"Don't flatter yourself."
For twenty minutes he headed west on a road that followed the Hillsboro Canal toward the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, a sprawling preserve on the eastern apron of the Everglades. Ricca stewed silently while Chaz held the pistol in his left hand, dead level with her heart. He was surprised how composed he felt, how confident and clearheaded. Once, when Ricca began fiddling with the door lock, Chaz raised the.38 to her temple. His arm remained straight and steady. In the glow of the dashboard he could see Ricca staring at him with wide, fresh eyes.
Finally she was scared.
Chaz turned off on a dirt trail that led to a locked metal gate. Whistling to himself, he flicked on the high beams, aimed the Humvee down a steep embankment and rumbled along a shallow ditch until he had bypassed the barricade. Then he gunned it back up the slope onto a narrow rutted levee, where nothing but night-cloaked wilderness lay before them.
"Oh God," Ricca said.
Chaz remained silent. Focus was essential. When he killed Joey, he never lost focus, never strayed from the script, never left the zone.
Ricca said, "Since when did you buy a gun? I thought you hated guns-"
With the tip of the blue-plated barrel, Chaz touched a button on the CD player and the Hummer filled with a blast of George T. and the Delaware Destroyers. That nasty slide guitar obliterated Ricca's yammering, and Chaz slipped gratefully into the buzz of the music, which was better than popping speed.
He drove down the levee for another fifteen minutes before he braked and ordered Ricca out. She stood squinting into the headlights, brushing the insects away from her face and trying not to break down. Chaz felt a subtle, ugly gnawing in his gut. He would have much preferred a silent ambush, as with Joey, but Ricca had left him no such option.
"So it's true about your wife," she said, her voice tight.
"Yeah. I'm afraid so."
"Chaz, how can you do this to me?"
"Same way I did it to her." He sat on the hood of the Hummer and aimed out between the headlights. Later, Tool would help him get rid of Ricca's car and clean out the apartment. Make it look like she skipped town.
"You can't kill me, Chaz. You cannot do it," she declared. "Joey wasn't looking you in the eye the way I am. She didn't know what was coming."
This, Chaz lamented, is exactly the sort of sticky scene that I wanted to avoid.
He said, "What I can't figure out-if you cared so much about my wife, how come you were sleeping with me?"
Ricca seemed to shrink.
"Well?" said Chaz.
"Because I was a fool."
"Keep going."
"And selfish," she added hoarsely.
"Now we're getting somewhere. Tell me about you and the blackmailer," he said. "Is it strictly business, or are you screwing him, too?"
Ricca bristled. "My God. You're cracking up." She cupped a hand over her brow so she could see him better. "Your hand's shaking."
"Like hell it is."
"Take a look, Chaz."
"Just shut up."
"Plus, you still got a boner. What's that all about?"
Chaz had been hoping with all his soul that she wouldn't notice. Those fucking pills were unbelievable.
"It's bad enough you're pointing a gun at me," Ricca said, "but that, too?"
He estimated that she was no more than thirty feet away; an easy shot. "Turn around," he told her.
"I'll do no such thing."
The marsh beyond was teeming with jumbo alligators. Beyond the headlights Chaz could make out half a dozen pairs of large eyes, glowing like embers. Ricca's corpse would be gone by daybreak. What the gators didn't eat, the turtles and raccoons would.
She said, "I'm not turning around!"
"Then hold still." Chaz sighted down the short barrel, gripping the.38 with both hands the way he'd seen it done a thousand times on television.
Jesus, she's right. I'm shaking like a damn wino.
"Chaz, you don't know what you're doing."
"Hold still, I said."
"This is a major mistake. The fuckup of all fuckups____________________"
He held his breath and pulled the trigger. Ricca shrieked but did not fall.
"You rotten little cocksucker!" she cried, hopping up and down. "That's not even funny!"
Swell, Chaz thought, she thinks that I missed on purpose. Or maybe that I'm shooting blanks.
He stiffened and again took aim, wondering: How in the name of God did I not hit her? She's a hundred times bigger than that frigging rabbit.
The second shot caught Ricca in the left leg and spun her one full rotation. To Chaz's surprise, she still didn't go down.
"Look what you did!" She clutched at the punctured limb. "Are you fucking crazy?"
Incredible, thought Chaz. I should've brought a buffalo gun.
Another mosquito stung his cheek and he swatted himself so violently that he slid off the hood of the Hummer. Ricca capitalized on the distraction, gimping into the darkness with surprising swiftness. Chaz collected himself and took up the chase, lengthening his stride when he spotted the blur of gray sweat togs ahead of him. He was closing the gap, when suddenly Ricca vectored off the rutted path and, to his profound amazement, dove headlong into the swamp.
Chaz aborted the pursuit instantly, for nothing so terrified him as the prospect of entering the piss-warm water of the Everglades in total darkness-gagging on soggy duckweed, being lashed to ribbons by the serrated saw grass, and finally getting sucked one leech-covered leg at a time into the inky, inescapable muck.
Not me, thought Dr. Charles Perrone. No thanks.
As Ricca tried to swim away, he stood on the embankment, firing his pistol until she rolled over and sank with a gasp. Before long his ears stopped ringing and the water glassed off and the night hummed back to life. Chaz peered at the spot where Ricca had gone down and observed nothing but a fleet of water beetles skating back and forth in the reflected starlight. Something substantial splashed farther away, in a thicket of lily pads. Probably just a coot or a garfish, Chaz thought, but why push my luck? The place is lousy with gators, and I'm out of bullets.
He jogged back to the Hummer, spun a nifty 180 and headed back toward town. His heart was thumping like a baby sparrow's, but he felt lightened and liberated and pleased with himself for turning the hated, haunted swamp into an accomplice.
Twenty-two
Karl Rolvaag said, "You look lovely this morning, Nellie."
"Coming from a degenerate like you, that makes me want to hang myself. You heard about poor Pinchot?"
"I did," the detective said. "They find him yet?"
Mrs. Shulman was bobbing from side to side, trying to see past him into the apartment.
"Poor Pinchot isn't here, Nellie."
"Then you don't mind if I look around?"
"Actually, I do." Rolvaag didn't want her to notice that the snake tank was empty.
She snarled, "I wouldn't put it past you, kidnapping some poor little puppy for your own depraved pleasures. You probably made a video of it. You probably put it out on the Internet!"
Daffy old bat, thought Rolvaag.
"I did not feed Bert Miller's dog to my snakes," he said, almost adding: But accidents happen.
Mrs. Shulman said, "Well, you certainly enjoy hearing those helpless little mice shrieking in agony. Just imagine how much fun a Pomeranian would be!"
"That's a totally irresponsible accusation." The detective choked down a sneeze. Nellie Shulman had drenched herself in a perfume that stunk like rotting gardenias.
"Then why can't I come in? It's Sunday morning, after all."
"Because you called me a degenerate," Rolvaag said.
"Well, you are. Anyone with a thing for snakes is a sick, sick bas-
tard." She tried to sneak past but he lowered a shoulder and blocked her. "The Millers are devastated!" she declared.
Rolvaag already felt terrible. He had searched the grounds of Saw-grass Grove for three hours, but the only snake he'd found was an ornery black racer that bit him on the thumb of his left hand.