Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013)
Read Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) Online
Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
PRAISE FOR T. JEFFERSON PARKER’S
“T. Jefferson Parker has created a monstrous villain who makes Thomas Harris’s Dolarhyde, Buffalo Bill, and Hannibal Lecter seem like three of the Vienna choir boys. I challenge anyone to sit down with this novel and get up without having finished it.”
— Elizabeth George, author of
In the Presence of the Enemy
“A harrowing mix of angst and suspense… More heart-rending than anything I’ve read in a long while.”
—
Washington Post Book World
“Powerful… T. Jefferson Parker weaves an intense, gut-wrenching and redemptive story around a character who jumps off the page and into your heart… A darkly unique story that stays open in the mind long after the book has been closed and put up on the shelf.”
— Michael Connelly, author of
Angels Flight
“It’s good to see ace suspense writer T. Jefferson Parker back with a new tale… A grim yet compelling piece of storytelling.”
—
The Chicago Tribune
“T. Jefferson Parker writes with a keen eye and an incandescent moral edge.
Where Serpents Lie
is a compelling, satisfying read and his best book yet.”
— Robert Ferrigno, author of
Dead Man’s
Dance
and
The Horse Latitudes
“Lock the doors and turn up the lights… In
Where Serpents Lie
, T. Jefferson Parker creates one of the biggest sickos since Hannibal Lecter.”
—
Playboy
“The most powerful book that I’ve read this year… T. Jefferson Parker has written a tough, brutal, moving work that I simply could not put down.”
— Robert Crais, author of
Indigo Slam
“A page turner… There are many ways to commit murder and Parker has come up with one of the most unusual in recent memory.”
—
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“If T. Jefferson Parker isn’t the best crime writer in America, I don’t know who is.”
— John T. Lescroart, author of
A Certain Justice
“Sinisterly involving… [Parker’s] first-person narration lets you slide not just beneath his skin but into his soul… I wouldn’t read this one late at night.”
—
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Amazing… Extremely well-written … a dark, gripping tale.”
—
Portland Oregonian
“Pulse-pounding… Parker expertly lures readers into his gruesome tale … and once caught, they’ll stay trapped until the last page.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Enough chills to give a rattlesnake goosebumps.”
—
New York Daily News
“This taut police procedural mixes high suspense with believable characters; it’s a real page-turner.”
—
Library Journal
“One of the most chilling reading experiences this side of Thomas Harris.”
—
Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel
“Even jaded, can’t-scare-me horror readers will shiver at the often poetic Parker’s latest offering… This cerebral thriller scares the hell out of us.”
—
Booklist
“Intelligently written, well-researched … the police procedures are impeccable, the writing blessedly lucid.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Lots of this is old territory, but Parker explores it with intelligence and surprising suspense.”
—
Miami Herald
“My choice for thriller of the year… Mr. Parker is one of the rare thriller writers who has managed to grow with each novel.”
—
Washington Times
“Naughton is a classic loner cop and man of honor in a league with Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe… I simply couldn’t put it down.”
—
Orange Coast
“Parker … has given the reader a villain as memorable as Hannibal Lecter and an unforgettable hero.”
—
Abilene Reporter News
“It’s very good, but what makes it so is not the villain, but the hero.”
—
San Jose Mercury News
“Compelling… Not recommended for the faint of heart, this book will keep readers on edge …”
—
Baton Rouge Advocate
“A thriller that’s not for the squeamish.”
— Harry Levins,
St. Louis Post
Where
S
erpents
L
ie
T. JEFFERSON PARKER
WHERE SERPENTS LIE
All Rights Reserved © 1998 by T. Jefferson Parker
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by T. Jefferson Parker
Originally published by Hyperion
For Rita
On This New Morning
cknowledgments
I sincerely thank the following men for their help in researching this book: Sgt. Toby Tyler of the San Bernardino Sheriff Department; Rex Tomb, Neal Schiff and Douglas Goodin of the FBI in Washington, D.C.; Deputy Gary Bale of the Orange County Sheriff Department; Larry Ragle, retired director of the Orange County Crime Laboratory; Dr. Gregory Robinson of the Social Science Research Center of California State University Fullerton; and not least, Laguna Beach artist Mark Chamberlain. The facts are theirs; the mendacities are mine and mine alone.
ROLOGUE
I
am the champion of the little people.
Their shield.
Their sword.
I live in the world of men and women, because I have to. But my eyes see what the little people see; I hear what they hear. They are my constituents, all the children who are ignored or abandoned, damaged, hurt, exploited, hated, used. They are a secret society and I am their ambassador to the world. Their friends are my friends and their enemies are my enemies. Their dreams are mine, too. We are one.
Crimes Against Youth. CAY for short. It is my unit, within the Orange County Sheriff Department, and I am credited with starting it. There were just three of us, in the beginning. Then four, due to some of the things I accomplished. Now there are only three again, due to one thing at which I failed.
My name is Terry Naughton. I am forty years old, divorced and childless. Once, I had a son. And it was he, Matthew, who first invited me into the world of the small ones. He was five when he left here, and I was very close to him when he went away. That was two years ago. He is the not-so-secret reason for everything that I have done since that day. He is closer to me now than he ever was when he was here. Then, Matthew was living in a body of his own
—
a perfect, brown, strong little body that delighted me more than anything on earth. Now, he has only mine to live through, because I am the jealous protector of his soul. My old man’s body is afar cry from his beautiful new one, I know. But heaven won’t dare try to claim him until I have met The Horridus. I need Matthew inside me for that. I need his strength, his innocence, his laughter, his love.
NE
“S
he’ll like you.”
Fathers, always proud of their girls.
Chet Alton was proud, with good reason. I’d seen Lauren’s picture—a skinny ten-year-old with innocent eyes and a smile that looked just a little reluctant. Fair student. Well behaved. Quiet, observant, gentle.
“Makes up her own mind,” Chet was saying, “on who she likes and who she doesn’t. And she makes it up fast. But sometimes I have a talk with her, you know, because friends are friends.”
Chet turned onto Tustin Avenue. I saw the white sedan in a parking lot, Johnny Escobedo and Frances White watching us go by before falling in. It was a clear, breezy April day, and inland Orange County passed across the windshield of Chet Alton’s car with a hard specificity: blue sky, black asphalt, a white Transit Authority bus with an orange band around it, a row of tan palms with their heads bent.
Not far from here is where The Horridus abducted his first victim. She was found later out in a wilderness park—wearing a black velvet hood without eyeholes; a tunic of gauzy white netting that suggested the angelic; hands taped behind her back; wearing clothes not her own; bruised and dazed—but alive. She was five. I can’t get within a few miles of a place where The Horridus has taken a girl without feeling the hairs on my neck bristle and a cool tightening of my scalp. He had taken his second by the time I was sitting in Chet Alton’s car, and we didn’t have a suspect. Few leads. Little evidence. And no suspect. Yet. Agent Mike Strickley at the FBI was due in with a profile for me the next day. And here I was, riding around with a small-time shitwrap like Chet, doing what I could to get him off the street. It’s hard to keep from getting furious.
“You okay, Art?” he asked me. “Seem kind of quiet.”
“Thinking.”
“Second thoughts kind of stuff?”
“Not that.”
“May as well get the money part over with, then.”
I was hoping to do this at the house. But I took the envelope out of my sport coat and set it on the gray plastic console between us. He let it sit there a minute, then picked it up and gave it a confirming squeeze.
“No reason to count it,” he said. “This is about money, sure, because money makes things happen, but it’s more about friends. Friends are all that matter. People like us.”
Chet looked at me and gave me his fungoid grin, the Chet-likes-Chet grin he uses when pleased by himself. He’s dark haired, pale and soft, has those fingernails that are manicured into hard little flips at the ends. A very clean man, physically. Well groomed. Suits, white shirts, bright ties. Dimples, and a smile that’s morally bankrupt. He sells phone systems to businesses and made a little over sixty-five grand at it last year. Thirty-six, married twelve years, father of one. His real name is Alton Allen Sharpe. Priors for exposing a minor to harmful matter—his own obscene phone calls—pandering and lewd conduct, but nothing in his jacket for the last ten years. That was about to change.
“I’m glad we met, Chet.”
The meet was accomplished months ago through “Danny,” one of Chet’s old friends, who ratted out Chet and his daughter in exchange for the DA’s leniency in charging him. We got to Danny through an eavesdropping bartender, some long surveillance and a hard-earned phone tap. I’ll lobby hard to have Danny’s leniency deal revoked, once I’ve stripped him of every useful thing I can strip him of. I intensely dislike these people. And that’s nothing, compared to what we’ll throw at Chet. My mouth was dry and I had to keep from looking for Johnny and Frances in the side view.
“Me too, Art,” he said.
For right now I am Art Means, an unemployed trust-funder with appetites not sanctioned by society, a man more curious than evil. It was a good cover, one I’d used before. I have the CDL, the credit cards, the initials engraved on an old pen I carry for Chet. He has not connected Art Means with Terry Naughton, and there’s little way he could. He doesn’t trust me, as a matter of course. There is, in fact, hardly a shred of honor among thieves.
Chet made a left on Collins. We were headed for a rented house with a pool that he and his wife, Caryn, maintain for people like me—the friends of Chet. Caryn furnished it. She will be there, with Lauren, when we arrive. So will Danny and one other man. Chet’s program is, Caryn will barbecue and Lauren will maybe help a little, but mostly stay in her room. That’s how she likes it. The men will eat, drink themselves ready and talk. After that, Caryn and Lauren will take over. Chet says we’ll end it by ten, because Lauren’s got school in the morning. He told me it was $1,500 for my first time, a “taster.” After that, $2,000.
My program was different. We had the whole house wired for sound. The backyard patio and garage, too. The outside team had earphones and radios. Johnny, Frances and Louis would make their move as late as they could—we wanted Chet and Caryn and their friends as deeply committed as we could get them. We’d have four uniforms out front for backup, two more on the street behind the house. The helicopter patrols were on orders to stay out of the sky around us unless we called them in, but if we did, they’d streak down like hawks. I also had my contact at County News Bureau—CNB—on standby, because I like to get my unit all the credit it deserves. The CNB cameras have been kind to us so far. There were also two state Youth Services officers, females, to take custody of Lauren. Lauren’s real name is Linda Elizabeth, by the way. I was somewhat concerned about Chet’s other friend—Marlon—who Chet says has a gun and an attitude. Usually, these child rapers aren’t the type to carry. Usually, they’re a friend of the family. Usually, they are precisely the kind of giggling pukes you would expect to find involved in something like this. Guys like Chet.
“This is a good time of year,” said Chet. “All this sex in the air—the birds and the bees and the people. We got these sparrows at home, building a nest up in the eaves. Every spring they come back and do it. And every year, the birds grow and get feathers and look just like the adults—you can hardly tell them apart. Then they leave the nest. It takes them about four hours. One at a time. And while one is out at the edge of the sticks, checking out the world, getting ready to go, the other ones watch to see how he does it. I swear. And every year, the dog sits there and waits for the first bird to take off and fall into the bushes on his maiden voyage, and eats him. That first try at flying, you know, they hardly ever get it right. Then, when the next one tries, the dog eats him, too. Ate three out of four, last year. I set up a screen, but the dog pushed it down. Then I figured I’d go with the program—let nature do things her own way. You interfere with the natural world and all you do is make things worse. You interfere with natural desires and you get somebody like The Horridus.”
His logic escaped me, but I agreed. “Yeah. Seems like you could put the dog in the garage or something.”
“It’s full of junk.”
“Or the house.”
“She’s got fleas.”
That’s one thing you learn fast about creeps in general, and kiddy-sex creeps in particular: they’ve got an excuse for everything, a reasonable explanation why they can’t do this, or have to do that. They’re great rationalizers, and at some level they’re convinced by their own arguments. On a deeper level, most of them are aware that their actions are shameful and repugnant. But their actions, of course, are never their fault, because they build these little reason-structures to justify and explain what they do, and the shame they should feel runs off the roofs of those structures, just like rain. Inside, the creep stays dry. They’ve always got an angle.
Chet turned off the radio. I looked at his soft, pale fingers and the manicured little flip of his nails. They looked aerodynamic. We headed right on Lilac and left on Daffodil. Daffodil was a cul-de-sac and Chet’s house was on the right, the first of three that made up the curve at the end of the street. The upside of a cul-de-sac is you know the exit route and it’s easy to cover. The downside is it’s hard to work without being obvious. Johnny and Frances were going to park on the other side of the wall that ran behind the houses, and listen in from there. They’d have to jump the wall when the time came. Louis was already parked near the entrance of the street, inside a van with a two-foot-long black plastic ant and the words “Countywide Pest Control” on each side. The ant is magnetized and removable. We have another set of signs for carpet cleaning, but I like to use the ant for busts because it’s been lucky for us. Chet looked at the van as we drove by.
“Could get them to spray for fleas, maybe,” he said.
“It really stinks up the house,” I said. The less attention Chet paid the exterminators the better. “Probably not worth it for a couple of sparrows. I guess Lauren must be an animal lover.”
“Yeah. Wanted a horse once. Looking forward to seeing her?”
“Got to be honest, Chet—I am.”
“That’s what it’s all about, friend.”
Chet hit the opener on his visor and up went the garage door. We parked inside, next to a Chevy, and the door closed behind us. Coming in from the sharp optics of springtime, it was a little hard to see. In the corner stood a set of golf clubs in a red and white bag with red-knit head covers. Chet had met Danny in the country club bar. There were five large cardboard boxes, neatly stacked beside the clubs. A few garden tools on wall hangers.
This
garage was not full of junk at all, I thought: the privacy of pulling his car in and out is much too important.
We went into the house. The living room was newly carpeted in light blue and had plump, oak-accented furniture that was heavy and graceless. The couch was beige. There was a tin vase on the coffee table with silk or paper daisies inside. There were brass-framed prints of flowers on the wall. The wall was papered in wide vertical bands of white with little flowers in it, separated by narrower stripes of dark blue. Homey and trite, cheaply cheerful.
A sliding glass door opened to a backyard charged with sunlight. A woman with yellow hair and two men reclined on chaise longues with drinks in their hands. A low table beside the woman had bottles and an ice bucket on it. The pool glittered light blue and silver. A woman’s laugh, uncannily piercing, bounced off the water and through the screen door to us. The men chuckled. When Chet slid open the door, all three heads were already turned our way.
Chet introduced us. Danny, an associate professor of mathematics at a local private college, was fifty and distinguished looking, slender from a diet of cigarettes and gin. He gave no sign of knowing me. Marlon was sad faced, big shouldered and slow. A bright green and yellow Hawaiian shirt with parrots on it hung over him. Late twenties. Beneath his lugubrious eyebrows, his blue eyes were fast and anxious. We didn’t shake hands: sex criminals generally don’t like to touch or be touched by strangers. Neither do I. Caryn was mid-thirties. Her yellow hair was cut big—blown and sprayed back from her face like the
Cosmo
models of some years ago. She had smooth skin and a receding chin made worse by big teeth. After she smiled she closed her mouth down pretty quick, like her teeth might get away. She was short legged and full in the chest, and all the hair made her look top-heavy. Her voice was a rasp, vaguely southern.
“Well, nice to finally meet you, Art. Chet here’s been telling me all about you.” Her voice was friendly and open while her dark brown eyes narrowed to study me hard. “Whatcha drinkin’?”
“Scotch and soda, if you have it.”
“We can handle that.” She started making the drink. “Chet tells me you’re an investor?”
“I do have a few investments. Conservative stuff, mostly just mutual funds. Some munis, so long as the Fed rates stay down. Some company stock.”
“Like it strong?”
“Please.”
“She’s going to like you.”
“I’m still a little—”
She handed me a clear highball glass with a silhouette of the Manhattan skyline on it.
“—Drink up, Art. It’s a good way to get yourself comfortable. Drink all you want, just so’s it doesn’t make you mean.”
“Thanks, Caryn.”
Her dark little eyes bore into me suddenly. “No rough stuff, Art. I mean none.”
“Chet told me.”
“Now I’m telling you again.”
“That’s not me.”
Her eyes stayed hard but her teeth escaped into a smile. “I’m not gonna win any mom-of-the-year award, but I keep a close eye on my girl.”
“That’s the way it should be.”
“That’s the way it is here.”
Caryn’s hard gaze dissolved as she looked over at Danny. He nodded and lifted his drink.
“You know, Art,” she said, “you’re going to have to give me some tips on investing. I want to make some good money. I got to thinking about starting an emu ranch. They’re worth a lot of money. You know, those big birds they got out now?”
“Steer clear of that, Caryn. It’s more like a pyramid scheme. Plus, who the hell’s going to buy an emu from you?”
“One egg feeds a family of five.”
“Where you going to find a family that eats emu eggs?”
“Internet, maybe? Beats me.”