"I'll take care of Mr. Braid," Tarver said in an offhand voice.

Rusk nodded cautiously. He wanted to know when the doctor meant to act, but he didn't want to anger him by asking.

"Will Braid be home tonight?" Tarver asked.

"Yes. I told him I might drive over to talk to him."

"Moron. What if he told his mistress that?"

"She left him ten days ago. Nobody talks to him now. His kids have been staying with their grandparents for the last two weeks."

"All right."

Rusk was breathing easier. No mention of money so far.

"Two hundred fifty thousand," Tarver said suddenly, as though reading his mind.

Rusk crumpled inside. "That seems like a lot," he ventured. "I mean, he's a threat to both of us, right?"

All humanity went out of Dr. Tarver's face. "Does Braid know my name?"

"No."

"Does he know my face?"

"Of course not."

"Then he's no threat to me. You are the only conceivable threat to me, Andrew. And I advise you not to make me dwell on that."

"How do you want the money?"

"The safe way. We'll make the transfer here, sometime next week."

Rusk nodded. A quarter of a million dollars…just like that. All to shut the mouth of one guilt-ridden client. He had to start screening better. But how? It was tough to predict who had the intestinal fortitude to watch someone they'd once loved reduced to a hollowed-out shell before they checked out. Shooting someone was a lot quicker, and loads easier to deal with. One trigger pull, and the source of your temporary madness was lying in the morgue. Three days later she was prettied up for her final appearance in the casket, and then poof-gone forever. That was fine in the old days, of course, the days of Perry fucking Mason. But this was the modern age. You couldn't shoot anyone you knew and get away with it. Nor could you strangle them, poison them, or push them off a hotel balcony. Just about any way you could kill somebody was traceable and provable in a court of law; and spouses and family members were automatically prime suspects in every murder. It was axiomatic: the first thing a homicide detective learned.

No, if you wanted to kill your spouse and get away with it, you had to do something truly ingenious: something that wouldn't even be perceived as murder. And that was the service that Andrew Rusk had found a way to provide. Like any quality product, it did not come cheap. Nor did it come quickly. And perhaps most important of all-as William Braid was proving-it was not for those with weak constitutions. Demand was high, of course, but few people were truly suitable clients. It took a deep-rooted hatred to watch your spouse die in agony, knowing that you had brought about that pain. But on the other hand, Rusk reflected, some people bore up remarkably well under the strain. Some people, in fact, seemed almost ideally suited for the role. They stretched their dramatic wings, donning a suit of martyrdom that they enjoyed all the more for its being unfamiliar. Rusk tried not to judge anybody. That was not his function. His job was to facilitate an outcome that a great number of people desired, but only an elite few could afford.

"If the money bothers you," Dr. Tarver said, "think about being gang-raped in Parchman prison for twenty-five years. Or think about sticking your hand inside that bag." Tarver gestured at the blue Nike bag at his feet. "Because I could make a strong argument for that. There's no risk to me, and it absolutely guarantees my safety."

"It would also deprive you of your future income," Rusk said bravely.

Tarver smiled. "I'm already rich, Andrew."

Rusk said nothing, but he was on surer ground here. Dr. Tarver had earned millions from their association, but the pathologist had already spent much of his money. His private research work ate up capital at a staggering rate. Rusk wasn't sure what he was working on, but whatever it was, Rusk couldn't see the point-unless it had nothing to do with money. He knew that Tarver had once been fired by a pharmaceutical company for some sexual impropriety, and this had deprived him of the fruits of whatever research he had done for them. Maybe Tarver's goal was to prove to those people that they'd made the worst mistake of their lives. All this went though Rusk's mind in a matter of seconds, and only at a shallowest level of thought, for the core of his mind was focused on the question What's in that Nike bag? He had been watching the bag for twenty seconds now, and he was almost positive that it was moving.

"Do you want to see?" Tarver asked.

Rusk shook his head. With Eldon Tarver, there was no telling what was in the bag. A poisonous snake? A fucking Gila monster? God only knew. "We need to talk about something else."

"What's that, Andrew?"

"My safety."

A new watchfulness came into Tarver's eyes. "Yes?"

"I knew today would upset you. Especially the stuff about Morse."

"And?"

"Because of that, I felt I had to take steps to protect myself."

The doctor's eyelids dropped like those of some South American lizard sunning itself on a stucco wall. "What did you do, Andrew?"

"Take it easy, Eldon. All I did was make a simple and absolutely safe arrangement whereby if I don't do a certain thing every day, certain events will be set in motion." Rusk heard his voice quavering, but he had to go on. If he didn't, he'd never get it out. "Events which would insure you going to prison for multiple murder."

A strange light had come into the half-lidded eyes. "Don't tell me that you left some sort of confession with your attorney? Or put something in a safe-deposit box somewhere?"

"No, no, it's much more discreet than that! And much more reliable."

"What if you happen to die accidentally?"

"You'll have a couple of days to get out of the country. No more, though. And that's not so bad. We're already set up like kings. You'd just be leaving a little earlier, that's all. The bottom line is this: you can't kill me and stay in America. But why would you want to kill me? I'm making you more money than you could get any other way."

Tarver was breathing in long, rhythmic respirations. "That's not true. Your idea of wealth is very provincial, Andrew. The profits from my research will dwarf what we've earned. I consider our little operations piecework, like a student cutting lawns during medical school."

For some reason this irritated Rusk, who believed what they were doing to be a revolutionary business. But he didn't argue the point. He was still looking at the bag. There was definitely something alive in it.

"I need to get back to the city," he said.

Tarver reached down and unzipped the Nike bag. "Your idea of a city is provincial also. Jackson, Mississippi…my God."

As Rusk edged away from the fire, something black and yellow emerged from the opened zipper of the bag. It looked like a lizard's head. A black lizard with a yellow band across its head. Too small for a Gila monster, he thought, unless it's a baby.

"Before you go," said Dr. Tarver, "tell me about the woman."

"The woman?" Rusk echoed, for some reason thinking of Janice and her muscular thighs.

"Alex Morse."

"Oh. She was a hostage negotiator for the Bureau. The best they had, until she fucked up."

"What was the nature of her mistake?"

"She let her emotions override her logic."

"A common pitfall." With an almost balletic fluidity, Tarver reached behind the black and yellow head and lifted a brilliantly colored snake from the bag.

Oh, shit…

The narrow, brightly banded tail was twenty inches long, and it coiled around Tarver's arm as though around the trunk of some pale, hairy tree. Rusk stared at the alternating bands: red, yellow, black; red, yellow, black-

His blood pressure dropped so rapidly that he thought he might faint. It was a goddamned coral snake. A stone-fucking killer! Unless, unless…there was a king snake that looked almost exactly like the coral. The scarlet king snake! He remembered a story about some guys scaring the piss out of a pledge with one during Hell Week. He tried to remember the rhyme he'd learned as a Boy Scout: Red over yellow…kill a fellow? Was that it? Red over black, friend to Jack? If he was right, then Eldon Tarver was holding a goddamn coral snake in his hand as casually as Rusk would hold a kitten.