Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) (32 page)

“I didn’t realize he’s killing.”

“He will. And you can massacre a person without killing them. You ruin a life or you take it—they’re both first-degree mortal sins if you ask me.”

Will was quiet for a while.

“Stay on him, Terry. Just because your badge is gone doesn’t mean you can’t stay on him.”

I thought about that and I realized—strange how it can take you so long to see the obvious—that Will Fortune was right.

T
hat 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.

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND GAME

DAY: 26 MONTH: 04 YEAR: 98

RECIPIENT NAME: IAN RICHARD SHROUD

DOB: 12 26 67

STREET/NUMBER: 18181 FOREST

CITY/ZIP: ORANGE 92867 STATE: CA

DRIVER LICENSE/STATE: E0460644

PHONE: (714) 681-4778

CITATION #

RANGER NAME/ID #

VIOLATION #

DESCRIPTION OF VIOLATION:

COMMENTS

CITING RANGER SIGNATURE:

RECIPIENT SIGNATURE:

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:

I. R.—Need some real-time chatter to get to the heart of this matter. Free adult seeking to exercise constitutional rights. Need directions to dream girl. Need to go to live feed. Aforementioned budget generous within reason. Reconsider loyal Mal.

“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.