T. Parker: Summer Of Fear

After a long silence, through which the whine of distant sirens intensified, Martin cleared his throat and looked at me. "Grace cracked about an hour after you left. She and Wald did Alice and the cover-up-the whole show. We don't have to talk about this now if you don't want."

Isabella gasped quietly.

"Who actually did it?"

"Wald did the clubbing. They were going to get rich and married. She planted the body here, on Wald's instructions. Covered it with the trash bags, so it wouldn't stain her car. According to Grace, the club went off the end of the Aliso Pier, so we'll get our scuba team out at daylight."

"That's good."

"Dan's thinking about firing me for my hillside antics that night. It'll depend on any complaint you might or might not bring. I'm not going to ask any favors at all, but you should know, Russ, I was really convinced you'd done it. All I knew for sure was that I hadn't." I could think of not one appropriate thing to say. "Wald trailed some things past me a couple of times, he continued. "Bits of information, questions about your finances, about your past relationship with Amber. I thought I was making some solid conclusions. If I'd been smarter, I’d have smelled him, not you." "Well, I believed it was you. We all got taken pretty good.” Martin looked down at Ing again.

"Damn. Maybe you two could take a vacation or something. Get away. Get clean.” "We will." "Go after some birds this fall?" "Let's think about that one, Marty." 3

Now it is winter and we can begin to forget. The wind blows, the rain steadies down, the old withers and the new awaits birth.

Mary Ing identified the body of her only son. The county seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief at the death of the Midnight Eye-there were candlelight vigils in three cities to mourn his victims, endless editorials in the papers and on TV, and an intangible lightening of the human spirit that prevails over a place as surely as the weather.

But even with these, in the wake of the Eye's slaughter, the county looked at itself as it never had before. As psychologists and sociologists looked for patterns and causes for his behavior, they could find nothing in Ing's past truly to account for his character. There was the usual talk of biochemical imbalances and sociopathic personality disorder, but the Ing who surfaced in continuing interviews with his mother and people who knew him revealed little more than a typical Orange County kid, raised middle-class, publicly schooled, introduced to religion, who found himself with a job at the phone company and a rage he could not-or would not-control. His hatred of minorities remained largely inexplicable, though a small incident from his high school days-shy Billy Ing had developed affections for a Mexican girl who eventually jilted him-might have shed some tiny bit of light upon his development. The girl had kept his love poems, which were reprinted in the Journal. They were simple, touching, dear.

Moreover, the county's stark realization that Billy Ing was their native son coincided with a lingering economic recession that found property values falling, housing starts down, and a general feeling that the "Orange County Dream" gone bad. For the first time in my memory-and I have lived here all my life-the easy optimism that had prevailed for decades was suddenly shattered, and in its place arose sense of self-doubt and questioning that the people here heretofore done without. We were like a seemingly robust woman, just told by her physician that she has cancer. We were, in our souls, aghast. And though we could sleep with our screen doors open and our guns locked safely away, there was always the chance that the Midnight Eye would through our dreams, or that some new evil might arise from us and begin it all again.

Alice Fultz was exhumed, examined, returned to Florida by Amber for a more proper burial near her parents.

Grace, within the jail, is timid and withdrawn with everyone except for Isabella and me. We visit every day that Izzy strong enough, which is three or four times a week. Grace seems like a creature just born; she is curious about the world outside and seems to assume nothing.

In late fall, the preliminary hearing established sufficient evidence to try Grace and Wald on charges of murder. During that proceeding, the basics of what happened on the nights of July 3 and 4-and in the days following-were outlined in Grace's deposition. She and Wald had entered the house together, though Wald had parked on a side street below Amber's home. (This accounted for Parish seeing Grace leave but not Erik.) Wald had carried the club in a tennis bag slung over his shoulder-not an altogether-odd accoutrement for Amber's neighborhood. They had found "Amber" sleeping, and Wald had killed her while Grace waited downstairs in the living room. It was only while they were setting out the evidence to direct authorities toward the Midnight Eye that the answering machine betrayed Amber's real location-she was calling from Santa Barbara to tell Alice she'd be late. It had been Wald's decision to try to cover up the whole thing-hoping to conceal fully one crime and save his framing of William Ing for another attempt on Amber. Together, they had returned to Amber's house the next afternoon and done their best to erase all evidence of what they had done. Grace was tasked with delivering Alice's body to my game freezer, which she had just accomplished late on the night of July the Fourth, when I found her waiting for me in my driveway.

Grace has been cooperative with Haight's attorneys, as well as her own, and from what Haight has told me, they will try to use Grace's testimony to convict Wald of first-degree murder, offering a more lenient prosecution of my daughter. This means he must be willing to drop the conspiracy charge against Grace, which, if proven in court, would qualify both Erik and her for the gas chamber. The DA seems more intent on nailing Wald well than on trying to prove the always-difficult conspiracy to commit murder. A second-degree rap against Grace will land her a sentence of about fifteen years. It appears that Wald's lawyers will argue that their client was seduced by a vengeful daughter, blinded by love, and eventually tricked into being in Amber's house on July the Fourth. They have been predictably mum with regard to details.

Some portion of her inner life seems to have left Grace and she is more tender now and sweet, resigned to the truth and its consequences.

It took me almost a month to muster the courage to ask her the question that had been torturing me most since learned of her liaison with Erik Wald: Did Grace know that. 45 Wald ordered her to steal from my study would be used kill both me and her mother? It was the first time since arrest that Grace truly broke down, and the rush of her tears convinced me that Wald had convinced her that only Amber would be there the night that we had sprung the trap on him. I believe her, and it is what I want to believe.

She told me just the other day that she is almost ready to see her mother.

Amber has visited us twice at home. Needless to say, undercurrents prevailing during a visit from Amber Mae do not encourage comfort or intimacy between husband and wife. Amber knows this, and her second visit-at our invitation-was, believe, probably her last. She is off to New York next week. I walked her down the road to her car when she left that second time, an uneasy silence between us.

"Stay my friend, Russ. We're not getting any younger, you know."

"I know. I will. I am."

"Am I as bad a person as I seem, given certain standard of measure?"

"No. You made yourself and I love you for that."

"Made myself, like a science project. Crude, bubbly, but to no particular effect."

"You had a disadvantage."