“I want you to talk to Kearns and Blodgett. If their answers don’t add up, I’ll refer the whole thing to Internal Affairs. I’d rather not do that, but I will. Don’t mention the Dispatch tape, or I’m dead in the water.”
Weir thought. “Can you get me into the station locker room when no one else is there?”
Dennison’s eyes came to life, a glimmer of curiosity. “The hair on Ann’s blouse?”
Jim nodded.
Dennison pondered for a moment, shaking his head. “Too risky. Try talking to them first. Check their alibis for the downtime. We’ll get hair samples if our options come down to that.”
Jim thought it through. What he needed was more leverage. “Kearns and Blodgett don’t know what Mackie saw, do they?”
“Not exactly. That report is for me and Paris and a couple of captains. And you.”
“I might embellish. Keep the interview under wraps if you can.”
“I am. If the stories around the station get a little wilder, I’ll know where they came from.” Dennison handed him an envelope. “Here’s for yesterday, today, and three more. After that, we’ll talk. Four grand, Jim. Silence. Don’t hang me out to dry on this.”
Jim pocketed the money. A hundred an hour, he thought, to find who killed Ann. He felt dirty.
“We got Ann’s car. Officers spotted it about two hours ago. Innelman worked the area, and we took it to impound.”
Jim’s heart sped up for a moment, then settled. “Where was it?”
“A mile from here, down by the Wedge.”
“And?”
“Window was pried open, so we figure he might have been waiting inside when she left work. It was just parked on a side street like a thousand others. Innelman said it was crawling with prints — hopefully not all hers. I happen to think she had somewhere to go that night — otherwise, she’d have walked to work, right? So, where?”
“Neither of us would be sitting here if I knew the answer to that. What about that piece of jewelry that Deak found — prints, make, anything?”
“A couple of jewelers told Innelman it’s probably the back of a tie tack. A custom piece — irregular and expensive. Twenty-four-carat stuff.”
They stood and shook hands. “The world’s a funny place, Jim. You’re investigating my own goddamned police force and I’m making a speech at noon to the Kiwanis, about what a good mayor I’d make.”
“I’m sure you would.”
“I’d expect your vote to go to Becky.”
“We go back a ways.”
“She’s a good lawyer,” said Dennison. He turned to leave, then hesitated, looking toward the back door. “You know, Jim, you could do me a favor. It’s obvious your mother doesn’t like me and she’s doing what she can for Becky in this campaign. That’s okay; that’s what makes this country great. But tell her something for me. Tell her if she’s got worries about the water in our bay, she can come to me. There’s no reason to run to the EPA or the state. If she’s onto something, I’d like to know about it. I care about this city, too, in spite of what she says.”
“What is it you think she’s found?”
Dennison shrugged. “She sure as hell won’t tell me. Maybe you can find out.”
Jim got Dr. Robert Gold’s number and took it upstairs to his old room. Gold was a soft-spoken man who even fifteen years ago when Jim took his classes in criminal psychology seemed aged and eroded by his study of violent crime. He was a statistician at heart, a collector of data, a theorist who based his ideas on a combination of immutable facts and unpredictable behavior. Jim did a rough calculation: Gold must be pushing eighty years old now.
Mrs. Gold said her husband would be right with Jim, but Weir waited at least two minutes.
“Many years, Jim,” he said in greeting. His voice was overloud, that of a man who no longer hears well.
“Too many, Doctor.”
“Can you speak up? I’m sorry you had to wait. I’m stuck in a wheelchair now and it can take incredible amounts of time to roll across a room. That’s because my right arm doesn’t work anymore and neither does my right leg. So the effect, of course, is pretty slow going. Stroke, summer of ‘eighty-nine.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor.”
“What?”
“I said I’m sorry, Doctor.”
“Well, thank you, but eighty-four years old is eighty-four years old. At least the right side of my brain still works.”
“Have you retired?”
“Oh, yes, ten years back. Now I spend my time with the aviary, and reading the journals. It’s too hard to write anymore, so I read for... well, pleasure wouldn’t quite be the right word, would it?”
Gold’s booming laugh came over the line. Weir thought he detected something desperate in it. The idea crossed his mind that Dr. Gold was easing around the last great bend. At least he’s doing it with a sense of humor, thought Weir. There seemed to be too much sadness in the world.
“What do you have for me, Doctor?”
Gold cleared his throat. “Jim, I have to say first of all how sorry I am about your sister. I feel badly for you, and for Raymond, too.”
“We’re going to be okay, Doctor.”
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite make out—”
“We’ll be okay.”
The line was suddenly quiet. Jim could hear Gold’s breathing. Ten seconds went by.
“I’m back,” said Gold, very quietly now. “I’m sorry. Every now and then a tiny seizure, a little focal seizure, but I can’t clear my head for a moment. Give me just another few seconds... is it Jim?”
“Yes, Doctor, it’s Jim Weir.”
“Oh my, this is... just hold on now. Wait.”
A minute later, Gold spoke again. The strength had returned to his voice, but Jim now understood how much energy the doctor used in just talking.
“Now, Jim. The reason I called is because I was going through the Sex Offender Registration files for the last three months. I review them quarterly, just to glean the numbers for my recidivism model. Does the name Horton Goins mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Well, he raped and stabbed a young woman in Ohio nine years ago. She didn’t die, but she’s been in and out of hospitals ever since, terribly disturbed. Schizophrenic. There’s no way you would know of him. It didn’t make the papers out here. But he was interesting to me for many reasons. He was only fifteen years old. He was raised in foster homes. He had a a troubled boyhood, and an oddly variable IQ. He also had a perfectly readable schizophrenic metabolism.”
“Readable?”
“Positron emission tomography — the so-called PET scan. Dr. Field at UC Irvine was kind enough to let me work over his shoulder a bit on Mr. Goins. We flew him in from Dayton, very hush-hush, state police and Mr. Goins’s keeper from the hospital in tow. You can imagine the strings we had to pull. But what a subject! We could see the hyper-stimulated thalamic stem — bright yellow and red, and the corresponding frontal activity that is usually suppressed in normal people. Goins’s PET scan was a virtual road map of schizophrenia — tracked chemically. National Geographic included a picture of his brain in its January ’eighty-seven issue on imaging technology. At any rate, I used Goins as a case study for class, and his... proclivities stuck in my mind. Jim, can you share with me the blood type on the suspect?”
“Type B positive.”
“Interesting. Goins is, also. The particulars of his episode are very similar to what I understand about Ann. He took his victim to a swampy area not far from town. It was late at night. He’d been watching her for a matter of weeks, it was discovered in the competency hearings. She was a waitress. Goins was committed to state hospital as a mentally disordered juvenile sex offender. They kept him almost nine years, performing the standard drug and psychotherapies, apparently to great effect. The PET that Dr. Fields did helped them prescribe even more helpfully — it’s not like they use these people as guinea pigs, then dump them.”