T. Parker - Summer Of Fear

"Yes."

"But you married Martin Parish, who later in life thought highly enough of you to try to kill you."

"Marty was interim. A way to get you out of my life."

"Damn."

"I know."

I thought for a moment. "Well, thanks for saying so. I suspected it was that, but it clarifies the stupidity of the whole notion to hear you admit it."

"Pound away, Russell. This is your big moment."

"How come nothing real is ever good enough for you'

"I've always considered it a fault of mine."

"You can make up only so much before your head hits the brick wall of what is."

"I know that now. And Russell, for what it's worth, my head hurts awful bad."

"You still haven't answered my first question. Where were you yesterday, last night, and today?"

Amber shook her head. "Gad, Russell. I met with my attorney to rewrite my will. Does that meet with your approval"

"It didn't take a day and a half."

She lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. "I had a rather long meeting with State Attorney General. Allen Boster. In Sacramento. I spent the night."

I felt my heart flutter and become light as I considered the possibilities of the People v. Martin Parish. "And?"

"There's a chance he'll open an investigation of Martin.

"What did you tell him?"

"Just about everything. He'll take my deposition soon. You will be called later."

"We'll still need the evidence."

"Then let's go get it, Russ."

I looked at her, unable to decide whether this new direction would lead to exoneration for myself or to even more pressure from Martin.

I could only assume she had written Martin Parish out of his five hundred grand. Perhaps she had written me out, too. I could blame her for neither. And she had gone to the top to get what she wanted. Very smart. Very Amber.

In Amber's house, the heat was stale and suffocating, but the sense of dread raised in me was even worse. How clearly I remembered that night of July 3, my anticipation of a secret life, my innocence, my stupidity, my desire; how clearly I remembered the smell of human flesh so strong, the sight of Alice, the painted walls, the resounding echo of insanity.

Amber's room. I worked the carpet on my hands and knees, with a flashlight and a comb. It was unreasonably clean. I rolled the bed away to get under it, but it wasn't likely that a piece of Martin Parish would be under the bed, and there wasn't. I inspected the fresh coat of paint, under which the spray-painted red of awaken or die in ignorace was still scarcely visible. I checked the trash cans in the side yard for some clue to this artist-a can of paint, a brush, a mixing stick, a spattered shirt or drop cloth-and discovered not one useful thing at all. I tried the garage and found more of nothing useful. He'd probably loaded it all into his car by the time I saw him that night- yes, he was wiping his final fingerprints from the gate knob! — then stopped behind a store on his way home to use the dumpster. Could I match a dried drop of paint from the lining of Parish's trunk to the paint on Amber's wall? I couldn't match shit shinola, I reminded myself, but someone like Chet Singer could. But Chet Singer wouldn't. I thought of driving Parish's route home and trying the dumpsters, but they'd have been emptied by now. I began to feel just a little bit sick. I desired a large quantity of alcohol, and I was hungry. My face was sore. Amber hovered, wordless.

When the doorbell rang in the cavernous entryway, I could feel the length of its diminishing echo all the way down my back. We were standing in the master bedroom. I looked at my watch. It was 9:45 p.m. Amber searched my face with a worried that looked close to panic. I pointed to her purse, which she had hung over a bedpost. She retrieved a little. 32 and handed it to me, and I nodded her downstairs, toward the door.

The doorbell rang again as we walked across the marble floor. Amber peered through the peephole, then looked at me with a quizzical expression. I looked myself. Narrowed to the point of caricature, seemingly yards away, stood the plump and forlorn figure of Chester Fairfax Singer. He was toting an ancient misshapen leather suitcase.

"How badly have you contaminated this scene?" he asked.

I stood back and let him in. "Nice to see you, too, Chet. Chester Singer-Amber Mae Wilson."

He regarded her momentarily. "You're somewhat larger than on the hair-conditioner bottle," he said without a trace of humor. "And lovelier, too."

Wearing fresh latex gloves, we used clean paper towels to check the drains for blood, and found none. Surely Parish had washed up here, but surely he was careful enough to run the water long and wipe the grills himself. The hand and bath towels looked fresh, but Chet took them down, laid them on the tile counter, and worked them over with a magnifier. They revealed nothing. I felt stupid.

"What about fingerprints?" Amber asked.

"He wiped the gate knob on his way out, so he probably wiped everything else, too."

"We'll spray and dust to our hearts' content," said Chet.

"Even a homicide captain can leave a mistake behind. In fact, I am reminded of Martin's earlier days as a detective-he was always just a little bit impatient and contemptuous of the crime scene specialists. He was not a man who worshiped detail, would not be surprised at all if Mr. Parish managed to leave us something… telling."

"What about the weapon?" Amber asked.

"He likely removed it when he removed the body," Chester said patiently.

"How did he get her into his car without the neighbor seeing?"

"I can attest to your privacy here, Ms. Wilson. Your nearest neighbors are two hundred yards away. It was dark. It was late. How big is this lot, by the way?"

"Three point five acres."

"Have you searched it, Russell?"

"No."

"Well, we may have to."

"What about tire prints in the driveway?" Amber asked

"You used it when you came home on the fifth," I said.

"Your manager used it when he came here, looking for you.

Chester glumly shook his big head. "Russell, review for me the night you found Martin here, in his… informal wear.

I told him everything I could remember about that bizarre encounter on July the Fourth.

"Why do you assume he was intending to enter Ms. Wilson's bed?"

"He told me he'd done it before. And the bed was still made."

"But maybe he was finished and had already made back up."

"That's true." I considered Amber's bed, the prolific pink pillows, the scented silk and satin. Chet worked over the pillows and discovered two short gray-brown hairs worked into a sham, hairs almost certainly not belonging to Amber or Alice. He put them in evidence bags, carefully labeling each. A little ripple of hope wavered up through me. We got another one from the top sheet, up near the pillows. Down about halfway, Chet found a short curly hair that could have come from about any crotch in the world. Chester bagged and labeled it. We looked for semen on the sheets-few acts have made me feel lower on the evolutionary scale-and found none.

Amber watched us in minor horror. "He wouldn't really have done that, would he?"

"You tell us, Amber," I said. "You were married to him."

"Jesus, I'm really not so sure. But you know something? I lived with him for over a year, and he's the most fastidious anal-retentive I've ever known. He'd brush out the toilet with disinfectant after he peed."

Chet ran a clean tissue under the toilet bowl's lip, for exactly what purpose, I wasn't sure. Clean. I remembered the shaving cut on Martin's Adam's apple the afternoon of the fourth and examined the razors-plastic, disposable-in the bathroom drawer. Dumb, I thought: What would possess anyone to stop in the middle of a murder and cover-up, then shave?