Busy
When he asked.
When I can
K
Your welcome she wrote, adding an eye roll emoji.
“What cards is he referring to?” I asked.
“Pokémon. He used to collect ’em when he was little.”
“What did he want them for?”
“Sell ’em, prolly. I don’t know what he could get for it, it’s a kids’ game.”
“Did he need money?”
“Everybody needs money.”
“I’m asking if he had a particular need. Was there something he wanted to buy? Was he in debt?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Did he gamble? Drink or use drugs?”
She stiffened. “No.”
“No to which?”
“None of ’em.”
“Not even alcohol or pot?”
“God, you’re nosy,” she said. “No, period. Okay? He hated that stuff. Never touched it.”
“I’m sure you’re sick of answering these questions. I’m sorry to make you do it again. That’s part of the job.”
Her cigarette had burned down to the filter. She fished out a new one and lit it off the first, grinding the butt out into the mug. “Go ahead.”
“At the time of these texts, where was Nicholas living?”
“Santa Cruz.”
“Was he employed?”
“He worked for a guy who made surfboards.”
“Name?”
“Randy. Smythe. With a y. And a e. He’s got a shop in his garage. He let Nicholas sleep there, but he didn’t pay him. He called it an internship. Ask me, that’s bullshit someone lays on you to get you to work for free.”
And maybe the reason her son needed cash.
I returned to the text thread. On Tuesday afternoon, Tara wrote that she’d sent the cards. She included a photo of the receipt showing the tracking number. Shipping had cost $23.65.
CashApp me she wrote.
Friday rolled around and he had yet to reply. Tara tried again. Did u get it
Subsequent texts reflected her growing irritation. She took time out of her day to do him a favor. The least he could do was say thank you.
Another week went by with no response. On June 18, Tara fired off a series of lengthy, angry texts, excoriating him for his selfishness.
“I was mad,” she said. “I thought he didn’t want to pay me. Then I saw his TikTok.”
She took the phone and opened up Nicholas’s profile.
I’d missed it because his name didn’t feature: His handle was wat3rwh33l, the picture an image of The Great Wave off Kanagawa. He had 39 followers and followed 210 other accounts. The earliest posts revolved around skateboarding. On average they garnered a dozen likes. Never an especially active user, in spring 2023 he seemed to lose interest. He didn’t post again for over a year, resurfacing on June 19, 2024, with a video lasting twenty-six seconds.
It began with Nicholas standing in a dirt turnout along a two-lane highway dividing silver ocean from green-and-tan hills. Wind crackled. It could have been anywhere along the West Coast. He’d propped his phone on the ground and was shirtless in cutoff jeans and hiking boots. The puka shell necklace smiled against his chest, the pendant winked.
The caption read In the name of the father.
Raising his face and hands to the sky, he turned in a slow circle, his expression euphoric, sun shining on his shaven scalp. I glimpsed the anchor tattoo on his shoulder.
He completed a rotation and strode forward. The pendant swung away from his body as he leaned in to grab the camera. He straightened up, holding the camera at arm’s length and grinning broadly. I realized I was looking at the source for the flyer photo.
He displayed his left fist. The letters f a s t were tattooed across his knuckles in serifed font, oriented backward and upside down.
He extended his middle finger. Held the gesture for a three-count before poking at the screen.
The clip ended.
Tara Moore said, “That’s the last I seen of him. No texts, no calls, no nothing.”
“Do you understand what this is about?”
“He was mad at me.”
“What for?”
“ ’Cause he didn’t want to pay me what he owed.”
“The cost of shipping the cards.”
She nodded.
“What about the rest of it?” I said. “The movements. Is he acting something out?”
“I thought it’s just him being a dumbass.”
“ ‘In the name of the father.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not really.”
“Was Nicholas religious?”
“We did Christmas but that’s about it.”
“Can I ask what the situation is with his dad?”
“He’s dead. He died when Nicholas was a baby. We were never together.”
“What’s his name?”
“Warren. Pezanko.”
I scrolled through the profile’s Following and Followers. Shasta Swann was not on either list. “What can you tell me about this necklace he’s wearing?”
“I never seen it before. He musta got it after he moved out.”
“Do you have a sense of where the video was taken?”
“Mendocino. Above Fort Bragg.”
“How can you tell?”
“There’s a mile marker,” she said. “You can see it when he bends over.”
I hadn’t noticed, too busy focusing on the pendant.
I replayed the clip.
The postmile flashed between Nicholas’s legs as he reached for the phone. Glare wiped out the lettering. I fiddled with the slider, bringing it into view one character at a time.
“Great catch,” I said.
Tara Moore waved that away. “Not me. It was this lady Regina Klein. You know her?”
I shook my head. “She’s a PI?”
“I figured you guys all hang out together.”
“You were working with her.”
“For a little bit. Haven’t spoken to her since prolly the beginning of the year.”
“What made you stop?”
“I couldn’t afford to pay her no more. I spent everything I had on the first two guys. Who were assholes.”
Tara scratched her nose with her cigarette hand, spilling ash on her T-shirt. She brushed at it apathetically. “I don’t blame her. She’s got a business to run. But it’s my son, you know?”
I nodded.
“I’m just so tired of chasing my tail,” she said. “I put twenty thousand miles on my car in the last year. Everything I make goes to gas and copies.”
“What brought you to Millburg?”
“I wasn’t looking there in the beginning, I thought he was still in Santa Cruz. Once Regina showed me the mile marker, I started driving out every weekend, going around and putting up his poster. I went into this shop to ask the lady if I could put one in her front window. She told me about this big bulletin board. ‘You should go there, everyone knows about it.’ ”
“I also saw his profile on NamUs.”
“I’m on all the sites. There’s about a million of them. I can’t keep track. It’s all just a bunch of useless fools crying to each other about how nobody’ll help them.”
“Let’s back up a sec,” I said. “You saw the video. Is that when you started to feel that something was wrong?”
“He missed my birthday.”
“When’s that?”
“August 18. I don’t care how mad we were, he wouldn’t do that.”
“At that point you haven’t had any communication from him in about two months.”
“Yeah.”
“Was it normal for you to go that long without speaking to each other?”
“Once he left, he didn’t want nothing to do with me. And, and” — her voice escalated — “why should I have to beg him? He’s the one owed me money. He’s the one flipping me off. He should be apologizing to me.”