Presumption Of Death

“Glad to hear it.”

“How about you? How do you like being out on your own?”

“It’s a lonely old world, working alone, but there are compensations.”

“I see that there are,” Crockett said, inclining his head toward Nina, who was scratching her ankle. “This your secretary?”

“My name is Nina Reilly. I’m an attorney,” Nina said. “Excuse me for interrupting, but we don’t have time to chat. As you know, Mr. van Wagoner is an investigator. We understand you have a victim in the Tuesday fire and a tentative ID on a young man named Willis Whitefeather. We’re friends, we’re worried, and we’d like to see the victim.”

Crockett had turned his whole body toward her in the chair. “I see. You’re an attorney, are you?”

“Mr. Whitefeather’s mother is out of state and can’t get here today. She asked us to come in and talk with you. Apparently she was told… a victim of the Tuesday-night Robles Ridge fire might be her son.”

Crockett studied her some more, then rustled around on his desk for some papers. “Yes. I talked with Mrs. Whitefeather last night. She’s still pla

“Yes, but maybe we can clear things up immediately if we see the victim, although I understand that isn’t possible at the moment?” Nina said.

Crockett nodded. “Seeing the body may not clear things up. It was badly burned.”

“What’s the basis of the ID?”

“Simple logic. He’s been missing since Tuesday night, and the last people to see him, his roommates, called in yesterday to report him missing. They heard the news reports and got alarmed because the last time they saw him was Tuesday night, and he was on his way with a friend into the hills above Carmel Valley Village. They read about the fire and decided to report it. The body was found by the sheriff’s posse, a mounted patrol out of the Salinas station on Wednesday about noon. They do rescues up there in the backwoods, get into places cars won’t go. Some of the area was still too hot to search as of yesterday.”

“You went up there too?”

“Yes,” he said. “And I’ll be going back up this afternoon.”

“What about the friend who went up there with Wish? Why aren’t you assuming it’s him?” Nina said. Paul put his hand on her arm, lightly, but she knew what he meant. He was warning her not to be so intense. Crockett had seen Paul’s movement. His eyes missed nothing.

Just as lightly, just as definitely, Nina shrugged off Paul’s hand.

“Could be him,” Crockett said. “But we don’t have a missing-persons report on him. That’s the difference. The friend’s name is Daniel Cervantes. Mrs. Whitefeather gave us the name after she heard the roommates said it was a young man named Da

Nina and Paul shook their heads.

“Childhood friends, Mrs. Whitefeather said. Guess they’re both Native Americans from the Tahoe area.”

“Wish is a member of the Washoe tribe. He was raised near Lake Tahoe.”

“He’s, what, twenty-one?”

“Yes,” Nina said.

“Going to college up there, I understand. And working for you this summer, Paul, am I right?”

“Right.”

“Was he working on a case on Tuesday night? Anything to do with the fires?”

“No.”

“You sure about that?”

“I’m sure. What are you getting at, Davy?”

Crockett shifted again in his black chair, which looked like a standard-issue back-torture instrument. “Because the roommates told me he took a backpack, camera, water, that sort of thing. Just wondering if you might know why he would go up the mountain there, since you worked with him.”

“I don’t know,” Paul said. Nina was getting nervous.

She said, giving Paul a warning look, “We understand this fire might have been set, that there have been a couple of suspicious fires in that area.”

“That’s right. Clear arsons. Kerosene all over the place. The local officials decided they needed someone to coordinate all the information coming in. I’m the liaison. I work with the agencies that are involved, and that can be a lot of bureaucracies, the police, the fire department, the sheriff’s department, the state, the park service, the FBI… you familiar with the crime of arson?”

“We’d like to hear whatever you can tell us,” Paul said.

“I can tell you generally that one of the first things we look for is motive.”

Crockett stood up and pointed to a huge aerial photograph of Monterey County on the wall beside his desk.

“Here, here, and here,” he said thoughtfully, pointing with his pencil to three spots on the map about fifteen miles inland from Carmel. “Those are the sites. You familiar with Carmel Valley Village?”

“I grew up here on the coast,” Nina said. “When I think of the Village, I think of flies buzzing, yellow grass, open spaces. Old cottages along the river.”

“Those old cottages are going fast, replaced by million-dollar mansions. Carmel Valley’s a hot real-estate market these days. Really hot. So we have to consider what the fires are aimed at, as I said. The first one took out a model home and some construction equipment on a subdivision site near the Carmel River. Twelve homes and a big condo unit were pla

“I think I read about that project,” Nina said. “Didn’t they evict some handicapped people from the site?”

“Evict, that’s not really the word. There’s an old converted motel at the top of the site called Robles Vista. Used now as a state handicapped facility. Has to be torn down anyway, the place is falling apart. The occupants have been offered alternate housing. Most of them haven’t moved yet.

“The second fire occurred at the new café right in the Village. It almost got away from the firefighters, and the elementary school next door would have gone up fast. A local character, a woman named Ruthie, was sleeping in the lot outside in her car about three A.M. and smelled it. She may have seen the arsonists. Two people in a car. Dangerous fire, could have burned down half the Village. The shop was gutted.

“The third fire, on Tuesday night, burned fifteen acres above the Village on Robles Ridge, all woods, and came within a hair of several brand-new homes up there. Big homes, spectacular views of the Valley.”

“So you think the motive had to do with stopping new development in the Village?”

Crockett shrugged. “It’s an obvious starting point. It could still be something else, revenge, insurance, punk kids playing nasty games. But the targets look like new homes and businesses.”

“Wish wouldn’t be involved in anything like that,” Nina said.

“Did you know Mr. Whitefeather was antidevelopment?”

“What? You are way off base. He’s not involved. He’s not a local. He’s not an ecoterrorist. He wants to be a cop!”

“How well did you know him, Ms. Reilly?”

“I know him extremely well, Mr. Crockett.” The friendly conversation between Paul and Davy had moved into Mr. Crockett and Ms. Reilly.

“Then you know he participated in the protest last weekend against development interests in the Valley with some local Native Americans?”

Nina remembered Wish leaving Paul’s office a few days earlier. “I gotta go early, Paul,” he had said. “I promised to drive. People are depending on me.”

“There were hundreds of people at that rally,” she said, “plus free food.”

Crockett shrugged.

“So he was out there exercising his constitutional rights,” Nina went on. “It’s a big leap from a rally to three rural arson fires in a place he’s visiting, where he has no vested interest. What did the police do at that rally, film it and run people’s IDs? I thought that went out with the Cold War.”

“Well, there’s his arrest at age thirteen for arson, that makes us sit up straight. The charges were dropped and the whole thing was put down to a prank. Still, that’s not something we can overlook.”

“But how would you know that? Records on juvenile offenders are sealed in California,” Nina said, trying to hide her dismay at hearing this information.