Snakes and Ash

After the TV screen went black again, Jughead said, "So Keller basically showed up just in time to arrest the wrong man, and then disappear again?"

"Looks like it," Betty said. She turned to Carol. "I want to talk to Snake, and then you need to start the process of getting him released."

"Keller has to approve releases," Carol said.

"Well, he's not here, and if he was, he'd only screw it up," Jughead said. "Please, take care of it, Carol. You're the only capable employee at this police department."

She grinned at him, and then said, "I'll take you to Snake, and then I'll start the paperwork to get him released. I'm an expert at forging Keller's signature."

She led them out of Keller's office and back to the holding cells, but left them there. Snake was in the same cell that FP had resided in in for the last few weeks, and Snake's presence only reminded Jughead of FP's absence, an absence that would be felt until FP's return-if his dad ever came back. There was a lengthy trail ahead and another stint in prison. It could be years until he could be with FP again, and for the first time ever, he wanted to be with his dad. Jughead needed him.

"Hey, kids," Snake said as they came fully into the room. He stood up from the cot and leaned his arms against the bars, his shoulders hunched. "Eric with you?"

"No, sir," Betty said.

"Good," Snake replied. "I don't want my boy to see me like this."

"He knows you're innocent," Betty said. "We do, too, and we have proof."

"What proof?" Snake asked, perking up. "Keller showed me the evidence they found in basement of the bar. It links me to the shooting. I look guilty as hell."

"But you're not," Jughead said. "Carol found new footage from Pop's, and from this different angle, you can see the gunman's tattoo on his neck. Betty figured it out." Jughead paused to look at his beautiful girlfriend, taking time to appreciate just how smart she was. This was the second mystery she'd figured out. Yes, he'd been by her side both times, but Betty was the one who solved the cases.

Snake grinned, the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes crinkling. He pulled the collar of his shirt away from his neck, showing that there was nothing there. "I don't have any tatts," he said. "What is it of?"

"A big rose, taking up most of his neck," Betty replied. "I recognized it when I saw the video. It was Johnny in the mask. He's the one who shot Fred."

"No," Snake said, shaking his head. "No, I don't believe it."

"Where have you been?" Betty asked, not letting him say anything else.

"Hiding."

"From who?" Jughead asked.

"That's the kicker. I didn't know twenty-five years ago, and I don't know now," Snake said.

"It's Johnny," Betty said. "He's on the video shooting Fred. He's the one coming after everyone now."

"But he was Fred's friend. He wasn't even involved in Goldhead. Why would he shot Fred? Why he be terrorizing us now?"

"Because he's crazy," Betty suggested, shrugging.

"No," Jughead said. He didn't like when Betty used that word, even to describe someone else. "He must have been involved in Goldhead. Or maybe he knew something."

Snake shook his head. "It's not possible. He knows nothing about Goldhead. He wasn't there that night or any night that Fall. He was locked away at that nuthouse, the Sister's of Quiet Mercy, and I know because I went to visit Alice, and saw him there."

He reached through the slats of the bars and took Betty's hands. "How is your mother? Is she safe?"

"She's fine. She's with my sister."

"Polly?" he said. "I didn't mean anything by calling that place a nuthouse. Alice wasn't crazy, just sad."

"But what about Johnny?" Jughead asked. "You've known him for almost thirty years. I've seen him lose his temper. Do you think he's capable of going after everyone? Of shooting Fred?"

Snake thought for a moment. "Maybe. But I know he didn't do this. He has no reason to."

"Insanity is a very good motive," Betty said. "Some people just lose it. And we have concrete evidence."

Betty was near enough to touch, so Jughead placed his hand on the small of her back. She was trembling, so he moved closer, put his arm around her shoulder this time. "Beside being a club, what the hell is Goldhead?" he asked.

Snake sighed. "It was more than the club, more than that cabin you found, more than any of us realized at the time." He looked down at his booted feet for a long moment, and then back to them, tears in his eyes now. "You saw the drug paraphernalia."

"It was heroine, like as in Cliff Blossom?" Jughead asked.

Snake nodded, some of the tears shaking loose, rolling down his cheeks. "But first he tried his hand at meth. Cliff was a few years older, but hung out with us from time to time. He became good friends with Michael James."

"The owner of the Whyte Wyrm," Betty said.

"The very one. Cliff's family maple syrup business was dying, and he needed to make some money to keep him in the lifestyle he was accustomed to. So he got involved in Hiram and Hermione's cock figthing ring, with the gambling, but it wasn't enough."

"So you're saying all this links back to Cliff Blossom?" Jughead said. He leaned against the window ledge across from the cell.

"Doesn't everything in this town?" Snake asked. "So Cliff started cooking his drugs. Hiram helped facilitate the whole thing. Michael James turned a blind eye to it all, but he knew exactly what was going on in his basement. He got a cut of the profits."

This was information Jughead had already assumed, nothing all that new, nothing that explained why Johnny had shot Fred. "Who else was there that night?" Jughead asked, pulling out the picture of the seven teens.

Snake took the photo and examined it. "This night," he said, pointing to the group. "Wasn't the night it all happened, just a picture someone took of us in happier times."

"Eric found this picture with your Serpent's jacket on the front porch of his trailer the night you went missing. Fred's face was crossed out. We assumed you were next since you went AWOL, but here you are," Jughead said.

"I was working late at the garage, and it was hot inside, so I took off my Serpent jacket, and left it on one of the workbenches. When I went to leave, it was just gone. I got this weird feeling, like someone was watching me. The hair on the back of my neck stood up on end, and everything thing just felt off. I'd had this feeling before. It was a chicken shit thing to do, to leave my mom and my boy, but I didn't know what else to do. It seems like the more people know, the more they are in danger. Twenty-five years ago, someone came after all of us."

"Johnny?" Betty asked.

"No. . . I don't know honestly. The person would leave scary, threatening notes. I don't know who was behind it, but it terrified me and all the rest of us."

"Who was harassed last time?" Betty asked.

"The same people who are running scared now."

Betty held up the picture again. "So all these people were involved somehow," Betty said. "They knew what was really happening in the basement."

"Yeah," he said as he nodded.

"Who took the picture?" Jughead asked.

"Johnny," Snake said. "But that doesn't mean anything. That doesn't mean he shot Fred."

"Maybe not, but that's what happened. Johnny is the gunman. We have proof," Betty said.

"But someone must have put him up to it," Snake said. "You know how Johnny is, Jug. He has a temper, but he's never really done anything bad. FP has always been good to him, always said that Johnny wouldn't hurt anyone, gave him a job, brought him into our fold. Someone must have tricked him into shooting Fred. With his mind the way it is, he's easily influenced."

Snake's theory wasn't as sound as Jughead would have liked, but maybe Snake was right. "If you, FP, Mary, and Keller weren't involved with the drug ring, then why are you all in hiding?" Jughead asked. "What are you so scared of."

"Of what we did," Snake said, and his skin turned as white as a man who had seen the devil himself. Snake stumbled back until the back of his knees his the edge of the cot where he sat down. He buried his head in his hands, and his body quaked as he sobbed.

Betty look at Jughead, and he shrugged not knowing how to comfort a man named Snake.

"What happened?" Jughead asked for what felt like the thousandth time.

"We killed a man, all seven of us," Snake said.

"As in murder?" Betty asked.

Snake shook his head so vigorously that his hair shook around his shoulders. "It was an accident, but we killed him just the same."

"You said that my mom wasn't involved?" Betty said.

"She wasn't there, but she knew. They all knew. We all agreed to cover it up, take it to the grave." He got to his feet and came over to them. "That night we were all at Goldhead, hanging out, everyone except Alice. Most of us were on the dance floor, already drunk, when we heard an explosion. Michael James was in the cooking room, counting money." He stopped speaking for a long moment. He squeezed the bridge of his nose, like he was trying to ward off a migraine. Or maybe a horrible memory. "Something went wrong. We tried to save him. We really did, but he was so badly burned. He had no heartbeat. He was dead, but we knew if we called Keller's dad, we'd all go down for the drugs being sold out of Goldhead."

"But you didn't do anything wrong," Betty said. "Cliff Blossom, yes. The Lodges, yes, but not you or FP or the Andrews."

"Looking back now, I know you're right, but we were all kids, scared shitless with a dead body in the middle of Goldhead's dance floor."

That's exactly what FP ended up doing with Jason. The Blossom kid wasn't the first body he'd hidden. Jughead loved his dad and wanted him out of jail, but FP had done some awful things in his life, and maybe they'd finally caught up with him.

"Hiram Lodge had an idea of how to cover it all up," Snake said. Jughead sighed in relief. At least FP wasn't totally responsible for this coverup. "So Hiram, Cliff, and I loaded Michael's charred body into the back of FP's truck." He paled and then swallowed. "God, his skin was so damaged that it came off in my hands when I lifted him, like a snake shedding its skin. The man we had all come to think of as a second father looked like something hell itself had burned to ash and then spit out." He rubbed his hands over his face before continuing. "It was an out of body experience. I knew moving the body and not reporting it was wrong, but I let Cliff and Hiram convince me that I'd somehow go down for the death, too. The whole time, I knew it was wrong, but they kept telling me that they were going to tell my mama on me. It would have killed her. So I did what I had to do to protect her. I did something awful."

"So we drove him down to Sweetwater," Snake continued. "We knew about his cabin. He'd let us party there that summer. So we dragged his body inside, but the cabin wasn't empty like we thought it would be. Inside was Mary, Fred, Hermione, and Keller. God, I can still see the shock on their faces when they saw what we were carrying into the cabin. Mary screamed. Hermione fanted. I think Keller pissed his pants. Fred was the only one with the clear head. He tried to go for the phone to call the cops, but Keller wouldn't let him, and when Fred fought him, Hiram clocked Fred over the head with the phone receiver. Everything after that went to shit."

Snake sat back down on the cot again. "Michael James wasn't dead after all," Snake continued. "He sat up screaming, and instead of helping him, we all just stood there and watched as Cliff Blossom choked him to death."

"So Cliff murdered Michael James, not any of you," Betty said.

"Technically, yes, but all of us let it happen. We lit the fire, stood outside as the house burned and Michael James shrieked and hollowed, yelled for help. We let him burn, let him die alone, and did nothing."

"If Michael James is dead, then why are you so scared of him? A dead man can't come back to life and terrorize the living," Jughead said.

"Something's back," Snake said. "Someone is trying to wipe us out one by one as payback for killing Michael James."

"It's Johnny!" Betty exclaimed. "We saw the footage from Pop's, and it's undeniable."

"He didn't do this," Snake said.

"Well, who the hell did?" Betty asked. "You said it yourself that someone is trying to kill all of you. Ghosts can't walk through the front door of the diner and shoot Fred Andrews. A real person is doing it." She was agitated, pacing in front of the cell. Something was off with her.

They all looked to the door when Carol came back through it. "I've gotten the paperwork started to get Snake out," Carol said.

Snake crossed his arms over his chest and sat back against the wall behind his cot. "No, I'm staying put until we find who shot Fred. It's not safe out there."

"We know who shot Fred," Betty said.

"No, we don't," Carol said, interrupting whatever Betty was going to say next. "I had one of the officers pick up Johnny. He's in the interview room right now for questioning. He has an airtight alibi for the morning Fred was shot."

"But unless he has a tattoo twin, Johnny is guilty," Betty said.

"Where was he?" Jughead interrupted.

"Someplace called the Sisters of Quiet Mercy," Carol replied. "I guess he goes there once a month to volunteer. They had his name written in the guestbook, and the nurse in charge remembers him being there. He helped her catalogue the library that morning."

Betty huffed out a laugh. "Sisters of Quiet Mercy isn't the Alcatraz. My pregnant sister slipped out of there. I'm sure a fully grown man could have checked in for his monthly duties, but snuck out without anyone noticing. He could have taken the short drive back to Riverdale and shot Fred in the stomach," Betty said. "We know who did this now."

"No, we don't," said Snake said.

"Carol said it was some Serpent named Johnny. She said he was crazy enough to do it."

"That doesn't mean he did it, though," Jughead argued.

"You're just afraid to admit that Johnny might have snapped," Betty said. You're scared to say the word crazy because you know your girlfriend is a nutjob, too. You know that I have the ability go into a blind rage and act out. I choked Hiram Lodge for god's sake. If you admit that Johnny could do it, you'd have to admit that your sweet, perfect girlfriend could do the same thing."

"Betty, stop," Jughead said. He tried to grab her arm, but she pushed away from him. She didn't turn around when he called her name again.

"Where are you going?" Jughead asked, following her out.

"To talk to Johnny," she said. "To prove to you both that he did this."

Jughead and Carol were behind Betty as she wove her way through the desks in the front office of the police department until they all reached the integration room. Betty pushed the door, and when she stopped short, Jughead ran into her back. He looked over her shoulder to see the empty room.

Carol went over to the table, where an unlocked shackle lay on the floor beside the vacant chair. "I don't understand," Carol said. "He was locked up tight." She held up the chain, and when she did Jughead noticed the lock was still in place, but the chain had been cut apart.

"Someone let him out," Jughead said. "Someone walked into the Riverdale police station with bolt cutters and freed him."

"That's not possible," Carol said.

"Anything is possible with these idiot police officers you have working here," Jughead said.

"Touche," Carol said.

Then Jughead noticed a worn, faded folder tucked underneath Carol's arm. "What is that?"

"Oh," she said, looking down at her file in her hand. "I overheard you all talking about Michael James, so I got curious and looked up his autopsy report." She opened the file, but it was empty, not a single scrap of paper.

"So?" Jughead said. "I'm sure someone just misfiled it or lost it."

"Or maybe Michael James isn't as dead as we thought," Betty suggested.