SUMMER of FEAR (44 page)

Slowly, our breathing became one rhythm. The ceiling lights shone down
upon us. Sweat burned my eyes. I tumed and looked at my wife. The wheelchair
stood behind her, locked in place. Isabella's eyes were open now and she
blinked slowly I could see the quick pulse of cotton where her heart was beat
ing. Her legs trembled from their effort.

"Is it over?" she whispered.

"It's over.
It's over. It's over."

Martin Parish was
the first to arrive. I welcomed him wordlessly, pointed to the body of Dee
lying on the stairway, then led him into the living room, where Isabella sat
again in her wheelchair and the Midnight Eye lay sprawled between kitchen and
dining room.

"Hello, Isabella," he said softly.

"Hi, Marty."

"You okay?"

"I
think I am."

Martin
stood for a long moment over the body of the Eye. I stood beside Izzy. As I
watched, Martin pulled off the false beard and set it down beside the Eye's head.
What was revealed to us was quietly shocking: a rather plain but still handsome
face marred by the scars of long ago; a straight, intelligent nose; high
forehead giving way to thinning brown hair that now stood up in errant wisps, a
pair of deep-set, very dark eyes, still open, that seemed more than anything
else to be reflective of pain.

Martin shook his head and looked at us.

I stood above Isabella, my hands upon her still-trembling shoulders, and
stared down at the lifeless man now occupying my kitchen floor.

Martin walked toward us and pointed at the couch. "Mind?"

"Go ahead," I said.

He sat heavily. "Eleven human lives. And his own miserable excuse
for one."

"A cancer," said Isabella.

"We cured it a little late," said Martin.

"B-b-better than never," said Izzy.

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

CHAPTER THIRTY

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."

"What was that?"

"You were alone."

She considered this. "You know something? I was always happiest
that way."

"I know."

"Do you think that somehow, in a different time or place, it might
really have been good for us, together?"

"Yes."

"That's a nice sentiment. Thank you."

"Does it matter?"

"If we think it does, then it does. Take care in
Mexico,

Russ."

"Thank you, Amber."

"Please know the offer is there, if you need
money."

"We'll make it. That wasn't what I meant."

She smiled,
actually blushing a little. I kissed her on the cheek, then held the car door
open for her. The car is a red Maserati. It roared and echoed down the steep
street. I could hear it all the way to Laguna Canyon Road. Amber Mae Wilson—
surrounded by herself, and alone as always—guided her fast car around the bend
of Our Lady of the Canyon and disappeared toward town.

Isabella greeted
me back to the porch with a knowing look on her face. She had always been able
to carry on a conversation without the words, and I wondered if, in the future,
this subtle capacity might serve us well.

She was sitting in her wheelchair, with a cap on her head. I guided her
over beside the patio bench, then sat next to her. Fall was approaching. A warm
breeze filtered in from the desert and the shadows had begun to change. We
looked out at the canyon, my hand in hers. She squeezed it.

"This is what we have,
Russ."

"Yes."

"It isn't what we wanted, but
it's what we have."

"I’ll take it, Izzy."

"No matter
what happens, remember how I loved you. Please don't ever forget that."

Next month,
Isabella and I will leave for Mexico. Our destination is the unglamorous hamlet
of Los Mochis, where Isabella's relations—a great many of whom she has never
seen—live. She yearns to know the people from whom she came. They have prepared
a home for us, cleaned and painted and furnished. It is reputed to have a nice
view of a small valley. Joe and Corrine will arrive ahead of us.

There
has been some assumption on the part of friends---unvoiced but nonetheless
apparent—that we are going to Mexico for Isabella to die. When viewed from the
outside, this idea is understandable. Three days ago, I received in the mail
condolence card from a distant friend, comforting me in my great loss. I had
the notion that Izzy would get a laugh out of this ill-timed gesture but then
decided she might not. I chuck it, sent the friend a photograph of Izzy holding
a current newspaper (date visible!) and a brief note of correction. Isabella
pressed me for an explanation of the newspaper ploy, but I refused,
good-naturedly, to give one. She has since lost interest in the incident. We
are not a man and woman who live in terror of secrets. The known is terror
enough.

Our
secret, if we have one, is this: We are going away next month not for death,
but for life.