A couple of miles in, Southbank Road forked. They followed the right fork and continued uphill in the dirt. Paul adjusted the gears of the Bronco into four-wheel drive and they powered on, raising a plume of dust behind. Soon they came to a last group of new and expensive homes with glorious views, the end of the road. A trail continued up toward the crest of the hill, and they saw what the fire had wrought.
A black, still-smoky swath of forest stretched above them. They got out, not bothering to leash Hitchcock, and Nina swung the pack on her back, tied on the scarf, and pulled on her gloves. As hot as she was, she’d probably die of heat prostration, but she preferred that to dying of itching from poison oak.
“C’mon, mutt,” Paul said. Nina, gratified, saw that Hitchcock looked her way for a nod, then waited for her to attach the leash to his collar.
They hiked up the trail where Wish and Danny had gone, Hitchcock pulling hard on the leash. Black tree trunks and fallen charred limbs littered the ground. Hollows and habitats lay exposed. No birds, no squirrels. No green anymore, not even the dry olive-green of central California.
“A lot of acreage burned,” Paul said, walking along with his eyes on the trail. “There might have been footprints, but the firefighters had to come through here to fight the fire. It’s all scuffed up. Stinks, doesn’t it?”
“Guess it even burned up my favorite plant,” Nina said. But she kept the scarf on.
Paul took photos of the trail, the skyline, the devastation. “Wish asked me what kind of camera to get, so I told him about my Canon,” he said, stopping just ahead to look at a tree branch that held a torn piece of yellow cloth. “He was doing so well at the office. I had him working a special detail with the security staff at the La Playa Hotel. They liked him and asked me if he might want full-time work. He was helping me with the paperwork on a divorce case I’m handling too.”
“I remember when he first came into my office in South Lake Tahoe,” Nina said. “He came to pick Sandy up, and he looked around the office like it was the most glamorous thing on earth.”
“What I always liked about Wish is, he’s enthusiastic.”
“We’ll get him out,” Nina said.
“Maybe Sandy can scare up the bail money from one of her pink-cheeked fellows. She’s in Washington, after all.”
“It’s a ridiculous amount. But if I go in again and ask for a reduction, this judge might make it a no-bail instead.”
“Salas? I’ve heard he’s erratic.”
“Well, you’ll hear a lot of rumors,” Nina said. “Just because he happens to be a Latino.”
“You’re standing up for him? I thought you said he called you a smart-mouth in open court.”
“It’s kind of refreshing. I was being slightly, uh-”
“Mouthy?”
“Forthright. Perhaps unduly forthright. Anyway, he’s got to be under a lot of pressure. So what have you got there?”
“A piece of cloth.”
“I know that. I’ve got eyes.”
Paul whipped out a Ziploc bag and put the cloth in it. Then he wrote a note in his black notebook. “I wonder why the arson investigator didn’t take it.”
“It’s probably his.” They continued up, Hitchcock close behind. He didn’t seem to want to get out in these woods.
Nina went on, “It’s getting damn steep. Imagine how frightening it must have been, late at night. I wonder how Wish could see to run down.”
Paul tapped his noggin and said, “That’s why you’re a lawyer and not an arson investigator.”
“Huh?”
“The forest was on fire. He had more light than we do.”
“Oh, right. Look, there’s a hawk.” It flew high above them, riding the currents, circling like a news helicopter over the story of devastation.
They walked the entire extent of the fire, all the way to the top of the hill. Nina saw no sign of the spot where Danny’s body had been found. She wouldn’t even have the police reports to look at until after the arraignment. She tried to imagine it, Wish lost in that crackling hell, Danny disappearing, and then the hand with the rock.
What kind of person had done this?
Looking around them from the top of the ridge, they could see several hundred feet below. This fire had been set with no regard for human life, as there were homes directly below-or maybe the homes had been the targets? “We should find out who lives in all the homes that were threatened,” she said.
“We have to prioritize,” Paul told her. “I’ll get on that soon, but right now, I think we better concentrate on the sure thing we do know-that one of the arsonists seems to live on Siesta Court. Look down. See the river we crossed to get onto Southbank? The riverbed, anyway. It’s almost dry. Siesta Court’s hidden in the oaks down there. Let’s go down and take a look at it.”
“I don’t want to blow my cover for tonight,” Nina said. “What if some of the neighbors are out?”
“Well, I’d like to see, since I wasn’t invited to the party. You keep wearing that scarf and the sunglasses. They’ll think you’re Winona Ryder on a shopping spree.”
They walked back down and Hitchcock drank some water, and then wound down Hitchcock Canyon in the Bronco. At the bottom of the Robles hill they came back to the substantial steel bridge over the river, which Nina remembered was called Rosie’s Bridge. Across the bridge, Esquiline Road and the hill sloped up again toward the Village, and halfway up they could see the remains of the model home that had burned down in the first fire. Tractors and forklifts and stacks of materials were parked along Esquiline, indicating that a cleanup had commenced. At the top of the slope, where Carmel Valley Road ran, they could just see the handicapped facility of Robles Vista through what remained of the grasses and trees.
They stopped the car on Esquiline along a fence just before they came to Rosie’s Bridge. Pointing to the narrow lane that ran along the river to their right, a dirty street sign read SIESTA COURT.
“We’ll just put ol’ Hitchcock back on his leash and take him for a sedate walk,” Paul said. “Don’t worry, you are unrecognizable.”
“Oh, why not.” They turned the corner and began walking down Siesta Court, trying not to look conspicuous as they passed the houses.
Nina thought more about the Spanish and Mexican history of the area as they strolled up to the road sign and turned right. Don Jose Manuel Boronda, Dona Catalina Manzanelli de Munras, and many other figures from the past had lived, loved, and died along the banks of the Carmel River. They built adobe houses, they nurtured pears, grapes, apricots, nectarines, cherries, they raised racehorses… they fought off the wildcats and coyotes, and even, until 1900, the grizzly bears that hunted through these wild lands. Though the grizzlies had gone, the occasional mountain lion still prowled along the riverbanks.
On the river side of Siesta Court a wall of riprap bordered the street, softened by buttercups and shooting stars that managed to root in and beautify the ugly concrete. A path made by owners and their dogs ran along the top, and they walked along it. The riverbed below on their left was at least eighty feet wide, only a streamlet hinting at its winter might. On the far side, a bank overgrown with laurel bushes lay below the scars of the first arson fire.
They reached the shadow of a mighty oak that had been allowed to remain when the riprap was laid down, one of the ubiquitous
Across the lane, snug under the leaves, a few houses slept in a straggling row. On this hot, still afternoon, the lane was quiet. A couple of golden retrievers came sniffing out from their naps under the trees.
“Imagine what the Green River development will do to this street,” Nina said, looking across the river to the hillside. “These folks will be staring at a hillside of identical roofs instead of greenery. Actually, the people in the condos will be looking down at them. It’ll be like moving from the country to the city without even having to pack.”
Paul pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and studied it. “Let’s start at this corner. That first house, with the chain-link fence around it-that’s owned by a couple named George and Jolene Hill.”
“How do you know that?”
“Went on the Web while you were getting dressed and accessed the county real-estate records. Since we were coming out here.”
“You’re good. I’m impressed.”
“Especially in bed.” He drew a finger down her sleeve. “Ah. I can still make you blush. A hard-nosed legal eagle like you.”
The yard was lush with hollyhocks and roses. A tire swing hung off the tree beside the old white cottage. BEWARE OF DOG, said a metal sign affixed to the fence. Nina saw a dog bowl on the porch. “Gardeners?” she said.
“Let’s see now. George and Jolene have lived here since 1970,” Paul said. “That’s when they bought it, anyway. Paid forty thousand for the property. The house is probably worthless, but they do have a half-acre. The land alone must be worth more than half a million now.”
“That much?”
They were now across from the second house. A bigger contrast could not be imagined. The Hill house on the corner was set modestly back from the road, but this house with its two stories and portico sat right on the street and seemed to fill the whole lot.
“Theodore and Megan Ballard,” Paul said. “Bought six years ago, just before the river flooded. Razed the old house and built this postmodern thing.” A blue BMW convertible sat in the driveway. “Somebody’s a telecommuter,” Paul said. “I can smell the vanilla soy latte from a mile away.”
“No sign of kids,” Nina said. “Big incomes and they collect retro fifties furniture, is my guess.”
“Living the good life. I’m gonna say, a pair of computer analysts.”
“Techies. And the house is all made of ticky-techie.” At a tall laurel that overhung the riprap, they caught up with Hitchcock, who was involved in an investigation of his own.
“Okay. Grass and neat flower beds on Number Three, middle of the block, old house but big and comfortable,” Nina said. “A home-loving woman lives here.”
“You’re such a sexist. Men make better gardeners.”
“Men are good with grass, I agree. But not with these delicate flowers, not with these pretty patterns,” Nina said.
“Well, all I can say is that Sam and Debbie Puglia own this place,” Paul said, consulting his notes.
“Looks like a big new deck out back. I wonder if that is where the party will be.” As Nina spoke, a middle-aged woman in shorts and a halter lumbered out the back door, which they could see at an angle, and disappeared onto a corner of the deck. Paul and Nina turned toward the river and stood together.
“Debbie?”
“The age is right. Sam and Debbie bought the house twenty years ago, and she’s in her mid-forties, I’d guess.”
“Sam’s at work,” Nina guessed. “Debbie doesn’t have a car. She likes Sam to drive anyway and she has plenty to do at home during the day.”
“See how easy it is, this investigating?” Paul said. “You just generalize and stereotype and it all comes together.”
“We could be dead wrong.”
“We probably are. But we can learn something from houses, from the way they’re kept, that sort of thing.”
“My picture of that lady over there doesn’t include sneaking up the hill at night to set fires.” Nina knelt down to give Hitchcock a pat. “Doesn’t it have to be a man, from Wish’s description?”
“No. Recall that he didn’t get that opportunity to ‘grab and twist.’ He just thought about it, right after he went down.”
“It must be a man. He killed Danny with a rock. He attacked Wish. He sets fires.”
“There you go again. I ever tell you about the woman weight lifter from Los Angeles who strangled her boyfriend? It took four cops to subdue her.”
