T. Parker - Summer Of Fear

"One of these days, I'll write a best-seller," Erik said with a boyish smile. "Then we'll be equals in the field of letters, too."

"Russell can write better than you," said Grace rather seriously.

"Which is exactly why I work so hard at it," answered Erik, still smiling. "If I remember correctly from five years ago, when I was seeing Amber, your grades in English hovered around the C mark."

"And you suggested I reread Moby-Dick."

Wald shrugged, set his coffee on one of the desks, and took a seat behind it. I brought up a chair to face him. Grace sat atop the other desk, to our left, dangling a leg.

"Russell," said Erik, slipping on a pair of glasses, "I've been racking my considerable mind for the last hour trying to figure out why in hell you were coming here. You have my curiosity up. So shoot."

And shoot I did. I walked him through the dire events of July 3 and 4; the burial of Alice Fultz; Amber's reappearance; Martin's secret lab work and dubbed tape-, the impending indictment from Peter Haight's office. I explained what I could of the bad blood between Grace and Amber; the monies at stake should she die; and Grace's actual presence at the scene.

Wald listened carefully and took very spare notes. His attention went back and forth between Grace and myself. He groaned when I told him about Alice's hillside funeral. He nodded when I tried to account for the competition and dislike between mother and daughter, Wald being familiar enough with both to fill in the blanks himself. He looked at me with an expression that suggested exasperation at both women, then turned the same look upon Grace.

"Now that you feel superior, are you ready to help us?” Grace asked him.

Wald said nothing for a long while. He stared off through a window toward his backyard fountain. He took off his glasses studied the lenses, then put them on again.

"Parish disgusts me," he said quietly. "He always has. I can't say I'm dumbfounded that he'd do this. I always believed there was something profoundly unbalanced in Martin. The trouble is, you've got no evidence. Martin's got the evidence, and it all points to you."

"That's exactly why I'm here," I said.

"That was hardly brilliant, Erik," noted Grace.

"But it's true," he answered, turning toward her. "And what's true is going to get you out of this. Not what's brilliant.” Pivoting back to me, he said, "Now… I assume you have plan."

"He didn't leave anything behind at Amber's. I saw him but that doesn't prove anything. I don't think we can touch him for Alice without touching him for something else first."

"Such as?"

"Another attempt on Amber's life."

He looked at me skeptically.

I explained that if the situation was good-no, not good but perfect-Martin could be tempted to finish what he had begun on July 3. Until now, Amber had been safe with my father and his diligent Remington, but if Amber would offer up hers as bait, we could set a trap into which Parish might possibly fall.

"Why would he try again? I assume Amber was bright enough to do a little adjusting of her will. Right?"

"That's right. It's not the money anymore, Erik. It's the hate, the violence, and he needs her silent. He'll try it again if he's sure he can get away with it. I believe that. All we need to do is create the opportunity for him-and be there to stop him."

"That is to say, I could make the opportunity," said Wald. "We assume that any information coming from you to Martin- especially information on the… vulnerability of Amber at such and such a time and place-would be instantly suspect. I, on the other hand, could point him in the right direction in all… innocence."

"How can you be so smart and so dumb at the same time?" Grace said.

We both looked at her.

"Amber won't cooperate. She's a total coward."

"Let us handle Amber," I said.

Wald was studying me hard now. "You're asking me to set him up."

"Yes."

He continued to stare at me. Grace's dangling leg swung to and fro. The morning light came through an east window and lighted the trophy case. He slid off his glasses again, wobbled the temples in his hand as he looked down at them, the right temple swinging loosely on the frame, barely secured.

"Lost one of the screws," he muttered, hopelessly searching his drawer, desk, lap, and floor. "I hate these things."

Erik's mind was obviously not on his glasses.

And neither was mine, until the realization crashed down on me that I had a spare screw-found in Amber's bedroom- still inside the cap of my pen. Involuntarily, I blinked. And with equal involition, my mind began to race.

"Me, too," I said.

Wald looked at the frames. "I only wear these damned things when the world won't see me, image being everything, right? Anyway… back to Parish. Look, if he's done what you've said he's done, then I agree-he'll try to finish her off if the opportunity is there. It seems to me that we need to get him a chance at Amber alone. Right?"

"I think Amber's house would be best-he's familiar with it; it's remote. But we need to move soon. He's about to thro me to Haight."

Grace sighed impetuously. "I still don't think she'll help

Wald turned to look at Grace, who was now leaning back on her hands, legs still lolling off the edge of the desktop. "You think more like your mother every day."

"I'm sure that sits fine with you."

"You are both very bright women."

He turned to me.

"Russell," he finally said, slipping his glasses back into the drawer, "let's set up a little sling, then get Martin Parish’s ass into it."

He offered me his hand. I shook it. "Thank you," I said absently, smiling with a similar absence. My mind, in fact, was reeling.

Wald stood. "I actually think this may go rather smooth! I'll have that oaf after Amber like a trout on a fly. I look forward to seeing the look on his face when we take him down for. well… what shall we shoot for? Burglary? Attempted murder? Russell, one hour from now, you and I will both be sitting in the same room with him, trying to figure how to play the Midnight Eye right. My guess is that Martin Parish will do everything he can to keep the Eye on the street until he can do Amber once and for all. He'll use the Eye's MO, like he tried to originally."

"I think you're right," I said.

"Thanks, Waldie," said Grace. She lurched off the desk and came to Erik, planted a polite kiss on his cheek, then shook his hand. "It means a lot to have a friend."

"You can count on me for that, Grace."

He was smiling broadly at her now, his blue eyes lighted with something like fascination, and something like mischief.

I used his phone to call the Medical Center. Isabella was awake and feeling well. I asked them to tell her I'd be there as soon as I possibly could.

One hour later, we were, in fact, seated in Dan Winters's office, gathered to devise our strategy regarding the Midnight Eye. I found myself unable to look at either Wald or Parish with fearing that my suspicions were written on my face as clearly as a headline. It was no easier to focus on Winters, whose penetrating black eyes seemed, as always, to find their way straight into the weakness behind my own facade. Why did he bother to include me here, with an indictment from the DA on its way? Was he simply keeping his enemies close? Or-outlandish as it would have been-had Parish bypassed his boss? Was it even possible that the indictment was nothing more than a terror tactic from Parish, that he had no intention arresting me for a murder he himself had committed? Karen would hardly look at me, so compromised did she feel at having tipped me to Martin's plans. The thought crossed my mine he may have used her. The thought also crossed my mine she was willing to be used. Suspicions of betrayal and treachery piled so high inside me, I could hardly hear myself think. I concentrated on the notepad in front of me, on the pen in my hand, and on the question that had been bothering me as much as it had been bothering John Carfax. How had the Eye managed to bypass the intercepts? We knew he had electronic know-how, this from the testimony of Mary Ing. We knew that there were commercially available products for scrambling, encoding, and decoding, for testing whether a line was "transparent" or not. With some experimentation and a little brains, the Eye might have found the application he was looking for-namely, making calls on a line with no number. But how could he get access to the lines?