Presumption Of Death

“I know a few people,” Crockett said, looking first at Paul, then staring at the map on the wall. “We don’t miss much.”

“But that’s illegal,” Nina said, leaning forward.

She felt like getting into it with Crockett. But before she could, he said casually, “And as I said, he told his roommates he was going up Robles Ridge. That conversation took place about three hours before the first 911 call about the fire. He and the other young man headed up there. Two people, like the witness saw before. Happens sometimes that during the course of a felony one of the perpetrators gets hurt. Makes even a lawyer think, doesn’t it?”

“I just hate to see you wasting time and taxpayer money, Mr. Crockett.” But she was shaken.

“You have a card to give me, Ms. Reilly? Where’s your office?”

While Nina was trying to figure out how to respond to this, Crockett’s phone buzzed, and Crockett raised a hand and picked it up. Hanging up, he told them, “The autopsy should be completed by three this afternoon. I told the coroner’s office you could go in and attempt an ID. If you promise me you’ll call me right after and let me know how it went.”

“You got it,” Paul said. They got up to leave.

“You do have a card?” Crockett said, standing up with them, his impassive face looking down at Nina.

She gave him the poker face right back. “Not on me,” she said. “Call Mr. van Wagoner if you need to get in touch with me.”

“Good to see you again, Paul,” Crockett said, and the two men shook hands. “I’ll be waiting to hear.”

She had been rendered invisible. She slunk into the passenger seat of Paul’s Mustang and they cruised out of the parking lot. She was thinking, when an attorney has no office and no card, no staff and no clients, maybe she’d better not a

But then, what was she?

“What’s the sound of a lawyer falling in the forest?” she asked Paul. “If there’s no one there to hear it?”

Paul neatly turned north onto the on-ramp to Highway 1.

“It sounds like a long argument slowly dying out,” he said.

Nina laughed.

“So where’s your aunt Helen’s place?”

“Not far. Over the hill, just past the Pebble Beach turnoff.”

“Maybe he’ll be there,” Paul said, as if to himself. Cypresses and pines pressed against the highway. They turned onto 68 and wound through the views of golf courses and ocean, the fog bank ragged off the distant horizon, like cotton batting leaking from the edge of a faded blue quilt.

3

N INA AND PAUL BUMPED ONTO THE cracked asphalt driveway of the wooden bungalow in Pacific Grove on Pine Avenue. Aunt Helen had died years earlier and left the place to Nina, and the welcome mat in front and the rhododendron bushes on either side of the entryway dated from Aunt Helen’s time, along with one of the few pines left on Pine, an eighty-foot listing Norfolk pine that someday soon would fall on the neighbors’ roof and bankrupt Nina. But she couldn’t bear to cut it down yet.

Pacific Grove lay at the tip of the Monterey Peninsula, jutting right out into the Pacific, and never got hot. The sea breeze produced clean, tangy air.

Through the open shutters Nina could see someone walking back and forth, and her heart gave a lurch: Wish? Or one of the roommates?

To herself she called the twins who had originally leased the house from her the Boyz in the Hood. Dustin and Tustin Qui

Unfortunately, only students wanted to rent the place. Built in the twenties, the whole house was heated by a single wall fixture in the living room. The stove had been old in Aunt Helen’s time, and there were no hookups for a washer or dryer. You had to cart the dirty clothes to the Washeteria in town. Apparently, elderly gardening ladies chose to live in more modern digs because none applied.

The Boyz had rented the place in May, hoping to stay through the summer and possibly fall. In early June Wish had moved in with them for the summer. Nina had suggested it, knowing the twins would welcome the help with the rent. Wish seemed to like them.

One of the Boyz now trotted out to meet them, shirtless, wearing baggy shorts and fat-tongued athletic shoes, no socks, a backward baseball hat on his head, a bottle of Gatorade in his hand. “My tenant,” Nina told Paul as he slammed the front door.

“Hey.” The young man nodded to them and blocked their way. He was stocky, buzz cut, and earnest, with a round pink face and round mouth. “How’s it going, Nina? Dus is just finishing up the sweeping. We wanted to clean up before you got here.”

So Dusty was dusting. “Hi, Tustin,” she said. “This is Paul van Wagoner.”

“Good to meet you. Any word about Wish?”

“No sign of him.” The fast swish of a broom mixed with the yelp of Eminem’s 2002 CD drifted through the open window. When Nina had lived there, right after Aunt Helen had passed on, it had been sea lions yelping from the kelp beds a few hundred yards off that she heard, but new mille

She had rented the house out ever since, and now she saw with landlord’s angst that the white paint was faded and peeling in places, and the roof was minus some shingles. “We’re sorry to raise up a storm if he’s just gone home to Tahoe or something…” Tustin was saying.

“No, you did right to call,” Paul said. “He hasn’t been home. We talked to his mother.”

Tustin really wanted to get the story out, or else he was delaying their entry while Dustin madly cleaned up, Nina couldn’t decide which. He launched into it, standing right there in the yard with the white picket fence.

“I don’t even want to think about him and that fire. We were watching TV when his buddy showed up. Gave him a beer, invited him to di

“Well, at the mention of money, Wish’s eyes lit up. I have to admit Dus and I wanted to know what was going on, but Da

“Wait a minute,” Paul said, holding up a hand to slow him down. “What’s not a good idea?”

Tustin shrugged. “Who knows? They shut the door. All I know is, he was pushing Wish to go somewhere. Told him he could be home that night-this was Tuesday-in plenty of time to pack for Tahoe.

“We could hear them arguing. Wish wasn’t up for it. And then Da

“My brother and I went into the living room and sat down to watch the baseball game on TV and eat our pot pies. Wish and Da

“‘What’s going to happen?’ I said, but he just shook his head.”

Dustin finally appeared at the front door. He gave some signal to his brother, who said, “We can go in now.” They mounted the three steps to the welcome mat. Dustin, in scruffy cutoffs and bare feet, held the screen open for them. “Hey.”