“Take one if you want,” said Emmett.
“Thank you, I would.”
Jim slid open the top desk drawer: two loupes, a roll of masking tape, pencils and pens. The side drawers were nearly empty, just a few loose snapshots and some boxes of slides.
“Horton’s got pictures of everything. Most of ’em, he took with him.”
“Mr. Goins, do you have any idea where he is? Any clue at all?”
“Well, somewhere not too far is my guess.”
“No address?”
“All’s he ever said is it’s cheap. You can read the postcard he sent us if you want to.”
They went back to the living room, where Edith had turned on a soap. She brought down the volume and looked at Weir expectantly. “Not much to see, is there?”
“No, not really.”
Emmett pulled something off of the refrigerator and handed it to Jim. The writing was small and neat, done in a well-sharpened pencil. The postmark was April 26.
Dear Mom & Dad,
Things are fine here in my ‘hideaway’ and the purpose of my life is becoming clear to me. I’ll be back in a few days to visit, and we’ll be together. My permanent address is still at your place — so don’t let Dr. Wick forget it! The Chevy is fine and I’m living off savings.
“Joseph?”
Edith explained. “Horton changed his name. The courts wouldn’t allow it because of his record, but he calls himself that, anyway. We can’t get used to it.”
When Jim flipped over the card, the blood rushed into his face. It was the old standard from Poon’s Locker, a shot of the shop with the words Wet Your Line at Poon’s Balboa! written across it.
“You know where Balboa is, Mr. Weird?”
“I grew up there.” His heart was throbbing hard now.
“We’re sorry about your sister,” said Edith, “but we know that Horton’s innocent, so we don’t mind talking.”
“Can you tell me what kind of car he has?”
“It’s an ’eighty-seven Caprice. White, four doors, blue interior.”
Weir decided to let Dennison’s men get the license-plate numbers — along with the postcard from Poon’s Locker, and a hair sample to check against the one found on Ann’s blouse. Who knows what else they’d find.
“Thank you very much, again. Both of you. You don’t have to mention this visit to Horton. No reason to get him upset.”
“Good luck. We got nothing to hide, and neither does Horton anymore.”
“I can see that now.”
“Good luck on your sister. Judging from you, she must have been a nice girl.”
“She was great.”
Jim skidded to a stop at the first pay phone he could find. He dialed Dennison’s direct number and the secretary told him Brian would be right with him. Weir stood, engulfed by the hazy smog on Harbor Boulevard, his stomach fluttering with eagerness. When Brian came on, Weir flew through the story — Dr. Gold, Horton Goins in Hardin County, the sudden unexplained move to Southern California, Edith and Emmett, the postcard. “The girl that Goins did in Ohio was a waitress, too. He befriended her, got her trust, and took her out to a swamp.”
“Good Christ in heaven, Weir.”
“That’s exactly what I thought.”
“Okay, I’m sending Innelman and Deak over there as soon as I can — they can ask a few questions, then pop the shit out of the place. Any chance Goins would show up and try to cart anything off?”
“Not with me watching the door.”
“Good. What’s your call on... what we talked about this morning?”
“I think Blodgett and Kearns have some questions to answer. Horton Goins wasn’t driving any cop car out at the Back Bay.”
Dennison was silent for a moment. “It’s your show with them, not mine. Blodgett’s off shift for the next few nights — might be a good time to find him home.”
“What did you get from Annie’s car?”
“A whole lot of hair and fingerprints — all hers. Robbins is working it over again right now.”
Weir hung up, his heart still beating fast. He spent the next forty-five minutes parked outside the Island Garden apartments, alert for a white ’87 Chevy Caprice. It never showed, but a new one did. Dwight Innelman and Roger Deak climbed out, followed, to his astonishment, by Interim Chief Brian Dennison and Mike Paris.
Jim smiled to himself as he started up the truck. Arresting a mentally disordered sex offender would be good for Brian. Good for the city. Good for the news media. Good for a campaign, too: Who wouldn’t want this crime-stopper to serve as mayor for their town? He watched Dennison bend down and check his hair in the side mirror of the cop car before leading his detectives toward the apartment.
Chapter 10
Two blocks south of the ferry landing on Balboa is the Weir family home. The first house was built by Jim’s great-grandfather in 1891, on a site obtained by a hundred-year lease from what is now the PacifiCo Development Group. The original structure was destroyed by flood. Jim’s grandfather rebuilt in 1922, but the Pacific claimed both the home and the man in the now-infamous storm of 1939. Poon built a third house just after the war. It is a weathered, fading two-story Cape Cod-style home with a wall around it, and the wall is engulfed in bougainvillea. You have to know what you’re looking for to find the gate.
Jim passed through, shut it behind him quietly. The courtyard was overgrown with foliage that cut off the outside sounds, and the pavers were ankle-high in bougainvillea bracts, dry and light as paper. The fountain was clogged and inoperable. Jim reflected that his mother was a capable businesswoman, but when Poon died ten years ago, the house had begun a nosedive that really never stopped. Virginia had done little to check its decline. There was in her, Jim had come to understand, a genuine and simple need to keep at least something the way it used to be. With the death of Ann, he now realized, this house — and he himself — were the sole fixed bodies in Virginia’s diminishing galaxy. And he knew that if PacifiCo and the development cartel of Orange County sunk the Slow Growth Initiative and allowed the Balboa Redevelopment Project, this house, and Poon’s Locker, and Becky’s place, and Raymond’s and Ann’s Kids, and the Eight Peso Cantina and scores of other low-rent domiciles and mom-’n’-pop businesses like them would slide helplessly into the churning maw of progress. Weir understood the vehemence with which Virginia and others like her opposed the neighborhood’s proposed date with “redevelopment.” Selfish and provincial as it sometimes seemed, they were, in some respects, fighting for their lives. The thought lay heavy inside Jim as he walked through the door.
Virginia was sitting in the living room, erect in an old swivel chair, with four rickety card tables set up in front of her. It was Virginia’s “office.” The tables were piled high with Slow Growth fliers and envelopes to be addressed, circulars for Becky Flynn as mayor of Newport, invitations to the Wrecking Ball, Coastal Commission tomes, Environmental Impact Reports, State of California Codes, coffee cups, legal pads, green and white pencils that read SAVE THE PENINSULA — FLYNN FOR MAYOR on them. Pinned to the wall in front of her was a list of phone numbers almost two feet long — the volunteer army that she liked to call the Newport Irregulars. Virginia’s back was to him and her head was cocked at an extreme angle to hold the telephone in the crook of her neck. She was stuffing envelopes as she talked. “I don’t care what the Times says, we had close to seven thousand people at that protest march. They can’t even get my newspaper onto the porch, and you expect them to count seven thousand people... then split the difference and call it six thousand, I don’t care!”