Since the police chief was getting pressure to stop the incidents, Officer Delinko knew that catching the vandals would be a feather in his cap—and possibly the first step toward a promotion. His long-term career goal was to become a detective, and the Mother Paula case was a chance to show he had the right stuff.
On the first Monday after the alligator episode, Officer Delinko set his alarm clock for five A.M. He rolled out of bed, took a quick shower, toasted himself a bagel, and headed out for the construction site.
It was still dark when he arrived. Three times he circled the block and saw nothing unusual. Except for a garbage truck, the streets were empty. The police radio was quiet as well; not much happened in Coconut Cove before dawn.
Or after dawn, for that matter, Officer Delinko mused.
He parked the squad car next to Leroy Branitt’s work trailer and waited for the sun to rise. It promised to be a pretty morning; the sky looked clear, with a rim of pink in the east.
Officer Delinko wished he’d brought a thermos of coffee, because he wasn’t accustomed to getting up so early. Once he caught himself sagging behind the steering wheel, so he slapped briskly at his cheeks in order to stay awake.
Peering through the fuzzy early-morning gray, Officer Delinko thought he saw movement in the open field ahead of him. He flicked on the squad car’s headlights and there, on a grassy mound marked by a freshly planted survey stake, stood a pair of burrowing owls.
Curly hadn’t been kidding. These were the dinkiest owls that Officer Delinko had ever seen—only eight or nine inches tall. They were dark brown with spotted wings, whitish throats, and piercing amber eyes. Officer Delinko wasn’t a bird-watcher, but he was intrigued by the toy-sized owls. For several moments they stared at the car, their big eyes blinking uncertainly. Then they took off, chattering to each other as they swooped low over the scrub.
Hoping he hadn’t scared the birds away from their nest, Officer Delinko turned off his headlights. He rubbed his heavy eyelids and propped his head against the inside of the car window. The glass felt cool against his skin. A mosquito buzzed around his nose, but he was too sleepy to swipe at it.
Soon he nodded off, and the next thing he heard was the radio crackle of the dispatcher’s voice, routinely asking for his location. Officer Delinko fumbled for the microphone and recited the address of the construction site.
“Ten-four,” the dispatcher said, signing off.
Officer Delinko gradually roused himself. The squad car was hot but, oddly, it looked darker outside now than when he’d first arrived—so dark, in fact, that he couldn’t see anything, not even the construction trailer.
In a fleeting moment of dread, Officer Delinko wondered if it was already the next night. Was it possible he’d accidentally slept through the whole day?
Just then, something smacked against the squad car—pow! Then came another smack, and another after that ... a steady invisible pounding. Officer Delinko grabbed for his gun but it wouldn’t come out of his holster—the seat belt was in the way.
As he struggled to unstrap himself, the car door flew open and a white blast of sunlight hit him in the face. He shielded his eyes and, remembering what they’d taught him at the academy, shouted, “Police officer! Police officer!”
“Yeah? Could’ve fooled me.” It was Curly, the sullen construction foreman. “Whatsa matter, didn’t you hear me knockin’?”
Officer Delinko tried to gather his senses. “Guess I fell asleep. Did something happen?”
Curly sighed. “Get out and see for yourself.”
The patrolman emerged into the glaring daylight. “Oh no,” he muttered.
“Oh yeah,” Curly said.
While Officer Delinko had been dozing, somebody had sprayed all the windows of his squad car with black paint.
“What time is it?” he asked Curly.
“Nine-thirty.”
Officer Delinko let out an involuntary whimper. Nine-thirty! He touched his finger to the windshield—the paint was dry.
“My car,” he said despondently.
“Your car?” Curly bent down and scooped up an armful of dug-up survey stakes. “Who cares about your stupid car?” he said.
Roy spent the morning with a knot in his stomach. Something had to be done, something decisive—he couldn’t spend the rest of the school year hiding from Dana Matherson and Beatrice Leep.
Dana could be dealt with later, but Beatrice the Bear couldn’t wait. At lunchtime Roy spotted her across the cafeteria. She was sitting with three other girls from the soccer team. They looked lanky and tough, though not as formidable as Beatrice.
Taking a deep breath, Roy walked over and sat at the same table. Beatrice glared in seething disbelief while her friends regarded him with amusement and kept eating.
“What is your problem?” Beatrice demanded. In one hand was a barbecued pork sandwich, suspended between the tray and her sneering mouth.
“I think you’re the one with the problem.” Roy smiled, even though he was nervous. Beatrice’s soccer friends were impressed. They set down their forks and waited to see what was coming next.
Roy plowed ahead. “Beatrice,” he began, “I’ve got no idea why you’re mad about what happened on the bus. You’re not the one who got choked, and you’re not the one who got punched in the nose. So I’m only going to say this once: If I did something to upset you, I’m sorry. It wasn’t on purpose.”
Evidently no one had ever spoken to Beatrice so forthrightly, for she appeared to be in a state of shock. Her sandwich remained fixed in midair, the barbecue sauce trickling down her fingers.
“How much do you weigh?” Roy asked, not unpleasantly.
“Wha-uh?” Beatrice stammered.
“Well, I weigh exactly ninety-four pounds,” Roy said, “and I’ll bet you’re at least a hundred and five ...”
One of Beatrice’s friends giggled, and Beatrice shot her a scowl.
“... which means you could probably knock me around the cafeteria all day long. But it wouldn’t prove a darn thing,” Roy said. “Next time you’ve got a problem just tell me, and then we’ll sit down and talk about it like civilized human beings. Okay?”
“Civilized,” Beatrice repeated, gazing at Roy over the rims of her glasses. Roy’s eyes flickered to her hand, which was now dripping fat glops of barbecue sauce. Soggy chunks of bun and meat were visible between clenched fingers—she had squeezed the sandwich so ferociously that it had disintegrated.
One of the soccer girls leaned close to Roy. “Listen, Mouth, you best get outta here while you can. This is so not cool.”
Roy stood up calmly. “Beatrice, are we straight on this? If anything’s bothering you, now’s the time to tell me.”
Beatrice the Bear dropped the remains of her sandwich on the plate and wiped her hands with a wad of paper napkins. She didn’t say a word.
“Whatever.” Roy made a point of smiling again. “I’m glad we had this chance to get to know each other a little better.”
Then he walked to the other side of the cafeteria and sat down, alone, to eat his lunch.
Garrett snuck into his mother’s office and copied the address off the master enrollment sheet. It cost Roy a buck.
Roy handed the piece of paper to his mother as they were riding home in the car. “I need to stop here,” he told her.
Mrs. Eberhardt glanced at the paper and said, “All right, Roy. It’s on our way.” She assumed the address belonged to one of Roy’s friends, and that he was picking up a textbook or a homework assignment.
As they pulled into the driveway of the house, Roy said, “This’ll only take a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Dana Matherson’s mother answered the door. She looked a lot like her son, which was unfortunate.
“Dana home?” Roy asked.
“Who’re you?”
“I go to school with him.”
Mrs. Matherson grunted, turned around, and yelled Dana’s name. Roy was glad that she didn’t invite him
inside. Soon he heard heavy footsteps, and Dana himself filled the doorway. He wore long blue pajamas that would have fit a polar bear. A mound of thick gauze, crosshatched by shiny white tape, occupied the center of his piggish face. Both eyes were badly swollen and ringed with purple bruising.
Roy stood speechless. It was hard to believe that one punch had done so much damage.
Dana glared down at him and, in a pinched nasal voice, said: “I am not believin’ this.”
“Don’t worry. I just came to give you something.” Roy handed him the envelope containing the apology letter.
“What is it?” Dana asked suspiciously.
“Go ahead and open it.”
Dana’s mother appeared behind him. “Who is he?” she asked Dana. “What’s he want?”
“Never mind,” Dana mumbled.
Roy piped up: “I’m the one your son tried to strangle the other day. I’m the one who slugged him.”
Dana’s shoulders stiffened. His mother clucked in amusement. “You gotta be kiddin’! This little twerp is the one who messed up your face?”
“I came to apologize. It’s all in the letter.” Roy pointed at the envelope clutched in Dana’s right hand.
“Lemme see.” Mrs. Matherson reached over her son’s shoulder, but he pulled away and crumpled the envelope in his fist.
“Get lost, cowgirl,” he snarled at Roy. “Me and you will settle up when I get back to school.”
When Roy returned to the car, his mother asked: “Why are those two people wrestling on the porch?”
“The one in the pajamas is the kid who tried to choke me on the bus. The other one, that’s his mother. They’re fighting over my apology letter.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Eberhardt thoughtfully watched the strange scene through the car window. “I hope they don’t hurt each other. They’re both rather husky, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they are. Can we go home now, Mom?”
FIVE
Roy zipped through his homework in an hour. When he came out of his room, he heard his mother talking to his father on the phone. She was saying that Trace Middle had decided not to take disciplinary action against Dana Matherson because of his injuries. Apparently the school didn’t want to provoke Dana’s parents, in case they were considering a lawsuit.
When Mrs. Eberhardt began telling Mr. Eberhardt about the wild tussle between Dana and his mother, Roy slipped out the back door. He wheeled his bicycle from the garage and rode off. Twenty minutes later, he arrived at Beatrice Leep’s bus stop, and from there he easily retraced Friday’s ill-fated foot chase.
When Roy got to the golf course, he locked his bike to the pipes of a water fountain and set off jogging down the same fairway where he’d gotten clobbered. It was late in the afternoon, steamy hot, and few golfers were out. Nonetheless, Roy ran with his head down and one arm upraised for deflection in case another errant ball came flying in his direction. He slowed only when he reached the stand of Australian pines into which the running boy had vanished.
The pine trees gave way to a tangled thicket of Brazilian peppers and dense ground scrub, which looked impenetrable. Roy scoured the fringes, looking for a trail or some human sign. He didn’t have much time before it would get dark. Soon he gave up trying to locate an entry point and elbowed his way into the pepper trees, which scraped his arms and poked his cheeks. He shut his eyes and thrashed onward.
Gradually the branches thinned and the ground beneath him began to slope. He lost his balance and went sliding down a ditch that ran like a tunnel through the thicket.
There, in the shadows, the air was cool and earthy. Roy spotted a series of charred rocks encircling a layer of ashes: a campfire. He knelt by the small pit and studied the packed dirt around it. He counted half a dozen identical impressions, all made by the same set of bare feet. Roy placed his own shoe beside one of the prints and wasn’t surprised to see they were about the same size.
On a whim he called out, “Hello? You there?”
No answer.
Slowly Roy worked his way along the ditch, hunting for more clues. Concealed beneath a mat of vines he found three plastic garbage bags, each tied at the neck. Inside the first bag was common everyday trash—soda bottles, soup cans, potato chip wrappers, apple cores. The second bag held a stack of boys’ clothing, neatly folded T-shirts, blue jeans, and underpants.
But no socks or shoes, Roy observed.
Unlike the other bags, the third one wasn’t full. Roy loosened the knot and peeked, but he couldn’t see what was inside. Whatever it was felt bulky.
Without thinking, he turned the bag over and dumped the contents on the ground. A pile of thick brown ropes fell out.
Then the ropes began to move.
“Uh-oh,” Roy said.
Snakes—and not just any old snakes.
They had broad triangular heads, like the prairie rattlers back in Montana, but their bodies were muck-colored and ominously plump. Roy recognized the snakes as cotton mouth moccasins, highly poisonous. They carried no rattles to warn in advance of a strike, but Roy saw that the tips of their stubby tails had been dipped in blue and silver sparkles, the kind used in art projects. It was a most peculiar touch.
Roy struggled to remain motionless while the fat reptiles untangled themselves at his feet. Tongues flicking, some of the moccasins extended to their full lengths while others coiled sluggishly. Roy counted nine in all.
This isn’t good, he thought.
He almost leaped out of his sneakers when a voice spoke out from the thicket behind him.
“Don’t move!” the voice commanded.
“I wasn’t planning to,” Roy said. “Honest.”
When he lived in Montana, Roy once hiked up Pine Creek Trail into the Absaroka Range, which overlooks Paradise Valley and the Yellowstone River.
It was a school field trip, with four teachers and about thirty kids. Roy had purposely dropped to the rear of the line, and when the others weren’t looking, he peeled away from the group. Abandoning the well-worn path, he angled back and forth up the side of a wooded ridge. His plan was to cross over the top and quietly sneak down ahead of the school hikers. He thought it would be funny if they trudged into the campsite and found him napping by the creek.
Hurriedly Roy made his way through a forest of towering lodge pole pines. The slope was littered with brittle dead logs and broken branches, the debris of many cold, windy winters. Roy stepped gingerly to avoid making noise, for he didn’t want the hikers down below to hear him climbing.
As it turned out, Roy was too quiet. He walked into a clearing and found himself facing a large grizzly bear with two cubs. It was impossible to say who was more startled.
Roy had always wanted to see a grizzly in the wild, but his buddies at school told him to dream on. Maybe in Yellowstone Park, they said, but not up here. Most grownups spent their whole lives out West without ever laying eyes on one.
Yet there was Roy, and a hundred feet across the glade were three serious bears—snorting, huffing, rising on their hind legs to scope him out.
Roy remembered that his mother had packed a canister of pepper spray in his backpack, but he also remembered what he’d read about bear encounters. The animals had poor eyesight, and the best thing for a human to do was remain perfectly still and silent.
So that’s what Roy did.
The sow bear squinted and growled and sniffed for his scent on the wind. Then she made a sharp coughing noise, and her cubs obediently dashed off into the woods.
Roy swallowed hard, but he didn’t move.
The mother bear rose to her full height, bared her yellow teeth, and faked a lunge toward him.
Inside, Roy was quaking with terror but on the outside he remained calm and motionless. The bear studied him closely. Her changing expression suggested to Roy that she’d figured out he was too meek and puny to pose a threat. After a few tense moments, she dropped to all fours and, with a final defiant snort, lumbered off tocollect her cubs.
Still,
Roy didn’t move a muscle.
He didn’t know how far the bears had gone, or whether they might come back to stalk him. For two hours and twenty-two minutes Roy remained as stationary as a plaster statue on that mountainside, until one of his teachers found him and led him safely back to the group.
So Roy was extremely good at not moving, especially when he was scared. He was plenty scared now, with nine venomous snakes crawling around his feet.
“Take a deep breath,” advised the voice behind him.
“I’m trying,” Roy said.
“Okay, now step backwards real slow on the count of three.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Roy.
“One ...”
“Now wait a second.”
“Two ...”
“Please!” Roy begged.
“Three.”
“I can’t!”
“Three,” the voice said again.
Roy’s legs felt like rubber as he teetered backward. A hand seized his shirt and yanked him into the thicket of pepper trees. As Roy’s butt landed in the dirt, a hood came down over his face and his arms were jerked behind his back. Before he could react, a rope was looped twice around his wrists and secured to the trunk of a tree. Roy could feel the smooth sticky bark when he wiggled his fingers.
“What’s going on!” he demanded.
“You tell me.” The voice had moved in front of him. “Who are you? Why’re you here?”
“My name is Roy Eberhardt. I saw you run by the school bus the other day.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“On two different days, actually,” Roy said. “I saw you running and I got curious. You looked kind of ... I don’t know, wired.”
“Wasn’t me.”
“Yeah, it was.” The snake wrangler was using a false husky tone—the voice of a boy trying to sound like a grownup.
Roy said, “Honest, I didn’t come out here to hassle you. Take off this hood so we can see each other, okay?”
He could hear the boy’s breathing. Then: “You’re gonna have to get outta here. Like right now.”