Page 11

Willis’s cabin, as the Newlands called it, sat at the base of the slope, where the tended lawn gave way to a wild tangle of juniper and mesquite. It had been built in the 1980s as a place for Bryant’s mother to live out her retirement. After her death, it sat unused until a teenaged Willis began begging for a pet snake. When Bryant, in a rare moment of parental indulgence, returned from a business trip and popped the Cadillac’s trunk, beckoning Willis to look inside a mysterious container, the boy stared, a lopsided grin on his face. Iris refused to allow the young Burmese python in the house, so it was relegated to the cabin, where Willis kept it in a fish-tank terrarium, feeding it mice that he raised in cages stacked nearly to the ceiling.

The snake was the circumference of a broom handle and the length of a child’s arm when Bryant brought it home. He had no idea that pythons could live a quarter-century, or that a mature specimen could be twenty feet long and weigh over two hundred pounds.

After Delilah, as Willis called it, outgrew a succession of tanks and graduated from a diet of mice to rats to live rabbits, Iris eventually persuaded Bryant to have the cabin’s bedroom turned into a full-blown habitat. Willis was in his mid-twenties then, having graduated from high school only by dint of the fact that he was a Newland. The family had come to terms with the reality that he would never hold down a job or live on his own. Nevertheless, he’d developed an almost savant-like expertise in herpetology. He spent much of his time in the cabin with Delilah, often sleeping there on a cot and sometimes staying for days.

In 1999, when Willis went to prison, Bryant ordered Felix, the ranch foreman, to get rid of the snake. “Chop its head off and feed it to the dogs. I’m tearing this damn place down.”

Somehow, Iris managed to change his mind. Keeping Delilah was a way of clinging to hope that her son would someday be released. Occasionally, after Felix fed the thing and Iris knew it would be sluggish, she’d don khakis and boots and head down the hill to sit in the musty room in front of the herpetarium, thinking things she never spoke aloud. And so the cabin remained, as did the rabbits in the hutch behind it. When Willis was finally released, a condition was set that he must stay a hundred yards from the big house whenever children were present. So the cabin became his full-time home.

Dusk was deepening towards darkness as Colly and Russ mounted the cabin’s steps.

“Kitchen light’s on,” Russ said. “Felix must be around somewhere.”

Colly followed him inside and wrinkled her nose. The place had the stuffy odor of a house seldom entered, mixed with another smell, acrid and reminiscent of a pet store.

The cabin was furnished as if from a rummage sale, with a threadbare sofa and a wagon-wheel coffee table near the door. A twin bed and nightstand stood against the back wall, half-inside the tiny kitchenette.

“I’ve never been in here,” Colly said.

“Not much to see—in this room, anyway. C’mon.”

She followed Russ through a side door, then stopped, astonished.

A few feet inside, running floor to ceiling and stretching the width of the room, stood a thick glass partition, the front wall of an enormous tank, containing what appeared to be a lush tropical jungle. Dense climbing vines hung from the branches of an artificial tree in the center of the enclosure. On the ground below, ferns, sentry palms, and giant philodendrons nodded, their waxy leaves dripping with moisture in the dim light. A pair of fallen logs rested on the leaf-littered floor near the front wall, and Colly glimpsed a recessed pool towards the back.

“Damn, Dr. Livingstone,” she murmured.

“It’s something, huh? The foundation had to be specially shored up just to support it. Designed by one of the architects who renovated the San Antonio Zoo. He owed Dad a favor, I guess.”

Colly laid her palm against the glass. It was cool and dry to the touch, though the other side was beaded with condensation. Leading into the enclosure was a transparent door secured with a heavy padlock. Beside the door was a small, hinged hatch.

“Willis died here?”

Russ nodded.

“Can we go in?”

“If you’re okay with snakes. I know they used to bother you.” He nodded towards what Colly thought was a fallen log, and she realized with a shock that she was staring down at a head like a shovel blade and a pair of bright, black eyes.

“Jesus God!” She stumbled backwards.

Russ steadied her with his arm. “Woah, there.”

“You didn’t euthanize that thing? It killed a man.” Colly pulled away, trying to regain composure as the blood roared in her ears.

“Momma wouldn’t hear of it. Delilah’s her last connection to Willis.”

Colly brushed the hair off her forehead, and her hand came back wet with sweat. She stared at the giant snake. It lay perfectly still, camouflaged by the patterns on its skin—dark amoeba-shaped blotches against a background of renaissance gold. After a moment, its tongue flicked out and tasted the air. She could see a perfect, convex miniature of herself reflected in its eyes.

What must Willis’s last moments have been like? How would it feel to have this Jurassic monster slowly tightening around your throat, the massive weight of its coils compressing your ribcage? To feel the pressure and the blood filling your ears, your eyes, your brain as you clawed at its scaly hide, fighting to breathe or scream, your vision slowly narrowing to black ...

Colly shuddered. “Just talk me through what happened.”

Russ glanced at his watch. “It’s a long story.”

“Give me the basics.”

Russ nodded but said nothing for a minute. When he spoke, his voice was flat and detached, but he never took his eyes off the snake.

Willis had died a few weeks after Denny Knox’s murder the previous September. On the night of Iris’s seventieth birthday party, in fact. Because of the location of Denny’s body and the rabbit-fur mask in his hand, the Rangers quickly homed in on Willis as their prime suspect. They wanted him to come to the station to give a formal statement and take a polygraph, something Iris and the family lawyer refused to allow. Willis couldn’t have killed Denny, because he’d been with her the entire day of the murder, Iris insisted. She wasn’t going to let the Rangers railroad her boy again.

Lowell was the one who finally persuaded her to relent. Public sentiment against the family was growing and had started to hurt the business. “You can’t stonewall forever,” he said. “The sooner Willis proves his innocence, the better.”

Accompanied by his attorney, Willis had spent that Saturday at the station. He passed the polygraph, and his account of his movements on the day in question matched his mother’s.

“I think the Rangers figured if they leaned on him hard enough, he’d confess, like he did in the Parker murder,” Russ said. “I watched the tapes. Willis was petrified—kept repeating his story and begging them not to send him back to prison. The DA wouldn’t press charges based on the rabbit mask alone, so in the end, they had to let him go.” Russ rested his forehead against the glass wall. “Momma was so happy, said it was the best birthday gift she could’ve gotten.”

Colly stared thoughtfully at Delilah. “Who was at the party that night?”

“Everybody—except Willis. He couldn’t, because of the kids. But the rest of us were. And Talford.”

“Willis stayed here alone?”

“I felt bad about that. He’d had a rough day. I came down before dinner to check on him.”

Willis had been afraid, asking if the Rangers would arrest him. Russ had tried unsuccessfully to calm his brother. “He was frantic. I hated to leave him. I tried calling Felix, but he was off somewhere, not answering his phone. So I called Momma, and she sent the housekeeper down with a Xanax pill. I gave him half.”

The medicine had helped. By seven o’clock, Willis was calm. “He wanted to spend some time with Delilah and then go to sleep.” Russ shook his head, mystified. “I swear, everything seemed fine. I called Felix again and left a message to check on Willis when he got home. Then I left. Wish to God I hadn’t.”

He stared bleakly into the tank. Colly was searching for something comforting to say when, from the adjacent room, they heard the front door swing open and the hollow tread of boots on the cabin floor.

Russ looked up. “Felix, is that you?”

A moment later, a man wearing faded jeans and a blue denim work shirt appeared in the doorway. He was in his mid-seventies, short and bandy-legged, with leathery skin and salt-and-pepper hair. Under one arm, he carried an enormous gray rabbit, which was working its nose furiously.

The man appeared slightly confused to find anyone in the cabin. “I was gonna feed her. I’ll come back later,” he said in a heavy Mexican accent.

“No, stay, Felix. It’s good you’re here. You remember Colly, Randy’s wife? She’s looking into the Denny Knox case for us. I was just walking her through the night Willis died. She’d love to hear your perspective.” Russ turned to Colly. “Felix was the one who found him.”

The man nodded, staring inscrutably at Colly. His gaze was unsettling, somehow.

“How did it happen?” she asked.

Beneath Felix’s arm, the rabbit began to struggle, unhappy at being confined. Felix opened the hatch in the glass wall and, to Colly’s horror, dropped the animal inside.

He closed the hatch and wiped his hands on his shirt. “I was at the movies with my nephew, Pete. When we come out, I seen a message on my phone from Mr. Russ saying Mr. Willis is upset. So when I get back to the ranch, I come here to check on him.”

Colly tried to listen, but her focus was riveted on the gray rabbit. It was sitting on its haunches in the herpetarium, its nose and ears twitching as it assessed its surroundings. Ten feet away, Delilah watched, motionless. After a moment, she flicked out her tongue.

“And you—you saw him where, exactly?” Colly stammered. “He was in there?”

“ Si .” Felix pointed to a spot just inside. “Slumped on the ground, half-sitting. His head hanging down.” He demonstrated, letting his own fall limply to one side, like a ragdoll’s.

In the cage, the rabbit took a slow hop forward, sniffing the leaf litter. The python remained still.

Colly wrenched her eyes away. “Did you go in and check for a pulse?”

Felix shook his head. “No need.” He glanced at Russ, who nodded.

“Tell her. It’s okay.”

“He was purple, swollen,” the older man said slowly. “His eyes bulged out. There were tooth marks ...” He gestured to his neck and head.

Colly’s lips felt numb and her palms were clammy. She turned to Russ. “It tried to eat him?”

“Snakes are primitive. When prey’s nearby, they get aggressive by instinct, like a shark in a feeding frenzy. That’s what the hatch is for.” She heard him swallow. “You should never feed one by hand. They’re nothing but muscle—even a small constrictor can kill a person. There’ve been several cases. Google it sometime, just not late at night.” He stared into the snake pen.

Growing more comfortable in its new surroundings, the rabbit had begun to explore. It took several tentative hops in the direction of the python, which still did not move a muscle other than its tongue and eyes.

Colly’s mouth felt dry. She looked at Russ. “You said the Rangers think it was suicide.”

“I do, too. Willis walked in there holding a live rabbit. We found it hiding under a bush in the back, terrified out of its wits.” He tapped his finger on the glass. “Willis knew better.”

“Could he have gotten confused? Maybe the Xanax—?”

“I didn’t give him much. He wasn’t loopy when I left, just calmer.”

Colly turned to the ranch foreman. “You knew Willis as well as anyone. Could it have been an accident? A mistake?”

Felix’s eyes were on the rabbit as it inched closer to the python. He shook his head. “Delilah only eats twice a month. Mr. Willis knew it wasn’t time.”

“Willis loved this snake more than anything, besides Momma,” Russ added. “He took care of it like a baby.”

He nodded towards the enclosure. Colly followed his gaze. As they talked, the rabbit had continued to explore. Unaware of its peril, it had hopped closer and closer to the snake and now sat barely a foot from its side, nibbling experimentally at some wood bark. Delilah moved for the first time, shifting her heavy head a few inches towards her prey.

Colly felt a sudden desire to bang on the glass. “Why doesn’t she just eat the damn thing, already?”

“Pythons are cold-blooded. They have to conserve energy. They don’t move till they’re sure of hitting the mark.”

The rabbit took another hop towards Delilah’s tail, and the snake seemed to contract, the muscles tightening along its burnished flank. It turned, lifted its head a few inches off the ground.

“Here we go.” Russ sounded tense, but excited. “If you don’t want to see this, look away now.”

Colly most definitely did not want to see it, but she was transfixed. It was happening so slowly—like watching the masked killer move up behind some clueless blond girl in a horror film. The blood was pounding in her temples, and she couldn’t breathe. She clenched her fists.

When the python struck, it did so with such speed and force that, although Colly was staring right at it, she saw nothing but a golden blur. By the time her eyes refocused, the snake had twisted itself into a surprisingly small, tight knot, from which nothing of the rabbit protruded but its hind feet and tail. The feet twitched, once, twice, then went still as the coils of the snake constricted further. As Colly watched, the pads on the bottoms of the rabbit’s feet morphed from bubblegum pink, to dark rose, to deep purple-blue.

Colly, who’d examined brutal crime scenes unfazed, now felt her stomach churn. “Let me out.” She stumbled against Russ, willing herself not to vomit on the borrowed dress.

Russ steered her into the adjoining room. “You okay?”

Colly blinked in the brighter light. Her pulse was slowing, but a sharp pain had begun to shoot along the nerve behind her right eye.

“I’m fine. Bit of a headache.” She stood up straight. “That’s one hell of a way to commit suicide, if it’s what happened.”

Russ nodded grimly. “Momma believes it was an accident. But once we found those rabbit masks in here, the Rangers considered the case closed.”

“Where were they hidden?”

“That’s just it—they weren’t, really.” Russ led her to the twin bed and opened the nightstand’s drawer. “They were here, under some magazines. Like we were meant to find them. The Rangers figured—”

“Let’s talk about it later.”

Russ seemed confused, but nodded. “I reckon we should head back. Felix, you staying?”

The old man was watching them, his wizened face impassive. “Pete’s coming to help me clean the pen.”

“Lock up when you leave. There’s kids at the house tonight.”

Felix nodded gravely. “Don’t worry, Mr. Russ. I will.”