Т Паркер - Where Serpents Lie

The Item smiled again, lifting Loretta up into its arms and staring into her hidden puppy face. “Could I have this one?”

“She’s mine! But I’ll let you see the others. All right?”

“Great!”

Hypok stood and walked toward the Item, bending down to take Loretta.

“Can’t she wait with me?”

“Well, I should keep her in my sight.”

“But I’ll watch her.”

“No... I really can’t let her be away from me like that. Let’s see... why don’t you... you know, my car is just right over there, so if you want to take the leash and walk her for me, that would be okay.”

“Can’t leave the fountain, Dad says.”

“Well, that’s understandable,” he said, softly.

Hypok set Loretta down and held the leash. The Item looked sadly at the puppy. He said nothing for a long, punishing moment.

“Actually, I won’t be able to bring them out, I guess, because I have to carry the box, too. Someone else would have to take Loretta.”

He smiled, then offered his most contrite and penitent expression. It was good enough to make God believe him. He held out the leash.

“It’s right over there. We’ll probably be back before your dad even gets his wine.”

The Item smiled too, and stood, then scampered toward his outstretched hand, reaching for the leash.

“Let’s go fast now,” he said.

“Come on. ”

“I’m right behind you.”

A quick pivot of scaled head toward the restaurant lobby: a chaos of happy, hungry humans, the smell of food, white lights against the blue-black springtime sky of Southern California.

Ruth!

You stand in a room where a person was murdered hours ago and the room feels different than others. It feels ashamed. It feels violated. It feels guilty. You tell yourself it’s just in your mind, that you’re projecting yourself into the space, but places like that are different, even if you can’t tell why. They scream, but the scream is silent. They offer proof, but the proof is hidden. They wait for you to make things right. So you listen, and you look and you hope.

I’d gotten out of the department building as soon as I could, after reorganizing some of the CAY task force responsibilities and huddling briefly with Wade over the question of the media and my new exonerated status. We decided not to hold a press conference and not to release the story through Public Information just yet, hoping that The Horridus would continue his computer transactions with me. There was only a small chance that he would, we agreed, but it was a chance worth taking. There was still a small chance, too, that Vinson Clay over at PlaNet would do the right thing and finger I. R. Shroud for us — if I could get him back on the line. The Bureau had talked to Vinson, throwing their weight behind our plea. For myself, I would simply remain for a few more days as the accused child molester I had been, with few people outside the department much the wiser. Easy. At my insistence, The Horridus task force room was going to be staffed twenty-four hours a day with investigators and deputies assigned directly to the case. I had the feeling that The Horridus was about to rampage soon: he struck and failed and he wasn’t going to wait another thirty days to try again.

Wade, uneasy at the prospect of what might happen, agreed to keep the force working around the clock.

“The proaction was dangerous,” he said bluntly. “We got a mother killed.”

“We didn’t kill her,” I answered bluntly back.

“But if we’d left things well enough alone, Terry?”

“With The Horridus out there, sir, things will never be well enough.”

He sighed. “All right.”

Then he got up and closed the door to his office. You could see the heads turning again. He didn’t even bother to sit down.

“I’m hearing the rumors. You think somebody here had those photos made up?”

I told him I was sure of it: I. R. Shroud had been the supplier — perhaps the creator — and someone using my Web name, Mal, had made the purchase.

“Who?” he asked.

“Ishmael talked to Shroud thirty-two times in the last seventy-four days. I’ve got that from two different sources, sir, and it’s easy enough to check out.”

“How would he know your Web name?”

“It’s not a secret around here. I’ve written it down a dozen times at least, in my reports. Hell, Frances and Louis have both used Mal to lurk in the chat rooms. Ish could pick it up without working too hard.”

Jim Wade colored deeply. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against his door. “You two bastards,” he said quietly.

“I kept mine within the rules, Jim. He didn’t.”

“This is all an angle to move up the ladder?”

“It’s all ambition, jealousy, pride and suspicion. It’s human nature.”

“Well, I know a lot of human beings, Sheriff deputies among them, who don’t resort to this kind of shit on the playground.”

I shrugged. “It’s about Mel and Penny, too, and Ishmael helping me get on here twenty years ago. I don’t know, sir — ask Ishmael. He made the overtures to Shroud. Ask him what the hell they were talking about, if it wasn’t pictures.”

“I will.”

“And I’ll be curious to know what he says.”

“Maybe it’s about Donna Mason, too.”

It didn’t surprise me that Ishmael had ratted out my living arrangements to Wade.

“She’s one thing I’d like to keep out of this,” I said. “We’re sharing an apartment. On the salary I’ve been entitled to for the last two weeks, it’s about the best I could come up with.”

He looked at me and shook his head. “She’s turned down Ishmael three or four times, on story ideas. She’s covered you like you were the risen Christ. Did you tell her your Web name?”

To tell the truth, it had felt far more natural and innocent to tell Donna my lurker’s name than it did to admit to Wade that I had done so. My stomach shifted a little. “Yes.”

“Who’s the girl in the pictures?”

“I’d rather not say just yet, sir. I’ll get to her when I can.”

Jim Wade looked at me with his cop’s face, not his politician’s face or his public servant’s face. It’s a wise old face when he wants it to be, filled with a remarkable combination of doubt and hope.

“All right. You know, that special Mason did — the Texas connection — there were some things in there that shouldn’t have gotten out. That was our stuff, Terry. And I know she got it from you.”

“Guilty. Sir, I’m in love with her and I trust her. She’s the only one who didn’t drop me when those pictures hit.”

Wade smiled without happiness. “Her and Johnny.”

I said nothing.

“What I’m saying, Naughton, is that you aren’t a CNB employee who happens to have an office here.”

“I understand. I’ve been trying to help us.”

“You’ve been trying to help yourself. Just in case you didn’t know, the woman you lived with until a week ago gave me her notice today. She’s had enough of all this.”

The Gayley crime scene was bloodless, but grim in its own matter-of-fact way. John Escobedo and I let ourselves in at 6:05 P.M. that Friday night, some fourteen hours after the death of Margo and the attempted abduction of seven-year-old Chloe. It was like the other scenes in the telltale ways: suburban, middle-class, ground-floor residence, no man in the house, single working mother and young daughter. And when we walked into Chloe’s bedroom, there it was, the silent scream.

Johnny walked me through, though there wasn’t much question about the sequence.

“He came in through the window, used a glass cutter and a bathroom plunger to hold the glass. Reilly couldn’t get anything off the plunger, so far. Anyway, he moved the latch up to unlock it, then slid the window back and climbed in.”