T. Parker - Summer Of Fear

I closed the drawer, thought, and leaned for a moment on the large wooden console that sat at the foot of the bed.

Strictly on instinct-or maybe because of the loomings I felt inside me-I left the bedroom and went again into Erik's study.

First, perhaps because I am at least in part a literary man. I went to the bookshelf. Wald's collection of forensic/psychiatric literature was extensive, ranging from copies of Diller's early studies with fingerprints, to pilfered syllabi from FBI lectures that Wald had both attended and delivered, to Ressler's tome on profiling, Whoever Fights Monsters. I removed a copy of Wald’s own dissertation, "Aspiring to Evil," and opened it midway

Thus, the violent psychotic mind is an ever-shifting labyrinth inside a constantly careening ego. No combination of pathology and consciousness is more potentially dangerous, nor more difficult to predict. But when these condition: are coupled in an individual of high intelligence, profiling methods can easily yield faulty results, as the subject is- by his very purpose-fluent in the behavioral disguise: which lead so many profilers to make wrong assumptions erroneous connections, and, inevitably, false conclusions

Exactly what he was propounding with regard to William Fredrick Ing, I thought. So far, he had been right.

I replaced the book and stood in the middle of the room, gazing at the sundry video equipment, the computers and printers, the endless file cabinets, and the ubiquitous testimonies to Wald himself. The room seemed to ring with his presence: I could sense his personality there, the way one hears a diminishing echo. But still, it was only an echo I could hear, not sound itself. I thought of something Izzy had told me about composing music: You hear the echo first.

Yes, but how do you follow it backward in time and it to the original sound?

I took a videotape of one of Erik's lectures-his entire collection of tapes seemed at first glance to be of himself something-put it in a VCR, and hit the play button. It was dated February of last year and featured Erik behind a podium, delivering a rather dry account on the basic principles used in DNA typing. He droned on about probes and probabilities. The tape itself was shot, apparently, from a fixed position at the back of the lecture hall, and the cameraman-a student, no doubt-had made only occasional attempts to close in, scan the attentive crowd, establish the larger context of the hall.

I tried another, dated some five years ago, with the cryptic title, "Motivation, Opportunity, and the Leap of Faith."

The hall was different, Erik was more youthful then, and his delivery was more enthused. Even the cameraman had had more spirit-he'd zoomed in and out, trying to anticipate Erik's tonic notes; he'd panned the students (actually, the backs of their heads and an occasional profile were about all he'd been able to capture); and he'd used, as some kind of symbolism, I supposed, several shots of the wall clock ticking away.

Something caught my eye, a head and partial profile in the front row. I could have sworn I recognized the face. I pressed rewind, then watched again. I hit freeze frame. Yes, without doubt it was my daughter, Grace. She was looking up at Wald in a respectful way, her pen poised over her notebook. I hit play again. As Erik made a crack about religious fanatics making good murderers, Grace smiled and shook back her dark wavy hair. She was approximately thirteen then-that would have been the time that Amber was involved romantically with Wald. I removed the tape and played several others, all dated within weeks of the first, all part of a course. And in each sat Grace in the same seat of the first row-precocious, poised, beautiful.

Like first daylight illuminating the rudimentary outlines of a room, an understanding began to form in my mind.

I locked the study, replaced the key in the kitchen, and went back into the master bedroom. It was here I felt Wald's personality most intensely-his discipline and hedonism, his mixture of the rough and the sensual, of the mundane and the fantastic. And it seemed to me that if I was to believe Erik had been in Amber's room that night- with Grace — I needed locate the very core of his character in order to understand with my mind what my heart was telling me was true.

So I looked at everything again. Then I went through guest rooms, the kitchen, the living and dining rooms, both baths. There is no end to what objects can suggest.

I found myself back in the bedroom again, drawn by one last desire to locate Wald's character through the reverberate of his absence. Erik and Grace. Grace and Erik. I again searched the bed stand belonging to Erik's female partner, again wondered at the contradictory powers emanating from the cute panda bear and the dreary books on her stand. Grace, I thought is this you I am looking at?

I stood beside the nightstand-Grace's nightstand? — considered the large wooden console at the foot of the bed. I found the switch, hit it, and watched the large TV monitor rise from its base. What manner of program could someone watch, this hugely displayed, from so short a distance?

I confess some shame at how easily I answered question. Perhaps my quick understanding was prompted in part by the shrine to himself that Erik had erected in his study. But I understood the power of image. Why would Narcissus choose the pond when he could capture himself on tape?

As I removed "Polar Alert"-a National Geographic special on polar bears-from the bottom drawer of Erik's nights' I was convinced that nothing of bears would appear on screen in front of me. I inserted the cassette into the built-in player and pressed play.

All I can say now is that I found what I was looking for and hoping not to find, that the image of a girl sitting up in this very bed brought with it all the excitement and all the sorrow of revelation. Grace looked about sixteen. She was smiling sweetly, shyly, seductively. Then the screen flickered and the first frames of the documentary overtook the image of my daughter. I replaced the cassette in the box and slipped it into my coat pocket.

The last thing I did before leaving was to put the window screen back in place.

I was not five miles toward the Medical Center when my car phone rang. It was Erik.

"Foolish move back there, Russ." My heart sank. "We won't help this county by infuriating a madman."

I managed some semblance of composure. "I think it beats the alternative. Between you and Parish forgetting to check the phone company people, I'd say that was pretty lame police work. Especially for a professor of criminology."

"Parish dropped the ball. Maybe he had a little extra on his mind-like framing you and Grace."

"He's done a pretty damned good job of it, too. Where do we stand, Erik?"

"I've laid the groundwork to get Parish believing that Amber will be home alone. Tonight. I managed this with some creative thinking in the voice-mail department. Basically, it sounds like Amber left a message for me, but at the wrong extension. All Martin has to do is call in for messages, recognize her voice, and he's hooked."

"What time?"

"Eleven. We should meet there at ten."

"Amber was willing?"

"Eager."

At three that afternoon, I helped the nurses of UCI Medical Center transfer Isabella from intensive care to a room on the neuro floor That is to say, I walked alongside the wheeled hospital bed, holding a vase of roses in one hand and pushing the IV unit with the other, looking down at her swollen face. She seemed lost to gauze and puffiness. But from the center of those, her eyes focused on me with a calm clarity, and I could see-yes, even then-the shine of Isabella's lovely spirit twinkling through at me.

"How is my man?"