'Get your stuff together,' I said to Jocelyn.
'We're going.'
She seemed to shake herself from a reverie for a moment, and stared at all of us in the dark room as if she hadn't known we were there. Everything she did seemed done in front of a camera. Vinnie went to the closet and took out her suitcase and opened it on the bed for her. He pointed at it. She made a pulling-herself-together shrug as she stood up and began to gather her things.
'You got a thought on who pounded Lonnie?' Hawk said. In the darkness he was an invisible presence still leaning motionless on the wall.
'Yeah.'
'And you don't like it much.'
'No.'
'Not too many choices left,' Hawk said.
'Not many,' I said.
'So we be going up to Port City again,' Hawk said.
'Yeah.'
'What we going to do with Norma Desmond?' Hawk said.
'We'll bring her along. Maybe she'll be useful.'
'Sure,' Hawk said.
'There a first time for everything.'
CHAPTER 50
I was in the Port City Police Station, in DeSpain's office with the door closed. DeSpain looked red-eyed and raw sitting behind his desk. He tipped his head forward and began to rub the back of his neck with his left hand.
'I found Jocelyn Colby,' I said.
He stopped rubbing but kept his head tipped forward.
'She all right?' he said. His voice sounded hoarse, as if he had brought it up from a dark place.
'She's not hurt,' I said.
'Good.'
We sat silently for a time. DeSpain still looking down, his left hand motionless on the back of his neck. There was light from the squad room drifting in through the pebble glass door to DeSpain's office. And the green-shaded banker's lamp was lit on his desk. So the room wasn't dark. But it was shadowy, and felt like offices do at night, even a cop office.
'She faked the kidnapping,' I said after a while.
DeSpain thought about that for a moment, then he looked up slowly, his left hand still on the back of his neck, the thick fingers digging into the muscles at the base of his neck.
'Oh, shit,' he said.
'Exactly,' I said.
I reached into my inside pocket and took out the envelope that Healy had given me containing DeSpain's file. I tossed it on the desk between us. DeSpain looked down at it, at the Department of Public Safety return address. He picked it up, slowly, and took his hand away from the back of his neck, slowly, and opened the envelope, slowly, and took out the file, and unfolded it, and read it, slowly. We were in no hurry, DeSpain and I. Port City was eternal and there was no reason to rush. DeSpain looked carefully at the photocopy of his record with the state police, at the copy of the sexual harassment complaint filed by Victor Quagliosi, Esq. on behalf of Jocelyn Colby, which was attached. He read, though he probably could recite it, his letter of resignation, also attached.
When he was through, he evened the papers out, folded them carefully back the way they had been, and put them in their envelope. He slid the envelope back across the desk toward me. I took it and put it back in my pocket. DeSpain leaned back in his swivel chair and folded his arms and looked straight at me.
'So?'
'You want to talk about Jocelyn?' I said.
'What's to say?'
'She's crazy,' I said.
'Yeah,' DeSpain said and his voice still seemed to rumble up from a place far down.
'She is.'
I didn't say anything. DeSpain looked at me. There were deep grooves running from the wings of his nose to the corners of his mouth. I could hear his breath going in and out, slowly. He unfolded his arms, and rested his chin on his left hand, the elbow on the chair arm, the thumb beneath the chin, the knuckle of the forefinger pressed against his upper lip. He puffed his cheeks and blew small puffs of air past his loosely closed lips.
It made a small popping sound.
'She was crazy when I met her,' DeSpain said.
'Only I didn't know it. She doesn't seem crazy, you know.'
