Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) (38 page)

I. R. Shroud: As do all good patients. Gone.

In my little blue notebook I noted the exact times that our conversation began and ended. I was afraid to look forward to the day when that information would help hang The Horridus, but I allowed myself a mirthful glance into the future anyway.

For the first time since being charged I strapped on my shoulder rig and .45 and put a light windbreaker over it to hide it from the real cops.

I stood on the Norwalk Green Line platform, 4:02
P.M.
, a paperback copy of
The New Centurions
in my hand, with one-third of a legal-sized envelope protruding from between pages 122 and 123. The May afternoon was bright and almost hot; it felt about eighty. There was just enough breeze to blow the smog out to Riverside. In the west the sun seemed to be sinking very slowly, as if it didn’t want to miss the sunset. The train arrived almost silently and I walked to the last car before getting on.

I found a seat, looked at no one and gazed out the window. The train accelerated oddly—more a sensation of brakes being let off than of power being applied. First I was sitting still, then I was going fast. In the faint reflection in the window before me I saw a mustached man in a cap and sunglasses. And I couldn’t help but remember the old Naughton, the suntanned, happy young father snorkel diving with his kid off of Shaw’s Cove in Laguna, with the sun on his back as he floated in blue water and watched through his mask as his boy dove down to claim a shell from the cream-colored sand.

I knew that I had changed and fallen. But exactly how and exactly why, well, these things seemed beyond me. I felt like I had grabbed hold of a dream that had moved along nicely for a while, like a speedboat on the surface of the sea, only to submerge quickly and without warning, taking my outstretched hand with it while everything precious scattered to the waves and the winds of the surface far above.

West along the Green Line, then: Lakewood, Long Beach, Wilmington, Avalon, Harbor Freeway, Vermont. Before the Crenshaw station a thin young man in a beige suit sat down across the aisle, looking frankly at me, then at the book on the seat next to me. He was thirty, maybe, with glasses and limp blond hair. He had a soft, thoughtful face.

“Good book,” he said.

I nodded. “I’ve always liked it.”

“Rereading it?”

“Pretty much so.”

“Mal?”

“Correct.”

“You’ll find the light better at the next station. Exit and go to the far west end of it. There’s a seat beside a fat man. Take it. Leave the book on that seat and take the next car east, back to Norwalk. You’re done, then.”

You’re done, then.

He stared at me through his glasses, surprisingly direct for such a meek-looking fellow, then stood and went through the door to the car ahead. I never saw him again. Five minutes later I got off at Crenshaw.

The fat man wasn’t just fat, he was huge. Big head, curly red hair and beard, massive arms extending from the kind of short-sleeved shirt you’d expect a nerd to wear: shiny poly/cotton, with light blue stripes, pocket, yellowed collar. He was reading a
Travel & Leisure
magazine. I could smell him as I sat down, body odor mixed with a foul breath that could only come from a soul turned to carrion. I could hear his inhales whistling past nose hair, his exhales hissing past his lips. I looked at him directly just once, but it was the same moment he was looking at me, and I saw his pale gray eyes—little things, little piglet’s eyes—roving over me. I held them for just a second, but in that second they said to me: we’re together, you and me; we share the secret; we’re the same. I tried to convey something harmonious back through mine, but all I could feel inside was contempt and anger. When I saw the next eastbound train approach I stood and leaned over to set the novel on my seat. A big soft hand with red hairs sprouting from the flesh closed over mine, and the little piglet eyes shined with joy as he looked at me.

“It’s all worth it, Mal,” he said. “Going live is what all of us want to do. You’ve got the courage, the
balls,
to do it. God bless you.”

I couldn’t look him in the eye, because he would have seen what I was feeling. I nodded contritely, and managed a quick glance down at him.

He was smiling up at me. It was a happy smile—yellow, pink and black toward the back. The stench of his insides puffed against my face and he let go of my hand.

I rode east in the dusk, watching the last of the sunlight fail while the frail lights of humans came on to take its place. I had a bad feeling about the night to come, but I had a bad feeling about most of them.

I. R. Shroud did not respond to my salutations that night. Nothing. Mum. I wasn’t surprised.

I’d just been shaken down for ten grand and The Horridus was having a laugh about it. I was financing his career in serial abduction, rape and murder with money I’d earned trying to catch animals like him. I was so angry my nerves were buzzing and I went to bed to see if they’d stop.

I couldn’t sleep. I tossed in bed, got up and roamed the little apartment, tried to watch TV. How many times can you look at a bean field? Tonello’s was dark. I was wired but fretful, eager to act but not sure what to do, anxious without knowing why. For a while, at least.

Then I understood that I wanted to drive out to Tustin again, to see who might be stirring at Collette Loach’s home on Wytton Street. The feeling I’d gotten in Hopkin was upon me again, the feeling I’d gotten at Caspers Park, the feeling I’d gotten—however slightly—at the Loach residence in Tustin. The long shot. The hunch. The maybe.

Donna wanted to come. She microwaved some popcorn, which took a couple of minutes, then we hit the road. I slipped a flat little five-shot Colt .38 into my jacket when she wasn’t looking. You’d be surprised what space just one less cylinder saves. It was 2:07
A.M.
when we got there, though my watch runs two minutes fast. When I rolled down the window I smelled exhaust but it wasn’t mine. You get used to the aromas of a familiar car. It really stood out against the smell of the popcorn, hanging there in the moist night air. I parked across the street from Collette’s place, two houses down.

We sat in the darkness with a thermos full of tequila and ice, sharing from the little plastic cup. We ate the popcorn from a paper shopping bag. I looked at the formidable wall of the Loach house, the big black sycamores guarding above, the neat little bungalow next door, where the rose fancier lived out the last days of his life. A faint yellow light issued from behind the wall—an outdoor bug light was my guess.

We made small talk while we watched the wall, covering the events of the day, as anyone who spends time with Donna Mason must be prepared to do. She is interested in everything and everyone. Perhaps too much interested in some things, but who am I to judge?

We sat in silence after that. I felt like I should talk to her.

“When I get like this, Donna, I just want to explode. I’ve been run all over the state by this guy. I’m out ten grand as part of a practical joke. He’s done things to girls that go against everything I am and everything I believe in. He’s got the key that can clear my name. I’m all ready and there’s nothing to do.”

“Well, you’re doing something now.”

I watched the house. I felt the tequila pulling me downward and together, toward some yearned for but often evasive center.

“I feel that this guy, no matter where he lives, is going out tonight.”

“I hope you’re wrong.”

“Used to be nights like this, I’d go to the cave. The Horridus feels the same way. Like I do. He wants to bust out of his skin. He watches his snakes do it and it makes him want to do it, too. He wants to emerge fresh. He wants to start over. The reason he wants those girls isn’t only for sex. The sex is the drivetrain for what he does. It’s the fuel and the engine. But what he’s doing, in a bigger sense—is getting back at everybody who ever wronged him. First, he punishes the girls for what they make him feel. What he feels is wrong, and he knows it, though he can’t help it
I’ve got to change.
And he punishes them for what he thinks the world has done to him—they’re sacrificial. That’s what the mesh robes say to me, anyway: you are now an angel, so that I can change,
because I’ve got to change.
He was probably abused as a boy. Physically, sexually maybe, psychologically. That builds a lot of anger, and a lot of self-disgust.
I’ve got to change.
The closer he gets to taking one of these girls and doing what he did to Mary Lou Kidder, the worse he feels about himself, but he thinks that’s the thing that will transform him. He stopped for a year and a half. He gave it a try. But once you go off peaks like that, you don’t go back easily. He’s not going to settle for the bunny slope.”

Donna said nothing for a long moment. “Does he deserve to die?”

“He’ll die.”

“Early, in a gas chamber or an electric chair?”

“That’s God’s decision, not mine.”

“And if you were God?”

“I’d roast him on a spit.”

I took a nice long drink of the Herradura and ice, then ate another handful of popcorn. The minutes ticked by.

“I know I drink too much. I’ll stop when I’m ready to. But right now it fuels me and it contains the flame, at the same time. You drink some and it’s like adrenaline going down. Then you drink more and the adrenaline turns into something strong and inward. Then you drink more and the something strong and inward melts into your muscles, and for a while you’re one, whole, integrated unit. Then you drink more and your body gets heavy and your mind stays light. Then you drink more and you’re asleep.”

“It doesn’t sound all that exciting.”

“I’m just rambling.”

“You’re packing, too.”

“You weren’t supposed to notice.”

“I notice every single thing about you. And I like it when you let your guard down and ramble.”

“The alcohol, though. It’s not about excitement. It’s about… well, I’m not sure what it’s about, really.”

“Maybe what it’s about is about wanting to feel different than you feel. Getting around what’s happened to you. Getting around yourself, seeing around the corner of you. When I was a kid, my Uncle Pollard out in War, he’d drink in the tool shed because my aunt wouldn’t let the liquor in the house. When he’d gotten enough, he started calling himself Jonah. That’s who he was when he was liquored up—Jonah. Even walked and talked different. Wasn’t crazy or mean or sloppy or anything—just…
a different guy
”

“Sounds great. But, what’s
War?
”

“Ah, just another little town in another little holler. West Virginia’s full of them. War, Left Hand, Big Isaac, Tad, Pinch, Ida May. They all got reasons behind the names. Like, Left Hand is on the left side of Left Hand Creek. Stuff like that. Anyway, real drinkers, be they in War or Orange County, are trying to drink themselves into being somebody different. Some of you get good results. I think Pollard did.”

I thought about that.

“You think I do?”

“No. I don’t think you’re much different when you drink. You just talk more and hurt less, I guess. Maybe you’re not drinking enough.”

We laughed at that.

I continued to stare out at the house. Nothing moved in the breezeless night. I waited for the feeling from Hopkin to come to me, but it didn’t. I realized there were still more houses listed for sale by women that I hadn’t even looked into yet. It’s a terrible feeling to realize you’ve been wrong.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked. “How come you never told me much about your boy?”

Oh, no, I thought. But I’d had enough tequila to feel honest.

“I didn’t want you to be a part of him.”

“I understand mat, but why?”

“Sometimes separation is good.”

“Understand that, too. But do you think that I’m somehow not good enough to be connected up with him?”

I felt a little lump way down below my Adam’s apple. Donna Mason’s deep and genuine humility never failed to surprise me. “No, it’s because I didn’t want you to be … ah .. . part of what happened to him. He ended in death and I want you to … not be affected by that.”