trying to be friendly, trying to make Bev like her, going so far as to politely ask Bev's name. They all do that, and Bev always says the same thing: "My name is none of your f*cking business, and I don't want to know yours or a damn thing about you."
The woman was instantly powerless, realizing that she wasn't going to talk her way out of whatever horror was in store for her.
Names have only two purposes: use them to manipulate people into feeling that their lives have value, and refuse to use them, to cause people to feel that their lives have no value. Besides, Bev will learn a lot about this pretty little lamb soon enough, when Jay monitors the news on his battery-powered radio.
"Please don't hurt me," the lamb begs. "I have family."
"I'm not listening," Bev tells her. "You know why? Because you're nothing but the catch of the day."
Bev laughs, enjoying the strength of her own voice, because very soon, she won't have a voice. Jay will. Once he takes possession of the lamb, there will be nothing left for Bev to do, except what he orders her to do or not to do. Mostly, Bev will watch, and thoughts of that overwhelm her with a compulsion to control and abuse while she can. She binds the lambs tighter than Jay does, tying ankles to wrists behind the back so the body is bowed, making it all the more difficult for the lamb's diaphragm to relax and contract as she struggles to breathe.