Cactus Heart (20 page)

42

The two men rounded the corner from the street as I stepped out the door. For just a nanosecond, I stood and stared in disorientation. But the guns they were carrying got my attention. I slipped back in the building just as they saw me and started running after me.

The door wouldn't lock from the inside. I moved as quickly as I dared through the dark room, panic starting to jelly the muscles in my legs. I dropped to the floor at the far end of the building just as sunlight spilled into the passageway and footsteps pounded toward me. Then the door closed and the world was utterly black again. I could hear footsteps scuttling across the concrete. I connected where I had seen those two bulked-up goons before: in the reception area of Yarneco, wearing oversized suits.

I called out: “I'm a deputy sheriff and I'm armed!”

Suddenly the whole room seemed to shatter into fragments. I realized someone was shooting, an automatic weapon with a silencer and a muzzle flash suppresser. Pieces of masonry rained down as I slid the Python out of its nylon holster. Its heaviness filled my hand. There was a little spark across the room, and some wooden pallets came apart behind me. His flash suppresser wasn't perfect. I took aim and squeezed the smooth Colt action. Fire and a deep
boom
! erupted at the end of my arm. Across the room somebody gasped and fell into something glass. Then he moaned and stopped making any noise.

I rolled to the left just in time before another gun fired in the direction of my muzzle flash. These boys were pros. Rolled and found the edge of the ladder. There was nothing to do but go down. I hit the bottom and frantically pulled out the metal hooks on the ladder. It crashed down into the shaft beside me. I retreated back into the tunnel, down the steps, into the next passage. Only the rough, century-old bricks of the wall guided me through the blackness.

I holstered the Python and fumbled in my pocket for the surveillance wire. Switched the battery on and whispered frantically into it.

“Mike, Mike! Officer needs assistance! Shots fired. At the Triple A Storage Warehouse. Yarnell's goons have me pinned down. I'm in the tunnels. They are heavily armed.” I left the channel open and set it aside. I didn't really believe they were still monitoring me. I crouched down in the darkness and waited, the fear all over me. I felt the sweet ache in my abdominal muscles from Gretchen, and wondered why the hell I was doing any of this.

“There's no way out, Mapstone.” It was James Yarnell. “You miscalculated your little blackmail scheme.”

I pulled the Python out again and nestled it against my face, the coldness of the steel and the acrid smell of the four-and-a-half-inch barrel somehow helping keep down my fear.

“I went to see Max that night he was killed, but I didn't kill him,” Yarnell said. “I told him he had to give up the Superior project. The banks were going to shut us down. We were leveraged to our eyeballs. We were going to lose everything. I was going to lose everything. Goddamned Hector. I hired his Mexican gang kids to make phone threats, set the fires, be my environmental terrorists—that way we could walk away from the project.

“But Max wouldn't play along!” he shouted from the edge of the elevator shaft. “So I went out there that night, to try to reason with him. But he was already dead. I found him with that damned petrified wood driven into his heart. For all I know, somebody else was squeezing Max. Maybe you, Mapstone. Maybe you hired somebody to shoot me!”

He paused. “Any questions?”

I had a lot of questions, but I didn't say a word. I moved carefully back into the tunnels, navigating by memory, going in the opposite direction of the place where Andy and Woodrow had been entombed. I shuffled, trying not to kick anything and make a sound. The heavy mesh of a spider web caught on my arm and made me shudder.

Just then the lights came on and I was blinded just long enough. One of the goons dropped down into the shaft. He strafed the tunnel and something heavy tore into my left foot. My entire left leg was instantly consumed with a bone-deep, searing pain. I fell backward, firing in his direction. The heavy magnum rounds ricocheted viciously off the walls. The goon drew back, dropped to the floor. The Python clicked as it revolved around to a spent cartridge. In my panic, my fire discipline had turned to shit. Too many years away from the academy.

I had retreated to the big chamber, with its garbage and old citrus cases. I hobbled backward painfully, crashing into some wooden boxes, falling flat on my ass. There was no cover. No way out. I reached to my belt and brought out a Speedloader. Opened the cylinder. Steadied my shaking hand. Emptied the spent rounds. They fell like little bells onto the filthy floor. Steadied my hand. I dropped the Speedloader into the cylinder, turned the metal shaft and dropped six fresh rounds into the Colt. I swung the cylinder heavily into place just as the goon stormed into the room and leveled his machine gun at my head.

“Give me your fucking gun!” he huffed.

I was splayed out on the floor, surrounded by the debris of a half-century ago, a steady ooze of blood coming out of the top of my foot. I just stared at the Python and knew I was at the end. “You're not getting my gun,” I forced out in a hoarse whisper.

James Yarnell stepped in behind him and shone a flashlight in my eyes. I could see a little chrome semi-automatic pistol in his other hand.

“The dentist's grandson.” He shook his head, playing the light over my bloody left foot. “How much bad luck have you had this month, young man? You find things that were never intended to be found. And now you're dead.” His expression was something between contempt and pity. “I never did like history classes. What's the point in looking back?”

I spoke to the barrel of the gun. “Sometimes you find unfinished business.” They were lousy last words.

In the next ten seconds, the silence became just complete enough that we were all startled by a man clearing his throat.

Then the goon's right knee buckled in a way nature never intended. In the same instant, the room was overtaken by a huge explosion. The goon collapsed, screaming, holding a bloody mass where his knee used to be. James Yarnell retreated, weakly holding out his pistol. Out of the gunsmoke stepped Bobby Hamid.

He walked to the goon, kicked away his machine gun, and shot him again in the other knee.

“There, now you have a match,” Bobby said hospitably.

“Bobby!” I winced.

“Dr. Mapstone, I am saving your life,” he said evenly, then he faced James Yarnell, who by now was on the other side of the room, his back against the wall.

“This is fun,” Bobby said, raising a gigantic, blue-steel automatic in Yarnell's direction.

“Don't kill me!” Yarnell pleaded.

“And why not?” Bobby asked, as if a party discussion had gotten heated and it was time for a new bottle of wine. “It sounds as if you have much to atone for, Mr. Yarnell.”

“My family built this state!” he shouted.

Bobby shot him in the left foot, releasing a jet of bright red blood. The pistol and flashlight clattered off to the side, and we were in half-dark again.

“Don't speak, David,” Bobby cut me off coldly. He walked over, retrieved the flashlight and set it on a carton overlooking Yarnell.

Bobby rubbed his fine chin and aimed at Yarnell's left knee.

“No!” Yarnell sobbed, clutching his mangled foot. “What do you want?”

Bobby chuckled. “You cannot possibly give me what I want. Dr. Mapstone, however, is more easily pleased. He would also tell you that you have the right to remain silent, that anything you say can be used against you.” He focused his aim. “I suggest you start talking about this kidnapping. And please don't bore me, Mr. Yarnell.”

Yarnell's eyes were wider than seemed possible for human eyes.

“It was Dad and Win together!” Yarnell blubbered. “They had to get Grandpa away from that little whore, Frances. She was pregnant again with his child. They were going to lose everything.”

“Slow down,” Bobby commanded.

“We brought the twins here. Then we went home. Talbott was told what to do, make the call demanding the ransom and pick up the money. After he gave the money to Uncle Win, he took Frances to the border.”

I spoke through my pain. “Why would she go with him? He must have kidnapped her, too.”

“No, no. She went willingly. She wasn't that bright. She didn't know anything about the kidnapping. Nobody did for days. Jack told her she would get to meet Grandpa in Nogales and they could be together. You've got to get me some help! I'm going to bleed to death.”

Bobby raised an eyebrow. “So?”

Yarnell moaned.

I went on, “But the real plan was to have Jack Talbott kill her?”

“If it came to that,” he said, his face contorted in pain. “Jack was supposed to drug her and get her an abortion. Then pay her to go away. He was given the money for that.”

I asked, “So why was Jack Talbott executed and Frances Richie forced to spend her life in prison?”

“Jack tried to blackmail us,” James said, forcing up some bravado. “The Yarnells don't blackmail.”

Bobby stifled an exaggerated yawn.

“There was a time when we would have crushed you, towel head!” Yarnell yelled. Bobby mockingly put his hand over his mouth in shock, keeping the big automatic leveled. Yarnell said, “We couldn't have either one of them talking. Dad put the pajamas in a sack in the trunk of Talbott's car, just as a little insurance. Dad was smart that way. So if anything went wrong, and the cops searched Talbott, he'd look guilty and nobody would believe him if he blamed the family.”

“And Frances?”

“Grandpa died thinking the little bitch had betrayed him. We made sure she kept her mouth shut once she was in prison.”

“Really, how was that?”

“I'm dying here, Mapstone!”

“Put your hand over your wound. Apply direct pressure. I don't think you silenced Frances. I think she chose not to talk.”

“You're full of shit, Mapstone. You're gonna tell me a broken heart over my grandfather shut her up? I'm finished talking. You're a deputy sheriff, even if you're a dirty one. So you have to arrest me, or arrest him!” He nodded toward Bobby without having the courage to look at him.

I said, “Frances didn't have the abortion.”

“What are you talking about?” Yarnell started to gesture but stopped himself. Bobby kept the gun trained on him.

“She had the baby in jail,” I said.

“That's…That's impossible. We paid…”

“Not enough, I guess. She had that baby and it was adopted,” I said. “So the only thing this woman has left in the world is taken from her, but at least the baby has a chance to be safe and free. She knew if she said anything it might make the Yarnell family go after that baby. Mother love is powerful. Maybe it was the only thing left inside her after you and your family were through. Makes me wonder if there's another heir to Hayden Yarnell out there, maybe more than one.”

“That's not…”

“They might have an interest in the Yarnell Trust after you lose every dime.”

Yarnell stared past me and spoke in a monotone. “When she was just his mistress, it was one thing. She got pregnant but Grandpa made Dad adopt the twin boys. Max was a little kid. He never knew. But Grandpa and that little bitch couldn't leave it at that. They loved each other.” He made it sound like an unprecedented phenomenon. “After Grandma died, he was going to marry Frances…”

“When was this?” Bobby asked.

“Nineteen forty-one. My dad and Uncle Win couldn't talk Grandpa out of it. He was going to remarry and start a new family. He said he was sick of his sons and their gambling and failures.”

“You were part of it,” I said. “You also forgot to come back and get the two loose ends you left down here inside the wall. It must have been a hell of a way for little boys to die. Suffocating. In the dark.”

Yarnell momentarily shook his head, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Dad had to do what he did. There was no other way. We were going to lose everything. Those boys weren't even his children.”

Bobby glanced at me, something unreadable in his black eyes.

“Dad suffocated them in their sleep,” Yarnell said. “That night. Then we carried them down here, to the tunnels under the hotel, and put them in the wall. The next day Dad ordered the tunnels sealed and closed the freight elevator. It would have worked if Dad and Win hadn't gotten at each other's throats about the gambling and the art collection. If he,” Yarnell pointed at me, “hadn't found the tunnels.”

He paused and swallowed hard enough that I could watch the saliva fall down his sweaty throat. “…If he hadn't found my goddamned pocket watch.”

Yarnell looked around the bleak room, looked into the tunnel, as if for the first time. We all stopped and stared at him. The hard man brought low by unaccustomed pain and fear. Even the goon with both his knees gone stopped whimpering.

Yarnell added in a whisper, “They didn't suffer.”

43

Christmas week. I stayed at Gretchen's apartment with my foot up, listening to Handel's
Messiah
on the CD player, foolishly mixing Macallan and painkillers, reading Burckhardt's classic
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
. I had missed it in college. Now, it was pure enjoyment. It made me want to write and teach history again. I was glad to be alive.

Gretchen checked in on me from time to time, amazing me with what a man with only one good leg can accomplish. Peralta sorted out the Yarnell case, only making me write a few dozen pages of reports and statements. James Yarnell was under arrest for very current offenses: assault on a police officer, conspiracy to commit murder, giving a false report. Peralta's detectives were working on other charges. Peralta was outraged to be in Bobby Hamid's debt, and kept threatening to indict him for assault with a deadly weapon. Bobby would beat the charge, just like he had all the others. He could take care of himself, as I had chillingly learned. For a moment, the enemy of my enemy had been my savior. It made me feel strange.

The city settled into serious holiday business: the run-up to the Fiesta Bowl, high season at world-class resorts, packed five-star restaurants, a big golf tournament. The days were brightly sunny and the nights cold, magical. The smog wasn't too bad. The twentieth century ticked out its last days. In Willo, the winter lawns gleamed as if every blade of grass was lit up by electricity, and the neighborhood put out luminarias along all the sidewalks. Gretchen and I had our own celebration, two or three times a night.

***

The bricks were set in place one at a time. It was done by a man's hand, a thick hand with copious hair on top, an ape's hand really. He ladled on the mortar and it ran off the sides like pancake batter. And I could only watch. It was dark and for a long time I watched with interest. So this was how bricks were laid. The hand moved very precisely. Every brick lined up perfectly. But I was inside, inside a tiny opening, so small I couldn't move. The wound on my foot seemed better, but my legs were inert. My hands were dead at my sides. And by the time I realized what was happening, every brick took away a little more air, and the hand kept laying them in place, and the mortar kept running like batter, and I couldn't breathe. I could only scream.

“David! Wake up, baby. Wake up. I've got you. You're safe.”

Gretchen was next to me, stroking my face. “You were having a nightmare. It must have been awful.”

I took big breaths and surveyed her large bedroom with relief. “I know, don't tell a dream or it might come true.”

She held me close. “I have dreams about you and me, and I want those to come true, David. Oh, baby, you've been through so much. But you're safe with Gretchen. This awful thing is over. James is in jail. They killed that kid who stabbed Max with the petrified wood. It's over.”

I let her rock me to sleep, my face nuzzling her russet-colored hair.

Then I came awake. I just stared into the dark for a long time.

***

“David? Couldn't you go back to sleep? The holidays are so hard.” She leaned over and kissed me, holding a hand against my forehead. “You feel clammy.”

She got out of bed and brought me a glass of water. She looked more beautiful than ever: the ambient light playing off her hair; the shadows accenting the lovely planes and curves of her face, her robe open and revealing.

“What is it? You're upset.”

I didn't want to speak, didn't want words or a voice to say them.

A wave of nausea just kept washing across me, again and again. But then I was letting her reach under the covers. It was a nice feeling.

“I know just what the patient needs,” she said. I was hard as a twenty-five-year-old.

Grandfather used to say that corruption ultimately wasn't about payments under the table or anything so prosaic. It wasn't even about evil, at least at first. It was about what happened inside when a person got comfortable with what he knew was wrong.

“No,” I said, pushing her away. She flashed those rich brown eyes and drew back.

I swallowed some acid saliva down my sandpaper throat and said, “How did you know Max had been killed with petrified wood?”

“David, what are you talking about?”

“We held back that information. Nobody knew how Max was murdered except the cops and the suspect.”

“You told me, you goof!”

God, I wished it were true. “I didn't, Gretchen. I never told you that.”

She didn't protest. She just watched me. We stared at each other a long time, until I looked away.

“If I call the city archaeologist's office, am I going to find out that there's no Gretchen Goodheart on the staff? That's what I will find, isn't it?” I swung out of bed and reached for my clothes.

“David, please! You're going to start the bleeding in your foot. What are you doing? It's the middle of the night.”

“I'm going down to Phoenix PD and see if they have a city staff directory.” In agony, I pulled my pants over my injured foot, then slipped on the sweatshirt.

“I don't work for the city.” She sat back against the headboard and pulled her robe tightly around her. “I did help you, David. I helped you in ways you don't even know.”

Why the hell was I starting to cry? I whispered, “You probably don't even wear a cowboy hat.”

“I thought eccentricity would be disarming,” she said.

“I was disarmed.”

I waited for her to protest, to say she could explain, oh, God, how I waited. She just leaned forward, put her arms around her legs and rocked. With every throb of my foot the room and the world were collapsing around me.

“And the dolls. That was you.”

Silence.

“So what organization, Gretchen? Who are you with?”

“What?”

“The FBI has been obsessed with eco-terrorism, and I thought they were overreacting. Apparently I was wrong. You used me to get close to Max.” I was talking in short bursts. I couldn't do more. “That night, you probably used my name to get him to let you in. Tell me a former smoke jumper isn't strong enough to knock a man down with a kick or a punch, and then…” God, my foot was throbbing in pain. “…And then pick up an ornamental piece of petrified wood and plunge it into his breastbone.”

“It's not like that.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I'm not with anybody but me!”

My clothes were on and I should have left. But I just sat on the other side of the bed, our body language nothing worse than a couple having a fight.

She said, “I never meant to hurt you.”

The damned pulse against my eyes.

She came over, bent down and kissed me on the forehead, and then on the lips. I let her do it.

“I really love you,” she said. “I thought you hungered for justice like I did.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you know Max offered me money?” she said. “As if that could make up for anything.”

All I could muster was a deep sigh. She took my hand and stroked it. I felt so tired.

“Three years ago, I learned that my dad had been adopted. He didn't know anything about the circumstances. It happened when he was a baby, so he has no memory of his real mother. A year ago, I learned I could never have children. It became really important to me to know where I came from. So it took some time. It took some money, and some other things. But I finally found Frances. She's my grandmother.”

My foot was caught somewhere between the worst cramp you can imagine and the deep pain of a broken bone. I just let it throb.

“I said I was a law student looking into wrongful convictions, and they let me visit her. I knew she was my grandmother, my flesh and blood, immediately. But she was so far gone, she didn't even realize who I was. And then I learned the whole story. How the Yarnells had kept her in there for all those years. What they had done to her.”

“So you murdered Max.”

“Those are your words.”

“God, Gretchen, stop lying to me. If you love me, give me the truth.”

“I'm not sorry for what happened to Max, whoever did it. That's the truth.”

“That's because you did,” I said dully. “Then James Yarnell. I remember. You checked your watch that night, after we had dinner, and you suddenly left. You needed to be there when he was locking up the gallery and walking to his car. It didn't seem to matter to you, that night in Scottsdale, if you shot me along with him.”

“If that had been me…if it had been, I'm a good shot.”

“You have the perfect alibi for that night: dinner with your lover, the deputy.” My mouth felt as if it were coated with acid.

Gretchen said softly, “Frances was a twenty-four-year-old girl who never did anyone harm. Her only fault was to fall for an old man who was betrayed by his sons! And then their sons carried it on. They could have stopped it any time. Just let her out and let her be. They had the money to let it go away.”

“I guess they thought they were in too deep.”

“They were evil,” she said simply. “They had blood on their hands.”

“That may be,” I said. “But the punishment isn't up to us.”

She faced me, her eyes fanatically bright. “How many more decades would we have to wait for your style of justice, David?”

“My style of justice?”

“How many?” she demanded. “You're the historian. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

“And there's no place for forgiveness?”

Her hands became fists and her voice rose an octave. “Tell my grandmother about forgiveness!”

“I can't imagine she wanted her granddaughter to live the same nightmare that she did. Don't you realize she stayed quiet all those years so your father would be safe, so the Yarnells would never even know about him?”

She sobbed softly. “Are you arresting me?”

I said nothing.

Then she kissed me, the most tender kiss of my life. It dawned on me that she could kill me, too, if she chose. Right that minute, I didn't care. I heard her whisper, “My God, we could have been good together.”

I willed myself from her arms, willed myself out of the bed, willed myself out of the pain and desire to pass out. I grabbed the cane they had given me in the hospital and hobbled toward the door.

I stopped at the threshold of the bedroom. “How can you be sure you're right?”

“You know I'm right.”

“I know I took an oath as a deputy sheriff. I know James Yarnell is under arrest, and we will prosecute him lawfully.”

“Well,” she said quietly. “You take your justice. I'll take mine.”