SUMMER of FEAR Read Free Page B

then
cold.
    Isabella whimpered and placed her arm
across my chest when I got in beside her. Her face was next to mine and I could
smell the breath of sleep from her.
    "Your heart is pounding,"
she whispered.
    "It's because of you." She
"hmmed." I knew what it meant: a small smile, tender and brief,
already drifting back toward the sleep from which it had come.
    "It's late, R-R-Russ."
    "I only had three."
    "Hmm..."
    "I love you, Isabella."
    "I love you, too."
    "I really, truly love you."
    "Hmm. You're my h-h-hero."
    The pounding in
my chest got louder and faster. I remember it getting so big, it finally just
picked me up and carried me, with the sound of boots descending steps, down
into the detailed silence of dreams.
     

CHAPTER
THREE
    I spent the next
morning at the Laguna police station, waiting for the call. I was going to get
them to take me along. Although Amber's home stood on unincorporated land, the
Laguna force was contracted to respond to emergencies and felony calls. So I
flattered the chief about a book he wanted to write, but I had to cut off the
conversation and head for the bathroom, where I threw up, camouflaging it by
flushing the toilet. I had never vomited in revulsion in my entire life, before
that day.
    My need to talk about what I'd seen—to confess—was an actual ache,
located near the center of my chest, just an inch right of my heart. I began to
understand what a guilty suspect feels under interrogation. Oh, to know. I spoke frankly, with grave sincerity, to the detectives—the subject was the
drought in California, I believe. I sneaked off to the rest room and threw up
again. I yakked with one of the narcs, the watch commander, the dispatcher, a
couple of meter maids. They all looked at me with suspicion.
    But
the call never came. No reported homicide at 1316 Ridgecrest. It was a slow
morning, considering it was the Fourth. It made sense, I thought; someone might
not find Amber for days.
    Besides, the Laguna cop house wasn't where I really wanted to be anyway.
Where I wanted to be was in Marty Parish's face—right, straight in it, looking
directly at him when he got the news. Finally, by noon, I couldn't stay away
from him any longer and I drove up to the county buildings in Santa Ana, where
the Sheriff's Department is headquartered.
    He was at his desk, clipping his fingernails, when I walked in. I knew
he'd work the Fourth of July. Marty always had a thing about holiday pay: He
could get almost two days' pay for one day of work, then take off some time
during the season and go hunting on the county's nickel.
    I put my briefcase on his desk and took out three boxes of new .20-gauge
shot shells. My hands felt flighty and cold. "Bought these by accident,"
I said, which was true. "Thought they were twelves. They're yours for the
Browning."
    He nodded, set down the fingernail clipper, then stood and shook my hand.
His eyes were blue, shot with blood. The left lid hung just slightly lower than
the right, giving Martin his usual expression of sleepy calculation. His skin,
as always, had the weathered tan of the outdoorsman. He was forty-two years old
but looked to be in his upper forties.
    Marty was a born predator. He had 20/15 vision, fine hearing, and a
heavy, muscular body that he could deploy with surprising speed and agility. He
was a superb marksman, one with a seemingly inborn understanding of distance,
trajectory, and lead lines. Years ago, in our hunting days, we had made each
other gifts of game freezers, along with an annual wager as to whose would be
filled with the most birds by end of season. (Marty always won.) Parish had the
thick hands and blunt fingers of a carpenter, though I never knew him to be
handy with hammer or saw.
    The bags under Marty's bloodshot blue eyes were dark and heavy. He had
cut himself shaving, and a little horizon line was visible directly on top of
his Adam's apple. It had bled onto his shirt collar, which was open. Even in
the air-condition county building,