Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) (34 page)

I nodded and watched the clock hand move for exactly twenty-three seconds.

“Thanks.”

“Can you get him, through the Net?”

“I’m trying. I’d love to lure him out, but he’s real shy.”

“What about the other way?”

“Vinson? You know where he stands on helping us.”

He patted my hand, then gently slapped my face. “Know something, boss?”

“You’ll have to tell me.”

“I don’t ever want to be you. I want to be a regular guy with no big problems, raise a family, do thirty with the Sheriffs and retire up in Havasu. Fish all day, maybe get a boat. Speed over to Laughlin once a week to gamble and drink. Teach a grandson how to play blackjack, kick a football. Doesn’t that sound better than being you?”

“Quite a goddamned bit!”

He slapped my shoulder on his way out.

Vinson Clay is a lean, tanned, curly-haired man, quick to smile, slow to act. He’s like a dam, all roaring activity on one side, while behind him piles up a large tonnage of silent power. He was with the Sheriffs for twenty years, and all that time we wondered if he was slow or just congenial and content When he left us five years ago to attend law school we began to see the arc of his ambition, and when he signed on with PlaNet legal department as corporate security director—for a rumored salary of $200,000—we sort of gulped and rewrote our opinions of him. At the Sheriffs he’d worked computer crime and PR, so our paths didn’t directly cross all that much. I remembered him as cheerful but kind of remote, too, never the type to fraternize after work or drink with the other deputies. You got his hours and you got his easy good humor, then he was gone, vanished to a home life that no one knew about, and to a career path that no one was aware of. You had to respect him.

It wasn’t easy to get my call through that afternoon. I had to plead with his secretary just to get him on the line, and when I finally did I begged even harder for twenty minutes of his time. I felt like Moe. But it worked.

“I surmise this has to do with you and the charges against you,” he said.

“Vinson,” I said, “it’s got to do with The Horridus.”

“And I’m talking to you as a deputy or a citizen?”

“Just a citizen.”

“Twenty minutes is about all I’ve got, Terry.”

The PlaNet offices were located on a shady Pasadena street, halfway between downtown and the Jet Propulsion Lab. Pasadena is where the money used to live, back when Los Angeles was a young town. The building was on the outskirts of a neighborhood of tree-shaded, million-dollar homes. I was ten minutes early. His secretary escorted me in ten minutes late. Vinson and I shook hands and sat across from each other, with his prodigious curving acrylic desk between us like some kind of crystal clear river.

He was still all smiles, his crooked teeth giving him a hick, friendly look. But Vinson’s suit was of the two-thousand-dollar variety and his nails were either professionally manicured or he spent more time on them than any man I know. I started out by asking how he liked L.A., and he said the best thing was the Dodgers being close by. “I catch all the home games I can,” he said with a smile. “Well, Terry, how are you holding up?”

“I’ve been framed. Framed by someone very good at manipulating images. The FBI has the alleged evidence against me, and I’m certain they’ll find out that it was created.”

His grin was half there now, like something he’d forgotten to close all the way.

“This is the deal, Vinson: I think it was an inside job—inside the Sheriffs, I mean. I’ve been using the Net to talk with the pedophiles and pornographers. That’s my area anyway, and I’ve made good progress. I’ve got the guy who either procured those pictures of me, or maybe even produced them. He goes by I. R. Shroud in the Fawnskin chat room.”

“That’s just a handle, right, not his user name?”

“He wouldn’t be dumb enough to put his user name or his e-mail address out there.”

“So, you’re buying from this guy?”

I nodded.

“You said something about The Horridus.”

“The Horridus is I. R. Shroud. It’s an anagram.”

He ran a hand through his curly golden hair and stared down.

“Is this a joke?”

“Definitely not. The FBI profile says The Horridus will be a networker, a porn collector. Why not a supplier, too? There’s money in it. Thrills.”

“What browser are you using to talk to him?”

I told him.

He nodded and looked down at the paper again. “Is he talking business?”

“Not yet. I hope he will be, and soon.”

“No monitor interruptions from us?”

“Not one. I’ve been lurking these guys for a year and a half, Vinson.”

Monitoring computer conversations, of course, is the way the software industry tries to keep crime off the Web. They always talk a hard game about listening in on transactions, making sure no one is breaking the law. The trouble is, talking about anything is basically legal—short of conspiring to commit a crime—and talking about sex is legal, too. There’s a fine line between talking about sex and conducting business around sex, and the pervs have come up with their own language to sound less suspicious. Guys like Vinson—and me—are always a step behind them. And guys like Vinson don’t want their networks to get reputations as being insecure or risky in any way. They say it’s a matter of First Amendment rights, and it partially is. But the bottom line in business is business, and no Net supplier wants to be known as the one with the big ears. So, tough monitoring is bad for business. Vinson knew this, and so did I.

“Have you completed a business transaction with him, using PlaNet?”

“No.”

“You haven’t exchanged any kind of payment or goods for any product or service, as of this date?”

“Not yet.”

He looked at me now, his smile gone, his suit throwing off a swank reflection of the recessed lights above the desk. “I can shut him down, Terry. I can shut down anybody I want to.”

“That would kill me, Vinson. I need him working. I need
him.
”

“Then you’re in a peck of trouble.”

“I know. If you shut him down, I might not ever hear from him again. You have to remember, he’s not just making dirty pictures of guys like me. He’s abducting children and doing things unimaginable to them. Let me give you an example. This hasn’t gone outside my department, Vinson, so it’s just your ears, all right?”

The way to win a confidence is to offer one. So I told him about Mary Lou Kidder in Wichita Falls, Texas, and what The Horridus had done to her. I speculated that before she died, young Mary Lou was probably subjected to a massive sexual assault. I took pains to describe the pile of reptile feces in which I found the skull of a once vibrant, much loved and beautiful little human girl.

“What if Shroud is punning on Horridus? Different guys all along?”

“Shroud called himself that before Horridus was even known. They’re the same man, Vinson. If I doubted that, I wouldn’t be here. I know you’ve got everybody’s constitutional rights to protect here, and I don’t mean to demean that. But you’ve got a monster loose on your Net, and I’m asking you to give him to me.”

Vinson sat back and crossed his hands on his lap. I could see them under the acrylic table, clear as trout in a mountain stream.

“You are an accused sexual predator, Terry.”

“I need Shroud, Vinson.”

He nodded and continued to look at me.

I did my best to close him: “Look, Vinson. I know the drill here. You take the information to the law department, you balance the risks and the gains, you go to committee. It takes time. Maybe you land on a user, maybe you don’t. I’m asking you to go off road with this one. Give him to me. You don’t talk to the law department. You don’t talk to the sheriff. You don’t talk to law enforcement. You just listen in when I tell you we’re going to be on, and you trace his number in your user directory. You give me his name and address and I’m never heard from again. You pop an animal and I get my record cleared up. It’s just us and it’s right.”

He waved in irritation and sat forward.

“I’ll think about it.”

I ignored my obvious cue to get up and leave. I looked across the clear sweeping desk to him. “Let me just say one more thing, Vinson. I’d still be sitting here talking to you if none of this had happened to me. It’s not about me. It’s not about the Constitution. It’s about The Horridus.”

“You make a good case, Counselor.”

It was pure Vinson Clay—friendly and vague, affirming and noncommittal. The crooked smile was back as he stood to offer his manicured hand across the desk.

I rose and shook it and walked out. And I knew I’d never hear from him.

O
n my way home I stopped by the first four female-owned homes that were listed for sale on the MLS. Time is cheap to the unemployed. More than that, though, it was either follow through or desperation—take your pick. The Nicols residence in Anaheim, not far from the stadium, had closed escrow two weeks earlier and the old owner gone to Hawaii. The Parlett home in the Fullerton hills was a horse property owned by an elderly woman who lived alone—no tenants in the guest cottage down by the stable. She looked at me with gray lonely eyes as we talked. The Haun residence in Orange had a for sale sign and a lock box on the front door. The sheet told me it was built in 1976, with a nonconforming “second unit” bootlegged in the back in 1980. It was in a decent neighborhood, one of those streets with lots of nice flat lawns but not a lot of trees. The block felt kind of open and exposed. The fact that the home was empty would have deterred some investigators, but I slipped into the backyard and approached the second unit for a first-hand look. It was locked, too. I peered through a side window at the hardwood floors, the freshly painted walls, the little kitchen with chipper pink tile around a white sink.

Next was Tustin, roughly on the way to my place in the metro district, Collette Loach’s house had been listed for $225,000. It was a three bedroom with a detached guest unit and “mature landscaping.” It was built in 1948 and it was small—1,300 square feet for the main and another 600 for the guest house. I vaguely remembered the street—Wytton—for two reasons. First, I had played in the nearby Tustin Tiller gymnasium just a few blocks away as a guard on the Laguna freshman basketball team (Darien Aftergood was on that team, and it was one of the few games we won that year, I believe). Second, I’d once arrested a terrified kid who had played a Fourth of July prank on his best friend and set three Wytton Street houses on fire with a smoke bomb. It was a nice old block, not far from the high school, small on crime and big on quiet.

The house was hidden by old sycamore trees that cast the roof in shade, and by a rock wall that came out almost to the sidewalk. The wall was six feet high. It was one of several houses on the street with walls, and they all looked just a little funny sitting there amid the frank and unguarded others, saying, it seemed: stay out, stay clear, stay away. There was a wrought-iron gate across the driveway opening in the wall, and a buzzer box was fastened to the stones beside it. Under the box was the mail slot.

I got out and went up to the buzzer and pressed it. I have no idea where or if it rang. There was no movement from the house. So I walked along the wall, turned and followed it back until I was stopped by the next-door neighbor’s grapestake fence. It was cool in the shade there and when I looked up through the canopy of fresh May sycamore all I saw of the lowering sun were slivers slanting in from the west.

I backtracked around to the front and tried the other side. There was a very narrow pathway between the neighbor’s rose garden and the rock wall. The rose garden was the most lovingly tended patch of dirt I’d ever seen, weedless and rich brown, with dark green bushes heaving scores of color-drenched flowers into the air. An old man stood in the middle of the garden looking at me. He had baggy tan trousers and a green cardigan sweater and a pair of clippers in one hand. His face and head were brilliantly pale, almost blue white.

I said good afternoon and he nodded.

“I’m interested in the house,” I said, only then realizing there was no for sale sign in the yard.

The old man’s voice was faint. “I lost three Mr. Lincolns last week. Lost two Snowfires, two Deep Purples and a Blue Girl. Did you take them?”

“No, sir. I’m not a thief.”

“How do you do?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“You could be one,” he said, but his voice was full of deliberation, not accusation. “Peg can tell a thief from a pilot.”

I shrugged and smiled stupidly. “Have you seen Collette recently? Ms. Loach, the owner?”

“I can’t really see you.”

“She lives here, I think. She listed the house for sale, but I didn’t see a sign.”

“Pangloss. My wife said I’m a Pangloss. She died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Her sons live there. Two of them. Nice young men—a minister and a salesman.”

“Do you mean Mrs. Loach’s sons?”

“Yes. Here, take this. The body of Christ.”

He held out a brilliant white rose with eight inches of stem. I took it and thanked him.

I looked at the wall beside me. Over the top I could see the roof of the house, and the dense sycamore. A power pole stood just behind the trees and you could see where the line curved upward to the pole top and where the utility company had trimmed the foliage back for safety.

“What are the sons’ names?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you describe them to me?”

“I don’t see them often. I only see up close. They look like sons to me.”

“Maybe I’ll just knock on the door,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said.

I went around to the front and tried the gate. Locked. So I walked around to the other side and climbed over the wall.

The house was wood, stained dark brown. The trim was white. The front yard was grass, healthy and trimmed along the cement drive that led to the garage. No flowers, hedges or shrubs. There was a long porch running along the front. No patio furniture. No flower pots. No birdbath or naked cherub or St. Francis or painted deer. A busy guy’s place, I thought: neat, efficient, low maintenance. Two guys, like the old man said? There were two windows facing the front, both with blinds drawn shut tight I knocked on the door and nothing happened. I waited and knocked again. Then I went around to the guest quarters behind. It looked closed up to me. The porch was littered with leaves and the windows were blocked off by thick curtains I couldn’t see through or around. I tried some windows on the side of the little cottage, but couldn’t see inside so much as an inch. The garage was connected: door locked, window blinds down.

I talked to three more neighbors but gathered little. Suburbs can be the most private places on earth, which is why places like Orange County can harbor some of the worst people in the world. Like Chet. Like The Horridus. One of the neighbors said he thought two young men lived there; the others said it was just one. They all agreed that the occupant(s) came and went in a white Saturn four-door.

Looking back at the place in the rearview I was reminded of the Grantley place in Hopkin. But then, I wanted to be.

On my way home I called the listing agent for the Loach house, to find out anything I could about Collette and the property. What I found out was that the owner had retracted the listing just after the MLS sheet went to print. My spirits sank and I cursed my luck. Then they began to rise. What would be a better reflection of an unstable, changing character than listing and unlisting a home in less than one week? The agent told me that Collette Loach had personal reasons for changing her mind. I asked for her phone number, but the agent said she was under strict orders from Loach not to give it out to anyone—a common practice for busy, private individuals, she informed me. All inquiries were to be handled by the realtor. I begged, pleaded and got nowhere with her. I toyed with the idea of telling her that I was not really an interested buyer, but worried that she might have read the papers or seen the news. I toyed with the idea of impersonating another deputy, say, Johnny Escobedo, but I remembered the look of warning on his face at the café. Plus, believe it or not, I know the difference between a moral act and an immoral one, not that I haven’t in my life chosen the latter. But I did call a friend of mine at the phone company in L.A. He was kind enough to check their statewide for me, only to confirm what I had feared: no Collette Loach with a telephone number in California.

Halfway home it was my turn to get a call. Will Fortune from Idaho, with an edge to his voice.

“Good news, bad news, and maybe news,” he said.

“Bad first.”

“The photographs were partially made by your old Yashica.”

My heart fell and my mouth went dry as sand.

“The good news is, I don’t think the final images were taken
exclusively
from photographs at all. They’re mainly digitized composites done by someone with a lot of patience, a lot of skill and some pretty good materials to start with—pictures of you and pictures of the girl and pictures of that cave. Our artist shot the final digitized images with a film recorder, thus a photograph. But he was careless. The edge marks from the original photos of the cave—taken with your camera—were still on the negs, just inside the edge marks the film recorder left. It’s a slick piece of work, but he was off by fractions of a millimeter. That fraction was big enough for me to drive a truck through.”

“If the photographs came from my camera, I’m sunk.”

“No. The final image was
made up
from photographs taken with your camera and photographs that may not have been. It’s image manipulation, pure and simple, and I will testify to that. But it gets better … maybe.”

“Give me the maybe better.”

“The shadow analysis worked beautifully. Those cave shots were taken on January the eleventh of this year. That was a Friday. If you can put yourself somewhere else, it means someone else took them. If someone else took them, you’ve been set up. I’ll testify to that, too. The DA can argue with me all he wants, but he can’t argue with the sun.”

It’s such a strange feeling, to have your heart shooting around inside your body like a balloon with the air escaping.

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“I’d reserve that privilege for Loren if I were you. Good luck.”

Few dates stay in the memory that long, unless they’re special. January the eleventh was all of that: I was with Donna. Newport Marriott Hotel, room 317. Our third time consummating the powerful desire that had grown since those first moments alone together in a county elevator two months before. I’d told Ishmael I was leaving the office, claiming an interview with a suspected child molester, up in Anaheim. It seemed like a small thing at the time: so little risked and so much gained. I did the actual interview the next Monday and dated the notes three days earlier. The suspected child molester was the man who became our turncoat, Professor Christopher Muhlberger, aka Danny, who blew out his brains in despair by the pool in Chet Alton’s rented Orange house.

It was an easy date to remember, too, because it was my fortieth birthday, and Melinda and Penny had awakened me that morning with a cake bearing a single candle that, when you lit it, whistled “Happy Birthday” over and over, until you blew it out.

Danny wouldn’t be contesting our interview time and date, though Danny’s calendar might. University professors keep pretty tight schedules, but he wouldn’t have stated his true reason for being away from his professional duties—ratting out friends so he’d get a lesser sex-with-minors pop—would he?

Ishmael might not “remember” my leaving at all. Why should he?

If need be, I could call Donna Mason to the stand and humiliate her in front of each and every one of her CNB viewers. And she could tell the truth about Terry Naughton, champion of the little people, where he was and what he was really doing that day. Maybe if I gave her the white rose sitting on the seat beside me, she’d be willing. Here, take this.