Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013)

by T. Jefferson Parker

  I was also temporarily content at what we’d been able to do for Brittany and Abby Elder. The Horridus had made his move, but he hadn’t done what I feared the most, and we’d been there fast to get the physical evidence and, most importantly, the physical description we needed so badly. I checked my watch. Right now, as we rode the tram toward the Wade Ranch, I knew that Amanda Aguilar and Brittany were conspiring to give a face to our monster. I felt luck in the air and luck in my blood and I knew that Amanda was going to get from Brittany what she hadn’t been able to get from Steven Wicks. We were going to get him, soon.

  I also felt happy to have truly arrived in high society. They were all there, sitting in the bleachers and sauntering over the grounds—the politicians and captains of industry, the judges and the big attorneys, the publishers and entertainers, the philanthropists and civic leaders, the owners and chairmen and chief executives, the builders, the movers and the shakers. The Tonello’s crowd—but more of them. Even the governor of California was expected to arrive by helicopter for a brief visit around noon. Orange County had voted strong for him in the last gubernatorial race. Not that I really knew many of these people, or really believed that their world was mine. This was merely the beginning of my association with them. But few men—especially those of us in law enforcement—are immune to the attractions of power. I’m not.

  Best of all, I felt like a Sheriff Department insider, one of the handful of ambassadors that Jim Wade had picked to represent us to the top echelon of our county. To the people there at the Orange Classic, on any other day of the year, sheriffs are mainly just cops. But on the last Sunday of April we are the best of the best, the ones who can put away our guns and use our energies to nurture the culture’s finest aspirations—like providing for needy kids—through this splendid, ostentatious, lucrative event. Cops feel like outsiders, of course, not really a part of the society they serve and sometimes die for. That’s an old story. But here at Jim Wade’s ranch they are momentary insiders, powerful players within the system. They’re the insiders, the very core responsible for this extravagant event. Some are chosen. And I was one of them.

  So when the tram dropped us off and we walked under the wooden J. WADE RANCH sign that hung between two massive redwood stanchions at the entrance of his property, my head was big and my heart was full. I’d bought a light-colored suit for the occasion, and Penny’s outfit was new, too. Even Melinda, so reluctant to buy clothes for herself, had found a department store dress on sale—a summery floral print—and bought it for today. We looked like subjects for an impressionist.

  Jim and his wife, Annette, met us as we approached the big ranch-style house. He looked distracted, as I knew he would be, looking over my shoulder to see who might require more personal attention than one of his loyal deputies. He studied me for a split second when he shook my hand, then turned his attention to Melinda. Before we moved past him he leaned up close to my ear and said he’d see me in his study in an hour. I couldn’t tell by his expression what might be afoot. But a little shudder of excitement went through me as I nodded, then gathered my little instant family together and moved on toward the arenas.

  We talked to Burns and Vega, both of whom seemed glum, considering the occasion. It’s always a little hard to see co-workers socially, hard to know which version of themselves they’re trying to be.

  I tugged gently on Melinda’s arm and we eased away. We walked past one of the arenas to where the food and beverage tables were set up. We got drinks, then followed another family down one of the many trails of the Wade Ranch and into a meadow of wild-flowers. There were orange poppy and red lupine and purple penstemon all in bloom, an eye-shivering carpet of color. Big oak trees stood in solitary distance around the meadow, casting black shadows. And all of us humans in our Sunday best, outfitted like flowers, too, roaming through the tall grass.

  We took our seats in the grandstand about a half hour later, to watch the hunters and jumpers. I saw Ishmael walk in front of the stand, with a pretty dark-haired woman I’d never seen. If there was anything tense in Melinda’s reaction, I didn’t feel it Penny jumped down and ran to them and Ish lifted her up for a kiss and held her for a moment against his big athletic body. He looked up and nodded at us.

  Just then Donna Mason came up the pathway in front of the stand and stopped to talk to Ishmael. She wore a simple white dress and a hat with flowers on it, and she looked to me like something from a very good dream. Her camera crew lagged behind. I could see Ish introducing Penny and his companion to her.

  “There’s your PR department,” said Melinda.

  “And she’s not even on the payroll.”

  Melinda poked me in the ribs playfully.

  Donna’s interview with Abby Elder had made the nine o’clock news on CNB. Another good story on the Orange County Sheriff Department Crimes Against Youth unit. I was a little disappointed that Jim hadn’t remarked on it when we came in. Frances had again been our spokesperson. I’d been surprised that Donna had tracked her down so easily for an interview when Frances was sick and hadn’t even returned my calls to her home. I’d watched it with Melinda. But my thoughts were still back in my little apartment in the metro district, and my heart still very much in the embrace of Donna, just as my body had been a few hours earlier. I had watched the segment with Melinda, hating myself.

  “Penny seems to grow an inch a month,” I said.

  “I’m glad she doesn’t resent her father.”

  “I am too.”

  “It’s real important that they stay close.”

  Donna looked up into the stands toward us, holding on to her hat with one hand as she squinted into the sun. I don’t know if she saw me or not. She was talking to her director and camera guy.

  I sat back and felt the sunshine on my hair and neck. March was cold and wet, and April’s warmth felt like the creation of the world. I wondered about my meeting with Jim Wade in a few minutes. Or was it a meeting? Neither Burns nor Vega had said anything. Melinda wasn’t asked to attend. Ishmael hardly looked to be on his way to the ranch house.

  Then I had a thought.

  I saw a way to understand Frances’s strange looks of two days ago. And Jim Wade’s odd expression the day before. And Ishmael’s haughty, fearful grimace just yesterday afternoon. And all the silent attention focused on me by the department brass.

  It was so simple and so clear.

  And it hit me with a wave of pleasure: Jim was going to move me up.

  To where, I had no idea, yet. But I realized as I sat there in the renewing spring sunshine that all of our seemingly casual private talk in his office of late, all his encouragement of me to turn out at Tonello’s, all the subliminal approval from his inner circle was going to be explained in just a few minutes. I closed my eyes and wondered if this might be the day Jim Wade chose the line of succession to his office. It seemed suddenly very possible that he was going to set me forward as a knight in the new court. I even toyed with the idea of being offered his position, remote as the chances were. I would be so perfect in some ways, and so bad in others. But no matter what was offered, I realized, I was being called into the inner, inner sanctum.

  So much had happened. Matt. Ardith. My ill-advised decision with Melinda. The self-destruction and self-hatred of Terry Naughton.

  But for the moment I allowed myself to think of Donna. I let myself think of us as husband and wife. I imagined children, hers and mine. And for just that brief moment I could actually feel what it would be like to be happy again.

  I took a deep breath and opened my eyes and looked out at the bright red jump poles in the arena. I put my hand on Melinda’s knee and felt her unmistakable low-voltage recoil at my touch.

  Jim’s office was a rustic room with exposed timber ceilings, a collection of handsome saddles on the wood-paneled walls and Indian blankets carefully exhibited to show the beauty of their workmanship. Electric lanterns cast an orange light. There was a big stone fireplace with some old Winchester Repeat
ers over it. The room was large and dusky, given to shadows despite the lanterns. Jim sat behind a burnished oak desk and motioned me to sit across from him.

  The county attorney, Laird Hawlsey, was already seated when we came in. He shook my hand and smiled wanly. On my right was assistant DA Rick Zant. Hawlsey had a notepad open on his lap, but no writing on it. Zant slumped down with his legs crossed and his argyle socks showing. I wondered at this odd arrangement of the county’s defender and the county’s prosecutor teamed up in the same place. Lots of power right there, in those two men. Not to mention the sheriff-coroner himself.

  “I like this room,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Jim said.

  He sighed and shook his head. He looked at me with an oddly objective, analytical expression.

  “I’m not sure what to do,” he said. “All the years and all the things I’ve seen. And here I am, not sure what to do.”

  I let the silence stretch.

  “I’ll help if I can,” I offered.

  “Terry, I’m going to take you up on that.”

  He reached into the top drawer and took out a large pink envelope. Frances’s discovery in Chet’s den of obscenity, I thought, whatever it was that had made her ill enough to miss a day and a half of work. He handed it to me and said, “Take a look.”

  The envelope contained three 5-by-7 color photographs. The top one was of a very young girl—prepubescent—fondling an older man. I stared at it for a long time. During that time I felt my heart pounding in my ears like a big drum, accompanied by a whine as loud as a siren. The second photograph showed the same girl and man, in coitus. The last was an oral act on his part. They were partially clothed. The light was dim and carnal. The camera was above them and seemed to maintain the same angle for all three shots, like it was on a tripod. The lens angle was wide enough to get some of the backdrop. You could see the thin line of a cord lying on the sleeping bag in one of the pictures. In the other two, the guy had the end of it in his hand. The photographs were unmistakably taken in the Laguna Canyon cave I used to drink in some nights. I’d never seen the girl before.

  I was the guy.

  My hands were trembling, but I looked straight into Jim Wade’s unhappy eyes.

  “Cute party gag,” I said.

  He nodded. All three of them were silent.

  “You guys can’t believe they’re real.”

  No. They could not.

  Wade just stared at me, then down at his desk.

  “Sonofabitch,” I said.

  “What am I supposed to make of these?” he asked.

  “Do you think I’d do something like that?”

  “Someone with your face did.”

  “Ah, shit, Jim.”

  Again, the long stare.

  “Just run them past Reilly,” I said. “A fake is a fake, and you can tell.”

  Wade nodded again. Hawlsey stared down at his empty notepad. I heard Zant adjust himself in his seat, but didn’t look at him.

  “Reilly analyzed them for me,” said Jim. “He’s not one of the forensic scientists at the FBI in Washington, but Reilly is pretty good. He says he isn’t sure. Says they might be retouched, fabricated somehow, like the tabloids do. If they are, he can’t see it. He says they might be real. Real pictures of a real event. He can’t see any signs of tampering at all.”

  My guts had twisted around themselves and the terrible ringing in my ears got louder. “What’s Chet say about them?”

  Zant looked at me. “He says he’s never seen them before.”

  “Which is what he says about all that other shit we found in his house.”

  “Yes, basically.”

  “He mocked them up,” I said.

  “He didn’t have the equipment to do that.”

  More silence. I still wasn’t willing to believe that my peers even considered that I might really have been with that girl.

  “Sheriff Wade,” I said. Then, turning first to Laird, then to Zant, “Counselor Hawlsey and Counselor Zant. I am going to tell you one thing now that’s the truth. There was no real event. This didn’t happen. And it pisses me off to no end that you’re sitting there thinking it did. Just for the record—fuck all of you.”

  I stood up. In the second or two that passed next I could easily have attacked any of them. In fact, only their number deterred me: I couldn’t decide which one to throttle first.

  The pictures and envelope hit the floor. The chair fell over behind me. My legs wobbled. My ears rang. I went to the window and looked through the curtains at the pure April sunshine beaming down on the riding arenas, the people in their colorful clothes, the tawny flanks of a jumper clearing the fence.

  “Do you know the girl?” Zant asked.

  “Of course I don’t, Rick.”

  “I have to ask you these things. Have you seen her before?”

  “I’ve never seen her, period.”

  “Do you recognize the scene?” asked Hawlsey.

  “It’s a cave out in Laguna Canyon. I slept in it a few times. Without girls.”

  Jim Wade’s sigh hit me with gale force. I could hear one of the lawyers collecting the pictures off the floor.

  “I’ll take you there. You can go through it,” I said. “You won’t find—”

  “We have,” said Jim. “Hairs like the girl’s. Hair like yours. Fibers. Girl’s underwear. The mattress that’s in the pictures. The sleeping bag.”

  My mind was burning itself alive, trying to keep up with the information.

  “I took these pictures of myself?”

  Silence again.

  “Come on.”

  “They’re convincing, Terry,” said Zant. “You look at them and they look real. And once presented with them, we have to do something. We can’t just toss them out because you work with us. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Who knows about this?”

  No response. They were going to make me work.

  “Melinda?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t know,” said Jim. “I talked to her but she doesn’t know. I got the location of the cave from her. Some other things. She doesn’t know it all. I thought … well. That part of it is between you and Melinda, Terry.”

  “That’s really kind of you,” I managed. “Ishmael?”

  “Ishmael, Vega and Woolton,” said Jim. “Hawlsey and Zant. Johnny and Louis. That was my decision. Nobody else.”

  “Don’t forget Frances,” I said.

  “It killed her to bring these things to me, Terry.”

  “It hasn’t done a lot for my mood, either,” I said quietly. Outside another sun-blanched horse glided through the sky over the poles. The applause came muffled through the glass. I saw a helicopter descending from the blue—the governor, no doubt, arriving in time to watch my execution.

  “So, what are you going to do, Sheriff?”

  “Just take a week of special duty, at home. It will give us the time we need. It will keep you paid. It will keep things quiet for a while.”

  “The Horridus.”

  “CAY can work The Horridus.”

  “While I sit on my butt for eight hours a day?”

  “I thought of a leave of absence, due to the stress of watching your friend blow out his brains in Chet’s backyard. A suspension would be good insurance, but bad faith. An arrest wasn’t out of the question, based on what you’re holding in your hand there and the way we found them. I’d be happy if I were you. I’m going to move carefully. Those are copies. I’ve sent the originals to the FBI. Reilly is processing what we found in the cave. If a case arises against you, Terry, we’re going to prosecute it If it doesn’t, we’re going to owe you a rather huge apology.”

  “For what it’s worth,” said Zant, “I hope it’s the latter.”

  Somehow, my nerves had repaired themselves and the ringing had left my ears. I felt blanched and drained, but in control of my own parts.

  “What about the press?” I asked.

  “They don’t need to know.�
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  “They’ll find out.”

  “Not from us, they won’t,” said Wade. “You’re on special duty. That’s all it is right now, Terry.”

  There was a heavy silence in the dark room, undercut with the cheers from outside. Hawlsey was still buried in his blank notepad. Zant sat forward like a fan at a boxing match.

  Sheriff Wade was rigid in his chair, with his arms on the desk and his head cocked just slightly as he looked at me. “Naughton, stay low. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be what it looks like. That’s for your sake as well as my own.”

  “It already isn’t what it looks like,” I said.

  “Noted.”

  I set up the chair I’d knocked over. “You think I did it? Jim? Rick? Laird?”

  The question hung in the air like the silence after a scream. No one spoke.

  “I’ll tell you something,” I said. “You gloomy chickenshit bureaucrats are all going to regret this. A lot. I promise. Not quite as much as the sonofabitch who did it, maybe, but a lot.”

  “Naughton,” said Wade, “give us the same respect we’re trying to give you. You’re a good investigator and a decent-seeming guy, when you’re not sinking your teeth into somebody’s ankle. You are also not in possession of photographs picturing me with underage girls. I have those, of you. That means I could roll your head and wash my hands right now, and save a big gamble. The CAY unit leader doesn’t show up in photographs with girls. It stinks up my entire department. If the media finds out, and I’m not doing something, my head rolls right alongside yours, down the ramp and into the basket. So I’m doing something. I’m gathering the facts. Lay low. Let the facts come in. If you’re scared of what we’ll find, then sell your house and get the best lawyers you can afford. If you’re not, you might actually think about cooperating. In the meantime, stay out of my sight. And when the Classic is over, get off my property.”

  I told Melinda right after dinner. Penny was at the neighbors’ house, playing with a friend. Mel set the plate she was rinsing into the sink. For the longest time she just stood there, arms still in the rinse water, the faucet running, her back to me. When she turned her face to me it was a classic translation of the mask of tragedy.