The 8th Confession - James Patterson [57]
I screamed, “Snake! That’s the snake!”
The animal seemed liquid as it poured out of the body bag and slid down one of the legs of the gurney onto the floor, head flattened in strike mode, winding across the gray ceramic tile toward Claire.
“Don’t move!” Conklin yelled out.
His gun was in his hand, and he fired at the swiftly moving target, once, twice, again and again, the weapon bucking, bullets pinging off the tiles, gunfire echoing in the suite.
He was oh for six.
My hands were over my ears, my eyes wide open. I stared as the snake kept coming, now only a yard away from the tips of Claire’s bootees.
I read the terror on her face. Moving would attract the snake, but Claire had no choice. She bolted for the stepladder that she used to shoot overhead pictures.
I broke for the hallway.
The firebox was on the wall. I smashed the glass with my gun butt, cleared the shards, reached for the fire ax, and ran back to the room.
Conklin was aiming again. Claire was standing on the ladder’s top rung, and her assistants were screaming, as good as climbing the walls.
I lifted the ax, brought the blade down on the snake, divided it neatly in two at midpoint.
Both halves of the snake continued to writhe.
“It’s dead, right?” I called out, my voice shrill, sweat pouring down the inside of my shirt. “It can’t do anything, can it?”
My mind was suddenly swamped with images of sharks lying on boat decks — presumed dead — that “came back to life” to clamp their jaws around fishermen’s legs.
This snake was still wriggling, mouth open, lethal fangs exposed.
We all stared, transfixed by the killer that wouldn’t die. Then Conklin came out of his trance, disappeared into Claire’s office, and returned with a metal trash can, which he upended over both parts of the snake.
He sat on the trash can.
The look on his face told me that he felt like he was sitting on a bomb.
“No, this is good,” he said to me, red-faced, perspiring, eyes bugging out just a little. “Good a time as any to get over my fear of snakes.”
Animal control arrived at the morgue forty minutes later. They relieved Conklin and lifted the trash can.
Both parts of the krait were still wriggling.
The front end gnashed at the air.
Chapter 75
YUKI WAS CLEANING out her fridge, listening to Faith Hill, thinking about piebald ponies and long-legged strangers, when her cell phone rang.
Her stomach clenched instantly — Is it Doc?
She dropped the sponge in the sink, wiped her hands on the back of her jeans, and went for the phone that was warbling on her mom’s coffee table.
The caller ID read SF DOJ. Yuki stabbed the receive button with her thumb, said, “Castellano.”
An hour later she was sitting in a leather armchair in Judge Brendan J. Duffy’s chambers, waiting for Phil Hoffman to arrive.
Duffy looked perturbed, but he wouldn’t even hint to Yuki about why he’d called until Hoffman was present. So Yuki used the time to study the judge’s bookcase and consider the multiple possibilities. But only one possibility seemed probable, and that was that the damned, cursed jury who’d been charged with deliberating Stacey Glenn’s case hadn’t arrived at a verdict.
The jury had hung — again.
So it followed that Duffy would declare a mistrial and that the sassy beauty queen who’d bludgeoned her helpless, loving parents would do the catwalk strut out of the jailhouse.
Duffy didn’t make small talk. He had gone into work mode, opening files, making notes, tossing papers into his out basket as the rays of afternoon sun lengthened across his Persian rug, and Yuki’s heart continued to beat an SOS inside her ribcage.
Finally she heard Hoffman’s voice in the outer office.
He ducked as he walked in the doorway, ran a hand through his rumpled black hair, said, “Sorry, Your Honor. Yuki. My wife and I were in Sausalito. The ferry couldn’t be hurried.”
“Sit down, Phil,” Duffy said.
Hoffman sat