that queers of either sex will not be safe when I come back? I didn't mean to discriminate against them, but I couldn't remember if I'd been specific.'
'You can't come back. Everyone knows your face. Everyone knows your name. It's just a matter of time before the New York cops come to your door. Then it's back to California for long trial, a couple of appeals, plenty of prison time, and the gas chamber. Winters offered me a front-row seat for that, I’ll be there.' 'Sh-sh-sh. You cutups! I wish there was a way for me show you how important this last article is. Just because I've left the county doesn't mean I don't care. I want to be remembered accurately. Remember to be accurate, Russell. You have professional codes to live up to.'
With this, he hung up. I dialed the Sheriff's Department immediately and got Carfax.
'It was a Brooklyn number,' he said, the excitement clear in his voice. 'We've got the address. He's meat.'
Back home, arms loaded with grocery bags, I managed to let myself in the front door. I had just kicked it shut behind me when I turned and saw Dee lying on the stairway with a bullet hole in the middle of her back and a streamlet of blood dripping down the steps.
In front of me, through dim light, something moved. A light went on. The Midnight Eye loomed not ten feet from me, bearded, bewigged, wrapped in a rotting green blanket, pointing a small automatic with a large silencer directly at the bags still clutched to my gut.
'Hi, Russ.'
My first reflex was to look up the stairway, past Dee's body, to the bedroom where I had last seen my wife alive. The bags dropped to the floor. I leaned in the direction of the stairs, then held myself.
'She's s-s-sleeping,' said the Eye. 'I looked in on her. Don't worry. Sh-sh-sh. Now, step toward me slowly, with your hands away from your body.'
I did so. I stopped to look upstairs again, to perhaps see a shadow cast by her breathing body, perhaps hear some tiny sound that would indicate life. The rage that rang from my stomach, up my backbone, and into my ears nearly deafened me. My breath was short.
'Yes, like that,' he said. 'Here… sit at your table.'
I saw that my typewriter and a fresh stack of paper had been placed on the dining room table. I walked toward it, still straining, even through the dreadful ringing in my ears, for some sound from the bedroom above. 'Sit.'
'I need to see Izzy,' I said.
'I told you, she's sound asleep. Deeply asleep.'
'May I see for myself?'
'You may not, you shit-sucking liar! You cheat. You coward. You sit!'
I pulled back the heavy dining room chair and sat before the typewriter.
'I took the seven o'clock out this morning.'
'How did you make that last call register in Brooklyn?'
'I have call forwarding in my little cage in Brooklyn. Your CNI intercept tells you that the call originated there. Actually, made it from your study and routed it through New York.'
'Clever.'
'All of these gadgets and tricks are in the public realm now. It's part of the peace dividend. Most people don't know ^ that. Most people are idiots. All I used was some very basic electronic know-how. Of course, two years at the central phone office in Laguna didn't hurt me.'
As I sat there, I got my first truly good look at the Midnight Eye. He was as tall as we suspected-six three perhaps-and heavily, though softly, built. Even from this distance, it was easy to see that the beard and disheveled red-brown hair were false. But aside from his size and the piecemeal manner of his disguise, little about the man himself commanded the kind of dread we had all felt looking at the things he had done. His eyes were very dark brown. They had a brightness to them, a luminosity that was intensified by the ceiling lamp. They were slow eye deliberate and calm. His skin was pale, and I noted that his fingers, wrapped around the handle of the gun, were plum; with longish nails. His legs were heavy and large, and his feet quite big, which gave him a bottom-heavy, weighted appearance. Magnifying this effect was his slight pigeon-toed stance. A flicker of anger charged his eyes when mine met them again.
'It's not polite to stare.'
From what I could judge from Mary Ing's earlier picture I was now looking at a disguised version of William Fredrick Ing. Rather, reverse-disguised, to mimic an earlier manifestation of himself. What did he really look like now, beneath the fake hair and beard? Wald and I had been right-the Midnight Eye had been impersonating an 'other' all along, playing a part in his own ritual. As we had suspected, Ing had been able to work, move about in public, and continue his murderous nights because in real life, he looked little like the beast he could become. Now I knew why he had been so nonchalant about our presenting his picture to the public, precisely because it was an image that no one would recognize. Except, of course, his own mother.
'You have one m-m-more article to write,' he said. 'I'll tell you what to say. Put in the paper.'
I scrolled in a sheet and threw back the carriage return. Again I trained my ears for some sound of life in the room above. Nothing. Not so much as a rustle of sheets, a breath.
'Now,' he said. 'The first two sentences should read, The 'Midnight Eye' is not William Ing, as earlier stories have c-c-claimed. I met him personally just last night and he assured me of this.'
I typed the sentences.
'Do you like the lead?' he asked.
'I'd change it a little.'
'How?'
'I think I'd say… William Fredrick Ing, the notorious Midnight Eye, visited me last night in my home. First, he killed my wife's nurse, then my wife, and by the time you read this, he will have killed me, too.'
'No. Don't get ahead of things. You have some of it right, and some of it wrong. You don't have to worry about Isabella. Sh-sh-sh. And I have only one name-the Midnight Eye. Ing is a person who used to be and is no more. You must remain accurate as a reporter, right?'
'That's right.'
'Next sentence: He is a tall and powerful man, who commands respect even with a glance of his dark eyes.'
I typed it. 'He's a tall and powerful man,' I said, 'who was picked on when he was a kid and didn't have any friend He didn't have much of a family life, either. Very early, he began a secret life of his own.'
'No! If you write one word of that, I'll kill you and finish it myself. I can t-t-type!' He extended the gun toward me, dark barrel a condensed version of the black eternity into which he would certainly blow me.
'I'm just saying it,' I said. 'I didn't write it. I'm saying you were a kid who got torn up by his own dogs on the Fourth July. You walked in on your parents and got slapped for your concern. You were a miserable kid. You weren't always the Midnight Eye. Why not include that?'
'Because it isn't relevant.'
'Can you explain?'
'The Midnight Eye was born. He did not develop. He was. chosen. Your next paragraph goes like this: According to the Eye himself, he has had murderous impulses for almost all life. He began by killing animals. As a young man, he saw the rape of the county by foreigners, people who came to Orange County only to make money. The Midnight Eye then realized his calling.'
I typed out the graph and waited, staring into his dark bright eyes.
He continued. 'And as the Midnight Eye's body grew lean and strong, his urges became tied to a greater good.'
'The good of killing people not like him?'
'The good of killing the parasites and leeches. The good of clean sand and skies. Of earth in balance, and all people their places.'
'I'd change that.'
'How?'
'I'd say, He looked for God and when he didn't find him, he began to think he was God himself.'
'Not true. I am merely a servant. Write that! The Midnight Eye claims he is only a servant.'
