me and then at one another with a series of unconnecting glances that left all eyes on me again.
'Billy didn't have any friends,' said Mary Ing in all seriousness. She was not fluent in the language of the unimaginable.
'They didn't have commercial video cameras in 1976,' added Wald, clearly a man who did not understand audacity.
'Who in hell cares what he was doing with the dog bodies, Marty?' asked Winters. He looked at his watch. 'Get on with this, Martin. Russell here has a story to file sometime this year.'
Martin looked a little gray but forced a grin at me.
As an adult, Ing had been arrested three times, questioned on three other occasions, and had done a total of 123 days in lockup. At twenty-two, he'd been popped on a standard DUI and found to have a pocketful of peyote on him-no charges for the drug; no probable cause for the search. Two years later, while working as a groundskeeper for a private school, he was questioned on complaints from his employer that certain animals in the school's 'zoo' were disappearing. No charges filed. Two years later, he was in on a complaint from his landlord, who said Billy had broken into three different apartments in the complex and stolen nothing but women's underwear. Nothing filed. In 1984, at the age of thirty, Billy Ing had been convicted of his first real crime-an indecent exposure to a woman on Laguna's Mai Beach. The ninety-day sentence was suspended in favor of out patient psychiatric counseling-seven sessions. A year later, Ing fell for grand theft auto, which earned him four months. The car was stolen from a side street in Laguna Beach and returned to hilltop residential area of the same city two days later. He was questioned in 1987 regarding an attempted rape at Laguna’s Thousand Steps beach, and again two years later for a series of dogs and cats that had washed up, beaten to death, near the Aliso Pier just south of Laguna. No charges filed.
'Russell,' said Karen, 'this personal history may be of interest to our readers. Most of it is taken from the psych evaluations done here at County-the rest from some phone interviews Probation did. You can't quote the evaluations-they're confidential-especially what Billy Ing said. You may quote Martin, Sheriff Winters, Wald, and me. You may quote Mrs. Ing if she will consent. Are we clear on this?'
'Clear.'
Ing was born in Anaheim, Orange County, in 1954. His father, Howard, was an aerospace draftsman at Rockwell; Mary worked in food service in the hospital in which Billy was born. He was an only child.
'Nothing could have been more 'normal,'' said Wald, looking up from the sheet. 'But while Mr. and Mrs. Ing worked hard and young Billy was left in the care of a day-sitter, he was beginning to lead, I suspect, a very unhappy life. Is that true, Mary?'
'He was not a happy child,' she answered, looking down at the page. 'I can't believe how much you have on him. On… us.'
'Mrs. Ing,' said Erik, with a look of deep gravity, 'you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. You have come here, and you are saving lives. You are a good person.'
Karen shifted uneasily in her seat, as did Martin Parish. If Winters detected the massive condescension, he did not let on. Neither did Mary. She blushed deeply, looked down at the pages, and wiped her eye again with the wadded blue tissue.
Parish went back to reading.
Ing was a large child, plump and not athletic, shy and friendless. More aggressive boys hit him, girls derided or ignored him; teachers disliked him because he was slow and stubborn as a student. His epilepsy was a topic for chiding. Ing came in at 136 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test. He was often truant, for which he was beaten by his father. Howard, according to Billy, was 'always drunk' and abusive, sometimes to the point of hitting Mary with his fists. Howard had told his son many times that Billy and Mary were 'anchors' around his neck, that the long hours he worked to support them were hours he would have spent-without the curse of their presence-in a life devoted to, of all things, the study of law.
I looked at Mary, who continued staring down at the papers on her lap. She gave off a clear, if inaudible, wail of distress. Sensing my attention on her, she glanced quickly at me, held my gaze for a moment with her hopeless blue eye: then directed them back toward her lap. Her fist clenched hard upon the tissue.
Parish flipped a page and continued.
According to Billy, Howard was a man 'so stupid and fat” that he got along better with animals than people.
'I expected this,' said Wald. 'It fits perfectly.'
'Then maybe you should let me read it,' said Parish.
'Pardon me, Captain,' said Erik.
Parish grunted and went on. According to Billy, the Ing always had three Staffordshire terriers (pit bulls) and three cat: One of Billy's jobs was to feed and clean up after them before his father came home from work. He hated the animals, the way they 'slobbered and shit everywhere,' the way they seemed, for reasons beyond his understanding, to receive more love and tender attention from his father than he did. He was attacked at age eight by all three of the dogs one night, receiving 135 stitches to close the wounds. As an adult, he grew facial hair to cover the scars.
Karen interrupted. 'Sheriff, what's your call on the scars? We can publish it, or we can hold it.'
'Why publish?' asked Wald, 'He's wearing a beard.'
'It can't hurt,' said Parish. 'What if he shaves? Which is a distinct possibility, after the picture we ran.'
Winters contemplated this. 'Drop the scars, Russ. Let' hope he keeps the beard. Mrs. Ing, any pictures of Billy with no beard and the scars visible?'
She shook her head. 'He's worn a beard and mustache since he was in his early twenties. The scars embarrass him. I don't think he would shave.'
Winters nodded. 'Save the scars, Monroe. You got only ^ so much space.'
Parish shook his big head as if he were dealing with children, then continued.
According to Billy, the dog attack, although terrifying and deeply angering, was not nearly as painful to him as the incident that immediately preceded it.
At this point, Parish looked at Mary Ing and asked with a gentleness that surprised me, 'Is it okay to read this, Mrs. Ing?'
She nodded but didn't look up.
Apparently, during one of his rages, Howard began beating Mary. Billy could hear them behind the closed door of the bedroom. His father was 'grunting,' something-or someone- was slamming against a wall, and his mother was sobbing. Billy threw open the door. Howard's back was to him, and he had his coat on, but his pants were down around his ankles. All Billy saw of his mother, blocked as she was by his father, were her two hands, fingers spread against the wall, and the profile of her face-'strangely angled'-also pressed to the wall, 'like she was trying to hear something on the other side of it.' Billy said that it looked 'painful' for his mother. So he jumped onto his father's back. Howard easily shook him off, and when Billy rushed to his mother's aid, she slapped him so hard across his face that he stopped dead in his tracks. Billy said later that the feeling of Mary's hand on his flesh was 'the single worst pain I ever felt.' Billy had then run out the back door of his bedroom, across the darkened backyard toward the fence, behind which lay the flood-control channel, and made two unsuccessful leaps to get atop that fence before Howard's pit bulls-in a snarling fury of mistaken protection-dragged him down.
'Note the date,' said Wald. 'Fourth of July, 1962. The County shrink notes that the dogs might have been aroused by the neighborhood fireworks, which in '62 were legal and popular. Look, even Billy says, down at the bottom of the page, that he remembered hearing the scream of a 'Picolo Pete' going off as he tried to get over the fence. This is the answer to the question of why he took the vet hospital job. Not the answer actually-but the question itself. Fear and its governance. E you integrate it or isolate it?'
'Who cares?' asked Martin.
'If we understand him, we can help him,' said Wald.
'I thought we were supposed to stop him,' said Parish.
Wald, obviously trying to accommodate Mary's feelings-and to pave in advance a layer of trust, should we need her help-smiled at Parish and shook his head. 'We help Billy, we help everybody in this county, Martin. That's what we're paid to do.'
Karen looked at me. 'This isn't the kind of stuff we expect to see in your next piece, Russ. It's background.'
As Parish proceeded with his reading, I couldn't help but feel some pity for the Billy Ing who used to be. And I
