My head snapped back against the rest and the engine howled from behind us. "I want to see Izzy. I want to love my wife."
"Good thinking, Russell."
Before lying down with Isabella, I had the presence mind to retrieve the unpaid bills from the wastebasket in my study and replace them in the drawer. The act felt like a step in the right direction. It was something positive, actual, redolent of hope.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Grace had just taken Isabella her breakfast and I had just taken my second handful of aspirin in six hours when the telephone rang. It was seven in the morning, eighty degrees already, and too early for business as usual. I half-expected to hear Amber's voice on the phone. I'd replayed the vision of her in my mind a thousand times that night, even in my dreams, so many times that, by an inexplicable trick of memory, it began to seem unreal. Had I or hadn't I? It was impossible. It was true. I was outraged. I was mystified.
I had read and reread my Journal article on the Midnight Eye-front page, above the fold-and it was good. The courthouse and crime-beat reporters would be gnashing their teeth and screaming at Karen Schultz by now. The general public would be buying even more handguns.
I made it to the phone and said hello, my head thundering.
There was a long silence, but I could hear breathing. "Speak up," I said. "Life is short."
"It certainly is. Russell?"
"Yep."
"I am the Midnight Eye."
I entertained the notion, very briefly, that this was a joke. I would not have put it past Martin Parish or Erik Wald or even Art Crump to call so early and with so idiotic a sense of humor. But something in the pause that followed, something the firm timbre of the voice, something I remembered from the tape left in the stereo at the site of the Wynn slaughter, something in the center of my soul suggested that I was talking to the real thing.
"Fuck you, Jack," I said, and hung up.
He called back immediately. The voice was even, unhurried, perhaps just slightly lower than average. To my ear, he had no accent, which means a California accent.
"The Wynn wife was still alive when I tied her to the shower nozzle. I wouldn't have tried it with anyone who weighed over a hundred pounds. Blood drains clockwise above the equator, just like water, unless you reverse the flow. I did not. It clogged early, anyway. Cedrick Ellison had a dangling left testicle and a much smaller penis than legend gives the Negro. The picture of Jesus over Sid and Teresa's bed actually brought tears of laughter to my eyes, which, incidentally, a blue. There, Russell, a clue-even though you were rude enough to hang up on me. Convinced?"
It was my turn to breathe wordlessly. No one on earth but a good person of the Sheriff's/Coroner's office could have know what the voice had just told me, except for the man who'd committed the acts. There is no way he could have extrapolated that information from my article that morning, even with the strongest and most intuitive of imaginations.
"No," I said.
"What is your IQ?"
"Higher than yours."
"Mine is one thirty-six, according to the Stanford-Binet they gave us in high school. Junior year. I think I'd have done better, but I was preoccupied that day with a fantasy about the neighbor's cat. I was d-d-distracted. Are you really not convinced?"
"No, I am not."
The line was quiet for a moment. His stuttering d reminded me of the garbled, cryptic tape left behind. But this voice, live on the phone, had none of the rambling, slurring delivery that handicapped the maker of that tape.
"Then ask me."
"What do you have on your back?"
"A green devil."
"What does the Midnight Eye see?"
"Hypocrites."
"Spell it."
"You know, this may be the last time we'll get to have a long conversation, Russell, because I know you'll report this call to the Sheriff's, Winters will install an electronic call tracer I will allegedly not be able to hear, and you and I will have to have short talks. Right now, this feels like a luxury. Let's not turn it into a spelling bee."
The line on which we talked was dead quiet in the background, not so much as a hum, no static, clear. He could have been calling from the depths of a tomb.
"What do you want?"
"I liked the article. Thank you for using my name."
"What is your real name?"
He laughed for the first time then, a strange, muted sh-sh-sh that sounded wet, compressed between teeth or lips to draw force from both the inhale and the exhale. It sounded like something with scales escaping from a cage.
"How is Isabella?"
Again, it was my turn for silence. I could find no words for the protective fury inside me.
"What do you want?" I finally said again.
"The county should understand my quest."
"Which is what?"
"Cleansing."
"The races?"
"Absolutely. I can remember when the orange grove spread for miles and every face was a white, healthy, brave face."
"So what?" I said. "Places change."
"And change again, Russell. I am doing my part, signaling the change. Tell me, what has Erik Wald given you in terms profile?"
"Nothing, yet."
"The usual bludgeon stuff, beards and size and neo-Nazi survivalist nonsense?"
"That's not Wald. That's the common wisdom."
"Sh-sh-sh. Wisdom. I'll tie Wald and his ilk in knots. Their arrogance astounds me."
"Where are you?"
"Russell, you are a belly laugh."
"In the county, I mean? Out of? In the state still?"
"Very much where I belong. I was born here. There, clue number two."
"Here, in the county?"
"Yes, Russell, here in the county. You still think like the cop you used to be. It must be hard to write entire books when your mind is so… flatfooted. Journey Up River was good though. I think Crump is a terrible self-aggrandizer-a clown. It would be a temptation, with you there to report all of his silly Posturing. But Art Crump had no purpose other than his own sex. That's why he was so sloppy. It's hard to think clearly in the middle of a sex act, even when there's killing to be done."
"You manage."
"You can't say that. There have been no traces of semen left at any scene. The bodies have not been penetrated, so far as your medical examiner can tell."
He was right, of course. An idea roamed my head, but I said nothing.
"This is not about a man's desire," he said. "This is about the restoration of place, the dignity of an age that we cannot afford to let slip by. I'm pleased that you'll be writing my story for the county, Russell. You need me. It will be, actually, the greatest story you'll ever tell."
"I still don't know what you want," I said.
"One: Don't let Winters put a tracer on your phone. Record the calls if you'd like-accuracy in reporting is important, isn't it? It will allow me freedom to contact you without worry and you'll learn much more from a leisurely chat than a quick one. Two: I want you to keep Erik Wald informed of everything we say. I am interested in his… mind. Alleged mind. Three: I will make a dramatic statement very soon. I would inform the public if I were you-but that's not really your call, is it?"
"No. What kind of dramatic statement?"
"Russell, what do you think? Lobby on my behalf."
I thought for a moment. "I need something from you."
"I wonder what."
"Someone took out a woman named Amber Mae Wilson on July the third. The club, the writing on the walls, the recorded message on tape. Then he tried to cover it all up. He removed her. Why did you do Amber Wilson?"
I heard the sharp intake of his breath. "N-n-no!"
"Yes."
"Her h-head?"
"Just like the others."
"M-my voice, m-my writing?"
"Identical."