SUMMER of FEAR Read Free

called Amber's number from my car phone and got the machine again.
What an inviting, conspiratorial voice she had!
    I took another swig from the flask, set it back in the glove
compartment, then rolled up the windows and got out.
    Don't do this, said a
receding voice inside me— you have no reasons, only a million excuses —but
I was already walking toward her gate. It was not locked. The house was dark
except for a very minor glow coming from what was probably the kitchen. I
knocked, rang the bell, knocked again. The door was locked. I followed a
pathway of round concrete stepping-stones around to the backyard. The moon was
half full, and in the moonlight I could make out the rolling lawn, the orange
trees huddled in a grove at the far end, a pale island of concrete. Steam leak
up from the edge of a covered hot tub.
    The sliding glass door stood open all the way. The screen door was open
about two feet. Open! My heart dropped, but fought to remain thoughtless. Is
this how a secret life begin: The drapes were pulled back on their runner. To
let in the night air, I guessed: Air conditioning gives Amber headaches. But
the screen. Had Marty come in this way? So I pressed against the screen with my
fingertip. The slit was six inches long, vertical, just left and slightly above
the lock. You could have cut it with a table knife.
    Demons began to lift off inside me; I could feel them swirling up
through my arteries, coiling along my spine. They felt like sea creatures that
live down where there's no light--- knife-toothed, blunt-headed, colorless. I
could feel the vein my forehead throbbing.
    What I did next went against all my training as a police officer,
against my instincts as a writer, against the logic of the situation, even
against the emotions I felt boiling up inside. Somehow, I lost it. I panicked.
I let out the fear. Maybe it was only a nod of respect for Amber Mae Wilson's
well-being--- would like to believe it was just that.
    I jumped inside, found a light switch, flipped it on, and yelled her
name.
    "Amber."
    "Amber."
    Amber!
    No answer. I
charged through all the downstairs rooms---empty. I threw on lights
willy-nilly. I tripped over my own feet charging up the stairs, hit my shin on
a step, hard. I couldn’t get enough breath. The light seemed arbitrary, beveled
with the darkness into treacherous edges, planes, drops. Everything was moving.
I crashed into a low credenza in what appeared to be her study. Magazines
slipped off the top; the lamp tilted and fell over and the bulb burst with a
soft pop.
    Amber!
    Then I was running down a long hallway toward a half-open door. Paintings
on the walls streaked past; the ceiling pressed down low. My heart was working
so hard, there was hardly a space between beats. I was inside the door. The
switch was just where it should have been. The room snapped to attention with
light. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
    At first, I thought it was blood. My second thought was a correction:
Red spray paint. The biggest words were on the mirrored walk-in closet:
     
    SOJAH SEH
     
    Across the wall over the headboard of the bed:
     
    AWAKEN OR DIE IN IGNORACE
     
    On the far wall:
     
    MIDNIGHT EYE IS RETURN
     
    And everywhere
the peace symbols, those hideous sixties ankhs or chicken feet or modified
crosses or whatever in hell they were—everywhere, trailing around the room in
poorly formed, inarticulate red circles.
    Amber
lay on the floor by the bed, face-up, her arms and legs spread. She wore a blue
satin robe. Her hair—thick dark brown waves—spread out against the carpet. Big
pieces of white and pink were scattered through that dark hair, strewn from
what I could see had once been her head. And her face! Amber's lovely, ageless,
beguiling face—somehow lifted back now, flap-like, hinged on only one side,
turned almost down, as if contemplating her own hair afloat in that pond of
blood.
    In ten years of police work, I had never—
    In ten years as a crime writer, I