Titanoboa Page 5

  “Room 217.”

  “Thank you for your help.” Mark jogged up the rickety stairs to the second floor. The building itself was old, but the interior was well cleaned and painted. The rugs were all spotless, and the furniture looked new. The hotel appeared like a comfortable place for a tourist to stay, but something was a little off about it. He didn’t know whether it was the staff or what, but something just didn’t quite sit well with him.

  He knocked on Room 217’s door. No answer. He tried again then stepped to the side and waited a couple of minutes. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and peered through the gap between the door and the floor. No movement inside. She wasn’t here.

  Back downstairs, the man was helping someone else. Mark wandered around the lobby, staring at some of the paintings up on the walls. The clerk became free a moment later, and Mark approached him. “How much to call me when she gets in?” he said. No use in circumlocution.

  “Twenty,” the man said. Mark laid a twenty down on the counter and wrote his phone number on it with a pen.

  “I’m a private detective trying to find out why Billy Gilmore disappeared, in case you’re curious.”

  The man shrugged as he put the money in his pocket. “Doesn’t really matter to me.”

  10

  Marlene Hallwell lay on the lounge chair, soaking in as much sun as possible. Her boy was playing out in the surf, picking up handfuls of wet sand and flinging them into the ocean as far as he could. She glanced down at him to make sure he was all right. It was still early, and most people liked to come out in the afternoon here. The sun stayed over Kalou Island seemingly forever. Last year when they were here, she remembered watching one sunset at a good fifteen minutes past ten p.m.

  Timothy ambled up the beach, wiping wet sand off his palms on his shorts. He flopped down next to his mother and sighed. Marlene knew what was coming next. The cry of every ten-year-old in the world: “I’m bored.” Sometimes she felt like her primary duty as a mother was to make sure her son was entertained. She didn’t remember it being like this when she was a child. Back then, kids had imagination and could entertain themselves. But the world had been a different place then. You could actually let your children outside to play without too much concern about them being kidnapped or killed.

  But now the world was something else entirely.

  “Mom, I’m bored.”

  “So go swimming.”

  “I did. I’m still bored. There’s no other kids here.”

  “They’ll be here later. It’s still morning. Go make a sandcastle or something.”

  “A what?”

  She fumbled in the sand next to her chair until her fingers wrapped around her iPhone. “Here, play a game.”

  “What game?”

  “Timothy, I don’t know. Occupy yourself. I can’t entertain you every second of every day. Go take some pictures or something to send back home to your father.”

  He sighed again. But he must’ve figured that was at least something to do, so he rose and walked off.

  Timothy glanced back at his mother after a few minutes. She was still lying on the chair, tanning herself. The past four days they’d been here, that seemed like all she wanted to do. That, and go out to bars at night and leave him in the hotel room. He didn’t even know why she brought him along. He thought it had something to do with an order from a judge, but he wasn’t sure what that meant. Every year, he visited her for two months in the summer, and every year, they travelled around for two months. He got the impression that she didn’t want to be home with him because she was scared of something. Maybe even of spending time with him. Though why she would be scared of him, he couldn’t possibly understand.

  He snapped a few photos of the ocean then grew bored of that. Behind them was thick jungle. He just couldn’t resist the draw of the tall trees and the multicolored plants, so he walked up to the edge of the jungle and stared inside. His mother wasn’t even paying attention. He began fighting his way through the shrubbery in search of a cool picture.

  The great reptile lay on the jungle floor. The soft leaves that had fallen gave it a comfortable sensation on the underside of its belly, though in reality it cared little for comfort.

  Coiled around itself, it rested its massive head upon its back. It was perfectly, deathly still, something unique to its species. And though it didn’t have the brain capacity to understand such a thing, it even knew how to stop its heart for several moments at a time, an evolutionary adaption that made it part of the background of any environment. Prey might just happen by without even noticing its enormous girth.

  The forked tongue, its great sensor, whipped out of its mouth. More sensitive than the eyes, ears, nose, and touch of any human being, it could detect the motions, scents, the beating of its prey’s heart, and even whether the prey was diseased. It knew all things instantly in one powerful burst of information whose sole purpose was to tell it whether the prey was edible or not. That was the perennial question it asked itself through its existence. The only thing that gave its life any meaning or purpose.

  The tongue sensed something. It sent packets of information to a brain no larger than an apple. Warmth was nearby. Warmth, movement, and the smell of perspiration. Something was alive and coming toward it.

  The predator didn’t move. Its stillness was the weapon most suited to taking down prey. It would strike, its teeth tearing into flesh and bone. The more the prey struggled, the more the teeth dug in. Its backward-pointing fangs were meant for capturing prey like a bear trap and not letting go. Then it would do something so unique, nothing else in nature even resembled it.

  The prey was almost near. One more whip of the tongue, and the predator knew the prey was smaller than the food it was used to but still edible.

  Timothy stopped a moment and looked around. He had walked into the jungle and thought he would just turn around and walk straight back, but that hadn’t worked out as he’d planned. When it was time to turn around and go back, he walked for a long time, thinking everything looked familiar. But he’d walked much farther out than in. He wondered if he had gone in a circle. Whatever he’d done, he was lost.

  “Mom!” he shouted. “Mom!”

  He shouted several times, but his calls went unanswered. He couldn’t even hear the surf anymore, which meant he wasn’t near the beach. That was the key to getting back. He had to hear the water then walk toward it. So he picked a direction and walked.

  The jungle shrubbery grew thick, and the path he had been walking on narrowed. Luckily, it wasn’t that late in the morning, so the sun overhead was really bright. The trees above him sometimes blocked it out and shaded him, but mostly constant sunlight bathed him. If not for that, he would be really scared. But right now, he just wanted to find his mom and not think about anything else.

  As he trudged through the vegetation, the path eventually disappeared. He was now trying to walk through thick plants that wouldn’t give way when he pushed on them. Having cut himself on two of them, he decided the best thing to do was to return to the path and try another direction. This wasn’t leading anywhere.

  After a few minutes, the path widened, and the dirt hardened so he could walk on it without having to fight. As it became easier to walk, his fear began to go away. He couldn’t be that far from the beach after all. He just had to keep walking, and he was sure he’d come across the ocean again. Or maybe back to town, and then someone could go and get his mom.

  He kept his head low, running his hand along the bushes on the side of the path, when he heard something. He thought it might be some plane way up in the sky. So he raised his head and looked up but saw nothing except deep blue.

  The sound, something like a soft exhalation of air, or maybe air let out of a bicycle tire, grew louder. Closer. He saw only jungle. When he started walking again, the little hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He didn’t know the sensation, had never felt it before, but he intuitively understood what it meant. He was in real danger, an
d his body had already picked it up when his mind couldn’t.

  He walked faster, keeping his head down. The classic childhood defense. Pretend it wasn’t there and, with any luck, it would go away. Whatever it was.

  Timothy picked up the pace. Once beautiful, the red and yellow flowers, the intense green leaves on the trees and the thin vines that dangled from them, now seemed dark and ominous.

  “Mom!” he shouted again. But he received no reply.

  He slowed a little, debating which direction to go. The sound was so close it was almost next to him. And he realized something just then. The sound wasn’t following him. He had been approaching it.

  A slow whisper just behind him. He froze. His stomach tightened, and warmth trickled down his legs. And something else was there on his leg. Something black and slick. It emerged from between his ankles and softly curled around his calf. The surface of the thing was smooth, almost like silk. But when it tightened, the muscle quivered beneath. And the thing kept tightening and tightening.

  Timothy turned just as he heard a loud hiss and blackness took him. He knew it had pulled him into the air because he didn’t feel the ground underneath him anymore. But he hadn’t seen anything. Just a flash of movement, and then his body on fire.

  The pain mostly centered in his back and chest. A piercing, fiery pain that shot through him so fast it astounded him. He screamed, but it was muffled.

  The blackness frightened him most. No light was coming into his eyes, though they were open. A single, horrific thought entered his mind: he was inside something.

  The tightening around his leg now spread to his body. Around his chest, hips, throat, and legs. It seemed like it would never stop. As if it would tighten and tighten until it simply cut through him. But he didn’t have time to focus on the tightening because he was hearing another sound now. Not hearing, not really, more like feeling. A series of snaps that began in his legs and ran up through the rest of his body, accompanied by a fiery agony that nearly made him black out.

  Timothy had broken his arm before when his bike crashed onto a curb. He had never heard a bone break and thought his mother was exaggerating when she told him his arm was broken.

  But now he knew what that meant.

  His last thought was of his mother as every bone in his body simultaneously shattered, and his heart exploded.

  11

  The day dragged by slowly when he had nothing to do. Mark ran a background check on Billy. Nothing out of the ordinary. A couple arrests for pot and a bad credit history for a repossessed car.

  Then he ran one on Riki.

  Hers was much more interesting. Not a single arrest. Her credit history didn’t show a single late payment on anything. Her current address was listed in Austin, Texas. Not California as she had said. But then again, sometimes these reports were outdated.

  At lunchtime, he ate at a little seaside crab shack and ordered a fish sandwich and fries to go. He dropped them off at the school and watched as Mariah gave the boy the sack lunch. He often wondered things about the boy. Who he would grow up to become, would this mean anything to him or would he not even remember, would he become a good man or a bad one?

  With his own daughter, he couldn’t answer such questions. He didn’t know who she was. His ex kept a tight lid on her and, Mark knew, purposely limited their contact time. Leah wanted their daughter to bond with her new husband, Jake. So far, the bond hadn’t formed. From what Mark could tell, which was little, the man had difficulty around children.

  Mark had thought about a custody suit more times than he could count. In the end, he didn’t know if he had the fight in him. Leah wouldn’t give up easy, and their daughter would be on the stand during a trial, choosing between parents. But it would be much better for her to live out here. The education system was actually superior to the United States. When children left middle school here, they typically spoke three languages and had already taken two semesters of calculus.

  Mark thought back to his own father, who had only graduated high school. He was one of the smartest men Mark knew. He wondered if the education system could really have declined so much in just forty years, and what would it look like forty years from now.

  Well, this wasn’t a time for philosophizing. He had to find something to kill some time while he waited for the phone call. As he rose to leave his office, a man in a police uniform said hello to his secretary.

  Rashan Ali leaned against her desk and smiled widely as he flirted with her. As he did every time he was here. He saw Mark, said a few more words to her, laughed, and walked into the office. Mark sat back down into the chair.

  “She’s outta your league.”

  “I’m not sure what that means.” He sat down and placed his hat on the desk.

  “Literally or figuratively?”

  “Both.”

  Mark smiled. In reality, most people’s English was fluent on the island, and because of the dominance of American television, they even understood colloquialisms and expressions. Sometimes better than he did. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I have a case the chief would like contracted to you. If you’re interested.”

  “Actually, I am. You caught me at a bit of a slow time.”

  “Good. It’s a missing persons.”

  “It’s not Billy Gilmore by chance?”

  “No. Stanley. The old man that was always out on his boat.”

  “Oh, right. The old Marine. You sure he’s missing?”

  “That’s what I thought, too. He leaves the islands for months at a time. But we found something on his boat.”

  “What?”

  His forehead crinkled. “You better have a look yourself.”

  The day was turning out to be a hot one. Mark always carried a handkerchief that he used to mop up the sweat on his forehead and neck. When no one was looking, he dried his armpits and chest with it.

  He could take the heat, but the mugginess was something else. Much of the time, it felt like he was in a sauna. The sensation, other than the constant drip of sweat, wasn’t entirely unpleasant, though.

  Ali drove them down to the pier and parked right up on the sand, something for which anyone else would’ve been arrested. Out in the distance, Mark saw something he had never seen near the island. A massive ship. Sometimes cruise ships came by, but Kalou had no major ports, so they could never dock. This one was close, and it didn’t look like a cruise ship. More like an oil tanker.

  “What’dya think they’re doin’?” Mark asked as the two men trudged through the sand.

  Ali glanced to him. “You living under a rock, Mark?”

  “I hear that a lot. Don’t really stay up on island gossip.”

  “We’ve contracted with VN Oil. They’re beginning drilling next year.”

  Mark stopped and turned to Ali. “You’re kiddin’ me?”

  He shook his head. “No. It’s a big deal. They’re promising jobs for every man and woman on the island that wants one.”

  “I bet they are.”

  “I’m not a mind reader, but I’m guessing you don’t approve.”

  “The island is perfect the way it is. I just don’t want that ruined.”

  Ali shrugged. “It goes higher than us two.”

  They continued their walk up the beach. A wooden pier jutted out into the crystal blue waters. At the end was a small shack with a straw roof, something intended for use as a lifeguard station but used instead as a place for boaters to try to sober up before heading out if they were too drunk.

  Lashed to the pier was Stanley’s boat. Ali climbed aboard first, and Mark followed. The boat bobbed slightly with the swells. Mark gripped the handrail and waited until Ali answered a phone call. He spoke in Fijian. Mark picked up a few words here and there, but he was no polyglot. Language had always been difficult for him. And one of the factors that made him choose this particular island was that Wikipedia said about ninety-eight percent of the population spoke fluent English.

  Ali h
ung up and replaced the phone in his pocket. He turned to Mark with a look on his face that said he wasn’t happy with whatever news he’d just heard.

  “What?” Mark asked.

  “Another missing person. A mother’s hysterical at the station right now. She’s saying her boy disappeared from the beach. Probably just another drowning. We get six or seven of those a year.”

  Mark scanned the boat. “What did you want to show me here, Rashan?”

  “Over here.”

  They walked toward the stern. Near the transom, the deck was a different color. A stain. Mark bent down and looked at it. “This is what you wanted to show me?”

  “It’s blood.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we found some meat and teeth with it. We took it back and sent it to Nasinu. Their police have a laboratory. They confirmed that it was blood. We didn’t know what the meat was. They said it was human organ tissue. Part of the spleen and kidneys.”

  Mark looked over the stain again. Amazing how knowing the origin of something completely changed your perception of it. He had once heard pans being thumped in Africa and thought it odd out there. When he drew nearer, he realized it was about twenty African children thumping a dead elephant’s hide. The sound, like this stain, had then taken on a completely different meaning.

  “You think he was killed?”

  “What else could it be?”

  Mark stood up, looking over the rest of the boat. “I don’t think we’ve had a murder since I’ve lived here.”

  “No, we haven’t. The last one was a husband that killed his wife almost eight years ago. It’s not good for tourism to have these things go public.”

  “Oh, I see. So that’s why the chief wanted me. People might notice you guys working a murder but not me, huh?”

  “You get paid either way. What do you care?”

  “I guess I don’t.”