“I’m not putting anything on you, Tara.”
She sucked on her cigarette. A vein ticked in her neck.
“He missed your birthday,” I prompted gently.
“Yeah. I started to get scared. Like, what if he got into an accident? He didn’t answer my texts and every time I called it went to voicemail. I didn’t know what else to do. I called the surfboard guy.”
“Smythe.”
“He said he hadn’t seen him, either.”
“Since when?”
“Around the same time.”
“June.”
She nodded. “He said he went out one morning and Nicholas is gone, his stuff’s gone, his car’s not in the driveway.”
“Did Nicholas tell him where he was headed? Did he leave a note?”
“The guy didn’t know a damn thing. He just kept saying, ‘Buuuh, duuuh, I dunno, he’s not here, he left.’ I got in my car and drove straight over there. I didn’t even stop to pee. I’m banging on his door, and he comes out with his hair sticking up, like I woke him up at two in the afternoon. I made him show me where Nicholas was sleeping.”
She scowled. “Internship my ass. Smythe had him cooped up in the garage like a friggin’ prisoner, machines everywhere, fiberglass dust. ‘No wonder he left, look at this shithole.’ He starts acting all huffy, saying calm down or he’ll call the cops. ‘Fuck you, I’ll call them myself.’
“I went to the station. Waited three hours for someone to talk to me. They told me Nicholas is an adult, he can do what he wants. I said, ‘What about this guy, Smythe, maybe he did something to Nicholas.’ They had me fill out a report and sent me home. Next day I called. They didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. They said I had to come back in and file a new report. I was ready to lose my mind.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through this, Tara.”
“You got no idea. I’m calling them every day and getting the runaround. Finally this one detective goes, ‘Ma’am, I was you, I wouldn’t sit on my hands.’ I started with the posters. Every wacko in town’s calling me up, saying they know Nicholas or they seen him. Then this guy calls and says he’s a private investigator. Portis?”
“Don’t know him.”
“Asshole... All he did was ask for money. The next guy was the same.”
She ashed into the mug. Her foot twitched anxiously.
“Kills me, you know?” she said. “Not just the money, how much time I wasted.”
She yanked out the pack and lit another cigarette. I let her smoke in peace for a bit, then said, “I’m curious what took Nicholas to Santa Cruz to begin with. Was that his thing? Surfing? I know he was a skateboarder.”
“Please. He never got wet.”
“So why do you think?”
“Beats the hell out of me. Senior year he dropped out. Said school’s for sheep. ‘Yeah, sheep who like to eat.’ I made him get a job, you’re not gonna hang around all goddamn day in your underwear playing video games. He started over at the Dick’s on Blackstone. Every day he came home whining. ‘They don’t respect me.’ No shit. Why should they? You don’t have a high school diploma. He quit and went to Chipotle. What do you know, it’s the same thing. Always been this way. His brain shuts off. He doesn’t think, he just does things. One day he comes home with this dumbass anchor tattoo, talking about his heart belongs to the sea. I said, ‘You dipshit, you can’t hardly swim.’ He got all offended. ‘Shows what you know, real sailors don’t know how to swim.’ Fine, Popeye. Go wherever the fuck you want. Just don’t come crying to me.”
She wiped her eyes roughly. “Shit.”
I offered her a tissue from a small pack I carry. A habit from my coroner days.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Do you need a break?”
She blew her nose. “Do your thing.”
I said, “In the last fifteen months, has Nicholas been in touch with anyone else?”
“Everybody says they haven’t heard from him.”
“His friends?”
“I don’t know who he hung out with over there. He didn’t tell me.”
“What about friends from Fresno?”
“They’re a bunch of idiots.”
“Be that as it may, they may know something.”
“They don’t. Call them yourself, you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” I said. “Who else is in his life? Siblings?”
“Just him.”
Her answers about extended family were similarly curt. No uncles and aunts locally, no grandparents to speak of.
A lonely, claustrophobic self-portrait.
“Could he have reached out to one of these people without telling you?”
“I asked my sister. She said no. She said anything happens, it’s on me, for fucking him up while I was pregnant.”
“I’m sorry, Tara.”
“She’s right.”
Smoke twined lazily toward a baked beige sky. Hard to believe that one of the most beautiful places on earth, Yosemite National Park, was less than seventy miles away.
I asked if Nicholas had any medical conditions or took medication.
“Adderall for his ADHD.”
“Anything else?”
“Like what.”
“Diabetes. Migraines. Seizures. Other mental health issues. Anything at all.”
“No.”
“Any history of self-harm or suicide attempts?”
“No.”
“What about the rest of the family? Illness or mental health issues?”
“Warren’s a fuckin asshole. Does that count?”
I smiled. “We’ll stick to official diagnoses.”
“No.”
“Does Nicholas have a criminal history?”
“Not really.”
I waited.
“When he was fourteen he and some friends got caught climbing the school fence. One kid had a can of spray paint in his backpack. Idiots,” she said. “They were going to charge them with breaking and entering till the principal got them to drop it.”
“What about as an adult?”
“No.”
“Hobbies, other than skateboarding?”
“Video games.”
“Did he have friends through either of those activities?”
“I told you, he didn’t talk to me about it.”
She looked uncomfortable. Bumping up against the limits of her knowledge.
“What kind of vehicle did Nicholas drive?” I asked.
“A Civic.”
“Do you have the license plate?”
“I got it written down. Regina had me get all that stuff together. She sent it back when she was done. It’s in a box, in his room. You can have all of it.”
“Great. Anything else you want me to know? What should I be asking, that I’m not?”
“I’m sure I’ll think of something as soon as you leave.”
“Call me, or email me. No matter how insignificant it seems. I’d also like to speak with Regina. I’ll need your permission.”
“You have it.”
“It’ll be faster if you call her yourself.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Thank you. How’d you find her, by the way?”
“Internet.” Tara tugged out her menthols. The pack was empty, and she crushed it.
The apartment had a single bedroom. A bare mattress lay on the carpet, striped by the shadows of window bars. Remnants of adolescent passions: vacant reptile tank, posters of Bruce Lee and Walter White. The gaming setup included a flat-screen, newer and larger than the TV in the front room.
I asked Tara where she slept.
“The couch pulls out.”