Т Паркер - Where Serpents Lie

“Ish told me Frances isn’t coming in today.”

“Why not?”

“Still upset about yesterday, I guess.”

“We’re all upset, goddamnit.”

“Yeah, but no telling what kind of pictures she found in Chet’s den. ”

“Then it’s just you and me on the listings, Louis.”

I read off the next five names and agents to him, complete with phone numbers and the real estate office addresses.

“Double time, Louis. This guy’s brave and getting braver.”

Before ringing off I got Jennifer Clark’s and Bridget Simenon’s numbers from Louis. I had to wonder if either of them might have been looking for “bright tomorrows.” Who wasn’t?

I called Melinda. She answered in her investigator’s voice.

“It’s just me,” I said. “He took another one.”

“I heard. How old?”

“Five. He left a snakeskin in her bed. I... I just called to say things are going to be okay. They have to be okay.”

“What things? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.”

She was silent for a moment. “Well, Terry,” she said. “When you do, you can fill me in.”

“I just... Penny get off to school okay?”

“Of course she did. Why?”

“All right, Mel. Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Last night was really good.”

“Yes. It was.”

I hung up and called Donna. Her secretary knows me only as Skip, and to always put me through. She did.

“I wanted to hear your voice,” I said.

“And I yours. You don’t sound too good.”

“He took another one. A five-year-old.”

Donna’s intake of breath caught in her throat. For a woman who made her living on mostly bad news, Donna Mason could also choke — almost literally — at times of great emotion.

“I’m with you,” she said.

“I wish you were. I’ve got these bad feelings all around and I’m trying not to let them get in.”

“Where are you?”

I told her.

He hefted Item #3 over his shoulder and backed out of the side door of the van. The automatic opener had already shut the door behind him and the garage was lit only by a bare bulb, but it was enough to see by. The blinds on the window were down. He steadied his load as he straightened and walked toward the door to the guest house. The Item kicked and made noises, but its mouth and hands and ankles were taped and it was in the thick duffel and couldn’t move very well. When he was inside the bedroom he set it on the bed and opened the top of the bag wide.

He tried not to look directly at its face while he tied the little black velvet hood over its head. He’d made the hood himself, with small holes at the bottom so they could breathe but couldn’t see. During the brief time it took to fit the hood over its head he got a brief look at it — a lot like the mother — slender and pretty. But dark hair. Its eyes were brown, and wide with unutterable terror. The tape around its head was still tight over its mouth. With its eyes bugging out like this it looked like a rat being constricted by a snake, like his mother had looked when Moloch was wrapped around her. He snugged the drawstrings firmly and knotted them. Then he dug the Hiker’s Headlight out of the duffel, where he’d put it after stripping it off his head once he was back inside the van.

He didn’t worry that it would be able to describe him later because he was hidden behind the oversized, wraparound angler’s sunglasses — polarized to cut glare and reveal trout underwater — the baseball cap pulled down right on top of the frames and the bandanna over his nose and mouth like a bandit. His breath smelled extra terrible, trapped up close to his nose like this. When he had the hood secured over Item #3 he stripped off the hat and shades, pulled the bandanna down around his neck and dropped some cinnamon breath drops onto his tongue.

Stop crying and don’t worry, he said amiably, screwing the top back onto the little bottle. Fresh. You’re going to be just fine.

He set up the three tall tripods and affixed his cameras to them — one video and two digital stills. He used a stool to get them aimed down at the bed where Item #3 lay and get the still cameras focused right. Then he climbed down and took the extra long remote exposure cables and set them on the floor just under the bed where he could reach them easily.

Brittany lay on her side, breathing fast, her heart pounding. She felt her ankles wrapped tight together and her arms tied behind her back. Not being able to move was the worst feeling in the world. Her nightie was all twisted up and half choking her. She had thought just minutes ago, when she was inside the heavy bag, that she might faint from the lack of air. She just couldn’t draw enough in with her mouth taped shut and the bag all around her. And she could hardly move. They were in a white van then, she knew that. He hadn’t put her in the bag until they were inside and the door was shut.

Now she was on a bed and there was some kind of opening near her nose and she was getting deep breams that didn’t smell like canvas tennis shoes. Instead, she smelled someone else’s smells, like when she stayed at her grandmother’s house. These odors were kind of similar — bed smells, blanket smells — sweet and personal. Then they would go away and she would smell something sticky and industrial that she understood was the tape beneath her nose.

The hood he had just put over her was already damp on the side from her tears. She had only gotten that one quick look at him in the sudden light. Sunglasses. Cap. And a scarf around his face. He could be anybody, but she named him Dead Gopher Man because his breath was awful. She’d first noticed it when he carried her from her room to the front door of her house, the way he held her head right under his chin. At first she thought he was Daddy, but she realized quick he wasn’t. Daddy wasn’t that rough, that much in a hurry, and his breath didn’t smell like the dead gopher they’d found in the corner of the playground at school. Daddy wouldn’t wake her from sleep by wrapping a piece of tape around her face. Daddy didn’t have one giant bright eye shining at her from his forehead.

She opened her eyes inside the hood but saw only darkness. She closed them and the darkness got darker. She could hear him across the room, talking quietly to someone.

Like it? I thought you would. See, I can get them to like me any time I want. They see me like Collie and Valee saw me. Like you never did. Oh, fuck you, bitch, and stay where you belong.

Brittany decided again that this was just a bad dream. And, like any other bad dream, she could get out of it by shaking her head real fast, squishing her eyes shut real hard and screaming real loud. And when you screamed you shook your whole body as hard as you could and that’s how you broke out of a bad dream. When you opened your eyes again, you were out of it. It worked. It worked when Finger Man was chasing her and she couldn’t run. It worked when Slow Man came up at her from under the bed. It worked when she was falling. She called it Dream Busting. You just closed your eyes and shook hard, and when you opened your eyes again you had busted out.

She took a deep breath through her nose.

She closed her eyes as hard as she could.

She screamed against the tape, but the scream stayed inside her throat and sounded against the inside of her ears.

She shook her whole body as hard as she could.

She shook it some more.

What are you doing, you little idiot?

She shook it even more than that.

It’s having a fit. What shall we do about that, Mom?

His mom is here?

Brittany gave her body one last supreme shake — head to toe and everything in between. Then she opened her eyes.