"I like them."

"More important, do they like you?"

"We get along fine. In return for food and shelter, they give me unconditional indifference."

Gallo said he knew a topless dancer in Oakland Park who would be thrilled to have the snakes for her stage act. "She'd give 'em a good home, too. The kind we all dream about."

"Thanks anyway." Rolvaag stood up. "I'd better get going before those damn rodents hot-wire my car."

"You're one bent penny," Gallo said, not unkindly. "Let's wrap up Mrs. Perrone by Friday, okay?"

"Friday?"

"Hey, they can't all be winners, Karl. Some cases, there's only so much you can do."

Especially in six days, Rolvaag thought irritably. He said, "One thing her husband told me, she was a star swimmer back in college."

"Yeah, well, I seriously doubt she practiced diving off ocean liners or swimming with sharks. Give it till Friday, Karl. You can keep the file open, but let's slide it to the bottom of the pile."

"You betcha."

Later, driving home with the box of rats, Rolvaag remembered the letter in his briefcase. He was miffed at himself for not mentioning it to Gallo, so that the captain could begin processing the paperwork for Rolvaag's resignation.

First thing Monday, the detective vowed. He was looking forward to getting out of this steaming sump and moving back to Minnesota. He truly was.

Charles Regis Perrone was a biologist by default.

Medical school had been his first goal-specifically, a leisurely career in radiology. The promise of wealth had attracted him to health care, but as a devoted hypochondriac he was repelled by the idea of interacting with actual sick people. Perusing X rays in the relatively hygienic seclusion of a laboratory had seemed an appealing option, one that would leave plenty of time for recreation.

Chaz's master plan was derailed by his own lubricious appetites. During those pre-med years he spent more time in condoms than he did in the stacks, and consequently meandered through the University of Florida with a less than dazzling 2.1 GPA. Not many medical schools avidly pursue C students, but Chaz wasn't crushed. He'd already decided that being a doctor would cut too onerously into his social schedule, and that he would devise another way to get rich.

In the meantime he sailed forth into the world armed with his Ken-doll good looks, his priapic affability and a bachelor's degree in a subject he loathed-biology. Three months after graduation he reluctantly moved back home with his mother, whose new husband, an addled ex-RAF pilot named Roger, delighted in tormenting Chaz with odd pranks. Whenever he snuck into a bathroom to whack off, which was several times a day, Roger would turn up the Irish Rovers full blast, rap on the doorjamb and chant, "Bad monkey! Bad monkey!" in an eerie falsetto.

Chaz suffered under his mother's roof, but without a job there seemed no escape. Only one prospective employer had displayed a glint of interest in his college credentials-the Bay County Humane Society, which was looking for just the right person to hose down the kennels twice a day.

It dawned on Chaz that he was doomed to minimum-wage hell unless he obtained a master's degree, so he purchased one from a popular diploma mill in Colorado. The eight-week mail-order course guaranteed graduation (with honors) for a fee of $999, which Chaz remorselessly conned from his mother. Any topic vaguely related to biology was acceptable for a thesis paper, double-spacing being the only academic requirement. Chaz's opus, researched one afternoon in the produce section of the local supermarket, was titled "A Comparative Analysis of Late-Season Oranges, Ruby Grapefruits and Tangelos."

Ten days after mailing off the finished manuscript-a cashier's check clipped to the cover page, as required-he received a certified letter stating that the school had been shut down, stripped of its accreditation and evicted from the strip mall where its "campus" had been headquartered.

Grudgingly, Chaz accepted the fact that he might have to physically attend classes in order to secure an advanced degree. His mother, having stumbled upon the more unsavory elements of his porn collection, expedited his departure by imposing on a cousin who taught at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Although Chaz's GRE scores were nearly as forgettable as his grades, the politesse of nepotism prevailed and he was admitted to the master's program.

It was a buoyant and eager postgraduate who arrived at the Rosenstiel campus on Virginia Key, for he had grandly envisioned himself sailing the lazy tropics on a schooner, tracking pods of playful bottle-nosed dolphins. In this fantasy, Chaz held binoculars in one hand and a frosty margarita in the other.

Had he bothered to scan the curriculum in advance, he would not have been so poleaxed by the tedious reality of field biology. His first assignment was assisting a doctoral candidate in a study of coastal sea lice, an experience that reignited Chaz's antipathy toward the great outdoors and all denizens great and small.

Among his chores was collecting gobs of algal weed that harbored the tiny granular organisms, which were not true lice but rather the larvae of Linuche unguiculata, the thimble jellyfish. Chaz's initial aversion to his subject was justified on the second day, when the pests somehow burrowed beneath his wet suit and colonized his upper torso with an itchy pustular rash-a painful condition spectacularly exacerbated by an ill-advised choice of colognes. Before the first semester was half over, Chaz looked like he'd been dragged from a burning oil rig. He stiffly informed his faculty supervisor that the only sensible purpose for studying sea lice was to isolate a toxin that would wipe them off the face of the earth.

Clearly, Chaz had neither the hide nor the perspective required for scientific inquiry. Worse, he had no interest whatsoever in the lesser species. As an undergraduate he had muddled through classroom biology by memorizing just enough to pass the exams. In the field he couldn't fake it so easily. The work was sweltering, repetitive and just plain hard. Every time Chaz asked if he could go play with dolphins, he was told to fetch another tub of kelp.

His family connection spared Chaz the ignominy of flunking out. Instead, he was steered along a path of study that minimized his exposure to nature-the breeding cycle of captive mosquito fish. After two years of sullenly tending aquariums, he emerged with a marginal M.A. in marine biology. At graduation the entire Rosenstiel faculty rose as one to cheer Chaz as he crossed the stage, so elated were they to see the last of him.

To his own surprise, he had no sooner laminated his diploma than he was offered a job. The company was a famous cosmetics manufacturer that conveniently had no use for the oceanic sciences and no concern about Chaz's lackluster grades. The firm merely needed a presentable face on staff-what serious biologists scornfully refer to as a "biostitute"-who would dutifully attest that its perfume products contained only negligible levels of toxins, acetones and carcinogens. Recruiters for the cosmetics company were impressed by Chaz's fastidious grooming and handsome features, which they felt would enhance his effectiveness as an expert witness, especially among female jurors.

He was assigned to the company's Jacksonville plant, where he was given an office, a small laboratory and a starter batch of one hundred white mice. These he occasionally swabbed with Blue Passion, Shiver or whatever new fragrance was being test-marketed at the time. Every now and then a mouse would manifest a tumor the size of a kumquat, causing Chaz to snatch up the wretched critter with barbecue tongs and heave it into a culvert behind the building. The idea of scientifically documenting such malignancies was never contemplated-