SUMMER of FEAR (23 page)

All of which is to say that as I lay in bed on the Wednesday morning of
July the seventh, bruised and still exhausted by the dismal events of the night
before, I tried to separate my world into things over which I had no power and
things over which I did. Against Martin Parish's bleak logic, I was temporarily
helpless. There was no sense in divesting myself of Alice's body, when Parish
had the tape. All an empty grave would prove is that I'd moved her! I had been
crudely but effectively neutralized—exactly Parish's goal. Over the cancer
cells that raged in Izzy's brain, I had no power. Over the actions of the
Midnight Eye, I had perhaps even less. Dread began to work into me. But I knew
that there were some things I could still accomplish. I could love Izzy, even
if I couldn't save her. I could protect my daughter from the young woman's
perils that had apparently befallen her. I could begin to outline my book about
the Midnight Eye. I could shower, shave, eat.

"Coffee, Russell?"

Grace stood in the bedroom, a steaming cup in her hands. I had not heard
her arrive, but that didn't surprise me: What little sleep I'd had had been the
sleep of the dead.

"Russell, where's Isabella?"

I explained.

She set the cup on my nightstand and assayed me with her Monroe brown
eyes. "I'm sorry I was gone," she said. "I could have
helped."

"Where were you?"

"Does it really matter, Russ?"

"Yes, it does."

"Don't be silly. You look rather under the
weather today.

A guy from the
phone company installed something on the telephone pole about an hour ago. You
slept right through it.

I groaned, sat up in bed, and hooked the coffee mug.

"Tell me if there's anything I can do for you," said my
daughter.

"Thank you."

"Isabella didn't leave because of me, did
she?"

"She likes you. I think she left because of
me."

"Give yourself a little more credit than that," she said then
turned and went back down the stairs.

I called Corrine. Izzy was sleeping after a fitful night—the heat, bad
dreams, many trips to the bedside commode.

"Thank you for your words last night," said Corrine. "It
important we not blame ourselves. I'm starting to understand what you've been
going through this last year. She—we all owe you so much."

"Thank you. That's a difficult thing to
believe."

"I hope you can use this time to enjoy yourself a little. Get some work done. Was yesterday relaxing
for you?"

I thought back to Amber's astonishing reappearance, thought back to last
night, to Martin's palpable lunacy and the body I had buried in a grave not a
hundred yards from my own front door. "Very relaxing," I told
Corrine.

"I'm glad to hear that, Izzy should be awake in
another hour."

"I'll be there."

"God bless you, Russell Monroe."

"I would like that."

My
Journal
piece on the Citizens' Task Force got front page play and a large
color photograph of Dan Winters and Erik Wald. The lead article focused on the
Midnight Eye, a horrifying photograph of whom—culled by Documents from the home
video—took up three columns above the fold. You could see his dark bearded face
in the shadow of the stolen car, determine his girth from the size of the arm
dangling from the window, sense his self-contained and predatory nature. Carla
Dance had not changed a word of my article, though she did run an inset on
Russell Monroe, the Task Force volunteer who was writing this special series
for the
Journal.
I sensed Dan Winters's hand in this bit of minor
manipulation—I had never told him I'd join his Force—and in the word
series,
which gave me a very specific idea of what my
Journal
employment was to
entail. I had to smile at Erik's expression in the photo—so grim, so alert,
so...
indispensable.
God only knew how many phone lines were ringing at
the Sheriff's Department, particularly on the desk of Erik Wald and the CTF. We
had a hit on our hands; I could feel it.

I called surveillance tech John Carfax at County, and he confirmed that
he'd installed the intercept device. It was a Positive Control Systems DNR
(dial number recorder) that had CNI (call number identification) capacity built
in. He told me he could get a trace number in thirty seconds. Under specific
orders from Winters, he was to share his information with me.

I called my agent, Nell. I told her I had an inside track on the
scariest, weirdest, most haunting serial killer to hit California in years and
that I needed money to write the book.

"We won't get a lot," she said. "You haven't made the
list since
Journey."

"I don't expect a million dollars," I said. "As much up
front as you can arrange. I need it."

"I’ll try."

"This will make
Helter Skelter
and
Fatal Vision
look
like Hardy Boys stuff."

She was quiet for a moment, then sighed. "How come it seems like
everybody in California is either writing a mystery or going on a killing
spree?"

"Each has his own special gift," I offered.

"I'll try, Russ. That's all I can do."

With this bit of encouragement came the bravery to call my bank and
check the balances of my three accounts—something I had not been able to do for
nearly six months. They went down to a grand total of eight thousand dollars,
about two months' worth. I had been subconsciously preparing myself to sell
Izzy's car, my truck (rarely used), and liquidate our retirement money, which,
after taxes and penalties, would have give us another year of living. There
remained the specter of selling our home in the current bad market. Not to
mention the eighty grand I owed the Medical Center.

I began to wonder how I could write anything close to the whole truth,
with Martin's tape, with Alice Fultz buried within throwing distance of my
typewriter, with my guilty fixation on Amber Mae so central to the story. No, I
told myself. You will write the story of the Midnight Eye. The rest will stay
consigned to the dark annals of your secret life. Maybe you can put it in a
novel someday.

I asked Grace to come with me to see Izzy, but she declined.

"I'm not afraid to be alone up here," she said. "I don’t
think those men have any idea where I've gone. In fact, this is the
only
place I feel safe alone."

"I understand," I said. Besides, there was something I wanted
to do in my car, and it wasn't something that I necessarily wanted my daughter
to hear.

On my way to Joe and Corrine's, I listened to the tape that had come
from Martin's box of "evidence." The voice of the Eye droned on, and
I could still make little of it. I began to meditate on just how this tape had
come into being and found its way into Amber's stereo. Was it faked? Dubbed
from others? An original that Parish had failed to file as evidence in the case
of the Midnight Eye? I finally tired of his slurred nonsense, removed the tape,
and put it in my pocket. Surely, I thought, there's a safer place to keep this
than in my car.

Isabella was sitting up in bed, propped up on pillows, her tape deck and
a bag of cassettes resting on her lap, when I came in. From beneath her
baseball cap extended the head-phones, a little black cushion over each ear.
She heard me come in, opened her eyes, and gave me a smile of such warmth and
happiness that all I wanted to do was lie down beside her, take her in my arms,
and tell her I loved her. I did that. She returned my hug as best she
could—from her waist up—then pulled off her headset and put her cap back on.

"You look so bad," she said without a stutter. I must have
looked at her strangely. "I mean," she said, "you... look...
so...
good.
These days, everything c-c-comes out mix-mixed up. You look
so bad, Russell. You h-h-have on my favorite red sidewalk."

She fingered my red windbreaker and smiled again. "Did you have a
good day without me?"

"Well..." I said, but I wasn't sure how to finish. I could
feel a pit opening inside me, a dark yawning thing into which two little dolls
that looked like Isabella and Russ Monroe were falling, arms and legs spread,
twisting slowly down into a cartoon abyss.

"Oh, baby, don't look at m-m-me like that," she said. "I
know I'm not m-m-making any sense."

"No, no, you are," I said. "And I'm flattered that you
like my red sidewalk."

She smiled again. Isabella's smile is everything good in this world.
"You... are making f-f-fun of me."

"I know."

"I'll some e-e-even day get with you."

"You can't catch me."

"Not y-y-yet. After my o-o-operation, I'll catch
you easy."

"After the operation, I better look out?"

"Gonna make you sucker, pay!"

"Typical hot-blooded Latina," I said.
"Always thinking of revenge."

"I g-g-got my revenge when you mangled me."

"I did not
mangle
you. I married
you."

"E-e-exactly."

I held her for a while, until she broke away and
fixed her smile on me again. It was the same coy, near-guilty smile she always
got before asking what she asked next.

"Guess what?"

"You're hungry," I said.

"W-w-would you see what breakfast is for?"

I climbed off the bed and went into the kitchen. Joe
was sitting at the table in front of a fan, drinking iced tea. Corrine stood at
the stove. I had the feeling that the silence between them had been going on a
while. It had legs. I reported to Isabel! that huevos rancheros was on the
menu. She smiled and nodded.

Back in the kitchen, I understood the reason for the
silence: Not only Isabella's speech but her moods were becoming strangely
askew. I followed Conine's stare out the window to the sky. A jet left a vapor
trail high in the blue and I could see the twinkling wedge of silver out ahead
of it. It seemed like a symbol for how high and perilous a life can be, but
mostly was just a jet in the sky. Far out to the west, a dark blanket of clouds
eased toward us, unfolding over the horizon like a shroud for morning.

"Dr. Nesson says tomorrow," Corrine said, turning to face me.
"They'll operate at six in the morning. It will take six hour: He doesn't
want us to wait. He's worried, and so am I."

I thought it odd that Izzy hadn't mentioned it, and Corrine anticipated
this thought.

"She can't keep anything straight," she said. "She forgot
her own name earlier this morning."

I joined their silence. Images of the night before, of Alice's frozen
arms embracing my chilled neck, mingled in my mind with those of my wife, not
thirty feet away now. I would have loved a Bloody Mary.

"Russell," said Joe. "When Izzy was young, Corrine
dropped her on her head. The doctors said she was fine. Do you think that
maybe—"

"No," I snapped. "That's
ridiculous."

I tried to tell Joe and Corrine that it wasn't their fault, that the
tumor had simply happened. But I could almost see my words running off of them,
I could feel them shouldering not only all the blame there was, but all the
blame they could imagine. I recognized what they were doing because I had done
it myself—for months—just after Isabella was diagnosed. We believe, in our
helplessness, that the amount of blame we can carry somehow lightens the burden
of the one we love. It is a heavy load to bear, but it is nothing compared to
what the victims themselves are asked to carry.

Nothing is quite so terrible about cancer as the way its sufferers are
encouraged to believe that they have caused their disease. Legions of pop
thinkers, from psychologists to MDs (few of whom have had cancer, I might add),
have adopted the stance that there is something deficient in the psyche of the
ill, something that has allowed them to "create" their cancer. And as
Isabella—and thousands like her—embarked on her battle for life, she read these
books, listened to these lectures, watched these videos (all expensive, all
packaged with advertisements for more product) promising her that, just as she
had created her own disease, so she could also create her own cure. She
meditated. She ate a macrobiotic diet. She imaged little cells eating up her
tumor. She exercised. She was acupunctured, acupressured, energy-channeled; she
had her medians unblocked, her colon flushed with enemas, her stomach filled
with chlorella, ginseng, miso, royal jelly, astragalus, echinacea, amino acids,
two-phase enzyme supplements, interaction supplements, vitamins in megadose,
minerals by the ton—in short, enough fringe treatment and fraudulent
"medicine" to render her, at one point, little more than a feverish,
diarrheic mess who couldn't even stand the smell of her own body. As instructed
she told herself she was beautiful. When nothing worked, she did everything all
over again. But still the cancer grew. And she knew by then whose fault
that
was: hers, of course, hers alone; it was a simple outgrowth of her imperfect
mind. She had created it. She had encouraged it. She deserved it. She
wanted
it.