Presumption Of Death

“No, no, nothing like that. He said he had the license number of the suspect’s car. He wouldn’t tell me any more, just that he’d staked out various construction sites around Carmel Valley Village for the whole week and saw the car parked for a couple of hours at Robles Ridge earlier that day. Some big new houses are under construction up there. It all made sense to me then.”

“So you saw the car again that night before you went up the ridge?”

“Da

“Oh, Wish,” Nina said. “You should have left and called the police.”

“The police wouldn’t do anything. A guy sitting in a car, that’s all, and we’d lose our chance. What would it prove? You know how hard they make it to get those big rewards. All we wanted to do was get one shot, but it had to be a shot of the guy, not the car, and he had to be doing a criminal act. So we parked my car. Da

“You were asking for trouble,” Nina said, angry now. How could he? Paul shook his head slightly.

Nina gave up. She sat back on the couch. Paul was right, recriminations could come later.

Paul said, “He must have gotten the license number from the police.”

Wish shook his head. “He wouldn’t say. But he’s lived here for years. He knows all the locals. Somebody knew something, that’s all.”

Nina said, “Wish, as soon as the police know you’re alive, you will become a prime suspect in these fires.”

“Me? A suspect? I almost got my ass burned off! Sorry.”

“We know that. Now to convince the world,” Paul said. “The police are going to be looking for you. We’ll have to contact them.”

“Tomorrow morning. When you’ve rested a little and we have talked more,” Nina said. She was wondering whether to tell him about the corpse in the locker in Salinas, who might be his friend.

“After I find Da

“I still don’t understand why you were there at all. Why did Da

“Da

“I can see what you guys had in mind, but I wish you’d run it by me first,” said Paul. Nina thought that showed superhuman forbearance.

“Is this guy go

“I don’t know,” Paul said. “You lost your camera and didn’t really see him. He has nothing to fear from you. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know that.”

“Maybe I should take out a classified ad, huh?” Wish said in a glum voice. “‘I know jack, pal, so don’t kill me, okay?’ ”

Paul looked at his watch. Looked at Nina.

“We should go if we’re going.”

“He has to put on some other clothes. Take a shower.”

“A quick shower would be nice. But then I have to go to the Valley.”

Paul had gone into the kitchen. He came out with a disposable camera with a flash. “I’m going in there with you, buddy,” he told Wish. “Take pictures of your injuries.”

“To prove I was there?”

“I don’t know what we’re go

“Good, Paul,” Nina said. She thought, for the jury. What jury? She wouldn’t let her mind follow that thought any further.

By the time Nina heard the shower stop in the bathroom, it was nearly midnight. Paul put some fresh clothes Wish could wear in the bathroom and called Da

She heard someone pounding on the door. She looked through the door of the bedroom to see why Paul had not answered. Head cocked to one side, supported only by air, Paul was napping in a chair. She tiptoed past and peered through the peephole in the front door.

It looked like a police ID. It was in fact a police ID.

She opened the door to two deputy sheriffs, hands hovering over their weapons. Behind them she saw a sheriff’s car, red light turning, and a Carmel Valley Police car with two other men in it.

“I’m Deputy Grace. Monterey County Sheriff. This Paul van Wagoner’s residence?” asked the bigger one, a young man with a face pocked like an olive loaf. “May we come in?”

“I’ll go get him,” she said, ignoring the last question. She left them on the porch, closed and locked the front door behind herself, and woke Paul. They returned to the door together.

“We’re looking for Willis Whitefeather. Like to ask you some questions.”

“It’s late,” Nina said. “How about your office, tomorrow morning?”

“Sorry. We need to talk to you right now.”

“That won’t be possible.”

“We just received information from the Las Flores Clinic in San Juan Bautista that Mr. Whitefeather has been hiding there. Mr. Whitefeather gave Mr. van Wagoner’s phone number as an emergency contact. Now please listen carefully. If you have any information as to Mr. Whitefeather’s current whereabouts and don’t tell us what you may know, right now, Detective Crockett is going to consider that an obstruction of justice. I just want to make that very clear to you tonight.”

Paul and Nina stood there. Paul said softly to her, “Your call, Counsel.”

“Am I very clear?” the officer repeated.

Nina held the door open. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Whitefeather is here.”

Wish was not under arrest, Deputy Grace assured them. But the arson investigator sure did want to talk to him. Now. Down at the station. Alone.

Wish, who appeared in wet hair and a towel, freshly covered in gauze and surgical tape, bleary-eyed and confused, went back into the bathroom and came out in Paul’s clothes. The pant legs rode high on his dirty boots. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be glad to cooperate. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“We’ll come along if you don’t mind,” Paul said.

“We mind,” said Deputy Grace.

“I’m coming,” Nina said.

“Look,” said the second deputy sheriff. The thin bristle on his upper lip in the watery glow of the porch light made him seem to have two upper lips. “He doesn’t need company. We just want to talk to him.”

“I’m his attorney,” she said. She grabbed her briefcase, more to put on the expected official show than because she needed it in this case, since she didn’t have anything inside it except a pad of paper and a pen.

“Take this,” Paul said, sticking her mobile phone into her pocket. “Call me.”

In her rush out the door, she forgot to kiss him good-bye.

The ride through the dark streets to the central police station in Salinas took only minutes in the dead of night. Inside, Crockett waited in his desolate office.

“So, you’re representing Mr. Whitefeather, here,” Crockett said to Nina, turning on his tape recorder without a by-your-leave. Nina noticed for the first time the mirror on the wall, dark on one side only, perhaps. And the video camera mounted in a ceiling corner. “He’s obviously been through some sort of traumatic event. What happened to your eyes, son?”

“Yes, I represent him.”

“You know he hasn’t been charged with a crime? We just want to know what went on up there in the hills above Carmel Valley on Tuesday. That’s where it happened, isn’t it? Where you were injured.”

“I’ve advised my client…” Nina began.