Presumption Of Death

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  She thought. “I thought he came in his car. It was overcast, and he must not have parked right out front.”

  “You didn’t see any children with him?”

  “I guarantee when you find him, you won’t find any kids with him. Not unless they wanted to go along,” she added, in a testament to her own uncertainty.

  “Did he take anything besides money?”

  “He keeps a lot in that closet.” Connie pointed to a painted cupboard. “He grabbed a few things.”

  Paul got up quietly. “Mind?” he asked as he opened the door to the cupboard. Clothes and bed linens were wadded and stuffed into every shelf. Paul searched for a few minutes while the women watched. He emerged with a lantern and a ball of netting. “Camping gear,” he said.

  Connie examined the closet. “A couple of sleeping bags are gone. And a pup tent he used when he was a boy. Lamp fuel.”

  “Kerosene?” Nina asked.

  Connie nodded.

  “How much?”

  “Half a gallon.”

  “Mrs. Cervantes,” Paul said, “where is he?”

  She didn’t resist the entreaty in his voice any longer, but pulled out a creased map and showed them Danny’s favorite camping spot. “I think maybe in the mountains above Incline Village, an area near Rose Knob. He loves it there, and we have some old family friends with a cabin they loaned us a few times in that area, so it’s familiar.”

  Paul got the address for the cabin.

  “You think that’s where he’s gone?” Nina said.

  “He wouldn’t stay in the cabin. He never liked being inside when he could be outside. Also, he talked like he was going camping. Took wood from the stack behind the house for campfires. I really don’t know. I’m guessing where he might be. He also likes to camp above Cave Rock, and over by Spooner Lake.” She showed them two other spots. “Go ahead,” she said, “track him down like an animal.” Now Nina could hear the anger coming up in her, the anger at herself and Danny and her husband and Sandy for pressing her.

  “Are you coming with us?” Sandy asked, standing stolidly in front of her. Nina hadn’t thought of that possibility.

  “No.”

  “It might help.”

  “Oh, I know I should. Just leave me alone. Go get him if you have to. I still can’t figure out if he’s really alive, if I really saw him.” Nina and Paul exchanged worried glances.

  “Okay, then.” Sandy opened her bag, pulled out a box of doughnuts, and set them in front of Connie. “Chocolate-covered,” she said. “Remember how we used to eat them back when the boys were little? Those were good times, and none of us are going to forget them. Nina, why don’t you and Paul wait in the car.”

  Nina took Paul’s hand and led him outside, Paul grabbing the map as they passed the table. Lying back against the seat as Paul started the motor, she closed her eyes and thought that Bob would be passing through this dangerous transition to adulthood in a few years. She hadn’t cared about Danny Cervantes as a person until this moment, the slow-burning match who had found only dried-up tinder in his search for a life, and had become a conflagration. Now she hoped that somehow he could be saved. But Callie and Mikey came first.

  In a few minutes Sandy came out to the car and opened the door. When they were moving again, she said, “Danny took a bottle of pills from the medicine cabinet before he left. Thirty pills. Ambien.”

  “It’s a very powerful sleeping aid,” Nina said. “My God! We have to find him.”

  “He let her think he was dead. He was already a ghost, all the ties with this world cut. I don’t think he can come back. She knows that.”

  36

  B ACK IN THE CAR, THEY REGROUPED. “Do we call the sheriff’s office now?” Nina asked. “Shouldn’t we tell them where we think Danny Cervantes might be? What’s he going to do with those pills?”

  “We still don’t know he’s there, Nina,” Paul said. “I wish we had more to report. Give Crockett a buzz. See what he says.” He knew what he wanted to do: Go to Rose Knob Mountain. He knew it well. He had hiked that section of the Tahoe Rim Trail traversing the summit the day the trail opened a year ago. But he was willing to let Crockett make the decisions.

  She called Crockett, who sounded very anxious at the news, especially when she told him about the pills. “He’s frustrated, Paul. He wants us to keep in close touch,” Nina said, closing her phone. “He’s going to talk with the local police and get back to us.”

  They drove for a few minutes more before Nina’s phone rang. She talked briefly, then hung up. “They don’t feel they can do anything with Connie’s information yet. They are sending someone out to talk to her right away. Apparently, Crockett is also pursuing a credible report that Danny’s hiding out with the kids south of Cachagua in the mountains near Big Sur.”

  Paul took a deep breath. “Damn. Those kids… do you think Danny’s mother told us the truth?”

  “I do.”

  “Drop me at the TART stop in King’s Beach,” Sandy told Paul as he swung back toward the road that ringed the lake.

  “Say what?” Paul stole a glance into the back seat at Sandy, who was looking out the window, hands tight on her bag. He refrained from making a wise-ass addition to the question, terrified he would laugh and alienate her forever.

  “Tahoe Area Rapid Transit,” Nina explained. “The bus goes around the lake to South Lake Tahoe.”

  “You don’t want to help us decide what to do?” Paul asked.

  “I know what you’ll do, and I’m not dressed for hiking. You brought what you need to go up the mountain and try to find him, I assume,” Sandy said.

  “Yes, we have what we need in the back of the truck.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Shouldn’t we call Joseph to come and get you?”

  “I already did from Connie’s. He’ll have somebody pick me up at the bus station. Don’t waste any more time worrying about me. I know how to get home. You have mobile phones, both of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Charged?”

  Nina checked her phone, then Paul’s. “Yes.”

  “Don’t forget them for a change.”

  “Okay, Sandy.”

  She had a few more instructions and edicts for them, which they listened to all the way down to the bus stop. When she got out, she held a hand up. “He’s a kidnapper and a murderer,” she said. “Paul, take your gun.”

  He patted his shoulder holster. “Check.”

  “And remember,” she said, “he’s still Wish’s friend. I used my friends to find him and now we’re trusting you with his life.”

  “Here we are,” Paul said, stopping.

  “Thanks, Sandy,” Nina said.

  “For what?”

  “For coming to the party.”

  “We beat Crockett,” Sandy said. “Now you do the rest.”

  Nina watched Sandy grow small in the rearview mirror as they drove back around the lake toward Incline Village. “How do you think she really feels about Danny?”

  “She remembers him when he was innocent. Probably wiped away a few tears for him once. Now, could you check the map? Do I turn onto Mount Rose Highway or not?”

  Directed by Nina, Paul made a left up the highway that eventually led over a nine-thousand-foot pass to the high Nevada desert and Reno. After a short distance, they turned left again and wound through some high-altitude residential streets set in landscapes that looked like they had been transported from the Alps. The asphalt dead-ended in patches of sprouting mule ears, white lupines, and penstemon getting ready to bloom. “Park here,” Nina said, pointing. “This is it. The end of Jennifer Lane.”

  On the left, a few large houses crawled over the edge of a downhill slope. “That’s his friend’s cabin,” Paul said, consulting a number he had written down. “Let’s go look.”

  The smallest home on the block, it was very quaint, a gingerbread model, with filigreed blue shutters and painted flower boxes, obviously empty, given the pulled drapes and
windblown pine needles all over the entry deck. They knocked. They rang the bell. They waited. When there was no answer, they tried again.

  “An old door-to-door solicitor trick,” Paul said. “You assume only a friend would have the nerve to ring twice.”

  Still no one came. Paul reached above the door to feel for a key but came away empty-handed. He proceeded to wander the front deck, turning over pots, fingering things around the edges of the deck.

  “Got it,” he said, fiddling with what looked like a rock.

  “You make me so nervous,” Nina said.

  “Worried the neighbors are watching?” He turned around with a big smile, waving the key. “Now they think we’re visiting friends.”

  “Forget the neighbors. I’m worried about breaking and entering.”

  “We’re not breaking anything. Besides, a friend of a friend said we could check it out for a possible rental, remember?”

  “I’ll remember,” she said, “and I’ll wait here.”

  Paul disappeared through the front door. “Have a seat there. Do your best to look innocent. I’ll just be a second.” He was true to his word, returning quickly. He placed the key back into the fake rock and put it back where he had found it. They walked back to the car.

  “What did you find?”

  “Kitchen raided for pots and pans. Bread crumbs and peanut-butter-and-jelly stains on the counter. Couldn’t tell what all was taken, but the place on the whole was incredibly neat, so it was obvious that someone in a hurry tromped through.”

  “He was there with the kids,” Nina said.

  “Has to be him. Crumbs so fresh the ants hadn’t even noticed yet.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just this.” He pulled a wadded-up map out of his pocket that had pinholes in each corner. “Found it stuck to the wall in the living room. Favorite trails of the Gerdes family, marked in various colors. There’s blue for easy hiking trails, red for steep ones, and yellow for four-wheel drives…”

  “Crockett told me he dumped the Jeep in Sacramento and stole an SUV. Less conspicuous.”

  “Yeah, he would once he had the kids. Nina, would you try to hike kids up that ridge?”

  They looked up a steep hillside on the left, moist, loose gravel dotted with thick brush, and looked down to their right into an almost-vertical gully that led up to the ten-thousand-foot peaks of Rose Knob and its neighbor mountains on the ridge. “A waterfall!” Nina pointed. “It’s really rugged here.”

  So where would Danny go from here, with two presumably reluctant children and camping gear in tow?

  Paul put a finger to the topo map. “There’s the nearest jeep trail, back to the highway, and then no more than two miles before you turn back this way. I’m guessing, but I think he’ll want to stay around here, on familiar ground, but he can’t hike far with gear and those kids, he really can’t. Your car’s four-wheel drive. Let’s get going.”

  The day before, just about noon in Carmel Valley, Danny had had no trouble luring Callie into the black Jeep. He knew just where she’d be waiting for her bus home at the school-he used to drive her there for Jolene now and then-and she climbed right in when he said Jolene had sent him.

  He cruised with her right down Carmel Valley Road, every nerve on edge, and turned down Esquiline to see if he could find one of Darryl’s kids. And he saw Mikey, his good little buddy, throwing stones off Rosie’s Bridge.

  “You’re supposed to be dead,” Mikey said. The kid’s hair was so short it made his ears stick out at right angles. His mouth was hanging open in puzzlement and curiosity about the big open vehicle Danny was driving, but he didn’t seem all shocked that the ghost of Siesta Court was back haunting him. He just instantly figured out, hey, it was all some bullshit adult mistake. Danny liked that.

  “I got lucky at Vegas. Bought me this Jeep. Wanna drive it?”

  No problem. They went back and got on the Los Laureles Grade toward Salinas, Mikey driving like a little champ, just barely hitting the pedals. Danny had let him tool around some nights in his own old car back in the days before it all went wrong. When Danny finally kicked Mikey out of the driver’s seat, Callie begged to drive.

  He let her sit in his lap and spin the Jeep around an empty parking lot in North Salinas a few times, then took over. “We gotta get started. We want to make Tahoe today.”

  “I can’t go to Tahoe,” Mikey said. “My parents will worry.”

  “That’s a long way,” Callie said, “isn’t it?”

  “Oh, not so far. Don’t worry. Your parents know all about this. They’re meeting us up there. Yeah, the whole neighborhood’s clearing out because of the fires, taking a Fourth of July holiday. We’re gonna have a big party. I had extra room for the trip so they sent me to pick up you guys, that’s all.”

  “What about clothes?” Callie asked. “What about summer school?”

  “Well, this fire thing scared ’em, and they all needed a break. I heard-yeah, Callie, your grandma said she called your teacher, didn’t your teacher tell you?”

  “No. I guess she forgot.”

  “You ever been to Tahoe?”

  Mikey said, “It’s cool. Maybe we can swim in the lake.”

  “That’s it. There are little lakes high up in the mountains. A place called Ginny Lake like a blue jewel-right, like a jewel…”

  They were loving the adventure, and all the good sense in the world went bye-bye temporarily. He played the radio stations they liked, and for a while, they pretended to shoot out the window with cocked fingers aimed at enemies all around. He knew they stood out and the Jeep was a gas hog, so as soon as he could, he switched it for an old Ford Explorer at a rest stop while the kids and the owners were in the bathroom. Luckily, the kids came out first and off they drove. The SUV had leather bucket seats, bottled water, all the conveniences.

  Danny felt like laughing, though the money front was pretty dire. He’d killed Donnelly over seventy-five bucks in Donnelly’s wallet. He’d been sure Donnelly would have a lot of cash somewhere at his place, but before he could find out anything Donnelly came at him and-and-

  And Donnelly lost. Dumb speed freak, he only weighed about a hundred fifty, what made him think he could take Danny?

  “We need something that’ll take the bumps up in Tahoe,” he said. “My friend switched with me for a few days. You ever fished before?” Neither one had fished, and they were both eager to try it. So they accepted what he said the way kids sometimes did, whatever, shrugs, after a few more easy lies.

  In Dixon, they stopped for shakes and burgers at the Carl’s Jr. They fought over what channel to listen to on the radio, but after a while, the carbs and fat did their dirty work, putting both the kids out for the rest of the count. By the time they woke up, it was morning. He had already stopped at his mom’s for his fishing gear, some sleeping bags, and traveling money, and they were at the Gerdes cabin, hungry again.

  “Best way to catch fish in most of the lakes up here is with Power Bait,” Danny said. “Orange. For some reason, that works.” Maybe the fish up here were deprived of the bright colors fish in warmer waters saw every day. They saw the orange bait as something unique and maybe especially tasty, like candy.

  They were sitting by what was really nothing more than a dammed-up part of a stream, but it was big enough to excite Mikey, and Danny needed something to get the kids off his back until he could dope them both up good for the night. He was running on adrenaline, scared, thinking how the whole state would be alarmed by now, thinking about the turning lights on the tops of the sheriffs’ cars. But the kids couldn’t see his fright.

  Having them around comforted him. He had always liked stories about mountain men, off in the woods surviving on the land, but always knew he couldn’t stay out for long because he couldn’t stand being alone. Sitting on the damp new ground cover, looking at the mule ears pushing up from the ground the snow had finally left, he could rest for a second. Mikey swished his little pole through the water and Callie
wandered around, and Danny wished like hell that none of it had happened.

  He should have thought up a better cover story. Like, a kidnapper was after them and their parents wanted them to hide out with Danny for a few days, that would have been so much better. But he never seemed to have time to plan right. He’d get the germ of an idea about how to handle something and the next thing he knew, it blew up into something awful.

  They had spent the morning hours finding and setting up a camp. He liked this location, with the tents butted up against the rocky caverns that kept hibernating bears cozy in winter. He got on his dead phone twice and pretended to check in with George and Darryl. “Yeah, we gotta stick it out tonight all by ourselves, something came up,” he had told them.

  He’d give old George a real call pretty soon, when it was convenient. Good old George, called him a loser, then begged him to do his dirty work, then stiffed him.

  “But we don’t have anything orange,” Mikey was saying, peering into the small fishing kit.

  “We got worms, though.” Danny brought out the night crawlers he had picked up in town, and showed Mikey how to thread one up the shank of a hook, leaving some dangling over. “Use a number six hook for this bait, and blow ’em up with a worm blower.” He showed the kids how. “Another trick is using sugar cubes on a bigger hook,” he said. “That’s the method in clear lakes like Emigrant and Margaret. You fix ’em on the line with rubber bands. You got to cast real carefully, but when they melt in the water, the rubber band comes loose and the worm looks real natural. Or you can always try grasshoppers.”

  “I’m hungry,” Callie said.

  “That’s why we’re catching fish, Callie. To eat. This is Outdoor Camp,” Danny said.

  “I’m cold.” She hugged her little sweater tight.

  “You can’t be cold. It’s eighty degrees!”

  “I am.”

  “Well, sit down here in the sun. That’ll warm you up.”

  “No.”

  “Then go back there in the tent and get your bag to wrap up in,” Danny said, working to keep the meanness he felt out of his voice. “Go on.”