“Yes.”
“Why?”
They exchanged looks again, looks of utter resignation. “Horton asked us to,” said his mother. “And besides, we were ready. Em couldn’t find any work in Ohio — we’d moved to Lima by then — so we thought California would be a good new start.”
“Did Horton say why he wanted to come here?”
Edith sipped again from her cup. “No. But he told us that California was rich in opportunity for Emmett, was a place we all could start over, and the weather was nice. He spent a lot of time doing research, and he decided Costa Mesa was the best place we could be. Close enough to the beach for good breezes, and close enough to the freeways for work. Horton got a job at a PhotoStop, soon as we moved out. See, during his stay in the state hospital, he got interested in photography. Took some real nice pictures of the other patients, though I must admit they’re some pretty scary people.”
“Which PhotoStop?”
“Right out here on Harbor Boulevard. To be honest, Horton must have lied just a tad on his application.”
“How has he been since he got out?”
Emmett set down his coffee mug. “This part might be hard for you to believe, Mr. Weird, because it was hard for us to believe. Horton is a changed man.”
“How so?”
“He’s clean and neat. He smiles upon occasion. He enjoys his work and takes it — well, took it — very seriously. He saw all the people around here so trim and suntanned, and he began doing exercises in his room. With his first few paychecks, he bought clothes. He likes the colors you got out here — the Hawaiian shirts and the baggy pants with the tight cuffs and those big jogging shoes that look so complicated. He puts Wildroot or something on his hair to hold it in place.”
Edith lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out her nose. “But you know, it’s not just his appearance or how he acts. We learned the hard way how a person can act one way and be another. It’s in the way he looks at us, at the world. There’s a light in his eyes now. There’s a... joy in them.”
Jim watched the smoke ease across the room, window-bound. “You say he quit his job?”
Emmett and Edith looked at each other again and shook their heads. Edith sighed out a lungful of smoke. “Starting out in early February — just a couple of weeks after we got here — Horton spent less and less time here. He told us he was working overtime, but we’d drive by to see and there’d be someone else in his booth. The terms of his release specifically say he’s gotta live with us, so we told him to stick close. He smiled and hugged us both — they seem to do that a lot in California — and said everything was ‘cool’ and not to worry. Well, two months ago today, Horton moved out. He took most of his things, his cameras and clothes, and he just disappeared. He never showed up at work, they said. He comes back here twice a week and spends the night — so’s not to violate the release. He calls every few days to say he’s fine, and we’ve gotten three postcards. But he won’t say where he is. Once a month, he’s got a review-board meeting, and he always shows up for it. Rest of the time, ’cept for a couple of nights, he’s gone. He took our Chevy and left us the truck. He’s actually pretty good about changing oil — did it before we left Ohio and when we got here.”
“Where do you think he went?”
“I honestly got no idea.”
Edith and Emmett looked at him now, the ball clearly in his court. Edith sat forward. “What exactly is motivating you at this point, Mr. Weird?”
“The woman who was killed was my sister, Ann.”
“Oh, my,” said Edith, her grief calling for another drink, which she poured with care.
Emmett sat forward, too, elbows on his robed knees. “Mr. Weird, we’ve been honest with you up to now, because we’ve found after all we’ve been through with Horton, that honesty is the easiest thing to do. We don’t feel we got anything to hide. We answered your questions even though you’re a stranger, and we’ll answer more if you got them. We’ve spent most of our lives answering questions about Horton. But I’ll tell you right now that Horton didn’t do it. He’s a new man. I’d bet everything I have on it.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Mr. Goins.”
“If you were sure I was right, you wouldn’t be here, would you?”
Jim nodded.
“Thing is,” said Edith. “We believe in him.”
But you really don’t believe in him, thought Jim, no matter how bad you want to. Can I? “May I see his room?”
Again the Goinses looked at each other. They regarded Jim now, shrugging at precisely the same moment. “Not much to see,” said Emmett. “But you’re welcome. We’ve got not one thing to hide, and neither does Horton.” He stood, tightened his robe sash with a martial tug, then led Weir down a short hallway toward Horton’s room.
It was the second on the right. Emmett swung open the door and followed Jim inside. It was small, with clean white walls, a twin bed, a desk with a blank blotter on it, sliding closets opposite the bed, and thin green shag carpet. To one wall was tacked a poster of a sunset over a swaying wheat field, with Thoreau’s “different drummer” quotation in fancy gold script at the bottom. On another were two promotional posters for a Japanese camera maker, featuring leggy blondes in swimsuits, draped with photographic gear. Between them was a colored picture of a human brain. The various parts of the organ were different colors, ranging from pale yellow to hot red. “That’s a PET picture of Horton’s brain,” said Emmett. “They do them to see the parts that make them crazy. Horton’s is that little red area way down in the middle. Over the last couple of years, it got smaller and smaller from the drugs.” A folded tripod leaned in one corner.
“Is he still on medication?”
“You bet he is. Costs us nine hundred a month, no generics. He’s real good about taking it — has a little electronic pillbox that beeps when it’s time for something.”
Jim nodded, his nerves jumping, a feeling growing inside him that he’d like to trash this place and see what he could find.
“Not much to see,” said Emmett. “Even when he was here a lot, the room was always neat. They taught him that in the hospital.”
“May I open some drawers? Look in the closet?”
“Help yourself.”
“I was wondering, too, do you have a recent picture of him?”
“Let me see what I’ve got,” said Emmett, heading for the door.
Weir slid open the closet door and looked inside: a few shirts and coats on hangers, pants folded and stacked on an upper shelf, cardboard boxes stacked at the far end. He pulled open the top one and saw the neat collection of photography magazines, proof sheets, developing gear. He removed one of the proofs and angled it toward the faint window light. Group shots in an institutional setting, dazed, scarcely attentive faces. Horton’s fellows in the state hospital, thought Weir. The last row were closeups of a man’s hand holding what looked like a crayon to a sheet of unmarked paper. It was a handsome hand — deeply lined, well proportioned, capable. Weir checked the date on the top magazine: June ’89. He could hear Emmett come into the room behind him.
“Got a couple here,” he said.
Jim left the closet door open, but backed out and accepted two snapshots from the hand of Emmett Goins. He could smell the bourbon on Emmett’s breath. “Just a month ago, these,” he said.
They were both pictures of Horton and Edith. Horton looked surprisingly good: wide-set, placid blue eyes, a high forehead, wavy dark brown hair, a strong but slender jawline tapering to a firm chin. His smile — a little crooked, a little shrewd — revealed large white teeth. There was something ulterior about that smile, though Jim couldn’t put his finger on it, something... employable. Looks like any other twenty-four year old Southern Californian, he thought. For just one fraction of a moment, Weir sensed recognition, but his mind, flying backward through the years, found nowhere to land.