Perri O'Shaughnessy - Presumption Of Death

Because it was so late at night, they made the six-hour trip in five hours, the Bronco flying up the long slog through the foothills as lightly as a flag in the breeze. The mountains, usually a daunting prospect, offered clear sailing, twinkling stars, and a polished moon to light the way. They arrived just a little after seven-thirty on Thursday morning.

Located at the end of the highway from Truckee, stopped cold by the big lake, the road split at King’s Beach to circle Tahoe in both directions, the eastern branch taking the Nevada side to the casinos of North Lake Tahoe, and the western branch moving along the California side of the lake past Emerald Bay until it reached the South Lake Tahoe casinos.

At the junction, a shadowy blue in the early-morning light, Paul turned right, then right again into the first gas station. Nina and Sandy stirred, murmured, found their shoes, and coughed a few times, complaining about the dry mountain air. After several minutes, while Paul pumped gas into the Bronco, they emerged, fresh-skinned, hair brushed into place. They drove a little farther along to the supermarket, where Nina told him to stop.

While they bought hydrogenated treats for breakfast, water bottles, and coffee in large containers, Paul moved into the passenger’s seat, looked away into the mirror, and realized he had forgotten his razor. But instead of running in to buy another to make himself presentable, he put his head back and closed his eyes.

When he woke up, they were parked in front of a crudely built log cabin with a weedy flagstone pathway leading to a door with a single step up. No porch or overhang softened the furious winter’s passion or this morning’s mountain sun. Sandy got out, motioning them to remain behind.

“You drove?” he asked Nina. They were parked on a slight rise on the northern part of the little town.

“You got a solid ten minutes’ sleep. That plus what you got before I woke you up ought to keep us going for the day. Sandy’s inside with Danny’s mother. Want some coffee?” She handed him a cup, which he eagerly slurped. After drinking half the cup, he ate a sticky roll without examining the ingredients.

Nina rolled the windows down. “See the white pines?” she said, her voice nostalgic. “The scent of Tahoe. Oh, Paul. I’ve missed Tahoe.”

As they watched the cabin, a yellow porch light came on.

“You think she’ll tell Sandy where he is?”

At that moment, Sandy appeared in the doorway and beckoned them inside.

“So you came.” An unusually tall woman, made taller by the lowness of the ceilings, Connie Cervantes stepped back into the gloom of her cabin and allowed them to enter. “I was hoping you wouldn’t.”

“They had to,” Sandy answered. “This is Nina. And this is Paul.” They all shook hands.

Across from the front door on the opposite wall Nina saw a stone fireplace with an efficient insert for holding the heat in winter, and wood in the wood box even now, because June at Tahoe still meant cool nights. Over a mile high in the Sierras, people around the lake could find themselves in the midst of a snowstorm any month of the year. Sandy went straight to a table and chairs under the single window in the room; they all sat down and looked through it at the rocky yard with its low stone wall. A couple of blue jays squabbled in the pine tree by Connie’s gate.

“Snow’s all melted,” Sandy said.

“For the next three months anyway.” Sunken-eyed and older than she had first appeared, Connie wore blue jeans and a sweatshirt. Black hair now going gray flowed down her back. She hadn’t looked again at Nina and Paul; her expression wasn’t exactly hostile, but she was struggling with some inner turmoil, which preoccupied her so totally that she had little interest in her visitors, and Nina felt sure she never would have talked with them at all if she hadn’t known Sandy. Nina folded her hands and listened while Paul rocked a little in his chair and kept his eyes down.

Sandy said in her matter-of-fact voice, “Where’s Gary?”

“Staying with his sister in San Diego for a while.” Danny’s parents had been married for thirty years, Nina knew, but Sandy hadn’t mentioned a separation.

Sandy and Connie seemed to be continuing some old conversation. Sandy said, “You remember my husband, Joseph? Well, he went and broke his foot. He was cutting down some limbs behind the house and tripped over a rock. He’s home in Markleeville right now.”

“Left all this trouble for you to clean up.”

“Now that’s not fair. He’d help if he could.”

“He ran out on you before.”

“He came back. What about Gary? Is he coming back?” Sandy asked.

“Let me know when you find out,” Connie said.

“Oh, so that’s how it is.”

“I’m workin’ at least. In the cashier cage at the CalNeva. Right up the road at Crystal Bay. Gary has the car, but the bus goes right there.”

“Good money?”

“Enough to keep this place going. When you comin’ back to Tahoe?”

“Pretty soon. I’ll see you at the powwow in August.” Connie got up and went into the other room, returning wearing a shawl over her sweatshirt. The little room was cold and dreary, and Nina wanted to gather the information and leave, but forced herself to stay patient. She imagined the older woman returning from her job day after day, sitting at this table, looking out, as the snow came and the heat of summer and then the snow again.

“So you’re chasing my son,” Connie said to Sandy as she sat back down. “You didn’t say anything to the police, like you promised?”

“Nobody knows but these two,” Sandy answered, waving a hand at Paul and Nina. “They just want to stop him.”

“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.”