'Dramatic statement,' muttered Winters. 'Goddamned animal. Erik, you're the psychobabbler here-what's your call?'
Wald crossed the room and stood in front of Winters. 'Look at it this way, what would you do if you wanted twenty bucks from me?'
'I'd say, 'Give me a twenty,'' Winters snapped.
'And I'd say, 'Sure,'' said Wald, slipping out his wallet, which he dangled before Winters, showing him the Sheriff's Department Volunteer badge lodged inside. 'You're busted, Dan. That's how we play him. Give him what he wants. Play along. Give him enough rope to hang himself.'
'Horseshit,' said Parish. His face had reddened. 'We can dink around with this guy all we want and not get any closer. I say put a CNI intercept on Russell's phone, keep SWAT ready, and hope for the best. When the picture hits the papers, we'll have the whole county waiting for him to show his face wouldn't negotiate squat with this scumsucker, or give him one inch of ink. We'll look like idiots.'
Winters smiled and nodded, then looked at me. 'Monroe, you're his dial-a-date, what do you think?'
'Play him,' I said. 'I'm with Wald. The intercept is a bad idea-he assumes we'll do it. Why not build up some trust, keep him comfortable, talking? If he wants to know what Erik is doing, we might be able to work that. He wants me as a mouthpiece. I can stall him, question him, maybe even guide him.'
'Yeah, right,' said Parish.
'He is right,' said Wald. 'As long as he wants something from us, we should listen.'
'Goddamn classroom bullshit again, Erik.'
Wald smiled. 'I didn't see you getting any closer to Cary Clough. If I remember right, you were trying to make latents left by a maid while Clough was sitting outside Madeline Stewart’s art's house with a ski cap, a pair of latex gloves, and hard-on: Get real, Marty. The twentieth century has actually arrived.'
The phone rang. Winters said, 'Yeah,' 'No,' and 'Get your butt up here,' then punched the intercom button and to his secretary to hold all calls for ten minutes. 'This is the deal he said. 'We go with the CNI intercept, but we keep the communication open. Carfax can rig one he won't be able to hear-he's a magician. We'll work him like Wald says. Erik, you'll need to coach Russell here on what to say-the last thing we want to do is set him off. Keep him hungry for what we can give him. Don't give him too much. Racial fucking cleansing. Man, I came to Orange County to get away from that shit. Martin, I know you'd trade a thousand words for one good fingerprint, and Chet Singer's working his ass off on the physical right now. We'll have a picture of him in the papers by this afternoon. Keep your leashes on.
'Winters's eyes went to the knock on his door. 'Get in here!'
A disheveled Karen Schultz burst in with a large envelope, from which she pulled a stack of eight-by-ten glossies. 'Lopez in Documents says it's the best he can get,' she said.
The photographs, mined from the neighbor's home video, depicted varying enlargements of a bearded Caucasian man behind the wheel of a Ford Taurus. In three of the shots he was looking at the camera; the others had him in profile, face to the road. The color was poor, but the car was clearly white, the man's shirt almost certainly red flannel rolled at the sleeves, and his hair and beard-which met and blended with the interior shadows of the car-were a chaotic mass of red-brown. Sunglasses hid his eyes. His left arm, dangling from the open window, was thick. His stubby fingers, ringless, were spread against the side panel.
'Exactly what Kimmy Wynn described,' said Wald. 'Exactly what the general profile indicates.'
I stared for a moment at this man, this image. He looked like some demonic visage pressing in from the darkened background of a Caravaggio canvas. Was it his bearded heft that made him so totemic, or our assumptions regarding what he had done? It didn't matter. But I could feel the hair on the backs of my hands rise and a quick shiver wobble down my back as I contemplated the imprecise rendering of his face. Was it good enough for anyone to ID? That was the question that really mattered.
'Copies ready?' asked Winters.
'One hour,' said Karen.
'Stay on it, choose the best and load up the press with them. Get a separate phone-bank number for the public, for anyone with information on the photo. Everything okay out there?'
'The phone lines are overloaded, so the bank isn't happening yet, the air conditioning is broken, and everybody pissed off at me because Russell here has the inside track.'
'He owes us,' said Winters, fixing me with his black eye 'Karen, get down to the dungeon and wait for Russell. You know what to hold and what to release. Marty, roll that dub for Monroe.'
Parish lumbered to one of the three TV monitors lined up to the right of Winters's huge desk, pushed a tape into the VC that sat below the middle set, and pushed a button.
'What you're about to see is the first Citizens' Task Force evidence we can really use,' said Winters. 'Pure accident. Pure gold. The neighbor-Lisa Nolan-brought it to Wald.'
The screen flickered to life, a front-yard scene, daytime. The date and time appeared in the upper right: July 3, 4:26 p.m. Three kids-two blond girls and a plump red-haired boy-race on the grass of a suburban lawn, chasing each other into a new red four-wheel-drive Jeep. A panting golden retriever followed them in. The camera moved to the front of the truck, holding for a still on the shiny bumper and winch, the dealer advertisement on the plate holder, the entire gleaming front end. A smiling woman of perhaps forty sat on the passenger's side. While she waved, a similar vehicle (but this one was white) tracked past slowly on the street, stopped, and the driver-a pleasant-looking Asian man in his early forties-leaned out the window and said 'Rick, you like to trade?'
'Lisa would kill me, Tran!' yelled the camera operator. The lens dipped as he answered and chuckled. Lisa nodded and pointed a finger at the camera in mock warning. The drive in the white Jeep admired the new red one. A woman was visible beside him, leaning forward so she could see. Three children had their faces pressed to the glass of the rear windows-two small boys and a girl.
'Recognize the girl in the white Jeep?' asked Parish.
'Kimmy Wynn,' I said.
'Affirmative,' said Wald. 'Now take a look at her shadow.'
A white Taurus came into the picture from behind the white Jeep, the driver pulling the car to his left around the stationary Nolans. When the Taurus came around, the driver looked briefly at the camera, then quickly away. He had just turned to profile when his vehicle disappeared off screen.
Parish stepped forward and rewound the tape for another look. On the second pass, I saw him more clearly: the bulk of his huge body stuffed behind the wheel, his red plaid shirt, his thick tangle of red-brown beard and matted hair, his apparently sunburned face, black sunglasses, and his arm and hand- broad and strong as a peasant's in a Rivera painting-hanging from the window, fingers spread in perfect relief against the white body of the car. Marty played it again. The focus was excellent, and the Taurus passed by about fifty feet from Rick, the cameraman. For almost a full second, this man-very possibly the Midnight Eye-was center screen, a star.
Winters shook his head at the now-blank screen. 'Russell, play up in your Citizens' Task Force article the fact that a citizen- Lisa Nolan-was bright enough to bring this evidence to our Task Force sheriff-adjutant, Erik Wald. We can't stress the need for public input enough. I'm praying somebody can ID this ape from a picture. If not, Chet has some physical that will help. Karen's waiting for you in Autopsy. After that, talk to Chet. After that, get to work and find a way to keep that county out there from going ballistic.'
'He's big, heavy, and strong,' said Karen, taking a deep breath and leading me into the autopsy room-the dungeon.
It smelled as it always did-a sweet putrescence of formaldehyde, blood, flesh. The overhead lights are bright but give no warmth. A chilly draft stays down low, clinging to your knee: easing into your joints. I hated this place, not for what it made me see but for the dreamlike unreality it forced upon me. To work the dungeon was always, for me, a matter of trying to chase detail through the silent, obscuring fog that surrounds the dead. The second I walked in, the ceiling dropped, the light lowered, the walls crept in a few yards. The longer you stay ^ the worse it gets.
'Six foot two, two ten,' she continued once we were inside. 'Right-handed is our guess, but it's still just a guess. Yee told me he struck Mr. Wynn too many times to count. There were parts of his gums and a molar stuck to the ceiling.'
I asked her how they got height and weight.
'Size twelve foot from the blood tracks, a very wide foot, deep imprint. The spray painting was done from a
