Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) (4 page)

I let Moe out of the backyard and we headed down Canyon Edge, away from Laguna Canyon Road. The road is crooked and uneven, without streetlights and sidewalks, but it also has almost no traffic because it dead-ends a half mile into the canyon. Once we were past the last rebuilt house I stood for a moment on the scorched foundation of Scotty Barris’s place. Scotty didn’t rebuild because he wasn’t insured. It was an old place, the oldest on the street, built by Scotty’s father and uncles back in the early twenties. Now it’s just a rectangle of black cement with weeds growing up through it and some twisted rods of rebar bent at odd angles. For sale.

Past the black foundation you pick up a trail in the high weeds and climb a steep embankment. The trail levels off, then meanders back down to the canyon floor and follows a creek bed that is dry except after a rain. Moe led the way. He’s a real dog’s dog when it comes to the outdoors, always in the brush after birds or critters—true to his Labrador instincts. I’ve never hunted him. I quit shooting things for sport when Matthew died, just another one of those things I used to love to do and then didn’t love anymore. I miss the taste of quail and dove and pheasant. I miss those evenings when I’d take the birds out of the marinade and Ardith would make the salad and rice and Matthew would blunder around in the kitchen with his plastic swords or superhero gear.

We headed up the creek bottom. In the black sky a sliver of moon rocked on its back. The stars looked close. The hills rose up and away in the distance, and their shapes were black like the sky but without stars in them.

Around the first big bend the trail starts uphill again, rimming around the sandstone hill, winding up. It’s steep and narrow. It passes through a canopy of scrub oak and lemonadeberry that you have to duck through and walk with your hands in front of you so your face doesn’t get scratched. I could feel Lauren’s gift on my cheek, and it pulsed hard when I bent my head toward the ground. Then, on the far side of the trees, the trail opens into a nice flat outcropping of sandstone where you can look out to the city to your left, Laguna Canyon Road straight in front, and the dark hills on the right. Below is a long drop. Behind you is a hill face pocked with big and little caves that far-flung families of the Juaneño Indians lived in centuries ago. You wonder if they chose this steep abode for safety or beauty, or both.

The smallest cave on the left holds my hiking provisions—a quart bottle of good Herradura, a coffee cup and a wooden box of Dominican cigars. I keep them in a pillowcase, which is stuffed way back, behind a sleeping bag I bought just for this place. Some months ago, when I first found the caves, I liked to smoke and drink in the big one, way back inside where the Juaneños used to be. I’d listen for their souls brushing against the rock. It was a mess when I found it—all beer cans and trash, an old mattress, skin mags—the usual things adolescents would drag into their den. But after I cleaned it out, no one ever seemed to go there again. Maybe that generation of kids had outgrown the caves and gone on to serious things like colleges or jobs. At any rate, I finally got tired of being inside it, and moved my recreations to the flat outcropping in front, unless it’s raining hard.

I’m not exactly sure why I come here. Melinda doesn’t mind my tequila, or even cigars, so long as I smoke them outside, which is where I like to smoke them anyway. She’s never expressed worry about Penny seeing me do such things, though I have my own concerns about that. In fact, Melinda has come out here with me a few times and matched me drink for drink. No, the reason I come here has more to do with solitude and liberty—the same things that the teenagers used to come here to enjoy. And it has a lot to do with the memory of Matt, which is always more alive up here, more specific and present. When I spend the night here, which I did a lot last summer, I unroll the sleeping bag in the deepest part of the cave and, with Moe curled up beside me, sleep deeply. Often, when I wake up, I won’t remember where I am or how I got here or why I didn’t just walk home to my companion and bed. I’ve awakened other places than the cave and had no memory of how I got there either. This is due to somewhat massive tequila intake. Luckily, I have an iron constitution and always wake up before dawn, whether I can see the sun or not, whether I’ve slept eight hours or forty minutes. And not once in the year I’ve been doing this has a neighbor seen me stealing back to my home in the accusing dark before sunrise. So far as I know. I drink because it makes me happy and peaceful. Most of the time. God created booze to keep us Irish from taking over the world.

Frankly, I don’t sleep out here much anymore. The worst of it was six months back, when Mel was in her own darkness about her dad and I was culminating a year and a half of ardent self-destruction. I have more to live for now. Mel is better. Ardith is going to be all right. Matt won’t come back no matter how bad I feel. My work is more important to me than ever. Beginning six months ago, at my lowest point, I began to find a way to love this world again. I’m fine now.

So I sat and smoked and drank a little. Not a lot. I thought of my last day with Matthew, how bright and hot it was, how the water was so blue and calm. The kind of day that seemed like it could last a hundred years and nothing would ever go wrong. I thought about how limp and cool he felt, then how rigid and strong, then how terrifyingly relaxed. You can play things over in your mind a million times, even put different endings on them, but in the long run it won’t do you any good. They tell us to imagine the world we want to see, but how can you unimagine something you’ve already looked at? Matthew was my first real loss in life. My parents are still alive, still married. Up until Matt went away, I still had the vague, youthful notion that nothing bad would happen to me and the people I loved, for a long, long time. In the last two years I’ve tried to accommodate the facts and the givens. I haven’t been very good at it, but I’m getting better.

I thought of Danny’s surprise ending and wondered if I should have seen it coming. I tried to weigh the heaviness in my heart for him, but there really wasn’t much there. With all the good people in the world who suffer, it’s hard to bleed much for the creeps who suffer along with them. Still, you don’t see an act like that and not feel something for the suffering animal that carried it out. But feel what?

I looked to the west and imagined The Horridus, out there, waiting, planning. White male, with wavy, “reddish blond” hair. For his second abduction he drove a red van that was seen by the girl’s disbelieving mother. He takes them late night or early morning, knows the bedroom, cuts out the screen and a hand-sized hole to unlock the window. Opens it, climbs through and grabs the girl. Then out the door. His first time—the first time we know about, anyway—he was gone with the girl for six hours before her mother even knew what had happened. On the second, the mother heard something, woke up and found her daughter gone, saw a guy get into a red van then pull away from the curb. Both mothers have been single, but we don’t know how he knows this ahead of time. I suspect he’s ditched the van by now, traded it in on another one. Just a feeling. Both girls have had identical vehicle fibers on them. Late-model Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge, according to the second mother. The van is where he does what he does, we believe. The clothes he puts on them are thirty years old and in very good condition. We know this from some lengthy product research and the fine work of our crime lab. In addition to the “vintage” clothing, each girl has been outfitted in a white gauzy tunic attached at the neck with a safety pin. It’s made out of that netting you’d see in a ballerina’s tutu, or a Halloween costume, or a wedding gown. It extends from neck to ankles and gives the victims a floating, angelic look. Each has been found wearing a black velvet hood without eyeholes. The hoods are made by hand, and there are two small holes way down toward the mouth area, probably to help supply air. The first girl, Pamela, was five, and the second, Courtney, six years old. He took them twenty-six days apart. He let them go within five hours of their capture, in remote state park or U.S. forest lands. He seems to know his way around. Other than that we don’t have much. We’ll get an FBI profile early tomorrow, but profiles, good as they are, are still speculation. When I think of The Horridus my heart beats hard and fast and I feel like all my senses have been stripped back to bare, efficient essentials. I feel like I’m growing fangs. He hasn’t raped yet. And he hasn’t killed yet, but I suspect that he’ll graduate to both. What he hasn’t done scares me more than what he has. Criminologists call it an escalating fantasy, though it is not a fantasy for anyone but the dreamer. I’ve read case histories where the fantasy is played out in different ways, different terms. It always gets worse. Now I’m actually seeing it happen, right here on my watch. I know he won’t stop until he gets what he wants. And he won’t stop after that, because he’ll want it again. And again. And again.

Moe sat beside me for a while, alert, then groaned and lay down and fell asleep. When I started back the moon was gone and there was a damp breeze coming from the west with the smell of the ocean in it. As I picked my way down the trail I wondered what it would be like to tell Melinda I was going to leave her, and if I could do it.

I
was at my desk by six-thirty, third cup of coffee going, rereading the note of thanks from Donna Mason over at CNB. It was in my e-mail. I got rid of that one fast—I don’t like my fellows here aware of my doings with the media. It can be a perilous business and I like to keep it to myself.

I was waiting for the call from Special Agent Mike Strickley of the Investigative Support Unit in Quantico. I’d met him eight years ago at an FBI “road school”—training sessions for law enforcement that the then Behavioral Sciences Unit offered to local law enforcement. He’d told me to call them if I ever needed them. After the second girl, Courtney, I knew we had a serial offender and made the call. I sent him the photographs of both girls, their statements, videotapes of the release sites and the forensic evidence we’d culled. That was eight days ago, and Mike had faxed me yesterday morning to say he’d be ready today.

I was pondering another angle on how The Horridus was picking his victims. They were both fair-skinned, light-haired anglos. One with blond hair; one with red. They were ages five and six. They both lived with their single mothers except for occasional weekends with their fathers. They both had ground-floor bedrooms with windows not visible from the street. They both lived in Orange County, though he’d taken Pamela in Orange, which is central county, while for Courtney he’d gone south to San Clemente, near the San Diego County line. They were both abducted, held, then released wearing different clothes, with the aforementioned mesh robes and black velvet hoods. No signs of physical abuse other than light bruising on the upper extremities. No penetration, no bruising, no bleeding. No blood, skin or saliva left on them. No semen. They’d both been found with silver 3M duct tape cinched over their mouths. Acetate and wool/rayon blend fibers on the tape suggested that he carried it on his body somewhere, already stripped off, so as not to make any noise rasping it off the roll. He used a different shirt or jacket each time, a new or almost new one, to transfer as little evidence about himself as possible. He named himself for Courtney: written in felt pen on the inside of the tape over her mouth was the word,
Horridus.

But I hadn’t found the link between the girls that he had found. Age. Race. Single-parent households. Ground-floor windows away from the street. How did he know? We had checked, rechecked and checked again for the connection between the girls, the common plane along which he was hunting them. Different cities. Different schools. Different day care. Different friends, parks, pools, shopping places. Different worlds and different lives. But somewhere their lives came together, and it was my job to find that place and be there the next time he hunted it.

Strickley called at six forty-five and apologized for the early hour. I told him I hadn’t been sleeping well anyway. We made small talk for about thirty seconds.

“I’ve looked over the material you sent me, and this is what I think. I’ll be faxing this out to you when we’re done, so you’ve got a hard copy, but I’m going to run it by you fast right now.”

“I’m ready.”

“Let me tell you something, Terry, you’ve got a genuine problem on your hands. He’s intelligent, cautious and he’s not going to stop until you take him out. This is a culmination for him, an arrival. He’s made the breakthrough, done it twice and he’s not turning back. It would be your call, but if you start putting on the pressure in some proactive way—which is what we usually recommend—we think he’ll graduate to a rape/kill scenario. Or he’ll leave and set up shop somewhere else. This is about control—control over the victims, you, us, everybody. My advice is not to publicize this profile. The more heat he feels, the tougher he’s going to get. But it’s your call out there, Terry.”

“All right.”

“Here he is: white male, late twenties to late thirties. The upper end puts him five years out of prime for this kind of pedophile, but the stalking and planning suggest maturity. Average height, slender. Physically presentable, maybe even attractive, this from the fact that he’s seen the girls and their mothers and not raised any red flags. And from the wool/rayon fibers and the acetate, which probably come from sport coats. He’s carrying the strips of duct tape inside. I’d guess a blazer because of the wool. The acetate is a common liner. I see a good chance he wears glasses. It’s just one of those feelings, but he’s bright and knows it and wouldn’t mind presenting himself in an academic or intellectual light. Glasses have a gentling effect. He might have a physical defect that he hides under clothes—possibly a skin condition like eczema or dramatic birthmarks, herpes, possibly a deformity. That’s one of the reasons he can’t attach to mature females—he’s sensitive about his appearance, but it’s something that
doesn’t show
in street clothes. That’s why he blinds them with the hoods he makes, though the primary reason is to hide his face. Two years of college, maybe more—science and humanities. He had some Latin in school, almost certainly Catholic, that’s where he first heard
horridus.
It’s Latin for rough, or bristling, and it’s used as a designator for animal species, specifically
Moloch horridus,
which is an Asian lizard, and
Crotalus horridus,
which is commonly known as the timber rattler. Look for him to be familiar with reptiles, maybe has a collection, or at least a library. Enjoys the outdoors. Has an extensive collection of pornography, mostly still photos, mostly young girls. He networks on the computer with others like him because he’s after validation and free porn. An actual conscience on this one, Terry—the Catholicism, the way he dresses them before he turns them loose, the way he blinds them, the fact he doesn’t kill them. He doesn’t feel good about himself except when it’s happening. Afterward, he spins down into a depressive phase. No military service. Lives alone. Never married. He’ll have had many relationships with women, none longer than a few months, no longer in touch with them. He’s around women a lot, but not closely—he’s an observer, not a mingler. He will have had homosexual experiences while young, possible abuse by a relative or friend, very possibly by a man involved with his mother. He’s white collar—clerical or retail. He might have artistic talent—visual, plastic arts—something he can make with his hands and see with his eyes. He makes the hoods and the gauze tunics, and they’re done skillfully. He makes good enough money to support himself, drive a late-model van, maybe even own a home, dress well, look successful. His home will be free standing—not a condo type of thing. Probably rather large, fenced and overgrown. Look for a separate guest house or maid’s quarters on the grounds. He’ll follow you in the media but he’s not likely to insinuate himself into the investigation. I doubt you’ve interviewed him yet. He’s taking their clothes as trophies and replacing them with clothes that belong to him—maybe literally, maybe symbolically. Hates his mother because she treated him like a girl, tried to make him behave like one, probably dressed him like one. Rarely saw his father. He’s had some precipitating stressor, something that pushed him over the edge. Death of a loved one. Something big.”

I was silent for a long moment. Most of what Mike said made sense to me. I’d drawn my own conclusions, made my own speculations, tried to imagine this man from the evidence he had left us, and from the evidence he had not. As usual, the experts at the Bureau had left a flatfoot like me in the dust. I liked the body defect and the description of his house. They gave me something physical to go on.

“Still there, Terry?”

“Thinking.”

“Let me say a few things. You have to understand that this guy is a bundle of powerful contradictions. It’s a classic escalating fantasy cycle he’s in. He has the morality he learned in childhood colliding with hatred of his mother, and of the man or men who abused him when he was small. He has this powerful drive to connect with women, hitting up against his vision of himself as freakish and unlovable. He has heterosexual desire mixed up with his fear of women, and homosexual urges he’s still trying to deny, feeding his self-loathing. That’s why he goes so young on the girls, Terry—they’re a way of punishing his mother for bringing him up in an effeminate way—it’s the most forbidden act he can imagine, the most rebellious. But underneath it he’s trying to make a statement of his heterosexual desires, though he’s terrified of women. So he picks women who aren’t women yet—he’s going to make the sexual connection without any adult, human interaction at all. His conquests are so small he can tape their mouths and carry them right out of their houses—the pure control he needs to feel, his way of making the world behave the way he wants it to. Right now he’s the culmination of probably twenty plus years of inner torment and outer placidity. He won’t have any priors. You won’t find him in the sex offenders’ registry. I made a VICAP run anyway, and it came up dry. But he’s made his change. He’s consolidated himself, finally, into a more singular personality. And because of that decision, that choice to move from imagination to action, he’s thrown himself into even greater stress.”

“But you say he consolidated. He’s become … whole.”

“It’s killing him. He hates himself even more now, and he’s going through radical changes in behavior. I’d guess heavy drinking, or maybe an antidepressant, or both. If he wasn’t nocturnal before, he is now. He’s probably growing or cutting hair, growing or cutting a beard, maybe dyeing one or both. A change in wardrobe. Sharp changes in personality, to anyone who might notice, but there’s a good chance that no one will, because he’s alone, absolutely alone in this now. He’ll have cut everyone off, except his anonymous, accepting peer group on the Web. Lurk the chat rooms—you might overhear something. Now this is a bit of a leap, but both my people came up with it—it’s possible he’ll have thought about selling the house. Clearing out. Change of scenery, change of behavior. Maybe he even listed it. If so, he’ll be anxiously waiting for a taker. And while he waits, he smolders. So look for the incidence between events to shorten. According to our models he’ll start raping, then killing. He won’t confess, and if you arrest him he’ll look for a way to kill himself. And of course, if there’s a way out of it for him, he’ll kill you to take it. Exercise extreme caution with this guy, Terry. He’s dangerous and he’s at the end of whatever tethers you can imagine—even his own. Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

“And call me when you score. We can help with an interrogation strategy, or we can drink a long-distance toast.”

I thanked him again and hung up.

The fax came through ten minutes later, but Ishmael beat me to it. Ishmael is Jordan Ishmael, an administrative lieutenant who oversees all of the Crimes Against Persons units, including mine. He’s two years older than me, forty-two, handsome like a panther and smart. He has black hair and green eyes, and teaches a special class in hand-to-hand combat for the Sheriff Academy. He’s big in the way that professional baseball players are big—hands, head, legs.

Ishmael is a genuine power broker within the Sheriff-Coroner Division. His desire for the office of sheriff-coroner is no secret, and his rivals are few and meek. He helped me get hired on here when he was just a young deputy himself. He expected fealty, which I offered for a while, then got tired of giving. He has been a friend and champion of Melinda for as long as I’ve known her. For eight of those years he was her husband. He told me recently, in all seriousness, that if I ever tried to interfere with the welfare of his daughter, Penelope, he would break my neck with his bare hands. I’m slender and wiry and far from powerful, though I believe I could take him if I had to. Maybe that’s just my Irish showing. More to the point, I can’t stand him anymore, and he can’t stand me.

“Here’s your psychobabble,” he said, dropping the uncut fax transmission onto my desk.

“Nice of you to deliver. What do you think?”

“I just said. Babble.”

“Well, here’s for your time. Thanks.”

I held out a quarter by its edge and waited for Ishmael to react. He left.

If Ishmael wasn’t a lieutenant and I wasn’t good at busting the creeps who prey on children, the department might have transferred one of us off this floor a long time ago. A year ago to be exact, when I took up cohabitation with Ishmael’s ex-wife. The fact that we chose to live together rather than marry probably prevented Personnel from acting—our arrangement is off the record, though well known.

Melinda is relatively free of the continuing vibe, working one floor down, in Fraud and Computer Crime. Ishmael still fawns over her. I doubt his sincerity with her. Inside, I suspect, a part of him must hate her. So far as my proximity goes, Ishmael is actually hamstrung by his own ambition: to lobby for my transfer or removal would make him look even more feudal and conniving than he is. I’m the thorn he can’t pull out.

Something else is at work here, too. Namely, I’ve been talking with Sheriff-Coroner Jim Wade a lot about my future here at the department.