Although I was on loan for only one interview, I wasn’t eager to go back to investigating dead longhorns. Joey’s case gnawed at me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the kid, wondering where he was, who had him, and if we’d find him before he ended up like those kids on my workroom shelf. It was nearly noon when I detoured back to the park to relay what I’d learned from Fernandez. I saw David the moment I exited the car and walked toward the pond. There seemed to be a lot of commotion; the others were standing back some, and one of the divers had a shovel and was stabbing at the ground. When I walked up, I saw what had all the others mesmerized, a two-foot-long coral snake—headless, thanks to the diver with the shovel. David started to bend down to pick up the head.
“Don’t do that,” I shouted. He looked up at me, unsure.
It was painfully obvious that David, a Yankee who’d grown up in Connecticut, needed a lesson on poisonous snakes. “The thing’s dead,” he said.
“The snake is, but its nerves and muscles aren’t yet,” I said. I grabbed the shovel from the diver and touched the snake head. As if it were still alive, the venomous reptile opened its mouth, clamping mindlessly onto the shovel. “They keep moving for a while.”
The diver, wearing a slick black wet suit, undoubtedly planned to give the northerner a fright.
“You know better,” I said, eyeing him unhappily.
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” he said with a shrug. “Didn’t figure we’d let it hurt him, just get close enough and then we’d stop him. Show him how the thing could jerk a little and give him a scare. Just having a little fun.”
The diver took the shovel, scooped up the head, and then grabbed the long, thin body. It reacted immediately, twisting in his grasp. We watched the dead snake writhing as he walked it toward a garbage can near the parking lot.
David and I sauntered off a bit, and once we were alone, he shook his head. “Just what I need. As if I’m not punchy enough. We’ve been at this for twenty-one hours now. We didn’t find Joey’s body, which is good because it may mean he’s still alive, but we don’t have a single solid lead. No one saw anyone around the park yesterday afternoon, but we’ve got lists of calls from moms who say they’ve seen suspicious cars and people hanging around in the past. The problem is that the descriptions are all over the place. It’s interesting, though, that no one has mentioned a white sedan, as Crystal described. I’m beginning to think it doesn’t exist.”
“You’re exhausted, David,” I said, at the risk of sounding like a nag. “You need to go home, at least for a couple of hours. Catch a nap.”
“I can’t, not with that kid missing, in danger,” he said, wiping his hands over his eyes. “Tell me you found a lead, any lead?”
After I relayed the conversation with Jimmy Fernandez, David shook his head and closed his eyes, as if in deep thought. “Sounds more and more like the mother’s involved all the time. Let’s go sit down at the picnic table,” he said. “Let’s go over this piece by piece and see what we know.”
“Sure. I don’t think the captain will miss me yet,” I said. “And I’d like to help you find the boy.”
On a pad of paper on a clipboard, David had already constructed a timeline of the events, as he knew them, leading up to Joey’s disappearance. Above the first entry, David wrote the information on the Saturday before: Crystal pairs up with Jimmy Fernandez at the bar and says she wishes Joey would disappear.
“You don’t think this guy’s making this up?” David asked. “Maybe he just wants to get in on the publicity bandwagon.”
“No. I don’t think so. Fernandez is no great guy, but he insists he doesn’t want anyone to hear about this. He’s got a jealous wife and two kids,” I said. “But you could send someone to interview the bartender, to find out if he overheard anything. Fernandez says the guy was standing nearby.”
“Of course,” David said. “We’ll send somebody over.”
The next entry on David’s list was the day before Joey went missing, when a store manager reported that Crystal’s credit card was rejected. At that point, she had Joey with her. Later that night, a neighbor in the apartment complex where they lived saw Crystal and Joey arrive home, late. He said Crystal looked upset.
“Over the credit card rejection?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” David said. “But it sounds like our kid’s mom has money troubles.”
“She told us that,” I reminded him. “She said she and the ex were arguing about money on the phone when the boy disappeared.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I forgot. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m tired.”
“Tell you what,” I said. “You can leave here now. You’re not far from the ranch. Drive out, take a nap, just a couple of hours.”
“Nah,” he said. “Not yet. We need to find that kid.”
David’s cell rang and he picked up. As if in chorus, only moments later, my phone rang, too. In my case, Gabby Barlow had news about Habanero, the first dead longhorn.
“Sarah, there’s quite a bit of insect activity on the carcass, mainly larvae. You know, bugs aren’t that precise, it’s hard to be certain, but based on what I’m seeing in the lab and the condition of the corpse, my best guess is that the bull was dead twenty-four hours or so when I got there to take the samples,” she said. “I’m thinking that the bull was shot sometime the prior evening, sometime before midnight.”
“Huh, I guessed it was a pretty fresh kill, just from the state of decomp, although the heat was a factor and my experience is more with people than livestock. Anything else?” I asked.
“Yeah, that colleague of mine, he says your symbols are African.”
“African?” I repeated. “Like Africa African?”
“Yes, African,” she explained. “It’s not my colleague’s expertise, but for the past month, he’s been working with another professor, a Dr. Alex Benoit, who relocated here from New Orleans. Dr. Benoit is a former Tulane prof in the process of cataloging artifacts found on the grounds of the old sugarcane plantations south of Houston. From what I hear, he’s one of the foremost experts on African symbolism in the country.”
“That’s a stroke of luck,” I said.
“Sure is,” Gabby said. “In fact, Benoit just happened to call my colleague today on another matter.”
“Did you ask him if he’d be willing to help?”
“Dr. Benoit agreed to talk to you. I’ve got his phone number, if you’re interested.”