Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013)

by T. Jefferson Parker

  I waited. I knew she’d make a mental run for it, and my only chance was to keep her right here in front of me, where decisions could be made.

  “You’ll have to talk to James Rudker—he’s the founder-owner.”

  “I don’t have time to talk to Mr. Rudker. There’s a member of Bright Tomorrows I need to see, Ms. Browne. He’s a member of Dawn Christie, too. And the only way I can find him is by comparing your membership list with theirs.”

  “I simply can’t give it to you. It’s impossible. Look, I signed an oath as an employee to follow the rules.

  Furnishing our members’ names to anyone goes against those rules. And it breaks all the promises of confidentiality we make to our members. We’d have been out of business years ago if we did that. You’re asking me to give up my job.”

  “No. The list goes from you to me. I put it in my pocket and it stays there until I get to my office. There, I compare the names against Dawn Christie’s list, and—”

  “—She gave you hers?”

  I said nothing as I lifted from my pocket the sheet of real estate listings that Frances had given me, and held it up.

  Marcine shook her head. “That’s really hard to believe. I mean, I’ve met Dawn and she’s not exactly … a pushover.”

  “She’s tough as nails. And she’s bright. That’s why she knows she can trust me. When I finish the comparison, the list goes back to you. This list goes back to her. If I get the match, I’ll take it from there. No one but us will know that this guy was a member here. That’s a promise. I’ll put it in writing and sign it, just like you did your employment agreement, if you want me to.”

  “You’ll have to talk to Mr. Rudker.”

  “We think he takes them to his house.”

  “What?”

  “We think The Horridus takes the girls to his house to do his thing. If we’re right, and I think we are, that’s where he is right now. At home. With an abducted five-year-old girl who may or may not come out of this alive. I can make a match in ten minutes, Marcine. With your list. I can get cops to his residence in about another five, maybe less. Without the list, I may as well cruise the Caribbean. There’s a window open now, and it’s going to slam shut fast. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  “Call Mr. Rudker. Please. I’ll write down his number for you. Oh … oh … shit. He’s … he’s actually in the Caribbean. We’re opening an office in Miami and he’s … vacationing.”

  “I see,” I said quietly. I let the reverberations of owner-founder James Rudker’s Caribbean vacation sound their irony into Marcine Browne’s heart. She looked at me angrily, then down at her desk.

  “Ms. Browne, I can make this easy for you. Or, you can do it the hard way. You can look into yourself and ask yourself what the right thing is. Then do it.”

  “Go ahead. Get a court order,” she snapped. “Why didn’t you just get it before you came here?”

  “No court order. That’s not what I mean.”

  “Then what?”

  “Mr. Rudker doesn’t want it known that Bright Tomorrows may have cooperated in a kidnapping investigation involving one of its members. That’s understandable. But how would he like it being known that Bright Tomorrows refused to cooperate in a kidnapping investigation involving one of its members? And what if that refusal came at a time when this … animal … could have been identified and arrested, and his third victim set free?”

  She nodded. “That would be a shitty thing to do to us, mister.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  She glared at me. “I absolutely detest being manipulated by someone.”

  “Maybe you’ll thank me someday.”

  She looked at me with a final beam of resentment in her eyes, but I watched it dissolve into absolute capitulation. “Abby Elder’s girl?”

  “Abby Elder’s girl.”

  “I signed her up myself. Oh … damn.”

  “Go get the list.”

  She shook her head and stared down at her desk again. “I could strangle y—”

  “—Go!”

  I pulled the same stunt on Dawn Christie and it worked. She still had a baleful stare as I left her office and jogged to my car. I threw open the sheets and started looking. There were 486 names on the Bright Tomorrows sheets, and 293 on Dawn Christie’s. They were both in alphabetical order. My eyes swam. The first thing I did was check the ten qualifying home sellers against both lists. Nothing. I looked for Steven Wicks, the reptile dealer. Not there. I tried Gary Cross, who was selling his red Chrysler van because it used too much gas. Nothing. The next thing I did was turn on the air conditioner and aim the vents straight at my face.

  Aarhaus, Blake . . .

  No.

  Aaron, Richard . . .

  No.

  Aaron, Steven …

  No.

  Too slow. Too slow!

  I set the light up on the hood and slammed the car into gear. I needed help and if I drove like a demon I knew I could make the twenty-minute drive in fifteen.

  I did.

  I ran past Shopping Carter without stopping, took the concrete steps two at a time and used the stairs instead of the elevator. I got Louis by the sleeve of his coat and almost yanked him off his chair. I sat him down at my desk with the Christie list and explained the drill. Twenty minutes later we had our answer.

  I didn’t like it so we ran through it again. Every friggin’ name, one at a time. And the answer came up the same: Nothing.

  “So he’s using another name,” said Louis.

  I didn’t answer. I just saw that faint outline of red on everything I looked at. It’s like looking through red lenses for a second. I kicked the lower drawer of my file cabinet, a sheet of metal already crumpled by dents. I mean big dents, authentically pissed-off, hard-as-you-can-kick-the-bastard dents. The thing won’t lock or even close right anymore.

  “Why don’t you call CNB, get it on TV?” someone piped from over the room divider.

  “Go piss up a rope,” I said.

  “Love you, too, Terry.”

  I put my hand on Louis’s shoulder. He was unbothered by my outburst, having seen enough of them to know how routine and fleeting they are. He just looked at the file cabinet, shook his head and stared down again at the list “I wouldn’t join two services and use the same name,” he said. “Especially if I joined them for the reason we think. No way. I’d want to be at least two different guys. I’d want to be as many guys as I could be.”

  I knew he was right.

  “This doesn’t mean we’re on the wrong track, Terry. I’m smelling the same thing you are. It just means we gotta dig him out.”

  Ishmael walked into our area and gave me an utterly disdainful look. Pathos, with an undercurrent of triumph, and his usual dose of loathing. The look I gave him back was probably full of the same. He looked at my wreck of a file cabinet, then at me.

  “A hiker found the girl off the Ortega Highway, way out in the sticks,” he said. “She’s with deputies at the Capo substation. She’s alive. Unharmed, they think. But definitely alive. Somehow, she saw through the hood. Claims she did. Says she knows what he looks like.”

  FOURTEEN

  An hour later—almost one o’clock—I got to talk to Brittany Elder at the substation. Her mother was already there. In a back office Brittany slumped liked a creature without bones into Abby’s lap. The girl’s eyes were dull and unfocused and there was a wide pink strip of inflamed skin across her mouth and cheeks where the tape had been. She hardly moved. Two dark eyes looked at the present but saw only the past. She had dirt on her dress and scuffs on her knees. On a desk in one corner of the office sat a white net robe and a black velvet hood, each bagged as evidence. I smiled at Abby Elder and she looked at me like I was an insane stranger. I wrote on a notepad:

  CAN I ASK HER SOME QUESTIONS NOW? YOU

  CAN STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. THE SOONER

  SHE TALKS THE BETTER SHE’LL BE. DON’T

  ANSWER. JUST NOD IF IT’S
OKAY TO TRY.

  I walked over and angled the notepad up so Abby could see it but Brittany wouldn’t.

  Abby nodded.

  I cheerfully asked Louis, Johnny and the other deputies to leave the room. Johnny shut the door with perfect pitch: slowly, firmly, quietly.

  “Well, Brittany,” I said, “I’m glad you’re doing all right. Your mom was just about sick with worry. I was, too. When my son was your age all I did was worry about him.”

  Abby cocked an eye up at me. She was petting Brittany’s hair. I’d never mentioned my son to her, and I must have struck her as the childless type. I don’t know. She looked a little surprised.

  “My name’s Terry, by the way. Your mom called me when she couldn’t find you. It’s my job to look for lost people sometimes. So, well … I’m just really glad you’re here. You did my job for me. You made me look good. So thanks.”

  She stared into space, unblinking, her fists balled up by her chin, her mother’s arms around her.

  “Brittany, you want a Coke or something?”

  She shook her head.

  Contact.

  “Abby?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I lifted my eyebrows and nodded encouragingly.

  “You know, I really would love a Coke.”

  “Me too,” I said. “So, one for you, and I guess I’ll have one. That’s two.”

  I stood there and watched the wall clock for a few seconds. I looked through the window blinds to the stucco wall that ran behind the substation. Then I started walking toward the door.

  “Me too,” Brittany mumbled into her fists. She wanted what the big people wanted.

  Just like Matthew, I thought. He’d have followed me off a building.

  Or into the sea.

  Abby looked at me and she was smiling with tears running down her face. Brittany breathed in deeply, then out again.

  “Coming up,” I said.

  I left the room and scrambled across the parking lot to a liquor store to make the purchase. I got some candy and snacks, too, just in case. When I came back, Brittany was still sitting on her mother’s lap, but she now had both arms around her mother’s neck. They both looked at me as I walked toward them, and for the first time since six that morning I believed that somehow, some way, sometime not too long from then, Abby and Brittany Elder were going to be okay.

  And that’s why I work this job.

  Here is what she told me over the next twenty minutes:

  She woke up when someone lifted her out of bed. She thought it was her daddy, but then she knew it wasn’t. She tried to call her mother, but her mouth was taped shut. She was jammed hard up against a man’s chest, with her head pushed to his chin, and he moved real fast and his breath was awful. She never saw him real good because it was dark and he had a bright light coming off his head that blinded her. He put her in a white van, and it was a big one because he was standing up with her. He put her in a bag that smelled like tennis shoes. It was tight at the top and she couldn’t get out. She cried for a long time while the car moved. He didn’t say anything. The radio had the news. Then the car stopped and he carried her into a room and put her on a bed. He let her out of the bag and put a dark thing over her head. She saw him for a second then. He had on a baseball hat and big sunglasses and something over his face. The hood had an opening for her to breathe through, but after she shook and moved around, she could see through it, just a little. The bedspread was red. It smelled like old people. They were in a room. There was a big glass wall with a snake in it and the snake was as big around as a telephone pole and about that long. It might not have been a real snake. The man stood and watched the snake for a while, and she saw him through the opening. He had a sharp, mean face and his hair was white and short. He wasn’t big or small or fat or thin. He went away and came back later dressed in something that was scaly. The scales were shiny, like a fish. Silver and gold and blue. He lay down on the bed beside her, with his back to her and he watched the snake. He moved funny. It was like he was crawling on his belly but not going anywhere. He had a hand on her while he did this. There was something up in the air behind her that made clicking noises every once in a while. She tried to scream and shake herself away from him, then he got over her and grabbed her arms and told her to be quiet because his mother was listening. He held real still then. Then he picked her up and carried her over to the glass. He put her up close to it and stood beside her. She couldn’t see anymore because the breathing hole went back down when he stood her up. He said, next time to the snake, or maybe to his mother. After a while he put her back in the bag. Then they drove in his car again and it stopped and he carried her inside the bag for a few minutes. He took her out of the bag and put something over her that he tied at the neck. It was a thing that rustled and felt dry when it brushed against her arms and legs. He cut the tape off her ankles but not her hands or mouth. Then she heard his footsteps on dried leaves and the footsteps got further away. After a long time she started walking. Then this lady came up and asked her if she was okay. Oh, and his eyes were brown.

  And that was all.

  Brittany fell asleep.

  “We should go,” Abby whispered.

  “Yes, you should. The deputies outside will take you to the Medical Center, where doctors can examine Brittany. They’re good and they’ll treat her well. Starting tonight, spend a few nights away from home. It’s going to be a while before she thinks of her bed as a friend. Please let me know where you are. Something that she’s forgotten for now could break this case. I’d like her to meet with our sketch artist as soon as possible. Tomorrow morning would be ideal for us.”

  “Okay,” she said tentatively.

  “It’s going to be all right. I’ve seen things turn out a lot … not as well as this.”

  Abby pursed her lips. “I’m just renting. Should we move?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far?”

  “I think around the corner would be far enough. It’s for Brittany. Not because of the guy who did this.”

  She nodded and stood. Brittany draped over her shoulder like a big doll.

  “The press will want to talk to you,” I said. “You can control their access, to a point. Don’t let them talk to Brittany. And don’t tell them Brittany saw him. Whatever you say, don’t say that.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

  “I know a reporter over at CNB who would handle this story professionally, and with respect for your privacy and your feelings. She knows what information to give out and what not to. She likes our unit and what we do. She’d spread the word, and it might help this not happen to someone else.”

  “Is there more danger to us, if I talk?”

  “That’s extremely unlikely. But there’s more danger to everyone else, if you don’t.”

  She stood in front of me and managed to offer me her hand. I shook it with both of mine.

  “I’ll talk to CNB on my own terms.”

  “I’ll make that clear.”

  I wrote my home phone on a card and slipped it into her purse.

  “Call me tonight,” I said. “I want to know how you’re both doing, and I want to know what time you can meet with our artist tomorrow. I can’t tell you how important a good sketch can turn out to be. She’ll be real good to your girl.”

  “I will. Thank you, Mr. Naughton.”

  I held open the door for her and watched Brittany’s sleeping face slide past me. I thought of Ardith and the way she’d bring Matthew to our bed in the morning when he was just an infant, and how small his head looked against her. Odd how some things hurt so much to remember, but you won’t part with them for anything in the world.

  I called Donna on my way back to the station. I left a Skip message and she called me back just as I was pulling into the Sheriff Department employees’ lot. I told her the girl was all right. Abducted, terrified and numb, but basically all right. I told her she had a scoop on the story—a
ll she had to do was be good to a young mother and love me forever and without condition. I could tell she was at her desk.

  “Be easier if I could see you once in a while” she whispered.

  “This evening, after work.”

  “I’ll be talking to Abby Elder then, if you’re kind enough to give me her number.”

  I did.

  “Call her soon. You can be done with it by the time I leave here.”

  “After Tonello’s, then?” she asked.

  “Let’s skip that part.”

  “Skipped, Skip. See you soon.”

  “I look forward.”

  “So do I, dear man. By the way, your best friend Jordan Ishmael called. He said there was about to be some big news coming out of the department. He said he’d be happy to keep me informed.”

  “What in hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I was wondering if you might tell me. He tries to emit mystery, but comes off a glum bureaucrat.”

  I wondered if he was trying to create a buzz over his Sheriff Department page on the Web, or something else related to his relentless, slow-motion pursuit of the department’s highest position. Maybe he was going to strip off his shirt, oil up his muscles and demonstrate his silent kill moves for the CNB cameras. Maybe he had secret video footage of my banged-up file cabinet.

  “I’ll keep my eyes open,” I said.

  “I hope to see them looking my way, in about three hours.”

  Those next three hours at the station were interesting. First of all, I had a fax from Mike Strickley at the Bureau:

  Terry—Something remote came up, but I’m passing it along anyway. We’re putting together a national index for sex crimes against juveniles, per President Clinton. We hope to have it up and running late this year. It’s going to put some more teeth in Megan’s law. Right now, we’re collecting everything we can get our hands on. I’d discussed The Horridus with one of our people who’s working on the index. Yesterday, she came across this, from Wichita Falls, Texas. Seems they had a guy two years ago, he was driving around in a van and offering free clothes to girls on their way home from school. The clothes weren’t new. He’d let them use the van to change out of their old ones. Two changed, one just took her booty home with her. White male, late twenties to early thirties, medium build, beard and glasses. Three complaints from citizens and that was the end of it. Wichita Falls cops never found a suspect. They hit the child molesters’ registry and came up with nothing. One month later a six-year-old disappeared between school and home. She’s still missing—maybe a connection with the van man, maybe not. Those were the only incidents. Nothing since then and no leads—several subjects questioned and released. But the van, the clothes, the ages of the girls fit your man. If he’s abducting now to make them wear what he likes, it’s a classic escalation. Maybe he split and landed in your backyard. Maybe he wanted more girls to choose from. Maybe he got scared. Maybe he scared himself. Use it if you can. The guy to talk to in Wichita Falls is Captain Sam Welborn. Good guy. Good luck.