Free SUMMER of FEAR by T. Jefferson Parker Page B

sorry."
    I loitered,
taking notes, getting the basics, sneaking off to a little laundry room with a
door that opened to the backyard, so I could smoke, breath fresh air, and have
a drink from my flask.
    The detectives quickly determined that Mr. Tran Wynn had been forty-one
years old, a physician. Maia was thirty-six and had worked for a local
aerospace firm.
    The twins—-Jacob and Justin—were two.
    The daughter, Kim, was blessedly gone. Where? I looked into her room.
The bed was made, and the cops had found the door open, whereas the doors to
the twins' room and the master suite were both closed. Karen Schultz demanded
another search of the house for Kim, which proved fruitless. Winters ordered a
door-to-door canvass of the neighborhood for the girl, after Martin and DA
assistants all impressed on him that for the killer to take the girl alive
would be "out of profile." APB pending. Bloodhounds considered.
    "No story until we find the girl," said Karen. Her face was so
pale, her freckles showed even darker.
    They didn't want Kim reading about the death of her
entire family—her entire universe—in the evening Journal. I didn’t either. "Don't worry," I said.
"The Wynns are Vietnamese, aren’t they?"
    Karen nodded. "The last name is an anglicized version of
Nguyen—pronunciation is similar. Jacob, Justin, and Kim? I say Tran and Maia
were trying hard to fit in as Americans."
    "A lot of Catholics came down from the
North," I said
    "I
guess the Wynns should have stayed put. Least they could have been buried in
their own ground."
    Half an hour later, Martin found me in the laundry nook and waved me
back to the living room. I'd already filled ten pages in my notebook.
"You'll like this," he said. Winters, the two assistant DAs, both CS
men, and Karen all stood in a loose semicircle facing the Wynn's impressive
stereo system. One of the uniforms hit a button and the loud hiss of a tape can
through the speakers. It continued for ten seconds or so, and realized it
wasn't all hiss—it was also the sound of ocean water on sand, or maybe cars on
a highway, or both.
    The voice that
came on next was a man's—slow, deliberate, almost pleasant. The words were
spaced out and careful enunciated, as if for a student to hear and repeat:
    " Coming... Seeing... Having... Willing
Cleaning... Taking.. .Jah..."
    Then more waves,
tiny voices in the far background, and a long inhalation, followed by silence.
What came next was the same ocean-heavy background, the same voice, but now it
was slurred, badly garbled, as if the man was in a drug stupor or falling off to
sleep:
    "Ice-a h-h-homing gen spoon.
O-o-ouch treble t-t-tings. A-a-ax is cute me. G-gren duffel m-m-m'back. G-gren
duffel m-m-m'back. M-m-make m-m-m'do tings. C-c-cun seed brat cun wormin from he..."
    Then the end of
sound, just the near silence of the Wynn's speakers.
    We listened to it again, then a third time.
    "Green duffel," said Assistant DA Peter
Haight.
    "Green duffel on my back," said Winters.
    "Green devil on my back," said Marty. "Makes me do
things."
    "Execute me," I said.
    Parish stared at me.
    "That's what I heard, too," said Karen.
    The most pressured of silences came over us. Winters looked around,
studying each face in the group. Heads shook. Karen asked to hear it again. We
listened.
    Suddenly, a cold wave of astonishment rose up and broke over me.
    Something was very wrong here.
    This I could not believe.
    Not only what we were hearing but the fact that the dicks had found it
so quickly. A houseful of death and blood, latents, footprints probably, hair
and fiber almost assuredly, and these guys turn on the goddamned stereo ?
Winters must have read the amazed doubt on my face. He looked at the two
assistant DAs and the two CS investigators and told them to beat it.
    Then it hit me. Of course.
    "Nothing about the recordings," said
Winters.
    "Nothing about the writing on the walls,"
said Schultz.
    "And nothing about you guys finding the same
things at the Ellison