SUMMER of FEAR

by T. Jefferson Parker

  When she finally spoke, her voice was thin and tight, stretched to cover the words.

  "I... Damn." She produced from her purse a cigarette and lighter. She leaned forward to miss the wind. From behind the blond perimeter of her head, I saw a glow, then a small cloud of smoke. She sat back up, and for the first time since we had gotten into my car, she looked directly at my face. "I was planning to be home on the Fourth—two or three o'clock. Reuben had a morning session set up in Malibu. It was a sunblock ad, and they wanted the holiday crowds for backdrop. At first, I said fine. I doubled my rate for the holiday, so I was getting about twenty thousand for the morning. I went up the day before, got a hotel in Beverly Hills. On my way to Malibu the next day, I changed my mind. It was too pretty and hot for work, so I called Reuben, argued, and headed up the coast to Santa Barbara. I left him believing I'd make the shoot, but Reuben believes what he wants to, no matter what someone tells him. I got a room on the beach in Santa Barbara and spent most of the Fourth. There was a man involved—a friend—someone I'm just starting to know. Don't ask me his name, because I won't tell you."

  "The room on the beach was at his place," I said. "It was too late to get a hotel in Santa Barbara on the Fourth of July."

  "Yes. I left about eleven that night, made it home at two. I walked into my house, but Alice was gone. Oh Hell, Russell— Alice. Oh Oh." Amber broke down finally, burying her face in her hands, tears rolling forth over her fingers, smoke from her cigarette wobbling up and out the window.

  "Amber," I asked, "what in hell are you talking about?"

  "You remember Alice, don't you?"

  "Why would I remember Alice? I never met Alice. You mentioned Alice maybe twice in the two years we lived together. You said she was the only woman in the world prettier than you."

  She looked at me again—face pale, lights creeping along the lenses of her sunglasses. "I said that?"

  "You said that."

  "Hell, what a terrible person I used to be. She was my big sister, Russ. My only big sister, ever."

  I waited, saying nothing, while Amber turned away I stared out the open window. She pulled off her glasses, wiped her eyes with a balled fist, choked back a sob, and exhaled long, fluttering breath. "I know you were in my house, Russ, Martin told me. Now you're angry. Is it because I made you mourn me?"

  In the two years I had been with Amber, her uncovering of my sundry angers had never done anything but multiply them. Amber had flown to my furies like lightning to the rod. It had not taken me much time with her to realize that she enjoyed this, that she craved the flash point. I learned that my rage-exposed and unleashed—was Amber's prize: It proved her power. And it wasn't until much later, when I came to know Isabella, in fact, that I discovered my furies were often little more than the unanswered brayings of a heart greedy for affection. Isabella exploded me safely within her strong confines, as gingerly as might a bomb squad handling some crude amateur device. I would never try to describe the desire that arises when anger collides with understanding. I can only say that into Isabella flowed the most heated and uncontrolled angers, transformed by the genius of her heart into the simple fuels of loving. It had been so long since I had allowed them out in the presence of another person.

  But now they tried to come again, unchecked and snarling, swirling around like ghosts inside my car. I would have lowered my window to flush them out, but it was already down. I turned up the vent fan all the way. I would not be baited.

  "It's because you made me mourn you falsely," I said.

  "Does that mean you feel cheated? Yes, I think it does. It means that you were happier believing I was dead. You can admit that, Russ. Damn, what a vicious, shallow man you are."

  I ignored her provocations. I stayed on track. "When were you expecting Alice?"

  "How patient you've become. We sure could have used some of that when we were together."

  "When were you expecting Alice?"

  "On the fifth, originally. But she left a message on the third saying she'd hit Laguna two days early. I was already in Beverly Hills, like I said, so I got a hold of her at her hotel, told her to go straight to my place, get comfortable, and I'd be home the next day. The maid was staying with family down in San Diego for the week, so she hadn't made up the guest room. So I told Alice to take the master. I wanted her to feel welcome. She and I had just started... we were trying to... well, I was trying to connect with her. It was part of my new, well, self. Gad, it sounds so fucking trite."

  Amber sniffed and ran her fingers under one eye, then the other.

  Amber's new self, I thought. My anger slid out of the car, whipping away in the slipstream. I began the long circle around the Dana Point Marina. The harbor sprouted thousands of yacht masts; the dark water shone with wedges of light that flickered on the swells, then vanished.

  "But I enjoyed my friend in Santa Barbara, and it was late before I knew it. By eleven, I was on the road. When I got home, she was gone. Her bags were there. I saw a new throw rug beside my bed. There was a stain under it. There was fresh paint on the walls. In my study, someone had knocked over a lamp and some magazines. My heart was racing. The only thing I could think of was to call someone I trusted, someone who might know about these ... these kinds of things."

  "Marty," I said. It explained his abrupt change in attitude that day at the Wynns.

  "Yes."

  "And it took Marty a long time on the phone to believe you were really you. He didn't believe it at first. He insisted on seeing you that night—morning by then. Drunk or not."

  Amber drew lightly on her cigarette, an action so fraught with distaste, I wondered, as I had always wondered, why she bothered smoking in the first place. It was so much like Amber to be able to flirt with a such a strong addiction and never real surrender to it. I'd seen her go for days without one.

  "I'd never seen Martin so upset," she said. "Never. And he'd been married to me for a whole year, the poor man. He told me that Alice had been murdered, and that someone he obviously cleaned up the... my room."

  Amber puffed again on the cigarette, staring out the window at the marina. The breeze blew through her platinum blond wig, and in the harsh violet light of the harbor lamps, her face looked like one freshly prepared for burial. For a moment, all the death of the last few days paraded through my mind: the Fernandezes; the Ellisons; the Wynns; their once-perfect two boys, Jacob and Justin; Alice Fultz, Amber's sister. Then I could actually see the tumor cells raging unchecked in the brain of my Isabella—tiny black star-shaped little fuckers programmed multiply themselves out of existence, aiming at nothing but the final annihilation of their host. For a moment, I saw those monstrous vultures circling with hideous ease outside our window, I saw Black Death sitting atop our telephone pole, lazily assured, patient, stinking.

  My car was veering off the narrow drive.

  I lighted a cigarette and took a pull from my flask, packing my visions down deeper inside with all the efficiency of a Lexington patriot tamping the ball into his musket.

  "You smell funny," said Amber, not unkindly.

  "I don't feel very funny. What then, after Marty told you what he'd seen?"

  "I could only focus on one idea. Something that Martin kept saying again and again: ' Whoever killed Alice was trying to kill you.' I was terrified, Russ. You know me well enough to understand that I wouldn't react... well to this kind of thing. So I agreed to do what Martin told me."

  "Disappear."

  "Yes. And wait for him to handle who had killed Alice."

  "That being me."

  "You and Grace."

  "Does he still believe that?"

  Amber studied me for a long while, then turned away.

  "Yes."

  "How much did Alice look like you?"

  "A lot. Especially to someone in a dark bedroom, someone assuming I was sleeping in my own bed."

  I thought. We circled the marina again, slowly. "So why in hell," I asked, "did you come to me?"

  Sh
e was watching me again. Amber always had a way of not being there, the capacity simply to exit, leaving only her body behind. She had often done this when under duress. She had sometimes done this when I made love to her—a form of punishment and a way of experimenting with a martyrdom that, like her smoking, she rarely took beyond the casual. I sensed her absence now. Slowly, almost visibly, she repopulated herself.

  "Because of Martin. I began to wonder. He told me he was at my house that night because a call came over his police radio, and he was in the area, so he answered it. I believed him at first—he kept saying we, like it was he and his partner and everything was official. When he told me what he'd found, I was too afraid to see what a strange story it was—that he just happened to be in my neighborhood. I mean, how long since Martin has been on patrol? How long since he drove around with partner? So I pressed him. It didn't take much. He kind of broke down—all two hundred pounds of rock Martin always was---he made this, this... confession that he'd been in my room on his own, that he'd been there before, always when he knew I’dbe gone. That he'd lie in my bed and think about us. Russ, that scared me almost as much as what he'd found, or said he' found. So I came to you."

  "But you knew I was inside your house, too."

  She looked at me through the dark glasses. "I believe what you told Martin. That you'd seen him come out, then found my sliding glass door open. Russ, I understand what you were doing parked outside my house that night. I think of you sometimes and I dream of you, and I know you think and dream of me. It's all about the way we were, the way we won't ever be again with anyone else. But you're not capable of true obsession, Russ—the same way I'm not. You're harmless. That's another way of saying that I trust you. Right now, I think you're one of the few men in this world I can truly trust."

  "What about Erik?"

  "Erik is still upset about our breakup. I don't think he should see me now."

  "A decade of panting after you, and poor Erik only gets one thin year to bathe in the glow."

  I simply couldn't resist the opportunity to hurt Amber, only because I knew that my weapons had always been to dull to dent her shining, perfect surface.

  "Russell?" she said, "Why don't you just fucking grow up?"

  Not grown-up, harmless and incapable of true obsession, I guided the car back up to Coast Highway and north toward Laguna. The anger I thought Amber's words would bring to me did not come. For a long time, all I could think about was Izzy, asleep in the small bed in her father's house. I tried to send her the most peaceful and hopeful of dreams. And I was aware of Amber as of someone in a dream, too—she was nearby but intangible, present but unavailable. Then, a new emotion began to gather inside me, though at first I couldn't identify it. But as it started to fill the space left by my diminishing confusion and shock at seeing Amber again, I realized what it was: I was pleased that this woman was alive. In fact, I was more than pleased; I was happy, grateful. And deeper down, beneath these understandable and approvable truths, grinned a simple, unsanctioned, forbidden concept that I tried to ignore but could not: I was thrilled by her nearness. Secretly, wildly, insanely thrilled.

  "Can I trust you?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "What should I do?"

  "Did Marty kill her?"

  "It could only have been Martin. That's why I didn't go to the cops, Russ. That's why I came to you. He killed her because he came in, thinking the house was empty. She panicked. He panicked. He tried to make it look like that Midnight Eye, but later he got scared and figured he should just hide it all—everything—even Alice. The second night, when you found him there, he'd just finished cleaning. He made up the story about seeing Grace come out the night before. If he has to, if anyone presses him, if he loses that crazy mind of his, he's going to pin it on you and her. What other explanation can there be?"

  "I'm working on that."

  "You don't think he did it?"

  I pulled into the Towers lot, waved off the valet, and parked next to Amber's gray rental K car. "Where were you going last night when I saw you on Coast Highway?"

  "Back to Las Brisas Hotel. That's where Martin told me to stay. He forbade me to leave the room, but I was getting suite fever. I was leaving the White House when you saw me I'd had a table up front, by the band."

  I listened to her explanation while staring out the windshield. A pale coastal haze had settled over the city, light dew that would vanish at first sunlight. The cars and streets seemed to sweat now, giving up their heat to the moisture.

  "How long since you've seen our daughter?"

  "Two months. Three. I've written. Imagine me writing letters, Russ. I've called. She ignores me."

  Amber said nothing, sighed quietly—how strange, how compelling it was to hear in her even a hint of surrender—then folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them. "I know I've made some mistakes, Russ, and I'm doing what I can to correct them. I was trying... I've been trying to connect. With my family. My old friends. My daughter. I burned so many bridges, it's hard finding my way back. Follow the smoke, I guess. And now.. .Alice. Poor, poor, lovely girl."

  So there it was, the first time in the twenty years I'd knowN Amber Mae that she had shown anything like doubt, fallibility regret—and meant it. I discount her thousand well-acted scenes, I was dumbfounded.

  "What do you want me to do?" she asked.

  "Have you talked to your agent?"

  "Reuben is my manager. Yes. He knows I'm okay, but not working, not taking calls, not gettable. I swore him to secrecy, and Reuben is good to his word. He's the only one I've talked to. He and Marty, that is."

  Amber actually shuddered then, though the night was hot and damp. A smell came off her that reminded me of the odor of Grace, the night she had come to me: woman, perfume, fear. But most of all, fear. "Where should I go?"

  "You checked out of the hotel?"

  "No. I didn't want to alert anyone that I was leaving. Martin is probably calling every five minutes. Or waiting. He insisted on having a key. But everything I've been living on is in that car. I've got an eight-thousand-square-foot mansion two miles from here, and I'm living out of a Chrysler. Ugly little thing, isn't it?"

  "Marty's idea?"

  She nodded, then looked at me again. "How's Isabella?"

  "Great."

  "I'm so sorry, Russ. If it was in my power to change things, I would."

  I said nothing for a long moment, then, idly, "She's strong."

  "She must be terribly strong. I don't suppose she would let me stay for a few days? I could cook and clean and stay out of the—"

  "No."

  It was only then, with the outrageousness of that plea, that I fully realized the depth of Amber's fear.

  "No," she said. "That would really not be right. I'm sorry. That was presumptuous."

  I thought for a moment. Marty Parish—or anyone else who wanted to find her—would check the local hotels first, then keep working outward from town. Cash payment and a false name would give her a head start, but she couldn't stay hidden for very long, not with a rental car, not being Amber Mae Wilson. Who would think to look for her in my world? Marty, maybe. But I knew someone who could handle Martin Parish. The trouble was, he disliked Amber, and Amber had years ago tired of wasting her charms on him. I turned over a dozen other possibilities but kept coming back to Theodore Francis Monroe, and his little house nestled darkly under the oaks of Trabuco Canyon.

  "I'll tell you something, Russell. I'm not going to let Marty get away with this. I'm going to make sure he pays for Alice. I don't know how or when, but I'm going to live to see it happen. "Follow me," I said.

  My father was standing on the porch of his cabin before I even shut off the engine of my car. He was centered in the halo yellow light cast by a bulb above the door, wearing only a pair of jeans, his old Remington 870 cradled in his arms. In the rearview mirror, I watched the Chrysler roll up the driveway behind me. I stepped out, motioned for Amber to stay put, then crunched across the drive
way gravel toward my father. A thousand crickets made a continuous, strangely sourceless buzz. The horses shuffled from the darkness of the corral. The stair boards were damp and soft as I climbed.

  I studied him as I came across the porch—his large, hard body; the black hair graying only slightly; the eyes made wary and strong by years of ranch work; the downturned, unforgiving mouth of a man familiar with disappointment. Bathed in the yellow bug light, he looked alien, otherworldly.

  "Dad."

  "Russ."

  "Got kind of a problem."

  "I can see that."

  He set the gun against the house, shook my hand, then hugged me. He smelled like a man's sleep. Looking past his shoulder, I could see the K car reflected in a window. "What's with the scattergun, Pop?"

  "This Midnight Eye's got me spooked. Maybe I'm getting old. What's with you being here at this hour? It isn't something with Izzy, is it?" "She's with Conine and Joe. She's okay." "Is that who I think it is in the car?"

  "Someone tried to kill her. They got her sister instead. She's scared out of her mind and needs a place to stay."

  He looked out at the car, then back at me. "Because they're going to try again."

  "Maybe."

  "Well, then get that damned Chrysler into the shed and bring her inside."

  "Thanks, Pop."

  "I don't see a great deal of choice."

  He gave me a very silent, very assessing stare.

  "This isn't what it looks like," I said.

  We sat in the pine-paneled living room as I told my father the story. I did not tell him everything, and I omitted any hint of my own presence outside Amber's home on that hot night of July 3. I could not admit that to him. He listened almost silently, sensing, I am sure, that his was an edited version. Amber sat off to one side of the couch, her hands and ankles crossed contritely, her platinum blond wig rendered suddenly ridiculous by the rustic interior of the cabin. She said little.

  By one o'clock, when the night seemed its most private, my father had brewed up a pot of coffee to sustain him through the morning. We agreed that one of them should always be awake. He showed Amber the second bedroom, then I walked her out to get some of her things from the car.