Standing there with her legs exposed beneath the apron and a wooden spoon in her hand, she looked like either advertisement for the spoon or an intro for some men's mag "sex in the kitchen" spread. Images of Elsie Stein flickered in my mind as I looked at my daughter, subliminal postcards from hell.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Some people and animals died."
"Is that why all the helicopters are out there?"
"Yes."
"It must have been horrible."
"It was truly horrible, girl."
I poured another large whiskey over ice and shut the door to my study behind me.
My father called to say that Amber had left without his permission. She claimed to have urgent private business. She was calm and apparently unafraid to be out alone.
"I'm sorry, Russ. I was on the pot when she drove off."
"It's okay for now. There's nothing you can do."
"I hear something wrong in your voice," he said.
"The Eye hit here in the canyon."
"People you know?"
"Kind of."
"Do you need me there?"
"Wait for Amber. Later, Dad."
I wrote the Ing piece first, based on Mary's partial identification of the picture and full conviction that the voice on the conference speaker was that of her son, William Fredrick.
My article on the latest killing spree by the Midnight Eye was finished an hour later. It simply projected out of me like vomit, and I felt the same sense of spent foulness that a good retching would have left. I faxed both pieces off to Carla Dance and Karen Schultz, then made another drink and sat out on the deck. The two Sheriff's Department choppers and one borrowed from the Newport Beach PD roared through the sky above, their blades popping dully against the canyon sides. Two network news birds hovered low, getting establishing shots for the seven o'clock segments. I talked briefly with Carla, who was checking facts—how many dogs, exactly, were hanging on the fence; did Ing graduate from high school in 1972 or 1973; was "Tiger' cat or a dog? She told me the crime-scene report was the best she'd ever read and speculated that there might be an award in it for me. The ice in my whiskey had melted and I felt sick.
Grace joined me in the shade of the deck, a shade that still registered 102 degrees on the thermometer nailed to the side of the house. The choppers persevered overhead. Grace looked lovely and composed; I sensed in her a desire to ameliorate the apparent darkness of my mood. She noted that the ice in my glass was gone and took it into the house for more. Grace did not speak as I explained to her what had happen on Red Tail Lane. I cannot remember what I said. My gorge rose as I finished the outline, and my mouth went dry and my face got cold. Through the open screen doors, I could hear the television newspeople slurring out the latest on the Midnight Eye's deeds in Laguna Beach.
I closed my eyes, saw the sun burning orange again my eyelids, concentrated on the slow, even pounding of my heart. "Grace, you ever wish something big, like God, would pick you up by the heels with a pair of tongs and just like dip you into something wet, and when you came out, you'd clean and fresh again?"
"Oh, yes. I've pictured it as something like mercury, something silver and smooth that goes into your body, then drains out through the pores, and all the ugliness goes out with it."
"Yeah."
Eyes still closed and my head resting against the rough redwood of the house, I found Grace's hand with mine and squeezed it gently. Contrary to the early morning of July 5, when I had last taken her stiff and reluctant hand, now she remained gentle and confident within my own and I sensed no notion on her part to withdraw from me. Her hand seemed, at that moment, the single most valuable thing in my world. Then I felt it grow tense.
"Don't take that away," I said.
It relaxed slightly and remained firmly within my own.
"Grace, I like the sound of your voice. Tell me a pleasant story, one with meadows or lakes or something, tell me something happy that happened to you."
"Well... okay, Russell, but I don't know any happy stories."
"You must know one."
"But I don't."
"Then make one up."
"I can't."
The sun continued its hot touch upon my eyelids and the sounds of the canyon traffic diminished, no doubt a result of the roadblock set up by Winters in meager hope of intercepting the Midnight Eye, or perhaps a witness. The whiskey surged around in my blood, unable either to fuel me or soothe me. I thought of Isabella and her surgery the next morning. I thought of life without her. There seemed to be nothing on earth to look forward to.
"Then tell me about you and your mother," I said. "It doesn't have to be happy, just true."
Grace sighed and her hand tensed. I squeezed it harder.
"What do you want to know, Russ?"
"I don't understand why you're so afraid of her."
"There are lots of things you don't understand."
"Tell me why. Tell me something. Let me hear your voice."
"Well... Russell, you must know that Amber is a profoundly selfish person. She is also extremely insecure and self-doubting. With every year I became older and more mature, she became more competitive. It was a revelation to me, at the age of thirteen, that my own mother was jealous of me."
Her hand grew stiffer, but I made no move to let it go
"Jealous?" I was imagining horrible things now from the Pampered Pet Palace, and it seemed that Grace's voice was the only antidote. "I wish you'd explain that."
"For example, Amber and I gained the attentions of very handsome young sommelier in a Paris restaurant one fall. He was thrilled to have our table—you could sense his desire just in the way he worked a cork from a bottle. It was also clear that he was interested in me. Amber, of course, in all her fake Continental sophistication, invited him—Florent—to a party her suite on a Friday night. Florent and I had a wonderful talk out on the balcony while the other guests were inside. He told me he was more affected by my beauty than he'd ever been by a woman before. I told him I understood and would accept his call the next evening. Don't I sound like Amber now—'would accept his call'? It was all so... obvious, so predictable. The next morning, I got from Amber a one-way ticket back to Orange County, via Los Angeles, and was met at the airport by Martin. The phrase that still sticks in my mind was, 'Never, ever try to come between me and one of my men again. I have not raise you to be a whore.' Amber said it from the back of the limo as I climbed out at De Gaulle. I'll never forget the... aggression in her eyes."
I heard the choppers thumping overhead.
"One might argue that Amber saw in you a thirteen-yea old girl getting in way over her head."
Grace's hand tightened with an unexpected strength.
"The first key to understanding other people, Russ, is to remember that they don't think like you do. If you aren't ready to respect my answer, you shouldn't have asked the question."
"I stand corrected. Please go on."
"She basically just dumped me on the plane, Russ. Without a word of explanation beyond the clucking about her men. That's an example, a typical event. There was a coldness about how she moved me around her world like a piece of jewelry. I tried just to understand her. I forgave Amber a lot—I rationalized her behavior, figuring that was just the way she was. I'm not an unforgiving person, Russ. But by the time I was taken on a... desert sight-seeing tour by the fat man and his crew-cut friend, I was finally broken. I was terrified. I felt... hated."
"I'm not tracking."
Grace studied me silently for a long while. I could tell by the shadow the hair of her turned head made across my sun-struck face.
"Well, Russell, the desert tour was quite simple. Fat man and crew cut—they called themselves Sam and Gary—met me as I was getting into my car one evening to leave work. Gary had a gun—a Glock Nineteen, I believe. This was about eight weeks ago. They stuffed me into the front seat of a red Bronco and squeezed me in between them. A bloodhound was on the backsea
t, huge and slobbering. Name of Tex. Funny. The ride down was two hours of silence and BO from Sam. No gropes or suggestive talk, so I was half-wondering if they might not rape me. We went out by Joshua Tree, off on a dirt road, into the desert. They brought me out, rather gently I remember, then knocked me on the ground and burned the bottoms of my feet with cigarettes. Gary allowed me to chew on his shoe, to quiet me. They didn't say anything. Well, they said one thing, which was the whole purpose of the exercise. Gary said, and I quote, 'Show some respect, or you're out of the money.' Amber's been threatening to write me out of the trusts. I'm supposed to get a really big piece of it when I turn twenty-one. She's holding the money over me like some kind of glue, like she can put us back together with it. The truth of it is, I don't want the money I can work. I have some savings. It's just like that stupid netsuke she believes I stole from her. She makes up something, then reacts to her own illusion. She scares me to death. Which exactly what she wants."
"To scare you into... what?"
"Submitting to her. Talking. Calling. Begging to be let back into her heart. Gad, I don't know, Russell. Ask her. I've given up trying."
She regarded me, and her face came into better focus and I saw the look of near exasperation on it. Her pupils were small and I sensed depths behind their depths, layers beneath the layers—fear and courage, truth and falsehood, youth and maturity—all tapering back toward the point in her life, all those years ago, when she felt betrayed by her mother. And I saw for my Grace no place where she might fall and hope to land safe! She seemed to be balanced above the abyss, like a dancer on one flexed toe, the question not being if but when she would tire and fall. And I felt myself tracking her through the same gaping wound that Amber had opened in her all those years ago, her violation making possible my own.
If one can feel a fissure open in the heart, that is exact what I felt. A helicopter roared past, straight overhead, low. The windows rattled.
"Let me see the bottoms of your feet."
"It's comforting, Russell, to see you trust me as much as Amber does."
"Then I withdraw the request. I believe you and I trust you."
"Good. You should."
Then she reached down and untied her tennis shoes, peeled off her socks, and exposed first the left, then the right foot. The circular pits of distorted skin, the chaotic healing of burned flesh, were a living fossil record of pain. There were seven burns on each.
"It hurt so bad, I broke three of my back teeth, gnashing. You may see the new crowns, if you'd like."
"I wish you had come to me."
"I thought I could handle this myself, Russell. I am not inexperienced in taking care of my own problems. I tried. I am still trying."
"May I hold you?"
"Yeah."
She melted against me, burying her sobbing face in the crook of my neck. She did not cry long, did not cry hard. She did not speak. A few minutes later, when her breathing had evened, she stood, went to the bathroom, blew her nose, then came back out to the deck.
"I'm looking forward to helping with Isabella tonight," she said. "It will be a chance for me to do something good."
"We'll do something good for Isabella," I said. "She's the most beautiful woman in the world."
"More beautiful than Amber?"
"It's not even close, girl."
"I love her too, Russ."
She gazed out at the canyon, tracking the flight of a chopper as it banked low over the hills.
"I didn't want to add to your miseries, Russell. I didn't want to burden you. But I am scared of Mother and what she might do next, or have her... friends do for her. I'm sorry to have complicated your life. And I wish I could have been a better daughter."
The phone rang. Grace was kind enough to answer and bring the cordless out to me. "Dan Winters," she said.
I took the phone.
"Dan."
"Sh-sh-sh-sh... fooled again. I can sound just like a nigger lawman when I want to. How's the tracer working?"
"I told you, we decided against it."
"I'll make this quick. I just wanted to know what you thought of my statement."
"I hope you hang for it."
"An erection and climax at the moment of death. Better than lethal injection."
"Nice job, Billy."
The silence that followed was long.
"W-w-what?"
"William Fredrick Ing. Billy. Crazy Billy."
"Explain yourself."
"You're dead in the water, Billy. We've got an ID on your photo and one on your voice. You left a clean right index print at the Wynns." This, of course, was a lie. "It took us about two days to make your ass. You're not the Midnight Eye. You're selfish fat little kid who got chewed by his own dogs. You got slapped around for walking in on your parents doing it. You think you're a great racial cleanser, but you're a fraud. By the time tomorrow, everybody in the county will know who you are."
I could hear him breathing then, a shallow, rapid sound that hissed across the line. "Y-y-you cannot write that. I forb-t bid you."
"What are you going to do? Kill someone?"
"Yes! Yes! I'll d-d-do something so bad, you won't be able to believe it. And it will be on your conscience, Monroe if you p-p-publish that information, you will be directly responsible for what I do next. I absolutely forbid you. You talk to Winters. You talk to W-w-wald. You talk to Parish. You tell them they cannot publish that lie. I am the Midnight Eye! If you write anything other than that... I will act t-t-terribly."
"You're scaring the sh-sh-shit out of me."
"Then consult your soul when I do the unspeakable. It is in your h-h-hands!"
"Cool off, man. Maybe I could use a little help myself. Maybe if you help me, that article won't get written. Just maybe."
A long pause followed. I could hear his heavy breathing begin to slow.
"You're talking about Amber Mae again."
"That's right."
"Parish tried to k-k-kill her."
"I know that. First he wanted it to look like you. Now he's working up a frame that will fit me perfectly. But he can't use it without damaging himself—his reputation, his marriage, everything. Why is he risking all that?"
"He's not."
"Explain."
"He'll fit you, but he won't use his... evidence, unless you threaten him."
"A bluff?"
"Partly."
"And the other part?"
"Sh-sh-sh. Well, it's possible, Russ, that he may still ask you to perform some act for him, to do something he desperately needs doing, and will call on you to do it."
"Such as what?"
"It's obvious. You want to catch a pig, think like a pig. Run that article and I'll make you sorry."
He slammed down the phone. The crack echoed in my ear as I pressed the OFF button, then dialed Carfax.
"Still no numbered line," he said. "All we can get is area code, and it's here, it's our area code. I can't figure this out.
"He's using a scrambler," I said.
"We can override that with enough time. We had enough time. But we've still got no active number."
"He's not calling from damned nowhere, John."
"No. No, he's not. Shit, I just can't—"
"Patch me through to Dan."
Winters came on the line, told me that Parish and Wald were on conference with us.
"Ing says if we print the ID, he's going to be an extra-bad boy."
"We shouldn't let that happen," said Wald. "It's the wrong way to play this."
"You guys are out of your goddamned minds," said Parish.
Ten heated minutes later, we had our answer. Wald and I prevailed over Parish. Winters finally decided to pull the article identifying Ing, perhaps using it as leverage the next time Midnight Eye called.
"We gotta stop coddling this asshole," said Martin. "'We know what he looks like. We got a name. Christ in heaven, Dan. what else can we do?"
"We've got to stop him, period," said Wald. "You don�
��t do that by infuriating him. Not now, at least. There might be a time for that."
"Yeah? How many more people have to die?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The choppers were still in the air an hour later when we left to go get Izzy. Laguna Canyon Road was blocked off again northbound. I could see the badges leaning keen-eyed toward the idling cars and T-shirted volunteers of the Citizens' Task Force with handfuls of fliers to give out—no pretense to a Sobriety Checkpoint tonight, just a flat-out blanket search for William Fredrick Ing.
There were news vans parked along the shoulder of the road, too, reporters getting man-on-the-street segments from canyon residents, police interviews, even a word with our mayor, whom I spotted squinting into the lights with an expression of shock and indignation on her face. Traffic was stopped all the way into town. Horns blared and radiators hissed and condensers dribbled and tape decks boomed and human limbs dangled from open windows and the heat gave no hint of abating as the sunset ended in a western sky so clear as to appear polished.
Grace said she felt sorry for Billy Ing. I said to spend her mercies where the exchange rate was a little better. And that was all we said, the rest of the way down to San Juan Capistrano.
Half an hour later, we were led into the Sandoval living room by Joe, who stood aside, revealing Isabella sitting in her wheelchair, looking up at me, smiling. Her overnight bag sat packed and ready beside the chair. Her cane stood next to that. She was wearing a new outfit, involving an oversized T-shirt studded with mock gemstones and glitter. Her wig had been brushed and styled, her face made up, and her lips reddened with a bold lipstick. She blushed deeply when she saw me, an said, "Hi, baby."
"You," I said, and knelt down and wrapped my arm around her.
"I'm coming h-h-home tonight!"
"You've been away too long."
Behind me, I could hear Grace and Corrine introducing themselves to each other. It felt strange that my daughter had never met my in-laws.
SUMMER of FEAR Page 20
