Page 84 of Take Your Breath Away

“Back here!” someone shouted, and coughed.

Breathing through my mouth, I stepped inside. The building, maybe thirty feet square, was filled with makeshift tables constructed of sawhorses and four-by-eight sheets of plywood. The tables filled the room, spaced apart to create several aisles.

And atop every table, cages. Dozens and dozens of cages.

The room was a cacophony of chittering noises, scratching noises, scurrying noises. Each cage contained one or more animals. Rats, mice, squirrels, raccoons.

A possum or two.

As I walked down one aisle, tiny eyes fixed on me. A black squirrel gripped the wire caging of its enclosure, stood on its hind legs, and watched me as I passed. My arrival had created a commotion. Word seemed to be spreading among the creatures. Someone new was here. A stranger. An interloper.

It was a fucking zoo of pests and vermin. And they were living in their own filth.

At the end of the aisle, his back to me, was Charlie Underwood in a pair of blue coveralls. He was stooped over, and as I got closer, he went into a coughing fit. When he was done, he made a retching sound that sounded like someone trying to scoop gravel out of the bottom of a well. Then he spit something onto the floor and I felt my own stomach do a slow roll.

He turned, saw me, and said, “Help you?”

“Mr. Underwood?”

“That’s me.”

“You, uh, did some pest control at my house a few years back.”

“Don’t do that anymore,” he said, then smiled, showing off brown teeth. “Dying,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“You work with poisonous chemicals your whole life, it has a way of catching up with you,” he said, and laughed, triggering another coughing fit.

“I can imagine.” I looked about the room. “What is all this?”

“You’re not one of those fucking inspectors from the city, are you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Because they’d take a dim view of what I’m doing here if they found out,” he said, and coughed again. It echoed all the way down to his shoes. He smiled, waved his hand at the room. “They wouldn’t understand that this is a rescue operation. These are the ones I didn’t have to kill. Saved them all. Some of them, been looking after them for years.”

“These are all … pests you got out of people’s houses?”

He nodded proudly. “Lot of people, they want ’em dead, but if I can get them out alive, I bring ’em here.”

I could think of only one question. “Why?”

He blinked, a little surprised by my question. “Because they’re all God’s creatures, you know. See this rat over here? That’s Susie. Anyway, caught her at a restaurant on the green downtown. I’d tell you which one but then you’d never eat there again and they got good food so I won’t tell you. And that raccoon was living in the attic of a couple in Devon. I accidentally broke his paw getting him out, so I keep him here. Figure he wouldn’t make it out in the wild. His name is Waldo. You say I came to your place?”

“About six years ago.”

“Who are you?”

“Carville. Andrew Carville. But back then, it was Mason.”

He blinked again, taking a second to put it together. It was like watching an old computer start up.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, and coughed again. “You’re the guy. The one who killed his wife.”

“I didn’t kill my wife.”

“Yeah, well, what else would you say? Whaddya want with me?”