SUMMER of FEAR Read Online Free PDF Page A

again."
    "What's the angle?"
    "That he'll do it again."
    "We'd have to be real careful, Russ. The racial overtones are
touchy."
    "Well, let the story slip and see how touchy it
can get.
    "I've worried about that, too."
    "I need something first—space for another Dina story, wouldn't have
to be front of the section."
    "Dina again?"
    "The big game starts next week."
    Dina was the DNA typing apparatus that the county crime lab bought the
year before. It cost $800,000, it hadn't produce a shred of admissible evidence
yet, and, worse, defense attorneys were just then getting the hang of
demonstrating what "genetic fingerprinting" had been from the very
start—complex, unproven, and without agreed-upon standards. There had been two
reversals from higher California courts in the last six month and one acquittal
by a jury that believed the defense had put genetic typing well within the
shadow of doubt. Dina, needless to say, was supposed to become the county's
biggest crime-busting star. But her luster was fading before she had even
gotten to trial, and nobody at the crime lab, or the Sheriff's, or the DA's
office could seem to talk fast enough to quell the increasingly vocal critics.
The first trial in which she would be used—the Ballard rape case—was set to
open next week. The defendant was on trial, but so was Dina. A pro-Dina story
by Russell Monroe in the Journal could help set a more comfortable
atmosphere for her tryout. For me, it was a bargaining chip.
    "Can the police link the Ellisons and the first couple— what's
their name, Fernandez? We ran the story today that says they can't."
    "They can, but they don't want to."
    "We'd like it first, if and when they do. I'll
make space for
    Dina."
    "Thanks."
    She told me to take care of myself, then hung up. I knew she wouldn't
ask about Isabella, the same way I didn't ask about her father: The subject of
cancer was not something you tagged onto the end of a business call, even one
about murder. There were other times for that.
    Next I called Martin Parish's boss—Sheriff Dan Winters— and pitched him
my deal: a good solid Dina piece in trade for pole position on... I almost said the Midnight
Eye.
    I explained.
    He acted as if I was a fool, which I knew he would, pretended to dismiss
my offer, which I also knew he would. But the seed was planted, and that was
all that mattered. That, and perhaps the fact that I'd generously volunteered
my minor celebrity (and less-than-minor money) to Daniel Winters's reelection
campaign two years ago. Now Dan was knee-deep in bad ink: jail overcrowding,
lawsuits, rising crime stats, shrinking budget. My offer of good ink would get
under politician's skin and it wouldn't cost him much. He said he’d think about
it.
    I kept the police scanner in my car turned up for the 187 at Amber's.
I've got a scanner in every room of my house---a questionable luxury I paid for
with the movie money from Journey Up River. In my early years as a
successful news writer, I left the scanners on every minute that I wasn't
asleep, and often when I was. Isabella put an end to this shortly after we were
married. It wasn't hard for her to do—any man on earth would rather listen to
Isabella's dusky smooth voice than a dispatcher droning code numbers.
    But the 187 didn't come. It was 5:30 and I was starting to wonder.
    So I called Amber's agent in Los Angeles and said I was Erik Wald. Erik
Wald, like myself, was a former "companion' to Amber. I had introduced him
to her, just as Marty had introduced her to me. That was six years ago, long
after Amber and I were over, and I was escorting her socially, occasionally,
without romantic interest on her part. It was my own somewhat pathetic way of
keeping the possibilities open, but I brought what dignity I could to the job.
Shortly thereafter, Amber and Erik were item. I was briefly jealous, but their
affair was short, and I had since fallen deeply in love with Isabella. I
tracked the dashing couple in the society column