Her gun pointed at Kenyon, she saw that his body was still now, dead at last.
“ Now, you son of a bitch, you've got a taste of nature's bone cutter,” Jessica shouted, her eyes firmly held by the sight, when a final spasm of the man's body made the alligator chomp-swallow on him once again.
The beast then tried to pull Kenyon's dead weight back toward the water, tugging at its prey, and shaking its tail to move in reverse.
“ Jessica! We can't let that gator get away!” shouted Mike Sorrento from behind her. “We've got to recover both bodies, Kenyon's and Mrs. Swantor if we can.”
Jessica fully agreed. She both wanted to recover Mrs. Swantor's body from the bowels of the beast, and to hold on to Kenyon's body, so that no one could ever question whether the Skull-digger was killed this day or not. She wanted no ambiguity remaining.
Since she didn't want to lose the alligator a second time, Jessica aimed and fired into its brain. A second shot from Sorrento rang out, hitting the beast as well. Right as it made the riverbank, the creature expired like a balloon losing air, dead of wounds earlier inflicted by Kenyon and now their combined gunfire.
She turned to Sorrento, his gun smoking. How long had he been there? How much of her behavior he had witnessed, she did not know.
The rains had softened and the sky along with it, a hint of daybreak showing through in the east.
Mike Sorrento stepped before her, and he stared at the scene: All but Kenyon's head extended from the alligator's mouth, his brain crushed inside the monstrous jaws. “Makes for a fitting metaphor for the man's life.”
“ Going to make one hell of a forensic photo, too,” she replied, standing over the scene.
“ Yeah… yeah, one hell of a shot. Good of you to put Kenyon out of his misery.”
“ I shot the gator, not Kenyon.”
“ No, I shot the gator,” he disagreed.
“ Then we both shot the thing.”
“ How long did Kenyon suffer?”
“ All of his life, I'd say.”
They stared for a moment at one another, each keeping silent. Jessica again wondered how much Mike Sorrento had seen, and how much his remarks were meant to elicit from her. In the distance, they heard Konrath calling out, trying to locate their position. I don't want anyone thinking we just sat here and let the alligator do our job for us,” she said.
“ I can't imagine anyone thinking that, Dr. Coran.”
“ I stopped him with a vine strung across his path. The moment he fell, the gator grabbed him. There was no pulling him to safety.”
“ I know… and you didn't have time to react. I saw the whole thing,” he concurred. “And if it becomes necessary, Jessica, I'll back you up.”
It wasn't lost on her that this was the first time he'd called her Jessica. Now that they shared a secret, he presumed them closer, she imagined.
Konrath came through the underbrush and stared at the scene. “Jesus,” he said. “Terrible way to go.”
“ No more so than his victims,” Sorrento replied.
Jessica knew that even dead, the gator's digestive juices would only continue to eat away at Lara Swantor's flesh. “Look around for that brain saw. It's got to be around here someplace.”
The two men did so, and Sorrento complained, “It's likely in the water, six feet under.”
“ No, here it is!” shouted Konrath holding it up.
“ Let me have it.” Jessica examined the machine and expertly started it. “Good, it's still functioning.”
“ What're you going to do?” asked Sorrento.
“ I'm getting what's left of that woman out of that beast, OK? Now, first thing we need to do is pry open the gator's mouth and get Kenyon's weight off. Then I want you two to help me roll that damned beast on its back. I'm going to cut it open.”
“ Don't you want to wait? Get a CSI team in here, photos, the whole nine yards?” asked Sorrento. “Cover our asses, so to speak?” “Some things can't wait. We couldn't save this woman in life, least we can do is help her in death.”
“ How much of the woman do you hope to recover?” asked Konrath.
“ Gators swallow whole chunks, like sharks. Most of her will be intact.”
O'Hurley came through the brush on a makeshift splint. He gaped at the scene, and Konrath brought him up to date. Together, the three men pried Kenyon from the monster's jaws. Jessica and the others grimaced at the sight of the crushed skull and oozing gray matter. They then rolled the gator onto its back. In a moment, the alligator's bulk quit shimmying under the blue light of dawn, and it lay now on its back, its green-to-white stomach shimmering like glowing mildew.
Jessica revved up the bone cutter again and began the incision, unconcerned about precision as the cutter sailed through the tough underbelly of the twelve-foot-long monster.
Sorrento in a failed attempt to ease the tension said, “Some cesarean section you've got going here, Doc.”
After the difficult work of the center cut, a visible, odious gas flume expelled from the stomach, sending Jessica back-peddling, the odor too much to bear. When it was safe to return, she cut two flap wings at top and bottom of the original cut.
With no other instruments to work with, she worked in butcher fashion to open the stomach lining. More gas fumes erupted, and Jessica said, “Think there's something here.” She grabbed hold of a gooey yellow swath of clothing and pulled at it. A large portion of the raincoat. She was finding nothing in the way of flesh and bone.
Working on, without gloves, she used her blood-smeared hands to pull back the tough, unyielding skin once more. Sorrento lent a hand, holding back one of the massive flaps, the odor of the insides threatening to make him ill when Jessica declared, “There's no Mrs. Swantor here. She's got to be out there somewhere.”
“ In the woods?”
“ In the river?”
“ Someplace other than the gator.”
“ She may've drowned.”
“ Maybe the gator has a hole someplace below the water where he stashes food.”
“ She could be in shock, wandering about in a daze.”
The theories came fast and furious.
They began calling her name, their voices wafting through the thickets and out over the river. No answer.
“ We'll get some help from the cutter, do a thorough search of the entire area,” suggested Konrath.
Jessica searched for her cellular phone but realized it must be in the Mississippi muck that Konrath and Sorrento had pulled her from. “All right,” she said, relenting. Looking down at herself, she saw that she was covered in animal blood and tissue, caked in with mud. Ignoring this, she began to spout orders. “Yeah, we need reinforcements. You're right.”
“ We have some black-water divers aboard the cutter. We'll get them out here, too. We'll find Mrs. Swantor,” Konrath assured her.
Jessica breathed deeply and rubbed the back of her aching neck. “We've got to grid the house, the backyard and the yacht as well as three additional crime scenes. There's a total of six bodies, seven if Mrs. Swantor is found dead. And we need to confiscate the tapes that Swantor made aboard his-”
“ Jess, I think you need some rest and-” began Sorrento.
“ Rest?”
“- to step back. Let others handle things from here on,” he suggested.
“ You're cold and shivering, Dr. Coran,” added Konrath. “We could all use some hot food, nourishment, coffee. It's been a rough night.”
Sorrento took her by the shoulders and firmly said, “I'll stay behind, keep any animals from getting at the bodies until you send in a team, Doctor.”
“ Good news is we've put an end to the Skull-digger. I'll let them know back at headquarters, get the word out.”
“ Come on, O'Hurley,” said Konrath. “You need that ankle taken care of.”
Jessica again thanked Sorrento for all he'd done, and then she thanked the Coast Guard men. Looking up at the top of the rise, she saw sunlight up there above this backwater hole.