Т Паркер - Where Serpents Lie

“I’m on special duty. House arrest for my usual shift, eight hours a day. Full pay. That’s funny, isn’t it? While he collects evidence to charge me. Hawlsey and Zant are leading the charge.”

“Good God.”

It was just us and the silence of the house for a long while.

“I’d like a minute to just sit here,” she said. “Alone.”

“I’ll walk Moe up the hill. When I come back, I’ll do whatever you’ve decided is best.”

I had no idea I could get that far into the wilder recesses of Laguna Canyon so quickly. I wondered what the neighbors must have thought as I ran along the road with Moe on his leash. Then I thought, who cared? When I passed the burned foundation of Scotty Barris’s old home I cut off through the brush and onto the trail.

Moe was dragging by the time I made the cave, but I felt fresh and alert. The first thing I checked was my little cache of vices, near the cave. My sleeping bag was gone. My cigars, tequila and pillowcase were gone. Booked into evidence?

Inside, it was obvious that someone had been there. I couldn’t itemize all my furnishings from memory, but I noticed my old foam egg-crate pad, a GI surplus wool blanket and my propane lantern were all missing. I could tell that the fire ring had been used because the rocks were arranged in a neat circle that I’d never bothered to maintain, and because of the pile of blackened ashes in its center. I could smell the recent fire. Even the uncertain light was enough to show me that there were footprints everywhere. With some dread I shone a flashlight on the cave belly and saw the gray carbon fingerprint dust still on the harder surfaces of the rock.

I shuddered. If you’ve ever had a guilty secret, you know the naked shame you feel when you are exposed to the merciless light of day. And it’s all the more shocking when you realize you never really felt guilty about it until someone knows.

I stood there and wondered who I had told about the cave. Melinda and Penny. Donna. Johnny and Louis, I think. Ardith. Frances? I couldn’t be sure. Mel and Penny were the only ones I’d actually brought here. It was amazing to me how lax I’d been in talking about the place. I’d never considered the cave, or what I did in it, as something to hide. Not that I mentioned the blackouts, or the mornings when I’d awaken somewhere else altogether. But those were a thing of the past, right? Now all I could see as I stood there inside it was a blond-headed girl of maybe eight, engaging my own hungry, lascivious body.

And as I saw that horrible image in my mind, suddenly I had a thought that made all of this even worse. Considerably worse. I had to brace my hands on the cave wall to keep myself up, and lower my head for air. I breathed deeply to purge my mind of the image, but I couldn’t. Because the girl in the photographs looked familiar. I couldn’t say where or when, but I believed I had seen her before. I knew I had. But where? Somehow, my presence in the cave triggered the memory, a memory that wouldn’t come to me as I sat in Jim Wade’s ranch-house office, confronted with false evidence of my own criminal pathology.

I turned and looked around me, trying to picture her here. I tried to picture myself here. It was easy to do. But were the images in my mind’s eye scenes of what had happened, or scenes appropriated from doctored photographs by my desperate memory?

I stared blankly into the dead ashes in me fire ring. I stared hard while my chest ached and my stomach tightened into an even tighter knot. When I finally blinked, I could see clearly again. I could see clearly enough to understand that the first forty years of my life had just tapered to this tremulous point, then vanished. I was a man bisected, a man whose history had not prepared him for his future. And I knew that nothing to come would be anything like what had gone before. I was over. And I was just beginning. I stared into the dead fire, a new man with new eyes. How badly I wanted to be the old one.

Terry Naughton, I thought, champion of the little people, always on the case. Film at eleven. Donna.

My head felt light and my breathing was short and shallow as I walked back outside to the gathering dusk.

The image of Lauren Sharpe came to my mind. With her face next to mine and her teeth sunk into my cheek. No, it wasn’t Lauren in those pictures. But it was someone I’d seen.

I didn’t do that, I told myself. I didn’t do that. I didn’t.

Ishmael was leaning against the big pepper tree in our front yard when I walked up the driveway. I hardly noticed him at first, in the faltering light. He had one foot resting against the trunk, and his arms crossed over his chest. I noted that Melinda’s car was gone. He looked at me with his green panther’s eyes.

“Now that things are out in the open, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” he said. His tone was jocular, amused.

“You’re a feeling human being, Ish.”

“And that if I ever see you in the general vicinity of Penelope again, I’ll kill you.”

“Whatever blows your hair back.”

“It’d make me happy, you little bagga shit.”

With this, he straightened off the tree and, watching me like a mailman watches a dog, walked across the yard, hopped the little fence in one graceful motion and moved toward his car.

I watched him drive off before letting myself into the house.

Melinda’s note was taped to the hardwood floor just inside our front door:

Dear Terry,

I’m looking for a way to believe in you. Maybe I’ll find one, because I love and respect you. I don’t see any way that your being here would be good for any of us. I have Penny to consider. Take whatever you’ll need and go. I’ll be here for you. I’ll be there for you. If you’re the man I think you are maybe we’ll laugh about this someday, after we sue the shit out of somebody. If you’re not, you must get the help you need. I’ll explain this to Penelope as best I can. God be with you, with all of us.

I packed a few things. Then I went to the liquor store, drove to the little apartment in the metro district, let myself in, opened the windows. I sat at a table in the dining nook and looked out. The Performing Arts Center was lit up like a shrine. The bean field was an empty black rectangle. Beyond it flowed a river of headlights, and the big hotels rose into the night and the palm trees stood erect and motionless. The dark glass of the business towers caught the lesser lights below, wearing them like medals. Tonello’s glowed with self-importance, and I could see the valets standing just under the awning in their red vests and bow ties.

I got out a notepad and made a list of the people I thought might have the opportunity to do this to me. Included were Jordan Ishmael, Jim Wade, Frances White, Johnny Escobedo and Louis Briar. I added Ardith Naughton, Melinda Vickers and Donna Mason. I added Burns, Woolton and Vega. But who knew about the cave, or could have found out about it? I hadn’t told Wade, Ish or either of the undersheriffs directly, but any one of them could conceivably have learned about it, located it and salted it. Right? I added three fat question marks, for the people who might have been told about the cave by the people I had told. They could be anybody. Then I put the names together in various combinations, like cards in a poker hand. Even with knowledge of the cave, who had the opportunity to slip the falsified photos into Chet’s den? That eliminated Ardith and Donna. And even with knowledge and opportunity, who had the technical skill to create such documents? That eliminated only Melinda, positively, because I truly didn’t know what secret skills my co-workers might possess. Anything was possible. But even with knowledge, opportunity and technical capacity, who had a motive to see my career, my relationships — perhaps my life — destroyed? I could only write down one name for certain: Ishmael.