“Teeth. He wasn’t a smiler. Why do you ask?” Dustin said. “Oh. Dental records. Damn. Of course. Danny’s missing too, is that it? And the firebug, it could be he’s the victim. But you only have the one victim. Well, Wish and Danny are both tall and skinny, although I’d say Danny’s more muscular. Both Indian-looking.”
“Native American-looking,” Tustin said.
“Danny’s hair is longer.”
“I don’t know where Danny is,” Paul said. “He may not be missing. Any idea where he lives?”
The Boyz shook their heads. Dustin said, “But they talked about Danny’s uncle. His name was-”
“Ben,” Tustin said.
“That’s it, Ben. He called him
“Did you hear the last name Cervantes?”
“’Fraid not.”
“Still, that’ll help.”
Dustin and Tustin nodded several times.
Nina went on, “What kind of camera did Wish take with him?”
“A Canon. Digital, with a megazoom lens. He just bought it at Costco with some birthday money and his first paycheck.”
“What was Wish wearing?”
“Uh, denims. Denim jacket. I don’t know what underneath. Same old Bob Marley T-shirt as always, I guess,” Tustin said.
“He’s a good guy,” Dustin said. “Quiet and no creepy habits.”
“Let’s check his room,” Paul said, getting up. Tustin led the way down the short dark hall. Nina’s memories of the place flooded up, Aunt Helen and her mother cooking on Easter Sunday in the kitchen, Nina years later carrying Bob from the bedroom when he woke up coughing with a high fever one night, through that very hall, out to the rattletrap Chevy she drove then, and the doctor saying he had pneumonia… those had been desperate times. She put her hand on Paul’s broad back in front of her.
They crowded into the smaller bedroom at the rear of the house, Bob’s kindergarten bedroom. Wish had taken down the blinds over the window in back and left the window open. Sunflower heads waved through it from the tiny overgrown backyard and the room felt swept by air.
Wish’s bookshelf, full of the thick textbooks on criminal justice he had studied the previous year, sat in one corner. Aunt Helen’s old upholstered chair in a yellow-and-green flower pattern sat in the other, and there was just room for a conference table squeezed along the wall, stacked high with auto tools, comic books, CDs and DVDs and a DVD player under the tiny TV.
In the closet, T-shirts, ten or twelve of them, folded on the upper shelf, an empty duffel on the floor, and several plaid flannel shirts that Nina recognized from Tahoe.
The room smelled like Wish, a dusty outdoors smell, the scent of a living breathing person, and this even more than his shirts frightened Nina. Wish might really be dead. He had been her friend, a cheerful, innocent, eager spirit in her life, too young to be an equal, too old to be a son. Paul too seemed moved. He searched with irritable, feverish efficiency, running his hands over the shirts, checking pockets, unfolding cuffed pants, pushing behind baskets on the closet shelf, searching.
“Nothing,” he said.
Nina, at the conference table, said, “Here’s his organizer.” Sandy had given him one of those leather notebooks full of index tabs and pockets for his twenty-first birthday. In gold letters on the cover she read, “Willis Whitefeather.” She opened it. Tabs for addresses, calendars, notes, expenses. Flipping through it, she saw many small crabbed notes and doodles.
She turned to the addresses and looked under the C’s and D’s.
“Got it,” she said. “A phone number with the name
Paul came over and wrote it down. He said to the Boyz, “We’re going to borrow this.”
“Paul, it might be evidence. Maybe we should just shut the door and leave it-”
“Put it in your purse,” Paul said. Nina opened her mouth and closed it. She put the organizer in her purse.
They said a few reassuring words to the Boyz and went outside. Nina held her heavy purse protectively, as though Wish’s life were in there. She was thinking that Sandy would want the organizer. Wish had left so little behind.
They stopped at the Bookshelf on Lighthouse for coffee. Nina leafed through the book.
“What else is in there?” Paul said, bringing coffees and a sandwich for Nina.
“Remember how he draws on his notes? He’s worse than I am,” Nina said. She showed him a penciled sketch of a sunflower. “He must have been lying on his bed and just picked up his pencil and drew this. I saw the flower outside his window. He can’t be dead, Paul.”
“He can’t. What else?”
“Well, on the calendar for this week, an eye appointment. I remember he was saying he thought he needed glasses. That’s it.”
“No girlfriend down here yet, I guess. I saw a photo of Brandy Taylor on the bookshelf.”
Thinking of Wish’s attraction to a young witness a few months before, Nina felt even worse. Wish had been downright noble about reconciling Brandy with her fiance.
“He got pulled in casually by his friend,” she said. “He just went along for the ride. Who knows what Danny told him? He couldn’t have known there would be a fire.” She swallowed some of her tuna sandwich and opened the notebook to the tab marked Notes.
“Oh, Paul. He wrote down some self-improvement stuff here. He tried so hard.”
“Tries.”
“Tries. Listen to this: ‘Goals: B-plus average. Get a girlfriend. Note: must like hiking. Be cool with Mom, be patient. Show Paul’ ”-Nina faltered and her voice thickened-“‘show Paul I am the best.’ ”
There was a long silence.
“You know he idealizes you,” Nina said finally. “He jumped at the chance to come down here and learn from you.”
Paul’s jaw clenched. “Give me your cell phone.” He pulled out the note he’d made with Danny’s phone number.
Danny didn’t answer, and Paul didn’t want to leave a phony message. “We’ll try again,” he said. “Let’s go over to my office. Wish might have called or stopped by.”
“Good. I want to call Community Hospital.”
“Davy’s certainly already done that.”
“Well, I’m going to do it again. Then I’ll call the morgue and see if they’re finished.”
On the way back over the hill to Carmel, Nina said, “I hadn’t been in Aunt Helen’s house for a while. The cleaners are supposed to tell me if they notice any problems.”
“Looked okay to me.”
“I meant to check the Boyz’ bedroom, see what they chucked in there when we called and said we were coming.”
Paul pulled into the passing lane. “They rent the place. It’s theirs. Leave them alone.”
Nina had another moment of shock, the same shock she had felt when Paul told her to take the organizer. He was challenging her judgment, telling her what to do about her own business. Paul did it so naturally, assuming the role as if it were his…Was it his? He seemed so strong sitting there beside her. He never questioned himself, while her whole life right now was a question.
She didn’t even have a business card. Something gave way beneath her and she slid into doubt. “I don’t like you telling me what to do,” she said. It came out sounding whiny.
“Well, I like it,” Paul said. He laughed and zoomed beyond the speed limit past Junipero toward Ocean Avenue, though the right lane was choked with tourists.
The irritation swept over her again. She was sick with worry about Wish, but this person beside her suddenly annoyed her so much! It is hopeless, she told herself, angry and pained.
Paul, oblivious, drove on, and after a while her anger turned back into confusion. Sitting next to him, she struggled again to understand what was between them.
He bent forward, looking hard ahead into the traffic like Ahab eyeballing the foamy brine for his whale, joyful in the midst of tension, his eyes bright and intent. She experienced the heavy shoulders next to her, the capable hands, the solidity of his body, and she caught his happiness at being fully engaged and out on a chase, even a chase that might lead to tragedy. If he had let his tongue hang out, panting joyfully like Hitchcock, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
He’s a big yellow Lab! she thought.
His aggressive energy, his lack of subtlety, his disdain for people who live in their heads-of course, since he lived in his legs!-she could live with that, she could love that, if she could only remember this moment, when she was finally in contact with his powerful, furry, canine essence.
Guess I just like big dogs, she thought to herself.
She leaned her head back on the seat, closed her eyes, and told herself that it could be worse. Paul, better than any man she had known, focused all this energy and wholeheartedness and bright-eyed intensity on her at night.
He had his way of loving her. He would click the dead bolt downstairs, turn off the light, and come noiselessly into the bedroom in the dim light of the seashell night-light. He would look a long time at her lying on the bed, and at those moments she knew for certain that she was the only one he wanted, knew it right down to the marrow. When he lowered himself onto her, arms supporting his weight, eyes looking into her eyes, he was fully involved, fully loving her. Simple and wholehearted, no question about how he felt.
No, it’s not hopeless, not hopeless at all, she thought, her eyes still closed, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
With this comprehension, some worries about their incompatibilities fell away. Amused now, she turned her head to the left to see him and he looked back, winked, and got back to driving. As she let her hand move to his thigh and rub it, feeling the long muscle contract as he accelerated, she thought, he’s an experience I can’t imagine ever denying myself again.
“What?” he said, catching her smile.
“I was thinking about your song. About the love monster. May I add a verse?”
“Sure.”
“It goes like this”:
“I like it. You have talent. We’ll see just how much tonight.”
They entered the quaint tourist town of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Taking a right on Ocean, Paul had to slow down for traffic. The sidewalks were choked with early-season tourists from Germany and France, meandering along among the flowers and antique stores. They took another right onto Dolores Street and pulled into a secret parking area behind the Hog’s Breath Inn and the Eastwood
