Free SUMMER of FEAR by T. Jefferson Parker

Be
back.
    —Grace

CHAPTER
EIGHT
    Sheriff Daniel
Winters called at 8:10 that morning and told me he expected the Dina piece to
be big, subtly persuasive, well played, and on the stands by Tuesday. From the
tone of voice, I could almost picture the resigned furrows on his deep black
face. Dan Winters was a sheriff who understood the impurities contained within
the larger concept of getting things done. So I did what any writer does when
faced with impossible demands—agreed to everything.
    He
was quiet for a long moment, then gave me an address in the Orange hills and
hung up. So, he had taken my bait.
    The
house was a magnificent wood-and-glass thing, tucked within a stand of Jelecote
pines at the end of a long private road. There were two patrol cars, two
unmarked, and the Crime Scene van
parked in the driveway. When I got out the air smelled like a mountain resort.
It was already hot. There was a nervous buzz in my stomach.
    Marty Parish met me at the back door and led me past two dubious
uniforms, down a long hallway, through a living room almost as big as my entire
house, then down another hallway toward, I assumed, the bedrooms. He turned
once to look at me as we walked but said nothing. I sensed a change in him from
the night before, a change that went deeper than the simple fact he wasn't dumb
drunk. Marty had a red patch where I'd kneed his forehead, but he also had the
level-eyed gaze of a man who's got something on you.
    "Sorry about last night," I said.
    "You'll get yours." He gave me that look again, as if he'd
found out something that put me, himself—everything—in a cold new light.
    "Ready when you are," I said.
    "I'll wait till you're not."
    "How bad is this?"
    "Worst I've ever seen. Two children."
    "So Winters is ready to go public."
    "Should have after the Ellisons. What'd you give him for this,
another Dina story?"
    "That's right."
    Marty's eyes bored into me. "Nothing's right,
Monroe."
    He stopped at the first room on our left. I could see past his shoulder
through the open door to a pale blue wall dripped with dark red.
    "Meet the Wynn twins," said Martin, and
stood aside.
    I went in. My first thought was that an industrial accident had happened
here, something involving faulty machinery and human flesh. You could smell the
foul scent of innards exposed to air for the first and last time. The blood
seemed to have been thrown at one wall—large impact splatters that ran like
paint all the way down to the blue carpet. On the opposite wall were great wide
smears of it, thick in places, then thinning as a brush might make. But the
brush was a small boy—a few years old.
    I guessed—who lay doll-like beside the
wall where phrases he been crudely written with his blood:

MIDNIGHT EYE CLEANS HIPPOCRITTS SOJAH SEH
    I took a deep
breath and squatted down, looking at a cardboard mobile that had once probably
hung over a crib. Little military airplanes lay flat on the floor at my feet—a
P-51, an F-l 11, an AWACS jet. I took
another deep breath, then looked to the far side of the room, where the crib
was tucked into a corner, near a reading nook that extended out toward a
garden. The alcove had windows on three sides. There was a hook in the ceiling
of it, for the potted fern and macrame hanger that were dumped on the carpet
below. From the hook dangled another boy, ankle bound, the binding set on the
ceiling hook, his small arms out in front of him. He looked like a tiny diver
descending toward a pool. There was, in fact, a pool beneath him. He turned
very slightly on the hook; turned back.
    I looked down at the cardboard airplanes again and apologized silently
to these boys whom I hadn't come here in time to help.
    I sensed Marty behind and above me.
    "Justin and Jacob," he said. "We're not sure who’s who
yet."
    I took another deep breath. My legs had stopped feeling and my pulse was
light and fast. I felt Marty's hand lock onto my arm and yank up.
    "There's more," he said.
    One foot in front of the