SUMMER of FEAR Read online

  Half an hour later, Martin found me in the laundry nook and waved me back to the living room. I'd already filled ten pages in my notebook. "You'll like this," he said. Winters, the two assistant DAs, both CS men, and Karen all stood in a loose semicircle facing the Wynn's impressive stereo system. One of the uniforms hit a button and the loud hiss of a tape can through the speakers. It continued for ten seconds or so, and realized it wasn't all hiss—it was also the sound of ocean water on sand, or maybe cars on a highway, or both.

  The voice that came on next was a man's—slow, deliberate, almost pleasant. The words were spaced out and careful enunciated, as if for a student to hear and repeat:

  "Coming... Seeing... Having... Willing Cleaning... Taking.. .Jah..."

  Then more waves, tiny voices in the far background, and a long inhalation, followed by silence. What came next was the same ocean-heavy background, the same voice, but now it was slurred, badly garbled, as if the man was in a drug stupor or falling off to sleep:

  "Ice-a h-h-homing gen spoon. O-o-ouch treble t-t-tings. A-a-ax is cute me. G-gren duffel m-m-m'back. G-gren duffel m-m-m'back. M-m-make m-m-m'do tings. C-c-cun seed brat cun wormin from he..."

  Then the end of sound, just the near silence of the Wynn's speakers.

  We listened to it again, then a third time.

  "Green duffel," said Assistant DA Peter Haight.

  "Green duffel on my back," said Winters.

  "Green devil on my back," said Marty. "Makes me do things."

  "Execute me," I said.

  Parish stared at me.

  "That's what I heard, too," said Karen.

  The most pressured of silences came over us. Winters looked around, studying each face in the group. Heads shook. Karen asked to hear it again. We listened.

  Suddenly, a cold wave of astonishment rose up and broke over me.

  Something was very wrong here.

  This I could not believe.

  Not only what we were hearing but the fact that the dicks had found it so quickly. A houseful of death and blood, latents, footprints probably, hair and fiber almost assuredly, and these guys turn on the goddamned stereo? Winters must have read the amazed doubt on my face. He looked at the two assistant DAs and the two CS investigators and told them to beat it.

  Then it hit me. Of course.

  "Nothing about the recordings," said Winters.

  "Nothing about the writing on the walls," said Schultz.

  "And nothing about you guys finding the same things at the Ellison and Fernandez places," I said. "What have you done?"

  "We'll expect you to omit that question in the Journal.” said Karen. "Or we'll omit you from everything that happen: this county from now until the day you die."

  “Why?"

  Winters locked eyes with me. "We made a judgment call and it turned out to be the wrong one. It was a mistake, hoped we could get him before he did this again. It's that simple Russell. We're giving you this story. Don't burn us. Help us. don't forget that splashing blood all over page one never saved anybody's life. Not in my opinion, anyway."span>

  In the ensuing silence, Parish glared at me; Karen Schultz looked at the floor and bit her lip;, Winters sighed and stared stubbornly ahead through space.

  I was almost too stunned to think. The only thing I could come up with was to pursue my temporary advantage through this silence.

  "Let me hear the other tapes," I said. "Let me see the photos of the walls."

  "No deal," said Karen. "Never."

  "Fine," said Winters. "Okay."

  "Monroe is a reporter, sir," said Karen.

  "That's why he'll sell us his conscience for a story," said Winters, a true master of the art of accommodation. "Right, Russ?"

  No reporter on earth would have said anything but yes. If I didn't, I could burn them big-time—once. But the same pages on which I flushed away my access to the Sheriff's Department and prosecutors for the rest of my life would be used two days later to soak up pee in a thousand litter boxes throughout I county. And I'd be out in the cold. And whatever damage Winters's silence had done was certainly, clearly, done forever. I was a little surprised at how Winters had changed since I'd worked for him. He was a harried political animal now, thinking ahead, watching out for himself, but not taking care of business. He'd made a terrible call, a call he wouldn't have made five years ago, and he knew it. He also knew he could hide it. Karen and I would do it for him.

  "I’ll rent it out for a while," I said.

  "And I'll get you a front-row seat when we send this guy to the gas," said Winters. "Until then, you owe us."

  He turned and walked out.

  I stood in the laundry room again, leaning against the washer and looking out the open door to the eucalyptus tree in the yard.

  That was when I first heard the faint, shallow breathing very close to me.

  It took me a second to realize what it was. I didn't move. I figured a dog sleeping behind the hamper, maybe, or a cat up on the shelf. For some reason, it scared me. I didn't blink. It was coming from just below me, just in front of me, still barely audible.

  It stopped, then it started again.

  Very slowly, I reached out to the dryer and pulled the door toward me. Gad, please, I thought.... The light inside went on and two eyes came into view. I knelt and held out my hands, palms up.

  "It's over," I said. "I won't hurt you. You can come out now, Kim."

  She climbed out and into my arms. I guessed she was four or five. She began whimpering and her breathing deepened. I walked us out into the sunshine. She dug her face into the crook of my neck. "Mommy screamed and I heard a bang. Mommy screamed and then she didn't scream."

  "Did you see him, Kim?"

  I felt her forehead nodding yes against my neck.

  "He was big and hairy and had a red bat."

  "Like a baseball bat?"

  "When he came out of Mommy's and Daddy's. I want Mommy and Daddy now."

  I rocked her and patted her back and let the sun hit her hair. It was matted with the vomit she'd given up in terror. "Did you see his face?"

  "He was a hairy giant and had a green robe. I want Mommy and Daddy now."

  I carried her back into the house, down the hallway, and into her living room. Martin and Karen were still there, standing by the stereo.

  "Oh My," said Karen. She walked toward us with a: officious stride that dissolved about halfway across the room when she broke into a run. She unwrapped Kim from my shoulders, hefted the girl onto her own, and carried her toward the front door.

  Martin and I stood alone. The piercing flatness of his eye unsettled me.

  "Was there a tape at Amber's?" I asked.

  He nodded. And his expression softened.

  "You listen to it?"

  "Once. Same garbled shit as this one. Same voice."

  "Were there beach sounds, cars in the background?"

  "Yeah. Same shit. He left it rewound and ready in he tape player. I found it because the power light was on and that seemed strange."

  I considered. "Did the Eye do Amber, Marty?"

  "Someone wanted us to think so."

  "The Eye doesn't cart his victims off in plastic bags."

  "The Eye doesn't make beds and cover stains, either, I'd imagine."

  "Then what the hell is going on?"

  The smile that Marty offered next was positively bizarre. "It's not that complicated, Russ."

  I let the statement go because I didn't quite understand it yet; I hadn't looked at me from Martin Parish's point of view. Now I began to, and a little spasm of fear fluttered in my heart. "Where is it now—the tape from Amber's?"

  "The second night, when I found you there, it was gone. Just like Amber was."

  Then it hit me, clearly and suddenly as a fist in the stomach. Marty was prepared to believe I'd killed Amber. I could see the conviction in his eyes, unalterable as faith.

  "Grace told me she wasn't there that night," I said.

  "Then one of us is a
liar."

  "Maybe a killer, too, Marty?"

  Marty was actually smiling again when he said, "I confess, Monroe. I did them all. I can't stop because it feels so good. Excuse me now while I go find some evidence so I can arrest myself."

  CHAPTER NINE

  When I returned home, Grace and Isabella were sitting on the porch—Izzy in her wheelchair and Grace on the step. My heart made a minor leap at the sight of them together, apparently peace. For a brief moment, visions of the Wynns receded and all that mattered was on my porch. We were a family.

  Hugging Izzy, I noted her smart outfit—a gewgaw-spangled T-shirt with matching hat and earrings, outrageous surfer pants with an explosive red-black-orange pattern, and her usual tennis shoes with the glitter ties. She was freshly made up and smelled wonderfully of perfume.

  Grace allowed me to hug her, too.

  "You look beautiful today," I said to Isabella.

  "G-G-Grace helped me. She has better taste than y-y-you."

  "And probably more patience, too," I said.

  "She's got totally great clothes," said Grace.

  Grace regarded me with unspoken pride. How she had found her way into Izzy's heart in so short a time, I could not immediately understand, but I sensed that some workable truce had been struck between them. After that, the exigencies of appearance and fashion had obviously taken over.

  Isabella looked up at me with her great dark eyes. "I don't want to be l-l-late."

  "I promise we won't be late," I said. "But I need one hour to write an article. Can you two behave yourselves for that long?"

  "We definitely cannot," said Grace.

  Isabella nodded.

  One hour later, I was driving Isabella up to the UC Irvine Medical Center for the reading of her second PET scan. Her doctors were afraid the tumor was growing. We were terrified the tumor was growing. The scan results would help us know whether it was, and, if so, how fast and in what direction. I had written and faxed my first article on the Midnight Eye to Carla Dance at the Journal, and a courtesy copy to Karen Schultz. I used his self-given name. Death seemed everywhere, common as air.

  These drives from our home in the arid tan hills of the canyon into the smoggy industrial sprawl of the medical center always seemed like a combination of the Bataan death march and a scene from Alice in Wonderland. There was a surreal overlay to these dismal journeys, along with a shaken faith that any minute the nightmare would be broken and we would be just another expectant couple heading up to the hospital for a chatty visit with our obstetrician. In fact, we had made just such a trip once, two months before Isabella was diagnosed, after a drug-store pregnancy test went bright pink. But an ultrasound showed no heartbeat. A day later, she miscarried. It was her second loss in six months. Eight weeks later, when the tumor was discovered, we understood that her body had refused to begin another life because it was already in a secret battle for its own.

  Isabella sat beside me, staring out the window, lost behind her sunglasses. The spire of Angel Stadium protruded from the haze in the east. The wide parched bed of the Santa Ana River wound beneath us, testimony to five years of drought, reminder of still another blessing that God seemed to have plucked from our tables. There was a wreck on 1-5, as there always seemed to be each afternoon. We came to a stop, funneled over to the middle lane, and looked at the lights flashing up ahead.

  "What if it's big-bigger?"

  "It isn't."

  "It really isn't, is it?"

  "No way. The implants killed it all."

  "And half of m-me."

  "That's right."

  "I deserve some good news for a charge-charge.. change—don't I?"

  "You deserve the best news in the world."

  We crept around the bang-up. Three cars were off on the shoulder. A woman sat on the asphalt, her back up against the freeway divider, her face in her hands.

  "Why do p-people always slow watch and down?"

  "It lets them be thankful it's not them."

  "Is that why my friends call me?"

  "That's not fair, Izzy. Your friends call because they love you. They don't know what else to do."

  "My peach-peach... speech is getting worse, isn't it?"

  "I think so, baby."

  "I can see the word but I c-can't say it."

  "You're doing well enough for me."

  "It's worse than last week, though. But it m-m-might be the drugs."

  "It might be," I said.

  Isabella stared at the wreck as we moved past, edged into the newly vacant "fast" lane, and sped up.

  She was quiet for a while. "I heard a woman's house in the voice last night. Was I d-dreaming?"

  I told her it was Grace.

  "Why didn't she j-j-just stay with her m-m-mother?"

  "Out of town, I guess," I said.

  "Do you want her to stay?"

  I told her about Grace's trouble.

  Isabella thought for a moment. "She might have turned out all right, if she jaw.. .just had a mother nother. I mean another mother."

  I let that pass. Isabella had always derived comfort from slamming Amber, and it wasn't my duty to deny her that pleasure. The thought came to me again how fundamentally different they were, how opposite.

  "Have you seen her re-re-recently?"

  "No."

  "What about the Fourth of July? You h-had that Amber look at dinner on the d-deck that night."

  "No, Izzy. I haven't seen her in months."

  "Does Grace want to live with us?"

  "No, she just—"

  "I don't want her in the house!" Isabella breathed very deeply and her chin shook. A tear flattened under the frame of her sunglasses and smeared her cheek. "I'm sorry," she said.

  "It's okay."

  "I'm r-r-really afraid they're going to find new growth."

  "No. No new growth, Is. Not today."

  "We see some new growth," said Paul Nesson, pointing out the dark tumor on the PET scan. "It hasn't been particularly fast. It's about what we expected. Part of it might be mass effect.'

  Dr. Paul Nesson was Isabella's neurosurgeon, a young soft-spoken man who managed to be grave, humorless, and warm, all at the same time. Of all the surgeons we consulted Nesson was the only one who said that Isabella's was not hopeless situation. He also said there was no cure. He also WAS the only one who advised against surgery. Instead, he implanted ten radioactive "seeds" into the tumor on a Monday, and by Friday, Isabella's legs had lost 60 percent of their function, he had sat with us for many of those long hours on the neuro floor while the movement in Isabella's legs ebbed away—starting at her toes and continuing up. Paul Nesson had told us then that the function loss was "probably not irreversible," but by now a year later, we all saw that he'd been wrong. I will never forget the sight of Isabella Monroe, age twenty-seven, lying in that cheerless room, her head wrapped in a lead-lined cap to keep the radiation from damaging anyone but her, trying to move her toes, then her ankles, then her knees. "Well," she said, always thought those wheelchairs with motors were nice. Can you get me one in a hot pink, Dr. Nesson?"

  "We'll get one in any color you want," he said quietly.

  We settled on black, motorless. When it came time to actually get a wheelchair, the concept of hot pink had lost its charm.

  Isabella looked at him now, then back at the colorize PET scan pictures. The tumor was a dark mass outlined in red and yellow. It was no longer round: The powerful radioactive implants had contorted it into a lumpy asymmetrical mess.

  "What do we do?" Isabella asked.

  "How's your leg function?"

  "Pretty bad."

  "More weakness?"

  "Yes."

  "Speech?"

  "It's g-g-getting worse. Want to see my tricks now?"

  Nesson did his usual neurological exam: reflex in the leg (almost none), nystagmus in the eyes (plenty), facial symmetry (good). He asked to see her walk. Isabella labored out of her chair, took the handle of a quad cane in each hand, and pi
cked her way across the room with excruciating slowness, patience, and concentration. Nesson and I followed on each side of her, ready. She made a turn, came back to her chair, and slumped into it.

  "Why don't I feel any better, doctor?"

  Nesson said nothing, looked up at the scan pictures again, his hands deep in the pockets of his white coat, his head cocked a little to the left. For a moment, he stood there without moving.

  "I think it's time to go in and debulk the tumor, clean out the necrosed tissue," he said.

  "Cut my head open?"

  "That would be necessary, yes."

  "If you d-d-didn't want to operate a year ago, why now?"

  "It's a different situation, Isabella. I believe that now we have more to gain."

  "You mean less to l-lose."

  "I suppose you can look at it that way."

  Nesson outlined the procedure, its risks and possible benefits, what we might gain and what we might lose.

  "What are my chances of waking up a spat-spat-spit-dribbling vegetable?"

  Nesson said that 90 percent of these procedures were done without that kind of damage.

  "Well, my chances of getting a brain tumor in the first place were one in about two hundred thousand. Your odds one in t-t-ten. Not g-good, if you're me."

  "I'd like you to think about it. Any surgical procedure has its risks. This is not urgent. Yet."

  I rolled Isabella back to the car in silence. When we were inside, she turned to me. "Does the insurance cover it?"

  "Of course."

  "But I don't want them in my head."

  "No. That's okay."

  "It terrifies me, Russ, worse than anything in the world. I don't think I'd ever out come of it."

  "Then I won't let them take you in."

  We spilled from the dark parking structure into the dazzling sunshine of early July.

  "Will you do me a favor, R-R-Russ? Take us to the grove? We could get some sandwiches, okay?"

  "My pleasure," I said, smiling, heart heavy, hands tight on the steering wheel. I wanted to crush things and cry a curse the Maker at the top of my lungs, but this was not the time. It was never the time.

  The grove was an orange grove—Valencias, in fact—one of the last still owned by the SunBlesst Company, once operated under the hard scrutiny of my father, Theodore Francis Monroe.