“A little worse than average.”
“Did something happen?”
“I have a patient in therapy not of their own volition. They’re on a court order. And that makes for an incredibly challenging dynamic.”
“The lightbulb doesn’t want to change.”
“The lightbulb doesn’t even know it’s a lightbulb,” she said. “It thinks it’s the sun.”
“Maybe you’re ready for a new career, too.”
“Maybe I am.”
“What’s it gonna be?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but it definitely requires us to move to Paris.”
“Diplomatic corps.”
“Too much pressure.”
“Baguette baker.”
“Too early.”
“Fashion designer.”
“I already work with the mentally ill,” she said. “I think I’ll be a roving street photographer.”
“Bullseye. What do I do in Paris?”
“Teach basketball fundamentals to disadvantaged European youths.”
I started to hum.
“What are you singing?” she said.
“The theme song to House Hunters International.”
“It’s so cute that you think that’s how it goes.”
“This bright young American family,” I said, “has a budget of eleven dollars.”
“Not sure we can be in the city center for that.”
“I’m fine being a little outside.”
Amy laughed and rested her head on my shoulder, and we watched dusk purple the lawn.
I said, “We do have money now.”
She sat up. “You know we can’t touch that. It’s for her education.”
“I’m just pointing out that if we don’t have to set as much aside for the future, we’ve got some wiggle room in the present.”
“Not enough to quit our jobs and move to Paris.”
“No. But if you were really unhappy and wanted to leave, we’d find a way.”
“Thank you.”
“You did it for me,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Do you ever regret it?”
“Leaving the bureau?”
She nodded.
Captain Bakke’s top-floor office.
Her flat voice mouthing words of concern.
We need to be realistic, Clay.
The theme of the conversation: realism, and my need for it.
It’s not that I don’t value you as an individual.
But we need, you and I, to be honest about your service record, and think realistically about your future.
“Not for one second,” I said. “Refill?”
“You’re trying to get me drunk.”
“Is it working?”
“I won’t rule it out.”
She handed me her glass. I went to the kitchen, took the Chardonnay from the fridge.
“Clay,” Amy called.
I figured she’d heard one of the kids crying. But the house was quiet, and she was crossing the living room with my buzzing phone.
The number had a 559 area code. I recognized it. I’d dialed it a week ago.
“Clay Edison.”
“This is Tara Moore,” she said. “I want to talk to you about my boy.”
Chapter 23
Five-five-nine was Fresno, three hours southeast of San Leandro. Tara Moore’s ground-floor apartment fronted to a noisy drag blighted by strip malls, gas stations, and bottom-feeder motels.
She’d left the door open but the security screen locked. I rang, heard plodding footsteps, saw her shape darken the grate. She cupped her eyes to it before turning the dead bolt.
Old forty or a young fifty, dishwater blond and haggard. A long-sleeved T-shirt declared that Life Is Good. Its wearer appeared unconvinced.
“Come in.”
The apartment reeked of stale tobacco. Tidy, though everything had been used well past replacement point, luster scrubbed down to raw flesh. In Berkeley, people called that living green. In Fresno, it was called being poor.
Younger versions of Nick Moore smiled behind scratched plastic. As a boy, he’d had teeth too big for his mouth — fodder for bullies. By his early teens, the rest of him had caught up, lending him a sinewy masculinity. No resemblance I could see to his mother. I didn’t see any photos of men, either. Just Nick and more Nick and, in one shot, Tara wearing a hospital gown, a florid infant in her arms. She’d been even thinner then, distressingly so.
The drive had left me stiff and thirsty. She didn’t offer water, just plopped down on a fraying armchair and pointed me to a fraying sofa.
She said, “What do you know about Nicholas?”
Try not to get her hopes up.
“Last month I was up in Humboldt,” I began.
“Why?”
“In connection with another case.”
“What case.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t discuss that.”
She folded her stick arms. “What’d you come for if you’re not gonna talk.”
“I’m happy to talk, Ms. Moore. But I have to respect my client’s privacy. I’d do the same for you.”
“I’m not your client.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to pay you.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Free trial, huh? Then how much? Five hundred an hour? You people are all the same.”
She heaved up from the chair and disappeared into the kitchen.
I gave her a few minutes, then followed.
A rear door stood ajar. I stepped through it and out into a poky communal courtyard strewn with castoffs: hamstrung bikes, unplanted pots, a charcoal grill bearing carbonized remains like a bier. Traffic rasped along the drag. Beneath the shadow of the neighboring Exxon sign, Tara sat in a lawn chair, smoking. A ceramic mug nestled in her lap.
“Ms. Moore, we don’t know each other. I don’t know what promises other people have made. I plan to look into Nick’s disappearance, with or without you. My chances aren’t great. But they’re better if I have your help.”
She ashed into the mug. “You were a cop.”
“I used to be.”
“You helped that boy.”
“Which boy.”
“The one who was in jail.”
She meant Julian Triplett. A Berkeley news site had run a series about the case, detailing my role in vacating his murder conviction. The articles came up when you googled me. The remaining hits were about basketball. As of last season, I no longer held the Cal record for assists.
“Why?” she said.
“He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“How come you quit being a cop?”
“I didn’t deserve what happened to me.”
Her laughter dissolved into a coughing fit.
“Not me,” she said. “I deserve every fucking thing.”
She dragged. “This paying client of yours. They got something to do with Nicholas?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“So what’s your angle.”
“No angle.”
“Pff.”
I said, “Can we try again?”
“Hell, it’s a free country.”
I pulled over a second chair and switched on my recorder. “Start with the last time you had contact with your son.”
“It was a year in June.”
“Is it Nick or Nicholas, by the way?”
“I put Nick on the poster ’cause everyone else called him that. To me he was Nicholas.”
“Did you see him in person, did he call, text?”
“Text.” She scrolled on her phone and showed me the screen.
On Monday morning, June 10, 2024, Nicholas Moore asked if Tara had sent the cards yet.
No she wrote.
You said today
I’m at work
Go after