“Very good,” Doolittle approved. “I seem to recall that I warned you not to confront that snake.”

“The snake confronted me. That is, the woman with snake fangs confronted me.”

“If you finish the whole glass, I’ll give you a lollipop.”

There was something deeply absurd about this entire conversation. “Stop treating me like a child.”

“I will if you take ownership of your predicament and take your medicine.” Doolittle looked at Barabas. “I don’t suppose you saw the snake woman in question?”

Barabas shook his head. “The second I walked in, the ME blocked her head.”

“Such a shame.”

I took another gulp—I’d never tasted anything more vile; I’d drink warm milk with baking soda before this stuff—and pulled the Polaroid out of my bra.

“Here.”

Raphael took the Polaroid out of my fingers and handed it to Barabas without a word.

My lawyer’s eyes widened. “Why does it say ‘Property of Jim Shrapshire’ on it?”

“Because that’s Jim’s real name.”

“That doesn’t explain anything,” Barabas said.

“If I died, the PAD would claim the scene and the Pack would be locked out of the investigation. There was a good chance that they wouldn’t let the Pack examine Gloria’s body. But when they found the Polaroid on my body, they would show it to Jim and ask him about it. He would know to look for her known associates with retractable fangs.”

“You were bitten and your priority was to take pictures?” Barabas said.

“Don’t agitate her,” Raphael told him.

“It seemed important at the time.”

Barabas looked at Raphael. “How do you put up with that?”

“Job first. That’s the way she’s wired,” Raphael told him.

Doolittle emitted a long-suffering sigh. “You know snakebite emergency procedures. You can’t even claim ignorance. This was just willful disregard of your life, that’s exactly what that was.”

The weremongoose and the werehoneybadger peered at the photograph.

“Folded fangs,” Barabas said. “Like a rattlesnake.”

“Or a saw-scaled viper.” Doolittle frowned. “What is this world coming to?”

“What’s so special about a saw-scaled viper?” I asked.

“It’s a fun little snake,” Barabas said. “Small, bad-tempered, active after dark. You walk by it, it bites you, you think nothing of it. Twenty-four hours later you develop spontaneous internal bleeding. Kills more people than any other snake species in Africa. It’s also delicious and has a tangy aftertaste.”

I drank my nasty medicine and connected the dots for them: Garcia Construction, drag marks of a towed vehicle, mechanic, check with Gloria’s name on it, and Gloria attacking me when I mentioned the knife.

“So it is the knife we saw when we broke in to Anapa’s office,” Raphael said.

Barabas stuck his fingers in his ears. “Lalalala, I’m not hearing anything about any break-in.”

“Yes,” I told Raphael. “They’re all after it.”

He frowned.