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

do we do with all this? How can we use it?”
    “There’s two basic ways to go, sir,” I said. “We can wait, be as ready as we can for number three, and hope to get to her quick. Our physical evidence has been thin, but the sooner we get to the girl the better chance we’ve got. He’ll leave us something, sooner or later.”
    “Later doesn’t sit too well with me,” he said.
    “Which leads us to option two,” I said. “We can try something proactive—draw him out, force his hand.”
    “Something like what?” said Wade.
    “We could edit the profile and release it to the media,” I said. “They’d give it good play and he’d feel the pressure.”
    “The media hound barks again,” said Ishmael.
    I looked at him sharply. “We could blow up his handwriting sample, Horridus, and put it on billboards, see if anyone recognizes it. It’s only one word, but it’s fairly distinctive. The Bureau did that once—and it worked.”
    Ishmael groaned. “ Advertise for him?”
    “That’s exactly right,” I said. “Or, we can keep the profile to ourselves, just like we have on some of the evidence, and set up something to attract him—I’m just brainstorming now—but, you know … get one of the papers to do a piece on fashions for little girls, use five or six models he might like and mention the agency that handles them. Set up a phone number of our own inside the agency, run a trap and trace on the calls that come in. No, this is better, we get the papers to do a story on an audition for young girls to star in a commercial, do modeling for clothes … something like that. There’s a chance he’d show up.”
    “And if he gets to one of those models, or somebody’s girl, we all end up as security guards,” said Ishmael.
    But Wade seemed interested. “Go on.”
    “Come on, guys,” I said, looking around the table. “Any fool can dance alone.”
    Woolton was next: “Set up a reptile show.”
    Vega: “They got those already. Kind of a swap meet. My kid goes.”
    Burns: “It says he likes reptiles, maybe. We know he likes little girls. So we set up a reptile show for little girls.”
    All: Laughter.
    “Or advertise a kiddies’ hour at the show,” I said. “Where they get to handle some animals. Use a picture of a girl holding a lizard, to promote it. Right there we’ve provided him with two temptations. We’d lay in heavy, look for someone who fits the description.”
    “Kick butt and take names,” said Burns.
    “He’d change his appearance,” said Ishmael.
    “Likely,” I said. “Plus our description is pretty thin to start with. She saw him at night, a hundred feet away, getting into the van.”
    “We’ll shake down all the guys wearing Groucho glasses,” said Woolton.
    Ishmael: “And if he finds his next girl there, then what? What if he tracks down the girl with the lizard? That’s the trouble with this public stuff—if it backfires it backfires big.”
    “Noted,” I said. “The smaller we keep it, the better we can control it.”
    “How about a tryout for a girls’ basketball league?” asked Rafter, obsessed as always with the game.
    The room went quiet, then.
    “Naw,” Rafter said. “Like Ish said, too many ways to go wrong.”
    “There’s something you all should know,” I said. “The Bureau thinks he’ll work faster now. They also think he’ll start to rape and kill them if we apply pressure and don’t get him. They’re almost always for proaction, but not for The Horridus.”
    Sheriff Wade looked at me. “So he’s going to speed up if we wait, and he’s going to start killing if we move?”
    “ Great ”said Vega.
    “The hell does that leave us?” asked Burns.
    “It leaves us with quaint methods, such as old-fashioned police work,” said Ishmael.
    I nodded and the room went quiet again. “He’s right. The first thing I want to do is get my people on the real estate angle. If we figure he’s sold his home, or is trying to, we’ve got a place to