"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.”
.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
There are only seven small streets that intersect Laguna Canyon Road, most of which branch into still smaller tributaries that narrow and wind and finally disappear into the rough hills above. The people who live there are an admittedly oddball lot, and I can say this with no sense of denigration because I am one of them. There is a history of lawlessness in the canyon, going back to the days when bandits on horseback preyed on the travelers who used the road, which was then just a wandering dirt path that was the only inland route into the city. Much later, in the 1960s, Timothy Leary's Brotherhood was headquartered on Woodland, moving many thousand of tabs of LSD outward to the continent. (Leary was finally arrested by a Laguna Beach patrolman, which led to the discovery of his operation and a prison term. The patrolman went on to become a very fine chief of police here; Leary, of course, is now a counterculture gadfly popular on the college lecture circuit.)
In more recent years, the outlaw heritage of the canyon evolved into a quiet suspicion of authority, a prickly tone independence and pride at not living "in the city" at all. It was only four years ago that we canyon people allowed the city to annex us into its domain, a move not made without endless dickering for "concessions" and seemingly interminable meetings. The canyon is one of the few places in Laguna where artists can still afford to live, an irony in an upscale town that prides itself, profitably, on being an art colony. The canyon a hodgepodge place, by Orange County standards: a cave house stands beside a Jehovah's Witness temple, trailers hide on flattened pads hidden by eucalyptus and near mansions; artists live next door to tax attorneys, there are families, gay couples, horse people, bird fanciers, bonsai growers, snake collectors-the friendly, the meddlesome, the isolated, and the bizarre. There are also littered along the narrow roads a number ramshackle cottages no larger than rooms, really, that are rentable, cheap, and private.
All of which is to say that as we climbed the steep, winding road called Red Tail Lane, I saw the houses and people in them as neighbors; I felt a sense of kinship with the dwellers there; I believed that so far as the word community went, we had fine one; and I was already wondering whether the Midnight Eye had chosen this place because of its proximity to my home, whether it was his way of showing how easily he could strike in this, my virtual backyard. No victim is faceless, but anyone of this canyon was of myself, too. I felt responsible. And I also felt in the pit of my stomach the soft, shifting reflection of dread as I pictured Elsie and Leonard Stein, proprietors of the Pampered Pet Palace. They were two very kindly people who ran the place, and they had taken fine care of Isabella's beloved dog one summer when we were away in Mexico. I remembered very specifically, that Mrs. Stein wore a small Star of David on a chain around her neck.