“This is for you, John — The Horridus has another handle. I. R. Shroud.”
“How do you know that?” he asked quietly, still askance at Terry Naughton, former head of CAY, former champion of the little people.
I took a napkin out of the plastic holder and the pen out of my pocket. I wrote:
HORRIDUS = I. R. SHROUD
He looked at the words for a long moment. “It’s an anagram. Same letters. I’ll be damned. But where’d you get the name?”
I told him about the killing field at Caspers Wilderness Park, the bathroom, the bag, citation and guardian serpent.
Then I slid the bundled pillowcase over to him and told him it was all his.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “The snake’s dead. Get Reilly to laser the ticket for prints.”
The anger flashed in his eyes again. “How am I going to book this? We can’t take it to court. I shouldn’t even touch it. It’s not evidence, coming from you. What it is, is useless, amigo.”
“Go discover it yourself.”
He shook his head. “That’s my career, if it ever gets out. And The Horridus walks, if it comes out in court. Look, Terry, I can work this I. R. Shroud angle until—”
“—But you won’t find anything.”
His face asked the question before his voice did. “Why not?”
“It’s just a name,” I said. “Not a person.”
“On Stefanic’s citation?”
“It’s also a user name on the Web. He’s one of the kind of networkers we like to mingle with sometimes. One of the kiddy touchers, the pervs. One of the bloodsucking ticks we deal with.”
“The Horridus is on-line? You mean we’ve talked to him?”
“Somebody has.”
Johnny looked confused more than anything else. “Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, man! What the hell are you talking riddles to me for?”
“I think somebody at the department has, and I don’t think he wants anybody to know. He talked to I. R. Shroud on the Web. They made some arrangements. Maybe he didn’t make the connect to The Horridus. Maybe he did.”
He continued to eye me, dark and sullen.
He shook his head and leaned back. “I’m not getting you, man. You’re telling me that one of the CAY people has talked to The Horridus on the Web, but never said anything to you about it?”
“Somebody at the department. Not necessarily CAY. And they talked to I. R. Shroud. Like I said, it’s possible he didn’t get the joke.”
“But it wasn’t me and it wasn’t you.”
“Correct.”
“Well, why in hell would somebody at the department mail Shroud but not tell CAY? Not tell you?”
“Pictures.”
His dark eyebrows rose again, and he groaned. “So, what are you saying?”
“Whoever framed me had to be inside. They’d have to know me, hate me, have a way into the porn networks, and a reason to burn my ass.”
“You’re saying it was Ishmael.”
I nodded.
Johnny said nothing.
But he intuited my request, as I knew he would.
“Oh, man,” he said quietly. “You goddamned Irish pendejo. I’m starting to think CAY’s better off without you. No.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a matter of checking his log-ons and his IRC receptors. They’re on the printouts—”
“—No, man. It’s a matter of getting my ass thrown off the department forever, is what it is.”
“Then don’t do it.”
“Hey, friend, there’s no way on earth I can do that.”
“I had to ask.”
“No. No. No.”
“Understood.”
He shook his head and pushed his empty coffee cup away. Johnny hated me in that moment, for forcing him to betray his department or disappoint his friend. Those dark eyes of his flashed across my face with both fury and sadness in them.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you were stand-up, Terry. I’m with you, man. You know that.”
“I know.”
“But don’t bleed me unless you have to.”
“All right.”
He picked up the bag and looked down inside.
“Thing’s still moving in there.”
“They take forever to die.”
“Yeah. I cut one’s head off and skinned it out when I was a kid. Tacked the skin to a board and salted it. Left the guts beside it for the hornets to eat. I stood there with my brother and watched the heart beat. It was this little tiny heart. Four hours later we come back out and it was still beating. Wouldn’t quit for nothin’. Just like you.”
Then the very long, agonizing silence while Escobedo tried to weigh his friendship with me against his loyalty to the department, my power as a pariah against Ishmael’s as a lieutenant in good standing.
“You been talking to The Horridus on-line, boss?”
“I’m trying. I used our Ramblers’ chat room to get a line on a good kiddy pornographer. Someone who has the new stuff. Maybe he actually makes the stuff. A producer. Someone who can do a custom.”
“And you got Shroud?”
“That’s exactly who I got. I didn’t see the connection until I found Stefanic’s ticket.”
Silence again.
“You really think Ishmael ordered up customs of you?”
“I know he did.”
Johnny turned and leaned his arm over the back of the booth. He looked back through the window, to the barrio outside. I guessed it was just a little vacation, a break from all the crap that he had to do all day long. He spoke without turning.
“You know, it’s Frances who spends the most computer time in CAY. She’s got a stable full of freaks on the Web.”
“Frances isn’t going to sit down over chips and coffee with me.”
“And then there’s the obvious.” He turned back to me, closing the bag and wrapping the end back into a knot. “You know, Terry, you might have already thought of this, but Melinda’s the one who has all the computer crooks in her machine. We’ve been sharing every CAY computer contact with her for a year now. So does every other section and unit — if there’s a crime and a computer involved, Melinda knows about it. Remember, Wade ordered us all to copy Fraud and Computer Crime if there was a computer involved? You remember that directive from Wade, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I remember it.”
“Well, anyway, she’s got all the computer creeps, somewhere in her files. Maybe she could line out Ishmael’s logs for you.”
“In order to help me.”
“Yeah, uh-huh. In order to help you.”
It seemed like the first time in days I’d actually laughed. It just jumped out of me — the idea of Melinda helping me — and I had to choke down a little coffee to keep it from coming out. I just broke down and laughed, like you do when you’re a kid and rarely do later.
Escobedo looked at me and laughed, too. It was one of those desperate, semiwicked connections between people willing to admit that something ugly is also very funny. Johnny looked like a gleeful devil for a second there, with his goatee and his hair slicked back from the widow’s peak and his straight white teeth and shrunken skulls.
So, we had our comic relief.
“She’s a good person,” I said.
“Yeah, she’s all of that. She also gets the monthly log-ons because she’s a section head. She knows who’s been talking to who on those damned computers.”
“That’s true, too.”
“I mean, well... I don’t know what it means.”
“I don’t, either, Johnny.”
Johnny stood and reached for his wallet, but I already had it covered.
“One more thing, Terry,” he said. “We’re going public with the Brittany drawing. Press conference this afternoon at five. We’ll be handing out copies to everybody who wants them.”