Free Checked Out by Elaine Viets Page A

collection.
    The abandoned box was piled with tattered medical books and outdated dictionaries. She picked it up gingerly and heard a tiny buzz.
    Did someone leave a cell phone in the box? she wondered.
    Helen tried not to hold the moldy box close to her blouse, especially after Alexa said donated books might be infested withsilverfish and bedbugs. But the box was too heavy to hold at arm’s length. At least it was a short walk to the Friends’ intake room.
    The top book was thicker than a brick and weighed maybe six pounds. The stained blue cover had a naked skull under the title
Color Atlas of Anatomy: A Photographic Study of the Human Body.
    Helen’s stomach flopped like a beached fish. The atlas had full-color photos of real dissected dead bodies. She was definitely not opening that book. The others could have been doorstops. Moldy, smelly doorstops.
    She staggered into the Friends’ intake room, dropped the box on the table and heard that buzz again.
    It has to be a cell phone, she decided. Maybe a doctor’s phone. What if someone’s calling with a medical emergency? She grabbed the tattered atlas by the corner and saw movement.
    Something long, swift and dark darted out and attacked the book. A rat? No, a snake!
    Helen screamed and slammed the heavy atlas down on the snake, crushing it, then hit the snake again and again until its midsection was a bloody pulp. She was still hammering the dead snake when Alexa ran in, followed by Blair Hoagland.
    “Helen! What on earth!” Alexa said. “I heard you screaming in my office.”
    “A snake,” Helen said, her voice shaking. “I picked up these books at the staff entrance and there was a snake in the box. A live snake.”
    “Not anymore,” Alexa said, looking at the smashed snake. “It’s definitely dead.”
    Helen steeled herself to examine the bloody mess in the book box, then shuddered. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve ruined the books.”
    “We couldn’t have used them anyway,” Blair said. “They were infested with silverfish.”
    “You aren’t hurt, are you?” Alexa asked.
    “No,” Helen said, still breathing hard. “The snake didn’t bite me.” She gathered her courage and looked at the dead snake again. She hated snakes, and this was no harmless garter snake. The long, yellow fangs were bared. The grayish body was thicker than a garden hose and blotched with dark spots. On its tail was a spike. No, not a spike.
    “Is that a rattle on the snake’s tail?” she asked, her voice high and thin.
    Alexa peered into the box. “Yes,” she said. “I believe that’s a rattlesnake.”
    “Do we have rattlers in Florida?” Helen asked.
    “You’re asking the right person,” Alexa said. “I used to work the reference desk, answering patrons’ questions. We don’t get as many reference questions these days, thanks to the Internet. Follow me to my office and we’ll look up Florida snakes on my computer.”
    “Wait!” Blair said. “What about this disgusting snake? Who’s going to remove it?”
    “Ask Jared,” Alexa said. “We’ll be back shortly.”
    Helen sank into the leather barrel chair in Alexa’s office. The room’s soothing quiet calmed her while Alexa clacked on her keyboard. Something about that snake incident nagged at her. Something someone said. Alexa? No, it was . . .
    “I’ve found your snake on a Florida wildlife Web site,” Alexa said, and Helen saw the hunter’s light in the librarian’s eyes. She enjoyed tracking down information. “Take a look. It’s a pygmy rattlesnake.”
    Helen hurried over to the computer screen and saw the snake’s photo. Coiled on a pile of leaves, heavy-bodied and evil, the rattlesnake was so lifelike Helen backed away.
    “That’s it,” she said.
    “The site says the pygmy rattlesnake is ‘the most commonly encountered venomous snake in urbanized areas, often in gardensor brush piles,’” Alexa said. “Just like Adam and Eve, we have a snake in our garden.”
    Snake.