The very idea that Wald had been in Amber's room had opened an entire fresh pathway in my thinking, and I was still trying to accommodate his presence there. Was he in this with Parish, two men with grudges against her and money to gain by her death, two men connected to the upper levels of law enforcement? Was he in this with Grace? I knew not what to make of the Strange tension between them, of the flirtatious belligerence one often sees in couples married for years. Surely, Grace and Erik had history, as did Grace and I, but was I sensing the all of it? Or imagining too much?
I began in the master bedroom. It was also done up in a masculine, heavy style, with the same rough dark wood of the sofas and chairs of the living room. I noted that the bedspread was of crimson satin and the sheets of black silk. It was unmade. The scent of some cologne-a musky incense-like aroma-was deep and cloying. The wardrobes were of purposefully crude design and construction, massive things with handles wrapped in leather. I looked at the clothes inside. There were not a lot of them. Most were still in the thin plastic sheath used by professional cleaners-Wald, the bachelor who could afford such a service. I noted the name of the company. I also noted the labels, which bespoke Wald's expensive tastes and in turn, accounted for his limited quantity. Piles of neckties were draped over pegs in the right-hand side. Likewise, belts and suspenders hung on the opposite. A stack of underwear-silk by appearance-caught my eye. I felt a little ridiculous. I looked inside a matching wardrobe on the other side of the room and found mostly winter and sportswear. Hanging on the far right side was a woman's satin robe, with matching pajama top and short-short bottoms. They were red, size ten. Next to them hung a rather skimpy black dress. I recognized the store's name on the tag, Ice Blue-the same one in which Grace had worked until being hounded underground by two men hired to torture her. My heart fluttered and wouldn't settle. I closed the door.
I looked through the personal items on and inside both bed stands. Wald's bedside reading was eclectic: forensic and psychiatric periodicals; Ian Fleming; Joe McGinniss; James Hillman. Three videotapes of National Geographic specials were stacked in the corner of the top drawer. He kept a journal, which I browsed. A bottle of Xanax prescribed to him sat beneath the lamp. It was not hard to imagine Erik, with his ceaseless energy, having trouble falling asleep. A remote control lay upon the stand, though I saw neither television nor stereo anywhere in the room.
The other bed stand belonged, quite obviously, to a wholly different personality. Two books sat upon it-my own Journey Up River: The Story of a Serial Killer, and Ellis's American Psycho. I had not inscribed the copy of Journey. A small but very plump panda bear with a pink ribbon around its neck leaned against the lamp. The top drawer contained copies of Elle, Interview, and Vanity Fair. Amidst the generalized disorder of the second drawer, I found a small bottle of perfume, a box of condoms-a brand different from the ones I'd noted in Grace's car-and an assortment of body lotions and creams.
I closed the drawer, thought, and leaned for a moment on the large wooden console that sat at the foot of the bed.
Strictly on instinct-or maybe because of the loomings I felt inside me-I left the bedroom and went again into Erik's study.
First, perhaps because I am at least in part a literary man. I went to the bookshelf. Wald's collection of forensic/psychiatric literature was extensive, ranging from copies of Diller's early studies with fingerprints, to pilfered syllabi from FBI lectures that Wald had both attended and delivered, to Ressler's tome on profiling, Whoever Fights Monsters. I removed a copy of Wald’s own dissertation, 'Aspiring to Evil,' and opened it midway
Thus, the violent psychotic mind is an ever-shifting labyrinth inside a constantly careening ego. No combination of pathology and consciousness is more potentially dangerous, nor more difficult to predict. But when these condition: are coupled in an individual of high intelligence, profiling methods can easily yield faulty results, as the subject is- by his very purpose-fluent in the behavioral disguise: which lead so many profilers to make wrong assumptions erroneous connections, and, inevitably, false conclusions
Exactly what he was propounding with regard to William Fredrick Ing, I thought. So far, he had been right.
I replaced the book and stood in the middle of the room, gazing at the sundry video equipment, the computers and printers, the endless file cabinets, and the ubiquitous testimonies to Wald himself. The room seemed to ring with his presence: I could sense his personality there, the way one hears a diminishing echo. But still, it was only an echo I could hear, not sound itself. I thought of something Izzy had told me about composing music: You hear the echo first.
Yes, but how do you follow it backward in time and it to the original sound?
I took a videotape of one of Erik's lectures-his entire collection of tapes seemed at first glance to be of himself something-put it in a VCR, and hit the play button. It was dated February of last year and featured Erik behind a podium, delivering a rather dry account on the basic principles used in DNA typing. He droned on about probes and probabilities. The tape itself was shot, apparently, from a fixed position at the back of the lecture hall, and the cameraman-a student, no doubt-had made only occasional attempts to close in, scan the attentive crowd, establish the larger context of the hall.
I tried another, dated some five years ago, with the cryptic title, 'Motivation, Opportunity, and the Leap of Faith.'
The hall was different, Erik was more youthful then, and his delivery was more enthused. Even the cameraman had had more spirit-he'd zoomed in and out, trying to anticipate Erik's tonic notes; he'd panned the students (actually, the backs of their heads and an occasional profile were about all he'd been able to capture); and he'd used, as some kind of symbolism, I supposed, several shots of the wall clock ticking away.
Something caught my eye, a head and partial profile in the front row. I could have sworn I recognized the face. I pressed rewind, then watched again. I hit freeze frame. Yes, without doubt it was my daughter, Grace. She was looking up at Wald in a respectful way, her pen poised over her notebook. I hit play again. As Erik made a crack about religious fanatics making good murderers, Grace smiled and shook back her dark wavy hair. She was approximately thirteen then-that would have been the time that Amber was involved romantically with Wald. I removed the tape and played several others, all dated within weeks of the first, all part of a course. And in each sat Grace in the same seat of the first row-precocious, poised, beautiful.
Like first daylight illuminating the rudimentary outlines of a room, an understanding began to form in my mind.
I locked the study, replaced the key in the kitchen, and went back into the master bedroom. It was here I felt Wald's personality most intensely-his discipline and hedonism, his mixture of the rough and the sensual, of the mundane and the fantastic. And it seemed to me that if I was to believe Erik had been in Amber's room that night- with Grace — I needed locate the very core of his character in order to understand with my mind what my heart was telling me was true.
So I looked at everything again. Then I went through guest rooms, the kitchen, the living and dining rooms, both baths. There is no end to what objects can suggest.
I found myself back in the bedroom again, drawn by one last desire to locate Wald's character through the reverberate of his absence. Erik and Grace. Grace and Erik. I again searched the bed stand belonging to Erik's female partner, again wondered at the contradictory powers emanating from the cute panda bear and the dreary books on her stand. Grace, I thought is this you I am looking at?
I stood beside the nightstand-Grace's nightstand? — considered the large wooden console at the foot of the bed. I found the switch, hit it, and watched the large TV monitor rise from its base. What manner of program could someone watch, this hugely displayed, from so short a distance?
I confess some shame at how easily I answered question. Perhaps my quick understanding was prompted in part by the shrine to himself that Erik had erected in his study. But I understood the power of image. Why would Narcissus choose the pond when he could capture himself on tape?
As I removed 'Polar Alert'-a National Geographic special on polar bears-from the bottom drawer of Erik's nights' I was convinced that nothing of bears would appear on screen in front of me. I inserted the cassette into the built-in player and pressed play.
All I can say now is that I found what I was looking for and hoping not to find, that the image of a girl sitting up in this very bed brought with it all the excitement and all the sorrow of revelation. Grace looked about sixteen. She was smiling sweetly, shyly, seductively. Then the screen flickered and the first frames of the documentary overtook the image of my daughter. I replaced the cassette in the box and slipped it into my coat pocket.
