1 Zeb Williams kicked the turf with the tip of his cleat and thought about what was underneath. The field used to be real green, but the school switched it to the Brillo Pad when Zeb got to UC Berkeley in '81. He thought that was lousy, since he'd mostly learned the game on grass. But he also had experience with dirt, mud, pavement. He'd gone down on a lot of sidewalks growing up, face smashed into the curb. The Italians would make fun of his bruises but shut right up when they saw how good he was with a ball. Soccer wasn't his thing; basketball sometimes, but what he was really good at was any game when he had to throw and catch. He started playing football at Riordan in the city when the coaches discovered he could also kick. Even cross-country his freshman year. On top of the rest, it turned out he could run, too. He took a deep breath in through his nose and wished the field was natural so he could smell it a little bit. Right then it would've made him feel like he was in the right place, about to kick an extra point. "You ready, Two?" said Bear Thomas, the holder, jogging in place while the last seconds of the time-out ticked. The joke on Bear was always "Hey, Bear, what would you do if your mama named you Bruin?" Or "Duck," or "Trojan." And then, when they really wanted to piss him off: "She should've named you Cardinal after all." Now, though, no one was joking, and Bear was jacked up; Zeb watched him hit his palm against the side of his helmet, still dancing around in his spot. Zeb raised his head about an inch but cast his eyes up higher, toward the stands, and suddenly he could hear all the people. Sixty-five thousand, they told him. That's what they were expecting. It always surprised him, the sound that that many people made. Most of the time, it was one continuous noise that hushed and rose to a shriek, over and over, like a fighter jet flying back and forth. Carmen was up there somewhere. She seemed too refined for cheering. Although, since they started dating, she'd told him it was hard for her to watch the games because she got so nervous about the outcome. Apparently, she'd never cared that much before. He smiled behind his face mask, thinking about her. He liked her because she was so honest. Other girls only talked about what they thought he wanted to hear: game stats; odds; recruiting news. Or they'd do their best not to care less, too preoccupied by modern dance or politics or whatever they studied. It would not have occurred to Carmen to pretend to be cool. She would be just fine in life. Which brought him back: what was underneath the turf? He'd heard it was a thin layer of rubber below the Brillo. Below that, gravel. Below that, concrete. Below that, dirt. Below that, below that . . . The time-out was done. Bear clapped his hands once. "Go," he said to Zeb, then squatted, waiting for the snap. Zeb nodded, glancing up at the board. 6-6. 4th quarter. 7 seconds. The Stanford kicker was already in the doghouse for missing his extra point, all the love from the fans dried up the second the ball sailed just past the left goalpost. Could be me, thought Zeb. Could be any of us at any time. He shook out his hands and his feet and then kept a little bend in his knees, left foot in front of the right, torso leaning forward. Buck Reinhart snapped the ball, and Bear caught it, set it upright, and held his right arm out like he always did, like he was balancing the ball with the power of his mind. Zeb waited. On the clock it took less than a second, but time on the field was different. Sometimes he felt like it might be a new year out in the world by the time the game was finally over. He stepped forward--left, right, left--but instead of kicking with his right, he leaned down all the way and grabbed the ball with one hand, gave Bear a shove with the other. Bear tumbled to the ground in shock. Zeb looked down at the ball tucked nice and snug in his forearm, then back up at the clock. 4 seconds now. He didn't have much time at all. He turned around and started to run, headed for Stanford's end zone. He heard Bear yelling as he chased him; Bear had been a corner in high school, too, so he was fast, but not as fast as Zeb. He could see the Cal defense coming for him off the sidelines: Jimmy Moffat the tackle, Roger Swain the outside linebacker, flags falling at their feet. If they caught him they'd crush him--hitting the turf wasn't like hitting the grass. It would be Jasper Alley in the city all over again, with the Italians piled on top of him, all of them giddy with the game, laughing away how much it hurt. His teammates weren't laughing. They were screaming his name, at first Roger Swain shouting, "Wrong way, Two, wrong way!" It had happened before, players getting disoriented after a sack and charging for the wrong end of the field, but when Zeb didn't stop or slow down, Roger and the rest seemed to realize this wasn't a mistake. The sound from the crowd had taken on a sky-high pitch--to Zeb they sounded like the spaceship's laser from War of the Worlds when it fried up the priest. Only louder. Thirty, twenty, ten. Some of the Stanford band and cheerleaders stood scattered in the end zone, confused, sipping cans of beer, tossing pom-poms into the air carelessly. Zeb spotted a narrow route between a cheerleader and a guy holding a trombone and accelerated, lighter with each step. That was one thing he could say for the turf--it didn't cling to the cleats like grass and dirt did, gave him a spring when he landed on the balls of his feet. He barreled into the end zone, the screech of the crowd higher and louder than before, the refs' whistles shrieking. People began to jump down from the stands onto the field, dropping over the wall. Zeb threw the ball backward over his shoulder, knowing it would be impossible for his teammates to resist catching it, like bridesmaids with a bouquet, even though the game was over now. He pumped his arms, free of the ball, heading for the passage he'd scoped out, but then the trombone player moved, the hand slide sticking right into Zeb's path. Zeb crashed into the musician's shoulder and knocked the instrument out of his hand but kept heading for the exit. He caught a whiff of a cheerleader's hairspray--strong, like rubbing alcohol. He heard the clash of his teammates against the band and the cheerleaders, the thumps of them hitting the ground. He didn't look back but imagined them all tangled, some laughing, others peeling themselves off the turf to keep up the chase. Into the corridor, and instead of making a right to the locker room, he ran straight into the parking lot and slowed down for a few seconds to hop on one foot and then the other, pulling off his cleats and tossing them to the ground. He stripped off his jersey and threw it up in the air as he gained speed, heading for the edge of the lot, still hearing the collective shriek of the crowd. He thought about running to Piedmont Avenue, where he might be able to blend in with the kids, or running a little farther, to Carmen's sorority, to wait for her. He thought about running all the way to the interstate, figured it was about three miles. He thought about running across the Bay Bridge to the city, back to Jasper Alley, where he grew up, and maybe when he got there he'd get to see all the kids he grew up with, and maybe they wouldn't have changed at all, still ten or eleven or twelve years old, still cracking crude jokes and chugging Coke from the bottle, wrapping their old footballs with masking tape to stop the air leaks. Maybe they'd be right on the corner where he left them, and when he finally made it there, they'd see him running toward them and say, "Where ya been, Zeb?" San Francisco was not Alice Vega's favorite town, on account of the weather. She preferred the heat straight up, never ran the a/c in her own house in the Sacramento Valley except during the most brutal of heat waves; otherwise, it was windows open. At home she typically walked around in yoga shorts and a tank top, but for work, every day, including today, she wore black--pants, shirt, jacket, boots. A Springfield pistol in a shoulder holster over the shirt, under the jacket. She'd worn the straps as tightly as she could stand it for so many years, just shy of cutting off circulation, that there was now an outline on her skin of the holster pocket, a collection of pink lines like an architect's sketch on her ribs, just south of her left breast. Work brought her to a lot of places she didn't care for. She stood on the front steps of a big yellow house in Pacific Heights and pressed the doorbell, the glass front door wide behind a decorative iron frame. She heard the two-tone echo inside and figured it might be a minute. Lots of stairs. She turned around and looked at the street, empty and quiet for a Saturday. It was noon, fifty-five degrees, and the sun was out but muted, some wisps of fog hanging in the air. A young tan man came to the door, bald with a black beard and glasses, wearing a mustard shirt and white pants that appeared oversized and expensive. He opened the door; the glass hummed as it shook on the frame. "Ms. Vega?" he said, tentative. "Yes," said Vega. "Mr. Fohl?" "No, no, I'm Samuel. The Fohls' assistant," he said, embarrassed to correct her. "Come in, please." Vega stepped into a large hall roughly the size of her whole house. There was a black-and-white-checkered parquet floor, and an ornate carved wooden ceiling. A tiled wall fountain burbled quietly in the corner. "It's Tiffany," said Samuel, catching Vega's gaze. Vega nodded, accepting the information as she would a ticket from a parking-lot payment machine. "This way, please," said Samuel, and led her to an adjoining room. The ceiling was engraved wood in the new room as well, and there were two wine-red leather couches, not a crease on them, facing each other. "What will you have to drink?" said Samuel, his hands clasped behind his back. "We have flat and sparkling water, or something stronger if you prefer." "No, thanks," said Vega. "Very good," said Samuel. "Anton is wrapping something up. He'll be with you shortly." He left the room. Vega let her eyes travel along the edges of the windowpane. Outside, there was a bush of papery purple flowers clipped into the shape of a box. She examined the room now. There was a dark wood sideboard the length of the entire wall opposite her, a white vase holding an arrangement of black lacquered sticks on top of it. Behind that stretched a long rectangular mirror, the top pitched at an angle so it leaned forward, almost as if it were put there to capture the full-body reflection of whoever was sitting on the couch. Vega saw herself in the glass, the crooked black sticks crossing the image of her face. "Ms. Vega," said the man she'd come to see. He rushed into the room, swung his arm back leading up to the handshake, as if to gain momentum. Vega stood and extended her hand, and their palms slapped together, so it was really more of a high-five. He held a folded sheet of paper in his other hand. "Anton Fohl," he said. "I'm so sorry to keep you waiting. I was on one of those calls. . . ." He trailed off and looked to Vega for approval, she guessed, expecting her to say, "Oh, it's no trouble," or "Please--just to sit in this delightfully appointed room has been pleasure enough," but he had not, of course, ever met Vega and therefore didn't know that she purposefully didn't partake in small talk unless she was trying to glean information from a person, much the way someone would pull and pick the meat from the delicate bones of a steamed fish. "Please," he continued, gesturing for her to sit. Vega sat, and Fohl sat on the opposite couch, so they were now about six or seven feet away from each other. Vega had not researched Fohl before meeting. She'd wanted to rely on her first impressions, and then piece the rest together later. Social media was great for that, but it was all through the filter of the screen through the filter of the author's engineering, which was two screens too many for Vega. She trusted her own eyes. Fohl was handsome, in his fifties, with walnut-colored hair, the gray woven throughout with a white streak above each ear, so precisely placed it seemed to have been dyed that way. His eyes were a saturated blue-green and by far the most noticeable features on his face, save the lone boyish dimple in his left cheek, visible only when he smiled. "Can we get you something to drink?" said Fohl, glancing at Samuel, who hovered in the doorway. "No, thanks," said Vega. "We're good, Samuel, thank you," said Fohl. Samuel withdrew, and Fohl placed the sheet of paper on the cushion next to him. He leaned forward and rested his knees on his elbows. "You must have had quite a drive," he said. "Coming from where? Sacramento?" "Not that far," said Vega. "A little south of there, though." Fohl whistled, expressing gentle astonishment. "Well, thank you for coming all this way to speak face-to-face," he said. Vega smiled and then stopped, waited for more. Fohl nodded rhythmically, like a bobble-head dog on a dashboard. "I, uh," he said, then coughed into his fist. "This is not something I wanted to put in an e-mail. I wanted to speak in person, to meet you, first off, but also this is . . ." He paused and pursed his lips, as if conducting an executive search for the right word, but Vega had a feeling he already knew it. ". . . a different sort of case than you're used to." He paused again--Vega presumed, to allow her time to digest the disclaimer, but she already had, and she thought that if Fohl knew about half the cases she took that didn't make press coverage, he might rethink his assumptions. "Don't get me wrong," said Fohl, holding his hands in front of him as if to stop her from getting him wrong any further. "It's still a missing-person case. It's just that it's likely to be the biggest case of your career." Fohl winced at the magnitude of his own words, but seemed excited by what he was planning to say. "My wife, Carmen, went to Cal for undergrad--her father and grandfather went there, but my family and I, well, we went to Stanford, so you can imagine how it went the first time she brought me home to meet the parents." He didn't laugh, but his eyes grew small as he smiled knowingly. When Vega didn't laugh along with him and just continued to stare, Fohl's smile shrank, the dimple flattening on the plane of his cheek. He seemed thrown off his topic but picked it back up after a moment. "We met, she and I, in the fall of '85. Married three years later. Two beautiful daughters." Fohl paused. "Now you're thinking, Who's the missing person?" he said. Vega still didn't speak but leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, mirroring Fohl's position. Fohl clasped his hands together and let out a heavy breath. "Before Carmen met me, she dated someone seriously, and he's the one I'd like you to find. And this," he said, holding up his index finger, "this is where it gets complicated." Fohl took another, even heartier breath than the one before. Then he delivered the name quickly: "It's Zeb Williams." Vega watched as Fohl rubbed his palms on his knees. Fohl's expression was somewhere between a scowl and a grin. Then it turned to confusion. "Zeb Williams," he repeated, in case Vega had suffered moderate hearing loss within the past few minutes. "The Cal kicker," he added, now with a forgiving sort of look, as if this new information was all Vega would need to jog her memory. "Okay," said Vega. "When did you last see him?" Fohl pressed his lips together, anxious. "Nineteen eighty-four," he said. "November 17, 1984. It was the last time anyone saw him." He scratched his chin, said, "You really don't know who Zeb Williams the football player is?" "No," Vega said, without hesitation or apology. Fohl laughed and shook his head. "I'm sorry--it's just that I thought everyone did," he said. Vega raised her hand, keeping her arm tight against her torso, like she was about to speak under oath. "I don't," she said. "Right," said Fohl, still stunned. "I'm just not sure quite where to start now." His incomprehension seemed genuine, so Vega thought it best to help him out. "Let's assume that I can find out what everyone knows from the Internet," she said. "Why don't you tell me what everyone doesn't know. Just what you know." This made sense to Fohl. He nodded vigorously, relieved. "They, my wife and Zeb, they met in a California natural-history class. Dated for two years," he said, another cough slipping into his fist. "She knew him very well, or thought she did, and was deeply hurt when he disappeared." "He never contacted her after he left?" Vega asked. "No," said Fohl. Vega believed him. Still, there was a thing that didn't fit. A jangly gold lid for a too-small Mason jar. "And you never met him personally," she said. "No," said Fohl. "Only from what Carmen's told me, and, you know, what everyone knows from the media." Vega paused, briefly peering at her reflection split by the black branches. "This might be easier if I can ask your wife about him directly," she said. Fohl scratched his knee. "She's not home right now," he said. Vega let a moment pass before speaking. Then she said, "Happy to wait." "Well, that's just it," said Fohl. "If I'm being up front with you." Another cough. "She doesn't know I'm speaking with you right now," he said with a note of humility. "She doesn't know I'm trying to find Zeb." Then he sighed--he was growing wearier with each sentence--and said, his head bowing, "And I suppose you'd like to know why that is." "Not really," said Vega. Fohl lifted his head, startled. "Not really," he repeated. "Why not?" "None of my business," said Vega. "If I take the job, you're the client, not your wife, unless you indicate otherwise." "That's great," said Fohl, relieved. "I thought, I assumed, you would have to speak to her first." "No," said Vega. "If there comes a time when I can't move the case forward unless I speak with her, then that will have to change." "Of course," said Fohl. "Cross that bridge." "Without her, it may take longer for me to get certain pieces of information, but I'll get them." "I admire your confidence," said Fohl. "Seeing that many, many people have tried to find Zeb Williams and failed. For over thirty years." Vega checked her reflection in the mirror on the wall, still behind the branches. "They don't have my resources," she said. "Which are?" said Fohl, suddenly haughty, as if he hadn't been the one who'd invited her there. "By resources I mean my experience," said Vega. "And my specific skill set." "Of course," said Fohl. "That's why I reached out to you. Because of your work on . . ." He lingered, searching for the words. ". . . specialty cases." "If I were to take the case, you would have to pay the rate I set, and then, when I find him, you would have to pay a little more," she said. "When you find him," said Fohl, clarifying. "Yes," said Vega. "When." "That's fine," said Fohl. "I'll pay whatever you think is fair. There is one more thing, a piece of information you should have." Fohl unfolded the sheet of paper he'd been holding, leaned forward on the couch, and handed the paper to Vega. It was a printed copy of a photograph: four people at an outdoor cafe: A woman with dark hair and eyes, wearing an apron. She appeared to be in conversation with two older men sitting at a table, one in a white suit, the other holding a cane. At a neighboring table was a younger man, gazing up at the woman. "Carmen's father hired a private detective after Zeb disappeared. He traced him to a town in Oregon called Ilona. That picture, that's the last record of Zeb, you know, confirmed. There's been a lot of conjecture between then and now." "Does anyone else have this picture?" asked Vega. "Would I be able to find it online?" "No, that's from the PI. Carmen's father didn't like loose ends and had an unlimited amount of capital, you see." Vega examined the photograph: the four people, their faces, how they contoured their features into expressions for the camera, knowing they were being watched. Fohl continued: "Her maiden name is Wirth." The young man--Zeb Williams, apparently--wasn't looking at the camera. He was looking up at the dark-haired woman. "My wife's," said Fohl. "Same family that owns Pacific Airlines." Vega recognized that Fohl wanted her to acknowledge this, not to impress her but because he thought it was important, how rich his wife and her family were. Vega was not so sure it was important at all and had other ideas. "Do you know who this is?" she said, pointing to the woman in the picture. Fohl sat up even straighter, looking pleased. He took his phone out of his pants pocket. "I do," he said, tapping the screen. "Cara Simms. Cara with a 'C.' " "That was from him, your father-in-law's private detective?" "Yeah." "What about these other men?" said Vega, holding the paper up so Fohl could see it again. "Nothing about them--all he found out was the name of the town and her name, Cara Simms." Vega folded the paper back up into a rectangle. "Do you have his name, the detective?" "Died in the late nineties, unfortunately," said Fohl. Then he made a sad face that ranked about a five on the genuine scale. Vega thought about that. She would have to go about this a different way. First, she would have to learn about football. She stood, said, "I'll need forty-eight hours to think about it before I accept. If I do, I'll have some additional questions for you." Fohl, taken aback, stood as well. "Of course . . . Are you sure?" "Yes. I'll call you the day after tomorrow," she said, shaking his hand firmly. "Yes," said Fohl, concern grazing his face. Vega didn't wait for his offer to show her out and headed toward the entryway. Fohl hurried and cut right in front of her as she reached the door. Vega took a small step back to let him in. "This lock's a little tricky," he said, then turned a small gold bolt under the knob which did not seem tricky at all. He opened the door, and Vega went outside, down the front steps. "Thanks very much for making the trip," he said from the doorway. "You're welcome," she said. "Speak with you in a couple of days." She turned away from him and walked to her car, heard him say, "Yes," and then the sound of the heavy door rattling closed. The fog had burned off completely by then, and Vega looked up at the sun before opening the car door and wondered how quickly she could get to SFO and get on a flight to New York, Newark, or Philadelphia. She knew it would probably end up being a red-eye, but it never bothered her to take night flights. She was not big on sleep. The sun warmed her face. It was a nice bit of relief and surprise, getting the heat like that. She couldn't really enjoy it, though. She missed someone. The boiler made a sound like it was digesting prey. A cramp of a sound, which migrated from one side to the other for a count of ten, stopped, and then started again in the opposite direction. Max Caplan stood side by side with his eighteen-year-old daughter, Nell, as they both stared at the thing uneasily. "Well, that doesn't sound great," said Nell after a few minutes. Cap ran his hand through the uncombed hair on the back of his head. "Nope," he said. "No, it does not." "Would explain why the heat keeps switching off in the middle of the night," added Nell. Cap nodded. For the past week or so, he and Nell had woken up with numb noses and toes. He'd first assumed there was an army of determined mice chewing methodically through the insulation (which had happened a few years back), but then, after inspecting every corner of the attic with an LED flashlight and finding things intact, had finally considered the boiler. "How long do boilers last?" said Nell, nibbling her black-painted fingernail. "About fifteen years, I think," said Cap. "But that's what I don't get. We just got this one." "Really?" said Nell. "Because I don't remember it getting here, which would imply it was purchased when I was too little to remember. Say, three years old?" Cap thought about it. It certainly didn't feel like it had been fifteen years, but he recalled the old boiler, a different brand and make, which had come with the house, and then, when this one had arrived, his wife at the time, Jules, saying, "This goes against everything I stand for as a feminist who believes in upending gender stereotypes, but this new boiler has made me a real woman." Then it all started to come back. He was still married to Jules when they got this boiler, so it was at least seven or eight years ago; they were still, in fact, happy, which turned the hands of the clock back even further. It could, he supposed, have easily been fifteen years. Before he was fired from the Denville Police Department, before the divorce, before he opened up shop as a private investigator. Before Vega. BV. "I guess that makes sense," he conceded. "I just can't believe it's been that long." "Way back to the aughts, Old Man Caplan," said Nell, patting him on the back. "You going to help me with the bass, or what?" Cap stared for another minute at the boiler, then inhaled sharply and turned to face his daughter. "Yep. Then I guess I've got to make some calls." "At least it's not that cold," said Nell, heading toward the stairs. "It's supposed to get up to fifty today, says my phone." "Good thing global warming doesn't exist," said Cap, following her. They came up to the ground floor of the house, a few degrees warmer than it had been in the basement. Nell walked toward her five-piece drum set on the floor near the front door. "Neither does climate change, I hear," she said, taking a powder-blue puffer coat from a peg on the wall. Cap smiled at his daughter. She was good. She was better than she had been. She'd been seeing a therapist biweekly now for almost a year and a half to work through the trauma of being held hostage during the first case Cap had worked with Alice Vega. And it was finally paying off. Nell had had a productive and fulfilling autumn, put her energy into playing music in a band with her friends and writing so eloquently about her harrowing experience that, along with her stellar GPA, varsity soccer, and volunteer history, she had secured early admission to an Ivy League school. And, unlike in years past, Cap actually wasn't worried about paying his share. There would, of course, be loans, but work had been steady for him for some time now, since he had accepted a full-time position as chief investigator for Vera Quinn, Denville's resident public-interest lawyer. Now, looking at his daughter, Cap realized he wasn't overwhelmed with guilt over having placed her in danger. She wasn't too thin, and was only a moderate amount of sullen. Just in the past couple of months, she seemed to have regained a bit of her old spark. He watched her as she zipped up her coat and checked her pockets for wallet, keys, phone. She squatted a little to pick up her snare and toms by their stands, and Cap saw the natural chestnut roots of her hair coming in behind the dyed black. "Dad, what's wrong?" she said, noticing him not moving. Cap felt overwhelmed, wasn't confident about speaking without choking on his words. "Are you having an emotional moment?" she said kindly. Cap nodded. "Is it okay if we continue that tomorrow, and you help me with the bass right now?" she asked, just as kindly. Cap laughed. "Yeah, I'll hit 'pause.' " Nell smiled and picked up the snare and toms and opened the front door. Cap bent over and grabbed the bass drum, not heavy but wide, and followed her out. It was barely cold, the air wet but not crisp, the sky dull gray and looking more fit for rain than snow. Winter should look like winter, he thought bitterly. Nell popped the trunk on her hatchback, and Cap pushed the bass inside; the back seat was already folded forward. He helped Nell stack the snare and toms and saw the cymbals positioned in the passenger seat so they'd make the least amount of noise possible at stop signs. "Thanks, Dad," said Nell, shutting the hood. "You got it, Bug. You staying the night at Carrie's?" "Yeah, I think so," said Nell. "That okay with you?" " 'Course," he said, breathing through a pang in his stomach. "I'll be back in the morning," she said. "I have some Euro to read, but we could go for a run if it's not raining?" The pang left, as quick as it had come. He smiled with relief. "I'll wait for you, then." "It's a date," Nell said. She walked around to the driver's side and got in. Cap started up the stairs to the house as Nell turned on the engine. She powered down the passenger-side window. "What are you having for dinner?" she called to him over the cymbals. "Leftovers," Cap shot back, without thinking. Nell made a face. "Dad, there's, like, nothing in there. Can you order yourself something, please? We can go grocery shopping tomorrow." Cap nodded, hoped it looked convincing. "You're promising me you'll order food?" Nell said. Cap held up three fingers. Scout's honor. "Okay," she said, suspicious. She fiddled with her phone, and ambient music blasted from the car's speakers. She powered up the window, the music now muffled. Then she waved once more, reversed fluidly out of the driveway, and was gone. Cap watched the car turn the corner and hurried into the house. Shut the door, locked the two deadbolts. Checked the windows in the living room, which were locked. Then the downstairs bathroom windows. Then into his office to check the door and windows there. Then upstairs to his room, the upstairs bathroom, then the small extra bedroom. Then Nell's room, where she had the window open a crack. Cap shut it, putting an unnecessary amount of weight into pushing the frame down, and then locked it. He went back downstairs and peered through the blinds in the front window. An unfamiliar burgundy minivan was parked across the street. No one inside. The pang returned to Cap's stomach, and he pressed it with his hand. Was it possible to empathize with a boiler? he thought. But, truthfully, he'd been having stomach pains for some time now, ever since he returned from his last case with Vega in California, five months before. So perhaps the boiler was empathizing with him. He grabbed the remote from the couch and flipped on the TV, turned to local news. Soon he would have a beer and call the people about the boiler. But, first, he went back to his office, to the top shelf of the closet, and pulled down the microvault, the small rectangular safe where he stored his Sig handgun. He tapped in the key code and heard the snap of the lock releasing, then opened the top of the case. Cap picked up the Sig, then the loaded magazine, from their foam imprints, and slid the magazine into the gun. This is how it was on the nights he was alone. Days were usually better. Cap walked to the couch and sat, turned up the TV, placed his handgun on the table in front of him, and waited for the hours to pass. On the red-eye, Vega did some reading. First she wanted the outline, and then she'd fill in the color, only searching for information about Zeb Williams before 1984. She read about how he grew up in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, raised by his grandmother. Played football in high school, got a scholarship to UC Berkeley. She looked at team pictures on fan sites, on the high school's alumni page, from old newspaper clippings, but they were all static: Zeb Williams kneeling in the front row or standing in the back, looking as young and dumb as everyone else. There was nothing to be discerned from his face flat on the screen. Everyone had an opinion, but it all sounded like nonsense to her: this was why he was a great player; this was how he used to kick; it was the shape of his feet; what made him different was that he was so fast; it was because he could take a hit. Vega clicked all the windows closed. The commenters didn't know any more than she did. He was just a flat face on a screen to them, too. "Please get me anything on Zeb Williams, kicker at Cal Berkeley 1981-1984," Vega emailed the Bastard, her dedicated freelance hacker. Then she closed her laptop and looked out the window at the brightening sky and saw that the local time was almost 6:00 a.m. He'd be up soon. Sunday morning, Cap woke up on the couch. Two empty cans on the coffee table, the TV still on but muted. His Sig was on his chest, and he had one hand on it. He sat up and saw his breath. It was colder in the house than the day before, the boiler further along in its demise. Cap recalled talking to the technician the night before, the guy telling Cap he charged double on the weekends, so Cap had said to forget it, figured he and Nell could bundle up until Monday. Now he questioned the decision, rubbing his palm against the tip of his nose. He squinted to see the time on the cable box--7:08 a.m.--and was relieved to realize that he'd slept until sunrise. Many nights, he woke at three or four only to lie awake until the birds chirped. Waking up when it was light out gave him a sense of normalcy, of everyday-ness, with which he only identified about half the time. He would take what he could get. He stood, felt the elderly in his muscles (he hadn't run in two days, but the way his lower back and hips felt, it was like he'd just done a 5K barefoot on the sidewalk), and went to his office to put away the gun. Then he headed upstairs to take a shower. After he returned to his office, he checked his e-mail and read a message from his boss, Vera, sending him contact information for a new client. He hit the print button, waited for the printer to warm up, and sent Nell a text: "You want to stay at Carrie's 1 more night? New boiler coming tomorrow." He tapped "send" and added, "d in here." Nell sent him a crying-while-laughing face, then "U sure? At mom's tomorrow thru Wed." Cap smiled at the phone. He knew Nell was perfectly fine spending any and all nights at friends' houses, but also knew that she was sensitive to Cap's and Jules's need to spend time with her, now more than ever, since she'd be off to college soon. "Yes of course!" Cap wrote, then added another exclamation point to further express his support of the idea. Just then the printer made a ratcheting sound. Cap set the phone down on his desk and reached to the shelf behind his chair where the printer sat. "Jam Tray 2," read the little screen. Cap made a small sound of disapproval, more out of habit than of actual frustration, pulled the tray out, and flattened the stack of paper inside. Usually, that was all it took. Not a jam; just a wrinkle. Cap's phone buzzed once more, and he glanced at it, expecting another emoji from Nell. But it wasn't that. It was a text from Alice Vega. He felt all the air rush out of him, vacuum-style, as he picked up his phone and stared at the screen. "Can you speak?" read the text. Now or in general? Cap thought, allowing a small laugh to creep from his lips. She wanted to have a conversation. He hadn't spoken to her in almost five months, since they'd said goodbye outside the San Diego Police Department. They hadn't hugged. Their eyes had been heavy with exhaustion from the case they'd been working, and also from having been awake the entire night before in Cap's hotel-room bed. More than that rushed send-off on the street, what stuck out in his mind most was the sun rising that morning, shining a column of light through the gap in the curtains, how he couldn't believe the night was already over as he kissed her face everywhere. There hadn't been a lot of talking. I'm too old for this, Cap thought a number of times, not necessarily with regards to the physical activity. It had been the intensity that gave him pause, the emotion. He'd never had blood-pressure issues, but felt like his heart couldn't sustain it all--almost dying violent, messy deaths three times in as many days, and then Vega, her body and her voice and her mouth. And, as physical as it was, it also wasn't--their bodies had been through so much, in so short a time, that kissing her softly in that stream of morning sunlight had had an otherworldly, elevated sort of feeling to it--and his body for once was light, ageless. But then, when Cap had returned home, he'd crashed back to Earth like a bag of broken bones. He still lived inside the trauma of forced electroshock at the hands of a psycho, the red circle burn on his left temple a reminder every time he glanced in the rearview. He found that the only time he felt right was when he was around Nell, allowing himself to be diverted by her life, by his love and worry for her, or when he was running. Work was okay, but almost too boring to be a proper distraction. Can he speak? Could he speak, was the question. Unfortunately, there was no way to hack Vega, even if he did his best to shut out the memory of her face and hands and hair, but there was no use in trying to plan a step ahead of her. She was already there; she'd already planned a dozen moves ahead. It was just the way her head worked. Cap knew better than to call it a gift. It was not a thing that had been bestowed upon her by an unseen neuro-fairy. He'd guessed that some of it was innate--she had a good memory for numbers and names--but the rest of it she'd trained herself to do, during years of not sleeping or eating much and just thinking: thinking like the victim and thinking like the criminal. "Hi," Cap sent back. Then, "Sure. Free now." He tapped "send" and stared at the screen for three full minutes. No dots. No ringtone. No buzz. Go about your business, he thought, which is the advice he would have given Nell. Do your thing. You do you. Don't be pathetic. He would not have said that last one to Nell, but felt totally cool about saying it to himself. He pulled the sheet of paper with the client's information from the printer and reviewed it. He examined the phone screen once more, just to make sure Vega wasn't texting or calling at that very moment, and then dialed the client's number. He was immediately shooed into voice mail, so began his standard shtick: "Hi, Mr. Ferad, this is Max Caplan, with Vera Quinn's office. I believe she let you know I'd be calling." Then the doorbell rang, and he jumped from his chair and walked to the window, still talking: "I just have a few questions to ask you about your case." He saw a few cars parked on the block: a beat-up Ford truck that belonged to his neighbor, a couple of generic sedans he didn't recognize, and then, down the block a little farther, the burgundy minivan from the day before. Cap pressed his head sideways against the glass, squinting, and stumbled over his last words of the message: "When, uh, you have a moment, please give me a call." He left his number and tapped the red button to end the call, stuck the phone in his back pocket. He kept squinting, as if his eye might act as the lens of an endoscopic camera to curve around and see who was at the front door, even though he knew the only way to get a complete view was to look through the living-room window to the porch, where the guest would be able to see him as well. It couldn't be, he thought. He pulled away from the window and left his office, walked up to the front door, and didn't open it. Waited one more minute. The doorbell rang again. Cap didn't jump this time but fought off a ripple of nausea. He shook his head--at himself or at her, he wasn't sure. Then he opened the damn door. He was thin. His face, narrow, and Vega couldn't make out any shape of his body in the sweatshirt and jeans. Still, it was him, his eyes, dark like the black coffee he drank on a normal morning, unless he was dead tired, when he would add cream and sugar because he needed the protein and the rush. Even his smile looked weaker. "You're too thin," said Vega. Cap laughed. "You sound like Nell," he said. "Nell is observant." He nodded. "You want to come in, Vega?" he said, holding the door open wide. Vega went inside. She took in the living room, her eyes scanning the furniture, the tan couch with a different blanket draped over the top (almost two years before, when she'd been there last, it was a multicolored afghan; now it was dark blue and lightweight and looked like something purchased at an airport for a long flight). She breathed deeply through her nose and smelled beer in the air, also felt cold air hitting her nostrils. "Sorry about the chill," said Cap, shutting the door, standing behind her. "Boiler's busted. New one's coming tomorrow." Vega turned around to face him. "Nell here?" Cap shook his head. "At a friend's." The way he said it, the way he shook his head, his shoulders hunched forward in a way Vega couldn't recall seeing before--it wasn't just that he had lost weight; he wasn't sleeping, either. "You're tired," she said. Cap sniffed out a laugh this time, pinched his nose with his thumb and finger as if it tickled him. Then he sighed. "Yeah, I'm tired, Vega. I don't sleep very well." He pointed at her with his chin. "You come all this way to tell me how shitty I look?" Now Vega smelled something different in the air between them. It was aggression, and she could always sense it, from men especially, from a city block away. From a man she knew as well as she knew Cap, she could detect it in a syllable, a breath, a nod. "No, I didn't," she said, and walked toward the kitchen. She moved around the small table, placed her hand on the back of the chair she'd sat in two years ago, remembered eating spaghetti. She glanced in the small waste bin against the wall, lined with a blue recycling bag, saw two beer cans there. "You want something to drink?" said Cap, heading to the cupboard over the sink. "I think Nell might have some tea in here." "No, thanks." Cap leaned against the counter now and stared at her. "You want to sit down?" he said, the annoyance creeping into his voice. "I'm good," said Vega. He laughed again; it wasn't forced, but it sure wasn't joyful. "Well, what the hell do you want to talk about?" he said, voice rising. "I don't hear from you for five months, and then you show up." "I haven't heard from you, either," Vega said quietly. "Correct," said Cap; he pushed off the counter and started to pace. "You really can't tell me you don't know this about yourself, but sometimes you're a little difficult to communicate with, right?" Vega didn't respond, let him talk it out. "And I figured, if you wanted to talk to me, you would've talked to me. And you didn't. You let me think whatever I was going to think, let me spin this around in my head over and over." He made circles in the air with his index finger. "And then you're ready to talk, so here you are. So--talk, Vega." He placed his hands on the back of the chair in front of him, lifted it an inch off the ground, and slammed it back down. "Talk," he said again, firmer. Vega sat down. "You're angry," she said. He gawked at her. "Excellent work, detective," he said. Vega ignored his tone and continued: "I don't think you're angry because I haven't called you. I think you're angry because I almost got you killed three times." Cap seemed taken aback. He raised his shoulders in a middling shrug. "That was the way the case went," he said plainly. "We did the job." "You wouldn't have worked the job if I hadn't brought you in." "You didn't cuff me to your steering wheel," he said. "I could have bailed out at any time." "No, you couldn't have." "What?" said Cap, the earlier fury replaced by orneriness. "You would have stopped me?" "No," said Vega. "I mean, you, Caplan, you've never not wrapped up a case in your whole life." Cap paused. Vega watched him think about it, his face softening for less than a second, then reset to resentment. He sniffed and sneered, having a miniature argument with himself. "I don't need your approval to be pissed off," he said. "So, if that's why you're here . . ." He trailed off and laughed. "Why are you here?" Vega didn't speak right away. She could take his anger. She could take anything he had to give her. It didn't even set the tip of her nose out of place. "I've been offered a case, and I wanted to know what you thought about it," she said. Cap stared at her, dumbfounded. They were both silent for a moment. Finally, Cap spoke: "And calling, e-mailing, texting--these methods didn't interest you?" "No, not really," she said. "I need your opinion on this case, on whether or not I should take it, and I thought it would be easier for me to do that in person. You texted that you were free to speak. Is that still true?" There was not a whiff of sarcasm in her voice. Cap was momentarily disarmed. "Yeah, it's still true," he said, massaging one of the hinges of his jaw with his thumb. "You came all this way. Might as well tell me." Vega folded her hands on the table in a neat little knot. "I've been offered a substantial amount of money to find someone named Zeb Williams." Cap stopped rubbing his jaw, and his eyes became large, the dark semicircles underneath disappearing. "The football player," added Vega. "Yeah, I know," said Cap. "Who wants you to find Zeb Williams?" "A Silicon Valley guy named Anton Fohl, married to Williams's college sweetheart." "The airline heiress, right?" Cap said. "That's right," said Vega. "So who is he again--Zeb Williams?" Cap laughed once more, but this was a laugh Vega remembered and associated with him, no longer with the shroud of bitterness from before. This was him being shocked by her, but delighted about it. "Zeb Williams the Cal kicker?" he said, incredulous. "Number two? Wait a sec, here, Vega," he said, running his hands through his hair. "You mean to tell me you don't know who he is?" "Not really." "You're from California!" Cap shouted, still delighted. "How have you not heard of Wrong Way Williams?" Vega shrugged a little, flipped her hands palm-up on the table as if to show she had no cards hidden. "I don't really follow sports," she said. Now Cap gave her a reproachful look. "Zeb Williams transcends sports," he said. "He was, like, a cultural phenomenon." Vega shook her head, her mood lifted by seeing Cap so suddenly animated. "Didn't you look him up?" "Only the basics. Raised by his grandmother, scholarship to Cal," said Vega. "Disappeared in '84." "Right, but you know how he disappeared? The conditions of his disappearance?" "No, I thought you could tell me about it." "All you have to do is google his name or 'Zeb's Run' or probably even 'The Run'--I can get my laptop," he said, pointing toward his office. "Or you could just tell me about it," Vega said again. "Okay," said Cap, a little invigorated by the challenge, his eyes scanning the room, as he pondered where to start. "Okay," he said again, sounding more definitive. "Every year, Cal and Stanford play a game--the Big Game, they call it, it's been going on for a hundred years or something, that's how long they've been rivals." Vega flashed on Anton Fohl's cheery admission that his Stanford alumni family was less than thrilled he'd married a Cal girl. "So--it's the fourth quarter. Game's tied. Five or six seconds to go. Cal's just scored a touchdown, so that means it's point-after time," Cap explained, not a lick of patronization in his voice. "The extra point would put Cal ahead, right? So--five, six seconds on the clock--Williams is on the three-yard line. Usually, a kicker's pretty clear anywhere within thirty." Vega gave a small nod. "Snapper snaps," said Cap, throwing an imaginary ball backward between his legs. Then he jogged backward a couple of feet, playing another role. "Holder catches and sets the ball down right in front of Williams." Cap crouched, his hand hovering about a foot off the ground. Then he stood upright and took one large step back, away from the kitchen table and the phantom ball. He took a small step forward and another to the left. "He sets up like he's going to kick, right?" he said. Vega continued to nod, even though she really had no idea what he was pantomiming. She had seen games on TV; sometimes her mother's second husband, TJ, would put them on; sometimes they'd be on in the background at her father's or brother's house when she visited, which was not often. At bars when she was on a job. Maybe she went to one in high school--she could not recall. "And the holder has the ball for only a second, second and a half, so Zeb steps up like he's going to kick, and at the very last millisecond of that one-point-five, he doesn't kick." Cap froze, letting the suspense build, hunched over with his hands on his knees. He gave Vega the side-eye. "He shoves the holder, who's his teammate, right, and he swipes the ball . . ." Cap stood with his arm curled into his chest. ". . . and Zeb Williams runs the opposite way," he said, drawing the words out, pointing into the living room. "Away from his team, away from where he's supposed to be, where he's supposed to kick the field goal." Cap did a trot around the kitchen table, then began to circle the couch. "Now, Williams was a decent kicker," he said. "But what no one counted on was that he'd been a runner before then--cross-country. He had the wind," Cap said, patting his chest. "So he runs," Cap continued, heading toward the window. "At the forty, at the thirty, the whole Cal team's behind him, fans are going just batshit, jumping down the wall out of the stands." Cap gestured to the wall behind the TV, as if the fans were dropping down right then. "But no one can get near him, and he does it, he runs into the end zone where Stanford is supposed to score. So the ref signals a safety." Cap reached his arms above his head and made a triangle, palms pressed against each other as if he were praying. "Which is a punishment, like a penalty score awarded to the other team, so Stanford wins, eight-six. And Williams drops the ball and just keeps running, out of the stadium, knocking people over--reporters, cheerleaders, the trombone player--and people keep chasing him, but they all get clogged up, fans are running onto the field, and somehow Williams gets lost in the crowd." Cap held out his hands, the magic trick complete. "Poof." He paused. Vega stared at him. "No smart phones, see," Cap added, calmer now. "Later, they find the helmet and the jersey and the cleats in the parking lot. No Williams." Cap turned his head and gazed out the window now, separating two blinds with his fingers. Vega did not think he was actually looking for Zeb Williams but didn't know what was out there instead. "Then what?" she said. Cap released the blinds and glanced back at her. "No one ever finds him. Plenty of people look for him, call themselves the 2s, after his jersey number. He's like a folk hero, or Elvis or Bigfoot or something--every now and then someone will post a picture online. You wouldn't have to try too hard to find some Zeb Williams conspiracy theorists, you know, people who believe he's been abducted by aliens, something. . . ." Cap let his thought taper off and walked back from the living room to the kitchen. He sat at the table opposite Vega and leaned back in the chair, crossed his arms. They stared at each other. "You ever do any cold cases?" he asked her. Vega leaned forward, her hands still folded in front of her. "Not really," she said. "Dead skips don't settle bail." "And he's not a minor in distress, either. So what is it that interests you about this case?" Cap asked. "The money," said Vega. "I didn't realize Alice Vega worried about such concerns," he said. "I'm not worried," said Vega. "Every few cases I bank a lot of money, so I don't have to worry." "Why does his ex-girlfriend's husband want to find him anyway?" Cap fired back, in full cop-mode. "I don't know." "You're just doing this one for the money," Cap said, clarifying. "That's right." "You came all this way for my opinion, correct?" said Cap. "On whether or not you should take this case?" "Not exactly." "So you lied before, when you said that's why you came here?" "Yes." They were silent. Vega's hands were cold, and she squeezed them together on the table, tried to keep the blood flowing. "Then why did you come?" said Cap. "I already decided to take the case," she said. "I came here to ask you to work on it with me." Cap seemed tired again. "I have a job here now," he said. "You probably have vacation days," Vega countered. Cap smiled. It was reserved, but it was still a smile. "I have a Nell." "She's a big girl," said Vega. "Turned eighteen in November, right?" Now Cap laughed. "Yeah, that's right. She's eighteen." "She going to school next year?" "She sure is," said Cap. "Early admission to Princeton." "Princeton," Vega repeated. "That's a big deal, right?" "It is." "Close, though. New Jersey's close?" "About a two-hour drive, so, yeah, close." "You're proud," Vega observed. "Always," said Cap. Cap's expression grew troubled as the thought of Nell appeared to dissolve. "You don't need me. You could do this job with both hands and a foot tied behind your back. Look," he said, correcting himself. "I'm not convinced Zeb Williams can be found, period, but, hell, if anyone has a chance, it's you." Vega wanted to blow hot air into her hands but didn't move. "No shit," she said. "Sorry?" "No shit," she repeated, and when he kept staring at her, she continued: "I don't need you to come with me. I would like you to. I think you should. I think it will make you feel better." Cap ran through it: texting Nell and Jules and Vera, throwing clothes and toiletries and the Sig into a suitcase, getting on a plane with Vega, chasing leads and interviewing witnesses. He knew that, even with a job that sounded as benign as this one did, it would still be with Vega, and she would wake up as Vega and go to sleep as Vega, and in between find a shit-ton of trouble. Cap shut his eyes and felt an involuntary shudder pass through his shoulders. The fantasy was over. He used to have a habit of running his finger along his ear, the ridge that had been shot off during the first case he worked with Vega, but now sometimes he tapped the electroshock scar instead. What would it be next time? Would he gingerly rub the stump where his hand or foot used to be? Cap opened his eyes. "You sure you don't want some tea, Vega? Temp's going down in here, I think." Vega shook her head. Usually, the problem was not knowing where to start, but right now, this time, she thought about how, when she started, there'd be no way she could finish. About how nothing had been the same for her, either, since they said goodbye in San Diego five months before, about how the scar tissue had mended over the knife wound in her side and looked not unlike a long tangle of fishing wire, about how that same wound might wake her up at odd hours pulsing like an artery, about how, after being awakened by the wound, she would not go back to sleep but inevitably let her thoughts snake and curl around the memory of Cap's teeth on her neck and chin and fingers, as if he were attempting to eat her up whole, like she was a blue-rare steak. Finally, she blew warm breath into her hands. Cap was right: the temp was going down. "Dude's long gone. No e-mail, no taxes, no Social," the Bastard had written. But he had sent Vega some more links and files and photos, all of which were available to the public online. On the plane back to San Francisco, Vega skimmed it all on her laptop. Newspaper articles first. Pictures from the game: fans with faces painted blue and gold, the Cal offensive line, a cluster of bodies in the end zone, Zeb Williams in the dark jersey running and running. Then, afterward: The angry Cal mob; the elated Stanford fans. Weeks afterward, long-haired bikers on Harleys on the open road, activists arrested for protesting Reagan's Star Wars plan, fans at metal clubs on the Strip in Hollywood--all of them holding up two fingers, but not for peace, for Zeb Williams. Number two. The 2s have posted pictures, too. Potential sightings: northern California, Oregon, Washington, up through Wyoming, over to Minnesota and Wisconsin. There he was on a motorcycle. There he was working in a feed-and-seed shop. Some of them looked real-ish to Vega, not altered or photoshopped. But none as real as the photocopy that Fohl had given her, with Zeb in profile, gazing up at Cara Simms. Just that sliver of his face in a crummy printed reproduction of a picture was worth more than all the yearbook head-shots. Vega sent an e-mail to the Bastard with Cara's name in the "subject" line and wrote in the body, "Can you please find her?" Vega figured it was about an eight-hour drive to the town called Ilona, or a ninety-minute flight to Eugene and then a half-hour drive. When she landed at SFO, she wouldn't even have to leave the airport or the terminal; she could just find the new gate and get right back on a plane. She closed her laptop and unfolded the paper again to look at the photo, the creases starting to fray. Someone, one of those three people, might still live in the area. At least one of them had to still be alive and might remember some details about Zeb Williams. And if Vega had to bet, she'd put her chip down on the dark-haired woman he couldn't look away from. Excerpted from Hideout: An Alice Vega Novel by Louisa Luna All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
