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?”
“Neither. Disappeared without any notice. I came in late one day, he was supposed to’ve opened up, but no, the place was still locked up tight. And not a word from him since.”
“When was that?”
“About three weeks ago,” Waymark said. “I was thinking about letting him go anyway. He knew cameras but he didn’t know how to deal with people. Get irritated, snap at customers for no reason. But I didn’t take him for a thief.”
“He steal something from you?”
“I think so, but I can’t be sure. I’ve been around to where he lives half a dozen times, but he’s never there. Left town, for all I know.”
“Money?”
“No, a digital camera. Kodak EasyShare. I don’t know why Tucker would’ve taken it, unless it’s because it has the look and feel of an old-fashioned single-lens reflex camera like his old Nikkormat; there are a lot more expensive digitals in the shop. But the Kodak’s gone and if I was a hundred percent sure he stole it, I’d’ve called the cops on him. Maybe I will anyway.”
“Don’t bother,” Runyon said. “He’s in a lot more trouble than you can make for him.”
T he first mailbox in the bank at 2309 Crinella bore a label that read: Apt. 1-J. Morales, Mgr. Runyon found Number 1 and rang the bell. Ten seconds later he was facing a young Latina with a squalling baby slung over one meaty shoulder. Child voices and spicy cooking odors dribbled out from the clutter behind her.
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for one of your tenants. Tucker Devries, apartment eleven.”
“Oh, him,” she said. Another one with scorn in her voice. “The photographer.”
“Seen him lately, say in the past week?”
“No. His rent’s overdue.”
Runyon flashed his license, handed her a business card; she looked at both with no expression, held the card between thumb and forefinger as if it were something dead and not very interesting.
“It’s important that I find Devries,” he said. “Very important.”
“What’d he do?”
“Hurt some people. Might be something in his unit that’ll help me find him.”
Blank look while she rocked and patted the baby. It went right on squalling.
“It’s worth twenty dollars to me to have a look,” he said.
“Uh-uh. My husband, he wouldn’t like it.”
“Thirty dollars.”
The dark eyes showed interest for the first time. “ How much?”
“Forty. Best offer.”
“Well, you know, I can’t leave my kids alone here.”
“Forty dollars for a twenty-minute loan of your passkey.”
“Yeah? How do I know you’ll bring it back?”
“You saw my license and you have my card.”
She wrestled with her greed for maybe thirty seconds, just about as long as it took the baby to stop crying and let loose a loud belch. Then she said, “Just a minute,” and retreated inside and shut the door. Two minutes and the door opened again. In place of the infant she held a key on a tarnished brass loop.
“Forty dollars,” she said.
He gave her two twenties and she relinquished the key.
“You better bring it back,” she said. “And you better not steal anything or I’ll call the cops on you.”
Runyon made his way to Number 11, let himself in. Faint musty odor; nobody there for several days. He found a light switch. Room about the size of one in a downscale motel. Clean, tidy. Cheap furniture, nondescript, the kind you find in those same downscale motel rooms. The only stamps of individuality were on the walls-hundreds of photographs in orderly rows from near the floor to as high as a six-foot-tall man could reach. Mostly five by seven, some eight by ten.
He spent a couple of minutes scanning them. People, places, animals; fences, graffitied walls, junk cars. No rhyme or reason to any of them, except for two short rows on the back wall near the kitchenette. These were all eight-by-tens and displayed in the best location for viewing. And all depicted women-young, middle-aged, old-in various states of nudity, taken through bathroom and bedroom windows. Tucker Devries, the photographic Peeping Tom.
Nothing else in the living room. In the kitchenette Runyon opened the refrigerator. Half-full quart of milk nearly a week past its sell-by date. Eggs, packaged cheese left open so the ends were curled up hard, cold cuts, part of a loaf of sliced bread that was stiff to the touch and smelled stale.
The bathroom was outfitted as a dark room, the equipment neatly arranged on the cheap vanity sink, a red safe light in place of the bulb over the sink. He examined the bottles. Developing solution, fixer, stop bath. And one that didn’t have anything to do with processing pictures.
Hydrochloric acid.
Tucker Devries was the perp, all right.
The only other room was a small bedroom. More cheap furniture in there. The nightstand, the bureau drawers, held nothing of interest. The closet was too small for more than a few items of clothing on hangers, a suitcase, a couple of cardboard cartons. No sign of the inherited trunk. Devries had either stored it or gotten rid of it.
Runyon sifted through the contents of the two cartons. One held photographs, bundled together and fastened with rubber bands. Discards, probably, ones Devries didn’t deem worthy of display. The other contained his mother’s belongings, some or all of what he’d decided to keep.
Letters. Wedding portrait of an attractive blond woman and a bushy-haired man, both in their late teens- Anthony and Jenny Noakes. Divorce papers. Baby pictures, and snapshots of a boy from toddler to about age seven. Locks of dark blond hair and other small keepsakes. A woman’s hat made out of some kind of soft animal fur. Odds and ends that meant nothing to Runyon.
