Presumption Of Death

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “Somehow she ended up next to him. Next thing you know, they’re kissing. I was disgusted, Mom. I mean, she went to the practice with me, you know? We were a couple. Everybody knew it even though she didn’t act like it half the time.”

  Nikki must favor sofas. The image of Bob and Nikki on her sofa back in Tahoe several months before was permanently burned into Nina’s brain. Nikki, three years older, much too wise, and her fledgling son, entwined… Nina had poured herself a glass of wine, collected herself, and more or less kicked Nikki out. Which had only caused more hormones to hit the fan.

  Unwisely, she went back to lecturing. “You haven’t started smoking, have you?”

  “I didn’t call for this, Mom! I’m tryin’ to talk to you about something important!”

  “Okay, okay, honey. All right. So. Nikki and Lars.”

  “I can’t stand to go to rehearsals anymore, Mom. She’s made her choice. But I miss her. I don’t like Sweden, Mom. Nobody smiles and they all wear black and smoke all the time.”

  And they’re all way too old for you, Nina thought with huge relief. “You could take some music lessons. Your dad’ll get you into a summer school. He’s the one you went to visit, Bob, and now maybe you can spend more time with him.” Bob’s father, Kurt, a classical pianist, had not known Nikki was coming to Stockholm either.

  “You don’t get it. You just don’t get it.”

  “Honey, what are you going to do?”

  “I want her back.”

  “I know you do.”

  “But when I told her that, you know what she said? You won’t believe this.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me I was too young for her.”

  “Well, those three years… they are big ones, Bob.”

  “Anyway.” She visualized his shrug. “Screw it. I have to come home and figure things out.”

  The shock waves this announcement generated made her sit back, gulping.

  “Question, Mom. Where exactly is home? Am I going to Carmel or Tahoe? I need to know.”

  She put him off. It wasn’t hard.

  They talked for a few minutes more. Bob told her how he spent his time when he wasn’t getting into trouble with Nikki, and about Kurt’s latest performance. By the time they hung up, he sounded less miserable.

  She had done her job. Bob felt better. She felt worse, so much worse. She went out to the deck and slumped across from Paul.

  “Well? How’s the boy?”

  “His heart’s broken.”

  “Nikki dumped him?”

  “Yep.”

  Paul shook his head sadly. “It’s the first time, but it won’t be the last,” he said. “I hope Kurt’s up to the challenge.”

  Nina thought but didn’t say, I don’t know if Kurt will get a chance.

  “Women have this problem with constancy,” Paul added.

  “Men have this problem with thinking women are their property,” Nina shot back.

  They looked at each other. Paul’s silence rang like the end of the fifteenth round at Madison Square Garden. She hung her purse off her shoulder. “Let’s go, then,” she said.

  Wait a second, it was the doorbell making that racket. No dulcet chimes for Paul’s door.

  Nina smoothed down her hair and went to answer it.

  She peeked through the peephole Paul had installed in his door.

  “Who is it?” she said, but flung open the door when she saw who was standing outside.

  “Yo, Nina,” Wish said. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  5

  H E WORE BATTERED BLACK DOC MARTENS boots, Nina noted, still laced in some complicated fashion. He also wore the denim jacket and jeans the Boyz had described, but the T-shirt seemed to be missing and the pants were tattered and black. His eyes were almost swollen shut and what Nina could see of his hands, wrapped with white bandages, were red and blistered, glistening with petroleum jelly. His singed, wild hair hadn’t been combed that day. All in all, he looked like a sadhu who had tripped on the coals.

  Nina embraced him. He was so skinny!

  Even with this distressing getup, Nina saw that someone had washed him up and bandaged him. He was walking and talking and medicated. She drew him in and helped him take the boots off.

  “I’m thirsty,” he said hoarsely. In the kitchen, Paul offered him a beer, which he refused, and a couple of Cokes, which he sucked down fast. “Sorry to cause all this trouble,” he told Paul. “I got in a situation and had to go undercover.”

  Nina said, “I’m going to make you a sandwich. Peanut butter okay? Your parents have been so worried. Paul and I have been looking for you.”

  “I’ve been in the hospital.”

  “What? I called the hospital.”

  “I went to the clinic in San Juan Bautista.” He’d driven himself thirty miles to another county.

  “Why?”

  “I better call my mom. Could I borrow the phone?”

  The call lasted a long time, and if it was possible, when he finished the call and walked back into the living room he looked more disheveled after talking to her than before. He sat down heavily on the couch, fingers embedded in Hitchcock’s fur. Nina sat close beside him.

  “Now,” Paul said, “what happened to you?”

  “We’ve all been so worried,” Nina said. “I guess your mother told you the whole county is looking for you.”

  “I got hurt,” Wish said, holding his hand to his throat. “The clinic put me on an IV and I slept all yesterday.”

  “Your mother…” Nina started, but Wish interrupted.

  “She’s pretty… worked up,” he said, wiggling a finger in his phone ear. “But I told her everything’s dandy now that I’ve hooked up with you guys. She said to tell you she’ll talk to you later,” he added, unaware of how ominous this sounded.

  “Does it hurt to talk?”

  “No. I know I sound funny, though. Uh, sorry, I need to make one more call. My friend, Danny… have to make sure he’s okay.”

  So Sandy hadn’t told Wish about the body. “We heard about Danny from Dustin and Tustin,” Nina said. “We’ve been calling him, but we can’t get through.”

  “I need to call him right now.” He got up.

  “Does he live with Ben Cervantes?”

  Wish said, “Yeah, his uncle. Ben’s not there either?”

  “I just called again a few minutes ago. They don’t have an answering machine and there’s no answer.”

  Wish sat down again and hung his head. “I’m very worried,” he said. “Paul, I was attacked and I think Danny may have been too. I have to get ahold of him. You’re gonna be mad at me about this situation, but I thought it was under control, I really did, when I told Danny I’d go along.”

  “You were attacked?”

  “Could I have a glass of milk and another sandwich?” Nina went into the kitchen, but she could still hear them talking.

  “I guess I thought I’d be a hero,” Wish was saying, heaving a sigh. “I had a narrow escape instead. Maybe I’m not cut out to be in law enforcement after all. I think I showed bad judgment, Paul. Danny may be in trouble. I should have stopped him, not gone with him, but he pushed my buttons. He’s always known how to do that. Now what? I don’t know.”

  “I think there are some huge misunderstandings all around,” Paul said. “Now tell me. Danny Cervantes came to your house Tuesday night.”

  “Yeah, we hooked up again after I came down a few weeks ago. Danny left Markleeville in sixth grade, and we had his uncle’s number in Carmel Valley, so I called him and we got together a few times and hung around together. He’d just lost his job and I had a few extra bucks and I was glad to buy the drinks, but, I have to say, Paul, I had decided not to see him anymore. I told him a couple of weeks ago that I was too busy to see him anymore because of working with you and all, and Danny lost it. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings but I did anyway. I think he’d been lonely and-I don’t know, he brought up some old problems we
had years ago. This was at the El Nido bar in Monterey.”

  “Danny’s twenty-one too?”

  “Yeah, and he drinks. He was my best friend when we were kids, Paul. I thought I really hurt his feelings and I was feeling guilty, you know? And sad because our friendship was over.”

  Nina came out and sat next to him again, setting a tray of food in front of him. She patted his hand and said, “Thanks for coming here. We’re your friends too.”

  Wish drank some milk. He pulled his legs up and put his feet on the coffee table, wincing. “I was sitting in the living room with my roommates on Tuesday night,” he said. “We were watching the Giants-St. Louis game. Danny knocked. He was in a great mood, better than I’ve seen. It’s like we hadn’t had an argument, like I never said anything. And I have to say I was relieved about that.

  “He was all fired up. He said he needed me to go up to Robles Ridge with him. Grab some stuff and just go now, now, now. I was in for the night, but Danny-he made me feel like I’d be letting him down, or that I was a coward. You know how you always say, you got to have courage in this world, Paul? Well, this was my moment for courage. But when the time came, I didn’t show much courage at all.”

  Nina licked her lips and said, “What did Danny want you to do up there?”

  Wish stared at her. “You know. The arson fires.”

  “Right,” Paul said. “The arson fires. And you went up there… why?”

  “For the money.”

  “The money?” Paul wore a stunned expression. Nina thought, it can’t be true.

  “One hundred thousand dollars split two ways,” Wish said reverently. “You know how much that is?”

  “That would buy a lot,” said Paul.

  “Sure would,” said Wish. “Instead, what a fiasco. And you can’t even see the worst of it!” he said darkly. “My throat is completely swollen up with poison oak! That’s why I belong back in Tahoe! I am never hiking these woods again.”

  “You know, Wish, I’m trying, but help me out, will you? You went up there with Danny on Tuesday… why?”

  Wish looked at Paul as if revising a previously positive opinion. “I told you. For the reward.”

  Paul relaxed back into his chair. “Ah. A reward.”

  “Some people who got burned out put their money together with some money from the county, that’s why it’s such a large amount,” Wish said. “Arson causes a lot of expensive damage.”

  “You followed Danny up there to catch the arsonist?” Nina asked. “In spite of the fact that you could get caught in a fire or killed?”

  “No way,” said Wish. “We were just gonna get a picture of the arsonist or his car, some evidence to show who was doing it. We planned to shoot and run.”

  He told them what had happened after they went up the ridge, the waiting, the heat and flames, Danny insisting on staying until they could get the shot, then the fear and confusion and getting lost. Nina held Wish’s hand as he haltingly told them about Danny finding him, then losing him again. Wish buried his face in his hands.

  “Then the firebug-he ambushed me. He came after me, knocked me down with a rock. I remembered my mom’s advice to my sisters when they went away to school, because she has a double standard, you know? With girls.”

  “And that advice was…” Paul prompted.

  “Grab and twist. But I was on the ground and he was too close for me to kick. Thing is, he got behind me. He thought the rock knocked me out. Even though the fire was right there licking at me, I decided to lay low. There were plenty of other rocks around.

  “He stood over me for a few seconds watching to see if… I don’t know. Maybe to see if I moved-I don’t know. I felt his eyes on me. Maybe the wind shifted right then. Something went right and the fire didn’t get me while I was playing dead.

  “All’s I know is, he hit me on the head with a big rock, and I fell. At the clinic they said”-his hand went to the left side of his head-“that I didn’t get a skull fracture, because he hit me from a bad angle.

  “When I thought he was gone, I dragged myself up somehow and ran straight through the fire, down the mountain through burning poison oak. But he was after me again! It felt supernatural, the way he was after me, like he was some kind of animal that could smell me through the smoke!

  “I have never been so scared in my whole life,” Wish went on, his voice trembling. “The firebug, he just wouldn’t give up. I had long since dropped the camera somewhere but it wasn’t the camera he cared about, it was getting me. He wanted to kill me. He almost did with that rock. Then when he found me the second time, he was relentless, crashing after me right out to the street like he didn’t even care if he got caught, just so he could kill me.

  “Next thing I knew, I came out on Southbank Road and there were fire trucks everywhere, pumping water straight from the stream along the road. My car was still parked a long way down the road. I couldn’t wait to find out what had happened to Danny. I got in the car and drove out to Carmel Valley Road. I kept looking back, thinking the firebug might be following me.

  “I drove to Salinas and got on 101. I drove as far as I could, until I realized I was going to pass out again. Then I saw the turnoff for San Juan Bautista and drove there.”

  “Did you see his face at any time?” Paul asked.

  “Too much white smoke when I was trying to focus the camera,” Wish said. “My eyes were watering and stinging. I could barely see anything. The rest of the time I was running or had my eyes closed. But he must think I saw him. It’s the only thing that explains why he tried so hard to get me.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “No idea.”

  “Nothing that could identify him? Think, Wish!”

  “I’m thinking. I’m thinking.”

  “Well?”

  Wish shrugged helplessly. “Something sharp pressing against my back when he was behind me, but he had just hit me and I wasn’t thinking too straight.” An agonized expression appeared on his face. “I have to go out to Ben’s house if Danny doesn’t answer the phone. I mean, Danny disappeared. He went down up there. I think the firebug may have-I can’t stand to think-”

  “Let’s call again,” Nina said. She had the number memorized by now.

  No answer. Wish stared at the phone. “It’s late,” he said. “They oughtta be answering.”

  “All right, we’ll drive out to the Valley in a minute, buddy,” Paul said. “But I have to ask, how did Danny know in advance there was going to be a fire up there?”

  “Danny had a tip.”

  “What kind of a tip?”

  “From a confidential source. He was pretty sure there would be a fire that night on the ridge.”

  “He’d have to know the arsonist.”

  “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?”

  “Danny saw it. Ahead of us on Southbank Road. He said that was it, but he didn’t want to get close because, heck, the firebug might be in the car. I couldn’t even see the color, but I saw a parked car. A sedan.”

  “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. Danny sneaked up the road until he could see the guy wasn’t in the car. I got a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. You know how you say you can feel it, when something big is about to happen, Paul? We started up the hil
l. In the dark, I had to trust Danny to lead. I knew the construction sites were at the top and there was a road on the other side.”

  “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 Danny,” Wish said.

  “I still don’t understand why you were there at all. Why did Danny invite you along? Wouldn’t he rather have all the reward money for himself?”

  “Danny knew the trails, I had the good camera. And I think he was scared to go alone. All we needed was some proof.”

  “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 gonna come after me?”

  “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.”