"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 labeclass="underline" 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."