Where Serpents Lie

Thirty-Two

I retreated to Room Horrible while Ishmael began the conference in the press room. Strange, to sit in the eye of that hurricane and feel the reach of my senses — the eyes of the choppers flashing through the county skies, the men and women on the ground, the voices of our people gathering information from all points in the universe — but to know I was still waiting, still looking, still hunting in the dark.

Then it happened.

Johnny turned to me from his desk, holding the telephone down at his side.

“He took a girl up in Newport twenty minutes ago,” he said. “Used a puppy to get her away from the parents. Dark-haired suspect, facial hair, white van.”

“Get there.”

“Gone.”

And he was gone, while I got Dispatch to send out the word to all units, praying the van was still on the road. I called the helos myself and told them to concentrate on west Newport and inland of Fashion Island.

“That’s a white Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge, late model, over.”

“We know that much, over.”

“Then goddamned find it!”

“Eyes wide as always, Terry... and out.”

Five minutes. Frances intercepted the messenger carrying the photo from the FasTrak toll road people and ran it down to Reilly in the lab.

The press conference was only five minutes old when a young deputy manning the 800 lines got our first call of a sighting of the new Horridus. The deputy explained to me that a young man claimed to have seen The Horridus drinking a piña colada in a Huntington Beach bar just last night — 1:30 A.M.

“He was at the Gayley house in Yorba Linda,” I said. “Forget him.”

Ten minutes. Sam Welborn called from Wichita Falls to say that Wanda Grandey had three daughters, according to some old-time Hopkinites who knew. None had any idea what their first or married last names were. Collette Loach didn’t ring bells. Still working.

Fifteen minutes. One of our Newport units found a witness who saw the van eastbound on Jamboree about the time the father called in. It tracked with my hunch that he’d move inland, away from the coast.

The piña colada deputy said he had another caller on the 800 line: she had seen this revised Horridus exactly one week ago in a supermarket in Irvine.

“He hadn’t revised himself by then,” I said. “He still had the white hair. Forget her.”

Eighteen minutes. Chopper Three called in with a late-model Plymouth van moving south on Pacific Coast Highway at MacArthur, just entering Corona del Mar. Two Sheriff units were less than half a mile away, and three Newport Beach police units were already in pursuit. I slapped on the radio headset and identified myself.

“We’re right over him now,” said the Chopper Three sergeant, “not going to let him out of my sight. I can see NBPD coming up behind him now... lights on... doesn’t see them... there — he’s pulling over. We’re on him, Terry... over.”

“Stay up. Over.”

“Couldn’t bring me down with a missile. Will advise, over.”

Another young deputy working the 800 number said he had a caller on the line who claimed to be The Horridus.

“Ask him where he is,” I ordered. The deputy did.

“He laughed and hung up.”

“Talk to Frances or Louis first when you get a call,” I said. “I don’t want these assholes wasting my time.”

“Yes, sir.”

Piña colada appeared beside his young partner. “Sir, caller on the line says The Horridus lives in the apartment next door to her. Very old woman, sir, says he drives a black pickup truck and delivers papers—”

“—Well, he doesn’t. Talk to your buddy here about screening these through CAY — got it?”

They turned and marched back to their phone bank.

My heart was thumping hard as I put down the headset and turned to the sound of someone coming through the door in a hurry.

Some things get your attention when you see them out of context, like your dog curled on the forbidden couch, like a movie star in the airline row across from you. They catch your eye and you know that something is different.

And that’s what I was thinking when Joe Reilly came through the Room Horrible with his hair askew and a strange smile and an evidence bag held up before him. Joe Reilly, scientist, rarely seen out of his native lab habitat. Whatever he had, it wasn’t an enhanced photo of a toll road violator.

“Something in here you should see,” he said. “It fell out of one of the shoes we were getting ready to laser for prints. One of the shoes from Chloe Gayley’s closet.”

Joe handed me the plastic bag and I set it on the desk. I flattened it with my fingers to deflect the glare of the overhead lights and stared down at the small shiny object.

It was a bracelet with a simple stainless-steel chain and an oval plate in the middle. The lobster-claw clasp was twisted open, unlockable now, ruined. On the front of the plate was an engraved serpent wrapped around a leafless branch. The words MEDIC ALERT were engraved down each side of the snake.

I flipped it over.

“It could have come off in the struggle,” he said. “Either that, or it’s the girl’s, or maybe her mo—”

I handed the bag back to Reilly and dialed the number on the badge. When the receptionist came on I gave it my best:

“Dr. Terry Naughton out at UCI Med Center in Orange, California. We’ve got an ER admission here with your bracelet on, sulfa drug allergy, a-ok on that. Thought we’d get anything else and an ID — no wallet, no nothing on him, looks like a drug OD. We might lose this one.”

“Number please?”

I told her.

“Just a moment, please.”

Thirty-seven seconds: I timed it on my watch.

“Dr. Naughton, that’s strange, because the bearer would be Mary Lou Kidder, last address is Wichita Falls, Texas. Now, I can—”

I hung up and stood. I was ready to crush something, anything. If one of the 800 deputies had approached to tell me about another bogus Horridus sighting, it might have been his last day of walking upright.

“It belonged to a girl back in Texas,” I told Joe. “The one he fed to his goddamned snake.”

Joe’s countenance fell, and he nodded.

Dispatch told us the Newport Beach police had already let the white Plymouth van go — family of five on their way to dinner.

Frances edged past him and took my sleeve. “Terry, sorry. Look — one of the guys has a girl on the 800 line who says she tried to deliver a prescription ointment to The Horridus. I know it sounds kind of funny, but she’s watching the press conference and she’s positive it was him. I don’t know, she sounds honest and credible.”

“When?”

“Yesterday morning. He came out and yelled at her. That gave her a damn good look at somebody, boss.”

I thought of Strickley’s speculation about a skin condition that would make him unsure of himself. Something you might need prescription ointment for.

Well, now.

“Give me the phone.”

“You’ll have to walk to it, Terry — some of them still have cords. Her name is Tamara and she’s seventeen. We’ve got her stats already.”

I picked the phone off the table and identified myself, told her not to hang up, then asked her to tell me what she saw.

“I’m like the new delivery person for Sloan’s Pharmacy in Santa Ana. And I went to take the delivery to our customer? And he came to the door and yelled at me because we’re just supposed to put it in the mailbox. But I didn’t know that? But he was the guy on TV tonight. It’s a rilly good drawing. Earring. Everything.”

“Do you remember his name, or the name of the street?”

“I’m really sorry but I can’t remember either one, because I’m new like I said and I don’t know the route yet? I mean, I can call the owner, Mr. Sloan, and he could probably tell me, but I thought I’d call you first. But I think he goes to bed pretty early. Either that or we open at nine in the morning.”

“The house was in Santa Ana?”

“No. We deliver in Tustin, too.”

“Tustin.”

“Yeah.”

I felt the little chill traverse my scalp.

“Old town?”

“What’s that?”

“Over by the high school.”

“I’m not sure where that is. I’m new to California.”

“Wall around the house, trees?”

“Definitely a wall. I don’t remember any trees, though.”

“A gate to drive in and out of, that slides?”

“Yeah. There’s a few of them in that area.”

“Tamara, think hard about the street name. Forget about the guy. Just let your mind relax and let the name of the street come to you.”

If she would just have said Witmer or Whitman or Wymer or, God forbid, Wytton — I would be there in five minutes. I looked at Frances while I waited, my eyes wide but not seeing anything, looking right through her. Then I closed them. I tried to will that street name into Tamara’s mind.

“Like it’s hard to relax when you’re talking to a cop?”

“My girlfriend says the same thing.”

She giggled. She was quiet for a long beat.

My heart was beating so hard I could feel my ribs hitting my shoulder holster.

“I’m feeling like really stupid.”

“You’re not stupid. Let it come.”

“It won’t.”

“Okay. All right, Tamara. Answer this for me and the street name will come to you. What medicine were you delivering?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know the names. It was some kind of tube of something. Like a cream or ointment.”

“For the skin?”

“I don’t know. Wait. The street was something like Lomsdale, or Plumb Stem or Lump Street maybe?”

My heart sank. Then it recovered.

“Lumsden?”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“That was your customer’s name, Tamara. You’re getting close. He uses that name all the time. It’s a fake name and he usually gives a fake address to go with it. But he gave his real address to you, because you had to bring him something he needs. You’re close. Think about that street name—”

“—But you’re making me like rilly nervous again and—”

I could feel the pulse in my neck, going about a thousand beats a minute. “I’m sorry, Tamara,” I said as meekly as I could. “I just get excited, too. I apologize.”

“That’s okay.”

“Hey, while you think, I was wondering about this. I’ll ask you this while you think of that street name, okay? Now, you said he came to the door. That’s good, but how did you get past the gate?”

“I meant he came to the gate. He came out because we’re supposed to drop the delivery in a slot in the wall and not ring the bell. Not bother him ’cause he’s so important. And he came out and like yelled at me ’cause I didn’t know. Like I already told you?”

“What did you do then?”

“I’m drawing like a total blank on the street. I could take you guys there. I know right where it—”

“—That’s too slow for us now, Tamara!”

“God, I’m just—”

“—I’m sorry. Really, I didn’t mean to snap. I apologize again.”

“You were more like yelling.”

“I’m just getting so much pressure here at work to get this guy, you know? I take it personally. All right I’ll be cool. I promise. So, can you tell me what you did when he came out and yelled at you?”

“Oh, and he had rilly bad breath.”

Heart in my ears. Beating like it was trying to fly. Scalp tight and mouth going dry. The pen in my right hand snapped and left a splotch of dark black ink on my fingers. I dropped the pieces on the floor and wiped the ink on my pants.

“Good! Great, Tamara. So... what did you do after he yelled at you and you smelled his breath?”

“Oh, well I threw this flower at him and walked off. I don’t have to take that kind of—”

“A rose?”

“Totally! This old man like lives next door? He had this rose and he says he grows them and asked me if—”

I cupped the phone and turned to Frances.

“It’s 318 Wytton Street in Tustin. Get Johnny and two of our units there ASAP, but keep them a block back until they get a go-ahead from me. But first, Frances, get Chopper Two to pick us up on the roof. Now!”

A minute later we lifted off the pad, the Civic Center receded beneath us, then the bird banked hard and threw my head back as we climbed fast toward the southwest. Stansbury was the pilot. Frances radioed Johnny down in Irvine and about-faced him to Tustin. I could hear his voice over the rotors and the deep roar of the engine.

“Unit 83 to Airborne Two, Frances, I’m running under lights and siren, still six or eight minutes out. Okay.”

“Stay the course, 83, we’ll be less than five.”

“Dispatch has me holding a block out. I’m unmarked, man.”

I told Frances to let him onto Wytton, but to hold until we put down, then find us.

“Unit 83 reads, over and out.”

I asked Stansbury if his piece of shit chopper went any faster. He just smiled and eased onto the fuel, shooting us across the black Orange County sky and into Tustin. I navigated us in by the map, then by my memory of old town. We were spiraling down along First Street when I saw Wytton, then, in the sudden beam of the helo’s searchlight, the towering sycamores over David Lumsden’s guest house.

“No lights, Stan!”

“Just making the ID, Terry. Fret not.”

“Put us down on the street behind Wytton,” I said. “If he’s there, I don’t want to spook him.”

“I’ll drop you down his chimney if you want.”

“Behind Wytton, far end of the block.”

“You’re there.”

Then the chopper dropped like a rock and my stomach bounced off the roof of the cockpit. Frances said “Woooh,” and steadied herself while she drew and readied her sidearm, then reholstered it under her coat.

“If he’s not there yet?” she asked.

“We’ll wait.”

“This thing is making me sick.”

“Think pleasant thoughts.”

“That’s why I checked my Sig.”

The helo swept into a big semicircle and came in low onto Hurst Street, just behind Wytton.

“Put us down at the far end,” I said. “We’ll go over the fence.”

“Roger,” said Stansbury. “So it is written, so it is done.”

I dropped to the asphalt of Hurst Street, road gravel stinging my face as I ducked the rotors and made for the sidewalk. Frances ran behind me. Johnny Escobedo and two prowl cars pulled up silently to the curb. There we were, a magnificent seven.

We huddled while I used my notepad to sketch the general layout of the Lumsden place. I ordered one deputy around to the main house to block the drive with his car, jump the wall and take the front door. Another one at the back of it, and one on each side of the guest unit. Johnny would follow me in, then Frances.

“Vests and shotguns,” I ordered.

Hypok lay in the half light on the bed and ran his gloved hand over the pale blue dress, over the hip of Item #4. He lay behind it, but not too close, turned as it was toward the big cage. He remote-shot a couple of images of them on the digital cameras tripoded behind and above him. The smell of years came from his mother’s old red wool bedspread and Hypok felt like his mind was anchored not in the present at all, but free to skip back and forward in time, a nimble, lively little water bug glancing upon the tops of things. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.

“Valeen?”

“Umm-mm-MMM!”

“There you are! I’m here, too. What’s Collette doing in the potty?”

Hypok, propped on one elbow, looked across the Item to Moloch’s world, pleased to see him curiously tasting the air with his tongue, patrolling one wall of his cage with excruciating patience. He looked down at himself, pressed out hard against the new skin like a shiny tent. He began the undulation.

“What’s Collette doing in the potty?”

“Hmm-mmm-MMA!”

He giggled. “Umm-hmm. She is?”

Movement. Rhythm. Touch. Loretta asleep at his feet. Back to Missouri and the warm humid nights, back to the smells of his sisters around him, the room that somehow retained the smell of bacon and gardenias, back to the knowledge that his body was growing into feelings he already possessed, that he was soon going to experience them as he was born to. So close so many times, almost there, almost to the brink, almost to... what was it... release? An explosion of some kind? Undulate. Then back to the farmhouse in Arkansas and the terrible days of Ernie Mears and his mother locking him in the storm cellar for “things” undone with Valeen and Collette, for the neighbors’ rabbits he stole from the hutch and strangled, for just about anything at all that would keep him locked away while they drank and yelled and mounted each other all over the house like animals, actually found them once on the kitchen floor with the soup boiling over and Ernie’s overalls down around his boots and Wanda on all fours with her face glazed toward the window, reaching for her beer on the floor beside her. Then, onto better days for sure, those back in Hopkin when he began to truly know himself and what could happen if he could only arrange things correctly, and he discovered with Item #1 just how to direct the scene to excite and satisfy himself, how the pageant needed to be acted, how the final tableaux he had photographed with the cheapie Kodak burned in his mind like an eternal coal until he could muster his wit and stamina enough to begin the whole production again. Puxico. Fordyce. Hopkin. Tustin. Point to point, memory to memory, past to present and back again, all tied up into one. He clicked the digital camera again, capturing the present for the future.

Undulate. Closer.

Girl smell. Girl warmth. Girl touch. Contact.

“Nmm-nmm-NMM!

“No? Are you sure? Collette’s getting a what from the bathroom?”

Then the sudden flash of light outside the windows and the sudden realization of what he had heard but not heard in his excitement — the faint overhead drone of an airborne machine coming closer, going past... coming back again?

Loretta stood on the edge of the bed and whined.

Then the light was gone and Hypok lay frozen.

Listen. Undulate. Listen.

But even with the windows closed against the cooling spring night he heard that machine coming closer again, sneaking through the night as if he were too stupid to notice something that rucking obvious; he was sure of it now, the faint, fast botta-botta-botta of blades in air and he rose from the bed and parted the blinds enough to see the lighted craft settling to earth somewhere on the street behind his.

Up with the zipper.

Although Crotalus horridus can be a ferocious foe, he will gladly flee if given an opportunity.

He let go of the blind, went to the bed, lifted Item #4 and took it around to the side of Moloch’s world. Moloch watched him. He stripped the hood off it, men opened the door, unslung the struggling thing from his shoulder and dumped it in. He fetched Loretta from the bed and threw her in, too. Then he slammed the cage door shut and locked it with the key he kept hanging on a nail by the cage and dropped the key down the toilet and flushed it

Finally, he got his .44 magnum from under the bed, opened the front door, locked it behind him before slamming it, then he slipped around to the side of the guest unit, up the fire ladder he’d installed there for just such an occasion, onto the roof and into the dark sturdy branches of the sycamore tree through which he climbed onto the rose fancier’s roof, then down to the lowest part of it before he dropped to the ground and began weaving through the backyards of the houses over fences and hedges with the dogs barking but it didn’t matter, he was light afoot and armored in his fresh skin, in possession of a lethal fang, not so much immune to the night as a part of it.

Let them try to find me.

We jumped the wall at 8:02 P.M. There was a light on in the guest house. One of the deputies shone his flashlight beam against the door as I ran up the stairs onto the porch, took three short steps and lowered my shoulder. It took one more charge to break the thing open and I flew through its unresisting swing, rolling to the floor and up with my .45 out front and my finger finding the trigger, Johnny and Frances beside me in a heartbeat, all three of us screaming and my nerves fried.

When I burst into the back room I could hardly believe what I saw. A glass cage took up the whole wall. There was a snake in it almost as big around as a man, too long to even guess at. Part of it was looped around and over a dollhouse. The other part was spilled out to the cage bottom and coiled around a little girl. Her head and neck and shoulders stuck out from the rolls of muscle at a strange angle, like she was rigid. A hand protruded from between two massive coils. Her mouth was taped shut but she looked through the glass at me with huge dark eyes. Her face was pale purple. I couldn’t tell if she was alive. The snake had its mouth over her shoes and ankles, about halfway to her knees.

“God in heaven,” said Frances.

“Mother of Jesus,” said Johnny.

The girl blinked.

“You bastard!” screamed Frances. She knelt and emptied her 9 mm into the glass. All the bullets did was punch little holes through it and knock puffs of dust off the drywall behind it.

“Door’s fucking locked.!” yelled Johnny.

I zipped up my jacket halfway, held the left side over my head and jumped through the glass. I think I bounced off the tree inside. I landed in gravel, on my back, my legs up. I righted myself and stripped the jacket back. The snake had already disgorged the girl’s feet and his head was about two feet off the ground, his tongue loping out ahead of him as he moved toward me. I shot him between the eyes. His head dipped like someone had slapped it. Then he rose up palebellied above me and I could see the jagged exit hole in his jaw. I shot him twice more, up through the bottom of his head. He writhed higher, coils loosening on the girl and his green body twisting to expose the plated yellow stomach. His mouth gaped. I stepped under the head and tugged on the girl, with the pistol still ready in my right hand. The huge reptile body rolled away from her — green revolving into yellow, then into green again — and I lifted the girl up and out and hugged her against me. Something small and brown fell to the ground but I couldn’t see what. I looked to Frances, waiting just outside the shard-toothed hole I’d made, her arms reaching through.

“Give her to me, Terry. Here!”

I’m not sure why I didn’t. Why I couldn’t. It was like I wasn’t supposed to, like she was mine and there wasn’t anywhere in the world she could be safer than in my arms. And though I’d had that thought before in my life and been wrong, some things are born into a man and you can overrule them but you can never make them go away.

“Terry! Give her over!”

I stood there for just a moment in the ocean of twisting scales, with the girl held tight to my chest, then I passed her into Frances’s waiting arms. She was light, and loose as a beach towel.

Johnny helped me through to the other side. I looked back and saw a small dog scratching up against the glass, trying to reach the hole I’d made. Johnny reached in and scooped it out.

Two paramedics rushed through the doorway, then ran to Frances. One of the deputies charged in right behind them with his shotgun lowered and I thought for a second he was going to blow everyone there to smithereens. “House is empty, sir. Grounds, too. There’s nobody here but us.”

“He’s in the neighborhood,” I said. “Everybody door to door.”

“You’re bleeding,” said Johnny, and when I looked down at myself I could see the slick red soaking my shirt and pants. I felt like I’d been punched in the ribs. In fact, I felt great because I knew I’d just done a good thing, whether the girl made it through or not. I felt lucky.

Louis pushed his way past the uniform and held up his radio. “Terry, he’s down in the flood canal behind the street. Stansbury was strafing south with the light — guy wearing something shiny was hauling ass north. Suspect stopped under the bridge and hasn’t come out.”

I heard a gasp, then a gentle male expletive from the other side of the room. Frances looked up at me from the paramedics. “She’s breathing.”

I approached and looked down at her, a skinny little girl wrapped in a blanket. Her eyes were terrified, but she was drawing breath deep and fast. Someone had gotten the tape off her mouth. I took a flashlight from one of the uniforms.

“Let’s go get him.”

The flood control channel ran behind Hurst Street. Louis kept up radio contact as he led us through a backyard and over a cinder-block wall. The lights in the houses were coming on and I could hear dogs barking from the yards on either side of us. A quarter mile south I saw the chopper hovering and a bright cone of light flaring down to earth. We climbed the chain link and landed heavily on the other side.

In the dim moonlight I could see the ditch was deep, with high, sloping, concrete walls and a flat bottom to carry the floodwaters out to the Pacific. Stansbury held the helo low over the street, a few hundred yards away. It looked like the bird was held up by the stanchion of its own white light. I heard Stansbury’s voice rasp over Louis’s radio: “still under the bridge here, haven’t seen him move in over a minute... I’d get on him if I were you flatfoots...”

“Johnny — can you make it down, then up the other side?”

“Done.”

“I’ll take the center. Louis, take this bank.”

In an instant Johnny was down to the bottom, through the slick of water, then scuttling back up the far side. The last twenty feet of embankment was dirt, not cement, and for a moment he was tearing at it with all fours but sliding down at the same time, going nowhere. Then he found a foothold, got himself moving and made the top. He righted himself, flicked his flashlight beam once and drew his gun. I slid down the dirt on the soles of my shoes, and when I hit the rough cement I leaned back further and rode it down. When I hit bottom I was moving fast but kept my feet under me, ran up the other side a few steps to slow down, then started trotting through the brackish stream toward the chopper. I wedged the flashlight under my left arm, brought out my .45 and reached it around to my left hand, chambering the first round.

The middle of the channel was slick with mud and algae, so I tried to stay left or right. The bridge came at me out ahead, illuminated by Stansbury’s fierce spotlight, and I could see the shining sides of cars parked on the overpass behind the fence. The pale concrete of the channel narrowed, then lowered in perspective, disappearing into the darkness under the bridge.

I stopped about thirty feet short of the entrance. Even from there I could hear the sounds from inside: the lazy chime of running water; the clear and surprisingly loud doink, doink... doink, doink of a drip that must have had its source high up; and the strange, metallic whomp of the chopper condensed in the tunnel then echoing out at me in odd angles from the darkness. Louis stood to my left, above me, and looked down. Turning the other way, I could see Johnny in a crouch, waiting for me to call the play. I wasn’t sure. It looked like a good way to get shot, if he was armed. I wanted him. I wanted him for myself, almost as bad as I’d ever wanted anything in my life. He was mine and I was going to take him. I looked in front of me to the dark yawning mouth of the overpass, moved to the far left side so my gun hand would be free, turned on my flashlight and looked in. As soon as I put my head into the opening, the echoes of the rotors hit me not only from both sides, but from ahead and behind, too. It was like having four ears. But I could navigate the invisible world of sounds by the steady doink and the minor sibilance of the running water.

The shiny little creek meandered along the bottom. There were large concrete blocks set in the floor of the culvert, just a few feet apart, to keep the large storm debris from going further downstream. Each one was almost a yard high and a yard wide — just big enough to hide a man. Three rows of three. I ran the light around them: branches caught lengthwise, mud and trash, a car tire. I held the beam just over each block and looked for shadows on the water. For movement. For a shape. For anything not quite right. Nothing. Nothing but the thump of the helo above.

I stepped back out of the tunnel and waved Johnny to go across the street, then back down again. He nodded and sprung onto the fence. Less than a minute later I saw the beam of his flashlight coming toward me from the other end of the tunnel. I waited until he was near the opening, then started in. Three steps. Four. I remembered something that Joe Reilly had once told me — always look up. So I aimed my beam to the ceiling and followed it up with my eyes. Ruststained concrete walls. Steel girders supporting the street from below. Bird nests and the dusty remains of spider webs long tattered and unused. I ran the beam down the wall to my left. It was sheer and clean except for the runoff tunnel that slanted up gently through the wall toward the street. The opening was about four feet off the floor of the channel and just big enough for a man to crawl into. There was another runoff line opening on the same side, about twenty yards further down toward Johnny. On the wall to my right I could see the black openings of two more, directly opposite.

Hypok lay in the cool barrel of the runoff line, feet slanted above him in the gentle uphill rise, both arms extended with the .44 firmly in grasp, barrel resting in a pile of debris through which he could easily see, elbows braced, his face recessed within the tunnel but his line of sight quite clear and unfettered. The nice wad of pine needles, leaves and trash not only hid him from flashlight view but gave him a steady brace for the gun.

His sores burned beneath the fresh skin. But he could scrunch backward into the deeper darkness of his hole, or forward toward the opening rather easily, using his elbows, knees and toes. He was tubed. It was like being born. Or like hunting if you were a snake, deeply penetrating the space of your prey, stealthy and silent, cunning and deadly. He rested his chin on the cold concrete and gazed down the length of his fine-scaled arms luminous in the near dark, to his pearlescent hands wrapped devoutly around the fat grips of the .44, then down at the shiny blued barrel waiting in the loose barrier of detritus. He could see the white post of the front sight and the generous rear notch into which you must center the post before you place it upon the target, pull the trigger and blow a hole the size of a softball out of any living thing on earth. He’d gotten the cop killer ammo, of course, Glaser Blues with the compressed #12 shot and the plastic, round-nose design. Guaranteed full knockdown on any hit or your money back.

The flood control channel was a great place to hide, he thought, unless it was raining. He’d found it months ago on one of his evening prowls. If the chopper hadn’t surprised him, bearing down low, spotlight igniting the ground around him like napalm and he just fifty yards from the protection of the bridge, he might have hidden down here for days. Then used the change of clothing, cash and ID he’d stashed in the runoff line across the ditch, and gotten himself to an airport or bus station. Now he was basically fucked, he told himself, though the idea was far less distressing now than he had imagined it would be during his many years doing the things he’d done, knowing that someday it would come to this. California had the death penalty, but they also had good lawyers and lenient juries. No, it wasn’t time to give up yet. If he could get himself out of the tunnel, back up the channel and into the cover of suburban backyards, he might be able to lose the chopper long enough to break into a house, fade a homeowner or two and get their car. Maybe they’d have an Item for him to take.

Through the loose wall of flotsam in which the barrel of his revolver lay, he could clearly see the main channel down in front of him. He could clearly see the white post of the front sight. To his right, a light came into view, playing along the creek bottom, then sweeping back and forth. They have no idea where I am, he thought. He wondered if it was the cop he helped pull the trick on, Naughton, the little hothead weirdo on Donna Mason’s show. Mal. Hopefully. Cops were all basically the same, though. The light became brighter, tapering back to its source. He could hear the slosh of feet in water, very quiet, but still audible, magnified by the hard concrete tunnel. Slishhh...

Then the beam veered away to the far wall. He watched it focus on the mouth of the runoff line across from his. A dress rehearsal, he thought. He watched the cop. He couldn’t tell if it was Naughton or not. The cop got right up close to the wall. His flashlight was in his left hand. He spread his legs and lowered himself into an amusing, ready-for-anything stance. Hypok could see the gleam of a firearm in his right hand. Then the cop leaned forward and aimed his beam up the opening. He didn’t look in. Hypok watched as the tunnel filled with light, saw the stained brown walls of concrete, the loose archipelago of flotsam and jetsam scattered inside. But the cop still hadn’t put his snout into the hole for a good honest whiff of things. Then he knelt down, quickly, some commando move he’d learned in school. His head was just under the opening and the light went off. In the darkness Hypok couldn’t see what he was doing, but he guessed the man was having a lights-out preview. Ten seconds. Then the tunnel went bright again and the beam had moved to about a yard inside it and Hypok could see the dark silhouette of a head looking in. What a sight. It was a lot like one of those paper targets at the indoor range, but no shoulders, only head, a perfect silhouette. He got the white post of his front sight settled into the notch of the back one and held it steady in the middle of the target. It was easy to do with the barrel on the bed of debris he’d built. A brain shot. Maximum stopping power. Guaranteed knockdown with any hit. The light raked the walls, held steady for a long while, then went out.

The next thing he knew, Hypok was looking across the channel at the flashlight aimed directly at him, weaving a little bit, but coming his way.

The cop veered to Hypok’s left, out of sight. Who wouldn’t? But Hypok could see his light and hear the gentle footfall of shoes on concrete, then the slishhh... slishhh of the dead man crossing the water, then the sucky sound of wet soles on dry cement again. Silence. Hypok imagined: he gets the light in his left hand and shines it in. And it happened. Next, he shines it around in here, but he doesn’t look in yet. That happened too. Bright. Hypok closed his eyes. Then, the cop turns off the light for ten seconds while he looks up here and tries to see me in the dark. The light, in fact, went out, and in the next eight seconds Hypok watched the scarcely visible outline of a human head not six feet away from him, not four feet from the muzzle of his revolver, becoming more distinct with every thunderous beat of his heart.

The shot was almost unbelievably loud. The echo bounced around the canal at me. I flattened myself against the wall and looked back toward Johnny, offing my light. I heard something land in the water. “John!”

Then I heard the sound of a body against the concrete, doing what, I couldn’t say.

“Okay, Naughton! Creep down!”

“Hold there, Johnny! Hold!”

“Holding! Holding!”

John’s voice? He rarely called me Naughton.

His light went on, shining my way. I turned on my own and held the beam down in front of me to light the ground. But I felt wrong, something felt wrong and when I looked up to Johnny’s light I saw it hadn’t moved, it wasn’t moving at all — why wasn’t it on our man? — so I veered out of its path and ran down the middle through the water toward it.

When I got there, the flashlight lay in one of the runoff openings, held in place with a rock. Below the opening was Johnny. Johnny, on his back with his head in the mud, his widow’s peak collapsed over his eyes and smoke rising from his mouth. Far ahead of me now, moving along the bottom of the channel was a figure faintly opalescent in the moonlight, vanishing fast. I brushed Johnny’s cheek with my fingers, then moved out

Louis had already slid down into the channel bottom to give chase. A uniform came jangling down from the other side, skied the last ten yards on his boot soles and fell in behind Louis. I caught them quickly, muttered something about nailing the fucker once and for all and shot past both of them. I am light boned and quite fast, and have much more stamina than a man of my personal habits deserves. But if I had been fifty years old and thirty pounds overweight it wouldn’t have mattered, because I could still see Johnny’s gone face back there in the ugly little stream and I would have willingly run myself to death to avenge him.

I couldn’t outrun the chopper. Stansbury roared past me overhead, raking The Horridus in his light, then banked and tried to stay over him. In the brief moment that the beam caught my prey I saw a scintillant flash of blue silver, like a marlin breaking water in the Sea of Cortez. I raised my knees and ran.

Out ahead, crisscrossing his way across the ditch, trying to avoid the beam above him, The Horridus was a glimmering phantom gliding from darkness to light then back to darkness. He was blue, then opalescent, then violet, then almost invisible in the night. He was fast, but he wasn’t as fast as me. His hundred-yard head start shrank to eighty. I was flying over that channel bottom like a hawk over a city street.

When I was about sixty yards away, he looked back. The chopper beam grazed him and I could see the bright reflection of his eye, straining around to see me. Then an orange-white jet of flame cracked in the darkness ahead and the booming report of a handgun quaked along the channel and passed. I hit the water with both hands out and slid about ten yards. Then I was up again, quick as a seal, and I saw Stansbury’s light capture him in a bright wide halo, with the water splashing up around his shiny legs as he sped down the center of the culvert.

Suddenly he angled up the embankment and scrambled over the last ten yards of rocks and soil without a slip. I realized that using the high ground, he could loop back and shoot me like a duck on a pond — quite literally — so I clawed up the concrete side and fought my way up the loose sharp rocks to the top. God bless Stansbury, who now hovered over The Horridus, drenching him in the full beam of his flood. He just stood there in the center of the light, his metallic body heaving, his metallic head bobbing up and down as he labored for breath. I took a knee and drew down on him, but as soon as I got my sights in line he was off. As he loped out of the light I could tell he wouldn’t go much further: his back was bowed, his arms loose before him, his legs heavy. But the big gun was still in his hand. I tracked him down the barrel of my .45, then stood and started after him again.

Stansbury’s light caught up with him. The Horridus was at the far side of the channel cut, hunched, facing the chain-link fence. I stopped fifty feet short of him and lined up my automatic on his heaving, shimmering back. Just behind the fence was a cinder-block wall, separating someone’s backyard from the flood control easement. He was bent, hands on his knees, looking back over his shoulder at me while he breathed fast and shallow. His breath was an urgent whistle, in-out, in-out, in-out. I could see the revolver still in his right hand and the glint of his eyes behind the fish-scale shine of his hood. He turned his head away slowly, lifted one leg and worked his foot into a toehold in the chain link. He looked back at me again. Then he heaved himself up and reached with his free hand for a grip on the cinder block. He grunted and slipped. Hard. His foot dropped free and his left wrist snagged on the sharp metal X of the fence top. He danced on his tiptoes, writhing around to face me, his left wrist still impaled above him, the big black handgun in his grasp. He brought it up. I shot him once in the face for Johnny and four times in the chest for me. He hung from the fence. Then something gave and his wrist popped loose with a metallic clink and he fell to the dirt.