Т Паркер - Where Serpents Lie

“There won’t be a house.”

The old fury surged through me as I stood there, realizing that cracking an alias hadn’t helped us much at all. He was still out there — The Horridus, I. R. Shroud, Gene Vonn, David Lumsden, Warren Witt, David Webb, John Q. Public, what did it goddamned matter — and we were still in here, waiting for him to make the next move. I felt like a fly caught in a web, trapped by the silk and knowing that the spider was moving in.

So I kicked the wall of the hallway. My foot went through the plasterboard. When I brought out my shoe it was covered in white dust.

“That hurts,” I said.

“I can see that it might, Terry. Maybe if you smash up your other foot too, it will help us catch this guy. You can’t expect him to go around town using his real name, can you?”

I kicked another hole in the wall.

“Nice to have you back, Terry!” someone piped from Room Horrible.

“Get to work! ” I yelled back, already dialing the home number for Sam Welborn on my cell phone. I told him I was back in the hunt. He said he was happy to hear that, and I told him we had two more aka’s and bad addresses, a botched abduction and a murder. What I needed now was anything he could give me on Collette Loach.

He was silent. Then, “Who in hell’s that, Terry?”

“One of Wanda’s daughters or sisters, I’m hoping.”

“Well, I’ve already got the sisters checked out and Collette ain’t one of them. But her daughters, those girls were grown and gone by the time Wanda bought that place in Hopkin. All’s they did was visit sometimes.”

“Ask around, Sam.”

“I have been. That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Maybe someone out in Hopkin remembers her. Forget the phone company — we’ve already struck out with them.”

“What is it you want to know about her?”

“If she’s related to Wanda. And if so, exactly where she is. I need a phone number and an address and I need it soon.”

“I’m on it.”

Within the next fifteen minutes, CNB, all three networks and two L.A. stations had reporters and camera crews set up in the conference room, along with writers and photographers from the Times and the Register. Amanda Aguilar and the animal control officer had completed their collaboration and a blown-up version of the sketch now sat on an easel beside the podium. He looked like one of those hot new actors — a smartass with a Vandyke and a wispy mustache. I stood at the back of the room with hope in my heart, a hard glance at Ishmael and a secret smile for Donna, who didn’t notice me as she stood on the dais and completed a sound check with her shooter.

Everybody else noticed me, however. Their heads turned as if my name had been announced when I came in. They stared hard, disbelieving that the accused perv was back on Sheriff Department soil. Then they started toward me.

I held out my hands toward them, palms up, shaking my head.

“Talk to him,” I said, nodding over at Jordan Ishmael. “He’ll have the story for you. Part of it, anyway.”

With that, I retreated to Room Horrible.

Louis stood and faced me as I walked in. “The deputies just made the Capistrano address for Lumsden,” he said. “It’s the public library.”

Hypok walked across the parking lot toward his van, Ruth and Loretta out in front of him, the lot filled with the bright bodies of expensive cars and the clean beams of their headlights. We’re quite the family unit, he thought — beautiful daughter, protective father, happy pup. He stole another glance over his shoulder: all clear.

“Here, I’ll unlock the back — the box is too big to take out the side doors.”

“How many again?”

“Three brothers and three sisters.”

“Before you said five.”

“No, it’s six. They’re unbelievably cute.”

He swung open the back door of the van. Luckily, the interior light was weak and unrevealing. He deliberately blocked its view with his body as he climbed in. He reached down into the console next to the tequila and brought out a Mag-Lite, the heavy aluminum, four-battery job with the adjustable beam. Shining the light in front of him, he looked over his shoulder at the Item: two feet from the doors, Loretta in its arms, trying to see past him to the desired box of puppy delight.

“Oh, wow, they’re all sleeping now! You’ve got to see them.” He knocked the flashlight against the seat back, reached forward and tugged at the console with one hand, then made a soft grunting sound. “Oh darn, I can’t get the whole box past this thing here. Just climb in and take a look.”

“Kind of dark in there.”

“I’ve got the flashlight, no problem. Come on up, but watch your knees on the cabinets — they’re hard. Here, I’ll take Loretta and you can climb in.”

Hypok kept the light trained in front of him, but he pivoted at the waist and held out one hand, palm up, for Loretta. He smiled at the Item and looked past it, toward the mall, but nothing at all seemed out of order.

Come on ... hand the puppy to her master ...

The Item hesitated. He could feel the doubt coming off of it in quiet, uncertain waves. The way a mouse looks before a viper hits it

Loretta whined.

“Oh, here, honey,” he said, reaching further, his voice filled with sympathy and accusation.

Then Ruth gave in, leaned into the van and lifted the puppy toward him. Hypok reached just past Loretta and caught the Item by its wrist, yanking hard. The dog hit the floor. The Item sailed over the transom toward him. It yelped. It was midair and starting to scream when Hypok slammed the flashlight into its oncoming head. A sharp and heavy crack and it landed on the van floor, limp and silent as a dropped blanket He hurtled over it and landed in the parking lot He looked once more over his shoulder as he slammed the van doors shut, then walked around to the driver’s side slapping his hands together like a carpenter dusting off, and got in.

Two minutes later he was half a mile away, at a stoplight down on Jamboree, waiting for the light to turn, plotting the quickest course back to Wytton Street, Loretta on the seat beside his.

The Item was completely silent. He got out his bottle and took three nice long gulps — almost gone. He didn’t bother to turn on the radio because the chorus of voices singing in his head now was more beautiful, deep and resonant than anything he’d heard in a long, long time.

Down Jamboree in the comforting darkness, to Redhill Avenue heading toward Tustin, past the old blimp hangars of the Marine Corps Air Station looming in outrageous bulk against the sky — largest wooden structures on earth, Hypok had heard — then into the fringes of Tustin, a quiet little town for the most part, middle America, familyville, good schools and churches, the kind of place where young people bought the homes their folks and neighbors used to own and settled in to give their own children lives remarkably similar to the ones they had had, the kind of place where a Lumsden, Webb, Shroud, Horridus or even Hypok could quietly lose himself with appropriate behavior and never so much as raise an eyebrow, but could hunt a delicious young Item or two or three when it became necessary and still remain safe against the world in his little walled home, his nerve center, his headquarters, his lair — was Item #4 stirring?

He looked behind him for just a second, training the Mag-Lite beam on its jiggling head. Nice, the way the hair and blood shined in the light. Far out in dreamland. Not too far out, Hypok hoped: both he and Moloch preferred live prey. He tapped the light against his crotch then, listening to the solid thump of it against his risen self. Clunk, clunk clunk. Funny. It was going to happen tonight, he knew, the complete act, the full circle of desire and satisfaction and the transformation of one strong human into an organizing God, another lowly human into a lofty angel; the human molt; the private pageant symbolizing the power of life over death, immortality over sin, need over shame. He checked his speedometer against the 35 mph sign whisking by on his right, and let off the gas a little. No time to be careless now, he thought, not on this warm night in May, blessed, bountiful May, when all reptiles move in earnest to eat and mate and assert themselves in the private darkness away from man.