The serpent hung suspended for a moment, then coiled itself around the doctor’s big forearm for the second time. A euphoric rush dilated his blood vessels. Unlike chemically induced highs, the reaction caused by the sliding of scales against his bare skin never lost its potency. He felt the thrill of a young boy holding a gun for the first time: the intoxicating power of holding death in your hand. The death of others, the ability to bring about your own …
As he drove southward, Dr. Tarver reveled in the proximity of eternity.
Even after three shots of vodka, Chris found himself unable to sleep. At 5 a.m. he finally gave up. He slid silently out of bed and dressed in the closet, then walked out to the garage, loaded his bike onto the rack on his pickup, and drove twenty minutes to the north side of town. There, under a violet sky, he topped off his high-pressure tires, mounted his carbon fiber Trek, and started pedaling north on the lonely gray stripe of the Natchez Trace.
The windless air had felt warm and close while he was filling his tires, but now his forward motion cooled him to the point of a chill. This far south, most of the two-lane Trace was a tunnel created by the high, arching branches of the red oaks that lined the parkway. The effect was that of a natural cathedral that extended for miles. Through the few breaks in the canopy Chris saw a yellow half-moon, still high despite the slowly rising sun. He pumped his legs with a metronomic rhythm, breathing with almost musical regularity. Small animals skittered away as he passed, and every half mile or so, groups of startled deer leapt into the shelter of the trees.
A warm, steady rain began to fall. Landmarks rolled by like a film without a sound track: Loess Bluff, with its steadily eroding face of rare soil; the split-rail fence that marked the ranger station at Mount Locust; the high bridge over Cole’s Creek, from which you could see Low Water Bridge, the site of some of Chris’s happiest childhood memories. After he crossed the high bridge he got serious, pumping his thighs like a Tour de France rider, trying to work out the accumulated anxiety of the past eighteen hours. The thing was, you couldn’t work out anxiety arising from circumstances that remained outside your control, and Special Agent Alex Morse was definitely not under his control. He jammed it all the way to the end of this stretch of the Trace, then made a 180-degree turn and headed back southwest.
Out of the whisper of tires on wet pavement came a faint chirping. It took him fifty feet to recognize the sound of his cell phone. Half the time he had no reception out here; that was one reason he chose the Trace to ride. Reaching carefully backward, he dug his cell phone from the Gore-Tex pouch hanging beneath his seat. The LCD said unknown caller. Chris started to ignore the call, but the early hour made him wonder if one of his hospital patients was in trouble. It might even be Tom Cage, calling about the mystery case on 4-North.
“Dr. Shepard,” he said in his professional voice.
“Hello, Doctor,” said a strangely familiar voice.
“Darryl?” he asked, almost sure that he recognized his old fraternity brother’s voice. “Foster?”
“Hell, yeah!”
“You finally got my message, huh?”
“Just now. I know it’s early, but I figured you hadn’t changed much since college. Always the first one awake, even with a hangover.”
“I appreciate you calling, man.”
“Well, that name you mentioned really woke me up. Why in the world are you asking me about Alex Morse? Did you meet her or something?”
Chris debated about how much to reveal. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not say yet.”
“Woo-woo-woo,” Foster said mockingly. “So what do you want to know about her?”
“Anything you can tell me. Is she really an FBI agent?”
“Sure. Or she used to be, anyway. The truth is, I’m not sure about her official status now.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know the lady, Chris, so take all this with a grain of salt. But Alex Morse was a bona fide star in the Bureau. She started out as what we call a blue flamer. Kind of like you in college—A’s on everything, always doing more than you had to. She made quite a name for herself as a hostage negotiator. Word was, she was the best. Anything high-profile or hush-hush, the director flew her in to handle it.”
“You’re speaking in the past tense.”
“Absolutely. I don’t know the whole scoop, but a couple of months ago, Morse lost her shit and got somebody killed.”
Chris’s legs stopped pumping. “Who got killed?” he asked, coasting along the pavement. “A hostage?”
“No. A fellow agent.”
“How did that happen?”
“Word is, it was a super-tense hostage scene, and Morse flipped out. The Hostage Rescue Team—basically our SWAT guys—was given the order to go in, and Morse couldn’t deal with it. She charged back into the scene—apparently to try to keep negotiating—and everybody started shooting. An agent named James Broadbent got his heart blown out by a shotgun. I did know Jim personally. He was your all-American guy with a wife and two kids. There was some talk that he was having an affair with Morse at the time, but you never know what’s true in those situations.”
Chris was trying to absorb this fast enough to ask intelligent questions. “So you don’t know if Morse is legit or not,” he temporized.
“No. You want me to find out?”
“Can you do it without setting off any alarms in Washington?”
“Maybe. But you need to tell me what this is about.”
“Darryl, is there any chance that Morse could be involved in a murder investigation?”
Foster said nothing for a while. “I don’t think so. We don’t handle murder cases, you know? Not unless there are special circumstances. Civil rights murders, stuff like that.”
“On TV it’s always FBI agents chasing the serial killers.”
“That’s Hollywood bullshit. One very small branch of the Bureau advises local and state cops on murder cases—if they request it—but they never make arrests or anything like that.”
Chris couldn’t think of any brilliant questions, and he didn’t want Foster to get aggressive with his own. “I really appreciate you calling back, Darryl. Thank you.”
“You can’t give me any more details than you already have?”
Chris searched his mind for some plausible explanation. “Morse was originally from Mississippi, okay? That’s all I can say right now. If anything strange happens, I’ll call you back.”
“Guess that’ll have to do,” Foster said, sounding far from satisfied. “Hey, how’s that new wife of yours?”
“Fine, she’s good.”
“Sorry I missed the wedding. But Jake Preston told me she’s hot. Like really hot.”
Chris managed a laugh. “She looks good, yeah.”
“Goddamn doctors. They always get the hot ones.”
Chris laughed genuinely this time, hearing some of his old friend’s personality come through. “Thanks again, Darryl. I mean it.”
“I’ll call you back when I get the story on Morse. Could be today. Probably tomorrow, though.”
“Any time is fine. Hey, where are you living now?”
“Still the Windy City. It’s nice this time