To Fetch a Thief by Spencer Quinn

Author:Spencer Quinn [Quinn, Spencer]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781439157077
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2010-09-28T07:00:00+00:00

Back on the road, Bernie said, “Shot in the dark, Chet. Boozers working in close proximity—they tend to find each other.”

A shot? Hadn’t heard one, not at the cemetery, not since the Chang case, in fact. The Chang case: a nightmare, but the food! Another story for later. I yawned a nice big yawn, the kind that sometimes catches my lip over a tooth, and by the time I got everything straightened out, whatever I’d been worrying about was gone. Why worry anyway? I had Bernie.

A green car with a gold star on the side was parked in front of our place. A bald guy in a green uniform climbed out as we pulled into the driveway.

“Bernie Little?” he said, as we left the Porsche, Bernie through the door on his side, me over the one on mine.

“Yeah,” said Bernie.

The guy came closer. “What a great-looking dog,” he said.

“Chet,” said Bernie.

“Nice name,” the man said. “Okay to give him a treat?”

What a question! The next thing I knew I had a biscuit in my mouth, not big but very very tasty.

“Mathers—Game and Fish,” said the man. Mathers: he had a nice name, too. I liked him from the get-go. “You’re the one who killed the snake?” he said.

“For God’s sake—you came to write me up for that?” Bernie said. “It was self-defense.”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Mathers said. “I’ve got a map of the area here, southeast section of the Sangre Hills. If you can point me to the spot where this happened, I’ll go out there and take a look.”

He spread the map on the hood of the Porsche. They huddled over it. Bernie pointed. “Right about there, more or less. What are you hoping to see?”

“Hard to specify,” said Mathers. “The remains of a crate, maybe, or a cage. Even a canvas sack.”

“There was nothing like that.”

“No?” Mathers said. “Nothing at all to indicate the snake wasn’t just out there on its own volition?”

“On its own volition?” Bernie said. “Must be thousands of diamondbacks wandering the desert on their own volition.”

“True,” said Mathers. “But your snake was a puff adder.”

“So?”

“So puff adders aren’t native to our desert, aren’t native to the Americas, in fact. This particular kind comes from sub-Saharan Africa—Gabon, Congo, places like that.”

“I don’t get it,” Bernie said.

“Meaning the only puff adders in this state come in with a permit,” Mathers said. “A permit to keep, not to release into the wild.”

“I’m surprised you let them in at all.”

“Completely insane,” Mathers said. “But this is the land of the free.”

Bernie laughed.

“We don’t get puff adder applications very often,” Mathers went on. “Three since I’ve been with the department—going on ten years now—all to licensed vendors and all accounted for, as of this morning.”

“Meaning our snake was illegal?”

“Looks that way,” Mathers said. “Could be some idiot sneaking it in through an airport and releasing it when he got tired of providing live mice for dinner. That, or it was an escapee from something bigger.”

“Something bigger?”

“Illegal animal trafficking’s a multibillion-dollar business.

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