Desert Cut
Desert Cut
Copyright © 2007 by Betty Webb
First Edition 2007
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007935699
ISBN-10 Print: 1-59058-491-0
ISBN-13 Print: 978-1-59058-491-0
ISBN-13 eBook: 978-1-6159-52212
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Poisoned Pen Press
6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
To Paul, as always
Many thanks go out to the Sheridan Street Irregulars, who were generous with their time and suggestions for this project. I am especially grateful to Arizona author Sharon Magee and her excellent
Geronimo! Stories of an American Legend
, for providing some of the information used here. Thanks also to Marge Purcell, Debra McCarthy, and Rod Fenson. Most of all, I owe an enormous debt to the many courageous women and men whose writings—in defiance of belief, tradition, and death threats—brought the central theme of
Desert Cut
to my attention.
Angels wear many faces.
Although inspired in part by true events,the following story is fictional and does not depictany actual people, events, or organizations.For more information,See the Author’s Note and appendices beginning on page 275.
Contents
The morning was perfect. Early October, a clear sky, a symphony of songbirds, and here in the foothills of Southern Arizona’s secluded Dragoon Mountains, no sign of the urban pollution we had left behind in Phoenix. But there is always a snake in Eden. A hint of the serpent slithered into view when my horse topped the ridge and I saw a coyote tugging at something white.
Fabric. Protruding from a mound of fresh earth.
“Warren!” I shouted. “Get back!”
Cops—and I had been one, once—know that few people bother to bury yardage. Not out here in the desert, they don’t. Perhaps a child’s pet lay underneath, a dog, a cat. But I saw no twig cross marker, something grieving children usually insisted upon.
Ignoring me, Warren galloped his horse up the slope and reined it in next to mine. I repeated my command, since the least amount of damage done to a body dump, the better, but, as he had so many times before, he misunderstood me. “Listen, Lena, I’m getting tired of all this, and your behavior isn’t helping.” Then, spotting the coyote, he fell silent.
Interrupted at its meal, the animal pivoted to face us. Fabric dangled from its teeth, one end of the cloth stained with blood.
Warren gasped.
“Do. Not. Move.” I told him, then dug my heels into my horse and charged the animal.
Snarling, it ran off, disappearing into a distant creosote thicket. It didn’t come out the other side, and I knew why. In the desert, animals took their meals where they found them, and a body dump could provide a two-day banquet, depending on the size of the victim. The coyote was simply waiting for us to move on.
I looked down at the small bundle of rags the animal had unearthed. No, not rags.
A child.
She was wrapped in white and from the condition of her body, not long dead. Her grave had been dug so shallowly that she lay half in, half out, of what was supposed to be her final resting place. An angel smothered in dirt.
At least the coyote hadn’t had time to do much damage.
Behind me, Warren called, “Lena? That’s not a kid, is it?” His twins were seven, and about this girl’s size. Unlike his little blondes, she was black, her fine-boned ebony face sculpted with delicate features. A beauty, even in death.
Keeping an eye on the creosote thicket lest the coyote reemerge, I rode back to him. “I’m afraid so. Give me your cell phone.”
With a shaking hand, he passed it to me. I punched in 9-1-1, said what needed to be said, and gave the dispatcher our location. Yes, a child. Yes, we would wait. I rang off, amazed at the steadiness in my voice.
Not yet ready to look down again, I stared up at that hard blue sky and saw vultures riding the thermals. I tried staring at the Dragoons, but that didn’t work, either. The mountains simply reminded me of other deaths. Once a sanctuary for Geronimo and Cochise during the Apache Wars of the late 1800s, they now served as a hiding place for the illegals who slipped over the nearby Mexican border on their way to Tucson. Mexican nationals, mostly, with a sprinkling of Central and South Americans. Every now and then the Border Patrol discovered a few Africans and Middle Easterners among them, desperate people seeking easier access to the U.S. than post-9/11 immigration policies allowed.
The illegals who were caught are among the lucky ones. The desert kills the others.
I looked down at the child and willed myself not to cry.
***
Cochise County Sheriff Bill Avery, accompanied by a deputy and a two-man forensics unit, arrived too long after my call. When I revealed my displeasure at the lag time, Avery, a desert-browned man with startling blue eyes, merely shrugged.
“We get this a lot, Ms. Jones. It’s a shame, but short of completing that fence between us and Mexico, there’s nothing we can do except collect the bodies when it all goes wrong.” His eyes were not devoid of compassion, but the flat line of his mouth revealed a peace officer who found it hard to care when there was so much to care about.
“Still. A child.”
Not even a blink. “The crossing’s tough on kids. Now tell me again what you two are doing way out here. Camping, did you say?”
Behind me, Warren made an exasperated sound. In his comfortable Hollywood world, law officers treated Oscar-winning film makers with respect. But this wasn’t California, it was the badlands of Southern Arizona, where Warren and I were nothing more than two strangers whose discovery had just made the sheriff’s job harder.
“Not really camping,” I told him. “We’re renting a tepee over at the Apache Dream Bed and Breakfast.”
One corner of the sheriff’s mouth pulled up. “Oh, yeah. I know those things. Tepees, which the Apaches never used. All the amenities, including heat, beds, and champagne breakfasts.” He looked Warren up and down, taking in the designer jeans, custom-made ostrich-skin boots, the diamond-sprinkled Rolex. “Not from around here, are you, sir?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Warren snapped. “You need to get tracking dogs up here, a full forensics team. Undocumented alien or not, that child deserves a full investigation.” He started to say something else, then head down, walked away.
The sheriff watched him for a moment, then turned to me, his eyes flickering briefly over the scar on my forehead. “Actually, I did a quick check on you both and found out you’re an ex-cop who’s set up shop as a private investigator. Mr. Quinn over there’s some sort of movie director. I’d think this is a pretty unusual place for you two to be taking a vacation. Especially a sensitive soul like him.”
Having been in the sheriff’s position many times myself, I understood what he was doing, so I repeated my story. After finishing work on a documentary about a WWII German POW camp near Scottsdale, Warren had taken the raw footage to California for editing. I went along to do some consulting work on
Desert Eagle
, one of those over-glamorized television crime dramas that makes everyone involved obscene amounts of money. Three days ago, after finishing our respective duties, we embarked on a working vacation together, with Warren scouting the area for his new project: a documentary on the Apache Wars.
“You headed back to California after this?” It was hard to tell from Avery’s flat tone if he believed me or not.
“If you did all that checking, Sheriff, you know where Desert Investigations is based. The TV thing, I just fly from Sky Harbor to LAX, attend a production meeting, then fly home. When this gets cleared up, I’m returning to Scottsdale.”
Avery jerked his head toward Warren. “How about him?”
There was no point in telling him that during the past few months, my relationship with Warren had developed several conflicts. “Beverly Hills. He has a business to run, too.”
Then I paused. “Sheriff?”
Avery’s eyes were as cold as the day had become. “What?”
“We didn’t know her.”
A dangerous smile. I’d been wrong. He
did
care.
An angry wind tore down from the Dragoons and whipped at the dead girl’s white wrappings. In the distance, a coyote howled. Her finder, lamenting the loss of his meal?
The sheriff winced at the sound. Like me, he had seen the bite marks on the child’s hand. “Damn things,” he said into the wind. “No wonder the ranchers shoot them.” Then he gestured at the tiny body, which the crime scene techs had now completely uncovered. “See how carefully she’s wrapped, Ms. Jones? That white stuff, it’s probably a shroud. She mattered to the person who buried her.”
Yet she had been abandoned in this wilderness.
A beautiful little girl.
Left for the coyotes and vultures.
Jesus.
Warren and I tried to pick up our vacation where we left off, but I kept seeing the child’s face on our ride back to the Apache Dream B&B, during dinner, and even while asleep, where she replaced my usual nightmare. Around three, when I awoke screaming, Warren took me in his arms and traced gentle fingers across the bullet scar on my forehead.
“It happened a long time ago, Lena. You’re safe now.”
Brushing his fingers away, I buried my face in his chest. I usually hated displaying any kind of vulnerability, but Warren and I were both damaged goods, and so we understood each other. The son of a Hollywood porn king who hadn’t known where the screen left off and real life began, he stilled his own nightmares by filming documentaries about society’s victims. As for me, I tracked down the victim makers. Sometimes it even helped.
“Better now?” Warren asked, stroking my hair.
“Yes,” I lied. But I kept seeing the gun in my mother’s hand, kept hearing the shot that ended my childhood.
You can’t force yourself to relax, but I tried. I thought clichéd happy thoughts: horses, cactus blooms, the smells of the desert after rain, heavenly choirs…
I stiffened. No. Not choirs.
Warren’s baritone penetrated the memory of people singing hymns on a bus. “This is senseless, Lena. Let’s pay up and leave.”
“But you still have so much to do.” I didn’t want my nightmares to interfere with his life. It was bad enough they interfered with my own.
When he shook his head, I realized I wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping. “Maybe if I weren’t a father it would be different,” he said, then added, “We’ll leave as soon as it’s light.”
Relieved, I agreed, thinking that the decision would allow me some rest. The interior of the teepee was dark, but through an opening in the leather-flap doorway, I saw the full moon bathing the main building of the B&B in creamy light. Stars not visible in neon-lit Phoenix spangled the sky. The wind, so strong in the afternoon, had eased to a whispery moan. Lulled, I finally fell asleep.
But the nightmare was waiting. The singing started and my mother raised her gun. This time, though, the child she shot in the face wasn’t me.
It was the girl in the desert.
***
The next morning Warren and I bid farewell to our hosts, two retired real estate brokers from Scottsdale, and promised to return, but I doubted we would. For us, the Dragoon Mountains were ruined forever. As the rented Mercedes wound through low foothills toward I-10, I wondered aloud, “Do you think the autopsy’s done yet?”
Warren stared at me, appalled. “I don’t want to think about it at all.”
“Me neither.”
Oh, her beautiful face.
I touched my own scar.
“Lena, a child dies getting across the border, her parents stop to bury her, then continue on their way. It’s the sheriff’s business, not ours. All we can do is feel terrible about it.”
“I need to know how she died.”
His hand slammed the steering wheel. “You don’t already know? She died from dehydration! That’s what gets them all! This damned desert, that damned border!”
Resting my head against his shoulder, I massaged his neck and felt his tension slip away as the saguaro-sprinkled landscape streaked by. We drove silently until we saw the fork in the road. The left would take us to I-10.
“Turn right,” I told Warren.
“Right? But that’ll take us into Los Perdidos.”
“I know.”
“You agreed we’d go back to Scottsdale.”
I shook my head. “I need to see the sheriff.”
His fist hit the steering wheel again with such force that for a fleeting moment I worried the air bag might explode out. “No, you don’t
need
to see the sheriff, Lena. You just want to. Why can’t you ever leave things alone?”
Averting my head so he couldn’t see the tears in my eyes, I answered, “Because I can’t.” The fact that the girl was now beyond her sufferings made no difference to me. She deserved justice, and to ease my own nightmares, I needed to make sure she got it.
So many children didn’t.
Warren pulled the car to the side of the road. After a few seconds, his blue eyes darkened with concern, and he leaned over to touch my cheek. “Lena, let it go.”
I said nothing.
“You can’t save the world.”
“I know that.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you do.”
“You’re a good one to talk.”
Sighing, he pulled the car onto the road again. Fifteen minutes later we were in Los Perdidos.
The small city was your typical schizophrenic Arizona town. Named
the lost ones
for a group of cavalrymen who in 1881 had set out in search of Geronimo and never returned, it was an uneasy mixture of New West and Old. The edge of town boasted functional modern structures that housed real estate offices and chiropractors, but leftovers from Territorial days made up the city center, where every other business seemed to be named after Geronimo and his band.
This was the area that drew Los Perdidos’ thriving tourist trade, with its raised board sidewalks, authentic saloons, Western store fronts, and the popular Apache Museum. Unfortunately, these charms had been marred by the insertion of an antiseptic steel-and-glass government complex that housed the sheriff’s office.
As Warren parked the Mercedes next to an unmarked sedan, obviously a sheriff’s vehicle, he made one last attempt to dissuade me. “Lena, we can still salvage this vacation. Let’s check into a resort, get a seaweed wrap, and not worry about anything other than ourselves.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, climbing out of the car. “You’re right. I
do
want to save the world, and when I can’t, I have to figure out what went wrong. That child…” I couldn’t get her face out of my head.
While most sheriffs’ offices aren’t quite as casual as that of Andy Griffith’s fabled Mayberry, they can be cheerful places, with snacks on desks and deputies cracking wise. This was not the case here, where the front office bristled with grim-faced men who stopped talking the moment I walked through the door.
I spoke into the silence. “I’m Lena Jones, the woman who found the body yesterday.”
“Wish you hadn’t,” muttered a rotund man whose uniform stretched tightly over his too-generous stomach. His remark earned him an elbow jab from the lanky deputy next to him.
“Is Sheriff Avery in?”
“He’s busy,” said the elbow-jabber.
“Maybe one of you could tell me if the autopsy’s been done.”
No answer, no “tells,” not even a shifting of feet. There was a lot of tension in the room for a dead illegal, even though the illegal was a child. Before I said anything else, the door at the far end of the room opened and Sheriff Avery stuck out his head. “Ms. Jones, go back to Scottsdale. We may not be as flashy as you folks up north, but we can handle this.”
Nothing like a warm welcome. “I just want some information about that little girl.”
“She’s not your problem.” Although his face bore a neutral expression, it appeared even more drawn than before, which I thought odd if the girl had simply died of natural causes. But as he had noted yesterday, border crossings were hard on kids.
“All I want is to find out her cause of death, if you don’t mind. You’ll have to release the information to the media, anyway. If they ask.” I tried to sound polite, not confrontational.
A slight narrowing of his eyes. “What makes you think we already know?”
From the tension in this room
, I started to say, but stopped myself just in time. “I’m an ex-cop, remember?”
“Very ex. You left the job years ago.”
Recognizing the stall, I took evasive action. “Okay. What’s the medical examiner’s name? If you don’t tell me, I’ll just call my office and find out.”
“From that Pima Indian partner of yours.”
At least the sheriff’s background check had been thorough. “That’s right. Give my partner a computer and before you can say ‘somebody’s keeping a secret,’ he’ll have your mother’s maiden name and the day and time she first kissed your father.”
Avery glowered, then appeared to change his mind. “The M.E.’s name is Dr. Nelson Lanphear. Now like I said, please go away.”
“Is he at the hospital now?”
“You think he gives me his schedule?” Without another word, the sheriff closed his office door. At least he didn’t slam it.
The deputies suddenly found business that needed attending to, so amid a great rustling of paperwork, I left.
Outside, the sun blazed down as if it wanted to bring back summer. I found Warren under the shade of a gnarled mesquite, studying the street with a worried expression. “We need to get the hell out of Dodge, Lena. These people look like something out of a Wes Craven movie.”
Since I’d spent several pleasant weekends in Los Perdidos in the past, his comment surprised me. Los Perdidos residents tended to be friendly and hardly resemble characters in a slasher film. Yet when I looked around, I saw the reason for Warren’s concern. On the corner, a group of men stood watching us, their body language as tense as that of the sheriff and his deputies. At the other end of the street, another group huddled together in a tense knot, glaring at Warren as if he had just insulted their sisters.
“You’re right. Something’s going on.”
He turned away from their glares and looked longingly at the Mercedes. “An astute observation. Can we leave now?”
I wanted to, but the memory of the girl’s face wouldn’t let me. “Not yet.”
***
Our stop at the hospital turned out to be a waste of time. Probably built by the same architect who had slapped together the city center’s government complex, its facade was even less welcoming than most medical buildings. The only decorative touch was the bronze plaque by the front door that proclaimed:
DONATED BY LEE CASEY IN LOVING MEMORY OF CAROLINE SOMERS CASEY
.
Once inside, the stark interior mirrored the building’s exterior, and the acrid scent of Lysol wafted along unadorned hallways painted the color of spoiled milk. In a glass booth overseeing a mostly-empty waiting room, a faded redhead informed us that today was Dr. Lanphear’s day off. She added that she was swamped with work, so if neither of us was sick or injured, let her get to it. Studiously ignoring us, she began leafing through a small stack of insurance forms.
Baffled by the obvious brush-off, we returned to the car.
“This is crazy, Lena,” Warren said. “That child’s dead, just another victim of this mess we call a border.”
By now, my sorrow had hardened into determination. “I feel like a drink, how about you?”
“Are you serious?” Warren had been in a Twelve Step program for years.
Not knowing who my parents were and fearing what kind of genetic load I might be carrying, I didn’t drink, either. “Let’s find a bar. The closer to the hospital, the better.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“People talk in bars,” I explained. “Especially when they’ve been there for a while. If you’re too tired, I can drive.”
He slid into the driver’s seat. “One bar, coming up.”
A few minutes later we were hunkered over Cokes at the Geronimo Lounge, which appeared even seedier on the inside than it had from the curb. Even though Arizona had passed a stringent No Smoking law, a fog of smoke and stale beer assaulted my nostrils. Someone had started to paint the cement floor a swampy green, then gave up halfway through. Moths had attacked the stuffed antelope head mounted above the cash register, and the glass had long been cracked on the large photograph of a genial-appearing Geronimo—wearing a top hat, no less—that hung on the rear wall. A damaged speaker on the juke box hissed its way through the end of a George Strait tune, then began crucifying the Rolling Stones. Still shy of ten a.m., the lounge held few customers, but the drinkers slumped over the long, scarred bar looked like they’d been exercising their elbows since sunup.
Perfect.
I found my prey, an elderly man sitting alone at a table by the men’s room, his nose almost as red as the Budweiser sign on the wall behind him. By his right hand, a copy of the
Cochise County Observer
lay open to a half-finished crossword puzzle. He sipped slowly on his Molson’s as if trying to make it last.
I walked up to the bar, ordered a bottle of Molson’s, and took it over to his table. “Happy Birthday.”
His looked up, his eyes clear. “Not my birthday, Blondie.”
“It will be eventually.”
“Good one. What do you want? Woman looks like you, she doesn’t need to go around picking up geezers like me. Especially not with that flashy boyfriend of yours sitting over there. Or are you recruiting for some weirded-out threesome?”
I smiled. “That’s a good one, too.”
His grin revealed a mouth full of cheap dentures. “I wasn’t always this old, Blondie.”
“Don’t be naughty. I just want to ask you some questions.”
“That’ll cost you another Molson’s.”
Hearing this, Warren fetched a bottle, then resumed his seat, making it clear he wanted nothing to do with either of us. I waited until the old man took another sip, then asked, “You hear about that little girl found dead in the Dragoons?”
He studied the label on his beer bottle. “Who the hell hasn’t?”
“You being a local, I figure you might know where she is now.”
“She ain’t playing hopscotch, that’s for sure.” When I drew his new Molson’s away, he added, “She’s in that basement cooler room over at the hospital.”
I shoved the beer toward him again. “They do the autopsy yet?”
“Soon’s they brought her in, is what I hear.” He placed a hand around each beer bottle. “Get me another Molson’s.”
Warren brought over two more, his face stiff with disapproval.
“I only drink in here once a week,” the old man explained. “On Sundays.”
“Today’s Saturday.”
“Yeah, well, some weeks are worse than others.” With his stooped back and age-spotted skin, he probably hadn’t seen a good week in years.
I leaned forward, making certain my next question didn’t carry to the bar. “Do you know the cause of death?”
“What makes you think I might?”
“An educated guess. You work crossword puzzles, which means you pay attention to things.”