Doesn’t sound like a case of foul play.

She would have been grateful for that. If she believed it were true. You can’t curse at the cops, though, she told herself, standing to leave. You might need them.

“Ms. Ames.”

She stopped and turned around at the door.

“If he’s not back in three days—if you find some evidence he didn’t just walk out—come back around. But until then, there’s really nothing we can do here.”

◆◆◆

So, Izzy went home. But she regretted that she’d backed down. How many times would her past trauma cause her to capitulate? She couldn’t do it this time. Come back in three days? Doesn’t sound like a case of foul play. Of foul play. Of foul play. Denial had turned to pain had turned to anger. Fuck the cops and their insinuations. She’d write a report of her own.

She looked at the rumple of sheets on the futon, the neat stacks of cassette tapes and the boom box, the sewing machine and acoustic guitar. Her massage table folded in the corner. Her favorite law book, officially nicknamed the “Dog Book,” with a picture of a St. Bernard and the words “Help is on The Way,” across the cover, lay open on the floor. Cyrus had put a juice jar full of desert grasses on top of the bookcase he’d built. The candles had pooled into wax; ghosts of sage smoke now silvered the air.

The tortoise blinked at her, his eyelids closing from the bottom up in that odd way they did, and swung his head to the side. “You okay, little three feet?” she whispered, knowing he responded best to soft sounds—who didn’t?

Izzy cut up some apple for Yard to eat, blinking slowly back at him. She’d read you could do this with cats, to connect with them, so she always blinked at the tortoise, just in case it worked. Then she stroked his shell to make him feel “at home” as the animal rescue people had instructed her to do daily. It was a brief respite for her, as well, a kind of meditation, imagining the sensitive nerve endings that she knew were embedded in the rough shell. But touching the tortoise now made her think of what Cyrus had told her when he’d first seen Yard: “Some people link them with death.” “I thought it was eternal life,” she’d said.

Now, Izzy searched “Cyrus Rivera” on her phone. There was nothing online except his construction website. Cyrus didn’t use social media. But Izzy composed a notice for a missing persons site:

6’2”, 175 lbs. black hair, hazel eyes. D.O.B. 1/28/1990. Distinguishing Features: Tattoo of red roses and black serpent on right shoulder. Tattoo of skull with red roses for eyes on left shoulder. Panther tattoo across upper back. Falcon tattoo on lower back. Tattoo across left side of chest: “Izzy Forever.” Silver band on left ring finger.

On Monday, November 1, at about 7:00 a.m., Cyrus Rivera was discovered missing from his residence in Salton City, Imperial County, CA. Rivera’s 1988 half-ton, black Chevrolet Silverado long-bed pickup truck remained in front of the residence. Rivera never returned home. He is most likely wearing Levi’s 501 jeans, a black short-sleeved T-shirt, black Doc Martens boots, and NO SOCKS. Anyone with any information please contact the Morongo Basin Sheriff’s station Izzy Ames at—