This guy was something else.
I noticed Kurt striding toward me. “Is everybody out?” he yelled.
I deferred with a glance to Officer Harwood. She took a quick count. “Yes.”
“All right, that’s it,” Kurt yelled. “Nobody goes back in. We’ll get Animal Control out here. Let’s start by processing the exterior doors and the porch.”
As people began to disperse and get to work, I walked to Kurt. “Anything on John?”
He shook his head. “Haven’t even found the car yet. We’re checking every possible route out of here.”
“Listen,” I said. “I’m going back in the house. There might be something in there that’ll lead us to him.”
“No, Pat. We can’t have anyone getting bitten. Don’t worry, I’ll have the CSU work with Animal Control, make sure they don’t contaminate the scene.”
I could understand that he didn’t want to put anyone in harm’s way, but my mind was made up. “Kurt, if there’s even a chance we can find a clue to his whereabouts, or possible associates, we need to move on it now.” I pointed to the rattler I’d removed from the house.
“I’m good with snakes. I’ll go in by myself. I’ll be careful.”
He deliberated for a few seconds, and then at last said, “All right. Yeah. Do it.”
“Let me use your phone.”
He looked at me curiously.
“Video,” I said. “Mine’s out of commission.”
He handed me his cell. “Watch your step.”
“I intend to.”
And then, armed with the spade and the Maglite, I reentered the snake-infested house.
54
The agitated snakes slid through the shadows around me, the sound of their thin, dry rattles cautioning me to be careful where I stepped.
I heeded the warning.
With the house deserted, the snakes seemed to feel at ease exploring the hallway. As they slithered through my flashlight’s beam, the light shimmered off their scales, making their bodies look as if they were glistening and wet rather than dry and rough.
And even though I knew how dangerous the rattlesnakes were, I couldn’t help but admire their elegant diamond designs as they moved with beautiful, deadly grace across the carpet. I reminded myself that they didn’t want any trouble from me any more than I wanted trouble from them, but that didn’t settle my pounding heart.
I walked in a circuit through the kitchen, the living room, the dining room. Earlier, Cheyenne had told me that the ranch’s owner, Elwin Daniels, was in his early seventies, and now I saw that the dated furnishings, knickknacks, and pictures on the wall bore that out.
By the time I arrived at the bedroom that had held the aquariums, I’d counted more than a dozen rattlesnakes and twice had to slide snakes out of my way with the spade.
The aquariums lay smashed on the floor. Ten more snakes slithered between the shards of glass or huddled against the wall.
Carefully, I took video of the room, getting the perspective from four different locations.
Next, the bathroom.
On the countertop beside the sink lay a toothbrush, razor, and four tubes of toothpaste. I opened the medicine cabinet and found it empty except for six sterilized hypodermic needles. I took video of everything, then went to the last room, the one at the end of the hall.
The room that was still locked.
I laid the spade against the wall and pulled out my SIG and lock pick set.
It took me only a moment to pick the lock.
I eased the door open. A quick glance around the room told me no one was there. Just a few more rattlers.
But when my eyes found the bed, ice slid down my back.
Resting on a pillow and staring unblinkingly at the east wall lay the severed head of Sebastian Taylor.
Insects had gotten to it and were doing their work.
But I could still identify whose head it had been.
The smell turned my stomach.
I tore my eyes off the head and looked at the wall its face was directed at.
Dozens of newspaper clippings had been tacked up, and the orientation of the head brought to mind the illusion that its eyes were reading the articles.
Killers love to fantasize, to relive their murders either by reading about them, watching news reports, or recording the crimes themselves and then watching the videos, so I wasn’t surprised to see the articles-the shock came when I directed my flashlight at them and realized that these were not articles about the crimes John had committed in Colorado.
No.
Every one of the clippings was about the grisly crimes committed by Richard Devin Basque thirteen years ago in the Midwest.
Steven James
The Knight
55
I checked beneath the bed, then inside the closet, confirmed that no one was lying in wait inside the room.
Then, avoiding the two rattlesnakes near the bed, I approached the wall with the articles.
I recognized each of the sixteen victims’ Associated Press photos.
Their names floated through my head: Sylvia Padilla, Juanita Worthy, Celeste Sikora…
“Why, Patrick?”
“Why?”
John had kept clippings from the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Wisconsin State Journal, and even some of Wisconsin’s smaller local papers like the Janesville Gazette, creating a journalistic memorial of the slayings of Richard Devin Basque.
A shrine.
From the time I’d heard the recorded message in the mine on Thursday evening, it’d seemed evident to me that the killer in Colorado had some kind of connection to Basque’s trial in Chicago. I hadn’t seen how the two cases might be related before, but I did now.
Richard Devin Basque had a fan.
Finally, I came to fourteen articles that covered my arrest of Basque. In each of them, the reporters had included the AP photograph of me. One of the articles, written by a journalist named Zak Logan who’d hounded me for three weeks for an exclusive, described me as “The brave detective who tracked down and single handedly apprehended the man suspected to be responsible for the brutal slayings of at least a dozen women.”
I remembered him now, and how upset I’d been that he’d written that I’d single-handedly caught Basque, as if the other officers on my team didn’t even exist.
And in all of the clippings containing my picture, my face had been circled with a red pen.
So, maybe Basque wasn’t the only one who had a fan.
Maybe I did too.
56
Getting the video took me longer than I expected, but at last I stepped out of the house and noticed three of the CSU members gathered around Jake Vanderveld, who stood beside the scrub pine where I’d released the snake. He’d corralled the rattler into the open and was holding the shovel vertically, handle up, blade down.
I started toward him, but before I could stop him, he raised the shovel and brought it down decisively, driving the blade through the snake’s neck and into the dirt. The head, along with about eight centimeters of neck, flopped onto the ground near the rattler’s body, which twisted and curled in the dirt.
“Hey!” I closed the space between us and snatched the shovel from his hand. “What are you doing?”
The snake’s body writhed beside my feet.
“It’s a rattlesnake,” Jake replied, as if that explained anything. He was watching the head, which was still hissing, fangs bared. “It’s dangerous.”
Officer Harwood stared at the head. “It’s still alive.”
“Reptilian reflexes,” Vanderveld said. “It can live up to ninety minutes. Careful. That head can still bite. Still release venom.”
Maybe Tessa’s views on animal rights had worn off on me more than I’d realized because, when I saw that none of the CSU members seemed bothered that Vanderveld had just killed that snake for no reason, it irritated me almost as much as what he’d just done.