In all honesty, Inspector, I didn’t know his name. I came to think of him as the Viper.

That’s right, just like the snake in my drawing.

A rather clever depiction, don’t you think? The spine of a book breaks the spine of the viper. I’d dare to guess a faithful rendition of the fatal scene. You must have seen him lying there. Under a bookcase maybe? Buried under a heap of musty hardbacks? Having sustained a broken neck, perhaps?

You look perplexed, Inspector. The horns above the eyes? This is a desert viper. The horns are natural.

I know. A biblical apparition of the devil.

I bet that under his grimy baseball hat, he hid a pair of horns too. Oh, I have no doubt now that the man was evil. He had always given me the creeps, but after yesterday’s performance, I came to loathe him with a passion.

What’s beyond me, though, is how he managed to stay in business all these years. And yet … I know this will sound stupefying … from the day he opened his doors, week after week, I patronized his shop like a timid little boy sneaking in to steal candy.

The perverse truth is that I favoured this antiquarian bookshop above any other in the city for the simple reason that the serpent in residence always completed our transactions without uttering a word to me and without expecting a word back.

Yesterday I hit the jackpot. I recognized the spine of the book with the diving whale’s tail on it all the way from the entrance door. The book you’re holding, Inspector, is the elusive 1930 trade edition of Moby Dick—to some dubious collectors, little more than a doorstop if it weren’t for the nearly three hundred Rockwell Kent illustrations. I can lose myself in one of those pictures and resurface a changed man. That’s a typically somber one you’re looking at right there—Captain Ahab on the deck of the Pequod. Moody and evocative, its ominous serenity portends the inevitable whale illustrations, full of explosive drama. You’ll find some nice examples toward the end.

I had just pulled the book from the bookshelf and was examining its contents when I heard his voice. I swear, for the first time ever. Not so much a voice as a sonic grinder, gnawing its way effortlessly through one’s soul.

“Are you going to buy that book or do you plan to read it here for free?”

With my back turned to him, I convulsed and nearly dropped the book.

“Put it back where you found it,” the Viper hissed.

My eyes were throbbing with red shadows as I slowly turned around to face him.

“What are you staring at? Either pay for it or put it back.”

His boorishness infused my being like a toxin. My lungs seized up. My innards heaved toward my throat. My heart tightened like an angry fist. I could no longer stop it. I opened the book on the half title page, pulled my pencil out of my shirt pocket, and sketched in the Viper’s fatal end. It took me only a few quick strokes to outline the scene—with the snake, rudimentary horns included, as his avatar. He was on top of me in a flash. I dropped the book and managed to break free. In the kerfuffle, he ripped my jacket pocket and took my wallet hostage.

I see you’ve recovered my conjuring pencil, too—the indubitable smoking gun.

When your colleague, Officer Dickerson, called on me this morning, I had been sitting patiently in my living room, expecting your visit.

Our introduction did not go well.

Your cringing is telling. You are clearly familiar with the man’s aversion to darker skin tones. I detected his foul intentions instantly and made a concerted effort to be polite and agreeable. I followed his instructions to a tee. Yet, that sad excuse for a Neanderthal maliciously went out of his way to fabricate a reason to rough me up and drag me to the station in shackles.

So, here I am then, bonding with you, Inspector, waiting for my alibi to stick.

An uncanny pathology, wouldn’t you say?

Of course I’ve done this before. Once, I saw my drunkard neighbor strike his wife in the middle of the street, the way a white bully had once struck me, viciously, with hatred gushing. I picked up a piece of chalk that kids had left behind on the sidewalk from a game of hopscotch, and drew, right there on the pavement, a human stick figure hovering above a circle. Innocuous hieroglyphics, right? The next day, I heard my neighbours talking to each other over the fence. “It was as though the Earth opened up and swallowed him,” one said.  The night before, the drunkard husband had staggered into a poorly marked manhole and drowned in raw sewage.

Coincidence? What if this swirling madness that surrounds us, Inspector, is nothing more than the endless, roiling strife of our collective capricious musings? The allegorical hurricane stirred up by the butterfly wing-beats of our wishes, dreams, and fantasies, of our inner sorrow, rage, and pain? 

What if I were to tell you that if I drew...

Ah! Saved by the bell. You’re a lucky man, Inspector. I was about to go all metaphysical on you. No, please, I’ll wait; you have a job to do.

#

No foul play. 

You mean you watched it happen? Remarkable! I knew he must have had a hidden camera somewhere. He broke his neck under a falling bookcase. What do you know, just like in my drawing.

Coincidence again, Inspector?

So what about Dickerson? ... You haven’t heard about him yet?

There you go. This must be the call now. Go on, don’t look at me, Inspector, answer your phone.

...

Well?

You better sit down.

Here. Did I draw this correctly?

You shouldn’t have left me alone in the room with that pencil, Inspector.

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