Why do people turn these things from hell loose so they can grow and grow?

As solid ground gave way to mud, Bailey’s boots began making slurping noises with each step.

He was within twenty feet of the snake, but the tall saw grass was blocking some of his view.

The snake moved slightly.

So the damned thing is alive.

Not that he’d thought otherwise—merely hoped.

Bailey slowed his approach, altering direction slightly to stay on relatively solid ground.

Then he saw something that turned his fear to horror.

A patch of blue cloth had emerged from between the python’s coils. Surely part of an article of clothing. He saw that one side of it was edged with lace.

A dress.

My God, he was looking at a dress!

A rage he didn’t understand helped to overcome his fear, and he moved forward to slightly higher ground. He saw what he dreaded. Pink flesh. An ankle and foot. Unmoving.

He inched closer and saw the horror in its entirety.

The python paid no attention to him. Perhaps because it was feeding. As snakes do, it had unhinged its jaws to consume larger prey headfirst. The girl’s blond head had almost disappeared inside the snake. Little of her slender body was visible among the tightly wrapped coils that had slowly and by degrees crushed the life from her.

A trembling Bailey found himself wondering if she’d been dead before the snake—

He refused to finish his thought.

The snake paused in its feeding and was perfectly still, staring at Bailey with calculating eyes.

Sweet Jesus!

On unsteady legs, Bailey took three cautious backward steps. Then he turned and hurried back to the truck to get his shotgun.

Everyone who knew Honey Carter was shocked by her death. Dwayne was inconsolable. And like everyone else, he had no idea what Honey had been doing that night in the swamp.

Mrs. Collingsworth, Honey’s former biology teacher, said that Honey had possessed a growing interest in nature and all its inhabitants. Creatures of the swamp, in particular, had fascinated her.

Dwayne knew that Honey had snowed Mrs. Collingsworth to raise her grade point average. He made no mention of it.

Four days after Bailey found Honey in the coils of the giant python, a man with a twelve-gauge shotgun entered a biker bar in nearby Plainville and blasted three of the regular customers off their stools. When the police arrived, the killer burst from the diner barefoot and shot one of them, then leaned over his shotgun and used a toe to trip the trigger and blow himself almost in half.

Dead at home from shotgun blasts were the man’s wife and two children. The media quickly discovered that one of the casualties in the biker bar had been involved in a secret affair with the killer’s wife.

That was pretty much the end of Honey in the news.

There were a few suspicions and aspersions cast Dwayne’s way, but he ignored them and they gained no substance or credibility. As far as the sheriff’s office was concerned, Honey had met with a terrible accident, and that was that.

Like the rest of her friends, Dwayne professed to be crushed by her death.

48

Green Forest, Ohio, the present

Quinn parked the rental car in front of Ida Tucker’s frame house, in the shade of a big mimosa tree. When they opened the car’s doors and climbed out, the sweet scent of the tree’s pink blossoms was like perfume.

All in all it was a nice morning, still not overheated by the summer sun. Ida suggested that they walk.

A plain black Ford SUV pulled into the Tucker driveway, and Joel Price climbed down from it, moving with the stiffness of old age. They invited Price to walk with them, but he declined, got back in the truck, and drove the few blocks to the Tradesman First National Bank.

He was standing in the shade of a large oak tree, in the center of a paved roundabout in front of the bank, when they arrived. Those on foot were feeling too warm and wished they’d heeded the advice of the attorney, looking dry and comfortable despite his dark suit. His tie had a small checked design on it today. Not a black tie like yesterday, but certainly not festive. Price had been around long enough to hit the right notes.

He smiled in greeting, then led them solemnly into the bank.

The air-conditioning was keeping up in there, and it was quiet in the way of banks with lots of carpeting and wood paneling.

There were two tellers’ windows open, and half a dozen employees at desks or wandering about with papers in their hands. Quinn counted only three other customers. One at each window, and one at a long oak table near the bank’s lettered window. Behind the tellers’ cages was a large, polished steel safe with its door open.

“Hi, Maggie,” Price said, to the youngest of the two tellers. Not that either of them was a spring chicken. Maggie looked about forty, the other teller fifty. Maggie had chopped-off looking dark hair. The other teller was a woman with gray hair worn in a long braid down her back. She was looking up something for a stout Hispanic woman holding a handful of what looked like deposit slips.

Maggie gave her customer some sort of form to fill out regarding a new mortgage. When the refinancing customer was gone, Maggie smiled at the small group near her teller’s cage. Said, “Hi, Mr. Price.”

Price said, “We need to get into a box, Maggie.”

She bent down and got some keys and what looked like a black leather ledger, then came out from behind the marble counter.

When they’d reached a small table near the gaping entrance to the vault, Maggie placed the leather book on the table and opened it.

“Not my usual box, Maggie,” the lawyer said. “Number one-fifty.”

Maggie turned some pages and seemed to study the book for several seconds. “Long time between visits, Mr. Price.”

“Part of my job,” Price said. He signed and dated the book.

Carrying a jingling ring of keys, Maggie led him into the vault.

A few minutes later, they emerged. Price was carrying a long, gray metal box with a locked door on one end. Maggie moved ahead of him and held open a door to a carpeted ten-by-ten room with a single oak table and two oak chairs. There was a tablet of paper on the table, along with a lamp.

Maggie laid the long metal box on the table, unfastened one of the locks with her master key, then nodded to them, and left the room. Joel Price had the second key needed to open the box.

Quinn went to the door Maggie had left by and worked the lock on the knob.

He nodded to Price, who withdrew the box’s key from a small, sturdy envelope with the box number written on it.

Ida Tucker moved closer, which seemed to cause Pearl to edge toward her. Quinn moved directly toward the box as Price worked his key and then lifted the hinged lid that was about half the length of the box itself. Everyone in the room leaned toward the box, staring.

It was empty.

Price seemed flabbergasted. “I don’t understand this any more than you do,” he said.

“Were you and Edward Tucker the only ones with keys?” Quinn asked.

Price nodded. “Yes. I had mine, always, in my desk drawer or in my pocket. I don’t know where Edward Tucker kept his key. I do know it would take the person with the activating key and the person with the other legitimate key to open the safe before nine a.m., when the bank opened and the timer would kick in within the safe.”

Price explained that at precisely 9:00 A.M. the safe’s brass handle could be moved to the left 180 degrees and the heavy steel door, balanced on its bearings, could be swung open with very little effort. It was usually left that way until the bank closed. Then the safe door would be shut and would automatically lock tight on its timer. It couldn’t be opened except with explosives until nine the next morning.