Chapter 3
Three
The news was all over town before dark. There were whispers about killing the damn snake and setting it on fire, while the more righteous people reminded them that Mayrene deserved a decent burial and needed to be extricated first. That cooled down the hotheads.
Initially, everyone felt horrified on Floy’s behalf, but the blame had begun to shift to him now, as well as the snake. Loud voices arose. He should not have been allowed to have a pet that could kill someone.
Then someone else reminded the ones with loud voices that the hunting dogs on their front porches were as deadly in their own way as that snake, so were they ready to get rid of their dogs? Again, cooler heads prevailed.
At his own request, Floy spent the night in an unlocked jail cell, because going home wasn’t an option. The chief had remarked upon the bloody crease down the middle of Floy’s forehead as looking painful, to which Floy replied that it was, then laid down in the cell and closed his eyes.
He dreaded the phone call he’d have to make to Quilla when she got back from Dallas. He didn’t like his mother-in-law, and she didn’t like him, so the feeling was mutual, but they both loved Mayrene, and this was a disaster.
The rain stopped around midnight.
Blackjack did not have an animal control facility. They had locals with guns that served in that capacity when the need arose, but bright and early the next morning, the local veterinarian arrived with his assistant and a portable X-ray to determine the contents inside the snake.
Bob and Fred, the two officers that had been left on guard, were in the kitchen when Floy arrived with the chief and his other officers.
Floy’s eyes had already turned black from him having run into the screen door.
He felt like a monster and looked like a raccoon.
His gut was in knots. One glance from the kitchen window confirmed Elvis with the belly was still there, and he was crying quietly again by the time Chief Arnold, Doc Zeke, and his assistant began setting up.
Doc Zeke knew Floy and Mayrene, and he knew Elvis. Still, this was about as sickening to him as a case could get. He ordered his assistant to open the program on the laptop so they would be able to see scans in real time, as Doc Zeke began adjustments on the handheld scanner.
Floy came out of the back door, with the officers behind him.
Doc Zeke glanced at Floy, then looked away. It was a gut-wrenching day for all concerned, but he couldn’t imagine what the man was going through right now.
Floy got as far as the end of the porch before he dropped and leaned over, bracing his elbows on his knees and covering his face. There was no way he could view those scans without wanting to blow his brains out.
The chief motioned for Bob to stay with Floy, while Fred joined the chief.
Doc Zeke had the handheld x-ray. “Are you ready?” he asked.
His assistant gave Zeke a thumbs-up.
Zeke aimed the scanner at the bulge and began the scan.
The images were popping up on the assistant’s laptop screen as Zeke moved the device across the entire surface, taking still shots as he went.
Then he stepped back, glanced over his shoulder at the assistant, and walked back to the laptop.
“Show me,” he said, watching as the assistant opened the file.
Doc Zeke leaned over the man’s shoulder, his eyes widening at every shot, and then looked up.
“Well, Chief, I can’t tell you where Mayrene is, but she’s not in his belly. That’s a hog. Elvis swallowed a hog.”
The chief’s shoulders slumped with relief, and he shouted out, “Floy! It’s a hog. Elvis didn’t swallow Mayrene. It’s somebody’s hog!”
Floy’s hands fell into his lap as his head came up with a snap. “A hog? Are you sure?”
Doc Zeke turned. “Absolutely positive,” he shouted.
Floy stood up too fast. The sky spun and the grass turned purple when his eyes rolled back in his head, and for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, he fell backward onto the porch and knocked himself unconscious.
They called the ambulance and took Floy to the hospital to check for a concussion. The doctor put a couple of stitches in the cut at the back of his head from landing on a loose, exposed nail Floy had been meaning to fix.
He was still in a state of shock when Chief Arnold entered the ER and hurting too much to see the expression on Arnold’s face when he saw all the fresh cuts on Floy’s chest and arms.
Arnold frowned. Black eyes? And those cuts on his chest! Were they defense wounds or wounds suffered in the act of committing a murder?
“Doc says you have a slight concussion, but they won’t hospitalize you unless you want them to. My question is . . . what do we do with Elvis?” Arnold asked.
Floy scrubbed his hands across his face. “I know a guy. His name is Hoot Zander. He runs an exotic snake exhibit on his place. It’s a couple of hours from here, but I’ll call him. He’ll take Elvis in a heartbeat.”
“What if he doesn’t want him?” Chief Arnold asked.
Floy was crying again. “Then I’ll shoot and bury him myself. The problem is that I’m still missing a wife. We had a fight. She was yelling at me when I walked out of the house. And when I came home, she was gone. No note. No nothing.”
Arnold frowned, looking anew at the cuts on Floy’s chest, and the bloody crease in his forehead, and how his eyes were turning black, and had to ask, “Floy! How did you get all those cuts?”
“Green beans,” Floy muttered, and reached for tissues. He’d never cried like this in his entire life, and never in front of guys, but he was so broken he didn’t know how to stop.
The chief frowned. “I think we need to revisit your statement and add in the part about the green beans and the fight. I’ve picked a passel of beans in my life, both for my mother and my wife, but they never cut me up.”
Floy rolled his eyes. “They were in a quart jar Mayrene canned last summer. It’s a long story.”
“You can tell me down at the station,” Arnold said. “I’ll get a nurse to wheel you out. They got rules and all, you know.”
“Whatever,” Floy muttered, as he pulled out his phone and began scrolling through his contacts to find Elvis a new home. By the time the chief had returned with a nurse pushing a wheelchair, Floy had Elvis’s fate sealed. Now all he needed was to find Mayrene.
They’d given him pain pills to take home, but when they got Floy to the station, he swallowed two with a drink of water without reading the directions, which turned out to be double the dose he was meant to take, then he sat there praying for them to work.
Chief Arnold knew the guy was hurting, but now there were too many unknowns he couldn’t ignore.
He’d sent Tex and Dub to search the property for recent signs of digging in the area—like anything resembling an unmarked grave.
He didn’t like thinking it, but the great snake escape had evolved into a bigger mess than when it first began.
Everyone knew Mayrene Beaudine hated that snake. Everyone knew Floy doted on it. The chief sent Bob and Fred to talk to Razor and Beau, but they were nowhere in town. The officers drove up the mountain to the old Langley place to talk to them, but they weren’t there either.
When they came back to the PD to tell Chief Arnold, he’d already imagined some kind of grand cover-up with Floy’s hired hands as co-conspirators.
What if Mayrene had been missing from the start, and he’d used Elvis as an excuse?
What if he’d fed the hog to Elvis in the hope that they’d blame her absence on the snake, and he would get away with murder?
The variables were vast, and Chief Arnold’s experience with murder cases was zero.
All he knew was to collect evidence, just like he saw on the cop shows on TV.
Unaware of the drama behind the scenes, Floy was still in the break room waiting for someone to take his statement.
He had a crease in his forehead, two black eyes, a razor cut on his chin, and multiple cuts on his chest. Today he’d added two stitches to the back of his head and a throbbing headache.
The only positive was that Elvis had not swallowed his wife. The negative was she was still missing.
However, this horrific scare made giving up Elvis easier than he would have believed.
For the first time, he regretted not knowing how to contact Quilla.
Maybe she would have a notion as to where her daughter might go.
Mayrene no longer had a car, and he couldn’t see her walking anywhere while still believing Elvis was on the loose.
Chief Arnold entered the room with a recorder. Floy saw the weird look on the chief’s face, and the way he braced himself after he sat.
“So, Floy, for the record, I need you to state your name and age.”
Floy frowned but did as he was asked. Then the chief leaned forward.
“So, tell me about the fight and the green beans.”
Floy blinked. The room felt like it was tilting, but he shook it off.
“Well, the green beans happened on the morning we found out Elvis was gone.”
The chief sighed. “Then start with how you got cut by green beans.”
Floy sighed. “It was morning. I had already showered but was still naked as I shaved. I like to air-dry,” he added, and proceeded to tell the tale from the scream, and the slap, to the jar breaking on his chest. “The jar of green beans broke against my chest when she slammed the door in my face while I was still holding it. So, now I’m standing in green beans, bean juice, and shattered glass, with shards sticking into my chest, and green beans in my hair, and I still don’t fucking know why she’s screaming. ”
The chief was caught up in a story so outrageous that he had almost come to the point of believing it. “Then what happened?” he asked.