Presumption Of Death

“The permanent party,” she said.

“Right. The people come and go, but the party never ends.”

“He hasn’t been here.”

“No.”

Nina pulled out the Monterey County phone book and Wish’s organizer and began making calls. She called Community Hospital, the highway patrol, Da

After a while, when they had run out of numbers, they paused. Paul looked at his watch. “You know what we have to do, don’t you? It’s three-thirty, and they’ll close by five.”

“Yes. We should go. It better not be him. What could have happened up there in the woods?”

“One step at a time. Lunch downstairs, then back to Salinas.”

In the heat of midday, they could identify some crops strictly by smell.

“Brussels sprouts,” Paul said. “I can’t stand ’em.”

“Mmm. Garlic. Fabulous.”

South Main Street still housed struggling secondhand stores, the shopping center that had never taken off, the Arby’s and Foster’s Freeze and the air of being lost in time that Nina remembered from childhood.

“I used to come here as a kid when the Northridge Shopping Center had the only good department stores in the whole county,” she said. “Then when I was clerking for Klaus, I would bring papers over to the courthouse for the lawyers. It looks just the same.”

“You still think of it as a sleepy agricultural town?” Paul said. “It’s changed. Silicon Valley is pressing down from the north. Executive homes are crammed together on small lots with high walls. A tired techie just snugs down in his concrete snail shell, never forced to meet a single neighbor.”

“We’re at least an hour to San Jose. They commute all that way?”

“Meanwhile, as the technical class hauls fifty miles between home in Salinas and work in San Jose, Mexico rolls up from the south and settles in the Alisal District. The population is eighty percent Latino these days. Did you know that?”

“Salinas has always been a tense place,” Nina said. “High crime rate for the population density. Part Okie, part Latino. Good fuel for writers like Steinbeck.”

“It does look sleepy, when you’re not here on Saturday night on the east side of town, when the bars get lively and the guns go off,” Paul said.

But no guns were in evidence on this sun-baked afternoon, just a few kids on bikes and moms pushing strollers past the thrift shops. Nina said, “Let’s stop at Foster’s Freeze for a dipped chocolate cone.”

“Right before the morgue?”

“Then again, maybe not,” Nina said. They drove through town in silence, each corner bringing Nina a fresh vista of memories. “You know, in front of the community center near the rodeo stands, there’s a giant sculpture by Claes Oldenburg. Did you ever see that, Paul?”

“Really? That’s a surprise. No, I don’t go to the rodeo. I guess it’s un-American of me.”

“I’ll take you this summer.”

“No, thanks, I know how you and Bob love these spectacles like monster-car races and motocross and calf roping, but I don’t like the seats.”

“What’s wrong with the seats?”

“They’re concrete and usually beer spattered.”

“Does that mean you don’t like football games either?” Nina asked.

“I like te

“But you like modern art, don’t you?”

Paul told her, “Look, if Oldenburg put up a giant sculpture in Salinas, of all places, let’s drive by it right now.”

“You can’t see it from the street.”

“Too bad. What’s it look like?”

“Three massive red metal cowboy hats. Each one about twenty feet across.” They turned onto Alisal Street.

Speaking of modern art, the concrete fiends of justice perched on each cornice of the Monterey County Courthouse hadn’t changed. These gargoyles, along with the white pillars casting sharp shadows and the deserted concrete courtyard within, still gave rise within Nina to a certain anticipatory dread straight out of an early de Chirico painting.

The dark-suited figures flapping like vultures up the hot street to make their cases inside added to the general air of malevolence, and the Honeybee restaurant, where many a sleazy legal deal had been cut over the decades, extruded more lawyers as they passed by. This courthouse had always felt foreign to Nina, so different from the courthouse on Aguajito in Monterey, which had been built in friendly hippie days in a vaguely Big Sur style.

“I always wondered why you didn’t take Klaus’s offer and join his firm after you passed the bar,” Paul said as they searched for a parking spot in back.

Nina said, “Compressed version. My mother died, that was the main thing. Dad got married again very quickly. I wanted to leave. San Francisco was a good distance, and then I married Jack and he was ready to leave Klaus’s firm too. Don’t we all grow up and leave town?” She took out her cream and rubbed a flare-up on her arm.

“Not at all,” Paul said. “In fact, I sometimes think the world is divided into those who go and those who stay. So off to the big city, then a few years in Tahoe. And here you are again.”

“I really, really hope it’s not Wish in there.”

They entered the dim courthouse hall and submitted to the metal detector. As they walked down the stairs toward the coroner’s office she firmed her jaw. It better not be him, she thought fiercely, and prepared herself.

Inside, they waited almost half an hour in an anteroom before they were allowed in. Some telephoning went on in the office as they were checked out one more time. Although a man in a lab coat was swabbing down the tables with Lysol, the morgue had that familiar smell of decay.

“Is the autopsy report completed?” Nina said to the female lab assistant accompanying them. She was realizing that, if this was Wish, Sandy would need help to call a mortuary and-surely she would want Wish sent back home?

Better not think about that now.

“This morning, but the report hasn’t been approved.” This small young woman had a Spanish accent, a large mole on her chin, and a businesslike attitude.

“Findings?” Paul said.

“I don’t know much. You’ll have to go through the cha

A long, blackened, naked body lay supine in the drawer like a specimen in some hideous experiment. Cracked-looking flaps of skin hung off the charred and blackened arms and legs. The arms were pulled up as if to protect the chest. The abdomen was concave, as though emptied of its contents. An acrid, wet-charcoal smell wafted up.

“Oh, God.” Nina looked away, then back at the body. She forced herself to look for some sign of Wish. Long bones, some burned black hair hanging lankly over the skull-the skull, oh, boy, the skull-

Nina walked off a few steps. Paul continued to look. “What else did they find?”

“The remains of a concho belt,” the lab assistant said, observing without emotion. “You know, leather with those silver things. We have partial black leather boots, Doc Martens. Laces burned off. Tatters of white T-shirt and jeans on the backside of the body.”

“A concho belt?” Paul said. “Nina, go outside and call the Boyz. Ask them.” Nina was staring at the skull, which still held on to the patch of long dark hair. DNA, she thought. They’ll find out eventually.

“I can’t tell if it’s him, Paul,” she blurted.

“Go on. I’ll talk to this lady for a minute.”

Nina went. In the bathroom outside, she rinsed her mouth and threw water on her face. She took a brush to her hair, sloughing off the black mask of death she had just seen. Outside, she breathed the blessed air, got into the hot car, and called the Boyz.