As if the less fortunate were all committed sex offenders, thought Weir, as if you can redevelop someone like Horton Goins out of existence, as if a low-profit, low-tax-base neighborhood was the reason for it all.
“Chief Dennison, is Horton Goins now officially, a suspect?”
“Horton Goins is a prime suspect.”
Paris leaned forward and whispered something in Dennison’s ear. Dennison cupped his hand around the nearest mike, as if national security might were at stake.
The chief nodded and turned back to the cameras. “In the search for the Bayside Slasher, Horton Goins is our only suspect.”
Chapter 18
Joseph Goins rang the doorbell once, then took a step backward on the creaking, uneven porch. He turned to look again at the immense avocado tree that cast its shade around him, at the weed-choked walkway up which he had just come, at the looming shapes of hibiscus and citrus and bamboo that stood tall in the yard, their tops connecting skyward, hushing the lot in shade and sealing off the house from the street. He already liked it.
A shriek issued from behind the door. The hair on the backs of Goins’s hands rose. Maybe it was more like a cackle, something containing a word.
“Mmmyyaa?”
What a grating tone, he thought. He rang the bell again, looking down at his box of cameras, photographs, clothes. The image came to him again of that man loitering across the street from the El Mar, the one with the tight jeans and the fancy billowy shirt. An idea had screamed up Goins’s backbone when he looked out and saw him, and he had listened to it telling him to get out while he still could. Cop, it said. See the cop who’s found you. It was part of the same idea that, the day before, had told him locate another room in case this happened. Thank God for the clarity, he thought, thank God for back doors.
“Mmmyyaa?”
“Mrs. Fostes?”
“Mmminute!”
Joseph took the newspaper from his box. A nice touch, he thought, like in the movies. He folded it back to expose the right column. His hand was still shaking. And whose wouldn’t? he wondered.
Carrying his box of things, he’d slipped out the back door and then walked down the bayfront to the video arcade, where he lost himself in the dark pinging metropolis of buzzers and bells and alarms. Everyone was looking at him. These California people know when you’re not one of them, he’d thought.
Aching inside, his mind swirling with contradictory messages, his face on fire with the heat of discovery and flight, he had sat on the seawall for a few minutes and just given up, just waited for them to come get him and take him away. A SWAT detail had pounded past him with martial precision, heading for the El Mar. The helicopter had settled over the motel, its rotors beveling the silence with chop-chops that he could see inside his eyelids — harsh, red-black blades cutting down from a blue sky. Three uniformed cops had marched by him, too, quick with purpose. And there he had sat, sunglasses and a bright painter’s cap on, his box of things beside him, wondering why they just didn’t stop and cuff him. Then he’d kept to the side streets, hefted the box up onto his shoulder to block his face from view, and headed south down the peninsula toward the address.
The door swung open and a withered, robed, white-haired woman beheld him with the palest blue eyes that he had ever seen. Her shoulders were curved over on top, like a paper clip. Her face was sunken, but the skin looked soft. With one bony dark-spotted hand she clawed her robe up close to her neck.
She’s lovely, thought Joseph Goins. He lifted the folded newspaper up to her, and watched with extreme care what she did now. “Are you Mrs. Fostes?”
“I am,” she said. Her eyes wandered, focusless, over the folded paper. Perfect. Sighted older woman seeks companionship for room and board, it said. To Joseph Goins, “sighted” could only mean almost blind. He was right.
“I’m Joseph Gray. Is the room taken?” he asked, smiling.
Her blue eyes locked on his face for a moment, and he took off his sunglasses to return their assessing gaze. “No. Come in.”
Even her speaking voice was a shriek, he noted, but it was a quieter one. He picked up his box and followed her bobbing down-white head into the house.
It was dark, warm, and filled with competing, unpleasant smells. A cat curled atop an end table, as if mounted to the lamp base. There was a slouching green sofa, an overstuffed chair in a floral pattern, a coffee table, and a television set, which was turned on. A dog the size and shape of a fluffy bedroom slipper zipped in tight angles around Joseph’s feet as he followed Mrs. Fostes toward the furniture. She sat slowly in the middle of the couch and lifted a bony finger to indicate the chair.
“If I could find my glasses, I could see you better,” she said. “I can hardly make out the TV from here. What’s on?”
“A soap opera, I think.”
“Where could they have gone?” She dug into a shoebox that lay on the table before her, a box filled with dozens of prescription bottles. “I don’t need them for these,” she said, tapping the box. “I can go by shape. But I can’t see the tube. Do you see them anywhere?”
Joseph looked around the room, his gaze moving to the top of the TV set, where a pair of black-rimmed heavy glasses sat. “No, Mrs. Fostes. I don’t.”
“I lost them for a month this winter,” she said. “Didn’t slow me down a bit.”
“What a lovely home,” said Joseph. The cat’s tail dropped off the tabletop, swung, twitched.
“It’ll do,” said Mrs. Fostes. “Are you a student?”
“I’ll be going back full-time in the fall,” he said. “UCI.” He knew all about the University of California, Irvine — the medical-research facilities, anyway.
“What’s your major?”
“Computers.”
“That’s the best field there is right now. My husband, John, he always said computers were the future. That was way back. He died in ’sixty-two.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” she sighed. “Where are you from?”
“Irvine.” May as well stay consistent, he thought. “My dad’s a computer salesman. My mom’s a homemaker.”
“Do you have a job?”
“I’m living off my savings right now. But I’ll be seeking a position in computers in the near future.”
“You’re certainly well spoken for a local boy. Your mouth isn’t loose when you speak. Do you surf?”
“I skateboard some.” Joseph chuckled, remembering the few dizzying moments he’d spent on the eighty-dollar board he’d bought, moments of vertiginous peril, banana-peel quickness, absolute befuddlement. “But I’m a good swimmer.” This much was true. He’d spent every available moment in the City Plunge, up until Lucy. Even through the long years of the state hospital, he had held an undiminished feeling of what it was like: the cool water parting before him, the way it would support you if you kept moving, the peacefulness of it.
She looked at him, a little off center with the soft blue gaze. “In the ad, I said companionship. What I like most is someone to read me the paper every morning. Perhaps discuss the major stories for a few minutes. Then, someone to talk with after dinner. Only for half an hour or so. We’ll make dinner together — the other meals we just fend for ourselves. I pay for groceries. You have to pay long distance telephone, but that’s about it. You empty the wastebaskets and take the trash out Thursdays. Sometimes I need help out of bed, but once I’m up and moving, I’m a hellcat. I prefer a young man or woman because I might need your strength occasionally, and, quite frankly — old people depress me. You’re welcome to bring a friend over when you want.”