Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) (33 page)

“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:

HORRIDUS = I. R. SHROUD

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?”