T. Parker - Summer Of Fear

In contrast to my silent deliberations, both Parish and Wald argued heatedly about how to handle the Midnight Eye. Their voices seemed to cascade over me like the roar of a waterfall behind which I was standing. How did the Eye get access to the lines?

The key question for Parish and Wald was whether to reveal him as Ing or not. He had threatened massive violence if we did, but, as Parish pointed out, keeping Ing active was the key to finding him. Wald took the opposite view, that to enrage Ing was to endanger the county, and that any time we could purchase with mollification was time we badly needed. At one point, Wald and Parish were yelling and Winters had to shout them both down.

"What's your call, Russell?" he asked me.

"ID him," I said absently. "Make him feel the pressure. I'm with Martin. Smoke him out."

Wald looked at Winters, visibly aghast. "It's going to backfire," he said.

"First decent idea Monroe's had in a week," said Parish.

"Thanks. Here's another one. Ing works around phone lines. He knows how to work them, like taking apart the phone when he was a kid. That's why he can place the calls around the intercepts."

"We've already talked to everyone we could think of said Winters. "Right, Martin?"

"Right. The linemen at the phone company, the utilities people, the city maintenance crews. Everyone."

"What about the phone company? Not the field crew but right there at the hub, in Laguna?"

"Wald covered it," said Parish.

"You covered it," said Wald.

An utter grayness descended over Martin's face. "I haven’t screened the hub people-that was Wald's damned Citizen Task Force's job. He asked for it."

"Bullshit," said Wald. "You said your people were handling it."

"Oh no," said Winters. "I can't believe what I'm hearing. You mean nobody's been out there to the goddamned phone company with that picture?"

The silence that reigned again seemed, logically, to focus upon Martin Parish. "No."

"Enough of this shit!" bellowed Winters, hurtling up from his desk and backhanding a pile of files to the floor. "This is what we do! No more games. No more crap between you people I'll fire all of you motherfuckers if I have to. Now you will listen and you will obey. One, Monroe, file the article about Mrs. Ing' identification. File the one on Ing's childhood. See if the Journal will run the graphic without the damned beard. Karen, give them one of Mrs. Ing's snapshots of this bastard. Parish, get out to the phone company right now. Wald, either get those citizens to come up with something or get them the hell out of this building. They're using up my air conditioning. Now get out of my sight and do it!"

I gathered my notebook and left the room. Behind me came the sound of Wald and Parish yelling again, the same accusations and warnings.

In the pressroom, I used a fax machine to file my story suggesting that the Midnight Eye was William Fredrick Ing. I talked to Carla Dance about the photographs and she was only too willing to run another picture of the suspect. She thanked me again for the best series of scoops she could remember printing.

"Gosh, I hope this doesn't come back to haunt us," she said.

"Carla, I don't know what else we can do. And, by the way, can you hurry along those checks? I'm broke."

"I'll talk with Accounting."

Then I went out to my car and drove back down the freeway toward Erik Wald's house in the Tustin hills. I wanted to have a conversation with the walls of his home, and then I wanted, very badly, to see my Isabella.

The same overpowering heat that was allowing the Midnight Eye into the homes of innocents also gave me easy entry into Wald's study. I pried off the screen of an opened window in the rear, slid up the glass, and climbed in, well concealed beneath the towering eucalyptus and oak that ran down Wald's property line to the east.

I went to the desk, opened the drawer, and took out Wald's glasses. From the pen in my pocket, I removed the screw I'd found in Amber's room. Working under the light of Wald's desk lamp, I placed the screw into the empty temple hole and twisted it in. The fit was perfect. It had the same coppery finish that the metal of the frames did. I tilted the glasses over, wiggled them gently, and watched the screw fall to the blotter. Stripped, I thought, exactly what had allowed it to fall out in the first place. I could feel my heart pounding in my fingertips as I gathered up the little part and replaced it in my pen.

I left the study and broke into the house with an old set of lock-picking tools I'd used during my deputy days.

I stood in the darkened hacienda-style living room and wondered what I was looking for and where to start. The very idea that Wald had been in Amber's room had opened an entire fresh pathway in my thinking, and I was still trying to accommodate his presence there. Was he in this with Parish, two men with grudges against her and money to gain by her death, two men connected to the upper levels of law enforcement? Was he in this with Grace? I knew not what to make of the Strange tension between them, of the flirtatious belligerence one often sees in couples married for years. Surely, Grace and Erik had history, as did Grace and I, but was I sensing the all of it? Or imagining too much?

I began in the master bedroom. It was also done up in a masculine, heavy style, with the same rough dark wood of the sofas and chairs of the living room. I noted that the bedspread was of crimson satin and the sheets of black silk. It was unmade. The scent of some cologne-a musky incense-like aroma-was deep and cloying. The wardrobes were of purposefully crude design and construction, massive things with handles wrapped in leather. I looked at the clothes inside. There were not a lot of them. Most were still in the thin plastic sheath used by professional cleaners-Wald, the bachelor who could afford such a service. I noted the name of the company. I also noted the labels, which bespoke Wald's expensive tastes and in turn, accounted for his limited quantity. Piles of neckties were draped over pegs in the right-hand side. Likewise, belts and suspenders hung on the opposite. A stack of underwear-silk by appearance-caught my eye. I felt a little ridiculous. I looked inside a matching wardrobe on the other side of the room and found mostly winter and sportswear. Hanging on the far right side was a woman's satin robe, with matching pajama top and short-short bottoms. They were red, size ten. Next to them hung a rather skimpy black dress. I recognized the store's name on the tag, Ice Blue-the same one in which Grace had worked until being hounded underground by two men hired to torture her. My heart fluttered and wouldn't settle. I closed the door.

I looked through the personal items on and inside both bed stands. Wald's bedside reading was eclectic: forensic and psychiatric periodicals; Ian Fleming; Joe McGinniss; James Hillman. Three videotapes of National Geographic specials were stacked in the corner of the top drawer. He kept a journal, which I browsed. A bottle of Xanax prescribed to him sat beneath the lamp. It was not hard to imagine Erik, with his ceaseless energy, having trouble falling asleep. A remote control lay upon the stand, though I saw neither television nor stereo anywhere in the room.

The other bed stand belonged, quite obviously, to a wholly different personality. Two books sat upon it-my own Journey Up River: The Story of a Serial Killer, and Ellis's American Psycho. I had not inscribed the copy of Journey. A small but very plump panda bear with a pink ribbon around its neck leaned against the lamp. The top drawer contained copies of Elle, Interview, and Vanity Fair. Amidst the generalized disorder of the second drawer, I found a small bottle of perfume, a box of condoms-a brand different from the ones I'd noted in Grace's car-and an assortment of body lotions and creams.