Where Serpents Lie (Revised March 2013) Read Online Free PDF Page A

his family and felt bad. I thought of him taking his own life in the backyard of a rented house and felt bad about that, too. I am long on compassion for the innocent, but there is always a little left for the guilty, too. Maybe this is a flaw in my character. But it’s not to say I wouldn’t tear the lungs out of any criminal who harms a child. I have and I will again. It’s my reason for being. But after the death of Matthew two years ago, everyone and everything became, to me, somehow forgivable. I can’t tell you why.
    “That didn’t have to happen to him,” I said. “I could have disarmed the fat guy and it wouldn’t have gone down that way. The prof didn’t even have the guts to bring his own piece. Drunk. Scared. I could have seen it coming.”
    “You did what needed doing. He blew out his own brains, Terry. You didn’t.”
    “I still think there was something I could have done.”
    “Precious little, Naughton.”
    As an investigator—Fraud and Computer Crime—Melinda’s judgment of me can cut deeply. She knows my world and its limitations, and she can flatten me not only as a woman but as a professional equal. In fact, she is not my equal: she’s a sergeant 4, one grade above mine of sergeant 3. She’s two years older and at least ten wiser. More to the point, Melinda feels no compassion whatsoever for the wicked or the inept. I believe this comes from her own sense of victimhood. Her mother died when she was young and her father abandoned her when she was six. She feels the pain of the innocent. And she feels the fury of the wronged. In fact, in our year of domestic life together I have seen her almost consumed by that pain and fury. Maybe the fact that she can feel so much for the innocent reduces her pity for the guilty. I can be touchy about her comments on me and my work. Melinda is a hard woman to please in most ways, so success with her is all the sweeter.
    “Thanks, Mel.”
    “Don’t beat yourself up.”
    “Am I a liberal?”
    “ A real do-gooder. ”
    “A pinko?”
    “ A commie. ”
    “A poet?”
    “ A queen. ”
    “You pour a mean drink, Melinda.”
    “Got to keep you up with me.”
    “You keep me up.”
    “I’ll bet she could, too.”
    Donna was on-screen again for her wrap. I looked at Melinda, then back to the tube. I will mention now, then forever hold my peace, that Melinda is a jealous companion. In some ways this pleases me. And she can joke about it now. Like this crack about a TV reporter. But it never hurts to set things straight.
    “Not my type.”
    “Too young and beautiful?”
    “It’s not the youth and beauty. She’s just not you.”
    “You’re a world-class liar, Terry.”
    “I know.”
    “At least you’re honest.”
    “Look at Louis and Johnny there, see how long they …”
    On-screen, Johnny and Louis stood at the curb until they realized the camera was pointed their way, then hustled off-screen. Frances did most of the talking for us—she’s well spoken, credible and unabashedly ambitious to rise in the ranks. Truth be told, though, it was hard not to look at Donna Mason. Maybe that’s why they gave her the job.
    “Freshen up that drink, Terry?”
    “Thought you’d never ask.”

    Penny, Melinda’s daughter, came out of her room around nine. She’d been doing homework. She’s a natural student, very much like her mother in the long, silent intensities she can bring to things. She’s nine, chunky and pretty like her mom, with straight blond hair and placid gray eyes. Penelope Anne. A year ago we began the hesitant dance of getting to know each other closer than friends, but not as father and daughter. She has a continuing relationship with her real father, and I would never try to compete or interfere with that. He’s a loving, if self-serving soul, and she needs him. My son, Matthew, would have been seven. Well, in August.
    She sat down between us with her laptop computer and shook her head. “Microsoft Word sucks.”
    “Don’t use