The interior was spacious and smelled of new commercial carpeting. The ceiling was high and the light was generous. I couldn’t even guess at the square footage or the number of books the building housed, but the patrons had to have been thrilled with the facility. I asked a woman sitting at the information desk where I might find old city directories, and she suggested the Jack Maguire Local History Room on the second floor. I bypassed the elevator and trotted up the stairs. The door to the local history room was locked and empty from what I could see through the glass. I spotted a woman in a wheelchair working at a desk in the room next door.

“Is there any way I can get in there? I’d like to check city directories from a few years back.”

“You might ask Verlynn at the reference desk. She has a key.” She pointed to a desk halfway across the vast carpeted expanse.

I crossed and waited my turn. When Verlynn was free, I explained what I wanted and she followed me back to the history room with her key in hand.

She unlocked the door and opened it, flipping on the overhead lights. “The volumes you want are on that wall straight ahead. We have city directories going back to 1899 and telephone books from about 1940. Those shelves over there you’ll find yearbooks from elementary, junior high, and high schools in the area. Not every year is represented. We depend on our patrons for donations. Will you be okay on your own?”

“I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

“Let me know when you’ve finished and I’ll lock up.”

“I’ll do that.”

I already knew where Dace had lived before his incarceration. I’d picked up that address from the expired California driver’s license in his safe deposit box. What I was interested in were two other sets of addresses. I hoped to track back in time to the point where Dace interacted with his beloved Uncle R. The dates on the backs of the two black-and-white photographs I’d seen were September 1941 and June 4, 1945. Something else occurred to me. My parents were married in 1935, which meant my mother might well have been with him on trips to Bakersfield. What if she was the one who’d taken the two photographs? The notion sent a chill down my spine.