Т Паркер - Where Serpents Lie

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?

Johnny 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.