We took our seats in the grandstand about a half hour later, to watch the hunters and jumpers. I saw Ishmael walk in front of the stand, with a pretty dark-haired woman I’d never seen. If there was anything tense in Melinda’s reaction, I didn’t feel it Penny jumped down and ran to them and Ish lifted her up for a kiss and held her for a moment against his big athletic body. He looked up and nodded at us.
Just then Donna Mason came up the pathway in front of the stand and stopped to talk to Ishmael. She wore a simple white dress and a hat with flowers on it, and she looked to me like something from a very good dream. Her camera crew lagged behind. I could see Ish introducing Penny and his companion to her.
“There’s your PR department,” said Melinda.
“And she’s not even on the payroll.”
Melinda poked me in the ribs playfully.
Donna’s interview with Abby Elder had made the nine o’clock news on CNB. Another good story on the Orange County Sheriff Department Crimes Against Youth unit. I was a little disappointed that Jim hadn’t remarked on it when we came in. Frances had again been our spokesperson. I’d been surprised that Donna had tracked her down so easily for an interview when Frances was sick and hadn’t even returned my calls to her home. I’d watched it with Melinda. But my thoughts were still back in my little apartment in the metro district, and my heart still very much in the embrace of Donna, just as my body had been a few hours earlier. I had watched the segment with Melinda, hating myself.
“Penny seems to grow an inch a month,” I said.
“I’m glad she doesn’t resent her father.”
“I am too.”
“It’s real important that they stay close.”
Donna looked up into the stands toward us, holding on to her hat with one hand as she squinted into the sun. I don’t know if she saw me or not. She was talking to her director and camera guy.
I sat back and felt the sunshine on my hair and neck. March was cold and wet, and April’s warmth felt like the creation of the world. I wondered about my meeting with Jim Wade in a few minutes. Or was it a meeting? Neither Burns nor Vega had said anything. Melinda wasn’t asked to attend. Ishmael hardly looked to be on his way to the ranch house.
Then I had a thought.
I saw a way to understand Frances’s strange looks of two days ago. And Jim Wade’s odd expression the day before. And Ishmael’s haughty, fearful grimace just yesterday afternoon. And all the silent attention focused on me by the department brass.
It was so simple and so clear.
And it hit me with a wave of pleasure: Jim was going to move me up.
To where, I had no idea, yet. But I realized as I sat there in the renewing spring sunshine that all of our seemingly casual private talk in his office of late, all his encouragement of me to turn out at Tonello’s, all the subliminal approval from his inner circle was going to be explained in just a few minutes. I closed my eyes and wondered if this might be the day Jim Wade chose the line of succession to his office. It seemed suddenly very possible that he was going to set me forward as a knight in the new court. I even toyed with the idea of being offered his position, remote as the chances were. I would be so perfect in some ways, and so bad in others. But no matter what was offered, I realized, I was being called into the inner, inner sanctum.
So much had happened. Matt. Ardith. My ill-advised decision with Melinda. The self-destruction and self-hatred of Terry Naughton.
But for the moment I allowed myself to think of Donna. I let myself think of us as husband and wife. I imagined children, hers and mine. And for just that brief moment I could actually feel what it would be like to be happy again.
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes and looked out at the bright red jump poles in the arena. I put my hand on Melinda’s knee and felt her unmistakable low-voltage recoil at my touch.
Jim’s office was a rustic room with exposed timber ceilings, a collection of handsome saddles on the wood-paneled walls and Indian blankets carefully exhibited to show the beauty of their workmanship. Electric lanterns cast an orange light. There was a big stone fireplace with some old Winchester Repeaters over it. The room was large and dusky, given to shadows despite the lanterns. Jim sat behind a burnished oak desk and motioned me to sit across from him.
The county attorney, Laird Hawlsey, was already seated when we came in. He shook my hand and smiled wanly. On my right was assistant DA Rick Zant. Hawlsey had a notepad open on his lap, but no writing on it. Zant slumped down with his legs crossed and his argyle socks showing. I wondered at this odd arrangement of the county’s defender and the county’s prosecutor teamed up in the same place. Lots of power right there, in those two men. Not to mention the sheriff-coroner himself.
“I like this room,” I said.
“Thank you,” Jim said.
He sighed and shook his head. He looked at me with an oddly objective, analytical expression.
“I’m not sure what to do,” he said. “All the years and all the things I’ve seen. And here I am, not sure what to do.”
I let the silence stretch.
“I’ll help if I can,” I offered.
“Terry, I’m going to take you up on that.”
He reached into the top drawer and took out a large pink envelope. Frances’s discovery in Chet’s den of obscenity, I thought, whatever it was that had made her ill enough to miss a day and a half of work. He handed it to me and said, “Take a look.”
The envelope contained three 5-by-7 color photographs. The top one was of a very young girl — prepubescent — fondling an older man. I stared at it for a long time. During that time I felt my heart pounding in my ears like a big drum, accompanied by a whine as loud as a siren. The second photograph showed the same girl and man, in coitus. The last was an oral act on his part. They were partially clothed. The light was dim and carnal. The camera was above them and seemed to maintain the same angle for all three shots, like it was on a tripod. The lens angle was wide enough to get some of the backdrop. You could see the thin line of a cord lying on the sleeping bag in one of the pictures. In the other two, the guy had the end of it in his hand. The photographs were unmistakably taken in the Laguna Canyon cave I used to drink in some nights. I’d never seen the girl before.
I was the guy.
My hands were trembling, but I looked straight into Jim Wade’s unhappy eyes.
“Cute party gag,” I said.
He nodded. All three of them were silent.
“You guys can’t believe they’re real.”
No. They could not.
Wade just stared at me, then down at his desk.
“Sonofabitch,” I said.
“What am I supposed to make of these?” he asked.
“Do you think I’d do something like that?”
“Someone with your face did.”
“Ah, shit, Jim.”
Again, the long stare.
“Just run them past Reilly,” I said. “A fake is a fake, and you can tell.”
Wade nodded again. Hawlsey stared down at his empty notepad. I heard Zant adjust himself in his seat, but didn’t look at him.
“Reilly analyzed them for me,” said Jim. “He’s not one of the forensic scientists at the FBI in Washington, but Reilly is pretty good. He says he isn’t sure. Says they might be retouched, fabricated somehow, like the tabloids do. If they are, he can’t see it. He says they might be real. Real pictures of a real event. He can’t see any signs of tampering at all.”
My guts had twisted around themselves and the terrible ringing in my ears got louder. “What’s Chet say about them?”
Zant looked at me. “He says he’s never seen them before.”
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