Dark Heart (22 page)

Sandra stared back at the little jeweled lizard, fascinated. Things were alive in here, she realized. Probably a lot of things. Now that she listened, she could hear them moving.

She continued on, and finally emerged into the roughly cleared space surrounding the old house. The deck and yard—if you could call the jungle of weeds that surround the house that—was enclosed by a rusty chain-link fence. A sign on it warned
NO TRESPASSERS
.

A tremendous splash sounded from somewhere out of sight. What the hell?

Following the fence line, Sandra trekked along the edge of the yard, burrs scratching at her hose. Damn. They were new, too.

Another stretch of chain-link bisected the space between the house and the original perimeter, and within that was a swimming pool.

Lounging in and around the pool were a half dozen alligators. The one who had just splashed into the pool opened its long, toothy snout and swiveled its head around, searching for prey. Sandra stared at it. What kind of nut-case kept alligators in his yard? The sign on the fence took on new meaning. She suddenly felt very naked and exposed. What other little surprises might be hidden in the riot of greenery at her back?

Something brushed her shoulder. She let out a half gasp/half scream and spun about. Reflexively she struck out, hit something, and heard a muffled grunt as whatever she’d hit fell away.

“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry!”

She ran to help him stand up. “You startled me. Are you Dr. Simmins?”

“No, no. I’m the one who should apologize,” the little man said in a high, nasal voice. He shook himself, dusted off the seat of his pants, stuck out one hand. “Yes, I’m Simmins. And you are…?”

He was just under five and a half feet tall, wiry and thin. He wore baggy Hawaiian shorts and a tight tank top that hugged his pot belly, making it look like he’d stuffed a bowling ball under there. His stork-like legs stuck out from the gaudy shorts and his gnarled toes were crammed into old yellow flip-flops. His thick, black-rimmed glasses were askew on his long, triangular nose. In what looked like a habitual gesture, he immediately pushed them up on his face. His eyes, made tiny by the glasses, were coal black. He regarded her with a feverish intensity.

“I’m Sandra McCormick.”

She held out her hand and the thin man took it. His grip was soft, damp, somehow tentative.

“Doctor, I really am sorry. I got spooked. The alligators…I’ve never seen them outside of a zoo.”

“Just some of my pets.” He smiled. Sandra noticed how his nose, long and pointed, twitched when he spoke.

They stared at each other. With the introductions out of the way, he didn’t seem to know what to do next. He kept smacking his lips. After an awkward moment he nodded toward the house.

“Come on in,” he said, stepping past her and walking along the fence.

“Uh, sure,” she said. She followed him through a corroded but still sturdy gate, keeping one eye cocked nervously in the general direction of the alligator pool. As she followed him along, she noticed a double set of indented scars in the back of his left calf. Probably a souvenir from one of his pets. She grimaced. Ugly thought…

He opened his front door and ushered her inside.

“You probably think my setup here is odd,” he said.

She remembered Dr. Dawes using the same adjective to describe Simmins. Well, he’d been right about that.

“I had to install the fence systems a few years ago to avoid any further contamination of the local ecosystem. I’d misplaced a Burmese python. The locals weren’t amused.”

“No,” she said faintly, “I guess they wouldn’t be.”

His living room held a few benches and innumerable
National Geographic
s and scientific magazines stacked on every level surface, including the floor, most of them featuring reptiles on the covers.

She pretended not to notice the three geckos clinging to the wall by the light switch. As he led her deeper into the interior, she almost stepped on a lizard. It scurried under a nearby table where it did a series of quick pushups as it stared at her with calm, lidless eyes.

The enormous house seemed to be buried in clutter. Posters of dinosaurs, snakes, lizards, alligators, and jungles plastered the walls. Bookcases burdened by all manner of scientific texts were piled high in disarray.

“Come on through here,” he said, negotiating a path between teetering stacks of mud-spattered magazines on the floor. He led her though the kitchen, a part of which was cordoned off with a fine mesh wire cage. Sandra began to get the unnerving feeling that she was in a huge cage, as well.

“I put up the wire to keep the larger ones from getting into the cupboards.”

“The larger ones?”

“Iguanas.”

“Oh.”

“They like the saltines.”

They exited the kitchen and entered the den. More pictures and posters of reptiles, real and fictional, covered the walls, though the clutter was marginally less. She eyed several posters from the movie
Jurassic Park
that seemed to be mostly huge white teeth.

“So,” he said, gesturing for her to sit, “Dr. Dawes said you had something that stumped you. Something weird.”

“Yes,” she said. She opened her bag, reached in, and withdrew the vial containing the scale. She handed it to him. He raised it to the light and squinted.

“Um,” he said, “where did you get this?”

Sandra told him, explaining how Madrone had it in his sleeve when they’d found him murdered.

Simmins stood up, eyeing her sharply. “Do you know what this is? What it might be? I’ve been waiting for something like this for a long time.”

“Do you recognize it?” Sandra asked.

“Well, it’s a long story, but I used to have one. Well, a lot of them. An entire skin.”

“What?” Sandra stared at him.

“Uh-huh. A skin found in London in November,1888. A human-sized lizard. Larger than human sized. The scales were this same color, translucency…the same size, texture. No doubt about it.”

“Did they find the animal it belonged to? What was it?” Sandra tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

“For a couple of days, the London papers suggested that Jack the Ripper was a giant reptile. But that didn’t last for long. Anyway, a cold-blooded creature could never have lived in a climate as cold as England in autumn. Unless,” he shrugged, casually gesturing to one of the dinosaur posters, “Bakker’s theory about dinosaurs being warm-blooded is true.”

“What about the skin?” Sandra persisted.

“Well, I learned about all of this when I was studying in the Sorbonne in Paris. They had it in one of their archive drawers. A shame. No one ever paid much attention to it, and the skin was just rotting there, forgotten. So I…well, I…they let me have it.” He shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

Sandra shrugged. She didn’t care how he’d acquired it. “So do you still have the skin? Can I see it?”

“Well, um.” He shifted again, brought one of his skinny legs up to cross the other. His thin, gnarled fingers clasped his shin. “Not exactly. I sold it.”

“You what?”

“I know, I know.” His eyes were downcast. “I was young and foolish and, well, you know how the saying goes. You never know what you have until it’s gone. I had the skin for years. I had only told a few of my closest colleagues about it. For, um, certain reasons I didn’t want it to be public knowledge that I had it, but…then
he
showed up.”

“He?”

Simmins stared up at the ceiling. “Now that’s the strange thing. I can never remember his name. I have a hard time remembering his face, too. He was a very polite, very well-dressed Chinese gentleman. He visited my apartment in Paris and we got to talking. We must have talked for hours about my theories. In the end, he told me he wished to purchase the skin. Of course, I immediately said I didn’t have it any longer. But he insisted and finally I admitted that I might be able to put a hand on it. He told me the price he was willing to offer and, well…”

“You sold it.”

He nodded. “For a lot of money.”

“How much was it?”

“Enough to buy Jurassic Park. Or at least this research laboratory. And then some.” He paused. “You have to understand, Detective. I was poor. I thought about all the research I could do, all by myself, with no sponsor, with the money that he offered.”

He sighed. “I’ve never been able to decide whether I regret parting with the skin or not. Obviously it was the type of thing a person stumbles across only once in their lifetime. But then, so was the offer the Chinese gentleman made me.”

“So you don’t have
any
of it? Not any
part
of it?”

“No.”

“No photographs?”

“I didn’t think about that until it was too late. I can tell you basically what it looked like, though, if that will help. It was almost eight feet long. It had roughly the same shape as a human, except it had six limbs. Two that looked like legs, I suppose. Two that were arms, and then two that were wings coming out of its back. That’s what I assumed, at least. There were no wings along with the skin, only ragged holes in the back of the skin that suggested it. It was really the only evidence of a sixlimbed reptile ever discovered. There isn’t even any fossilized evidence of such a creature. Of course, such a large creature could never fly. The condor principle, you see, times four. Never fly, unless, of course, my theory about the creature’s bones is right. They could have been formed of hexagonal protein crystals, and that would’ve made them light enough. That would explain any lack of fossilized evidence, if in fact these creatures existed in large numbers long ago.”

Silence fell again, and Sandra watched his face as he watched hers. She had no idea if he was telling the truth, lying, or delusional. Her private opinion was that he was a nut-ball and had been one for years.

“Could this scale have come from some large, trained lizard?”

“But…” Simmins looked puzzled. “I told you where it came from.”

She sighed. “Yes, an eight-foot, six-legged reptile with wings. A lizard man.”

“Well, that’s not completely sure. I mean, it’s only supposition that it was a lizard
man
. It could have been a completely separate evolutionary strain that just happened to be shaped very much like a human.”

“I see.”

“There may be one other possibility mentioned in the literature,” he said thoughtfully.

“Oh?”

“They’re called the Drakkers.” He scrunched up his face. “No…that’s not it. Drakmers…” Again, his face contorted into a disappointed frown. “No. The Drokpas! That’s it—the Drokpas.”

“The Drokpas?”

“It’s been well reported by those who have traveled there that there are dragon men who live in China. High up in the Himalayas. I’ve never seen photos, mind you, but there’s been enough talk for me to believe the story’s true. And there are many cites in respected journals. Older ones, of course, but…” His voice trailed off. There was a noise to his left and they both glanced in that direction. An iguana was making its way across a line of stacked books on the shelf under the window.

“Dragon men. In the Himalayas,” Sandra said. Her voice was flat.

He spread his hands. “Perhaps it’s a bit tenuous…” he said. “But I’ve told you everything I can think of.”

She rummaged in her purse and brought out the digital prints. “We found these at two of the crimes,” she said, handing them over.

He stood up, took them over to the window, and brought them close to his face. “Yes, yes. The same. See the triple claws, the way the arch is twisted slightly?”

She stood up, walked over, and joined him. He pointed out anomalies in the prints, how one claw was somewhat larger than the others, equivalent to a human heel. “This is no crawling lizard, Detective. Whatever it is, it stands on its hind legs.”

She shook her head in frustration. “But you don’t
know
what it is.”

“Well, the Drokpas I mentioned…”

“Right. Them.”

They stared at each other again. Finally his watery gaze dropped.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” he said softly.

She retrieved the scale and the prints, put them back into her bag. “Oh, you’ve been a help,” she said.

He brightened. “That’s good. Isn’t it?”

She felt a wave of sudden pity for this misfit living with his cold-blooded reptiles in the back of nowhere. “It’s a help,” she said. “I just don’t know what
kind
of help.”

He nodded. “Will you keep me informed? If you actually find anything?”

“Of course,” she said. She glanced out the window. The clouds beyond were now a vast purple bruise across the sky. “I’d better get going,” she said. “Looks like rain.”

He escorted her as far as the front gate. “Be careful now,” he called. “It’s not a good road.”

The last she saw of him, he was standing and watching her, one hand slowly waving good-bye.

She waved back, then plunged into the gloomy thickets that barricaded his house from the rest of the world.

“Chinese dragons,” she said. “Drokpas. Lizard men with wings.”

Some sort of sticker bush scratched a long tear in her already tattered hose.

“Jesus!”

It was three o’clock when she left her mad scientist’s lair. She drove down five miles of winding highway before she came to Fallbrook’s main street. The highway entered the town, weaved back and forth a little and then abruptly turned to the left onto a straight drag.

She stopped at a small Chinese restaurant, surprised but pleased to find one in such a small town. The place was practically deserted. The food was good, though nothing to compare with the best of Chicago’s Chinatown. She ate mechanically and stared out the window into the parking lot. It had finally begun to rain.

As she watched the water pour from the heavens, she allowed herself to think of Justin. She remembered his hands on her. How good it had felt to be touched. Maybe to be loved, if only a little, if only for one night.