Reilly 09 - Presumption of Death (47 page)

“He loves kids. You’re crazy if you think he’d hurt a kid.”

“Maybe,” Sandy said.

“He kidnapped two kids? You’re sure about that?” She paused, then went on, “I guess you wouldn’t drive all the way up here if you weren’t sure.”

“If we find him and there aren’t any kids, that’ll be great. But see, the kids are gone and it looks like Danny.”

Connie closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers and said, “I thought something was wrong when he got here. He likes it here a lot when Gary’s not around, and he would normally stay a few days if he came up. But he was in a big hurry. He didn’t look right, and he didn’t talk right. I thought maybe he was on drugs, but now I think he was just very scared.”

“He let everyone think he was dead,” Sandy said. “How did he explain that?”

“It wasn’t a big plot. I asked him, and he said nobody really cared one way or another. I told him I did, and he just said, ‘Well, you.’ ” She swallowed and put one bony hand over the other, as if to hold it still.

“I hate to say it,” Sandy told her, “you know I hate to say it. But if we don’t find him right away somebody really could die.”

Connie frowned deeply. In the back room Nina heard a clock ticking. Apparently Sandy had spared Connie the details of all that Danny might have done.

“Tell us what happened when he came,” Sandy persisted.

Connie, who seemed to be still deciding whether to steer them toward Danny or not, said, “That time when they’re nineteen, twenty… it’s the hardest time for a boy. Figure out what you’re gonna work at, figure out who you’re gonna marry. They don’t realize they’ve got time, they can go slow, the weight of all of it crashes down and they feel like they can’t do it, growing up is too hard. Danny tried. He went to Ben’s and tried to work, tried to do it right.”

“He did,” Sandy said, nodding.

“He was always lonely. We moved so much. Two months here, six months there… Danny never had a chance to stay put and have real friends, except that year or so we spent in Markleeville, living near you and Wish, Sandy. The happiest times Danny had growing up were with Wish,” she said. “You know, Danny was a little older… he felt like a leader with Wish.”

“Led him straight into trouble,” Sandy said, “that time they set the tree on fire.”

Nina bit her lip. So Danny had been with Wish during that first prank involving the stump of a tree. She should have known!

Connie did not look offended at the comment, taking it as Sandy offered it, as fact, not as criticism. She played with the fringe of her shawl and said, “Normal life never seemed exciting enough. He started playing with explosives and fire, always getting up to something he shouldn’t. I tried to keep better track, to stay through one entire school year in the same area, but there’s a time with kids, a right time, and I had missed it being busy, working all the time, trying to keep us in food. He wouldn’t talk to me anymore.

“Ben found that job for him at the car-repair shop in Carmel Valley. He was good at that. He loved cars. I really thought things were looking hopeful for him finally.”

“I hear he was good at it,” Sandy said. Her calm kept them all calm, especially Connie.

“Then the business got sold. But Wish had come to town by then, and Ben says he was happy to have a buddy again. But then Ben says Wish decided to part ways with Danny.”

“He did. I won’t say he didn’t.”

“Another time things that could have gone good went bad,” Connie said half-angrily. “Danny made me promise not to tell anybody he came here, and now look at me, I’m breaking my promise to him. His whole life is one broken promise.”

“Stop. Stop it. You took the best care of him you could. You’re still taking care of him by helping us get ahold of him. That’s being a good mother. You know it.”

“He’ll hate me.”

“Don’t-”

“It’s all right. He will hate me, because he’s got a soul-sickness, but that’s how it has to be. You know, we had a funeral for him. Flowers and speeches. Twenty-one years old, and we thought he was dead. We laid him in the ground. I suffered through my boy’s death. I can’t quite believe he’s still alive. But seein’ as how he is, I want your word that you won’t bring in the police if I tell you what I know.”

“I can’t swear that, he’s so far gone,” Sandy said. “But tell me anyway.”

After a long silence, Connie said, “He needed money.”

“How much did you give him?”

“Everything I had. Three hundred dollars.”

“What was he driving?”

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.”