SUMMER of FEAR

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "What do they want?"

  "How on earth would I know?"

  "Have you called the police?"

  "No. I came here instead, hoping for maybe one night peaceful sleep."

  "How long have they been following you?"

  "I don't know. I noticed a few days ago."

  "They've never approached?"

  Grace studied me with a peculiarly lucid expression, as if she'd found something in my face she'd never noticed before. "No. I've spent some time with a boyfriend the last two days. but I don't believe he's capable of... protecting me."

  "Who?"

  "His name is Brent."

  "Brent have a last name?"

  "Sides. He's a bartender, but he wants to write movie

  "What bar?"

  "Sorrento's—up in the Orange hills."

  Grace finished her drink, put the glass on the coffee table and sat on the couch. She looked down at the floor, her loose dark curls falling forward and hiding her face. "He's got a crush on me. But as I said, Russell, he's only a boy. He keeps showering me with gifts."

  She looked up at me, her eyes a little wet.

  "I hear you were at Amber's last night. I thought you two were still hardly speaking."

  Grace blinked, then furrowed the brow that reminded me so much of my own. She studied me for a long, very strange moment, during which I felt as if I were being contemplated by my own eyes. She shook her head slowly and looked away. "I didn't see Mom last night," she said.

  "Marty Parish said he saw you there, coming out at eleven-thirty."

  "Well, I'm telling you he didn't."

  "He was positive—last night. Your red Porsche."

  "I don't know what to say, Russ, but I wasn't there. Martin drinks too much to be positive about anything, doesn't he? The last time I saw Martin, he was unconscious on Mom's sofa. That was a long time ago. Last night, I was with Brent."

  She studied me again. Her expression wasn't locked, but open—an expression that offered as much as it took in. There was no cunning in it—not to my eyes, at least. But there was confusion and curiosity, and a small amount of what I can only describe as hopefulness. "What's going on, Russ? Have you been seeing Mother again?"

  "No. I talked to Marty today. That's when he said he saw you, coming out of Amber's last night."

  "Then Marty's been seeing her again."

  I nodded.

  "I've never understood how she turns you all into such grovelers."

  "Brent Sides could probably enlighten you."

  Grace's brown eyes steadied on my face. "That was never my intention."

  "Amber would say it was never hers, either."

  "It's like you crave the heartache. Does it really feel the good?"

  "Only when you're young."

  "Like me."

  "Like you. It's the way of the world. So Jah seh."

  She looked up at me again, then stood. If the phrase startled her, she gave no hint that it did. She looked out a window for a moment and shook back her dark hair. "So God says. Russ, look, I'll be honest with you. Can I just stay here one night? I'm tired of being harassed, and I'm exhausted. I know Isabella isn't wild about me, but I'll be out early."

  "Sure, the guest bed's made up."

  "The couch here would be fine."

  "Suit yourself, Grace."

  She held up her glass. "Have a nightcap with me? Something a little stronger than vermouth would be nice."

  I made two stout whiskeys and brought them back. We sat on the couch, at what seemed a proper distance. I told her about Isabella and my work; she told me about hers. The conversation was oddly formal and tentative, like that of an old friendship held together only by some strained honoring of what used to be. But for us, there was no used to be. Still, I couldn’t keep the feelings down, the great, tender, protective urges that a man feels for his daughter. I felt them spreading inside me until they reached some invisible barrier where they eddied settled, pooled. It was just as it had always been—nothing for them to have, nowhere for them to go. There she was, my girl sitting on my couch, two proper feet away, telling me about selling clothes, and all I could do was sit there. Of the severe injuries that Amber's annexation of Grace had caused me, these were the worst: that she had torn away the object of my love and stolen from my daughter and me the one thing that could never be returned—time.

  I placed my hand over hers and looked at her. She ended a sentence without finishing it, glanced at me, then turned her gaze to the floor again. Her hair fell forward and hid her face. "I'm sorry, Russ. I could've just gotten a hotel or something."

  "I'm glad you're here."

  For a while, we sat there, hand in hand, letting the touch be. Grace's muscles wouldn't relax, though; she kept her hand in mine by an act of will.

  "It's strange," she said. "I've spent my entire life with Mom, having fun. I've been on every continent, lived in ten countries, learned three languages besides my own—but I still can't understand what went wrong. Something's missing, something that isn't there, but I can feel anyway, like a phantom limb. Sometimes I feel like there's a part of me, a big part, that's just now crawling out of the slime for the first time."

  I squeezed her hand gently and smiled at her self-awareness, her self-ignorance, her eighteen-year-old's combination of confusion and clarity. "It'll never change, Grace," I said. "You'll be finding out you weren't quite who you thought you were until the day you die."

  "Quite a comfort, Russ."

  Suddenly, she stood up. I hated the feeling of her hand slipping away. "I should go."

  "Don't."

  She went to the window and looked down toward Laguna Canyon Road. "I still hate her."

  I let that pass for a moment, waiting her out. "You're just seeing her for the first time."

  "No. I really like hate her."

  The thought came to me that at this moment in time Grace believed her mother was alive. Not "I hated her" but hate her." Marty Parish was lying—Grace had not been inside Amber's house last night. The hair on my arms stood up.

  Marty, what could you have done?

  "Want to tell me about that?"

  "No. Some things you can't elaborate on. I can't say it any clearer than I just did." She turned. "Good night, Russ. Man, I tired."

  I hugged her, but she remained erect and unyielding, unoffering. "There's a blanket in the closet," I said.

  I lay beside Isabella for a while, holding her close to me, watch over her shoulder as the minutes ticked past on the clock.

  At 3:40, I went downstairs with a flashlight, saw my study door shut and the light off, then quietly let myself outside and into the dry stillness of the canyon. The smell of sagebrush settled around me. The canyon road bent far below, twisting: out of sight, unoccupied, barely lighted, peaceful.

  I let myself into Grace's car and found the light.

  Her glove compartment contained a few CDs, a tire pressure gauge, and the usual registration and insurance documents. It also contained a wallet, in which I found $680 cash, several credit-card receipts—mostly from Sorrento's in the Orange hills, home of writer, bartender, fool-for-love Brent Sides. The three-pack of condoms, I assumed, was probably for those moments when Grace bestowed upon Mr. Sides that most intimate of gifts. The thought of his eighteen-year-old daughter in coitus sits well with no father.

  I popped the trunk release, got my flashlight, and climb out. Nothing unusual in the trunk, either: jack and spare, two cans of oil, a squeegee, a small tool kit. Pushed up near the dash was a box of glass cleaner, car polish, silicone tire spray, sponges.

  Lying flat against the far side was a box of thirty-three-gallon trash bags.

  I ran the flashlight beam across the label: EXTRA HEAVY DUTY. I reached into the trunk, brought them out, and checked the price tag for place of purchase, but there was only the bar code. I fished out the ties—plastic, joined together, waiting to be pulled apart—and compared them with the three in my wallet, taken from under Amber's bed.


  Same ties.

  Same bags?

  I finally went to bed just after four. I lay there wondering whether Grace was lying, if so, why, and whether she could possibly have it in her to kill. I did not believe she did. Sometime around five, I drifted into an uneasy sleep, from which I woke in a nonspecific panic less than an hour later.

  Downstairs, I found that Grace had gone. She had probably coasted her car down the hill to keep from waking us.

  In my study, I found her note:

  Thanks, Russ—couldn't sleep much, after all. Find anything juicy in my car? I went to pick up a few things. Be back.

  —Grace

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sheriff Daniel Winters called at 8:10 that morning and told me he expected the Dina piece to be big, subtly persuasive, well played, and on the stands by Tuesday. From the tone of voice, I could almost picture the resigned furrows on his deep black face. Dan Winters was a sheriff who understood the impurities contained within the larger concept of getting things done. So I did what any writer does when faced with impossible demands—agreed to everything.

  He was quiet for a long moment, then gave me an address in the Orange hills and hung up. So, he had taken my bait.

  The house was a magnificent wood-and-glass thing, tucked within a stand of Jelecote pines at the end of a long private road. There were two patrol cars, two unmarked, AND the Crime Scene van parked in the driveway. When I got out the air smelled like a mountain resort. It was already hot. There was a nervous buzz in my stomach.

  Marty Parish met me at the back door and led me past two dubious uniforms, down a long hallway, through a living room almost as big as my entire house, then down another hallway toward, I assumed, the bedrooms. He turned once to look at me as we walked but said nothing. I sensed a change in him from the night before, a change that went deeper than the simple fact he wasn't dumb drunk. Marty had a red patch where I'd kneed his forehead, but he also had the level-eyed gaze of a man who's got something on you.

  "Sorry about last night," I said.

  "You'll get yours." He gave me that look again, as if he'd found out something that put me, himself—everything—in a cold new light.

  "Ready when you are," I said.

  "I'll wait till you're not."

  "How bad is this?"

  "Worst I've ever seen. Two children."

  "So Winters is ready to go public."

  "Should have after the Ellisons. What'd you give him for this, another Dina story?"

  "That's right."

  Marty's eyes bored into me. "Nothing's right, Monroe."

  He stopped at the first room on our left. I could see past his shoulder through the open door to a pale blue wall dripped with dark red.

  "Meet the Wynn twins," said Martin, and stood aside.

  I went in. My first thought was that an industrial accident had happened here, something involving faulty machinery and human flesh. You could smell the foul scent of innards exposed to air for the first and last time. The blood seemed to have been thrown at one wall—large impact splatters that ran like paint all the way down to the blue carpet. On the opposite wall were great wide smears of it, thick in places, then thinning as a brush might make. But the brush was a small boy—a few years old.

  I guessed—who lay doll-like beside the wall where phrases he been crudely written with his blood:

  MIDNIGHT EYE CLEANS HIPPOCRITTS SOJAH SEH

  I took a deep breath and squatted down, looking at a cardboard mobile that had once probably hung over a crib. Little military airplanes lay flat on the floor at my feet—a P-51, an F-l 11, an AWACS jet. I took another deep breath, then looked to the far side of the room, where the crib was tucked into a corner, near a reading nook that extended out toward a garden. The alcove had windows on three sides. There was a hook in the ceiling of it, for the potted fern and macrame hanger that were dumped on the carpet below. From the hook dangled another boy, ankle bound, the binding set on the ceiling hook, his small arms out in front of him. He looked like a tiny diver descending toward a pool. There was, in fact, a pool beneath him. He turned very slightly on the hook; turned back.

  I looked down at the cardboard airplanes again and apologized silently to these boys whom I hadn't come here in time to help.

  I sensed Marty behind and above me.

  "Justin and Jacob," he said. "We're not sure who’s who yet."

  I took another deep breath. My legs had stopped feeling and my pulse was light and fast. I felt Marty's hand lock onto my arm and yank up.

  "There's more," he said.

  One foot in front of the other, that choking, meaty, slaughterhouse stink all around me, I followed Marty from the room.

  We stood in the hallway, our backs against the wall, and smoked. The ceiling seemed terribly low. It was dark, too, even with the recessed flood lamps bearing down from above. A uniform jangled by, his face averted, crossed himself, and headed into the twins' room.

  "You make enough money to get out of this business, then come back for this kind of shit," Marty said. "Does it really pay that well?"

  "Go to hell, Martin."

  "Wish I could."

  "Damm... damn."

  "He does, He does. Mom and Dad are in the master. There's a daughter, too, but she must have been gone. Her bed's made up and she isn't anywhere around."

  I went in. It looked as if something had fed there perhaps—captured prey, torn it apart, partaken. Or maybe not eaten at all, but simply shredded the room and the people in it, searching for something very small, very hidden, very important. The smell was strong. Both bodies—smallish dark-skinned bodies—were opened and emptied like drawers. Their contents were everywhere, strewn around the floor, hurled against walls, piled on the bed, strung from the blades of the ceiling fan, flung onto the lamp shades, the blinds, the television screen, the dresser, hung from the top fronds of a palm that stood by a window, splattered against that same window and drying now from red to black in the golden summer sunlight of morning. The carcass of Mr. Wynn, on his back, arms out, was spread across the bed. Mrs. Wynn was hanging in the shower stall, tied by her hair to the nozzle fixture. Some of what had been inside her was spilled out in a pile over the drain, which had backed up, making a pool of blood.

  The two Crime Scene men were going to work with a video camera and evidence bags when I left and found Martin, still in the hallway.

  I heard a muted commotion from the living room, followed by Sheriff Daniel Winters and his entourage coming briskly toward us up the hallway. Their footsteps had a ring of assurance. Winters is a tall, very thin man, bespectacled, a sharp dresser. Gray colors his hair at the temples, and his eyes, behind the glasses, are black, hyper-vigilant, and consuming. He often stoops, catches himself at it, straightens himself, then slumps back into his characteristic posture again. There were three men besides Dan—two assistant DAs I knew, a uniform I'd never seen—and a pretty red-haired woman named Karen Schulz,. the Sheriff's Department Community Relations director. Winters nodded at me on his way past, then took Martin by the arm without a word and led him into the master suite. The prosecutors and deputy followed. I heard Winters's shocked expletive, then heard it again, filled with outrage, disbelief, dread.

  Karen Schultz studied me with her always-alert green eyes. "We're going to have to hold back a lot of this, Russell

  "You just say what."

  "I need to see your copy before you file."

  "You can see it, but I won't change it. Tell me what to sit on, and I'll sit on it."

  "We'll admit the possibility of a link to Ellison ; Fernandez."

  "That's why I'm here."

  "But nothing positive until the ME's done and all the labs are complete. You will use the words possibly linked and say we are attempting to establish a definite connection. You not encouraged to use the term serial killer."

  "Repeat offender sounds a little trivial."

  She sighed, glanced toward the door of the master suite, then looked back at me. K
aren Schultz's hair was straight and luxurious, her skin pale, her nose freckled. She never smiled. "Go ahead with it for the Journal if you want, but if we can't connect the scenes, you're the one who'll be wearing the ass ears."

  "What time is the press conference?"

  "Four tomorrow. That vets out to a two-day scoop on all the other print. Spin Dina well."

  "I will. Thanks."

  She looked again at the door to the master. "Gad, I hate this," she said.

  All I could think of to say back was, "I'm sorry."

  I loitered, taking notes, getting the basics, sneaking off to a little laundry room with a door that opened to the backyard, so I could smoke, breath fresh air, and have a drink from my flask.

  The detectives quickly determined that Mr. Tran Wynn had been forty-one years old, a physician. Maia was thirty-six and had worked for a local aerospace firm.

  The twins—-Jacob and Justin—were two.

  The daughter, Kim, was blessedly gone. Where? I looked into her room. The bed was made, and the cops had found the door open, whereas the doors to the twins' room and the master suite were both closed. Karen Schultz demanded another search of the house for Kim, which proved fruitless. Winters ordered a door-to-door canvass of the neighborhood for the girl, after Martin and DA assistants all impressed on him that for the killer to take the girl alive would be "out of profile." APB pending. Bloodhounds considered.

  "No story until we find the girl," said Karen. Her face was so pale, her freckles showed even darker.

  They didn't want Kim reading about the death of her entire family—her entire universe—in the evening Journal. I didn’t either. "Don't worry," I said. "The Wynns are Vietnamese, aren’t they?"

  Karen nodded. "The last name is an anglicized version of Nguyen—pronunciation is similar. Jacob, Justin, and Kim? I say Tran and Maia were trying hard to fit in as Americans."

  "A lot of Catholics came down from the North," I said

  "I guess the Wynns should have stayed put. Least they could have been buried in their own ground."