Regina moved him front and center.
“You want to grab anything?” She mimed toking. “Munchies?”
We parked in the lot serving the town’s public buildings. All shared an exterior scheme of yellow stucco and brown shingles. The sheriff’s substation was distinguished by the addition of heavy-duty steel screens along one side where the holding cells were.
A lone deputy staffed the counter. He took our licenses and ducked through a door.
While he was gone I browsed a much smaller corkboard advertising feel-good events. Highway cleanup, DUI checkpoints, have your kids meet the deputies.
There were a few missing persons posters, too, but nothing like the menagerie down the block. Which made sense, if your goal was to reach as many eyes as possible. More people needed snacks than they did the law.
The deputy returned to escort us back.
A sergeant waited in the hall. Mid-forties, black hair and a lantern jaw, intelligent eyes. He introduced himself as Mike Gallo.
“Thanks for talking to us,” I said.
His smile was friendly but tinged with wariness. “Two of you.”
Regina said, “It takes a village.”
He saw us into his Every-Cop office: scabby carpeting, tubular steel chairs, a computer on life support. Binders piled five-high beside desk photos of teen boys and a handsome wife. The open window framed a view of the schoolyard through dual-purpose chain link. Keep the students in and the prisoners out.
We sat.
“What can I do for you?” Gallo said.
I passed him a clean copy of Nicholas Moore’s flyer.
He nodded. “I’ve seen it over at Fanny’s.”
“Anything you can share?” Regina asked.
“Unfortunately not. Unless I’m mistaken he’s not our case.”
“Santa Cruz PD.”
“There you go,” he said. “Happens all the time, ’cause of the bulletin board. I appreciate what they’re doing as a service to the community. I have three deputies covering five hundred square miles. I’ll take any help I can get. But it’s turned into a magnet for desperate folks. Not everybody gets that sticking the flyer up here doesn’t automatically make it our jurisdiction.”
“I hear you,” I said. “I used to be a sheriff-coroner for Alameda.”
“So you know what I mean.”
“For sure. We do have indications Nicholas was in the area last year.”
“In Millburg?”
“Swann’s Flat.”
“Uh-huh.” Gallo’s expression was hard to read. “What indications?”
We told him about Nick’s obsession with Octavio Prado; about the stolen manuscript, the necklace, the TikTok. I showed him Shasta’s Instagram post.
Gallo swiped back and forth between the two photos, trees and hands. “Shasta Swann. That’s Kurt’s daughter.”
“You know her,” Regina said.
“She used to go to school with my boys till they pulled her. I think they homeschool her now.” He gave my phone back. “What makes you believe Mr. Moore is missing, as opposed to gone away on his own?”
“It’s been fifteen months without contact,” Regina said.
“Okay, but we have a lot of wandering types passing through. They show up at harvest, do a little trimming, make some cash, and skip.”
“That wasn’t Nick’s scene,” I said.
“My point is, nobody’s keeping track of who’s going in and out. This is Humboldt. People come here to be left alone.”
Regina said, “What about John Does in the morgue?”
“None meeting his description.”
“Abandoned vehicles?”
“Those we got no shortage of. Head up Alderpoint, it’s practically a junkyard.” Gallo looked at me. “What was the original reason, brought you to Swann’s Flat?”
“Due diligence on a piece of property.”
“Mm.”
I said, “Kind of an unusual system they have going.”
“Buyer beware.”
I sensed an opening, though not its motives. “You get complaints?”
“Almost never,” Gallo said. “And never anything of a criminal nature.”
Almost.
“One resident I spoke to said he’d been harassed,” I said. “Windows broken, so forth.”
“Don’t recall seeing a report.”
“He didn’t make one.”
“Then there’s not a whole lot I can do. You know that. Fact is, I can’t remember the last time we took a call from them. It’s another world out there.”
“The Humboldt of Humboldt,” Regina said.
Gallo smiled. “If you like.”
“I also spoke with someone from your Coroner’s Bureau,” I said. “Owen Ryall.”
“He’s a good guy.”
“He was telling me about the night Kurt Swann died.”
Gallo’s dark eyes slitted. “Not sure what that has to do with Mr. Moore.”
“I get the sense that they have their own way of handling problems in Swann’s Flat.”
A bell split the silence.
Through the open window I saw kids trickle out onto the schoolyard, twenty or thirty of them, ranging from first graders to preteens. Not much of a peer group.
Gallo said, “I didn’t offer you anything to drink.”
“I’d love some coffee, thanks,” Regina said.
“How do you take it?”
“Black. Unless you have oatmilk.”
“Lemme see what I can scare up. Clay?”
“All set,” I said.
“Back in a bit,” Gallo said.
He left, shutting the door.
Chapter 33
A breeze ruffled Gallo’s desktop. In the schoolyard, recess got under way, the kids pairing off except for one girl skipping rope alone.
“He’s vetting us,” I said.
“Or calling the Bergstroms to give them a heads-up,” Regina said.
“Or searching for oatmilk.”
“Shouldn’t be that hard,” she said. “It’s everywhere now.”
“That’s the bougiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Tell it to my colon.”
At a quarter to, the school bell sounded again. Students began filing inside.
Gallo reentered, shut the door, and placed a foam cup in front of Regina. “Black it is.”
“Thanks.”
He lowered the window. “I moved here in 2007. There were hardly any families. Still aren’t many. That school” — he tapped the glass — “was falling down.”
He turned. “Who do you think paid to fix it up?”
“Kurt Swann,” I said.
“Library needed new computers.” He sat at his desk. “Someone had to pay for that, too.”
“He’s dead now,” Regina said.
“Yes, ma’am, he is.”
I said, “But they still have pull.”
“Not with me,” Gallo said. “Are we clear on that?”
He waited for acknowledgment from both of us before going on: “But I wasn’t always the one sitting in this chair. Now, I want us to respect each other.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Good. So tell me. How much shit do you plan to stir up?”
“As much as we have to,” Regina said.
I thought Gallo might get annoyed, but he smiled and shook his head. “I thought you might say that. So again, let me be clear: Everything I say, this point forward, is off the record.”
I nodded. Regina made a zip-the-lip gesture.
Gallo straightened the disordered pages on his desktop. “This is when I was a rookie. I respond to a disturbance at the 76. Two trucks, a Dodge Ram and a tow truck, pushed right up against each other. A young woman, eighteen, nineteen, arguing with a pair of older guys. She tells me they hemmed her in so she can’t leave. They don’t deny it, but one guy says first off, she’s his wife, and second, the Dodge is his, not hers. She stole it, so they followed her.