Where Serpents Lie

Thirteen

Marcine Browne ushered me into her office at Bright Tomorrows. It was 9:55 A.M. She was mid-thirties, dressed and made up with pride, red haired and quite attractive. She flicked on the lights and pointed to a chair in front of a desk.

“Can I get you some coffee?”

“I’d rather not waste your time,” I said.

“Can I get me some coffee?”

She was back in five minutes with two cups. They were white mugs with BRIGHT TOMORROWS emblazoned across them in optimistic red script. She looked at the bandage on my face as she offered me the coffee.

“Thank you,” I said. “Ms. Browne, I’m the lead investigator for the Sheriff’s Crimes Against Youth unit. We’re small, we work hard and we believe that children in our society need protection.”

I waited a beat. I like to let the importance of what we do sink in.

“All right.”

“Can I speak frankly with you?”

“Please do.”

“Have you heard of The Horridus?”

“Yes.”

“He took his third girl from a condo in Irvine, about four hours ago. The condo is three miles from here. The girl is missing, her mother is ready to break down and I’ve failed them. She’s five years old, and somewhere out in this county of 2.6 million souls, he’s got her.”

She said nothing. I liked her face.

“The Horridus named himself. It’s the Latin root for rough. He’s living through what the FBI calls an escalating fantasy. That means he’s got a vision, a goal in his imagination. It isn’t something he can just go out and start doing. It’s something he has to work up to. That’s what the abductions are — practice runs for the real thing. Who knows, maybe this time, it will be the real thing. Rough.”

I paused but she said nothing. I was reassured by the intelligence in her face, though I knew my chances of getting what I wanted from Marcine Browne were somewhere between slim and none.

I was pleased that she was finally unable to resist the bait.

“I think this is absolutely terrible,” she said. “I feel awful. I’m not a mother myself, but I can imagine how it would feel, to have that happen to your daughter. What would the ‘real thing’ be?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll rape and kill them. Probably in that order. It’s a matter of time. Right now, it might be a matter of minutes.”

I let this sink in. She looked at me with her lovely green eyes. “Investigator Naughton, why are you here?”

“I need your help.”

“How?”

One of Marcine Browne’s co-workers stuck her head in the door and said good morning. She smiled brightly at me, no doubt the lure-the-new-male-membership smile. Marcine asked her to shut the door, please.

The quiet in the office was just what I wanted. What Marcine did in the next few minutes would be between herself and her soul, and the soul is best heard in silence.

“We know, very generally, what he looks like. We have some general indications as to his age, what he drives, what kind of a house he lives in and what kind of a past he has. We have some suspicions — founded on the opinions of people who profile unknown subjects for a living — about what kind of work he does, how he behaves socially, what his interests are.”

“That sounds like a lot.”

“Until you realize it isn’t. Until you realize we don’t know his name. And that people can change their appearance pretty easily. That there are five thousand other vehicles like his on the roads out there. And over two and a half million people in this county alone. Plenty more in Los Angeles and down in San Diego. Until you realize he just kidnapped a five-year-old while we were all asleep. While her own mother was asleep fifteen feet away. When you realize all that, you understand how little you’ve really got.”

She looked at me again. I could see the confusion on her face. She sighed, sat back, then sat forward again. “Mr. Naughton, maybe I watch too much TV, but this isn’t like anything I ever saw a cop do. You’re telling me all this stuff, but you’re not asking me any questions. May I see your ID again?”

I showed it to her again.

“I’m sorry. But what is it that you want?”

“Let me tell you just a little something more. I talked to the mother of the second girl. That’s part of my job. The girl was named Courtney and she was six. I was trying to put things together. I’m glad I did. Her mother was a member of Dawn Christie and Associates.”

Marcine looked at me with a hard, uncomprehending stare. “Well, they’re another service. They have a different philosophy than we do. Our competitors, but... so what?”

“The mother of the girl who was taken four hours ago was a member here. A new member, Abby Elder.”

“Oh, God,” she said quietly. “I was afraid that’s why you were here.”

I waited. I knew she’d make a mental run for it, and my only chance was to keep her right here in front of me, where decisions could be made.

“You’ll have to talk to James Rudker — he’s the founder-owner.”

“I don’t have time to talk to Mr. Rudker. There’s a member of Bright Tomorrows I need to see, Ms. Browne. He’s a member of Dawn Christie, too. And the only way I can find him is by comparing your membership list with theirs.”

“I simply can’t give it to you. It’s impossible. Look, I signed an oath as an employee to follow the rules.

Furnishing our members’ names to anyone goes against those rules. And it breaks all the promises of confidentiality we make to our members. We’d have been out of business years ago if we did that. You’re asking me to give up my job.”

“No. The list goes from you to me. I put it in my pocket and it stays there until I get to my office. There, I compare the names against Dawn Christie’s list, and—”

“—She gave you hers?”

I said nothing as I lifted from my pocket the sheet of real estate listings that Frances had given me, and held it up.

Marcine shook her head. “That’s really hard to believe. I mean, I’ve met Dawn and she’s not exactly... a pushover.”

“She’s tough as nails. And she’s bright. That’s why she knows she can trust me. When I finish the comparison, the list goes back to you. This list goes back to her. If I get the match, I’ll take it from there. No one but us will know that this guy was a member here. That’s a promise. I’ll put it in writing and sign it, just like you did your employment agreement, if you want me to.”

“You’ll have to talk to Mr. Rudker.”

“We think he takes them to his house.”

“What?”

“We think The Horridus takes the girls to his house to do his thing. If we’re right, and I think we are, that’s where he is right now. At home. With an abducted five-year-old girl who may or may not come out of this alive. I can make a match in ten minutes, Marcine. With your list. I can get cops to his residence in about another five, maybe less. Without the list, I may as well cruise the Caribbean. There’s a window open now, and it’s going to slam shut fast. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“Call Mr. Rudker. Please. I’ll write down his number for you. Oh... oh... shit. He’s... he’s actually in the Caribbean. We’re opening an office in Miami and he’s... vacationing.”

“I see,” I said quietly. I let the reverberations of owner-founder James Rudker’s Caribbean vacation sound their irony into Marcine Browne’s heart. She looked at me angrily, then down at her desk.

“Ms. Browne, I can make this easy for you. Or, you can do it the hard way. You can look into yourself and ask yourself what the right thing is. Then do it.”

“Go ahead. Get a court order,” she snapped. “Why didn’t you just get it before you came here?”

“No court order. That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what?”

“Mr. Rudker doesn’t want it known that Bright Tomorrows may have cooperated in a kidnapping investigation involving one of its members. That’s understandable. But how would he like it being known that Bright Tomorrows refused to cooperate in a kidnapping investigation involving one of its members? And what if that refusal came at a time when this... animal... could have been identified and arrested, and his third victim set free?”

She nodded. “That would be a shitty thing to do to us, mister.”

“I’ll do it.”

She glared at me. “I absolutely detest being manipulated by someone.”

“Maybe you’ll thank me someday.”

She looked at me with a final beam of resentment in her eyes, but I watched it dissolve into absolute capitulation. “Abby Elder’s girl?”

“Abby Elder’s girl.”

“I signed her up myself. Oh... damn.”

“Go get the list.”

She shook her head and stared down at her desk again. “I could strangle y—”

“—Go!”

I pulled the same stunt on Dawn Christie and it worked. She still had a baleful stare as I left her office and jogged to my car. I threw open the sheets and started looking. There were 486 names on the Bright Tomorrows sheets, and 293 on Dawn Christie’s. They were both in alphabetical order. My eyes swam. The first thing I did was check the ten qualifying home sellers against both lists. Nothing. I looked for Steven Wicks, the reptile dealer. Not there. I tried Gary Cross, who was selling his red Chrysler van because it used too much gas. Nothing. The next thing I did was turn on the air conditioner and aim the vents straight at my face.

Aarhaus, Blake...

No.

Aaron, Richard...

No.

Aaron, Steven...

No.

Too slow. Too slow!

I set the light up on the hood and slammed the car into gear. I needed help and if I drove like a demon I knew I could make the twenty-minute drive in fifteen.

I did.

I ran past Shopping Carter without stopping, took the concrete steps two at a time and used the stairs instead of the elevator. I got Louis by the sleeve of his coat and almost yanked him off his chair. I sat him down at my desk with the Christie list and explained the drill. Twenty minutes later we had our answer.

I didn’t like it so we ran through it again. Every friggin’ name, one at a time. And the answer came up the same: Nothing.

“So he’s using another name,” said Louis.

I didn’t answer. I just saw that faint outline of red on everything I looked at. It’s like looking through red lenses for a second. I kicked the lower drawer of my file cabinet, a sheet of metal already crumpled by dents. I mean big dents, authentically pissed-off, hard-as-you-can-kick-the-bastard dents. The thing won’t lock or even close right anymore.

“Why don’t you call CNB, get it on TV?” someone piped from over the room divider.

“Go piss up a rope,” I said.

“Love you, too, Terry.”

I put my hand on Louis’s shoulder. He was unbothered by my outburst, having seen enough of them to know how routine and fleeting they are. He just looked at the file cabinet, shook his head and stared down again at the list “I wouldn’t join two services and use the same name,” he said. “Especially if I joined them for the reason we think. No way. I’d want to be at least two different guys. I’d want to be as many guys as I could be.”

I knew he was right.

“This doesn’t mean we’re on the wrong track, Terry. I’m smelling the same thing you are. It just means we gotta dig him out.”

Ishmael walked into our area and gave me an utterly disdainful look. Pathos, with an undercurrent of triumph, and his usual dose of loathing. The look I gave him back was probably full of the same. He looked at my wreck of a file cabinet, then at me.

“A hiker found the girl off the Ortega Highway, way out in the sticks,” he said. “She’s with deputies at the Capo substation. She’s alive. Unharmed, they think. But definitely alive. Somehow, she saw through the hood. Claims she did. Says she knows what he looks like.”