“Why? Because you cracked Pet Girl while I lay here like a sack of sand? Why would that make me mad? I mean, come on, Lindsay,” he said, turning his brown eyes on me. “Nailing that psycho, even if I wasn’t there at the triumphal moment — that’s what’s important. Nurse! I need a cyanide drip, stat.”
I laughed. Rich had stood up to frickin’ Pet Girl’s snake attack, and for that alone, he was a hero. He was alive — and both our shields, McCorkle’s, too, had been buffed to gleaming for teeing up Norma Johnson for the DA.
This was what we liked to call “a great day to be a cop.”
A nurse’s aide brought in an early-bird blue plate special for Conklin, and as he moved the mush around his dish, I told him about my return to Pet Girl’s apartment.
“Animal Rescue said that the place was clean, but seriously, how did they know they’d gotten every last snake? I walked on tiptoes, Rich, and I’m not even sure my tiptoes touched the ground.”
He grinned, said, “Yer a brave lass, Lindsay.”
“I grabbed that handbag, slammed the door behind me, found the keys. Fifty of the sixty-two were brass with a round top.”
“Did one of them fit the lock?”
“You in a hurry?” I asked him.
“No, no. Take your time.”
I laughed again, glad that Conklin would be out of this house of horrors as soon as Doc gave him the thumbs-up.
“I met McCorkle at Pet Girl’s storage unit,” I said. “He brought this big kid along with him from the lab.
“So we get the door open, and we’re staring at maybe ten yards of cardboard cartons. Big Kid starts taking the boxes down, and McCorkle and I flip through files for five hours looking for ‘Natajara,’ ” I said.
“Turns out Natajara is the name of an Indian god, wears a cobra around his shoulders. Natajara Exports sells poisonous reptiles.”
“Lindsay, you rock.”
“Yes, I do. I found the correspondence between a Mr. Radhakrishnan of Natajara Exports and Christopher Ross, CEO of Pacific Cargo Lines. And I found an invoice for a crate of kraits. Dated January nineteen eighty-two.”
“Asshole kept a record of his snake buy? But how do you figure he was the killer and also a victim?”
“McCorkle thinks his death was an accident, possibly a suicide. We’ll never know, but this is for sure: Norma Johnson is going away for six consecutive lifetimes — and McCorkle has stamped his cold case closed.”
I was high-fiving my partner when a curly-haired blond tornado blew into Conklin’s room with a gift-wrapped box and a bouquet of helium balloons.
“Hey, you,” Conklin said, clearly delighted.
“Hey, you, too.”
Grinning, Cindy said hi to me, kissed Conklin, hugged him, put the box on his stomach, and demanded he open it. “It’s a bathrobe,” she said. “I don’t want anyone seeing your buns but me.”
Conklin laughed, his face coloring. As he worked on the ribbon, I said, “Sounds like my cue to leave. Hope to see you at the Hall tomorrow, bud.”
I kissed Conklin on the cheek and hugged my irrepressible friend Cindy, and as I left the room, I had a thought: Cindy and Rich are good together.
They really are.
Chapter 105
THAT NIGHT, just as Claire, Yuki, and I came through the door to Susie’s, the power went out, instantly plunging the place into a dusky giddiness. Strangers bumped into one another, ordering beer while it was still cold, and the steel drummer carried on without a microphone, ramping up his mellow voice and singing out, “Salt, tea, rice, smoked fish, are nice and the rum is fine any time of year….”
We three pressed on toward the back room, took our usual table, saving Cindy’s seat until she finished taking Conklin home with his new bathrobe.
“She is coming, though?” Yuki asked.
Claire and I shrugged dramatically in unison. Yuki laughed, and Lorraine put candles on the table. She brought us a pitcher of draft, a big basket of chips, and a bowl of salsa, saying, “This is dinner until the power goes back on.”