SUMMER of FEAR (27 page)

"Did he succeed?" Wald asked.

"Yes. It took him a while, and Howard was furious. He was... is
quite talented that way. He made radios and walkie-talkie devices. He was
always a good listener."

"Did he like to dress up? In your clothes, or Howard's, or in any
kind of costume or disguise?" Erik asked.

"Oh my, yes. All of that. Halloween was his favorite day all
year."

"Who gives a shit?" asked Parish.

"I do," I said. "Wald is onto
something."

"Like what?"

I thought of Chet finding the heavily sprayed hair. I then
remembered—began to remember—my train of thought while I was talking to the Eye
at Joe and Corrine's house: Why was he so smug about having his picture in the
paper?

"Like the fact that the beard and ratty hair are fake," I
said, looking at Erik. "He's wearing a costume. He sprays the hell out of
the hairpiece to keep it looking... sharp."

Wald smiled. "I'll take credit for that jump. It makes perfect
sense on a psychological level, too. Part of what this man is doing is
performing a ritual. He's reversing the roles of childhood trauma so that he
can come out the victor now, not the victim. The long hair and beard are part
of the ritual. Mary, did Howard—"

"Yes! His hair was long—for the time, that is—and he was always
bearded."

Wald shot a glance at Parish. "There's another reason for it. It
lets him run a
normal
life. He's got a job. He's got an
identity—undoubtedly a false one—but during the day, when he's not the Midnight
Eye, he wears no beard and his hair i probably short."

"So we've got the whole county looking for the wrong face?"
asked Winters.

"Exactly," said Wald. "His own opposite. If it's a face
you want—get Graphics to take off the hair. It would be close enough."

I was once again impressed by Wald's understanding, if perhaps only
because it aligned so closely with my own. "He right," I said.
"Over the phone, he's almost always clear and lucid. If he holds a job, he
doesn't wear that blanket around himself. He leaves the garbled tapes to make
us think we're after a moron having a fit. He's signing with his left
hand."

Again the quiet prevailed. Finally, Winters stood and offered his hand
to Mrs. Ing. "Thank you."

She rose and took it. "I wish I could identify that picture for
sure," she said. "I believe it is Billy, but I can't be positive.
Needless to say, I hope
it... it...
isn't."

"We will be in touch," said Winters.

I stood myself then, checking my watch. "Dan, I think Mrs. Ing
should stay."

"What for?"

"I talked to the Midnight Eye an hour ago. He said he be calling
here at noon."

A wry smile passed over Winters's face.
"Here?"

"It's about the 'dramatic statement,'" I
said.

"Oh Damn," said Mary Ing.

"Mrs. Ing, can you wait another forty minutes and listen to his
voice?"

"Of course."

Then, to Parish: "Martin, get Carfax in here for a CNI intercept.
He's got forty minutes to make the installation."

Parish grunted, glaring at me, then at
Wald.
"Now."

"Russ,"
said Karen Schultz, already heading for the door, "Chet wants to see you
in the lab."

Chet sat, rumpled
as usual, on his stool, his heavy mouth turned down as if not only gravity but
years of acquaintance with the dark side of human nature were tugging his
entire face earthward. His eyes behind the thick glasses were sharp as always.
He glanced at Karen, and some unspoken signal sent her from the room.

"Sit," he said.

On the table in front of Chet was a tape player and a stack of
cassettes. The tape I had given him sat beside them. He eyed them forlornly as
I sat beside him. "I'm unhappy with what I have discovered," he said.
"It makes no sense. And when I put it within the larger picture, it still
makes no sense." He turned and stared at me over the tops of his glasses.

"Students of the incomplete?" I asked.

He looked at me again with his lugubrious and penetrating eyes.
"Russell, what we have here is something far more disturbing than incompletion.
I fear that we may be looking right into the heart of an evil. An evil very
close to us."

"You listened to my tape."

"Yes, I want to know where you got it, and why it hasn't been
properly booked into evidence here."

"I got it from the trunk of Martin Parish's
car."

Singer studied me for a long while. I could almost see the thoughts
racing behind his eyes, and I easily sensed in his deliberation the speed and
economy with which Chester Fairfax Singer organized information.

He nodded finally. "Let us backtrack. I am
employed, as you know, in the Hair and Fiber section of our forensic trim lab,
although I spend much time in the other areas of the lab. By default,
seniority, and perhaps experience, it has fallen upon me to run the day-to-day
operations here. I have a hand in almost every piece of evidence that comes
through here, from fingerprints to semen samples to trace soils to spent
cartridge And it has come to my attention, Russell, that there is forensic work
being done in my lab on a crime for which we have no record, no file, no case
number, no information at all. A cer
tain...
ranking official in this department has been doing the work on his own. He is
inexpert in technique but patient enough to arrive at sound results. I have
observed him both early and late, before and after hours. The evidence involves
hair, latents belonging to a suspect, taken from the scene of what crime, I
cannot fathom. Also, there are paint chips, fiber samples from the floorboard
of the
suspect
’s car, which match samples taken---again, I assume—from
the scene of whatever 'crime' was committed. I have come to learn the name of
the
suspect,
if that the right term. I've said nothing of this to anyone
yet except for you. Supply for me the name of this suspect, Russell."

"There are two, if I'm not mistaken."

He arched an eyebrow and smiled.

"Grace Wilson and Russ Monroe," I said.

"Your daughter, I believe."

"That's right. Did you solve the tape I gave
you?"

Solemnly, he nodded, and looked down again at the
offending cassette. "It's not an actual recording made by the Midnight
Eye. It is his voice. They are his own words. But the tape you gave me is a
composite, a collection of sentences from the tapes left at the Fernandez and
Ellison homes. You knew that I assume."

"I was pretty sure. I recognized the phrases
from before

"And Martin had this tape in his
possession?"

"Yes."

"Russell, you will now be as forthcoming with me as I have been
with you, and tell me what in the name of God is going on."

"It's simple," I said. "Martin Parish killed a woman on
the third of July and tried to frame the Eye. But he changed his mind—I'm not
sure why yet—and now he's using your lab to build a case against Grace and
me."

Chester listened in a rapt, if not stunned, silence as I explained to
him the drear events that unfolded on the nights of July 3 and 4. I told him
everything—my desire to see Amber Mae, my witnessing of Martin leaving the
house and wiping the gate, "Amber's" demolished body, and later, the
sanitized crime scene, fresh paint and throw rug, the missing body, Martin's
near-naked appearance in Amber's bedroom, and his claim that Grace had been
there on July 3.

Chester listened like a man hearing the unspeakable name of Jehovah for
the first time. When I was finished, he moaned quietly.

"What does Parish actually have?" I asked.

Singer's eyes took on a focused ferocity I had never seen in him.
"No. You will not get that information from me. You will take that tape of
yours and proceed out of this office now. I will not allow my lab, or this
department, to be used by Martin Parish, or by you, or by anyone else. You have
made me feel filthy, Russell, as has our captain. And I will tell you right now
that I will give my last breath of effort to maintain the high standards this lab
has always sought. We are not going to be caught between you men and your
primitive obsessions.
We
will
not
be used."

His chin was trembling.

I could not blame Chester for his fury or confusion. I only admire his
honesty.

"Russell," he said. "Exercise extreme caution, grand
jury. And I will ask you now not to betray m I've confided in you. At some
point, I will protect only and the integrity of this department."

"I understand."

"And I
understand nothing. Please, go."

The Midnight Eye
called Sheriff Dan Winters at exactly noon. Winters, Parish, Wald, Karen, Mary
Ing, and I all listened to his voice on the conference phone while John Carfax
monitored CNI intercept.

"Hello, fellas," he began. "Hello, nigger Dan. Midnight
Eye. Look for the pampered pets in the town that pampers perverts, too. I have
a surprise there for you. Enjoy it in all its richness, and remember that I
won't stop until every nigger, greaser, chink, slope, cocksucker, and kike
start to pack his bags and get out of my home. I'd print something like that,
if I were you. See you in hell."

The Eye hung up.

"What in Christ's name does that mean?" ask
Parish.

The canyon,
I thought.

Carfax shook his head, bewildered. "He's bypassing the intercepts.
All of them. I don't know how."

Winters glared at the conference speaker, then at Mary Ing.

"Well, Mrs. Ing?" asked Wald.

"It's Billy," she said.

“He means the Pampered Pet Palace in Laguna, I said.
“It’s in the canyon.”

.

There are only
seven small streets that intersect Laguna Canyon Road, most of which branch
into still smaller tributaries that narrow and wind and finally disappear into
the rough hills above. The people who live there are an admittedly oddball lot,
and I can say this with no sense of denigration because I am one of them. There
is a history of lawlessness in the canyon, going back to the days when bandits
on horseback preyed on the travelers who used the road, which was then just a
wandering dirt path that was the only inland route into the city. Much later,
in the 1960s, Timothy Leary's Brotherhood was headquartered on Woodland, moving
many thousand of tabs of LSD outward to the continent. (Leary was finally
arrested by a Laguna Beach patrolman, which led to the discovery of his
operation and a prison term. The patrolman went on to become a very fine chief
of police here; Leary, of course, is now a counterculture gadfly popular on the
college lecture circuit.)

In more recent years, the outlaw
heritage of the canyon evolved into a quiet

suspicion
of authority, a prickly tone independence and pride at not living "in the
city" at all. It was only four years ago that we canyon people allowed the
city to annex us into its domain, a move not made without endless dickering for
"concessions" and seemingly interminable meetings. The canyon is one
of the few places in Laguna where artists can still afford to live, an irony in
an upscale town that prides itself, profitably, on being an art colony. The
canyon a hodgepodge place, by Orange County standards: a cave house stands
beside a Jehovah's Witness temple, trailers hide on flattened pads hidden by
eucalyptus and near mansions; artists live next door to tax attorneys, there
are families, gay couples, horse people, bird fanciers, bonsai growers, snake
collectors---the friendly, the meddlesome, the isolated, and the bizarre. There
are also littered along the narrow roads a number ramshackle cottages no larger
than rooms, really, that are rentable, cheap, and private.

All of which is to say that as we climbed the steep,
winding road called Red Tail Lane, I saw the houses and people in them as
neighbors; I felt a sense of kinship with the dwellers there; I believed that
so far as the word
community
went, we had fine one; and I was already
wondering whether the Midnight Eye had chosen this place because of its
proximity to my home, whether it was his way of showing how easily he could
strike in this, my virtual backyard. No victim is faceless, but anyone of this
canyon was of myself, too. I felt responsible. And I also felt in the pit of my
stomach the soft, shifting reflection of dread as I pictured Elsie and Leonard
Stein, proprietors of the Pampered Pet Palace. They were two very kindly people
who ran the place, and they had taken fine care of Isabella's beloved dog one
summer when we were away in Mexico. I remembered very specifically, that Mrs.
Stein wore a small Star of David on a chain around her neck.

Much can be said
for the mercy of forgetfulness, although I have actually forgotten very little
of what I saw inside the Pampered Pet Palace, 1871 Red Tail Lane, Laguna Beach,
at 2:35
p.m
. on Wednesday, July
7. Forgotten, no,
but...
well,
edited. Organized. Arranged.