Don't do this, said a receding voice inside me- you have no reasons, only a million excuses — but I was already walking toward her gate. It was not locked. The house was dark except for a very minor glow coming from what was probably the kitchen. I knocked, rang the bell, knocked again. The door was locked. I followed a pathway of round concrete stepping-stones around to the backyard. The moon was half full, and in the moonlight I could make out the rolling lawn, the orange trees huddled in a grove at the far end, a pale island of concrete. Steam leak up from the edge of a covered hot tub.
The sliding glass door stood open all the way. The screen door was open about two feet. Open! My heart dropped, but fought to remain thoughtless. Is this how a secret life begin: The drapes were pulled back on their runner. To let in the night air, I guessed: Air conditioning gives Amber headaches. But the screen. Had Marty come in this way? So I pressed against the screen with my fingertip. The slit was six inches long, vertical, just left and slightly above the lock. You could have cut it with a table knife.
Demons began to lift off inside me; I could feel them swirling up through my arteries, coiling along my spine. They felt like sea creatures that live down where there's no light- knife-toothed, blunt-headed, colorless. I could feel the vein my forehead throbbing.
What I did next went against all my training as a police officer, against my instincts as a writer, against the logic of the situation, even against the emotions I felt boiling up inside. Somehow, I lost it. I panicked. I let out the fear. Maybe it was only a nod of respect for Amber Mae Wilson's well-being- would like to believe it was just that.
I jumped inside, found a light switch, flipped it on, and yelled her name.
"Amber."
"Amber."
Amber!
No answer. I charged through all the downstairs rooms-empty. I threw on lights willy-nilly. I tripped over my own feet charging up the stairs, hit my shin on a step, hard. I couldn’t get enough breath. The light seemed arbitrary, beveled with the darkness into treacherous edges, planes, drops. Everything was moving. I crashed into a low credenza in what appeared to be her study. Magazines slipped off the top; the lamp tilted and fell over and the bulb burst with a soft pop.
Amber!
Then I was running down a long hallway toward a half-open door. Paintings on the walls streaked past; the ceiling pressed down low. My heart was working so hard, there was hardly a space between beats. I was inside the door. The switch was just where it should have been. The room snapped to attention with light. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
At first, I thought it was blood. My second thought was a correction: Red spray paint. The biggest words were on the mirrored walk-in closet:
SOJAH SEH
Across the wall over the headboard of the bed:
AWAKEN OR DIE IN IGNORACE
On the far walclass="underline"
MIDNIGHT EYE IS RETURN
And everywhere the peace symbols, those hideous sixties ankhs or chicken feet or modified crosses or whatever in hell they were-everywhere, trailing around the room in poorly formed, inarticulate red circles.
Amber lay on the floor by the bed, face-up, her arms and legs spread. She wore a blue satin robe. Her hair-thick dark brown waves-spread out against the carpet. Big pieces of white and pink were scattered through that dark hair, strewn from what I could see had once been her head. And her face! Amber's lovely, ageless, beguiling face-somehow lifted back now, flap-like, hinged on only one side, turned almost down, as if contemplating her own hair afloat in that pond of blood.
In ten years of police work, I had never-
In ten years as a crime writer, I had never-
Never. Not once. Not even close.
I can remember standing there, weight back on my heels, thighs quivering, face raised to the ceiling, mouth stretched open to release a howl that I instead choked dead in my throat. The throttled scream came from deep inside, from my very toes, felt like-a wild discharge that left my eyes throbbing and terrible pain from my stomach clear up to my jaw. The peace symbols swirled around me.
I went to the side where her face was. I turned toward her and, bending low, looked into her dull gray eyes. They were lifeless and remote as old glass.
Never, in ten years-
Reaching out from the red that had settled over me- everything I saw was red, tinged in red, outlined in red, steeps in it, drenched in it-I touched my fingers to my lips, then stretched my hand toward hers. From my mouth to Amber's, a distance it seemed my hand would never cover, how much farther could it be? And what a cold and trembling arrival, fingertip to cool gray lip!
I stood. In the bathroom, I got a handful of toilet paper went back to Amber, and for a moment looked around the room again. I noted the packed suitcases-still open-on the floor beside the walk-in. Where had Amber been going? I force myself to look at her again. Then I knelt, reached out my hand, hesitated, then reached out again, wiping her lips with it. Then the light switch in her bedroom as I turned it off. The other switches, too-all of them, even ones I was sure I hadn't touched. Then the spot where I'd fingered the screen-door flap, the front doorknob, and a few red, dreamlike moments later, finally, the same cold brass handle of Amber's gate that Martin Parish had cleansed.
It was roughly ten thousand miles to my car.
I drove to Main Beach and waded along the shore, soaking myself to the thighs. I jammed my hands in the sand, threw the seawater against my face. I stood there, knee-deep, and scrubbed my arms with the rough, dripping mud. Now what? I could call the cops-anonymous tip. I could call the cops, tell them who I was, and that Martin Parish had killed his ex-wife. I could do nothing, sit back, wait, and watch them go to work. The one thing, though, that I was not going to do-even with the smell of murder in my nostrils-was to admit that I had been at (inside!) Amber Wilson's home, ever. For Isabella, I told myself. For us.
I had one more thought. And though it seemed as dismal a product as my mind had yet rendered, I will confess also to the sizable thrill that accompanied it down my spine and into the chaos of my heart. As I stood there, earnestly grinding my fingernails into the abrading Pacific sand, I realized I might have just stumbled onto the biggest story of my life. Golden material, pure and mine only. Play this smart, I told myself. For here was more than a secret life, more than a diversion. Here upon my platter was the kind of event- event! — that, if handled right, could do more for my career than a dozen secondhand crime books. I knew these people. I'd been there. I felt a little sick to see finally, in all its hidden rapacity, the true face of my own ambition. But at that moment, with the chill of the ocean working its way up my legs and arms, what shame could find airtime in a soul still writhing with the image of pure horror that was Amber's face?
Finally, I went back across the beach to my car in the light of the half moon. Couples walked arm in arm. Lovers kissed on the boardwalk. A dog trotted by.
Sojah seh.
So God speaks.
Suddenly, it hit me how badly I wanted to be home, in bed beside Isabella. The yearning surged over me as if a dam had been blown. Gad, take me back. I drove fast out the canyon, up the winding road that ends at our precarious, stilted horne.
In the kitchen, I checked my knees for blood. I saw none but sprayed them with a stain lifter, anyway. Stripping down upstairs, I threw everything washable into the hamper.
I showered forever-hot at first, then cold.
Isabella whimpered and placed her arm across my chest when I got in beside her. Her face was next to mine and I could smell the breath of sleep from her.
"Your heart is pounding," she whispered.
"It's because of you." She "hmmed." I knew what it meant: a small smile, tender and brief, already drifting back toward the sleep from which it had come.