Where Serpents Lie

Twenty-Three

That afternoon I stood in the meadow at Caspers Wilderness Park, where Ranger Bret Stefanic had met his bloody end just five days before. I could see a grassy swale, a ring of big oak trees and the bed of a stream that flowed only in winter. There was still a long fragment of crime scene ribbon tape staked up, lilting in the breeze like a yellow kite tail. I had a copy of the arriving deputy’s report, which I’d filed in my briefcase before my arrest so I could work at home. I was doing something good for myself, as ordered by the best examiner of questioned documents in the world.

The early May afternoon was warm. The sky was light blue, with a circle of black vultures turning far overhead. The locusts buzzed on and off in short bursts that sounded like signals. I could smell the damp richness of the grass and trees surrounding me, and feel the winter’s rain evaporating with spring. Another six weeks, I thought, and everything here but the oaks will be tan, dry and hot.

I knelt by the tape stake and looked out at the grass. According to the deputy’s drawing, Stefanic was lying about ten yards from me, on his back, head east and feet west. The deputy had duly noted an area of matted, bloodied grass, about twenty feet from the body. Blood turns black in the sun, of course. I watched the grass blades tilt in the breeze. I’d brought my yellow shooting glasses from the car and slipped them on. They concentrate the light and enhance contrast when you’re outdoors, which is why hunters like them, especially early in the morning or at dusk. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the fresh onslaught of sunlight, but when they did, I could easily see what I was looking for. The yellowing grass caked in black jumped out at me. The clotted blades didn’t tilt in unison with the others because they were heavier, and some of them had been choked dead by the fluid. I could see the big patches where the CSIs had collected specimens. I looked at their report to remind myself of what else they’d taken: citation book, park ranger’s (1); hat, park ranger’s, size 7 1/4(1); sunglasses, Ray-Ban aviator style, green lens and cable temples (1 pr.); pen, aluminum ballpoint, black ink, Scripto brand.

When I looked back out from the CSI report I thought I saw a huge green snake looking at me from a bush about fifty feet away. It was up off the ground, head maybe four or five feet high, swaying in the breeze. I’d seen enough National Geographic specials to recognize a king cobra when I saw one, but I knew they weren’t out here. I blinked and it was gone. Just an optical illusion, something imagined. I stared at the bush for a moment, knowing how eyes play tricks. The trunk looked like a snake, a green one, in fact, though I must have supplied the swaying head on my own. I got that same giddy, sinking feeling I’d had in Wanda Grantley’s guest quarters in Hopkin, Texas.

I turned back to the report and flipped back a few pages for more detail on the citation book. The CSI had said that the top page was numbered 068. It was a ticket for an illegal campfire, written four days before Stefanic’s death. He’d gone almost four whole days without citing anyone? But the book was found twenty-two feet from the body. He’d had it out, then, unless it fell from his belt in a struggle. Say he was ready to issue. Say he’d already taken down some information. Say the citation was the inciting incident. Good. Then what does the killer do when he’s finished? He rips out the ticket about to be issued to him. He probably grabs more than just the top one — he takes four days’ worth of citations and wads them into a ball. Then what? Well, if he’s scared and careless, he throws it into the bushes. If he’s stupid, he takes it with him. If he’s not too much of either, maybe he hides it someplace he thinks is safe.

Betting on the first, I beat the bushes. I started where the citation book was recovered and worked a slow circle outward. I thought I saw the cobra spying on me again from a clump of manzanita, but it was just the manzanita. I knelt and pried down into the trunks of the thick shrubs, wondering if the ball of tickets might have been stuffed into a secure nook. I found dried blood. Lots of it. Near the initial attack there was one patch of ground that was a foot square and just drenched in it. I found an old cigarette pack and two screw-tops. I found a penny. I put them in the pocket of my coat, resigned to their irrelevance. No citations. My circle ended fifty yards from where the attack had begun. I looked back over the distance I’d covered, then at my watch. A forty-minute loop. The sweat had run off my forehead and formed rivulets on the yellow lenses of my shooting glasses. When I took them off to wipe them I could have sworn I saw the cobra looking at me over the tall grass, but when I put the glasses back on I couldn’t see anything but swaying blades. I wondered if I was really seeing what I was telling myself I couldn’t be seeing. The Horridus is changing. The Horridus is consolidating. He changes his appearance. He sells his house. He lets his pets go in the wild, and that’s what he was doing when the park ranger found him. Why not? Then the cobra could be real.

I walked back to the parking area. It was almost two hundred yards from where Stefanic had been found. I checked the map I’d been given at the Ranger Station to see where else — if anywhere — our slaughterer might have left his vehicle. No, he would have parked here, I thought: the next lot was half a mile to the east

You parked here.

You walked out from here.

What were you doing?

Why did you choose to kill?

How did you get a viper to do to Stefanic what a viper wouldn’t do on its own?

At the far end of the parking area, in the shade of a stout old oak, stood a cinder-block outhouse. Women right; Men left. There was a drinking fountain with yellow jackets buzzing over the faucet, and a big steel-mesh garbage container with a lid on it. A chain ran from the lid to the mesh.

I scanned the CSI’s report to make sure they’d gone through the contents for evidence. Surely they’d done the math on the ticket book and drawn the same conclusion I had. But there was no mention of the book — other than its description — and no mention of the garbage container. Great.

I sighed, walked over to it and lifted the lid.

Half an hour later I’d gone through every item inside, from the ketchup-and-ant-caked french fry box to the plastic Big Slurp cup to the empty peach can and the reeking cantaloupe rinds. There was newspaper, tissue paper and even a swatch of gift wrap, but no tickets once issued by a conscientious and now very dead Bret Stefanic. There’s no way, I thought, that a rattlesnake stole up and bit him on the calf, then the butt, then jumped up and bit him on the face while someone cut his throat.

Gene, do I smell you again?

I threw the trash back into the container and went into the bathroom to wash my hands. I dried them off on a roll of that crisp brown paper that decomposes the second it touches moisture. I tossed the soggy ball into the wall bin, but it hit all the other paper stuffed in there and plopped to the cement floor. More trash to go through, I thought. So I went through it.

Nothing.

I went back into the shady warmth of the parking area again and had an idea: if our guy was going to stash something in a bathroom, why not use the women’s side? A weekday in a remote wilderness park. No crowds. Maybe not even any other cars in the lot. Why not?

So I went into the ladies’ room and reached down into the wall bin. It was almost full. I used both hands to shovel the stuff into the sink beside me. It was mostly wadded brown paper. When I got down near the bottom there was a funny hissing sound, like one of the grasshoppers outside had found its way into the trash. It must have gotten scared because it stopped buzzing. I reached in for the last load and brought it out. The buzzing started up again. When I dropped that last batch into the sink I saw the cloth bag — it looked like a pillowcase — knotted at the top, mixed in with the other rubbish. Inside, something was moving. When I picked it up — by the knot — the buzz commenced. It felt like the bag was empty, but I knew I’d seen movement inside. I untied the cloth and opened up the end and looked in. Down at the very bottom, in one corner, curled into a circle no larger than a coaster was a small dark rattlesnake. His little tail was held up and the end of it was a blur. He tracked me with a small triangular head. In the opposite corner was a wadded ball of pink and white paper. I closed the end, took the bag firmly in my hand, swung it over my head and down to the floor, hard. The buzzing stopped. When I looked inside again the serpent was stretched along the bottom and kinked up kind of funny, bleeding from its mouth.

I got the paper out and flattened it against the floor.

I knelt there for a moment and read the information twice. I studied the final slash of Ranger Bret Stefanic’s pen. I studied the big stain of blood that had splashed against the paper. Then I read the name again, Ian Richard Shroud, and I felt that odd combination of vertigo and illumination happening at the same time. I fell through bright light, and there he was.

My man.

My man I. R. Shroud, The Horridus.

I. R. Shroud = Horridus. Another game.

You were so close to where I am now, I thought.

On my way out of the park I called the number Shroud had given Stefanic. It was a supermarket. I called Johnny next, who confirmed there was no I. R. Shroud listed or unlisted anywhere in Orange County.

Less than an hour later I was sitting in Steven Wicks’s office at Prehistoric Pets, watching him count the mouth scales of the rattlesnake on his desk. The animal was still moving, slowly and without progress, like in a dream. Wicks shook his head very slowly, which I took as a criticism of my specimen collection technique. He had a book on rattlesnakes open in front of him. When he was done he looked up at me.

“Crotalus horridus” he said. “Timber rattler.”

Back at the apartment I checked my computer, suspecting that The Horridus wouldn’t have contacted me again either. Right again. After all, he’d been busy. Abducting girls. Supplying evidence that damned the very cop who was after him the hardest.

Question: did he know who Mal was? How? If so, was he playing a game with me, or did he believe that Terry Naughton was a bad cop with a bad habit?

Either way, I had to get him to answer me. He was my savior. So I left a plaintive note for him on the bulletin board:

“Going live” or “going to live feed” is pedo parlance for “acquiring” the object of desire in the flesh. Not the picture. Not the video. Not the film.

The actual live girl. It’s risky and expensive. And I’d never done it before.

Half an hour later I met Johnny Escobedo at Fontana, a restaurant down in the Santa Ana barrio, not far from the county buildings. He had tried to turn me down, but I was all over him. I told him I had new evidence on The Horridus and Stefanic — and that was enough. That’s one of the things I love about Johnny: he’ll do almost anything on earth to bust a creep.

He slipped through the screen door and into the booth, looking more like a cartel enforcer than a cop: his usual jeans and white T-shirt, cowboy boots and silk windbreaker. The windbreaker had shrunken skulls embroidered across the shoulders. He stared at me from behind his sunglasses for a silent moment, then took them off and smiled.

“You’re looking good, boss.”

“If I was really your boss, you’d be wearing a coat and tie. You’re working crimes against youth, you know. You’re supposed to look squeaky and square, like a cop you could trust”

“Well then, I guess you never really were my boss, boss.”

“I’ll tell you, Johnny, I intend to be again someday.”

“Ishmael’s so slow about everything, it’s a wonder he gets his teeth brushed before work. You gotta run each and every thing past him before he’ll cut you loose. He watches us like we’re children. He doesn’t have any urgency, no speed at all. Like working for a turtle.”

We ordered two coffees, a basket of chips and salsa.

“Where are you on Grantley, Vonn and Webb and Webster?” I demanded.

He eyed me. “I thought I was getting the dope here.”

“You’re getting the dope.” I pulled the pillowcase from my jacket pocket and set it on the table. Johnny looked at the little bloodstain on it, then at me. “But I need some first.”

“Grantley’s a bust so far — no homes with guest units bought, sold or leased by a Grantley in the last two years, in any of the three counties. There’s two Eugene Vonns in Orange County — father-son, both clean. Junior is twelve. No Eugene or Gene Grantley anywhere. There are eighteen Eugene Webbs in the three counties, and we’ve checked out all but four. We’ve got seven Eugene Websters and two Gene Websters. Haven’t had time to touch them yet. Welborn called from Texas with Wanda’s married names — total of five. Haven’t had time for them, yet, either. If all that doesn’t pay, we’re back to where we started.”

“Then where the hell is he, Johnny? You run through the state files, DMV, tax rolls, voter regis—”

“—I just told you, boss.”

Creeps who go off the grid are tough. You’d be surprised how many people aren’t who you think they are. You don’t know who you’re looking for, and all the standard locators don’t work. I was quiet a second as the frustration built. But, as with most frustration, there was nowhere for it to go. “What about subcontractors and custodial people for Bright Tomorrows and—”

“—Dawn Christie helped, but Marcine Browne won’t even talk to me.”

“How could she resist you, Johnny?”

Escobedo leaned in close. I saw the quick anger in his eyes. “Because she didn’t resist you, man. She got her pretty face fired for talking with you. Her boss gets back from St. John or someplace and one of her assistants tells him she’s been talking to you about members. Rats her out completely. Guess who the new manager is now? I talked to one of their legal department. They’re not releasing shit to us without a subpoena or a warrant. Period. They’re just not talking, man. Of course I got Marcine’s home number and tried that. She hung up.”

It hit me hard that I’d gotten a helpful young woman fired. I added that to the frustration, too. Johnny could see the look on my face and he knew what it meant. A pissed-off Irishman and a pissed-off Mexican boil down to about the same thing.

“Then get the warrant,” I said.

“We’re working on it.”

I sighed and sat back. It was either that or throw a chair through the plate-glass window. Or throw myself. “What about the female-owned houses?”

Johnny sat forward, speaking quietly: “Look, boss. We’re way past this FBI profile. Forget the houses and guest houses and listings. Forget all the names we don’t have for this guy. He’s off the grid — a lot of people are off it. But we’ve got a good composite out of Brittany Elder and we need to work it the best we can. There might be something at Bright Tomorrows, but that’s going to take a little time. I’ve requested a subpoena but the judges are busy. It’s the usual stuff, Terry. Hours. Days. Time.”

“No. There’s the women. The women who listed houses with guest quarters. He could have a wife, a sister, you never know who holds the paper on a place and who really lives there.”

Now he sat back, shaking his head sadly. “Ishmael nixed that this morning. I agreed.”

What can you say when your unit revolts against you? “I’ll see what I can do,” I said, all fake bravura.

The words must have sounded stupidly brave to Johnny, because he arched his dark brows and stared hard at me again. But for all his cool and street smarts, Johnny’s as straight as a cop can be. I could almost read his thoughts: you start prowling around as a charged felon repping yourself as a cop and you’re going to take a long hard fall. I can’t help you there. I’m taking a chance on you, man.

“All right, Johnny,” I said. “Thank you. Thanks for helping me. I mean that.”

Then he looked at me with undisguised regret. I knew it wasn’t giving me information that he regretted, but the fact that I was still working the case. That I was still there, getting in deeper, trying to make it mine while the County built its case against me for a morals rap. I saw myself as a little bit crazy in Johnny Escobedo’s eyes. He saw me tying a rope around my own neck, but he still had a job to do. He was the system and I wasn’t. I was pure poison.

“This is for you, John — The Horridus has another handle. I. R. Shroud.”

“How do you know that?” he asked quietly, still askance at Terry Naughton, former head of CAY, former champion of the little people.

I took a napkin out of the plastic holder and the pen out of my pocket. I wrote:

He looked at the words for a long moment. “It’s an anagram. Same letters. I’ll be damned. But where’d you get the name?”

I told him about the killing field at Caspers Wilderness Park, the bathroom, the bag, citation and guardian serpent.

Then I slid the bundled pillowcase over to him and told him it was all his.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “The snake’s dead. Get Reilly to laser the ticket for prints.”

The anger flashed in his eyes again. “How am I going to book this? We can’t take it to court. I shouldn’t even touch it. It’s not evidence, coming from you. What it is, is useless, amigo.”

“Go discover it yourself.”

He shook his head. “That’s my career, if it ever gets out. And The Horridus walks, if it comes out in court. Look, Terry, I can work this I. R. Shroud angle until—”

“—But you won’t find anything.”

His face asked the question before his voice did. “Why not?”

“It’s just a name,” I said. “Not a person.”

“On Stefanic’s citation?”

“It’s also a user name on the Web. He’s one of the kind of networkers we like to mingle with sometimes. One of the kiddy touchers, the pervs. One of the bloodsucking ticks we deal with.”

“The Horridus is on-line? You mean we’ve talked to him?”

“Somebody has.”

Johnny looked confused more than anything else. “Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, man! What the hell are you talking riddles to me for?”

“I think somebody at the department has, and I don’t think he wants anybody to know. He talked to I. R. Shroud on the Web. They made some arrangements. Maybe he didn’t make the connect to The Horridus. Maybe he did.”

He continued to eye me, dark and sullen.

He shook his head and leaned back. “I’m not getting you, man. You’re telling me that one of the CAY people has talked to The Horridus on the Web, but never said anything to you about it?”

“Somebody at the department. Not necessarily CAY. And they talked to I. R. Shroud. Like I said, it’s possible he didn’t get the joke.”

“But it wasn’t me and it wasn’t you.”

“Correct.”

“Well, why in hell would somebody at the department mail Shroud but not tell CAY? Not tell you?”

“Pictures.”

His dark eyebrows rose again, and he groaned. “So, what are you saying?”

“Whoever framed me had to be inside. They’d have to know me, hate me, have a way into the porn networks, and a reason to burn my ass.”

“You’re saying it was Ishmael.”

I nodded.

Johnny said nothing.

But he intuited my request, as I knew he would.

“Oh, man,” he said quietly. “You goddamned Irish pendejo. I’m starting to think CAY’s better off without you. No.”

I shrugged. “It’s just a matter of checking his log-ons and his IRC receptors. They’re on the printouts—”

“—No, man. It’s a matter of getting my ass thrown off the department forever, is what it is.”

“Then don’t do it.”

“Hey, friend, there’s no way on earth I can do that.”

“I had to ask.”

“No. No. No.”

“Understood.”

He shook his head and pushed his empty coffee cup away. Johnny hated me in that moment, for forcing him to betray his department or disappoint his friend. Those dark eyes of his flashed across my face with both fury and sadness in them.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you were stand-up, Terry. I’m with you, man. You know that.”

“I know.”

“But don’t bleed me unless you have to.”

“All right.”

He picked up the bag and looked down inside.

“Thing’s still moving in there.”

“They take forever to die.”

“Yeah. I cut one’s head off and skinned it out when I was a kid. Tacked the skin to a board and salted it. Left the guts beside it for the hornets to eat. I stood there with my brother and watched the heart beat. It was this little tiny heart. Four hours later we come back out and it was still beating. Wouldn’t quit for nothin’. Just like you.”

Then the very long, agonizing silence while Escobedo tried to weigh his friendship with me against his loyalty to the department, my power as a pariah against Ishmael’s as a lieutenant in good standing.

“You been talking to The Horridus on-line, boss?”

“I’m trying. I used our Ramblers’ chat room to get a line on a good kiddy pornographer. Someone who has the new stuff. Maybe he actually makes the stuff. A producer. Someone who can do a custom.”

“And you got Shroud?”

“That’s exactly who I got. I didn’t see the connection until I found Stefanic’s ticket.”

Silence again.

“You really think Ishmael ordered up customs of you?”

“I know he did.”

Johnny turned and leaned his arm over the back of the booth. He looked back through the window, to the barrio outside. I guessed it was just a little vacation, a break from all the crap that he had to do all day long. He spoke without turning.

“You know, it’s Frances who spends the most computer time in CAY. She’s got a stable full of freaks on the Web.”

“Frances isn’t going to sit down over chips and coffee with me.”

“And then there’s the obvious.” He turned back to me, closing the bag and wrapping the end back into a knot. “You know, Terry, you might have already thought of this, but Melinda’s the one who has all the computer crooks in her machine. We’ve been sharing every CAY computer contact with her for a year now. So does every other section and unit — if there’s a crime and a computer involved, Melinda knows about it. Remember, Wade ordered us all to copy Fraud and Computer Crime if there was a computer involved? You remember that directive from Wade, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I remember it.”

“Well, anyway, she’s got all the computer creeps, somewhere in her files. Maybe she could line out Ishmael’s logs for you.”

“In order to help me.”

“Yeah, uh-huh. In order to help you.”

It seemed like the first time in days I’d actually laughed. It just jumped out of me — the idea of Melinda helping me — and I had to choke down a little coffee to keep it from coming out. I just broke down and laughed, like you do when you’re a kid and rarely do later.

Escobedo looked at me and laughed, too. It was one of those desperate, semiwicked connections between people willing to admit that something ugly is also very funny. Johnny looked like a gleeful devil for a second there, with his goatee and his hair slicked back from the widow’s peak and his straight white teeth and shrunken skulls.

So, we had our comic relief.

“She’s a good person,” I said.

“Yeah, she’s all of that. She also gets the monthly log-ons because she’s a section head. She knows who’s been talking to who on those damned computers.”

“That’s true, too.”

“I mean, well... I don’t know what it means.”

“I don’t, either, Johnny.”

Johnny stood and reached for his wallet, but I already had it covered.

“One more thing, Terry,” he said. “We’re going public with the Brittany drawing. Press conference this afternoon at five. We’ll be handing out copies to everybody who wants them.”

“It’s about time,” I said. “Ishmael gave in?”

“Naw. He acted like it was his idea — ordered us to go ahead with it. He’s Mr. Proaction now. He’s also taking your idea about the freeway billboard. We’re having the thing blown up to thirty feet across and hanging it all over the county.”

I had to smile. “John, I’ll get those log-ons some other way. Forget it.”

“What log-ons?”

“Would you sit back down for just a second and talk to me, friend?”

He sat back down and he let it out. “Terry, if someone inside the department has been talking to The Horridus, and not said anything? That’s not done, man. That’s the kind of thing nobody’s going to condone. You prove Ishmael’s been cutting deals with that scum, deals to set you up for a fall like the one you took? Ishmael’s head is going to roll right alongside yours, real quick. It’s gonna be a bloodbath for us.”

“I know.”

“You better be goddamned careful what you do.”

I nodded. “Johnny, I got to ask you something.”

“Then ask it, man.”

“What do I do? You were me, what would you do? Can I trust Wade with this?”

He looked at the tabletop for a long moment: yellow Formica with brown flecks and plenty of scratches from the flatware, old circular stains from warming beer glasses stacked up onto each other; cigarette burns; dings.

“I don’t think you can say anything. Until you know for sure, you know it all, and you know you can prove it. Until then, I think it’s your solemn duty to keep your mouth shut. It’s also what’s best for you. What if you’re wrong?”

I nodded and watched the clock hand move for exactly twenty-three seconds.

“Thanks.”

“Can you get him, through the Net?”

“I’m trying. I’d love to lure him out, but he’s real shy.”

“What about the other way?”

“Vinson? You know where he stands on helping us.”

He patted my hand, then gently slapped my face. “Know something, boss?”

“You’ll have to tell me.”

“I don’t ever want to be you. I want to be a regular guy with no big problems, raise a family, do thirty with the Sheriffs and retire up in Havasu. Fish all day, maybe get a boat. Speed over to Laughlin once a week to gamble and drink. Teach a grandson how to play blackjack, kick a football. Doesn’t that sound better than being you?”

“Quite a goddamned bit!”

He slapped my shoulder on his way out.

Vinson Clay is a lean, tanned, curly-haired man, quick to smile, slow to act. He’s like a dam, all roaring activity on one side, while behind him piles up a large tonnage of silent power. He was with the Sheriffs for twenty years, and all that time we wondered if he was slow or just congenial and content When he left us five years ago to attend law school we began to see the arc of his ambition, and when he signed on with PlaNet legal department as corporate security director — for a rumored salary of $200,000 — we sort of gulped and rewrote our opinions of him. At the Sheriffs he’d worked computer crime and PR, so our paths didn’t directly cross all that much. I remembered him as cheerful but kind of remote, too, never the type to fraternize after work or drink with the other deputies. You got his hours and you got his easy good humor, then he was gone, vanished to a home life that no one knew about, and to a career path that no one was aware of. You had to respect him.

It wasn’t easy to get my call through that afternoon. I had to plead with his secretary just to get him on the line, and when I finally did I begged even harder for twenty minutes of his time. I felt like Moe. But it worked.

“I surmise this has to do with you and the charges against you,” he said.

“Vinson,” I said, “it’s got to do with The Horridus.”

“And I’m talking to you as a deputy or a citizen?”

“Just a citizen.”

“Twenty minutes is about all I’ve got, Terry.”

The PlaNet offices were located on a shady Pasadena street, halfway between downtown and the Jet Propulsion Lab. Pasadena is where the money used to live, back when Los Angeles was a young town. The building was on the outskirts of a neighborhood of tree-shaded, million-dollar homes. I was ten minutes early. His secretary escorted me in ten minutes late. Vinson and I shook hands and sat across from each other, with his prodigious curving acrylic desk between us like some kind of crystal clear river.

He was still all smiles, his crooked teeth giving him a hick, friendly look. But Vinson’s suit was of the two-thousand-dollar variety and his nails were either professionally manicured or he spent more time on them than any man I know. I started out by asking how he liked L.A., and he said the best thing was the Dodgers being close by. “I catch all the home games I can,” he said with a smile. “Well, Terry, how are you holding up?”

“I’ve been framed. Framed by someone very good at manipulating images. The FBI has the alleged evidence against me, and I’m certain they’ll find out that it was created.”

His grin was half there now, like something he’d forgotten to close all the way.

“This is the deal, Vinson: I think it was an inside job — inside the Sheriffs, I mean. I’ve been using the Net to talk with the pedophiles and pornographers. That’s my area anyway, and I’ve made good progress. I’ve got the guy who either procured those pictures of me, or maybe even produced them. He goes by I. R. Shroud in the Fawnskin chat room.”

“That’s just a handle, right, not his user name?”

“He wouldn’t be dumb enough to put his user name or his e-mail address out there.”

“So, you’re buying from this guy?”

I nodded.

“You said something about The Horridus.”

“The Horridus is I. R. Shroud. It’s an anagram.”

He ran a hand through his curly golden hair and stared down.

“Is this a joke?”

“Definitely not. The FBI profile says The Horridus will be a networker, a porn collector. Why not a supplier, too? There’s money in it. Thrills.”

“What browser are you using to talk to him?”

I told him.

He nodded and looked down at the paper again. “Is he talking business?”

“Not yet. I hope he will be, and soon.”

“No monitor interruptions from us?”

“Not one. I’ve been lurking these guys for a year and a half, Vinson.”

Monitoring computer conversations, of course, is the way the software industry tries to keep crime off the Web. They always talk a hard game about listening in on transactions, making sure no one is breaking the law. The trouble is, talking about anything is basically legal — short of conspiring to commit a crime — and talking about sex is legal, too. There’s a fine line between talking about sex and conducting business around sex, and the pervs have come up with their own language to sound less suspicious. Guys like Vinson — and me — are always a step behind them. And guys like Vinson don’t want their networks to get reputations as being insecure or risky in any way. They say it’s a matter of First Amendment rights, and it partially is. But the bottom line in business is business, and no Net supplier wants to be known as the one with the big ears. So, tough monitoring is bad for business. Vinson knew this, and so did I.

“Have you completed a business transaction with him, using PlaNet?”

“No.”

“You haven’t exchanged any kind of payment or goods for any product or service, as of this date?”

“Not yet.”

He looked at me now, his smile gone, his suit throwing off a swank reflection of the recessed lights above the desk. “I can shut him down, Terry. I can shut down anybody I want to.”

“That would kill me, Vinson. I need him working. I need him.”

“Then you’re in a peck of trouble.”

“I know. If you shut him down, I might not ever hear from him again. You have to remember, he’s not just making dirty pictures of guys like me. He’s abducting children and doing things unimaginable to them. Let me give you an example. This hasn’t gone outside my department, Vinson, so it’s just your ears, all right?”

The way to win a confidence is to offer one. So I told him about Mary Lou Kidder in Wichita Falls, Texas, and what The Horridus had done to her. I speculated that before she died, young Mary Lou was probably subjected to a massive sexual assault. I took pains to describe the pile of reptile feces in which I found the skull of a once vibrant, much loved and beautiful little human girl.

“What if Shroud is punning on Horridus? Different guys all along?”

“Shroud called himself that before Horridus was even known. They’re the same man, Vinson. If I doubted that, I wouldn’t be here. I know you’ve got everybody’s constitutional rights to protect here, and I don’t mean to demean that. But you’ve got a monster loose on your Net, and I’m asking you to give him to me.”

Vinson sat back and crossed his hands on his lap. I could see them under the acrylic table, clear as trout in a mountain stream.

“You are an accused sexual predator, Terry.”

“I need Shroud, Vinson.”

He nodded and continued to look at me.

I did my best to close him: “Look, Vinson. I know the drill here. You take the information to the law department, you balance the risks and the gains, you go to committee. It takes time. Maybe you land on a user, maybe you don’t. I’m asking you to go off road with this one. Give him to me. You don’t talk to the law department. You don’t talk to the sheriff. You don’t talk to law enforcement. You just listen in when I tell you we’re going to be on, and you trace his number in your user directory. You give me his name and address and I’m never heard from again. You pop an animal and I get my record cleared up. It’s just us and it’s right.”

He waved in irritation and sat forward.

“I’ll think about it.”

I ignored my obvious cue to get up and leave. I looked across the clear sweeping desk to him. “Let me just say one more thing, Vinson. I’d still be sitting here talking to you if none of this had happened to me. It’s not about me. It’s not about the Constitution. It’s about The Horridus.”

“You make a good case, Counselor.”

It was pure Vinson Clay — friendly and vague, affirming and noncommittal. The crooked smile was back as he stood to offer his manicured hand across the desk.

I rose and shook it and walked out. And I knew I’d never hear from him.