SUMMER of FEAR (39 page)

I left the study and broke into the house with an old set of
lock-picking tools I'd used during my deputy days.

I stood in the darkened hacienda-style living room and wondered what I
was looking for and where to start. The very idea that Wald had been in Amber's
room had opened an entire fresh pathway in my thinking, and I was still trying
to accommodate his presence there. Was he in this with Parish,
two
men
with grudges against her and money to gain by her death, two men connected to
the upper levels of law enforcement? Was he in this with Grace? I knew not what
to make of the Strange tension between them, of the flirtatious belligerence
one often sees in couples married for years. Surely, Grace and Erik had
history, as did Grace and I, but was I sensing the all of it? Or imagining too
much?

I began in the master bedroom. It was also done up in a masculine, heavy
style, with the same rough dark wood of the sofas and chairs of the living room.
I noted that the bedspread was of crimson satin and the sheets of black silk.
It
was
unmade. The scent of some cologne—a musky
incense-like aroma—was deep and cloying. The wardrobes were of purposefully
crude design and construction, massive things with handles wrapped in leather.
I looked at the clothes inside. There were not a lot of them. Most were still
in the thin plastic sheath used by professional cleaners—Wald, the bachelor who
could afford such a service. I noted the name of the company. I also noted the
labels, which bespoke Wald's expensive tastes and in turn, accounted for his
limited quantity. Piles of neckties were draped over pegs in the right-hand
side. Likewise, belts and suspenders hung on the opposite. A stack of
underwear—silk by appearance—caught my eye. I felt a little ridiculous. I
looked inside a matching wardrobe on the other side of the room and found
mostly winter and sportswear. Hanging on the far right side was a woman's satin
robe, with matching pajama top and short-short bottoms. They were red, size
ten. Next to them hung a rather skimpy black dress. I recognized the store's
name on the tag, Ice Blue—the same one in which Grace had worked until being
hounded underground by two men hired to torture her. My heart fluttered and wouldn't
settle. I closed the door.

I looked through the personal items on and inside both bed stands.
Wald's bedside reading was eclectic: forensic and psychiatric periodicals; Ian
Fleming; Joe McGinniss; James Hillman. Three videotapes of National Geographic
specials were stacked in the corner of the top drawer. He kept a journal, which
I browsed. A bottle of Xanax prescribed to him sat beneath the lamp. It was not
hard to imagine Erik, with his ceaseless energy, having trouble falling asleep.
A remote control lay upon the stand, though I saw neither television nor stereo
anywhere in the room.

The other bed stand belonged, quite obviously, to a wholly different
personality. Two books sat upon it—my own
Journey Up River: The Story of a
Serial Killer,
and Ellis's
American Psycho.
I had not inscribed the
copy of
Journey.
A small but very plump panda bear with a pink ribbon
around its neck leaned against the lamp. The top drawer contained copies of
Elle,
Interview,
and
Vanity Fair.
Amidst the generalized disorder of the
second drawer, I found a small bottle of perfume, a box of condoms—a brand
different from the ones I'd noted in Grace's car—and an assortment of body
lotions and creams.

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?"

"Holding up, and proud to be yours. Do you hurt?"

"My
head doesn't. Just my throat, where the tube was, and my wrist, where the IV
is."

"Do you realize what you're doing?"

She
smiled slowly, a smile limited by swelling and drugs. "I'm talking without
stuttering. Dr. Nesson is proud of me."

"You've made him look good."

"I'm already lobbying heavily to go home. He said tomorrow maybe,
or the next day."

"Baby, that would be great."

The room was a dreary affair with a view of Interstate 5, Anaheim
Stadium, and a six-plex movie dome. But it was ours, and it was private. The
nurses arranged Izzy, took vitals, got the IV pump working right, gave her a
dinner menu to order from, and were gone.

"Isabella, I'm so happy to see you."

"I'm so glad you're here. How was your
night?"

"Interesting."

She gazed at me from beneath the gauze turban, with eyes that I am
sure—for a moment at least—were assessing the impact of her gift, offered
through Amber Mae Wilson.

"I hope it was interesting in a good way,
love."

"The nights I look forward to are ones with
you."

"I'm so lucky."

"No, you're not. But I am."

"You look tired, Russ. Everyone here is talking about the Midnight
Eye. The nurses are scared to go home, so they're w-w-working overtime."

"They're getting closer to him, Izzy. I think they'll have him
soon. The whole county seems paralyzed."

I told her a little about the last two days, but what could I really say
that wouldn't depress and frighten her even more? I avoided the essentials of
Grace, Martin, and Wald and told her instead about the manhunt for the Midnight
Eye, and as much as I thought she wanted to hear about our plan to bait him
with the article. The article itself, I read in the afternoon edition of the
Journal
while the nurses helped Izzy to the bathroom. Beside it was the
computer-aided picture of beardless Billy.