Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) (27 page)

I
f you’re a regular guy, they march you to the Intake-Release Center, which sits next to the jail. Then they take away everything you’ve got, search you, take off your cuffs, make you sign some forms, try to figure how much of a hazard you are to others and yourself, fingerprint you, photograph you, spray your body for lice—making you bend over naked to get a solid dose between your cheeks—let you rinse in a cold shower, then give you an orange jumpsuit with Orange County Jail stenciled on the back. Then they let you make your calls. Then you go to your tank and the fun really starts.

If you’re a cop accused of sex with children, it’s all the same, but they put you in a small cell alone instead of a general population tank because general population inmates are known to murder men like you. It’s called protective custody, and it’s reserved, generally, for child molesters, those accused of heinous crimes, cops and celebrities. I felt like I was the first three, with a good shot at becoming the fourth.

I made my two phone calls from the Intake-Release Center, from a phone bank built into the dreary wall. It was a little room with a smoke-stained acoustic ceiling and a table with a bunch of phone books strewn across it. Other accused were making calls, some whispering, some whimpering, some shouting, some just standing silent with the receivers to their ears, as if being pumped with some numbing drug through the cord. I hunkered up close to the wall and called Donna. I was surprised and crestfallen that she answered. I didn’t even try to ease into the subject—it can’t be done—and just blurted out that I’d been arrested, and why. I said I was innocent. I said I was being framed. I said there were photographs that had been altered or tampered with and that the FBI would establish this to be true. My heart sank even lower as I said this, realizing that the FBI had likely done just the opposite, and my arrest had been the result.

All I heard for the longest time was the in and out of Donna’s breath, followed by the silence during which I could see her clearly: slender face and sad brown southern eyes, her dark hair curling forward over her pale skin, the swatches of blush on her cheeks, her red and knowing lips. I told her I was innocent. I told her I wanted her to learn about this from me, first. I told her I was innocent again. I told her I wasn’t sure what I’d do—try to make bail and lie low until my defense experts could disqualify the evidence. I told her, matter-of-factly, that I loved her, and, again, that I was innocent.

Finally she spoke. “You want me to cover this for CNB, or let someone else?”

“It’s yours if you want it.”

“That would be, ah … extremely perilous.”

“I’m a good story. Think of it as another exclusive. Stick with me. You’ll get all the firsts.”

“Terry,” she whispered. “
Terry. I can’t stick with you very far. You may be innocent, but we’ll crucify you first and cut you down later. It’s the way we do it.
”

I took a deep breath and felt the walls moving closer around me, felt the acoustic ceiling—stained by years of whispered alibis and desperate lies—lowering onto my head like a lid onto a coffin.

“I love you, Donna.”

I hung up and called the law office of Loren Runnels, an old friend of mine, a deputy DA turned to private practice. Luckily, he was listed in one of the phone books.

When I explained to Loren what had happened, I got one of those surprises you should see coming but never do. I discovered that in spite of being the star of my personal, purgatorial pageant, I would have to wait.

“I’m due in court in twenty minutes,” he said. “I’ll see you after lunch. Anybody wants to know anything, you tell them to talk to me. Hang in there, Terry.”

They put me in a protective cell, in a small block reserved for people so bad even other prisoners hate them. Module J, to be specific. I kept my head up and my eyes level as I looked into the other cells on the way by. The eyes that followed me were curious, resigned, amused, blank. My cell smelled faintly of urine and disinfectant, but the lice spray on my skin followed me in and cut down on the stink. It mixed with the smell of my own nervous sweat. When I heard the door slam shut behind me and echo down the long hallway, a part of my soul withered, broke off and blew away. Those echoes are the harmonics of hell.

At 1:25
P.M.
I was led into a booth in the Attorney-Bonds Visiting Room and told to
sit.

The deputy who led me in was four inches taller than me and probably outweighed me by forty pounds. You look at these young guys—I was one of them once—and you wonder at the predictable relish they take in their power, in the tiny cruelties that help them set the “us” apart from the “them.” You wonder at the absolute authority when one man can order another to sit, like he’d order a dog, and the man in fact sits, just like a dog would.

I shook my head, smiled and sat. Of course, he just couldn’t let it go. The same way I wouldn’t have let it go twenty years ago when I worked this loud, stinking, overcrowded jail my first two years as a Sheriff deputy.

“Is there some problem you’ve got with that?”

“None at all, Deputy.”

“You look like that Chet guy we had in here last week.”

“I arrested him, and we don’t look alike at all.”

“The kids you both screw look alike?”

“Yeah. We like them young, dumb and blond. Like you.”

“How would you like your ass kicked?”

“Whatever fries your eggs, kid.”

The booths offer a reasonable amount of privacy. There’s a glassed guard station behind where the prisoners sit, and the deputy can see everything in the room, but can’t hear much. There’s a table in front of you, separated from another table by a low partition. I watched Loren Runnels come through a door on the other side of the room. He lugged his briefcase toward me and sat. He studied me through silver wire-rimmed glasses that matched perfectly his thinning silver hair. The bald patch on the top of his head was a deeper tan than I had had in years. He had thin lips and bright white teeth he rarely showed.

“You all right?”

“I’m absolutely not fucking all right, Loren. They’ve got pictures but—”

He sat back and looked around in an exaggerated manner, shaking his head.

I looked away from him and felt the anger in my guts and the sadness and humiliation in my heart. How many times had I heard some guy say just about the same thing to me? And how many times had I assumed he was human sludge, a loser, a liar, a creep? I swallowed my pride a thousand times in that one brief moment. Then swallowed it a thousand more.

And I let my attorney lead.

“I’ve seen the complaint,” he said. “The arraignment is set for eleven tomorrow morning. It looks like Zant will be in court tomorrow. He’ll probably ask two hundred bail, as a flight risk. I’ll ask you be O-R’d as a deputy with an impeccable record. The judge can do anything in between, but unless we draw Honorable Ogden, I’d guess it’ll be more like fifty grand. Can you raise fifteen plus collateral for bond?”

I hadn’t thought about the cost of my nightmare before this. Nothing is free, not even hell. I had about eighty bucks in my wallet—which was in the possession of the county. I had four hundred in a checking account, eighteen hundred in a savings account and ten grand in an IRA I couldn’t use without penalties. I had a Ford, eight years old, worth maybe nine grand on the market. I’d put thirty thousand toward the down payment on the Canyon Edge place, to match Melinda’s thirty. It was all the savings I had at the time.

“I can get it.”

“The sooner the better, Terry. I’ll send Alex from County-Wide over—you two work it out. I’m going to need five to get us through the arraignment. After that, we can talk. I’m not cheap but I am good. If you can afford someone you think is better, hire him.”

“I called you because I want you.”

“I’m proud to represent you, then.”

“When do you want the dough?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’ll have it.”

He nodded and looked at me. It was a long, thoughtful gaze, his pale blue eyes trying to sap something out of me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. “We’ll get you out of here, sooner than later. With luck, and without Ogden, we’ll have you O-R’d and out before lunch. Until then, stay cool.”

I nodded but I didn’t say anything. It was strange, very strange, to have a friend. In fact, I’d never been so grateful to have a friend in all my life.

“Loren, I’m being framed.”

“That’s pretty obvious. We’re going to have to find out by whom. Listen, I don’t want you to say any names yet. Not here. Not now. But I do want you to tell me one thing: do you think you know who it is?”

I held his stare, then shook my head.

“All right.”

“When can I talk to the press?”

He looked at me quizzically. “Don’t, Terry. It’s going to be tough sledding, when they get hold of this one.”

“I want a conference.”

“No. And I’ll tell you why. The reporters will murder us whether you talk to them or not—and if you do,
anything
you say can be used against you by the media and, possibly, by the DA. There’s no confidentiality if you start making statements in public. Some defendants can get sympathy through the press, but it won’t work for us with these charges. I don’t have to tell you why. The more you show your face the more you make yourself a target. You think you can handle all the dirt they’ll dig?”

“I didn’t do it, Loren.” I never, never thought I’d see the day when I reminded myself of the sniveling men I’d arrested so many times. I looked at him, then down at the table in front of me. I could feel my mind begin to fog up, then to haze over into a stupor. I felt like a vessel taking on water. I tried to fight it off. I was not sure, for just a moment, that this was actually happening. Loren Runnels’s hard-eyed stare assured me that it was.

“Look, they’re going to dig and dig hard. Whatever privacy you think you had, you can forget. They’ll go back to your schooling. Back to your training. Your marriage, your divorce, your relationships. They’ll go back to what happened to your son. They’ll turn every stone and turn it again. You want to answer for everything you’ve ever done? We can’t look good, doing that. We can’t look good to anybody at this point, Terry, we can only look bad. You’re on the defensive. When we get you out of here we go on the offensive. That’s why you’ve got me. Use me. I’ll tell the media what they need to know, when they need to know it. Right now, you’re going to have to endure all the assumptions people might make. That’s your part of our deal here. It’s hard and I know it’s hard. But fuck ‘em for now, Terry. That’s how you’ve got to think. I’ve got a good team of investigators and we can get you out of this. I know a photographic examiner who can analyze those photos—Will Fortune—he’s ex-FBI and he’s the best there is. I’ve talked to him. He’ll cost you a hundred and fifty an hour, plus a hundred an hour to travel. Your time will come. Be patient.”

“I have to say
something.
”

“You are. Tomorrow you’re going to tell the world you’re not guilty.”

I was arraigned in Superior Court 8, the Honorable Lewis Sewell presiding. Sewell is generally considered to be an old-time conservative, tough on crime, efficient in his courtroom. I had testified before him several times, and always liked the economy of his proceedings. He was a prosecutor’s judge. Now I dreaded him.

The county courtrooms are large, modern and somewhat sterile. They hint of bureaucratic dispatch rather than the halls-of-justice drama you find in older, more seasoned ones. The room was jammed. The back part was irate citizens, all eager to see with their own eyes the cunning pervert once entrusted with the protection of their children. There was a bristling phalanx of reporters in the front rows, at least four sketch artists set up to capture me for their newspapers and networks. I immediately realized the wisdom of Loren’s refusing to let me talk to the media right then. Those people were there to crucify me, pure and simple, just like Donna had said. There were no cameras in Sewell’s court, for which I was profoundly grateful. I recognized people from the
Times
and
Register, OC Weekly,
KFWB and KNX radio and a rather beautiful reporter for CNB, Donna Mason. She looked up from the ranks as I was led in. Her pencil was poised over a reporter’s notebook and the look on her face was unrevealing. She looked at me without any visible trace of personal interest, which sent my guts into a free fall. But, under the circumstances, what else could she do?