SUMMER of FEAR (15 page)

I put up my hands in mock surrender. "Okay. I'm sorry about all
this, Karen."

"Your sorrow doesn't do the Wynns any
good."

"You're not the only one who feels bad here."

"Stop, Russ. I know. I
know.
Please, just stop."

Karen's eyes were
filled with neither rage nor sadness, but with a churning, undisguisable fear.
"We should have put together the first two sooner. Maybe this wouldn't
have happened."

The Hair and
Fiber section of county Forensic Science Services was presided over by an
aging, overweight man named Chester Fairfax Singer—Chet for short. He wore
suspenders, white shirts, and bow ties and affected a professorial
deliberateness that seemed at first a mark of either arrogance or dullness. He
was unhurried, quiet. As I had learned over the years, Chet's bearing wasn't
born of arrogance, academic overtraining, or stupidity, but of a broad and
genuine gentleness. He was a lifelong bachelor, never mentioned family, seemed
to spend virtually all of his free time alone, and though he'd never to my
knowledge intimated such a thing to anyone at the county, there was an almost
unanimous decision that he was homosexual. But Chet had never been the butt of
those secret jokes that follow homosexual men around, especially in the
flagrantly hetero world of law enforcement. I think this had less to do with
Chester's spotless reputation than with the sense of vulnerability he
projected. Chet was a man who'd cried openly when the Challenger went down.
Chet was a man who remembered the birthdays of every female who worked in
Forensic Services, and honored each with a single white rose—grown himself—in a
simple white vase. Chet was a man who arranged to be escorted to his car each
night rather than negotiate the dark county-employee parking lot alone. Chet
was a man who, despite his sizable quirks, commanded respect.

IChet was
a man, I came to understand, who had a secret life. I never got to know him
well enough even to guess what it was.

He was sitting on a stool at his
light table when Karen and I came in, staring through a swing-out magnifier at
something in an evidence bag. He set the bag on the glass and rotate his bulk
on the stool, offering me his hand. Chet looked pale and nonvigorous as always,
though I knew from my days on the Sheriff's that twelve-hour days were standard
for him.

"One of my favorite fellow students," he
said, smiling, was part of a phrase he'd mumbled once to me years ago while
working on a perplexing rape case, and I'd reminded him of often: "We are
students of the incomplete." The other statement of Chet Singer's that I
will never forget, he made drunkenly to me over the punch bowl at a department
Christmas party back in 1982: "Violence is the secret language of the
race, and we, are its translators."

Chester and Karen exchanged wary looks, and Karen
nodded. "Winters says we can talk to him," she said. "I tell him
what to leave out."

"Of
course. Well... where to begin?"

Chet
folded his hands over his ball-like midriff and beheld me through the thick
lenses of his glasses. "Let me describe picture for you, and you can tell
me what you see."

Chester's "picture" of the Midnight Eye was
of a tall, right-handed Caucasian male, age thirty-five to forty, with Iong
straight red-brown hair and a full beard of a slightly darker shade.

"If we use the 'all hairy' description that Kim
gave you, we can say his hair is unkempt—wild-looking," said Chet.
"Three of the five hair samples are nearly eight inches long. They contain
some polymers I suspect are a fixative of some kind. Very thick in places."

"Hair-spray?" I asked
"Apparently."

"A genuine sweetheart," said Karen. Karen was still uncharacteristically
pale, the freckles on her nose still standing out in relief against the white
skin.

Chet nodded. "Dina can't match the genetic print of the hair with a
blood sample from a suspect unless there's root tissue connected to the
follicle. So far, I've found none. I don't feel that we're in a strong position
right now for typing."

"And we've got no suspect," I said.

"I remain an optimist," said Chester. "Though at times, I
don't know why."

According to footprints left in the Ellisons' vegetable garden—through
which the Eye had walked—the man would have been wearing size twelve shoes.

"Now, the soils."

The soil was a mixture of decomposed granite and beach sand, and the CS
techs had found it in various locations in all three scenes—the Fernandez
apartment, the Ellisons' suburban home, the Wynn's big custom house. An alert
CSI had checked the blood smears on the walls at the Wynns' and found the sand
granules mixed with the blood, along with acrylic fibers most likely
originating from the Eye's gloves. A small mound of the granite/sand mix had
been found on the floor next to Shareen Ellison's side of the bed. The word
mound
told me how it got there.

"Why a mound?" Chet asked me.

"He knelt down to look at Mrs. Ellison before he attacked—one knee
up, one down. The sand came out when his cuff emptied."

"How did it get into his cuff to begin
with?"

"The beach. It's beach sand, right?"

"Correct."

Chester's next
finding was contrary to what Kim had described, though her mistake was
understandable. The murder weapon was not a baseball bat at all, but a heavy
length relatively soft steel alloy, commonly used to make standard irrigation
pipe. Yee had found microscopic shards of the metal in the skulls of Mr.
Ellison, both Wynn adults, and Sid Fernande He found no wood or aluminum that
would indicate a sporting bat. From the relatively controlled fury that the Eye
had employed on his first three victims—the Fernandezes and Cedrick Ellison—Yee
had been able to establish that one end of the pipe was fitted with what was
probably a standard threaded cap, giving the weapon a rounded rather than a
sharp edge. "I suspect that the other end is capped also," said Chet,
"Or at least drilled."

I waited, as did Karen. Chet had the same smug, almost flirtatious look
that he always got when he'd made a tough leap and landed squarely.

"Picture this," Chet continued. "He must find a way in
the homes. In the Fernandez apartment, he was lucky and used an open door. At
the Ellisons', he climbed through a window At the Wynns', he cut a five-foot
slot through the screen-door mesh and slipped through it. We must assume he
arrived at all three scenes by car or motorcycle—surely he can't cover so much
of the county by foot and not be noticed—so in each case he must've walked from
the vehicle to the home."

I waited again.

"Where does he keep a two-to three-foot-long, one-and
a-half-inch-diameter—I would guess—club? Does he waste free hand on it? Does he
risk being seen
holding
it as he approaches the scene? No. He fits one
end with a loop. Leather or maybe thick twine, even a strip of cloth. He cinches
the knot up against the cap, or maybe he's drilled a hole for it—remember, this
pipe is manufactured to be relatively soft and rust resistant because it's
often buried. The loop goes over his left shoulder, leaving the weapon to lie
against his side. It's hidden, out of the way, but quickly accessible."

"Raskolnikov's MO," I said.

Karen frowned.

"Yes," said Chet. "He's taken the page from Dostoyevski,
although I doubt he's read
Crime and Punishment."

"How do you know what he
reads?"
Karen asked.

"Nobody who misspells
hypocrite
or
ignorance
reads
the masters," I said maybe a little snottily. I was hoping to buy Karen's
kindness with forensic competence, but the tone of voice came out wrong. She
colored and looked away from me.

Chet gave me a very odd look at that moment but nodded, first to me,
then to Karen, then studied me again. "Yes."

"Nice, Chet, but a yard-long pipe dangling from a man's shoulder
isn't exactly hidden," Karen said.

"That is correct. And that is why, as Kim told Russell, the
Midnight Eye wears the green robe."

The green robe turned out to be a blanket—an inexpensive acrylic
blanket, fibers from which Chester had already placed at all three scenes. It
was likely old. It was very dirty. Fibers of it were found at the Wynns', mixed
with decomposed granite and beach sand just inside and to the left of the
master suite's door.

"Holding a blanket around you still takes a free hand," I
said. "If you're going to keep it over your shoulders."

"He takes it off once he's inside—the CS team found the fibers
tightly grouped in all three scenes. He has set down the blanket, in each case,
just inside the bedroom door, always on the left, using his freer right hand to
slip it down and off."

"Like taking off his warm-up jacket," said Karen. "I wonder
if he uses pine tar on his club, for a better grip."

"No evidence of pine tar, Karen. But I had Evidence send up the
Wynns' screen door this afternoon, for a closer look the cut. The jagged ends
of the mesh were rich with green acrylic fiber—the top, where his shoulders
went through, and the bottorn, too, where the blanket dragged across."

Karen looked at me a little wearily. "Nothing on the blanket, Russ.
It's too easy to ditch and get another. Winters said okay on physical
description and method of entry
only."

Chester coughed quietly. "I would not release information on his
facial hair, for roughly the same reason, Karen. A man with a full beard is
much easier to spot than one who is clean shaven."

"Too late, Chet. We're going with the
picture."

Chester shrugged.

Karen hesitated for a moment. A flutter of confusion crossed her eyes.
It was then that I realized she was truly making the calls for me, that for all
her carping about Winters this and Dan that, Karen Schultz herself was in
charge of me and what I wrote. That's why she'd been sitting on me so hard. A
mistake was hers and hers alone.

Chet coughed again, cupping his hand to his mouth. It struck me as a
little nervous. I assumed he was plugged into Karen's distress at my presence.

"We know he carries a knife—short-bladed, and I would guess a
substantial handle
for...
leverage.
It is likely a hunting knife, or one for skinning. So," he said.
"That is the picture I've drawn for you. What do you see?"

I gathered my thoughts for a long moment, drawing Chester's images and
information, extrapolating what I could, trying to let a coherent whole emerge.
"A beach bum. One of the homeless you find in beach cities. He's got long
hair and beard because he can't afford to have them cut. He wears blanket for
warmth, and to hide the club. He spends his time at the beach because it's
free, he can panhandle, use the public rest rooms, check the dumpsters for
edible trash, steal from the tourists. On the tapes he made, I heard waves in
the background, and voices. He hangs out at a place where the cops are halfway
lenient, where other homeless people congregate—no use standing out, and at six
two he's not exactly inconspicuous to start with. Venice Beach is a
possibility, but it's too far north. The cops would run him out of Huntington
or Newport, so Laguna is the best bet. I'd look for him in Laguna. He steals
cars to get around because he's too poor to afford one of his own. He gets them
in Laguna, leaves them there when he's done. You'd find beach sand in the floor
mats, green acrylic fiber on the upholstery, and if you were lucky, Chet's
mystery polymer on the headrests. He's a Rastafarian—or thinks he is—from all
the Jah shit he paints all over the walls. Rastas smoke a lot of dope—it's part
of their religion—so I'd expect him to be around the smoke. Again, he can't buy
it, not much of it, so he hangs with people who supply him. We know he's got
access to a tape recorder, so I'd guess he stole it from a tourist who was out
in the water, not looking after his things. He's either got a speech impediment
or he's heavily under the influence when he makes the tapes—maybe both.
Epilepsy is possible. We could figure out only half of what he said, and that
didn't make a lot of sense. Last, I'd say he's pretty smart. He wears gloves,
hides a three-foot steel club under his blanket. He's brave and he's getting braver.
First, two people alone in an unlocked apartment, then a couple in a locked
house, then a family of four. He won't stop because the more he kills, the
hungrier he is for more. There's no sexual turn-on for him in it; he does it
because he thinks he has to. Probably hears God—-Jah—telling him he has to do
this shit. Maybe that's who's talking on the tapes. That's what I see."

Chet said nothing for a moment, then finally looked Karen. She had her
back to us, staring out the vertical slot window that constituted—twelve hours
a day—Chet Singer view of the outside world.

"Good,"
said Chet. "I understand you have actually talk to him."

"News travels fast around here," I noted.

"Are you
done?"
asked Karen.

"I'm done. Thanks, Chet. I'll be careful with
this."

"Good of you to visit," he said. "I'm
sorry we lost you."