“I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the one you’re looking for,” she said. Large woman in her late sixties, heavily lined face, little piglike eyes pouched in fat. Too much lipstick made her mouth look like a bleeding gash. “Crazy, like I said. Nothing but grief for that poor dumb sister of mine. I told Pauline not to adopt the kid after brother Tom’s girl was killed, but no, she had to be a mother. Well, she learned to regret it.”
“In what way?”
“Didn’t leave her house to him, like I was afraid she would. Left it to me, and rightfully so-I’m her only blood relative left. But up in the boonies like that, it won’t be easy to sell. Not a single offer so far.” She sighed and looked off down a street lined and cluttered with junk cars, pickups, stake beds, boats on trailers-metal-and-glass weeds in a decaying neighborhood. “My husband and me, we can sure use that money. He’s a semi-invalid since his stroke. Needs constant attention. A burden, some days. A real burden.”
“Where can I find Tucker, Mrs. Kovacs?”
She wasn’t listening. “Pauline didn’t have much in the bank, and her furniture and the rest didn’t sell for much. Well, she never had much to begin with, just that house Tom willed to her when he died. Thirty years now, Tom’s been gone. Construction accident. He would’ve raised Tucker if he’d been alive. Didn’t take any crap from anybody, Tom didn’t-he’d’ve raised that boy right, ironed out his kinks good and proper.”
“Kinks,” Runyon said. “I understand Tucker has been institutionalized.”
“What? Oh, the twitch bin. Sure, more than once. They should’ve kept him locked up the last time. Better for everybody if they had, Lord knows.”
“Why was he locked up?”
Disgusted snort. “Always taking pictures of people and not all of ’em clean and wholesome, I’ll tell you. They caught him in Sacramento taking sneak pictures of women naked in their bathrooms, not once but twice, and the second time he went nuts when the cops tried to arrest him. Bit one, broke another one’s arm. Another time he threatened some man, said he’d kill him if he didn’t stop following him. Only the man didn’t know Tucker from Adam’s right buttock.”
Tucker Devries: paranoid schizophrenic.
“All they done was lock him up for a while,” she said, “and then let him back out on the streets. But that don’t mean he ain’t dangerous. My husband and me, we won’t have him in the house.”
“Obsessive about cleanliness? Washes his hands often?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s another of his nut things. Says he can’t stand dirt.”
Paranoid schizophrenic with OCD-a bad combination.
“Last time I saw him,” Anna Kovacs said, “he washed his hands right over there with the hose. And he wasn’t here five minutes.”
“When was that?”
“Three weeks ago. Come to pick up the trunk.”
“Trunk?”
“That’s all Pauline left him, his mother’s trunk, and I wish she hadn’t done that much. I hauled it back here from Deer Run, thought maybe we could use it for storage, and then her lawyer told me she willed it to Tucker. What else could I do but let him have it? Not that I minded, once I had a good look at what was inside.”
“Which was what?”
“Clothes, books, photographs-Jenny’s crap. Pauline kept it all these years, up in her attic. Never told him she had it. He seemed real upset about that.”
“How upset?”
“Started yelling after he got the trunk loaded in his van and washed his damn hands, called Pauline a b-i-t-c-h. After all she did for him. Well, if that’s what she was, I told him, then you’re a son of a b-i-t-c-h. He said F-you and that’s the last I saw or ever want to see of the little shit.”
“Where does he live?”
“Vacaville. Up to last Christmas, anyway. Pauline had his address, probably wanted her to send him money.”
“You still have the address?”
“No. I threw it out.”
“What kind of work does he do?”
“Clerk in a camera store.”
“Name of the store?”
“How should I know? I could care less.”
“You said he drives a van. Make, model?”
“I can’t tell one from another. White van, old, beat-up.”
“Lettering on the sides or rear?”
“Just a crappy white van. Listen,” she said, “it’s cold out here, no sun again today, and I’m tired of talking about Tucker. You want him, you go find him. And when you do, do the world a favor and stick him back in the nuthouse where he belongs.”
V acaville. A little less than halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco, and some fifty miles from Los Alegres. Location of two prisons in the nearby hills: California Medical Facility, the state’s health care flagship, and California State Prison, Solano. The medical facility might be the reason Devries was living in Vacaville; if he’d been remanded for observation to the psychiatric unit there, he could’ve decided to stay in the area after his release. One town, one clerk’s job, was the same as another to a paranoid schizophrenic whose passion was photography. Vacaville’s population was around ninety thousand. There were bound to be more than a couple of camera stores in a city that size, but not too many to make a canvass difficult.
By the time Runyon reached Vacaville, Tamara had called with the DMV and other information he’d requested. He’d guessed right about the California Medical Facility: Tucker Devries had spent nearly seven months there three years ago. Devries had a valid California driver’s license and the vehicle registered to him was a fifteen-year-old Dodge Caravan. Height: 6’0. Weight: 180. Description from his license photo: round face, cleft chin, light-colored eyes, dark blond hair parted in the middle and worn in short, in-curling wings low on his forehead. Last known address as far as the DMV was concerned: 2309 Crinella Street, Number 11, Vacaville.
As for camera shops and other stores that sold photographic equipment, just a handful. Runyon asked Tamara to hold, took the first Vacaville exit off Highway 80, and pulled over long enough to write down the names, addresses, and MapQuest directions she gave him.
He made 2309 Crinella his first stop. It was in the older part of town, a residential street not much different in look or feel from the one Anna Kovacs lived on. More rundown, if anything. Cracked stucco apartment building, the two-storied kind built around parking areas and dead or moribund landscaping. Runyon parked on the street, considered arming himself, decided it wasn’t necessary, and went into the central foyer where the mailboxes were. The box marked with the numeral 11 had no nameplate. He moved through the grounds until he found the unit, on the second floor overlooking a section of communal Dumpsters.
Half a dozen raps on the door brought no response. He tried the knob-locked tight. The window beside the door was curtained, the folds crossing fully from top to bottom so that it was impossible to see inside.
He didn’t like the idea of bracing Tucker Devries at work, in a public place, but hanging around here on an extended stakeout wasn’t an option. For all he knew, Devries was in Los Alegres planning more mischief.
Two of the local camera shops were in the downtown area. Nobody in either had ever heard of Tucker Devries. The third on the list, Waymark Cameras, New and Used, occupied space in a strip mall back toward the freeway. That was the right one.
The only person in the small, cluttered store was a fat man in a bulky turtleneck sweater who said he was the owner, Jim Waymark. He was all smiles until Runyon dropped Devries’s name. Then the smile turned upside down, thinned out into a wounded glower.
“Yeah, I know him. He used to work for me.”
“Fired or quit?”