Phil Kearns, in a loose-fitting silk shirt and a pair of jeans, was briefing Tillis. Kearns had a retrospective, “what a game it was” attitude, leading Weir to conclude that Kearns was the one who’d first stumbled on to the El Mar and Goins, thus, MVP. He looked at Paris with a self-satisfied nod. Two more plainclothes were going through a closet built into the wall that divided the two rooms. Weir recognized one of them from the Sheriff’s — Mapson, who turned, looked at Dennison, shook his head, and mumbled something to his partner. They brought in the whole fucking department, thought Weir. Raymond, by himself, was staring at the knotty pine wall.
Ray turned to Innelman and indicated something in the wood.
Jim could see Raymond passing his fingers over the wall, then Dwight doing the same. He followed Ray’s gaze down to the stained linoleum floor. Raymond stooped, collected something, and stood. For a brief moment, Raymond looked up and through the blinds, straight into Jim’s eyes. Then he came across the room, blocking the tiny window with his body, and reached out his hand. Weir stepped back and rested against the wall. He saw the blinds shift open just a little, then Raymond’s voice: need a little goddamned light in here. Looking from an angle between the widened slats now, he saw Raymond’s hands open to the light that filtered through. He had collected thumbtacks from the floor. Jim considered. What had Goins hung on the walls? Whatever it was, he had taken it with him: It was more valuable than his developing chemicals, his map, or his razor. More pictures?
Raymond’s hands retracted from view and Jim angled out of sight. He could barely see in, just enough to make out Dennison whispering some final command to Paris, who then turned and shouldered his way past the uniforms, under the ribbon and out through the front room.
As Tillis went through Goins’s closet, Jim could see the odd schizophrenia of Horton’s wardrobe: impossibly bright Hawaiian shirts and pants; three pairs of tennis shoes — one red, two white; a couple of painter’s-style caps in Day-Glo green. Then, pushed to one side as if unwanted but still somehow necessary, were two sport coats, two white dress shirts, a pair of dark dress pants and a pair of light ones, and a handful of neckties on a hanger. Tillis examined a pair of penny loafers, holding the bottoms up to the light. Jim could make out the shape of a skateboard that sat beside the shoes. Innelman bent down, flipped it over with a fingertip, and spun a wheel. Didn’t use this much, Weir heard him say.
A kid from Ohio, he thought, comes to California and gives himself a make-over. Takes a new name. Gets a job, saves his money, tries to look like he’s one of the natives. He gets a skateboard but doesn’t have time to use it. He’s too busy making plans, taking photographs, studying maps, moving closer and closer to a woman he’s probably never even talked to. Of all the women in the country, he thought, why would a messed-up kid in a mental hospital pick Ann? Chance — the horrible randomness of chance? If someone else had been standing in the play yard of Ann’s Kids the day he shot her picture, would he have become obsessed with that woman instead? Raymond stepped forward and fingered each necktie. Looking for the telltale hole of a tie tack, Weir ventured. Raymond shook his head helpfully. There was none. Horton Goins doesn’t wear half-carat diamond tie tacks. Horton Goins wears Day-Glo painter’s caps and red tennis shoes. Reconcile the two, he thought. Somewhere is an explanation.
Hey Paris, said Dennison, What’s the deal on the press, anyway?
They’re ready when you are.
Dennison checked his watch, then stepped forward to confer with Innelman.
Tillis brought over a chair and stood on it for a look at the top shelf. He looked like a circus elephant on a stool. Innelman broke away from the chief with a shrug, and joined Deak in dusting the kitchen counter and the oven door. Raymond was standing with Kearns now. He cast a quick glance at Jim through the blinds.
Christ, thought Weir, if a Newport Beach cop killed Ann, what he has here is carte blanche to contaminate, conceal, tamper with, remove, adjust, or plant any evidence he wants to. It was an incredibly sloppy job.
The idea hit him that the cops would be happy to have it this way, if one of their own had killed Ann. They’d be happy, too, to let Goins stay one step ahead of them for a week or so, to put him in the spotlight and keep him there. What if they were orchestrating this circus, letting Goins run off ahead like a mechanical rabbit? Maybe Kearns isn’t after Goins at all, he thought. Maybe he’s running him. Why was it Kearns, out of everyone in the department, out of every citizen on the peninsula, who caught up with Goins? For a moment, he wanted to burst in, beat the shit out of anyone who got in his way, grab each offending invader by the throat and drag him outside, leaving Innelman and Deak to do what only Innelman and Deak should have been doing in the first place. Stupid. There was nothing he could do about it now.
He watched as Dennison clapped his hand onto Kearns’s back — a job well done — then onto Raymond’s, too — we’ll get this guy — like this was some cocktail party and he was three martinis strong. There was an ingratiating tilt to his head as he said something to Kearns. Then Paris the flack shouldered back into the kitchen and leaned close to Dennison. The chiefs hand dropped from Raymond’s back. Carry on, he said, and headed toward the front room door, buttoning his linen sport coat, running his fingers through his hair, straightening his back, a sense of mission now returned, now palpable in his stride.
When he was gone, Paris turned to Tillis, straightened his back, brushed a hand through his hair, and echoed Carry on, in a voice that approximated Dennison’s. Weir that it wasn’t very good. Muted chuckles came from behind the window glass, anyway. Raymond shot him another glance.
Parrot, he thought. Public Relations officer Mike Parrot. Another fucking clown with a badge and a gun.
From his elevation on the chair, Tillis’s voice boomed clearly through the general hum of the kitchen. Hey, hey, hey! Young Tillis delivers.
Weir watched him step down, with a large manila envelope between one thumb and forefinger. He walked it gingerly to the kitchenette table, set it down, and worked open the flap with a pencil. Tillis shook out the contents — a stack of eight-by-ten glossies, black and white. Using the pencil eraser, he separated them, spreading them around the table.
Jim heard the silence that descended on the room. Three backs blocked his view — Innelman’s, Ray’s, and Roger Deak’s. Past them, he could see only the surface of the cheap table, the stack of photographs, and the dick’s pudgy hand still holding the pencil.
Man.
Fuckin’ nutcase.
Look at this.
Weir could see that someone with a pair of tongs had lifted one of the pictures to the light. He couldn’t make it out. Raymond’s face, in profile now, looked conspicuously pale. Raymond accepted the tongs, held up the picture, made a show of not being able to see it well enough, then came toward the window. Bending down, his back to the room, he held the photograph to the weak inrush of light.
And there was Ann in all her beauty, captured unaware by Goins in a moment of her everyday life. She was coming out of her front door in the morning, one arm still trailing inside to turn the lock. She had a fresh expression on her face, the look of mild optimism with which some people anticipate their work. Raymond flipped it over. Written in grease pencil were the words New Morning — February 25.