Violets Are Blue

“Irwin Snyder.” I followed him through a dysfunctional kitchen, then out back to a slanted wooden door that led to a cellar.
    We had our guns drawn. Based on what we knew about the viciousness and suddenness of Irwin Snyder’s attack, nobody wanted to go into the cellar. I yanked open the door and we edged inside.
    Kyle, two other agents, and I went down three rickety wooden steps.
    It was quiet and dark. An agent worked a flashlight around.
    Then we saw the killer. He saw us too.

Chapter 50

    A WELL-BUILT teenage boy in a soiled black leather studded vest and black jeans was crouched in the far corner of the cellar, waiting for us. He had a crowbar. He leaped up and began swinging it over his head. He was growling. It had to be Irwin Snyder, the boy who had killed his parents. He was so damn young, just seventeen. What had gotten into his head?
    Gold fangs protruded from his mouth. Contacts made his eyes appear bloodred. His nose and eyebrows were pierced with at least a dozen tiny gold and silver hoops. He was tightly muscled and over six feet tall. He’d been a star football player before he suddenly dropped out of school.
    Snyder continued to growl at us. He stood in an oozing groundwater puddle and didn’t seem aware of it. His eyes were glazed and seemed to be set way back in his skull.
    “Back off!” he shouted. “Y’all have no idea how much shit you’re in. Y’all have no goddamn idea! Get the fuck out of here! Get out of our house!”
    He was still swinging the heavy, rusted crowbar. We stopped moving. I wanted to hear whatever he had to say.
    “What kind of shit are we in?” I asked Snyder.
    “I know who you are,”
he shouted, spraying spit all the way across the room. He was in a murderous rage. He looked stoned beyond comprehension.
    “Who am I?” I asked him. How could he know?
    “You’re fucking Cross, that’s who,” he said, and bared fang-capped teeth, the smile of a madman. His answer shook me up. “The rest of y’all are FBI dogs! Y’all deserve to die! You will! The
Cross
don’t work here, assholes.”
    “Why did you kill your mother and father?” Kyle asked from his place on the stairs.
    “To free ’em,” Snyder sneered. “Now they’re free as little birdies in the air.”
    “I don’t believe you,” I said. “That’s bullshit.”
    He continued to growl like a barnyard dog. “Smarter than you look,
Cross
.”
    “Why did you use metal fangs when you bit them? What does the tiger mean, Irwin?” I asked another couple of questions.
    “You already know or you wouldn’t ask,” he said, and laughed wickedly. His real teeth were yellow and nicotine stained. His black jeans were filthy and looked as if they’d been dipped in ashes. The leather vest had studs missing. The cellar smelled awful, like spoiled meat. What had happened down here? I almost didn’t want to know.
    “Why did you kill your parents?” I asked again.
    “Killed them to free myself,” he screamed. “Killed their asses ’cause I follow the Tiger.”
    “Who’s the Tiger? What does the Tiger mean?”
    His eyes danced with mischief. “Oh, you’ll see soon enough. You’ll see. Then you’ll wish you didn’t.”
    He dropped the crowbar and reached into his jeans, and I rushed him. Irwin Snyder had a stiletto knife in his right hand. He swiped the knife at me, and I pivoted away.
    I wasn’t fast enough, and the blade sliced my arm. It burned like hell. Snyder screeched in triumph. He lunged at me again. Fast, athletic, forward.
    I managed to wrestle the knife from his hand, but he bit into my right shoulder. He went for my neck! Kyle and the others were all over him now.
    “God damn it!” I yelled in pain. I punched his face. He bit me again. This time on the back of my hand.
Damn, it hurt
!
    The FBI agents had trouble pinning him down as he hurled a stream of curses and threats at all of us. They were afraid of being bitten.
    “Now you’re one of us!” he screeched at me. “You’re one of us! Now you can meet the Tiger,” he howled, and laughed.

Chapter 51

    MY HEAD was aching, but I spent the next four hours questioning Irwin Snyder in a bare, white-washed, claustrophobic room at a jail in Charlotte. For the first hour or so, Kyle and I interrogated him together, but it didn’t work out. I asked Kyle to leave the room. Snyder was shackled, so I felt safe being alone with him. I wondered how he felt.
    My arm and hand were beginning to throb, but this was more important than