“I DON’T UNDERSTAND what I’m doing here,” Brian Yun complained. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
An interrogation room at police headquarters was probably the last place the soft-spoken assistant manager was used to spending Sunday night in. He had no police record; this was his first documented brush with the law. He fidgeted nervously in his seat, across the table from Ray and Sara. Vartann had been called away to investigate a drive-by shooting in Pahrump, but Ray figured they finally had enough evidence to pin the snake attack on Yun. A confession would wrap things up nicely.
“Really?” he said skeptically. “Then perhaps you can explain how it is that we found coral snake venom in your cat’s remains. Venom identical, by the way, to that produced by the snake that bit Rita Segura.”
Gas chromatography and the mass spectrometer had both confirmed that the venom samples were chemically identical. The toxicology reports rested in a folder in front of Ray, along with various photos and statements. Yun looked anxiously at the bulging folder, just like he was supposed to. He had to be wondering what else they knew.
“Guess Fala didn’t like having a snake in the house,” Sara said. “What happened? Sometime when you weren’t looking, the cat got at the snake? Which then retaliated?”
Once again, Ray pictured a moment of hissing, snarling chaos. “A tragic turn of events for Fala. I’m sure you were quite broken up about it, but not enough that you abandoned your plan to sneak the venomous snake into the vivarium at The Nile.”
“Why would I do something like that?” Yun argued unconvincingly. He glanced over at the oneway mirror, as though worrying who else might be listening. “There must be some sort of mistake.”
“I don’t think so,” Ray said. He opened the file and slid a photo across the table. The color glossy was an enhanced close-up of the bite marks on Fala’s moldering remains. Yun gagged at the photo and looked away. Afraid that he might throw up, Ray reclaimed the picture and tucked it back into the folder. He assumed he had made his point. “Fala was bitten by a snake. A coral snake.”
Yun swallowed hard. “Maybe . . . maybe it was a different snake.” He groped for an alternative explanation. “She must have been bitten in the yard, when she was playing outside. I didn’t realize . . . I thought she had just died of natural causes.”
“Unlikely,” Ray pronounced. “Coral snakes are not native to Nevada.”
Yun’s hopes faded. “A rattler?” he suggested feebly.
Ray shook his head. “Completely different kind of venom.”
“There’s more,” Sara added. “We know you bought the snake from Fang Santana. He identified your photo. We can put you in a lineup if necessary, but why drag this out.” She ticked off the evidence on her fingers. “We know the snake was in your house. We know who you bought it from. All we need now is the why.”
Ray offered Yun a sympathetic ear. “You never wanted to hurt Ms. Segura, did you? That wasn’t the plan. You were after your boss. She’s the one who was supposed to get bitten, wasn’t she?”
“Of course!” Yun threw up his hands in surrender. “She always had her massage every Monday morning, just like clockwork. How was I supposed to know that Rita was going to show up and take her place? I wasn’t even there that morning to stop her. I came in late on purpose, so nobody would think I had anything to do with it.” Tears streamed down his face. “You have to believe me! I never wanted anybody else to get hurt!”
“But why Madame Alexandra?” Sara asked. “What did she ever do to you?”
Yun looked surprised by the question. “Are you serious? You’ve met her, haven’t you?” Bitterness curdled his face and voice. “She swans around, treating me like a servant, even though The Nile would fall apart without me. I do all the work, and she takes all the credit . . . and all the money. She should’ve made me her partner years ago, but I’m still just a doormat as far as she’s concerned.” He snapped his fingers while doing a cruel impression of his imperious boss. “‘Oh, Brian! Come here, Brian! Take care of this, won’t you, Brian?’”
Obviously, he had been nursing a heavy-duty grudge for some time. “You could have just quit,” Sara observed.
“And let her reap the rewards of my creativity?” he scoffed. “The success of the serpentine massages was the last straw. I told you before, that was all my idea. But did I even get a bonus or a cut of the profits? Of course not! Instead she acted like the whole notion sprang from her own deep spiritual wisdom, spouting off about the sublime healing properties of snakes.” He laughed harshly. “I pulled all that bullshit off the internet for her!”
Sara still didn’t get it. “So you decided to kill her?”
“No!” Yun exclaimed. “I just wanted to scare her, maybe make her sick for a while. I looked it up: coral snake venom usually takes hours to take effect. I figured she’d make it to the emergency room in time . . . but not before she got a taste of her own medicine.”
“I see.” Ray wasn’t sure if he believed that Yun expected Madame Alexandra to survive, but it didn’t really matter. Yun had shown a reckless disregard for human life; it would be up to the district attorney’s office if they wanted to press for attempted murder. “Well, you lucked out in one respect,” he informed Yun. “I just heard from the hospital. Rita Segura has finally regained consciousness and is breathing on her own again. She’s going to need plenty of observation and follow-up, but she’s expected to make a full recovery in time.”
“Good thing,” Sara told Yun. “Otherwise, you might have been looking at a lethal injection of a different sort.”