Reilly 09 - Presumption of Death (9 page)

“We’re looking for Willis Whitefeather. Like to ask you some questions.”

“It’s late,” Nina said. “How about your office, tomorrow morning?”

“Sorry. We need to talk to you right now.”

“That won’t be possible.”

“We just received information from the Las Flores Clinic in San Juan Bautista that Mr. Whitefeather has been hiding there. Mr. Whitefeather gave Mr. van Wagoner’s phone number as an emergency contact. Now please listen carefully. If you have any information as to Mr. Whitefeather’s current whereabouts and don’t tell us what you may know,
right now,
Detective Crockett is going to consider that an obstruction of justice. I just want to make that very clear to you tonight.”

Paul and Nina stood there. Paul said softly to her, “Your call, Counsel.”

“Am I very clear?” the officer repeated.

Nina held the door open. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Whitefeather is here.”

Wish was not under arrest, Deputy Grace assured them. But the arson investigator sure did want to talk to him. Now. Down at the station. Alone.

Wish, who appeared in wet hair and a towel, freshly covered in gauze and surgical tape, bleary-eyed and confused, went back into the bathroom and came out in Paul’s clothes. The pant legs rode high on his dirty boots. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be glad to cooperate. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“We’ll come along if you don’t mind,” Paul said.

“We mind,” said Deputy Grace.

“I’m coming,” Nina said.

“Look,” said the second deputy sheriff. The thin bristle on his upper lip in the watery glow of the porch light made him seem to have two upper lips. “He doesn’t need company. We just want to talk to him.”

“I’m his attorney,” she said. She grabbed her briefcase, more to put on the expected official show than because she needed it in this case, since she didn’t have anything inside it except a pad of paper and a pen.

“Take this,” Paul said, sticking her mobile phone into her pocket. “Call me.”

In her rush out the door, she forgot to kiss him good-bye.

The ride through the dark streets to the central police station in Salinas took only minutes in the dead of night. Inside, Crockett waited in his desolate office.

“So, you’re representing Mr. Whitefeather, here,” Crockett said to Nina, turning on his tape recorder without a by-your-leave. Nina noticed for the first time the mirror on the wall, dark on one side only, perhaps. And the video camera mounted in a ceiling corner. “He’s obviously been through some sort of traumatic event. What happened to your eyes, son?”

“Yes, I represent him.”

“You know he hasn’t been charged with a crime? We just want to know what went on up there in the hills above Carmel Valley on Tuesday. That’s where it happened, isn’t it? Where you were injured.”

“I’ve advised my client…” Nina began.

“Yeah. I went up there that day,” Wish said.

Nina punched his arm. “I’ve advised my client not to speak. I know you consider him a suspect for the arson fires. He was Mirandized on the way here.”

“Your client went to a clinic to get treated for burns,” Crockett said. “That’s how we tracked him down. We know he went up there to set fires.”

“Not true!” Wish said. “I went up to the ridge that night because…”

“I told you in the car,” Nina said. “Now are you listening, Wish? Exercise your right to remain silent. Don’t say anything.”

Crockett said, “We have the autopsy report. We know what happened.” He said the words provocatively.

“Autopsy report? Did someone die? Danny? What happened?” Wish cried.

“For the love of… keep quiet, Willis!” Nina said. She couldn’t remember ever saying his formal name out loud before, but circumstances demanded serious measures.

He closed his mouth, but he was stunned by Crockett’s news, already drawing conclusions.

“Massive skull fracture,” David Crockett announced, directing his comments to Nina. Since she had warned Wish to remain silent, Crockett could not, by law, ask him any more direct questions. “The victim, maybe Danny Cervantes, was hit over the head before he was left to sizzle like a piece of shrimp over hot charcoal.”

“What!” Wish said. “Is it Danny?”

“Well,” Crockett backpedaled. Still looking at Nina, he said, “He was up on the ridge with your client setting a fire, wasn’t he?”

Wish jumped up. His metal folding chair clattered to the ground. “No!” he said, and Nina realized he was beyond control.

“Danny wasn’t setting fires!” Wish said. “He was trying to stop the guy!”

“We have a witness,” Crockett said.

“A witness to what?” asked Nina, to keep Wish from opening his mouth again.

“To the arsons. Our witness has ID’d Danny at one of the previous fires.”

Wish stood up. “He would never…”

“We have a witness,” Crockett said. “Oh, and…” he said, directing his comments to Nina, “your client is under arrest.”

“For what?” Nina asked.

“Trespassing.” Crockett smiled. “He was up there running around on private property. He just admitted it.”

And so he had.

6

“S ANDY’S ON A PLANE TO SAN Francisco,” Paul announced on Friday morning as he spread cream cheese on a bagel. They were out on the deck in the crackling morning cold, both wearing heavy white terry-cloth robes that said CAESARS in looping red embroidery.

Hitchcock ate noisily from his bowl. They had just taken him for a good walk. “She lays over two hours and then flies to the Monterey airport. She’ll get in about six.”

“I heard the phone. Thanks for getting up-I just couldn’t.”

“She became somewhat exercised when she heard her son was spending the night in the clink after coming to us for help. Must have been difficult. First he calls and he’s alive and safe. She calls Joseph and everybody sighs with relief. Then she hears that he’s been arrested.”

“Nothing else we could have done. Is she staying with us?”

“She harrumphed and said no way. She said she’d be fine. But I said I’d meet her and cook her dinner. Her and Wish, if you get him out.”

“Great,” Nina said. “I’ll polish up the silver. Queen Victoria is coming.”

“She won’t care about the place. She just wants to see Wish. What time is the bail hearing?”

“Two o’clock.”

“You going to get him out?”

“If they haven’t added the felony charges.”

“How’s the rash?”

“The rash? Oh, the rash! Well, what d’you know. I didn’t itch all last night.”

“Miracle of modern drugs,” Paul said.

“I’m going to be very careful of poison oak in the future, Paul. I don’t want the rash, and I definitely don’t want the prednisone.”

“You did have your ups and downs. Is all that going to change to tranquility now?”

“Absolutely,” Nina said. Paul laughed.

By nine-thirty they were both dressed and the living room looked acceptable for the formidable company they expected later. They went out on the deck and sat down in the metal chairs. Nina said, “Call the meeting to order.”

“I vote we drive out to Carmel Valley Village and talk to Danny’s uncle.”

“The police may be there.”

“So? That ever stop you before?”

“Why don’t we try calling him one more time?”

This time Nina got a message. It said, “This is Ben. Call me on my cell phone.”

She recited the number to Paul, then called it.

“Sí?”

“Mr. Cervantes?” She heard voices and clattering sounds.

“Who is this?” A soft voice, with a Spanish accent.

“My name is Nina Reilly. I’m a friend of Wish Whitefeather’s. Danny’s friend Wish.”

“Yes?”

“I need to talk to you. It’s important. Could we meet somewhere?”

“Why do you want to talk to me?”

“It’s about Danny.”

“Right now is not a good time. Friday the thirteenth is turning out to be as unlucky as the superstition says.”

“Anytime today.”

“I’m sorry. I have to go. You can give me your number-”

“Have the police been in touch with you?” Nina said. “About Danny?”

She heard a sigh. “I am with an officer right now. I am at the county morgue in Salinas and they are about to have me look at-I have to go.”

“Mr. Cervantes, please stay right there and I will meet you in an hour. I’ll wait for you outside.”

“You are not a polite person.”

“You will want to hear what I say.”

“
Bien
. You can wait for me.” She heard a click.

For more than an hour, they waited, watching the people walk in and out of the buildings, talking little, leaving the car windows open to the sun and the breeze. Finally they saw a handsome Mexican-American man in a cowboy hat, white shirt, and jeans coming down the steps toward them. Paul and Nina got out and they shook hands.

His face betrayed nothing and he displayed no interest in Paul’s unannounced presence. “Where do you want to go?”

“We could get in my Mustang,” Paul said. “Good air-conditioning.”

He shook his head. His expression said, I don’t know you.

“The law library inside?”

“I’m not going back in there. Come on.” He led them down the street and Nina noticed his narrow waist and good build. It was her curse to react as a woman to every man she met close to her age.

He ducked inside a short doorway on Main Street near the old Cominos Hotel. A dive, she thought, dark, with red-pepper lights decorating fake cacti along the wall and a long bar holding up two guys playing some kind of dice game. The owners hadn’t felt any need for tables, so she took a bar stool beside Paul.

“Corona,” Cervantes said on the other side of Paul, his voice still soft. Nina ordered a ginger ale and Paul asked for water.

“You probably think I’m a boozer,” Cervantes said. “I need a drink right now, that’s for sure.”

“What happened inside?” Paul asked.

“I saw my nephew all burned up, that’s what happened.” He tipped back the beer glass and set it down and heaved a sigh.

So it was official. The body was Danny. Wish would be crushed. They had all hoped the arsonist had burned himself up.

“Danny’s your nephew?”

“My brother’s son. He was only ten years younger than me.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” Nina said.

“That’s tough,” Paul said.

Cervantes turned on his stool to look at them, finally, and Nina saw that his eyes were red-rimmed. He loved him, she thought. She felt torn between sympathy and a dawning suspicion. He had lived with Danny. What did he know?

“I gave him that concho belt. Last Christmas. The one they showed me. Twelve conchos, black leather. Some of them were gone. Otherwise I don’t know if I could have recognized him, he was so burned up. Poor Danito. God have pity on him.”

“We went there yesterday, to see if it was Wish,” Paul said.

“Wish got lucky. Danny, he never had luck.”

“Wish isn’t so lucky,” Nina said. “He’s in custody. The police think he and Danny were the arsonists.”

“You think they weren’t?”

“We think they went up the mountain to find out who was committing these arsons.”

“Wish told you that?”

“He told us that and we believe it.”

“Huh.” Cervantes digested this. He thought things over before he said anything in that sexy voice of his, but Nina didn’t think he was stupid. “I hope that’s true. The way the police talked, I thought they had some proof-”

“We think the police are blowing smoke,” Paul said, “if you can pardon the expression.”

“Why are you telling me this? What do you want from me?”

“Wish has a bail hearing this afternoon,” Nina said. “Maybe you know something that can help us.”

“I would help you if I could. All I know is, Danny was talking about some big money coming in sometime. I didn’t know what from. I never asked. I told Detective Crockett all this.” He looked even sadder.

“There was a significant reward offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the arsonist. A hundred thousand dollars. Wish told us they went up the ridge to try to get a photo of the arsonist. It was Danny’s idea. And he never mentioned this?”

Cervantes was brightening by the second. “Is this true? I never wanted to believe that Danny was setting fires. I understand this much better. A big reward, yes, that would pull Danny in. But how did they know to go up there that night?”

“Wish says that Danny had some sort of advance information,” Nina said.

“So you think he must have talked to me? The answer is no, I didn’t know anything. Danny-he’d been gone a lot, camping, I don’t know. He was only twenty-one, but he’d been on his own for four years.”

“Family problems?”

“His family lives at Tahoe these days, on the North Shore, King’s Beach. Danny was an only child. His parents both work and moved around a lot, and I think-he just didn’t have much going on up there. What Danny wanted more than anything was to belong, to have friends, to settle down.

“He came down to the Village to stay with me last summer, and I got him a job doing car repair at a shop I worked for until recently. Danny was pretty good, he could sniff out rust, leaks, broken belts. He liked it. He worked hard, but when the shop closed-they got bought out-he couldn’t find anything else. No education, no connections, and like I told you-no luck.”

Paul raised his eyebrows, and Nina asked, “A repair shop? Any chance this was the shop by Rosie’s Bridge? The one that got replaced by a coffee shop?”

The lids narrowed over Cervantes’s warm brown eyes. “Yes. Why?”

“The coffee shop that burned down?”

“Right.” He gave them a challenging look. “And?”

“How did Danny react to losing his job?”

“Now you’re accusing him? You now have decided he set the fires after all? Which is it? Ah, you people.” He turned back to the bar. His moment of trust had passed.

“I’m not saying anything. I was just surprised. Maybe-maybe it’s how Danny found out about the arsonist. Wish said Danny had a license-plate number,” Nina said.

“I don’t know. Danny didn’t hang out with cops. I don’t know where he would hear something like that.”

“How did he get along lately?”