The detectives lined up with their notebooks on one side of the table, Lana and Jack on the other. Before anyone else could speak, Lana leaned forward.
“Have you determined what happened?”
“We’ve identified the person who died,” Nicoletti said. “On Jacqueline’s tour yesterday.”
“He wasn’t on my tour.”
Nicoletti kept talking as if he hadn’t heard Jack speak. “We’d like to show you a picture of him. Not from when he was in the water. From before.”
The detective slid a photograph across the table. His thick fingers stuck to it for a moment. Then he looked up.
“Do you recognize this man?”
Jack and Lana both stared at the picture. The man was handsome, slim, with dark brown hair hanging past his shoulders. Thick eyebrows, big bright eyes, clean-shaven. He was wearing a fancy backpack with neon straps and clips, standing in a forest and smiling wide for the camera. He looked like he was ready to charge up a mountain.
Jack shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
She looked up at the detectives and started ticking off reasons why. “He’s too old to go to my school. He doesn’t work at the Kayak Shack or any of the other places at the marina. I haven’t seen him on the slough. He doesn’t really look like a water guy, unless maybe he has a dad or an uncle he goes fishing with. And I know most of them.”
The detectives looked at Lana. This time, the woman, Ramirez, spoke.
“Ma’am, do you recognize him?”
Lana shook her head. “Cute kid,” she muttered.
“His name is Ricardo Cruz. He was twenty-nine years old. Resident of Santa Cruz. A naturalist, working for the land trust up there. And here’s the thing, Jacqueline: he was on the sunset tour you ran on Saturday.”
A flicker of surprise ran across Jack’s face. “Saturday? Not Sunday?”
“Saturday.”
Ramirez pulled out the logbook from the Kayak Shack, the one they used to manage reservations. Seeing a piece of the Shack in her kitchen felt impossible and a little dirty, like seeing your chemistry teacher at the beach in her swimsuit.
The detective opened to the pages from the weekend and turned the book around so Jack could see. Ramirez tapped a bejeweled fingernail halfway down. Ricardo Cruz, Saturday sunset tour, with a phone number and the word “PAID,” scrawled in Paul’s handwriting. Despite Paul’s supposedly glorious past career in technology, the Kayak Shack was strictly a phone and walk-in operation—no apps or online booking systems.
Jack pulled the logbook toward her. Holding it made her feel more confident. “He booked it Friday afternoon. But there’s no checkmark by his name. He must not have shown up Saturday. That night I had a group of eleven: eight guys from Fresno, a bachelor party. And two women. One older man. There wasn’t anyone else on the tour.”
“What do you do when there’s a no-show?” Ramirez asked.
“If we have a phone number, we call. But I wasn’t in the office. I was out hauling boats. I don’t know if Travis called him. When I’m guiding, I just go when I get the signal that we’re all good.”
“But what if Mr. Cruz just didn’t get checked off? He could have met you down by the water, right? Maybe even jumped in your boat with you?”
“No. I had seven boats at sunset, nine men, two women. No one else.”
The two detectives shared a look. Nicoletti leaned forward, putting his massive forearms on the table.
“Here’s the thing, Jack—can I call you Jack?” His voice was soft, but the false kind, the kind that’s hiding something hard behind it.
Jack gave him a tight nod and looked nervously toward Ramirez.
“Don’t look at her. Look at me,” Nicoletti said. “Here’s the problem, Jack. We talked to Carl Willis.”
Jack said nothing.
“Don’t remember him, Jack? From your Saturday sunset tour.”
“The bald guy?” Jack asked.
“So you do remember him,” Nicoletti said.
“I . . . uh, I don’t always learn their names.” Jack was watching the detective very closely now.
“Mr. Willis said you were having a real party out there on Saturday night, Tiny.” Nicoletti said the nickname sarcastically, in a way that implied she’d done something wrong. “He said you were drinking. Flirting. He said y’all splashed around in the dark, had yourself a good old time. He thought this Ricardo was there.”