Where Serpents Lie

Twenty-Eight

Johnny Escobedo called me at six the next morning to tell me that The Horridus had just moved again. APB on a white van, stolen plates, description of UN-SUB male pending. One terrified girl, okay — she got away. But her mother was strangled while she escaped and The Horridus had slithered back into the dark. Johnny said it looked like the mother had heard something and surprised him. I wasn’t at the crime scene, but I could have told you that.

For the next seven hours I’d sat by the phone, waiting for his updates, feeling more foolish, helpless and impotent than I had ever felt in my life. It just frosted me, because I knew he’d be out that night and I’d missed him. Finally I blew up. I threw a full beer bottle through the TV screen — though it wasn’t even turned on. Then I smashed my fist into a kitchen cabinet that splintered like the cheap wood it was. So much for my deposit. Neither helped. There were white splinters in my knuckles.

In the early afternoon I took a break to meet Melinda at her house. She’d taken the day off work to have an escrow officer put a rush on the papers that would allow us to sell the place and split the money. Neither one of us had expected a sale so quickly. She had some documents for me to sign. She was wearing an old yellow sweatsuit she used to work out in, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail and a brooding look on her face. She looked underslept, pale.

I was in a foul mood when I got there, and a fouler one still when Melinda held up the papers, said “sign these” and with a sigh held them out to me. Moe looked at me and slunk away.

“Thought I might get consulted before we decided to sell,” I said.

Her look was sharp as a paring blade. “Don’t.”

“Sorry. But I’m having trouble figuring out why I’m doing real estate deals while The Horridus is out there killing people and chasing little girls.”

“It’ll take two minutes. Then you’ll be back on the case.”

Pure sarcasm.

“Just sign and get out?”

She smiled wanly and shook her head. Then, our standard peace offering: “Coffee?”

“Hell. Why not?”

In the bright Laguna kitchen we watched the coffee drip into the carafe. When it was ready we took our cups to the sundeck outside and sat in the shade of a silver-dollar eucalyptus. The day was warm and it was breezy there in the canyon, as it often is, and I felt again the loss of it all. My home, though it wasn’t really mine. My woman, though she wasn’t really mine. My daughter, though she wasn’t really mine. I guess I had borrowed a family after losing my real one and now it was time to return it. My frustration and fury melted away when I felt that loss. It just blew away in the breeze and it left me with a heightened sense of what was here for me now: nothing. She set the papers on the patio table and put a rock on them so they wouldn’t blow away.

“I wanted to get a few things straight with you,” she said. “One is, I don’t think you did what those pictures showed, but I also know you don’t remember a lot of what you did, back when we were drinking so much. I don’t either. But that doesn’t really matter. You’ve made Penny’s life extremely difficult. She refuses to believe anything that’s on the TV or in the papers, but that isn’t enough to save her. She’s taunted at school, she’s ridiculed by friends, she’s been disincluded by loving parents who think their own children might be... contaminated by her contact with you.”

“It doesn’t make sense to shun her for something I didn’t do.”

“Men believed the world was flat for centuries. That didn’t make sense either.”

“Well, now that’s really—”

“—But more to the point, Terry, you’ve humiliated me. You can’t even imagine the looks I get, the things people say — some of them trying to help, I know — just the way people are. You might be the alleged monster, but I’m the bride of Frankenstein. Well, I’m sick of it. That’s why I’m leaving. For Penny, and for me.

I didn’t speak. I could see by the flush on Melinda’s broad, pale cheeks that she was angry and hurting.

“I’ve already made an offer on a place up in the Portland area. Good schools. Nobody knows us. So I’d appreciate your cooperation on the sale. According to the joint ownership either one of us can impede a sale, and I’m asking you not to.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m settling for a little less than I asked. It’s still a buyers’ market and I want out. So, thank you.”

“What are you going to do for work?”

She looked at me and smiled just a little. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

“You’re going to use that old credential and teach school.”

She nodded. “I just can’t do it anymore, Terry. The filth we shovel. The people we deal with. We’re just garbage collectors — human garbage. I’m sorry, but I’m bitter and I’m burned out and I’m finished. They’ll get The Horridus and another one will crop up to take his place. Anyway, there’s openings in some of the Portland districts. I’ll get something.”

“How’s Penny taking it?”

Melinda’s eyes bore into me. “She wants to stay.”

There was a long silence then and I listened to the cars hissing past on Laguna Canyon Road.

“You know, Terry, you did something more than humiliate me to the world. You humiliated me to me.”

“You know I’m innocent.”

“Of the children, I believe so. But how innocent are you of Donna Mason?”

I watched her sip her coffee. There are times when a man wants to crawl down a hole, and times when he is the hole. This was one of those.

She chuckled. “You can tell me I’m wrong and I won’t bring it up again. I’m not after confirmation. I’m past that, to be honest.”

“Well, yes. There is that.”

“How long?”

“A few months.”

“I’d flattered myself that it was more recent. I suspected. When I saw the interview I realized she was in love with you. I just knew. So, when were you going to get around to telling me?”

“I’d been thinking about... how to do it.”

Her face was flushed now, but Melinda still had the interrogator’s calm that had worn down so many creeps over the years. “Noble of you, not to rush things.”

“The same way you thought before you left Ish. I hurt you, Melinda. I cheated and I lied. But you’re not righteous either. Nobody is.”

“I feel very put in my place. I apologize for asking you when you were going to tell me you were cheating on me. I stand corrected.”

“I was wrong in what I did. I know that. I wasn’t expecting what happened.”

“And what, exactly, happened?”

“I just met her and fell. I thought we’d be right together. I fought it. I did what I could because I knew someone was going to get hurt. I did fight...”

“For whom?”

“You and me.”

We were quiet a moment while Melinda stared at me.

“What about us? Were we right?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ. Don’t. Don’t start listing my faults.”

“Most of them were mine.”

“I’ve got no interest in them, now.”

“Do you want me to get up and walk, or sit here and bleed?”

“Sit and bleed, sonofabitch, because I’m not done with you yet.”

My turn to offer the olive branch:

“More coffee, then, hon?”

“Sure, cakes.”

When I got back with fresh cups, Melinda had her knees up and her arms wrapped around them and her head sideways on her kneecaps. Her ponytail hung down behind them. I walked into her field of vision to set down the cup, then walked back out of it and sat down again.

“I knew we weren’t right, too,” she said. “I knew it from the first. But I did it anyway. That sounds like I settled for something less, but really it was just the opposite. I was getting more than I thought I deserved. I thought you’d make me feel young and beautiful and happy again. I thought you’d wrangle me into having another kid, even though I told you I wouldn’t. I felt old, Terry, when we started seeing each other. And I do again, now. I feel old as owl shit. I look in the mirror and I see a face made out of old, dry owl shit. For a couple of months you made me feel like a woman again, then it was just back to being dried-up old me. You’re one of those men that gets older and a little crazier, maybe, but you hold your looks and your body keeps up with your desire, and you do okay for yourself. I knew the drinking would pass. And when it did, I knew your vision of me would pass, too, and you’d see me for what I was. Owl shit. So, no, I’m not arguing with you when I say we weren’t right. We weren’t. Of course, then, nobody is, really, especially at our age.”

“God, Mel — you talk like you’ve got a foot in the grave.”

“I feel that way, Terry. Sometimes. I really do. How can’t you, in the kind of work we do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I do.”

“And maybe you compensate with a twenty-eight-year-old television bombshell from Dixie.”

“West Virginia stayed Union.”

“Who gives a shit what West Virginia did?”

I watched one of our neighbors — former neighbors — driving along the gravel road. She craned her neck, having seen my car out front, trying for a look at a real child molester, the kind of guy they’re going to start chemically castrating in the golden state of California soon. (As head of CAY I was in favor of the old-fashioned, actual castration, but it is considered cruel and unusual. As an accused child molester with a trial date not yet set, I had to admit to some uncertainty on this issue.)

“Maggie brought me cookies the day she found out you’d been arrested. There was a plate of them for you, too.”

I said nothing. Melinda unwound from her pensive position and leaned back against the railing of the deck.

“So, sign the papers, Naughton. I’ll let you say good-bye to Penny sometime, but I don’t want to make too big a thing out of us leaving. I’m putting a happy face on it. And I’m determined to look happy if it kills me, which it might. I’m talking to Wade and the personnel people tomorrow. Thought I’d give you the scoop. Is that what Donna Mason called it, when she sat you down for that interview?”

She actually waited for an answer. “They call it an ‘exclusive,’ I think.”

“Well Terry, you’d just had sexual intercourse with her, a few minutes before, so you must have felt pretty exclusive, yourself. It was written all over your pathetic little face.”

“Mel.”

“Mel fucking what?”

“Enough.”

“Yeah, enough. Take a hike, old friend, but sign the papers first. See you in the next life.”

I signed the papers.

On my way back to the apartment all hell suddenly broke loose. Very quietly, but it broke loose just the same.

First was a call from Loren Runnels:

“Terry, they’ve got Tim Monaghan from the FBI here to talk about those photographs. Will’s flying in from Boise, should be landing in an hour. I can’t get a read on Zant, but he wants to see us at three, up at County with Wade and the photo boys.”

“Holy, holy, shit.”

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

Next was a call from the second-to-last person on earth I expected to hear from:

“Terry, this is Jim... Jim Wade. I’ve got some people we need to talk to at three today. You’ll be here, won’t you?”

“You know I will.”

“How are you?”

“I was worse the day my son died.”

“We’ve got some things to talk about. I’ll see you then.”

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel my chest knocking against the shoulder restraint. The luck was back, man: the stinking Irish luck was coming back to me. I felt it. I knew it. I was it.

So I called Johnny and got him at the Gayley crime scene.

“Anything good there?”

“Skin and blood under her nails, hair all over the place, fingerprints galore — who knows whose. He’s made at this end, Terry. All we need now is a suspect. We could use your eyes, boss. It was bad, what he did to her.”

“The Bureau’s here to pow-wow with me and Wade. I’m smelling the finish line.”

“I’ll say a prayer for you.”

Then I called Vinson Clay at PlaNet and wouldn’t stop talking to his secretary until she put me through.

“I need Shroud,” I said.

“Naughton. Look... we’re considering. I took it to committee. It’s the only way to cover our own asses around here.”

In committee. Lawyers, lawyers, lawyers.

I went back to the metro apartment to shower and shave before my meeting with the FBI and the sheriff. And there was part three of all hell breaking loose, a user-group posting from I. R. Shroud:

Mal — Sorry for delay. Been busy as a bee. If you’re going live, call Chet for the feed. He’ll direct. It’ll be worth every penny you donated. Tee-hee-hee.

And that’s when I realized who the girl in the photographs was.

Of course.

I could feel the heat of eyeballs on me as I walked into Sheriff Jim Wade’s office at 2:58 P.M. that day: Ishmael from the hallway; Woolton and Vega from their desks; Burns from his chat with Jim’s secretary; and Frances, who stopped her conversation with a deputy I didn’t recognize to stare at me rather blankly as I made the long march to Wade’s door.

When that door closed behind me there was Jim and Rick Zant, my lawyer Loren Runnels, Will Fortune and a large, athletic man who could only be Tim Monaghan. Monaghan was with the Special Photographic Unit. I shook his hand and we sat around Wade’s desk.

“They’re fake,” Monaghan said. “They’re the best I’ve ever seen, but they’re still fake. They’re digitized mockups, reshot with a film recorder. Several ways we can tell this, but I don’t think I need to go into detail right now. Basically we knocked them on three points — physical anomalies, replicated edge marks and contradictory patterns in the grain matrix. I can testify in court if you want, but one of the reasons I’m here is to keep it from coming down to that. I think we all might have better things to do. We want to talk to the guy who made them. I know you do. We’ll give you our help if you want it. Will, you have anything to add?”

“Not one word.”

Talk about a golden silence.

Two hours later I was sitting in a conference room, uncharged, reinstated, apologized to, put back in control of CAY and gathered with my unit — plus Wade, Woolton and Burns, the six deputies temporarily assigned to us, plus six more brand spanking new ones that Johnny said were a welcome-back present. Monaghan left us with two FBI agents he must have been storing in his briefcase. Our only task was to accelerate our search for The Horridus. We had to light a fire under his ass so hot he’d jump right out of his skillet and into our pot.

Oh yes, Ishmael was there, too. He was the only deputy on the whole floor who wasn’t lingering around Jim Wade’s office when we came out, the only guy who wasn’t standing there clapping and smiling when Wade said he’d just had the rare experience of being able to help correct one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

Ish just stood there in the room acting like he had business with a telephone, staring at me with his green cat eyes and a look of spiritless revulsion on his face. Then he turned his back to me and kept on talking.