Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) (40 page)

Hypok walked back to the van and drove away, unconcerned that Ward would remember his plates, stolen months ago from an out-of-commission Audi near the Bright Tomorrows building in Irvine.

He was a mess. His eyes burned, his lips and nostrils burned, his neck burned, his right thumb was sprained and he had absolutely nothing to show for himself. He held up his right hand and looked at the latex glove, fingers torn and peeled back, a yawning hole over his palm. Same with the left, but no palm hole. He noted that his lucky snake bracelet was gone, fuck, probably ripped off in the disagreement with the mom. God knew how many fingerprints he’d left behind, but he was clean, they couldn’t match prints with nothing, the pinheads. Margo Whatsername wasn’t going to be fingering anybody for a while, either.

Driving slowly, he signaled his occasional lane changes, trying to get his nerves to settle a little. He drank more tequila, but that did the opposite of settling nerves, it just taunted him with its warmth and courage and it made him feel again that consolidation down there in the naughty zone, morning wood, which he’d been hoping to deal with in some depth before the sun came up. It made him want sex; it made him want … well,
everything.

He headed east on the 91, out of Orange County, where he figured some kind of APB would be on the cop waves. Not enough traffic on the roads to feel safe, yet. Just before the county line he saw another billboard of himself. It really wasn’t a bad rendition of his old look. He thought it might actually be a help to him now, transformed as he was into dark-haired, hip and poetic sideburn and earring man. It was a decoy. He watched himself watch himself until the sign turned to reveal the insipid stop smoking announcement on the other side. He wondered what the names of the bones were he’d crushed in the mom’s throat. Whatever. That thumb was sore.

Getting off on Maple Street in Corona, he then went north to the park. Hypok had scouted the place as a possible Item release site, but it was too crowded, too many people, no privacy. Of course it was closed now, but he parked anyway and wandered across the damp grass toward the drinking fountains and rest rooms. Stooped over the fountain he let the water loop up into his eyes and blinked them a lot until the burning eased up. Then lips and nose. He pulled off the gloves and rinsed them, then poured some of the wet gravel from the fountain bed into them and tossed them on top of the outhouse. Then he giggled.

He sat on a picnic bench for a while and listened to the park birds. He yawned. Then he climbed up onto the table and stretched out on his back, with his elbows on either side of his head and his fingers laced beneath it to form a pillow. Let the traffic get going before you head back home, he thought. Another hour or two.

Then his little cowboy pj’s were down around his knees and Collette and Valeen half hidden under the sheet were giggling and oohing, inspecting, probing, playing. All he wanted to do was relish their touch and his feeling, lie there and pretend he was sleeping though they all knew he wasn’t. Yes, that would be enough, to just stay there forever, enfolded within the smells of his sisters and the sheets and the bewildering wonders of being four years old and loved so much and feeling so sweetly, deliciously, mysteriously
good,
peeking out the window where the Missouri sky held a full orange moon and, one night, a pretty little rat snake on the sill illuminated by the porch light looked through the screen at him.

Hypok woke up, startled and aroused. He watched the traffic heading out Maple to the freeway. The headlights were still on but the first light of morning had turned the world gray. This wasn’t Missouri. He looked down at his pants and rolled over, trying to hide what could not be hidden forever, imagining a way to express what had to be expressed. Fully expressed. Soon. He was sad, frustrated and furious.

A few minutes later he was back in his van, heading for home. The traffic was heavy from Riverside into Orange County and there wasn’t a way on earth they would spot him.

About halfway there, he got an idea.

No time for a long predation. No time for the port-in-a-storm stuff. It took weeks to get those right.

But he wanted action and he wanted it now and he was going to get it. God, he needed it. He was aching: heart, head, balls, thumb. When they’ve put your face all over the freeways, you know your time in that place is short. You’ve got to
act.
Hypok decided to just go get some live bait and go hunting. Like back in Wichita, but simpler, something irresistible. He’d had the idea before.

He brought out the tequila and took a long, warm gulp. Most good. Then he turned the jazz back on low. He imagined the big County of Orange Animal Shelter, right off I-5. He’d shopped there occasionally for free dogs and cats for Moloch, but he hadn’t been there in months.

How much is that doggie in the window?

J
ohnny 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.