Perri O'Shaughnessy - Presumption Of Death

“Is the autopsy report completed?” Nina said to the female lab assistant accompanying them. She was realizing that, if this was Wish, Sandy would need help to call a mortuary and-surely she would want Wish sent back home?

Better not think about that now.

“This morning, but the report hasn’t been approved.” This small young woman had a Spanish accent, a large mole on her chin, and a businesslike attitude.

“Findings?” Paul said.

“I don’t know much. You’ll have to go through the channels for finals.” They came to the drawer. She unlocked it and Paul helped her pull it out in a blast of frigid air.

A long, blackened, naked body lay supine in the drawer like a specimen in some hideous experiment. Cracked-looking flaps of skin hung off the charred and blackened arms and legs. The arms were pulled up as if to protect the chest. The abdomen was concave, as though emptied of its contents. An acrid, wet-charcoal smell wafted up.

“Oh, God.” Nina looked away, then back at the body. She forced herself to look for some sign of Wish. Long bones, some burned black hair hanging lankly over the skull-the skull, oh, boy, the skull-

Nina walked off a few steps. Paul continued to look. “What else did they find?”

“The remains of a concho belt,” the lab assistant said, observing without emotion. “You know, leather with those silver things. We have partial black leather boots, Doc Martens. Laces burned off. Tatters of white T-shirt and jeans on the backside of the body.”

“A concho belt?” Paul said. “Nina, go outside and call the Boyz. Ask them.” Nina was staring at the skull, which still held on to the patch of long dark hair. DNA, she thought. They’ll find out eventually.

“I can’t tell if it’s him, Paul,” she blurted.

“Go on. I’ll talk to this lady for a minute.”

Nina went. In the bathroom outside, she rinsed her mouth and threw water on her face. She took a brush to her hair, sloughing off the black mask of death she had just seen. Outside, she breathed the blessed air, got into the hot car, and called the Boyz.

“This is Tustin.”

“Hi. It’s Nina. Tustin, will you please try to remember, and ask your brother-was Wish wearing one of those leather belts with silver conchos on it? You know what I mean?”

“Huh?”

“Silver decorative disks, engraved with designs. They attach to the leather of the belt. Was he?”

“Got me. Just a minute.” He was gone more than a minute. Paul came toward the car, worry lines etching his usually smooth forehead.

“Hey,” Tustin said into the phone. Nina held her breath. “Sorry, I don’t remember. Wish had on that denim jacket.”

“What about Danny?”

“He had that long-sleeved cammy jacket buttoned up pretty well.”

She punched off. “I need to call Sandy,” she told Paul. “It could be Danny.”

“Don’t tell her that. Just tell her we’re on it.”

“You’re not convinced?”

“We ought to wait until a final identification is made before we give Sandy hope that it isn’t Wish.”

“Where to now?” Nina said as she dialed Sandy’s number.

“Home. Regroup. We’re only human.”

“And we try to reach Danny again?”

“Right.”

T HEY STOPPED AT THE NOB HILL in South Salinas on the way home. While they picked out artichokes and fish to grill, pushing their cart among tired women farmworkers in bandannas covered with baseball caps, Nina thought back to the Raley’s in South Lake Tahoe, the buzzing expectancy of the fun-loving tourists trolling its aisles for frozen daiquiri mixes, cigarettes, lowbrow magazines, all manner of things they forbade themselves back home in the lands of political and dietary correctness.

Tahoe, lake of the free and the damned. She felt a pang of homesickness, and wished fervently that she had never dragged Wish down here. He had come because she had come.

Back at Paul’s, where the air smelled of eucalyptus, Paul poured wine for her and Tecate for himself, then put the charcoal on to heat. Changing swiftly into shabby brown shorts, he disappeared into the bedroom, where Nina heard keys clicking.

Hitchcock nudged her. “Sorry, boy,” she said. “Let’s do it.” She placed her wineglass in the refrigerator. Attaching Hitchcock to his leash, she followed the bounding black dog outside and up Paul’s street, permeated with ocean scents.

At the end of a long block she stopped and unhooked him, pulling his favorite grimy ball out of her pocket. She tossed it toward the tall golden grass of an empty lot into the abalone sky. Hitchcock flew to the ball, slapped it around in his mouth, then hustled back to her, dropping the ball at her feet. He repeated this operation dozens of times, untiring, ever thrilled.

Tonight his joy couldn’t lift her spirits. Guileless Wish was gone, maybe forever. All he’d ever wanted was to follow Paul around and get his degree and help people. She bent down to scratch the back of her knee.

A black thing about four inches across moved on the asphalt beside them. A tarantula! Fascinated, woman and dog stared. The tarantula lifted a hairy black leg and seemed to scratch itself too, in an arachnoid salute.

The spider didn’t seem inclined to scurry off, and it was blocking their path. Hitchcock kept his nose out of reach, wary.

Nina stamped her foot.

No reaction. The tarantula’s glossy eyes didn’t blink. It stared them down.

“It’s time to go back anyway, boy,” Nina told Hitchcock. They turned around and hastened back to the line of condos below.

Hitchcock circled and plopped on his favorite spot in the living room, while Nina hid the slimeball and then washed her hands in hot water.

Nina made dinner while Paul worked in the bedroom. Fish and rice, the food of lovers, guaranteed not to cause gas.

She hurried outside to flip the ahi, located a blue bowl, which she filled with rice and carried to the table, pulled asparagus out of the steamer, squeezing lemon over Paul’s portion and dolloping her own with butter, then set the fish on a dish on the table.

Fish. Dish. Wish. All the time, thinking about Wish. She was beginning to mourn.

She called Paul, picked up her napkin, and wiped under her eyes.

Paul practically leapt to his place, as if he were the one who had just spent half an hour playing with the dog. He rubbed his hands together, and took a big whiff of the meal.

“Phone rang while you were out,” he said.

“Sandy again?” Their earlier phone call had been brief and unsatisfying. Sandy seemed not to understand the full picture, or, more likely, she was intentionally and stubbornly obtuse about what might have happened to Wish, and Nina didn’t really want to trash her illusions.

“No. Your dad. He wants to see you.”

“Oh. He called last week too. Somehow, because I’m only a few miles from him, there’s a shorter leash, or something. He expects a lot of contact.”

“And why not?” Paul asked. “He’s getting on. You’re close by for once.”

Nina ran her hand through her hair. “I can’t worry about him right now. I’m too worried about Wish. Dad’s fine. He’s got his thirty-year-old wife and his four-year-old son. Ten years younger than Bob, his grandson. All this generation-skipping stuff gets me down.”

“All so modern,” Paul said, taking seconds on the fish and the rice. “Want to know what I’ve been doing while you, who swear you cannot cook, were casually whipping up this superb meal?”

“What?”

“Computer chicanery, pirated software, reverse directory.”

“Uh huh.”

“That phone number in Wish’s book for Danny Cervantes? Well, we now have an address. It’s gotten so simple to find addresses from phone numbers these days. Google does it in ten seconds.”