Kearns had said it wasn’t far. Jim followed him back out to the boulevard, then left. Fog was settling in again; the traffic was light. A fat moon hung like a spider in a web of clouds. Two miles down the peninsula, Kearns pulled into a driveway all but hidden by towering avocado and dense orange trees. Jim looped around and parked along the curb. Kearns nodded at Weir as he shut his car door and disappeared into the foliage around the old house. He was wearing a pastel linen suit, loafers, and no socks.
“He’s got to quit watching so much TV,” said Raymond. “And his alibi’s going to be a chick.”
“He’s got enough of them.”
Ray shook his head, tapped his fingers on the outside of the door.
Weir looked out. He could see a lit fraction of upstairs window through the trees, the silhouette of someone standing there. Kearns? The girl? How much had he rehearsed her? It shouldn’t be hard to tell.
A moment later, Kearns came from the house, winding his way through the front-yard jungle. In front of him was a girl with bright blond hair. As they headed for the truck, Weir pushed his briefcase under the seat and Ray got out to let them in.
She climbed up and sat down beside him in a halo of perfume. Kearns squeezed in next to her, then Ray. She had on a pair of complex athletic shoes, thick socks pulled up over faded jeans, a T-shirt, and a denim jacket. Her hair was pulled up over her head, held in place at the roots by a rubber band, the rest of it falling down willy-nilly. She had a high forehead, a round little nose, pouting pink lips. Her eyes were large and filled with the confidence that comes from unwavering male attention and the notion, as yet unchallenged, that a girl can get by with a bod and a smile. She looked thoughtproof, about sixteen.
“I’m Lucinda Fostes.”
“Jim Weir.”
“Cool.”
Jim pulled out and headed back down the boulevard.
“Jim’s got a few questions for you about last Monday night,” said Kearns. “Answer him honestly. You don’t have to hide anything, or protect me in any way. Got it?”
“Yeah,” said Lucinda. She was chewing gum. “Go ahead.”
“Tell me what you were doing at midnight.”
She popped the gum, leaning forward to look out the window and point. “My friend Kimber lives there. She’s rich.”
“Sunday night, Lucinda,” prompted Kearns.
“Why don’t you just tell him?”
“He wants to hear it from you. Go.”
“Okay, all right.” She sat back, crossed her hands over her knees, and shrugged histrionically. “First I went down to Fry’s — that’s the market — and got a guy to buy me a six-pack. Then I went down to Thirteenth to drink it. I was kinda like pissed off at my ex-boyfriend, Sean, so I drank four of them and went to his house up on Twentieth. He wasn’t home, his dad said. So I drank the other two rilly fast and went over to Charlie’s Chili for a burger.”
“This is before midnight?” asked Jim.
“This is like, quarter ’til eleven. So after I ate, I stood around Rumple’s for a while and listened to the band. I used to get in, but they carded me last month and I’m fully eighty-sixed now. So I just started walking, heading up Newport Boulevard.”
“Off the peninsula?”
“I don’t know. I can’t keep the peninsula and the mainland and like, all the islands, straight. I walked up the road, you know, toward like Costa Mesa. I was coming down off that swirly bridge when Phil pulled up in his cop car to talk.”
“How long have you known Phil?”
“Oh...” She chewed, gum snapping. “A few months. He’s my bud.”
“Then what?”
“He told me I should get home because it was almost eleven-thirty, and I told him I was hyper. So he said get in and he’d drive me around a minute, then take me home. So I did.”
Lucinda turned to watch Fifteenth Street go by. Weir noted Fry’s Market on the corner, wherein she had scored her beer. He glanced over to Ray at the far end of the seat.
“That’s where we like to hang in summer,” she said. “Cool guys, hard bodies galore. Over there’s where Lauren lives. She used to be Sean’s girlfriend.”
“Where did you drive?”
“Well, over the bridge, then down Coast Highway to Balboa Island. We went across on the ferry and Phil dropped me off at home. It was one-fifteen when I got in. I remember because my grandma said something about it the next day. I’m supposed to be in like one at the latest.”
Raymond’s voice had an edge. “An hour and forty-five minutes to go from the bridge to the ferry to the peninsula? That should take half an hour. You barely made the last ferry run.”
Lucinda popped her gum and looked first at Kearns, then over to Ray, then left to Jim. Weir watched the spray of her ponytail bobbing with the bump of the truck. She said something to Kearns that Jim couldn’t make out. What Kearns said back was, “Go ahead.”
“Well,” she said. “We like walked.”
“Like walked.”
“Yeah. And talked. He talked. That took maybe an hour. Phil’s always telling me to get my shit together and make something of myself. He’s always telling me not just to give it away to anybody. By that, he means my body. He’s always telling me if I get good grades and a couple years at a JC, I might get a clerk’s job at the station. It starts at nine hundred sixty a month, so it’s good pay.”
The hour in question, thought Weir. Kearns is clean if Lucinda is on the level. The idea hit him that she wasn’t complicated enough to lie for anybody but herself.
She leaned toward Kearns, whispered something, then turned to Jim again. “I might as well tell you I tried to get him to like do me right there in the car, but he wouldn’t. Plus, I’m eighteen, so I can do what I want.”
“Guess so,” said Jim.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“No.” Weir looked past Lucinda’s ponytail to Kearns, who was leaning back, eyeing him with a certain grimness. Kearns’s eyes trailed down to her, then back to Weir, a regretting expression: Look what I passed up.
Jim suddenly U-turned on Coast Highway and headed back toward Balboa.
“Cool,” said Lucinda.
“Sure there’s nothing else you want from her?” said Kearns. “Ask away, Weir. It’s now or you’re out of my face for good. That was the deal. I’ll have to tell Internal Affairs the same goddamned thing, if that makes you feel any better.”
“That’s enough.”
Jim headed back down the boulevard in silence, while Lucinda pointed out highlights to him and Ray. Kearns had apparently had this tour before. It seemed as if she knew everybody on the peninsula: Colin lives here, Ryan here, Kate and Max right there. A thought struck him. “You get around, don’t you, Lucinda?”
“Well, I’ve been living here for a year, and visiting every summer from Michigan for like, ten.”
“See a lot of faces.”
“As much as anybody else, I guess.”
He slid his briefcase from under the seat — nudging her legs, at which she giggled — laid it across her lap, and flipped open the two latches. Copies of Goins’s photograph lay on top, Dennison’s enlargements for the door-to-door.
He turned on the interior light, shut the lid, and set the photo on top of it.
“How about this one?”
“Joseph?”
Weir felt a dose of adrenaline kick in. Raymond’s clear, fierce eyes held his glance for a beat. He backed off the gas and held the truck in the middle of the lane as he turned to look at Lucinda Fostes. Kearns already had placed an assuring hand on her knee.
“Yeah, Joseph,” said Weir. “Where can we find him?”
Lucinda held up the copy, gum popping as she studied it. “Who’s the lady?”
“His mother. Do you know where he is?”
She sighed, put the picture on the briefcase lid, and looked at Jim. A kind of snotty vacancy crossed her face, then dissolved. “His name is Joseph Gray and he has a blue Porsche that’s in the shop. He’s Gramma’s new boarder. He moved in yesterday.”