The bedlam at the Sheriff's Department had gotten worse. The General Services people clogged the elevators, heading down into the bowels of the building to revive, allegedly, the dead air-conditioning system. Random sheets of drywall had been pried away to expose the ducting system, in front of which the orange-clad techs stood looking in with arms crossed, postures of stubborn defeat. Against the far wall of the Investigations section, the Citizens' Task Force phone bank was up and running, staffed by four volunteers in blue T-shirts with images of Kimmy Wynn on the front. The dicks came and went, giving wide berth to the phone-bank workers, as if they suffered something contagious. Reporters lingered, unable to restrict themselves to the pressroom, clearly ignored by the dicks. Karen Schultz, gripping a bulky Records file against her body, tried to direct them back downstairs.
I proceeded down to the lab, where I found Chet Singer using an electron microscope on a piece of fiber left behind at the Fernandez scene. I handed him the tape I'd taken from Martin box of evidence, which Isabella had so beautifully decoded.
"Can you tell me what's wrong with this?"
Chet looked at me rather dolorously, taking the cassette in his large hand. "The Eye again?"
"Maybe," I said. "I think you should hear it. Only you.'
"Then I shall. I will tell Karen to fetch you when I've had a chance. You certainly look bedraggled today, Russell."
"Long night."
"Ah, I can imagine."
Winters, Parish, and Wald were positioned around the desk in Dan's office when I walked in. Between Wald and Parish directly across from Winters, sat a woman I'd never seen before. She was in her early sixties, with stiff strawberry blond wave of hair, bloodshot blue eyes, and a plain, not-quite-pretty face. She dabbed one eye with a tissue after looking up at me.
"Russell Monroe, meet Mary Ing. She's identified the photograph we ran in the papers. Our suspect is her son."
Wald grinned at me and nodded. Parish regarded me with a particularly hostile stare. Although Dan's voice was calm, I could see the satisfaction in his eyes.
Mary Ing offered her hand and I shook it. She sniffed into the tissue. "I'm still not positive."
"It's been eight years since you've seen him," said Winters. "We understand."
Erik leaned across the desk, picked up a small stack of snapshots, and handed them to me. They were all of the same man-in one shot, he was just a sullen boy. The last two picture bore dates: 12-24-82 and 12-25-80. The subjects were identical, a male Caucasian of varying age, in the last three photo graphs wearing his red-brown hair quite long, with a full bear and mustache. He looked like the man in the video.
"Billy," said Mary quietly. "William Fredrick Ing."
"He's got a sheet," proclaimed Parish. "I've had a chance to study it. Interesting stuff. Schultz is burning copies right now."
Karen came through the door, lugging the bulky file. "Schultz is done burning copies," she said as she strode to Winter's desk and plopped the bundle down in front of him. "Gad, the media is a pain in the ass."
Wald introduced Karen Schultz to Mary Ing. A moment of silence covered the office, then Dan spoke. "Mrs. Ing, you might not want to be around for this. It's official business, and there's nothing in Billy's file you don't know about already. But if you'd like to, we want you to stay. Anything you can add to what we have might help. It's very possible, Mrs. Ing, that you may have already saved lives by what you've done."
Mary Ing stroked the wrinkles from the lap of her patterned cotton dress. "Of course." She glanced very briefly at me, then lowered her blue eyes. "I'll stay and do what I can."
Karen handed a file copy to each of us.
Winters nodded to Parish. "Martin, walk us through this- you had time to study it. Karen, keep Russell here on the straight and narrow."
I got out my micro recorder, rewound the tape, and turned it on. I got out my notepad and pen. Mary Ing looked at me with sorry curiosity.
"William Fredrick Ing," said Parish. "Male Caucasian, thirty-nine, six-two, two ten. LKA Dana Point, but it's four years old and patrol's already checked it. Nobody there has ever heard of him. History of epilepsy since childhood, alcoholism as an adult, some uh… family problems. The raps seem random until you get them together for a long view back. Stack up the fact that he's killed eight people in the last two weeks and you can read his sheet like a 'how to create a killer' manual."
"Don't quote him on that," said Karen.
I followed the sheet as Parish read. Ing made his debut in the juvenile justice system on July 14, 1966, at the age twelve, for "hunting" two girls with a BB gun at a junior h school campus. For reasons unfathomable, the girls had tried to hide in a glass phone booth. Ing had pinned them down with. BB fire for an hour before some older boys caught him, broke the gun and Ing's nose. The riddled phone booth cost Ing’s mother eighty-nine dollars to repair. Neither girl was hit or hurt. The girls' families didn't press. Billy was counseled at Juvenile Hall-six sessions-then the charges were dropped.
He was back a year later, when neighbors in his Santa Ana neighborhood told police that their pets were disappeared and that "Crazy Billy" was their suspect. Billy denied know anything about the animals. The headless carcasses of the dogs and six cats were exhumed from shallow graves in a nearby orange grove a month later. Police found the head: "crudely preserved with gasoline and newspaper stuffing "- a makeshift lean-to beneath the bridge of a flood-control ditch. Also found in the lean-to were a vise clamped to a piece scrap plywood, a blood-clotted coping saw, two containers pet snacks-one for dogs and one for cats-and a bloodstained Nelson Foxx model Louisville Slugger baseball bat. The Santa Ana cops could find no evidence that the lair "belonged" to Billy although the same flood-control channel ran directly behind his house, which was less than half a mile away. It also ran along the grove where the bodies were found. Following Ing's Jul 6 interview with the cops and the dismantling of the lean-to, no more pets disappeared from the neighborhood.
"He's active this time of year," I said. "Look at the date
"Like a rattlesnake," said Parish, making an embarrassed avoidance of Mary Ing's sad face.
"He always liked warm weather," she muttered.
And then it hit me that Ing might have been leaving his name on the tapes he left at the scenes. "Coming," I said.
"Seeing… having… willing… they're all on the Wynn tape. Ing."
"Right, Russell," said Erik. "Gamesmanship. Mrs. Ing, was Billy fond of trickery, deceit?"
Mary looked at Erik with her blue, red-rimmed eyes. "I don't know if he was fond, Mr. Wald. But he… well… he was what I would call a born liar. He lied about almost everything, just as a matter of course. Did he enjoy it? I don't know. Billy's emotions were almost never… visible."
I stared for a moment at one of the glossy blowups of the photograph taken from the video. Ing's bearded, wild-haired face was a fear-inspiring thing to behold, precisely for the absolute lack of fear that it contained. Beneath the deep brow, his eyes had a look of determination, boldness, cunning. I saw something else there, too-superiority and arrogance. Here was the face of a man proud of the horror he could personify, a horror he had worked a lifetime to possess.
"He was in some kind of trouble with the police or juvenile authorities every summer until he turned eighteen," said Parish. "At which time he dropped out of continuation school and took a job as-get this-a live-in attendant at a veterinary hospital."
"Perfect," said Wald. "He was searching for integration."
"Integrating what?" said Parish.
"His hatred, which was directed at helpless animals. He was trying to find a way to live with that hatred, for the hatred to become manageable. If he could integrate the animals into his life, he could accomplish this, at least on a surface level. For Billy, it would have been a start."
"Either that or he was looking for more animals to kill," said Parish stubbornly.
"No," said Mary Ing. "He took that job against his own fear of dogs. Mr. Wald is right-Billy was trying to overcome his fear."
"Of course he was," said Erik. "I'll bet he didn't look forward to his first days on that job."
"He came down with the flu," said Mary.
"I'll rest my case," said Wald. Then, to Parish, with a smile. "Read on, Captain."
Ing had managed to keep the job for four years. He was fired after an argument with the doctor, who filed a police report in the summer-of course-of 1976, claiming that Ing had be stealing various drugs stored at the facility. The doctor had a claimed that Ing had "removed" bodies from the hospital freezer, though exactly what the night attendant had done with them he "couldn't imagine." Police interviewed Billy, who denied any wrongdoing. No charges filed.
With Parish's mention of the word freezer, I looked hard at him, while he stared dully back at me. It had been clear to me how Martin's work in Amber's bedroom was supposed to turn out: the bloody walls, the bludgeoned woman, even the tape in the stereo would have been more than enough to aim investigators straight at the Midnight Eye. Parish had practically signed the Eye's name to the scene. Then, for reasons I still hadn't be able to decipher, he'd changed his plan and was trying instead to stage my and Grace's guilt by removing the body to my property and documenting its burial. Why the change of plan? What had Martin learned between the time he killed Alice on July 3 and the time on July the Fourth when he removed his victim and the "evidence" of the Midnight Eye? Why had he laid it on me? I remembered something that Chet Singer had told me once-that premeditated murder required audacity. Parish's just-spoken words rang in my mind-that the doctor "couldn't imagine” what Ing might have done with the carcasses stolen from the deep freeze. It was only the doctor's limited imagination that kept him from the truth. And that concept-the unimaginable-was always applied to the serial killer, to the fact that Randy Kraft would drive around with his latest victim in the seat beside him; to the fact that Art Crump would return to the rental yard a chain saw still clogged with blood and hair; to the fact that Richard Ramirez would simply walk into quiet suburban homes late at night; to the fact that Jeffrey Dahmer would cut up his victims with an electric saw right there in his little apartment while the smell of rotting human flesh crept out from under his door and filled the hallway. The audacity! It was all, truly, beyond imagination. So as I returned Martin Parish's stare, I understood the secret he had kept-that behind his calm exterior and his badge lived a man capable-quite literally-of the unimaginable, a man intimately familiar with audacity.
He smiled at me and said, "What do you think Ing was doing with the bodies from the freezer, Russ? You writers are supposed to have imagination."
And that was when it occurred to me that the only way to bring Martin Parish to any kind of justice was to out imagine him, to meet him on his own audacious turf. But how?
"Maybe he had a friend bury them and taped it with a video camera," I said.
Martin retreated behind the blankness of his smile, while Wald, Winters, Schultz, and Mary Ing all looked at me and then at one another with a series of unconnecting glances that left all eyes on me again.
"Billy didn't have any friends," said Mary Ing in all seriousness. She was not fluent in the language of the unimaginable.
"They didn't have commercial video cameras in 1976," added Wald, clearly a man who did not understand audacity.
"Who in hell cares what he was doing with the dog bodies, Marty?" asked Winters. He looked at his watch. "Get on with this, Martin. Russell here has a story to file sometime this year."
Martin looked a little gray but forced a grin at me.
As an adult, Ing had been arrested three times, questioned on three other occasions, and had done a total of 123 days in lockup. At twenty-two, he'd been popped on a standard DUI and found to have a pocketful of peyote on him-no charges for the drug; no probable cause for the search. Two years later, while working as a groundskeeper for a private school, he was questioned on complaints from his employer that certain animals in the school's "zoo" were disappearing. No charges filed. Two years later, he was in on a complaint from his landlord, who said Billy had broken into three different apartments in the complex and stolen nothing but women's underwear. Nothing filed. In 1984, at the age of thirty, Billy Ing had been convicted of his first real crime-an indecent exposure to a woman on Laguna's Mai Beach. The ninety-day sentence was suspended in favor of out patient psychiatric counseling-seven sessions. A year later, Ing fell for grand theft auto, which earned him four months. The car was stolen from a side street in Laguna Beach and returned to hilltop residential area of the same city two days later. He was questioned in 1987 regarding an attempted rape at Laguna’s Thousand Steps beach, and again two years later for a series of dogs and cats that had washed up, beaten to death, near the Aliso Pier just south of Laguna. No charges filed.
"Russell," said Karen, "this personal history may be of interest to our readers. Most of it is taken from the psych evaluations done here at County-the rest from some phone interviews Probation did. You can't quote the evaluations-they're confidential-especially what Billy Ing said. You may quote Martin, Sheriff Winters, Wald, and me. You may quote Mrs. Ing if she will consent. Are we clear on this?"
"Clear."
Ing was born in Anaheim, Orange County, in 1954. His father, Howard, was an aerospace draftsman at Rockwell; Mary worked in food service in the hospital in which Billy was born. He was an only child.
"Nothing could have been more 'normal,'" said Wald, looking up from the sheet. "But while Mr. and Mrs. Ing worked hard and young Billy was left in the care of a day-sitter, he was beginning to lead, I suspect, a very unhappy life. Is that true, Mary?"
"He was not a happy child," she answered, looking down at the page. "I can't believe how much you have on him. On… us."
"Mrs. Ing," said Erik, with a look of deep gravity, "you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. You have come here, and you are saving lives. You are a good person."
Karen shifted uneasily in her seat, as did Martin Parish. If Winters detected the massive condescension, he did not let on. Neither did Mary. She blushed deeply, looked down at the pages, and wiped her eye again with the wadded blue tissue.
Parish went back to reading.
Ing was a large child, plump and not athletic, shy and friendless. More aggressive boys hit him, girls derided or ignored him; teachers disliked him because he was slow and stubborn as a student. His epilepsy was a topic for chiding. Ing came in at 136 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test. He was often truant, for which he was beaten by his father. Howard, according to Billy, was "always drunk" and abusive, sometimes to the point of hitting Mary with his fists. Howard had told his son many times that Billy and Mary were "anchors" around his neck, that the long hours he worked to support them were hours he would have spent-without the curse of their presence-in a life devoted to, of all things, the study of law.
I looked at Mary, who continued staring down at the papers on her lap. She gave off a clear, if inaudible, wail of distress. Sensing my attention on her, she glanced quickly at me, held my gaze for a moment with her hopeless blue eye: then directed them back toward her lap. Her fist clenched hard upon the tissue.
Parish flipped a page and continued.
According to Billy, Howard was a man "so stupid and fat” that he got along better with animals than people.
"I expected this," said Wald. "It fits perfectly."
"Then maybe you should let me read it," said Parish.
"Pardon me, Captain," said Erik.
Parish grunted and went on. According to Billy, the Ing always had three Staffordshire terriers (pit bulls) and three cat: One of Billy's jobs was to feed and clean up after them before his father came home from work. He hated the animals, the way they "slobbered and shit everywhere," the way they seemed, for reasons beyond his understanding, to receive more love and tender attention from his father than he did. He was attacked at age eight by all three of the dogs one night, receiving 135 stitches to close the wounds. As an adult, he grew facial hair to cover the scars.
Karen interrupted. "Sheriff, what's your call on the scars? We can publish it, or we can hold it."
"Why publish?" asked Wald, "He's wearing a beard."
"It can't hurt," said Parish. "What if he shaves? Which is a distinct possibility, after the picture we ran."
Winters contemplated this. "Drop the scars, Russ. Let' hope he keeps the beard. Mrs. Ing, any pictures of Billy with no beard and the scars visible?"
She shook her head. "He's worn a beard and mustache since he was in his early twenties. The scars embarrass him. I don't think he would shave."
Winters nodded. "Save the scars, Monroe. You got only ^ so much space."
Parish shook his big head as if he were dealing with children, then continued.
According to Billy, the dog attack, although terrifying and deeply angering, was not nearly as painful to him as the incident that immediately preceded it.
At this point, Parish looked at Mary Ing and asked with a gentleness that surprised me, "Is it okay to read this, Mrs. Ing?"
She nodded but didn't look up.
Apparently, during one of his rages, Howard began beating Mary. Billy could hear them behind the closed door of the bedroom. His father was "grunting," something-or someone- was slamming against a wall, and his mother was sobbing. Billy threw open the door. Howard's back was to him, and he had his coat on, but his pants were down around his ankles. All Billy saw of his mother, blocked as she was by his father, were her two hands, fingers spread against the wall, and the profile of her face-"strangely angled"-also pressed to the wall, "like she was trying to hear something on the other side of it." Billy said that it looked "painful" for his mother. So he jumped onto his father's back. Howard easily shook him off, and when Billy rushed to his mother's aid, she slapped him so hard across his face that he stopped dead in his tracks. Billy said later that the feeling of Mary's hand on his flesh was "the single worst pain I ever felt." Billy had then run out the back door of his bedroom, across the darkened backyard toward the fence, behind which lay the flood-control channel, and made two unsuccessful leaps to get atop that fence before Howard's pit bulls-in a snarling fury of mistaken protection-dragged him down.
"Note the date," said Wald. "Fourth of July, 1962. The County shrink notes that the dogs might have been aroused by the neighborhood fireworks, which in '62 were legal and popular. Look, even Billy says, down at the bottom of the page, that he remembered hearing the scream of a 'Picolo Pete' going off as he tried to get over the fence. This is the answer to the question of why he took the vet hospital job. Not the answer actually-but the question itself. Fear and its governance. E you integrate it or isolate it?"
"Who cares?" asked Martin.
"If we understand him, we can help him," said Wald.
"I thought we were supposed to stop him," said Parish.
Wald, obviously trying to accommodate Mary's feelings-and to pave in advance a layer of trust, should we need her help-smiled at Parish and shook his head. "We help Billy, we help everybody in this county, Martin. That's what we're paid to do."
Karen looked at me. "This isn't the kind of stuff we expect to see in your next piece, Russ. It's background."
As Parish proceeded with his reading, I couldn't help but feel some pity for the Billy Ing who used to be. And I also couldn’t help but wonder whether anyone-especially a county ps ^y chologist-could ever really locate the reason why a human turns into a hunter of other humans, a thrill killer, a living nightmare. True, Ing's story was horrible enough-a violent family bad experiences at school, even the awful attack by his own dogs. But there were thousand of others with comparable-or worse-lives who had managed somehow not to break, not turn, not to slip over that final edge and fall into the numb, self-pitying, remorseless rage that is the hallmark of the sociopath murderer. Why Ing, if indeed Ing was the Midnight Eye? Why not someone who had suffered even more?
I have a theory, though perhaps it's less a theory than simple point of view. I'm not a religious man, though faith has something to do with my theory, as does the cold truth of mathematical probability. (The idea has come to me that God and mathematics are one.) But I've always believed that there is God somewhere, that certain people are closer to that God than others, that some are tied to a "purpose" that seems to come from outside of themselves, from "above." My list would include people as diverse as Solomon, Buddha, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Muhammad, Blake, and certainly Jesus Christ. Thus, statistically, one in every Xmillion people are "chosen" or "choose" or simply end up being closer to God than the rest of us, and they function much as journalists, scurrying between above and below, reporting back, keeping us informed. It is their job to carry out the high-level diplomacy that people like me would only bungle- misquoting, missing deadlines, missing the point, losing the notes, erasing the tapes. Similarly, there are those "chosen" to do the darkest work of the world, to function as God's continuing curse upon us, or-for those amused by the concept of God-to fulfill the mathematical fact that for every X million men and women who walk the earth at a given time, one of them will be little more than a merciless predator of other men and women. Solomon was chosen for his gift of poetry; the Midnight Eye for his gift of rage. One celebrates his specific blessing; the other bears his unique curse. But both do their work so that we don't have to. The Eye was a serial killer for the simple purpose of allowing me to be a writer. In a sense, I owed him. I extend this sense of gratitude to all sufferers of disease, too. Especially to Isabella, who, I am convinced, received her sickness so that I would not. None of this is to say that the best place for the Midnight Eye is not the guillotine or some modern equivalent-it probably is. And if called upon to lower the blade, I certainly would, though less with a feeling of vengeance than a sense of duty. I would lower the blade so you wouldn't have to. Cancer is a serial killer; a serial killer is a cancer. No one chooses either. Parish then briefly reviewed Ing's history of epilepsy, while I wondered whether his taped stutterings might have been influenced by seizures, or post seizure confusion. Had he taped them during the "aura" experienced by some epileptics before a fit, those seconds of ecstasy, vision? Ing had admitted to being heavy drinker from the age of eighteen, when he left his parent: home and took the job as hospital night clerk. After his four year stint there, Ing began a life of localized vagrancy that took him further and further out of contact with his mother, and oddly, further away from contact with law enforcement.
Something else I found fascinating, if pathetic: Ing had been questing for religious belief from an early age. He had tried it all. Lutheran, Methodist, and Baptist churches as a boy (his mother often moved the family's place of worship); as a young man on his own he'd tried Catholicism, the Four-square Church, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Rosicrucianism, Scientology. In his own words, Ing had been "looking for simple answers to complex questions. All religions, I discovered for myself, are based on the fraudulent assumption that there is Father who cares. There is no greater lie."
An uneasy quiet settled over the office then, broken only by the distant sound of the General Services crew still yanking away at the sheetrock. Winters sat back, crossed his arms, and contemplated the desk in front of him. "Mrs. Ing," he said finally "you have anything to add?"
She breathed deeply, squaring her burdened shoulders "Well… I think… I suppose that most of what you just read is true. When Howard died, ten years ago, Billy seemed to take on certain… courage? I can say that all through my life with Billy there seemed to be two of him-one that was there and one the was somewhere else. Truly, deep down inside, he's a good boy. I know that sounds like I'm blind, but really, he was never, I mean, he was always… I mean, I don't know what I mean."
"You mean he's your boy and you love him," I said.
"Thank you, yes."
"What were his interests, his hobbies?" asked Parish.
"He liked electric things, electronic things. He took apart our phone once and tried to put it back together."
"Did he succeed?" Wald asked.
"Yes. It took him a while, and Howard was furious. He was… is quite talented that way. He made radios and walkie-talkie devices. He was always a good listener."
"Did he like to dress up? In your clothes, or Howard's, or in any kind of costume or disguise?" Erik asked.
"Oh my, yes. All of that. Halloween was his favorite day all year."
"Who gives a shit?" asked Parish.
"I do," I said. "Wald is onto something."
"Like what?"
I thought of Chet finding the heavily sprayed hair. I then remembered-began to remember-my train of thought while I was talking to the Eye at Joe and Corrine's house: Why was he so smug about having his picture in the paper?
"Like the fact that the beard and ratty hair are fake," I said, looking at Erik. "He's wearing a costume. He sprays the hell out of the hairpiece to keep it looking… sharp."
Wald smiled. "I'll take credit for that jump. It makes perfect sense on a psychological level, too. Part of what this man is doing is performing a ritual. He's reversing the roles of childhood trauma so that he can come out the victor now, not the victim. The long hair and beard are part of the ritual. Mary, did Howard-"
"Yes! His hair was long-for the time, that is-and he was always bearded."
Wald shot a glance at Parish. "There's another reason for it. It lets him run a normal life. He's got a job. He's got an identity-undoubtedly a false one-but during the day, when he's not the Midnight Eye, he wears no beard and his hair i probably short."
"So we've got the whole county looking for the wrong face?" asked Winters.
"Exactly," said Wald. "His own opposite. If it's a face you want-get Graphics to take off the hair. It would be close enough."
I was once again impressed by Wald's understanding, if perhaps only because it aligned so closely with my own. "He right," I said. "Over the phone, he's almost always clear and lucid. If he holds a job, he doesn't wear that blanket around himself. He leaves the garbled tapes to make us think we're after a moron having a fit. He's signing with his left hand."
Again the quiet prevailed. Finally, Winters stood and offered his hand to Mrs. Ing. "Thank you."
She rose and took it. "I wish I could identify that picture for sure," she said. "I believe it is Billy, but I can't be positive. Needless to say, I hope it… it… isn't."
"We will be in touch," said Winters.
I stood myself then, checking my watch. "Dan, I think Mrs. Ing should stay."
"What for?"
"I talked to the Midnight Eye an hour ago. He said he be calling here at noon."
A wry smile passed over Winters's face. "Here?"
"It's about the 'dramatic statement,'" I said.
"Oh Damn," said Mary Ing.
"Mrs. Ing, can you wait another forty minutes and listen to his voice?"
"Of course."
Then, to Parish: "Martin, get Carfax in here for a CNI intercept. He's got forty minutes to make the installation."
Parish grunted, glaring at me, then at Wald. "Now."
"Russ," said Karen Schultz, already heading for the door, "Chet wants to see you in the lab."
Chet sat, rumpled as usual, on his stool, his heavy mouth turned down as if not only gravity but years of acquaintance with the dark side of human nature were tugging his entire face earthward. His eyes behind the thick glasses were sharp as always. He glanced at Karen, and some unspoken signal sent her from the room.
"Sit," he said.
On the table in front of Chet was a tape player and a stack of cassettes. The tape I had given him sat beside them. He eyed them forlornly as I sat beside him. "I'm unhappy with what I have discovered," he said. "It makes no sense. And when I put it within the larger picture, it still makes no sense." He turned and stared at me over the tops of his glasses.
"Students of the incomplete?" I asked.
He looked at me again with his lugubrious and penetrating eyes. "Russell, what we have here is something far more disturbing than incompletion. I fear that we may be looking right into the heart of an evil. An evil very close to us."
"You listened to my tape."
"Yes, I want to know where you got it, and why it hasn't been properly booked into evidence here."
"I got it from the trunk of Martin Parish's car."
Singer studied me for a long while. I could almost see the thoughts racing behind his eyes, and I easily sensed in his deliberation the speed and economy with which Chester Fairfax Singer organized information.
He nodded finally. "Let us backtrack. I am employed, as you know, in the Hair and Fiber section of our forensic trim lab, although I spend much time in the other areas of the lab. By default, seniority, and perhaps experience, it has fallen upon me to run the day-to-day operations here. I have a hand in almost every piece of evidence that comes through here, from fingerprints to semen samples to trace soils to spent cartridge And it has come to my attention, Russell, that there is forensic work being done in my lab on a crime for which we have no record, no file, no case number, no information at all. A cer tain… ranking official in this department has been doing the work on his own. He is inexpert in technique but patient enough to arrive at sound results. I have observed him both early and late, before and after hours. The evidence involves hair, latents belonging to a suspect, taken from the scene of what crime, I cannot fathom. Also, there are paint chips, fiber samples from the floorboard of the suspect ’s car, which match samples taken-again, I assume-from the scene of whatever 'crime' was committed. I have come to learn the name of the suspect, if that the right term. I've said nothing of this to anyone yet except for you. Supply for me the name of this suspect, Russell."
"There are two, if I'm not mistaken."
He arched an eyebrow and smiled.
"Grace Wilson and Russ Monroe," I said.
"Your daughter, I believe."
"That's right. Did you solve the tape I gave you?"
Solemnly, he nodded, and looked down again at the offending cassette. "It's not an actual recording made by the Midnight Eye. It is his voice. They are his own words. But the tape you gave me is a composite, a collection of sentences from the tapes left at the Fernandez and Ellison homes. You knew that I assume."
"I was pretty sure. I recognized the phrases from before
"And Martin had this tape in his possession?"
"Yes."
"Russell, you will now be as forthcoming with me as I have been with you, and tell me what in the name of God is going on."
"It's simple," I said. "Martin Parish killed a woman on the third of July and tried to frame the Eye. But he changed his mind-I'm not sure why yet-and now he's using your lab to build a case against Grace and me."
Chester listened in a rapt, if not stunned, silence as I explained to him the drear events that unfolded on the nights of July 3 and 4. I told him everything-my desire to see Amber Mae, my witnessing of Martin leaving the house and wiping the gate, "Amber's" demolished body, and later, the sanitized crime scene, fresh paint and throw rug, the missing body, Martin's near-naked appearance in Amber's bedroom, and his claim that Grace had been there on July 3.
Chester listened like a man hearing the unspeakable name of Jehovah for the first time. When I was finished, he moaned quietly.
"What does Parish actually have?" I asked.
Singer's eyes took on a focused ferocity I had never seen in him. "No. You will not get that information from me. You will take that tape of yours and proceed out of this office now. I will not allow my lab, or this department, to be used by Martin Parish, or by you, or by anyone else. You have made me feel filthy, Russell, as has our captain. And I will tell you right now that I will give my last breath of effort to maintain the high standards this lab has always sought. We are not going to be caught between you men and your primitive obsessions. We will not be used."
His chin was trembling.
I could not blame Chester for his fury or confusion. I only admire his honesty.
"Russell," he said. "Exercise extreme caution, grand jury. And I will ask you now not to betray m I've confided in you. At some point, I will protect only and the integrity of this department."
"I understand."
"And I understand nothing. Please, go."
The Midnight Eye called Sheriff Dan Winters at exactly noon. Winters, Parish, Wald, Karen, Mary Ing, and I all listened to his voice on the conference phone while John Carfax monitored CNI intercept.
"Hello, fellas," he began. "Hello, nigger Dan. Midnight Eye. Look for the pampered pets in the town that pampers perverts, too. I have a surprise there for you. Enjoy it in all its richness, and remember that I won't stop until every nigger, greaser, chink, slope, cocksucker, and kike start to pack his bags and get out of my home. I'd print something like that, if I were you. See you in hell."
The Eye hung up.
"What in Christ's name does that mean?" ask Parish.
The canyon, I thought.
Carfax shook his head, bewildered. "He's bypassing the intercepts. All of them. I don't know how."
Winters glared at the conference speaker, then at Mary Ing.
"Well, Mrs. Ing?" asked Wald.
"It's Billy," she said.
“He means the Pampered Pet Palace in Laguna, I said. “It’s in the canyon.”
.