“I really don’t know,” he said finally. “I wish I did.”
Virginia looked at him. “I know. It’s okay, Jim.”
“Have any of Ray’s friends from the department been around the last few months?”
“You mean around the café?”
“I mean around Ray and Ann.”
Virginia thought for a moment, shifted slowly in her chair. “Last month, a Saturday night, Annie and Ray and a young man — I think his name was Kearns — came by to say hello. Kearns is one of Ray’s friends from the cops. They were all dressed up, hitting the local bars. When they left, Ann had each one by the arm, in the middle of them, you know. It reminded me of when the men came home from the war. Why?”
“I’m trying to get a feel for whom she was seeing.”
“I sure as hell didn’t say she was seeing him.”
“Blodgett, maybe?”
Virginia’s gaze was fierce and cold. “Just on our runs out to the bay. I can categorically tell you that there was nothing between Annie and him. Nothing.”
“Anyone else? Any men you haven’t seen around before?”
“No.”
“How about him?”
Jim pulled out the snapshot of Horton and Edith Goins. Virginia studied the picture at length, first at arm’s length, then up close. “No. But he looks... I can’t say familiar, but he looks like he might be familiar.”
Virginia continued her reconnaissance of the snapshot. She held it up at different angles to the light. “Who is he?”
“He’s a released sex offender. He did something like what happened to Annie, back in Ohio, years ago.”
“Is that his mother?”
Jim nodded. “He sent her a postcard from the Locker, Mom — the ‘Wet Your Line’ ones.”
“I’ve seen him!” Virginia’s wide eyes went from Jim, to the photo, then back to Jim. “He’s come in three or four times. He wears these bright Hawaiian shirts and loud pants. He looked like someone from Ohio trying to fit in here. I’m positive it’s him. He should be arrested immediately.”
“The police are taking some evidence from his parents’ apartment. I think they’ll bring him in for questioning. Soon.”
Virginia looked at the picture again. “I’m sure I’ve seen him, at the Locker. I’ll testify to that, under oath.”
“First things first, Mom. I don’t have to tell you what to do, if you see him again.”
“You sure as hell don’t. I’ll hold him at gunpoint with Poon’s forty-five.”
“Call me, would be good enough. Or Brian Dennison.”
Virginia was about to say something about Dennison but stopped short. She started stuffing Flynn for Mayor circulars, with a vengeance.
“When was the last time Dale Blodgett saw Ann, as far as you know?”
“I’ll tell you about Dale Blodgett. He’s a cop. He’s a quiet man, doesn’t say much. I kind of like him. He’s the only cop with the guts to speak out for Becky and for Slow Growth. He’s the only cop Newport Beach has who works Toxic Waste, and he has to do that as overtime. But he wasn’t seeing Ann. I’m amazed Dennison hasn’t fired him or something.”
“Besides Kearns, have any other cops been hanging around with Ray and Annie?”
“How come you’re so interested in Ray’s cop friends?”
“I’m thinking they might be willing to put in some volunteer time, for Ann,” he lied.
“I think they should be considered suspects. Annie was fully aware of the TCE dumping.”
“There hasn’t been any dumping, Mom. You said that yourself. Trace only.”
Virginia looked at him with her customary deep suspicion. Wouldn’t she like to know what Mackie Ruff saw, he thought. The telephone rang again. Weir kissed Virginia’s cheek and went upstairs to get Dale Blodgett’s address from his file.
When the phone was free, he called Dennison to see whether a personal journal belonging to Ann had been booked in by Innelman. None had. He called Blodgett to see whether tonight would be a good time to talk, but the line was busy.
Jim wrote down the address on a slip of paper, put it into his pocket, and slipped back downstairs. While Virginia stuffed mailers in the living room, he found the extra key she kept for the preschool.
Jim was surprised to see a faint light on inside Ann’s Kids. The chain-link gate was open and someone sat at Ann’s desk. Jim could see the motionless profile enhanced by the soft fluorescence of a reading lamp.
His pulse quickened as he pushed open the gate, crossed the little play yard, and climbed the porch steps. In the front room, he stopped for a moment. Whoever was sitting in Ann’s office neither spoke nor moved.
Jim took two steps down the short hallway, then followed the light. At the doorway, he leaned forward and looked in.
“Don’t go for a career in burglary,” said Raymond, seated at Ann’s desk. “Let me guess. Virginia told you about the diary, and you wanted one more look at a flower vase that had fresh water but no flowers in it.”
Jim went in, studying Raymond’s face, his nerves settling. The lamplight bounced off a blotter, illuminating Ray from below. His eyes were black but clear, and Jim could see in them the unmistakable influence of pain. In another time, Jim thought, Ray would have stood up and bear-hugged him. In another time, he thought, we wouldn’t even be here. “You okay?”
“Thanks for the calls and visit. Guess I slept right through it. I needed some sleep.”
“How are you feeling now?”
“I’ll get there,” Ray said. “You?”
“I’ll get there, too.”
Raymond took a deep breath and leaned forward. “Innelman came and got the vase for prints, but all Robbins could find were Ann’s and a few tyke-sized smudges. I’ve looked through here three times for her journal. It’s not at home. It’s not here. It’s starting to piss me off.”
Weir looked down at a half-eaten sandwich and a carton of milk that sat on the desk in the pale light.
“Get this,” said Raymond, tapping the desk blotter. “Upper-right corner here — ‘Rita,’ ‘Renata,’ ‘Rene.’ Ann liked these R names for girls. I was holding out for Mary. Typical Catholic.”
Their eyes met, then darted away from each other like aquarium fish. Jim wondered at the terrible capriciousness of life, the way it dangled so much possibility, then yanked it away. Life was a little of heaven, a little of hell, and a whole lot of neither.
“I wish for just ten minutes I could forget,” said Ray. “Just ten minutes of being... well, being not this.”
“Let’s walk the neighborhood.”
Ray clicked off the light. “Sure.”
They headed north up the bayfront, past Becky’s, toward the yacht club. The little docks and private piers jutted out to their right, lost in fog. No sky was visible above them, just the pale marine layer that seemed both lazy and eternal. It was the kind of afternoon not content to surrender to evening. Weir was easily drawn back in time to the long summers when he and Ray ran amok here — skateboards and fishing poles, mud fights and running dives, sandbagging the Locker during the storm of ’68, the occasional blessed trip out to sea with Poon and Jake. They say we have our memories, thought Jim, but really our memories have us.
Raymond walked along, a half step behind him, in that slow, even gait he’d had since boyhood. “What do you think of the Lakers?” he asked suddenly.
Jim understood that for the next few minutes at least, Ray was going to be in the world without Ann. It was a shakedown cruise. “Detroit’s too tough. Portland is, too.”
Ray dribbled an imaginary ball past Weir, stopped, sprung, and sent off a fadeaway jumper. “They need a guard who’s a little reckless. A guy who can make things happen. How about me?”