Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) by T. Jefferson Parker Page A

is pale and her eyes are brown. She’s small, perfectly proportioned, unathletic. The first seconds I spent with her were six months ago in an elevator at a press conference, where we were headed from the briefing room to the seafood buffet. I looked at her, introduced myself and shook her hand. I’ve been thinking about her ever since, off and on, no matter how hard I try not to.
    “It’s nice to work together,” I said lamely. “You know, law enforcement and the … media.”
    “Oh, can’t you just call me the news? Or the press, or a reporter, or even a hyena, vulture, jackal or bloodsucker? I can’t get used to being a medium of any kind. It makes me feel so … vaporous.”
    Vaporous, with just a hint of the hollows in the lengthened vowels and the gentle lilt of the “r.” You won’t hear her talk like that on CNB.
    Sheriff Wade smiled down with an avuncular grin. He’s labored hard for good press over the years, and I’ve helped him land an ally in CNB. More accurately, the children I work to protect have helped him into the good graces of the news sellers. Children are hot now. Children—namely the children of the baby boomers, and the bad things that happen to them—sell. CNB is a local news network, but extremely popular here, and getting more so every month. Like other businesses defined by place, CNB’s fortunes and the future of Orange County are intertwined.
    So, what I did next no cop should do, but I had my reasons.
    “Sir,” I said to Sheriff Wade, “we’re going to be getting an artist’s sketch of a Horridus suspect in the next hour. Can I have it sent through to the fax in your car?”
    He put his lips together as if to whistle, leveled his gray eyes on me through his glasses and took me by the arm, away from the group.
    “Easy, media hound. What’s this about?”
    We worked our way toward the bar and I told him about the reptile collection angle and my visit to Steve Wicks. Jordan Ishmael eased in our direction, but Wade warned him off in that silent way the powerful have. I glanced over at Donna and the supervisors, then back to the sheriff.
    “I thought we were going to let this guy operate,” he said.
    “For now.”
    “Comments like that have a way of hitting the news.”
    “She’ll clear it with me. She always has.”
    He looked across the room at Donna Mason. Wade is over six-three, with the weathered skin and dry pale eyes of a rancher. Then he looked down at me. “What do we know about your guy, besides he likes snakes and knows a little Latin?”
    “He matches the physical description on the profile.”
    “Besides that?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Go easy, Terry. We don’t need to be seen swinging at bad pitches. That’s best done off-camera.”
    “I understand.”
    He nodded. “You and Melinda going to come to the ranch Saturday?”
    Sheriff Jim Wade’s annual equestrian show and benefit for County Youth Services was set for the weekend. If you’re somebody, you go. I’d never been invited until this year, though I know that Jordan and Melinda Ishmael used to attend together.
    “Much looking forward to it.”
    “Go ahead. Call Amanda and use the fax in the Lincoln. Here’s the key.”
    “Thank you.”
    “You’re in charge of CAY, Terry. But I wouldn’t go public with that sketch yet, if I were you.”
    “Understood, sir.”

    The fax transmission came through the machine in Wade’s gold Lincoln about twenty minutes later. It was clear and specific, taunting in its ordinariness. I smoothed it against my lap and studied it. Slender face, wavy hair, the glasses. A high forehead. Mustaches and beard. Smallish ears and a mouth that looked neither cruel nor kind. A look of intelligence, perhaps. I’ve seen enough artist’s sketches derived from witnesses to know how much they can seem to tell you and how little they often do. The next page had him without the facial hair. Same guy, but he looked more ordinary, less individual. Without the glasses he could