I took my See Forever Pocket Telescope with sky map and went out the door.
Ames, leaning over so he couldn’t be seen from the door, was in the backseat of the Saturn. He didn’t sit up until we hit Tamiami Trail.
“What’d you find?” I asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror.
“Our chief suspect has a lot of explaining to do,” he said.
Victor wasn’t around when we got to my place.
Ames waited for me to sit behind my desk, and then produced the envelope he had taken from Corkle’s office. He opened it and placed the first two sheets next to each other in front of me.
They were birth certificates. The one on my left was Ronald Gerall’s. It said that he was born in Palo Alto, California, on December 18, 1990. The birth certificate on the right gave his date of birth as December 18, 1978. If the certificate on the right was correct, Ronnie Gerall was 29 years old.
“I’m betting that one,” Ames said pointing at the certificate on my right, “is the right one and the other one’s the fake.”
“We’ll find out,” I said. “You know what this means?”
“Gerall started high school here when he was twenty-five or twenty-six years old,” said Ames.
He reached back into the envelope and came out with two more pieces of paper. He handed them to me and I discovered that our Ronnie had graduated from Templeton High School in Redwood City, California, and California State University in Hayward, California.
“Best for last,” Ames said, pulling one more sheet of paper out of the envelope.
It was a marriage certificate, issued a year ago in the State of California to Ronald Owen Gerall and Rachel Beck Horvecki. Ronnie was married to Horvecki’s missing daughter.
We had more questions now. Why had Ronnie Gerall posed as a high school student? Where was his wife? What was Corkle planning to do with the documents that were now on my desk?
It was three in the morning. We said good night and Ames said he would be back “an hour or two past daybreak.” I told him nine in the morning would be fine.
I handed the papers back to Ames and said, “You keep them. If Corkle finds that they’re gone, he might think I’m a logical suspect.”
Ames nodded and put the documents back in the envelope.
When Ames left I went to my room and closed the door. The night-light, a small lamp with an iron base and a glass bowl over the bulb, was on. I had been leaving it on more and more when night came. I put on my black Venice Beach workout shorts and went back through my office to the cramped bathroom. I showered, shaved, shampooed my minor outcropping of hair; I did not sing. Catherine used to say I had a good voice. Singing in the shower had been almost mandatory-old standards from the 1940s had been my favorites and Catherine’s. “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree,” “To Each His Own,” “Johnny Got a Zero,” “Wing and a Prayer.” I had not sung or considered it after Catherine died. When I turned off the shower, I heard someone moving around in the office.
I got out, dried my body quickly, put on my Venice shorts and stepped into the office while drying my hair.
Victor Woo was sitting on his sleeping bag on the floor in the corner. He had placed the blanket so that he could look up at the Stig Dalstrom paintings on the wall. He glanced over at me. He looked exhausted.
“I called my wife,” he said.
I draped the towel over my shoulder.
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t. I couldn’t. But she knew it was me. She said I should come home, that she’s been getting my checks, that the children miss me. She didn’t say that she missed me.”
“Go home Victor,” I said.
“Can’t.”
“I forgive you. Catherine forgives you. I don’t think Cook County forgives you, but that’s between you and the Cook County state attorney’s office, and I don’t plan to give them any information.”
It was pretty much what I had been saying to him for more than two months. I didn’t expect it to work this time.
“Forgive yourself,” I tried. “Hungry?”
“No.”
“You can do me a favor,” I said. “In the morning, go to Starbucks or Borders, plug your computer into the Internet, and find some information for me.”
“Yes.”
“You might have to do some illegal things to get what I want. I want whatever you can find about a Ronald Gerall, probably born somewhere in California.”
It was busywork. Dixie would get me whatever I needed in the morning.
“Yes,” he said.
“You want me to turn the light out?”
“Yes.”
“Good night.”
I went into my room, placed the towel on the back of my chair, put on my extra-large gray T-shirt with the faded full-color image of Ernie Banks on the front.
I turned the night light to its lowest setting and got on the bed. I stayed on top of the covers, lay on my back, and clutched the extra pillow.
The room was bigger than my last one in the office building behind the Dairy Queen. I looked up at the angled ceiling.
I like small spaces when I sleep. This room wasn’t large, but it was bigger than I liked. I would have slept in a closet were there one large enough to sleep in. I cannot sleep outdoors. I can’t look up at the vastness of the sky without beginning to feel lost, like I’m about to be swept into the universe. This room was tolerable, but it would take some getting used to.
I lay without moving, looking upward, growing too tired to move, going over whether Ronnie Gerall had killed his father-in-law and why, and wondering if he had killed his wife and Blue Berrigan.
Thoughts of Sally Porovsky came and went like insistent faces of forgotten movie actors whose names just managed to stay out of reach.
Sometimes when I fall asleep, an idea comes, and I feel energized.
Usually, if I don’t write down the idea, I’ll lose it with the dawn. I did get an idea, then, or rather, a question. Why were all the Corkles paying me to save Ronnie?
His family would be better protected by having Ronnie locked away until he was too old to appreciate a handy dandy Corkle Electrostatic CD, LP, and DVD cleaner. I didn’t write down my idea, but this time I remembered it. When I sat up in the morning, I heard my dark curtains open, saw bright morning light, and looked up at Greg Legerman and Winston Churchill Graeme.
“He’s out,” said Greg, handing me a steaming Starbucks coffee.
“Who?”
“Ronnie. Who did you think I was talking about, Charlie Manson?”
“What time is it?”
“Almost nine,” said Greg.
“I know Ronnie’s out,” I said. “Who let you in?”
“The Chinese guy,” said Greg.
“He’s Japanese,” Winn Graeme said.
“He’s Chinese,” I said.
Greg took the only chair in the room and pulled it over to my bedside.
“You want your money back?” I said. “Fine.”
“No, you need it. You live in near squalor.”
“Greg,” Winn warned.
Greg Legerman’s response to the warning was to reach up and punch the other boy in the arm. Winn took it and looked at me.
“How long have you known old Ronnie?” I asked.
