Page 36 of The Killing Plains

“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 perfectlystill, 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.”

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