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

supervisors and city pols, the judges and the assemblymen, the developers and real estate magnates, the publishers and editors and media executives, the many lobbyists who represent Wall Street brokerage firms and banks, the philanthropists and the social elite. If your status isn’t as high as your ambition, you can still go, so long as you’re dressed well, submissive and don’t expect a table. Jim Wade is a regular there, along with his heir apparent, Jordan Ishmael. Few others in our Sheriff-Coroner Department have much reason to patronize the place. We like cop hangouts. But for the last six months or so I’ve been showing up at Tonello’s myself, an unknown in the smiling, boozy world of the Orange County elite. Jim suggested that I might profit from a proximity to these people, though he’s never said exactly how. Ishmael, of course, detests my presence. Melinda joins me occasionally. With Linda Sharpe’s bitter words still ringing in my ears, I pulled up to the valet line and left my car and a five with Rodrigo. He parked it out of sight, back with the other Fords.
    I walked in with a truculent glow, due to my good fortune at Prehistoric Pets. Ishmael was at the bar, and for once I was glad to see him. I delivered to him the line I’d been dying to deliver for the last few hours:
    “ Where’s Wade? I got a sketch of a Horridus suspect coming through in less than an hour. ”
    Ishmael looked at me hard, his green eyes openly suspicious. He motioned behind him with a turn of his head. “With your personal publicist from CNB.”
    “Perfect,” I said, smiling. “Talk to you later, Ish.”
    I paid, then overtipped the bartender.
    “My daughter says she’s starting to really like you.”
    “Everybody in your family likes me, except for you.”
    “Pride goes before the fall, Naughton.”
    “I always land on my feet.”
    “When you’re not passed out on your face.”
    “Those days are gone.”
    “A drunk’s a drunk.”
    I took my Herradura rocks and eased through the crowd to where Sheriff Wade, Donna Mason and a couple of the new county supervisors—Dom Ingardia and Lucille Watrous—were holding down one corner of the lounge. I nodded to my boss and to Donna, clicked glasses with the supervisors.
    “Nice work yesterday, Terry,” said Lucille. She’s an older woman, savvy and tough, who often looks at me with a twinkle in her eyes that makes me feel like a hero, or her son, or perhaps a fatted lamb. “One more offender off the streets. Two more, I guess.”
    “One more kid in juvie, too,” I said.
    “Beats turning tricks for Daddy,” said Ingardia, who was recently appointed supervisor—the most powerful office in the county—by the governor. He’s a real estate salesman, and I don’t see how he’s going to help guide this county out of the shitswamp of development it’s fallen into, but that’s another matter.
    “Ten years old …,” I said.
    I turned my attention to Donna Mason. I always feel all alone with her, even in a crowded room. I kind of have to screw up my courage to talk to her in a situation like this. “That was a good segment you did on us,” I said.
    “You probably don’t realize how good,” she said. “The phones have been ringing all day. That bite looks bad, Sergeant.”
    I nodded and smiled at her, rather stupidly, I think. I ran my fingers over the bandage on my face. She looks different than she does on TV, her face is thinner and her smile is quirkier and she seems lighter, less permanent. She’s from one of the hollows of West Virginia, born poor but naturally advantaged: she’s quite beautiful, extremely smart and knows what she wants. She works long hours, keeps up a demanding social life and still manages to read two or three books a week. I’ve gathered that much. She was married at twenty-two and divorced two years ago, at twenty-eight. No kids. Her hair is wavy and black and cut short, kind of curls forward around the sides of her face. Her skin