“No.” Jim could hear Gold catching his breath.
“This January, they remanded Horton to his parents — legal guardians, that is. It was the same old story. The state couldn’t keep him, his doctor approved a release, and the DA’s hands were tied because Horton had been in for custody of one kind or another for almost nine years. In late January, Horton Goins and his foster parents moved to Costa Mesa. That’s what — two miles from where Ann was found?”
Jim felt his throat thicken, a coolness spread into his feet. “Do you have an address?”
“Emmett and Edith Goins, courtesy of Pacific Bell.” He gave Jim the street address and phone number.
“According to your models, Dr. Gold, would Goins be likely to repeat?”
“Oh my, please wait...”
The line went quiet again. Jim could hear the doctor’s steady breathing. Gold’s seizure lasted half a minute.
“Hello?” His voice was very faint now.
“Hello, Doctor... it’s Jim Weir.”
“It’s so hard... so hard to come out from behind this cloud. And the seizure medications they give me — Dilantin, Tegretol, then more stuff to keep the others from eating away my stomach. It’s like... watching myself in a dream. Where were we?”
“I’d asked you if Horton Goins was likely to repeat.”
“It would be irresponsible to answer that question directly. So many factors, so many unknowns. But, well Jim, I did call you, didn’t I?”
“Thank you, Doctor. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Well...” Gold’s voice was reedy and thin now, as if the breath upon the cords was not enough to play them. “You know, Jim... just a few months ago I would have asked that if you apprehend Goins, you would put in a good word for me. Arrange an interview. But now... but now... I think I just want to rest. I have my birds.”
“God bless you, Dr. Gold.”
Chapter 9
Emmett and Edith Goins lived on the east side of Costa Mesa, on Heather Street. It was a neighborhood of apartments built in the fifties: uniform rectangles, flat roofs, cement stairways with iron banisters leading to the upper units. The Goinses’ complex was called Island Gardens, and looked the same as the others around it except for one large bird of paradise plant and a six-foot-high stone head that stood off from the walkway. The statue was Polynesian in attitude, and covered with graffiti. The sign that stood behind this “island garden” was so faded by sunlight that Weir could hardly read it.
The Goinses lived downstairs, in 1-C. Jim walked past three reeking dumpsters busy with cats, past the stairs, down a walkway choked with weeds and dog turds, along the open windows of downstairs units, from which came the sounds of television and the smells of breakfast. The screens were dotted with flies that shined in the dull morning sun.
He knocked and stepped back. A game show sounded through the window — horrible laughter followed by carnivalesque music, then applause.
“Who is it?” A woman’s voice, low and rough.
“My name is Jim Weir.”
“We don’t want none.”
“I came to see Horton.”
“He’s not here.”
“May I talk to you for just a moment, please?”
Then the door opened about six inches and a pale, soft, red-haired woman looked up at him. She was wearing a blue terry robe with cigarette ash on the lapel. Her eyes were brown in the middle and bloodshot everywhere else.
Edith Goins’s eyes went down him, and back up — brown, red, brown again. “You the police?”
“No. But I’d like to ask some questions.”
“Another doctor?”
“No ma’am, just a regular guy.”
“Nobody regular’s interested in Horton.”
“May I come in?”
Edith Goins shut the door in Jim’s face. He heard voices, questions, a hopeful agreement. She opened the door a moment later and turned back inside. Jim followed. She was short, heavy, rounded. “This is Emmett,” she said. “Em, this is Mr. Weird.”
Jim didn’t see him at first. He was locked in shadow in the corner of the room, wrapped in a black robe with a big silver anchor emblazoned over one breast. His head was narrow, his hair cut short, his ears nearly flush with his skull. He wore a thin, almost prissy mustache. His face was red in the TV light, then it shifted — to great applause — to blue. He looked up at Jim and offered his hand. “Horton isn’t here,” he said finally.
Jim shook his hand, then sat at the far end of the couch from Edith. He set down his briefcase. “Thanks for having me in. Nice little apartment you have here.”
“Ought to be for eight-fifty a month,” said Emmett. “And if they pass this Slow Growth deal, then they’re going to stop the construction and rent’s going to go even higher.”
Jim glanced at the TV, where some frantic young couple made fools of themselves for an Amana range. “I had a talk with Dr. Robert Gold earlier. He’s a man who keeps track of people when they get out of hospitals. He told me that you and Horton moved here to Costa Mesa just this January.”
“January twenty-eighth,” said Edith. “Why are you so interested in Horton? The woman that got kilt?”
The question threw Weir off balance. This was going to be a strange ride. “Yes. A young woman. Five nights ago, down in the Back Bay in Newport, a couple of miles from here. We were... very close. Was Horton at home that night?”
Edith and Emmett exchanged blatantly furtive looks. Emmett nodded to his wife.
“That was Monday,” she said. “Horton was out Monday night. Horton comes and goes as he pleases these days, even though his release people told him to stay put here.”
Jim nodded, waiting for more. The game show droned on stupidly. Weir sensed that big things were not being said here, things that might lay groundwork. “Would you mind, at all, telling me about Horton? I’m not a cop or a doctor. I’ve got no official standing. I just lost someone close and I’m doing what I can to help out.”
Emmett looked at Edith, then nodded again, but neither spoke. Their continuing silence implied that what was about to be revealed here was of such size and scope, it would dominate the entire moral landscape, but there was nothing theatrical in their faces. Edith brought a bottle of bourbon from beside the couch and poured a small shot into a coffee cup, Weir understanding now that he had provided a service — his presence was an excuse to drink. She swished it around for a moment, then drained it. “Horton ain’t ours. We got him from the agency when he was four.”
“He wasn’t four, he was almost six,” said Emmett. When Emmett looked at Jim straight on, one eye wandered and one stayed on target with sharp black intensity. “The agency lied about that, and plenty of the other, too.”
“We didn’t know four from six anyhow,” said Edith. “On accounta not being able to have our own. See, Emmett was in a bad—”
“ ’Nuff a that, Edith.”
“...So we got one from the agency.”
“What agency was that?”
“Hardin County Adoption Agency. Hardin County being in Ohio.”
“Ah,” said Jim. He suddenly felt badly for these people. They seemed like lightning rods for calamity, and he’d only known them for five minutes. He recognized in them, too, the overwhelming desire to divulge, so common to children, adulterers, and drunks.
Edith poured another bourbon and studied it with a measured, rational air. “We were happy to get him. See, you usually got to wait a long spell, but Horton, we got him quick. They just made us sign a bunch of papers and out we went.”