‘Not necessarily.’ Pavlik waved toward the road bed. ‘If our decedent, knife already in his back, hit the ground a certain way, his own weight might have punched the blade deeper. Or, as you say, the snake’s constriction might have forced the knife farther into the body.’
I felt sick again. ‘And that’s what killed him?’
‘We don’t know that yet.’ Pavlik put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Potter might have already been dead from the wound. Or from drowning.’
You know you’re in a bad place when the thought of somebody dying sooner rather than later cheers you.
But here we were. Welcome to the Everglades.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, moving closer to Pavlik.
‘The water dripping off the leaves and grass, probably,’
‘I hear that, as well, but this is kind of a tick, tick, tick.’
‘You mean like a clock? Inside a crocodile perhaps?’
Captain Hook’s crocodile. My sheriff was channeling Peter Pan. ‘I know it’s silly, but – there! There it is again.’
Pavlik listened. ‘Probably some kind of night bird. They have a lot of species down here that we’ve never heard or seen.’
‘And, of course, alligators, not crocodiles,’ I said with a self-deprecating laugh.
‘No, they have crocodiles, too.’ Pavlik was crossing the flooded breach back to our friend the python. ‘Just not as many as they do alligators.’
More great news. With a nervous look around, I followed him.
‘Did you get a good look at this thing’s teeth?’ I pointed a cautious toe at a portion of the snake’s head. ‘They tilt backwards like those one-way exit spikes in parking lots. You know – the ones that cause “severe tire damage” if you back over them.’
‘A very efficient creation of nature. And from the looks of the maternity ward, Hertel was right about one thing: she was eating for about eighty.’
I looked into the belly of the beast and could swear that some of her eggs were rolling against each other. ‘We’re not going to leave them here, are we?’
Pavlik eyed me. ‘Please tell me you’re not that hungry. Or maternal.’
Ugh. ‘No, thank you very much, on the former. As to the latter, just the opposite. I know everybody down here is concerned about the population of pythons in the Everglades, and I think the ‘ticking’ noise might be coming from inside the eggs. Maybe we – or better, you – should smash them or something.’
Pavlik shook his head. ‘I get your point, but outside of what Hertel told us, I have no proof that’s a python. Nor that it’s legal to kill whatever it is or its eggs.’
‘Pavlik, it was eating another member of our species, and you’re going to risk letting its offspring grow up to slither in Mommy’s footsteps? Not to mention following her dietary habits?’
The whole thing was starting to feel surreal. Whatever were we doing stuck here, talking about this, while standing next to … that? I averted my eyes.
‘I get it, Maggy. And if the creature hadn’t ruptured, I would have happily slit the thing’s throat if I could find it. As it is, though, I’m not sure I feel right about smashing the eggs. We’ll let the authorities decide on that when they arrive.’
‘Unless the eggs hatch first, overrun the cars and Murder on the Orient Espresso gets made into a sequel to Snakes on a Plane,’ I muttered. ‘Then all the “authorities” will find of us is our shoes. Maybe.’
‘Good flick,’ Pavlik observed as the rain started to fall heavier again. ‘A classic, in fact. But I have to say, if these eggs can hatch themselves, make their way up and into the train and then kill us all, we deserve what we get.’
Terrific. Now Pavlik was Charles Darwin.
On the opposite side of the breach, the engineer came around the locomotive’s corner. ‘I tapped the first two I saw. Will they do?’ He hooked a finger toward Boyce, the coffeehouse owner, and Markus, the librarian.
‘Jesus,’ Markus said. He was looking at the flooded track. ‘What do we do?’
‘I didn’t tell them nothing,’ Hertel said to Pavlik. ‘Like you said.’
Pavlik nodded. ‘Sadly, the track’s not our biggest problem.’ He gestured toward Potter’s body in the shadow of the locomotive.
Boyce stepped forward. ‘Isn’t this one of our passengers?’
I realized the coffee man wouldn’t necessarily know Laurence Potter by face.
‘How in the hell did Potter get out here?’ Markus asked, not seeming to know what to make of it all.
He could join the club.