“Cassius,” he said. “A chocolate Lab.”
“Cassius,” said Cantrell. “Did he change his name to Muhammad Ali?”
“Always just Cassius to us. Ann picked it from Shakespeare. She liked to read. She liked to write.”
“Ah, yes.” Cantrell looked at Jim, an assayer’s stare. “I’m sorry about Ann, Jim. Please believe that. I didn’t mean to land on you so hard. All this talk of elections and campaigns and slander doesn’t really relate to Ann, the flesh and blood woman. Just don’t let them yank your chain. You seem like a good enough man to me. And I wasn’t involved with your sister.”
“You liked her, though.”
“I told you that. She was...” Cantrell’s voice cracked, trailing off into a sigh. He stared out the window the rest of the way down the peninsula.
When they reached the theater, the car pulled over. The man with the crew cut flicked a cigarette into the street, then stepped from under the marquee to open the door.
“Let me know if I can help,” said Cantrell, offering his hand. “You can find me at the beach house for the next few nights. I’m sure Becky Flynn has the address and phone number.”
Jim, still palming the hair in his right fist, looked at Cantrell’s offered hand.
“Mr. Weir, you should know that I am capable of making things happen very quickly.”
Weir climbed out and let the man shut the door. Crossing Balboa Boulevard, he almost could hear the hair in his fist bellowing out for Ken Robbins’s Crime Lab, screaming that it would match the hair on the letter from Mr. Night.
Chapter 29
The first thing Weir saw as he opened the door to Ken Robbins’s office was the gray, sweating, unhappy face of Brian Dennison. The chiefs eyebrows went up in tired astonishment when he saw Jim, and he stopped talking, mid-sentence. Robbins, behind his desk, with his hands crossed over his stomach, looked exhausted. Raymond, yanked from duty and still in uniform, wore the expression of a beaten dog.
“Have a seat, Jim,” Robbins finally said. “We were just talking about... well... Brian, maybe you should put your cards on the table.”
Weir sat. Dennison scooted back to face him better. Raymond sent a stubborn look his way.
Dennison poked a thick finger into Weir’s chest. “I think Becky Flynn is manufacturing a smear against Dave Cantrell. That press conference of hers was a self-serving circle jerk. She’s making all sorts of wild suggestions to fuck over the anti-proposition people.”
“She’s doing a pretty good job on you, too,” said Weir.
“Well, she’s sure not doing it alone,” said Dennison.
“I’m working for her, like I told you.”
“Who tipped you to the Sweetheart Deal?”
“I did,” said Raymond. “It was my idea. We were looking for Ann’s journal, and it was the one place we hadn’t checked.”
Dennison didn’t miss a beat. “And all these letters from Mr. Night were just sitting there waiting for you?”
Jim wasn’t sure where Dennison was going, but he now understood that the same printer had been used on the letter that was sent to Raymond. “They were stuffed down inside the engine compartment, wrapped in plastic.”
“Becky didn’t suggest you look there, did she?”
“No.” Weir looked again at Robbins, who was following the dialogue without expression. “Becky never said a word about Sweetheart Deal.”
Dennison shook his head in disgust. “You know, Innelman traced the roses to Cheverton long before you did. Cantrell launched an internal investigation that afternoon.”
“What did he come up with?”
Dennison waved through Jim like a salesman overcoming objections. “Twenty-five hundred employees come and go out of the PacifiCo Tower every day. Any one of them could have gotten that number, and you know it. When Cantrell finds out who, Becky Flynn’s going to take a bath. Tell me this, Jim — whose idea was it to call the goddamned Petal Pusher in LA? Becky Flynn think of that, too?”
“I think it was Mom who called.”
“That’s a distinction without a difference.” Dennison sat back, shook his head, then leaned his face into Jim’s. “Now Becky wants to defend Horton Goins... for free. Isn’t that just fucking sweet?”
“Goins doesn’t have any money.”
Dennison exhaled through his nose, a short, bullish snort. His eyes were hard and eager. “Generous,” he said. “I got some little white printouts with lots of numbers on them from Pac Bell, Weir. Becky’s first call to the Goinses came on May twenty-first, the day before she announced she was taking on the... case. That was placed from Becky’s home, not her office. And they got calls from your number on May twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-third. Explain.”
Weir hadn’t called the Goinses. It could only have been Virginia. “I can’t.”
“Explain this, Weir — your mother was sitting in the Goinses’ goddamned living room when Innelman went over with the tie tack. Want to tell me why you and Becky and Virginia are all of a sudden so cozy with the prime suspect in your sister’s murder?”
Weir tried to track the logic, but it wouldn’t come. Becky’s calls were understandable; Virginia’s weren’t. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t either, and Poon’s Locker has been closed all day. Where is Virginia?”
“No idea.”
Dennison stared at Jim but said nothing for a long moment. “We’ve seen the video. Cantrell reported that tack stolen a month ago, with a bunch of other things out of his beach house. I’ve got forms downtown to prove it. He’s on the level, Weir. He’s being set up — and you’re being used to do it.”
Jim nodded along, took the Baggie from his shirt pocket and set it on Ken Robbins’s desk. “If it matches the stamp, I’ve got our killer.”
Dennison swiped it up, squinted at the hair inside, then tossed it back to Jim. “You’re not going to use a county facility or county employees for this campaign of yours. You have absolutely no authority here, nothing you have could ever be admissible, and I flatly repudiate any connection you might have had to the Newport Beach PD. If there was any chain of custody to begin with, you fucked it up by getting involved. I offered you a job, Weir, a way to do all this by the book, and you told me to stuff it. Jim — lay off, get out, and, for chrissakes, save your own ass. It’s over.”
The chief looked at Robbins, who shrugged.
“He’s right, Jim,” he said. “I can’t help you anymore.”
Weir set the bag on Robbins’s desk again, along with the glossy of Horton Goins. Robbins slowly shook his head.
Dennison slammed his fist down as a fresh gust of anger blew into his face. “And I know about the damned garage-door opener you guys checked out of evidence this morning. Now the chain of custody runs through the victim’s husband. I’ll file an obstruction charge for that, if I have to.”
Raymond looked steadfastly at the floor. Robbins sighed.
But Dennison wasn’t done. “Again, where’s your mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’d find out, if I were you.”
The only way through Dennison, Weir saw, was around him. Percy might listen. If not Percy, then his boss, D’Alba. If not the DA himself, then federal prosecutors. They’d be more than happy to talk to Marge Buzzard, who could lead them to “Smith,” Blodgett, Cantrell, Ann, Mr. Night. No threats now, he thought. No tipping of the hand. He was alone here and he knew it. Raymond sat, neutralized between his suspicion and his career.