“You’re surprised,” said Lynette.

“A married man giving money and gifts to a girl who gets murdered? Yeah. I’m pretty damned surprised.”

“He rented her an apartment in Newport Beach. She wrote about going over there with him to see it. Big and sunny and right on the harbor. Expensive.”

Andy tried to shake the surprise out of his head so he could think straight. “How long did she live there?”

“Not long. It was off and on. She only wrote one letter from that address. She wanted to live in Laguna. Get a place that was hers. Not someone else’s.”

“That must have disappointed our Good Samaritan.”

“I can see right through him,” said Lynette. “Even in the letters I can tell he wanted her for the same things any man would want her for. But she never did it with him. At least that’s what she wrote, and I believe her.”

Stoltz!

“Did she keep writing after you moved here?”

Lynette shook her head. “No. We spent plenty of hours together, though. And on the phone.”

“Good times?”

“Yeah. She was in love with this singer. Jesse Black, down in Laguna.”

“Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

Lynette opened her mouth but didn’t speak at first. Finally she shook her head. “No. She died that way?”

“Eight weeks,” said Andy.

Lynette ran her long black hair behind her ears. Gathered the ponytail to one side and brought it forward over her left shoulder. Stared at the shag carpet. In this light her face looked Cherokee, like this girl he’d gone to high school with.

“Did you know that she was on the Sheriff’s Department payroll?” asked Andy. “As an informant?”

“She told me,” said Lynette. “They were after the Laguna Beach acid heads, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. And that Cory Bonnett cat. Guy that owns the leather store? I heard about him from some people at work one night. Bad dude. Not even the Hessians mess with him.”

Andy put the letter back in the envelope and dropped it into the box. Stood. “I need to take these with me,” he said.

“No.”

“I need them,” he said. “Nick needs them. This is evidence.”

She stood. “I’ve got three guns hidden in this house, and I swear to God if you try, I’ll use the nearest one. I shot Preach outside Tempe, Arizona. Just in the butt but it hurt like hell.”

Andy looked at her. Raised his empty hands like a bad guy and sat back down. “Don’t shoot. Can I just sit here and read awhile?”

“That would be fine. You want coffee, tea, or some hash?”

“Coffee is all.”

“It’s good black Afghani. Brought in by the Brotherhood.”

“I tried some once and couldn’t even type,” said Andy.

“That’s pretty much the point. I got some dexies that’ll cut the fog.”

“No. Thank you. I just want to read these letters.”

“Then stay and read them.”

“Why don’t you say her name?”

Lynette’s face reddened as she turned it away from him. She released the ponytail and a curtain of smooth black hair fell over her eyes. “Because it hurts to hear it.”

Because you left her to your brothers, thought Andy. Yeah. That would hurt.

ANDY READ Janelle Vonn’s letters while Lynette loaded up a small pipe with black crumbs and dabbed at them with a wooden match. She watched him silently as she smoked and Andy felt as if he were on display. It was usually him that made other people feel that way with all his questions. But no questions was worse. Lynette was trim and catlike with her bare feet tucked under her thighs and her eyes steady behind the hair. She finally set aside the pipe and melted into the couch.

Asleep by ten. Andy was maybe halfway through the letters. Some were four and five pages and he read them slowly. Bulletins from the great beyond.

Janelle was connected to everything. Neck deep in the Laguna LSD crowd. Neck deep with the Sheriff’s Department narcs. Neck deep with David, and Jesse Black and even Representative (R) Roger goddamned Stoltz and his asphalt cleaner empire. Neck deep with Cory Bonnett, who owned a store called Neck Deep. Neck deep with football coach Howard Langton and all the Miss Tustin people until they kicked her out like a leper. But neck deep was a terrible modifier because it made Andy think of Janelle in her baby blue sweater with the empty turtleneck. Up to her eyeballs…up to her elbows…up to her ears. He still couldn’t get that horrific picture out of his mind.

He covered Lynette with a blanket from a closet, then boxed up all the letters and cards and snuck out the front door with them.

IN THE Journal building he ran copies of them on the big Xerox machine, light flashing under the cover with each slow pass. Called home and Teresa said “Come and get me.” Voice thick with smoke.

Almost an hour and a half later he was back on the road with the letters in the box beside him and the copies in his briefcase and the coastal fog making halos around the streetlights on Newport Boulevard.

Lynette was still asleep on the couch. Andy set the box of letters on the floor. She had bunched up the blanket around her throat with both hands. A small automatic pistol had fallen to the cushion by her head. Andy plucked it up with a nervous heart. In the kitchen he popped out the little magazine. Five.22 longs. Shit. One in the chamber, too. Set it on the counter by the toaster and the Cap’n Crunch.

He shook Lynette gently by the shoulders. Weird girl, he thought. Felt like she weighed under a hundred. Won’t say her sister’s name but she’d shoot you for the letters.

“I’m leaving,” he said.

“Stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Get out.”

“Okay. The gun’s by the cereal.”

ANDY GOT HOME at two-thirty. Teresa was deep in sleep, didn’t want to be touched. He set the stack of copies on his typewriter stand in the laundry room, sat down, and kept reading.

His eyes moved while his imagination created scenes. He was not aware of the gentle sweet smell of the dryer or the insanely funny song of a mockingbird in the oleander bush outside. As he read, Janelle’s voice came clearly to him and he could picture her.

Roger showed me the apartment today.

He saw Roger Stoltz holding open the door of a sunny apartment overlooking the bay in Newport. Saw the look on his face when she stepped in. Proud. Hopeful.

Really a trippy place. Big window and the bay and sailboats all blue and white. Says it’s a gift for as long as I want it. No strings attached.

Saw Janelle take in the view, then turn and smile. Janelle trying to act happy. Trying to figure how she could let him down without breaking his soaring little heart. Without waking him from the dream that connected them.

Without making him furious.

Andy read it again and watched it again.

He heard the dialogue between Janelle and Stoltz. Not a lot of words. Almost formal. The age difference, he thought. Stoltz late thirties and Janelle sixteen. He saw Janelle’s beauty and health, the shine of her hair and the sparkle in her eyes. He saw the fullness of her next to Stoltz’s sparse, ascetic frame. How was it that her damage didn’t show? He noted Stoltz’s brisk mustache. The affected leather jacket. His eager eyes. Andy saw the blue ocean through the window behind them. The tide was ebbing and a pelican casually rode the onshore breeze.

A moment later Andy sat up. His arms were stiff and his temple was sore from where it had rested on his hands. Some of Janelle’s letters had spilled onto the floor.

He looked out to the first light of morning. Wandered into the kitchen for more coffee. Called Nick. Nick picked up on the first ring, said he’d been up most of the night.