SUMMER of FEAR (14 page)

I told them everything we said, except our exchange about the murder of
Amber.

"Dramatic statement," muttered Winters. "Goddamned
animal. Erik, you're the psychobabbler here—what's your call?"

Wald crossed the room and stood in front of Winters. "Look at it
this way, what would you do if you wanted twenty bucks from me?"

"I'd say, 'Give me a twenty,'" Winters
snapped.

"And I'd say, 'Sure,"' said Wald, slipping out his wallet,
which he dangled before Winters, showing him the Sheriff's Department Volunteer
badge lodged inside. "You're busted, Dan. That's how we play him. Give him
what he wants. Play along. Give him enough rope to hang himself."

"Horseshit," said Parish. His face had reddened. "We can
dink around with this guy all we want and not get any closer. I say put a CNI
intercept on Russell's phone, keep SWAT ready, and hope for the best. When the
picture hits the papers, we'll have the whole county waiting for him to show
his face wouldn't negotiate squat with this scumsucker, or give him one inch of
ink. We'll look like idiots."

Winters smiled and nodded, then looked at me. "Monroe, you're his
dial-a-date, what do you think?"

"Play him," I said. "I'm with Wald. The intercept is a
bad idea—he assumes we'll do it. Why not build up some trust, keep him
comfortable, talking? If he wants to know what Erik is doing, we might be able
to work that. He wants me as a mouthpiece. I can stall him, question him, maybe
even guide him."

"Yeah, right," said Parish.

"He is right," said Wald. "As long as he wants something
from us, we should listen."

"Goddamn classroom bullshit again, Erik."

Wald smiled. "I didn't see
you
getting any closer to Cary Clough. If I remember right, you were trying to make
latents left by a maid while Clough was sitting outside Madeline Stewart’s
art's house with a ski cap, a pair of latex gloves, and hard-on: Get real,
Marty. The twentieth century has actually arrived."

The phone rang. Winters said, "Yeah,"
"No," and "Get your butt up here," then punched the
intercom button and to his secretary to hold all calls for ten minutes.
"This is the deal he said. "We go with the CNI intercept, but we keep
the communication open. Carfax can rig one he won't be able to hear---he's a
magician. We'll work him like Wald says. Erik, you'll need to coach Russell
here on what to say—the last thing we want to do is set him off. Keep him
hungry for what we can give him. Don't give him too much.
Racial fucking cleansing.
Man, I came
to Orange County to get away from that shit. Martin, I know you'd trade a
thousand words for one good fingerprint, and Chet Singer's working his ass off
on the physical right now. We'll have a picture of him in the papers by this
afternoon. Keep your leashes on.

"Winters's eyes went to the knock on his door.
"Get in here!"

A disheveled Karen Schultz burst in with a large envelope, from which
she pulled a stack of eight-by-ten glossies. "Lopez in Documents says it's
the best he can get," she said.

The photographs, mined from the neighbor's home video, depicted varying
enlargements of a bearded Caucasian man behind the wheel of a Ford Taurus. In
three of the shots he was looking at the camera; the others had him in profile,
face to the road. The color was poor, but the car was clearly white, the man's
shirt almost certainly red flannel rolled at the sleeves, and his hair and
beard—which met and blended with the interior shadows of the car—were a chaotic
mass of red-brown. Sunglasses hid his eyes. His left arm, dangling from the
open window, was thick. His stubby fingers, ringless, were spread against the
side panel.

"Exactly what Kimmy Wynn described," said Wald. "Exactly
what the general profile indicates."

I stared for a moment at this man, this image. He looked like some
demonic visage pressing in from the darkened background of a Caravaggio
canvas. Was it his bearded heft that made him so totemic, or our assumptions
regarding what he had done? It didn't matter. But I could feel the hair on the
backs of my hands rise and a quick shiver wobble down my back as I contemplated
the imprecise rendering of his face. Was it good enough for anyone to ID? That
was the question that really mattered.

"Copies ready?" asked Winters.

"One hour," said Karen.

"Stay on it, choose the best and load up the press with them. Get a
separate phone-bank number for the public, for anyone with information
on the photo.
Everything okay out
there?"

"The phone lines are overloaded, so the bank isn't happening yet,
the air conditioning is broken, and everybody pissed off at me because Russell
here has the inside track."

"He owes us," said Winters, fixing me with his black eye
"Karen, get down to the dungeon and wait for Russell. You know what to
hold and what to release. Marty, roll that dub for Monroe."

Parish lumbered to one of the three TV monitors lined up to the right of
Winters's huge desk, pushed a tape into the VC that sat below the middle set,
and pushed a button.

"What you're about to see is the first Citizens' Task Force
evidence we can really use," said Winters. "Pure accident. Pure gold.
The neighbor—Lisa Nolan—brought it to Wald."

The screen flickered to life, a front-yard scene, daytime. The date and
time appeared in the upper right: July 3, 4:26 p.m. Three kids—two blond girls
and a plump red-haired boy—race on the grass of a suburban lawn, chasing each
other into a new red four-wheel-drive Jeep. A panting golden retriever followed
them in. The camera moved to the front of the truck, holding for a still on the
shiny bumper and winch, the dealer advertisement on the plate holder, the
entire gleaming front end. A smiling woman of perhaps forty sat on the
passenger's side. While she waved, a similar vehicle (but this one was white)
tracked past slowly on the street, stopped, and the driver—a pleasant-looking Asian
man in his early forties—leaned out the window and said
"Rick, you like to trade?"

"Lisa would kill me, Tran!"
yelled the camera operator. The lens dipped as he
answered and chuckled. Lisa nodded and pointed a finger at the camera in mock
warning. The drive in the white Jeep admired the new red one. A woman was
visible beside him, leaning forward so she could see. Three children had their
faces pressed to the glass of the rear windows—two small boys and a girl.

"Recognize the girl in the white Jeep?" asked
Parish.

"Kimmy Wynn," I said.

"Affirmative," said Wald. "Now take a look at her
shadow."

A white Taurus came into the picture from behind the white Jeep, the
driver pulling the car to his left around the stationary Nolans. When the
Taurus came around, the driver looked briefly at the camera, then quickly away.
He had just turned to profile when his vehicle disappeared off screen.

Parish stepped forward and rewound the tape for another look. On the
second pass, I saw him more clearly: the bulk of his huge body stuffed behind
the wheel, his red plaid shirt, his thick tangle of red-brown beard and matted
hair, his apparently sunburned face, black sunglasses, and his arm and hand—
broad and strong as a peasant's in a Rivera painting—hanging from the window,
fingers spread in perfect relief against the white body of the car. Marty
played it again. The focus was excellent, and the Taurus passed by about fifty
feet from Rick, the cameraman. For almost a full second, this man—very possibly
the Midnight Eye—was center screen, a star.

Winters shook his head at the now-blank screen. "Russell, play up
in your Citizens' Task Force article the fact that a citizen— Lisa Nolan—was
bright enough to bring this evidence to our Task Force sheriff-adjutant, Erik
Wald. We can't stress the need for public input enough. I'm praying somebody
can ID this ape from a picture. If not, Chet has some physical that will help.
Karen's waiting for you in Autopsy. After that, talk to Chet. After
that,
get to work and find a way to keep
that county out there from going ballistic."

"He's big,
heavy, and strong," said Karen, taking a deep breath and leading me into
the autopsy room—the dungeon.

It smelled as it always did—a sweet putrescence of formaldehyde, blood,
flesh. The overhead lights are bright but give no warmth. A chilly draft stays
down low, clinging to your knee: easing into your joints. I hated this place,
not for what it made me see but for the dreamlike unreality it forced upon me. To
work the dungeon was always, for me, a matter of trying to chase detail through
the silent, obscuring fog that surrounds the dead. The second I walked in, the
ceiling dropped, the light lowered, the walls crept in a few yards. The longer
you stay
the worse it gets.

"Six foot two, two ten," she continued once we were inside.
"Right-handed is our guess, but it's still just a guess. Yee told me he
struck Mr. Wynn too many times to count. There were parts of his gums and a
molar stuck to the ceiling."

I asked her how they got height and weight.

"Size twelve foot from the blood tracks, a very wide foot, deep
imprint. The spray painting was done from a six-two height. Give or take some,
Russell. You know that."

"Blood type?"

"None, but we've got his hair."

"Latents?"

"Dream on. We've found bits of black acrylic material where we
might expect prints."

"Gloves."

"Gloves."

"Semen?"

"He's kept that to himself, so far. Or put it
where we haven't found it."

We stopped short of a stainless-steel table where examiner Glen Yee was
working on Mrs. Wynn. The light seemed to dim again. I breathed deeply the
sickening chemical-flesh air. You think it's never going to wash out of your
nose hairs. My throat felt sudsy.

Yee, elbow-deep, looked up at me and actually smiled. "All
B-I-T," he said. "Except for Mr. Wynn."

I nodded. B-I-T—blunt-instrument trauma. It struck me that it shouldn't
take a doctor to figure out that much. But I had been wondering how the Eye had
managed two adults and two children with nothing but a club.

I looked at Karen, but she was staring at her own feet, arms crossed,
hands clenching and unclenching.

Yee reached into a plastic basin that stood at the head of the table and
held up something with his fingers. Between them was the instantly recognizable
shape of a .22 long rifle bullet, slightly mushroomed, lopsided, bent from the
middle.

"One in the head for Mr. Wynn," said Karen without looking
up.

"He didn't really have much of a head left," I said. It wasn't
supposed to sound like it did: It was just a numb observation.

"Oh, he did," said Karen. "It was just spread around the
room. The techs brought it back in bags. Dr. Yee used all his skills to put it
back together.
Shit."

Karen, blanched and sweating, hustled across the autopsy room to a big
stainless sink, into which she vomited. Yee watched her go by, looked at me,
and shrugged, giving a small embarrassed smile. He carefully put the bullet
back. The air conditioner—which can run by generator in case of power outage—blew
a death-heavy breeze by me. The ceiling came down another foot.

Yee sighed. "I've never seen anything this traumatic in seventeen
years, except the car accidents."

Karen, her back still to us, shook her head, coughed,
spat.

"Did you get a shell to go with that bullet?"

"CS brought in no shell. Revolver, maybe, or a single shot. He used
a knife to disembowel."

I nodded, staring stupidly into the open carcass of Maia Wynn. "I'm
done in here if you are, Karen."

"Take your time," she said. "Don't
rush a good thing.

"I said, I was done."

We passed through the sliding doors and down the hallway, the residual
sweetness of formaldehyde lessening in my nostrils. Karen Schultz's heels hit
the linoleum with a hurried resolve.

"The bullet we don't release," she said. "We don't wanr
him ditching the gun. The knife we don't release—same reason. Don't talk about
the wall writing or the tapes—we don't want to put any ideas into any other
sick heads. We're trying to get a better description from Kim, but she won't
tell us anything all. She gave me what she gave you back at the house, then
went mute. I've never in my life felt sorrier for another hum being. All she
does is stare."

"Where is she now?"

“No."

"I won't talk to her unless you say I can."

"Damn straight you won't. Kim's going to live with what happened
last night for the rest of her life. She's not here for you to draw quotes
from. And leave her out of the
Journal.
That's
the least you can do."

"Maybe I could—"

Karen stopped, drove a finger straight at my face, and glared at me with
her fatigued green eyes. "No. No.
No.
You don't talk to Kim. End of discussion. Besides, I've got more for You in
Hair and Fiber."