They’d not found the saw blade.

Now Nick’s own voice came from the tape recorder and he checked his handwritten transcription. The inside of his first knuckle, middle finger, right hand, had a shiny divot in it that had started to bleed.

Chase bad guys all day, Nick thought. See a young woman with her head sawed off, interview a psycho, and you get bloody making notes.

Q: Describe him again.

A: Regular-sized guy. Hard shoes the way they sounded on the wood. A jacket maybe. Something bulky around him. It was dark and cool by then. I told you all this. I couldn’t see that good.

Q: What time did you say?

A: Midnight. I don’t got a watch but I know what time it is usually. Remember I told you that?

Q: Bulky, like a coat or a sweater?

A: Maybe bigger. Longer.

Q: Like what, a blanket or an overcoat?

A: Maybe like that. (Yawn) I’m getting tired, Nick.

Q: Just a few more questions.

A: When I was little I always thought there was ghosts in wind like that out there. You know, like the wind was so strong it would gather the ghosts up, pull them right off of things. Scared me. I’d hide under the bed. And these balls of cat hair would come rolling along the floor in the draft. Right at me. Thought they were the ghosts coming to get me.

Q: Interesting. Did you kill her, Terry?

A: Not me. I’m still telling the truth.

Q: Tell me what you did after you found her.

A: Seems like about the twentieth time you asked me that.

Q: It’s the seventh.

A: I’m really getting sleepy now.

Q: Come on, Terry. Just once more, from the time you found her. Look, if you killed her, that’s okay. I understand and you can just say so, then we can get this over with and move along to the next thing.

A: I didn’t kill her. Even if I had an opportunity I could not have been the one that killed her.

Q: And why is that?

A: Because I never hurt anybody in my life.

Q: People here say different, Terry. Your old juvenile investigator works burg-theft now. He gave me a nice little rundown of the people you hurt and fires you set and things you stole.

A: That was my family.

Q: You set your brother on fire when you were eight. He was four. He almost died.

A: I already told you that doesn’t count.

Q: I’m not seeing any logic there, Terry. But I’ll take your word for it. Okay? Now tell me what happened after you found the girl in there. You sure her head was off, or did that maybe happen later?

A: No. It was off, Nick. I wouldn’t forget something like that.

It was 3 A.M. when Nick parked along the tracks outside the SunBlesst packinghouse. Didn’t mean to slam the Fairlane door but the wind came up just as he pushed. Just about took the door handle out of his hand.

He followed his flashlight beam up the steps and across the platform. The crime scene tape slapped against the wallboards. There was a new combination lock on the door and nobody had told him the numbers. He stood in front of the SunBlesst woman’s big faded smile, listened to the crime scene tape rippling on the old wood.

Nick walked around back, picked an empty window, climbed up and over. Smell of creosote again, and pee and old fires. And the faint sweet smell of citrus, blown through the cracks by the wind.

The beam danced through the trash as Nick moved toward where the body had been. Pigeons shifting above.

He held the light steady on the blood. Still surprised there wasn’t more.

Knelt. Thought.

Janelle. Freckle-faced little girl with an orange in her hands. Tutu and a guitar. Molested by her brothers. Dope and booze by fourteen. Then Andy’s article, different names but some people figured it out. David’s church took her in. Miss Tustin till she did a Playboy magazine cover. All that a year ago but pretty quiet since. Heard she’d quit the dope and booze. Going to college, wasn’t she? Nineteen and all that behind her and her head sawed off in a filthy packinghouse.

Nick listened to the wind outside, let his light beam roam the big wooden cavern. Stood up and started out. Saw one of the floorboards by the window was busted. Reached down and yanked. Going to get this fucker. The nails shrieked in the wood and the pigeons blasted into flight, frantic wings in the dark. The board broke off in Nick’s hand. Nails still in it. Nick threw it through the window and climbed out.

11

NINE THE NEXT MORNING. Three hours of sleep. Day warm and breezy, sun cutting the ocean into silver bevels where Nick lifted a thin curtain and looked out a window.

“How’s a nineteen-year-old chick afford this?” asked Lucky Lobdell.

“And two thousand in the bank,” said Nick.

Janelle Vonn’s place was downtown Laguna, a cheery yellow cottage on a bluff above the beach at St. Ann ’s. Out a highway-side window Nick saw a market, a realtor’s office, and Rainbow Connections-a shop selling hippie dresses.

“I smell maryjane,” said Lobdell.

“I smell incense.”

“Like the piss thing yesterday. You got the nose but look who found the saw.”

“It’s hard to miss patchouli, Lucky. But good work on the saw.”

“It wasn’t work, it was luck.”

“Good either way.”

Lobdell stood in the hallway. Leaned forward and touched a picture frame. He made the cottage around him look toylike.

“The dopers use patchouli incense to hide the pot smoke, don’t they?” he asked.

“So I’ve heard.”

Nick took the living room and kitchen. Lucky Lobdell took the bedroom and bath.

To Nick’s eye the place was rented furnished. Blue fabric sofa ten years out of style. Same with the glass-topped coffee table in front of it. Thought he remembered the style of rocking chair from a high school friend’s house, a Sears product with a beige background and a brown oak-leaf and acorn pattern. A big dust apron around the bottom. A scuffed-up pine floor with a braided oval rug in the middle, blue and gray.

Easy to spot Janelle Vonn’s stuff. A Beatles Revolver album cover and a peace sign poster on one wall. A WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF NUCLEAR ATTACK poster on another wall, with a photo of a guy kissing his ass goodbye. Some framed black-and-white photos of a guitar player onstage. Nick didn’t recognize him. The pictures looked amateurish, with the microphone making a big round shadow on the guy’s face. There was an elaborate macramé plant holder hooked into one corner of the ceiling, creeping charlies spilling out from the pots. The curtains were just bedsheets thumbtacked to the window frames. White sheets with little pink roses that the sun had faded.

The kitchen was small and had a yellow and chrome dinette. The table had been last set for three. Yellow straw place mats, three wineglasses with a little dried red left at the bottoms. Lipstick on one. Water glasses-two almost full and one with lipstick almost empty. A large faint circular red stain in the middle. Plates and silverware in the sink rinsed but not washed.

Yellow walls and cabinets. White refrigerator. Yellow counter tile. Nick opened the refrigerator. Orange juice, relish, three eggs, three packets of soy sauce. On top of the fridge was a large jug of Bali Hai wine. And a small ceramic mushroom with two sticks of patchouli incense in it, one of them half burned. A quarter of the wine was left. Nick figured the bottle bottom matched the red stain on the dinette table and made a note to have the bottle dusted for prints.

A wastebasket under the sink solved the dinner mystery. Mexican takeout from Pepito’s on Ocean Avenue here in Laguna. Nick fished out the receipt. Red and Ho at seven o’clock? Enough food for three-$7.45.

There was a bay window with a bench seat. Most of the seat was taken up with textbooks. An Introduction to Economics. The Norton Anthology of English Literature Revised, Volume 1. The Art of Sound: Appreciating Music was open to page 114, with a postcard of Watts Towers holding the place. The postmark was eight days ago.