Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) (46 page)

“Johnny—can you make it down, then up the other side?”

“Done.”

“I’ll take the center. Louis, take this bank.”

In an instant Johnny was down to the bottom, through the slick of water, then scuttling back up the far side. The last twenty feet of embankment was dirt, not cement, and for a moment he was tearing at it with all fours but sliding down at the same time, going nowhere. Then he found a foothold, got himself moving and made the top. He righted himself, flicked his flashlight beam once and drew his gun. I slid down the dirt on the soles of my shoes, and when I hit the rough cement I leaned back further and rode it down. When I hit bottom I was moving fast but kept my feet under me, ran up the other side a few steps to slow down, then started trotting through the brackish stream toward the chopper. I wedged the flashlight under my left arm, brought out my .45 and reached it around to my left hand, chambering the first round.

The middle of the channel was slick with mud and algae, so I tried to stay left or right. The bridge came at me out ahead, illuminated by Stansbury’s fierce spotlight, and I could see the shining sides of cars parked on the overpass behind the fence. The pale concrete of the channel narrowed, then lowered in perspective, disappearing into the darkness under the bridge.

I stopped about thirty feet short of the entrance. Even from there I could hear the sounds from inside: the lazy chime of running water; the clear and surprisingly loud
doink, doink
…
doink, doink
of a drip that must have had its source high up; and the strange, metallic
whomp
of the chopper condensed in the tunnel then echoing out at me in odd angles from the darkness. Louis stood to my left, above me, and looked down. Turning the other way, I could see Johnny in a crouch, waiting for me to call the play. I wasn’t sure. It looked like a good way to get shot, if he was armed. I wanted him. I wanted him for myself, almost as bad as I’d ever wanted anything in my life. He was mine and I was going to take him. I looked in front of me to the dark yawning mouth of the overpass, moved to the far left side so my gun hand would be free, turned on my flashlight and looked in. As soon as I put my head into the opening, the echoes of the rotors hit me not only from both sides, but from ahead and behind, too. It was like having four ears. But I could navigate the invisible world of sounds by the steady
doink
and the minor sibilance of the running water.

The shiny little creek meandered along the bottom. There were large concrete blocks set in the floor of the culvert, just a few feet apart, to keep the large storm debris from going further downstream. Each one was almost a yard high and a yard wide—just big enough to hide a man. Three rows of three. I ran the light around them: branches caught lengthwise, mud and trash, a car tire. I held the beam just over each block and looked for shadows on the water. For movement. For a shape. For anything not quite right. Nothing. Nothing but the thump of the helo above.

I stepped back out of the tunnel and waved Johnny to go across the street, then back down again. He nodded and sprung onto the fence. Less than a minute later I saw the beam of his flashlight coming toward me from the other end of the tunnel. I waited until he was near the opening, then started in. Three steps. Four. I remembered something that Joe Reilly had once told me—
always look up.
So I aimed my beam to the ceiling and followed it up with my eyes. Ruststained concrete walls. Steel girders supporting the street from below. Bird nests and the dusty remains of spider webs long tattered and unused. I ran the beam down the wall to my left. It was sheer and clean except for the runoff tunnel that slanted up gently through the wall toward the street. The opening was about four feet off the floor of the channel and just big enough for a man to crawl into. There was another runoff line opening on the same side, about twenty yards further down toward Johnny. On the wall to my right I could see the black openings of two more, directly opposite.

Hypok lay in the cool barrel of the runoff line, feet slanted above him in the gentle uphill rise, both arms extended with the .44 firmly in grasp, barrel resting in a pile of debris through which he could easily see, elbows braced, his face recessed within the tunnel but his line of sight quite clear and unfettered. The nice wad of pine needles, leaves and trash not only hid him from flashlight view but gave him a steady brace for the gun.

His sores burned beneath the fresh skin. But he could scrunch backward into the deeper darkness of his hole, or forward toward the opening rather easily, using his elbows, knees and toes. He was tubed. It was like being born. Or like hunting if you were a snake, deeply penetrating the space of your prey, stealthy and silent, cunning and deadly. He rested his chin on the cold concrete and gazed down the length of his fine-scaled arms luminous in the near dark, to his pearlescent hands wrapped devoutly around the fat grips of the .44, then down at the shiny blued barrel waiting in the loose barrier of detritus. He could see the white post of the front sight and the generous rear notch into which you must center the post before you place it upon the target, pull the trigger and blow a hole the size of a softball out of any living thing on earth. He’d gotten the cop killer ammo, of course, Glaser Blues with the compressed #12 shot and the plastic, round-nose design. Guaranteed full knockdown on any hit or your money back.

The flood control channel was a great place to hide, he thought, unless it was raining. He’d found it months ago on one of his evening prowls. If the chopper hadn’t surprised him, bearing down low, spotlight igniting the ground around him like napalm and he just fifty yards from the protection of the bridge, he might have hidden down here for days. Then used the change of clothing, cash and ID he’d stashed in the runoff line across the ditch, and gotten himself to an airport or bus station. Now he was basically fucked, he told himself, though the idea was far less distressing now than he had imagined it would be during his many years doing the things he’d done, knowing that someday it would come to this. California had the death penalty, but they also had good lawyers and lenient juries. No, it wasn’t time to give up yet. If he could get himself out of the tunnel, back up the channel and into the cover of suburban backyards, he might be able to lose the chopper long enough to break into a house, fade a homeowner or two and get their car. Maybe they’d have an Item for him to take.

Through the loose wall of flotsam in which the barrel of his revolver lay, he could clearly see the main channel down in front of him. He could clearly see the white post of the front sight. To his right, a light came into view, playing along the creek bottom, then sweeping back and forth. They have no idea where I am, he thought. He wondered if it was the cop he helped pull the trick on, Naughton, the little hothead weirdo on Donna Mason’s show. Mal. Hopefully. Cops were all basically the same, though. The light became brighter, tapering back to its source. He could hear the slosh of feet in water, very quiet, but still audible, magnified by the hard concrete tunnel.
Slishhh …

Then the beam veered away to the far wall. He watched it focus on the mouth of the runoff line across from his. A dress rehearsal, he thought. He watched the cop. He couldn’t tell if it was Naughton or not. The cop got right up close to the wall. His flashlight was in his left hand. He spread his legs and lowered himself into an amusing, ready-for-anything stance. Hypok could see the gleam of a firearm in his right hand. Then the cop leaned forward and aimed his beam up the opening. He didn’t look in. Hypok watched as the tunnel filled with light, saw the stained brown walls of concrete, the loose archipelago of flotsam and jetsam scattered inside. But the cop still hadn’t put his snout into the hole for a good honest whiff of things. Then he knelt down, quickly, some commando move he’d learned in school. His head was just under the opening and the light went off. In the darkness Hypok couldn’t see what he was doing, but he guessed the man was having a lights-out preview. Ten seconds. Then the tunnel went bright again and the beam had moved to about a yard inside it and Hypok could see the dark silhouette of a head looking in. What a sight. It was a lot like one of those paper targets at the indoor range, but no shoulders, only head, a perfect silhouette. He got the white post of his front sight settled into the notch of the back one and held it steady in the middle of the target. It was easy to do with the barrel on the bed of debris he’d built. A brain shot. Maximum stopping power. Guaranteed knockdown with any hit. The light raked the walls, held steady for a long while, then went out.

The next thing he knew, Hypok was looking across the channel at the flashlight aimed directly at him, weaving a little bit, but coming his way.

The cop veered to Hypok’s left, out of sight. Who wouldn’t? But Hypok could see his light and hear the gentle footfall of shoes on concrete, then the
slishhh
…
slishhh
of the dead man crossing the water, then the sucky sound of wet soles on dry cement again. Silence. Hypok imagined: he gets the light in his left hand and shines it in. And it happened. Next, he shines it around in here, but he doesn’t look in yet. That happened too. Bright. Hypok closed his eyes. Then, the cop turns off the light for ten seconds while he looks up here and tries to see me in the dark. The light, in fact, went out, and in the next eight seconds Hypok watched the scarcely visible outline of a human head not six feet away from him, not four feet from the muzzle of his revolver, becoming more distinct with every thunderous beat of his heart.

The shot was almost unbelievably loud. The echo bounced around the canal at me. I flattened myself against the wall and looked back toward Johnny, offing my light. I heard something land in the water. “
John!
”

Then I heard the sound of a body against the concrete, doing what, I couldn’t say.

“
Okay, Naughton! Creep down!
”

“
Hold there, Johnny! Hold!
”

“
Holding! Holding!
”

John’s voice? He rarely called me Naughton.

His light went on, shining my way. I turned on my own and held the beam down in front of me to light the ground. But I felt wrong, something felt wrong and when I looked up to Johnny’s light I saw it hadn’t moved, it wasn’t moving at all—why wasn’t it on our man?—so I veered out of its path and ran down the middle through the water toward it.

When I got there, the flashlight lay in one of the runoff openings, held in place with a rock. Below the opening was Johnny. Johnny, on his back with his head in the mud, his widow’s peak collapsed over his eyes and smoke rising from his mouth. Far ahead of me now, moving along the bottom of the channel was a figure faintly opalescent in the moonlight, vanishing fast. I brushed Johnny’s cheek with my fingers, then moved out

Louis had already slid down into the channel bottom to give chase. A uniform came jangling down from the other side, skied the last ten yards on his boot soles and fell in behind Louis. I caught them quickly, muttered something about nailing the fucker once and for all and shot past both of them. I am light boned and quite fast, and have much more stamina than a man of my personal habits deserves. But if I had been fifty years old and thirty pounds overweight it wouldn’t have mattered, because I could still see Johnny’s gone face back there in the ugly little stream and I would have willingly run myself to death to avenge him.

I couldn’t outrun the chopper. Stansbury roared past me overhead, raking The Horridus in his light, then banked and tried to stay over him. In the brief moment that the beam caught my prey I saw a scintillant flash of blue silver, like a marlin breaking water in the Sea of Cortez. I raised my knees and
ran.

Out ahead, crisscrossing his way across the ditch, trying to avoid the beam above him, The Horridus was a glimmering phantom gliding from darkness to light then back to darkness. He was blue, then opalescent, then violet, then almost invisible in the night. He was fast, but he wasn’t as fast as me. His hundred-yard head start shrank to eighty. I was flying over that channel bottom like a hawk over a city street.