The first box contained a serpent as big around as my forearm. Its color was pinkish-beige with orange mottling. If I had to guess, I would’ve said it was a species of boa. The next constrictor species, also unknown to me, was a vivid green and equally muscular. The third snake I recognized on sight. The previous summer, I’d gotten too close for comfort with a Burmese python in Florida’s Big Cypress Swamp. It had nearly chewed a man’s face off in front of me.

There wasn’t a proper chair in the room: just matching sectional couches arranged around a coffee table made from a barn door and littered with tabloid magazines, wine and shot glasses, and ashtrays needing to be emptied. I remained standing with my back to the nearest exit.

I heard Tori shout, “Hey, Arlo, there’s another game warden here. He wants to talk with you about old man Chamberlain.”

A drop of sweat rolled down the side of my face.

Tori returned, having removed her sunglasses and overshirt. She wore a thin tee that might as well have been transparent. Her small nipples poked through the cotton fabric. She held two cans of Twisted Tea.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m not allowed to drink on duty.”

“Who said one of these was for you?” She kept an alcoholic beverage for herself and set the other on the table. “So you’re the Mike Bowditch. The warden who killed those prison guards last spring.”

“Actually, I didn’t kill anyone.”

“But you were an accessory.”

“Accessories are people who assist in the commission of crimes. I was a law-enforcement officer defending innocent people.”

She threw herself onto one of the couches. “That’s why the entire nation hates cops. You’re all so fucking racist and corrupt. You get away with shit that would send someone like me to prison for life. How many people have you abused personally? And how many of them were Black?”

There were people I was prepared to have a serious conversation with about the state of policing in America: the problems and possible solutions. This Tori person was not one of them.

I heard a man’s voice and another woman’s voice at the far end of the house. Their words were muffled by a door closed between us.

I nodded at the second terrarium. “What’s that green one there? I recognize the boa and the Burmese python.”

“Emerald? She’s from Australia. We bought her in New Hampshire. Reptile Warehouse. You ever been there, Mike?”

She seemed to take pleasure in saying my name. “No, but I’ve rescued a few animals that came from that business.”

Her face was magnificently freckled. The skin beneath was as thin and pale as rice paper, but the sheer number of freckles on her forehead, nose, and cheeks made her look almost tan.

“Really?”