Desert Lost (9781615952229) (10 page)

A disbelieving look. “Don't you remember, Lena? You used to tell me that when you grew up you wanted to be a cowgirl, so I fixed up your bedroom just like this.” She gestured around the room. “Those turquoise horse head lamps are like the ones you had. Maybe they actually are, since you found them in some antique shop. The bedspread? It's the same color as your old one and the same style, too. The only difference is that this one has the Lone Ranger and Tonto on it instead of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. That's why you don't want to move; you'd be leaving your past, not just an apartment.”

I didn't know what to say, so said nothing. How could I not have realized what I was doing?

She leaned over the bed and ran her hand thoughtfully across the Lone Ranger's face. “What does Warren think about it?”

It took me a few more moments to recover from my shock about the bedroom, but when I did, I said, “He doesn't understand. Maybe because I never really understood it myself. Before now, that is.”

A sad smile. “It's common for kids raised in foster homes to experience relationship problems. They need people, yet push them away because they're too afraid of having their hearts broken again. Is that what's happening with you?”

As I stacked the empty boxes against the wall, I allowed that she might be right. “Warren once said something like that.”

“Perceptive man. How are you, Lena. Don't give me any more of that ‘everything's fine' crap. How much can you still remember?”

“Too much. Not enough.”

I told her I remembered my parents boarding the white bus, the long ride, the laughter, the singing, the clearing in the woods where my father died, my mother's screams, the gunshot that changed my life. Then came a long period of nothingness until I regained consciousness in a Phoenix hospital. I almost told her that I'd had to say goodbye more often than my child's heart could stand, but then thought better of it. Madeline had done what she could to repair my shattered life; what happened after she got sick wasn't her fault. She'd experienced enough sorrow.

“So that's it,” I finished.

She didn't say anything right away for a moment, just continued to stroke the Lone Ranger's face. “Still having those nightmares?”

I let my silence be her answer.

“The first few months you were with us, you woke up screaming every night. Then you stopped. Just like that. Stopped cold. Then you started talking in your sleep.”

Madeline looked at me, her face expectant. When I didn't ask the question she apparently thought I'd ask, she smiled. “Where should I put my things?”

***

Later, as I tossed and turned on the sofa, I wondered about what Madeline had said. In the past few days I'd come up with one reason after another to slow the finality of moving in with Warren, and yet none of my reasons rang true. Could she have been right, that getting close to someone threatened my too-damaged heart? If she was, my relationship with Warren was in more trouble than I'd previously believed.

Chapter Fourteen

That night Jonah stopped the wrong car.

The too-standard Nissan, the john's too-neat haircut, the too-controlled voice—it all screamed “Cop,” but in the throes of a major meth jones, Jonah had ignored the tells. Now here he was, sitting in a small room at the cop shop, trying to keep it together. He'd been busted before, but something about the questions this detective asked seemed off.

“Tuesday night? Gimme a break. How the hell can I remember what I was doing Tuesday night? Can't nobody remember that far back.”

The detective, a moon-faced man with arcs of sweat staining the underarms of his blue shirt, gave him a smile. “As a matter of fact, I can. Tuesday night I was home watching
The Lion King
for the sixteenth time with my kids.”

“Don't make me puke.” Jonah folded his arms, signaling that as far as he was concerned, this interview was over, so take him back to the holding tank already. He'd wind up serving a couple of months in Tent City, that stupid outdoor jail the other boys on the street were always bitching about. He'd get his three squares, make new friends, do some business, then hit the streets again. Big fucking deal.

The detective tapped his thumb on the manila file folder he'd brought with him into the interrogation room. “Well, then, Mr. King, let me jog your memory. Tuesday night. A little on the cool side. It was raining.”

“Thanks for the weather report, but I got nothing for you. Far as I'm concerned, one day, one night, what's the diff? Get up, get around, go to bed.”

The detective looked down at the folder. “You have an attorney?”

What was with this shit? Of course he didn't have an attorney. Why would he need one? They both knew what the outcome of this conversation would be, so why jack around? “Like I said, Detective Sweet Ass, don't make me puke.”

The detective's smile disappeared. He opened the manila folder, took out a photograph, and slid it across the table. “You know this woman?”

Jonah, who no longer knew any women, looked down.

Then he screamed.

“
Mommy
!”

Chapter Fifteen

Exhausted from her flight, Madeline slept late. My thoughts—and my sofa, which wasn't all that comfortable as a bed—had kept me awake most of the night. An hour after sunrise, I called Warren.

An early riser, he picked up immediately.

“How are the twins?” I asked him, after we'd exchanged empty pleasantries.

“Unsettled. Angel didn't tell them about her stalker, but they know something's wrong.”

“Children can be perceptive.”

“
Children
can, yes.”

The stress on that first word seemed so odd that I almost asked him what he meant. But I didn't. “I told Beverly Hills PD where they could find Nevitt and I'm pretty confident they'll manage to pick him up in a day or two, which should take care of the problem. With the evidence of those letters and his past record of stalking, no judge will let him go this time.”

“Hope you're right.”

A long silence.

I steeled myself for a conversation that was long overdue. “Warren, we need to talk about our relationship. And, uh, the problem I've been having with it.”

Another long silence, then, “I agree, but not now. The twins are up and clamoring for their breakfast.”

“Why don't we get together later today? I could come over and we could…”

A heavy sigh. “Today's not the time for this, Lena. Angel wants the girls to stay with me until the Nevitt thing's wrapped up, and even if he's picked up right away, the legal process will take some time, a couple of weeks, maybe a month. So I'm spending today looking for a tutor. I don't want the girls to fall behind.”

“Tomorrow, maybe?”

“I'll get back to you next week.”

He hung up.

Madeline and I spent the rest of weekend catching up on old times. It could have been boring, but it wasn't, so when Monday morning rolled around, I was loathe to go downstairs to the office. My excuse, of course, was that I wanted to show her how much Scottsdale had changed since she'd left.

“I'm perfectly capable of finding that out for myself,” she said. “In fact, I was thinking about visiting some galleries. Thanks to your location here, they're all within walking distance.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“What, you think I'm nuts? Business of course. I brought along some slides of my work to flash around. You probably don't remember, but I used to show in that big gallery right down the street before I got sick.”

She was wrong, I did remember. Years earlier, I'd checked to see if they'd heard from her; they hadn't. “Toulouse Fine Art. It's still there. Closed on Mondays, though.”

“To walk-ins, yeah. But most galleries will see artists by appointment. And if I'm lucky, the good will I established while living here may still be in effect. Providing, of course, that everybody's still alive and doing business.” She glanced toward the phone. “Do you mind?”

I handed over the spare key to my apartment and after wishing her good luck, left her sorting happily through her slides.

Downstairs, a note from Jimmy informed me that he'd be spending most of the day over at Southwest MicroSystems, so I found myself alone. While he wasn't the most talkative of men, the office seemed uncomfortably quiet in his absence. To keep myself company, I hummed a few bars of Muddy Waters' “Mean Red Spider,” and brought in the weekend's newspapers, which lay in a stack outside the door. After I'd taken a Tab from the office refrigerator, I unfolded Sunday's
Scottsdale Journal
and began to read. I had just taken a big swig of soda when I saw a small item on B-3.

I spit out the soda. Not bothering to mop up the mess, I placed a call to my friend Vic, at Scottsdale PD. Fortunately, he was there.

Without bothering to identify myself, I blurted out, “Is it true, what I just read in the
Journal
about an arrest in the Scottsdale murder?”

“Pamela Anderson! Hi, baby. I see you've dumped that tattooed dork you been wasting your time with and decided to crawl back to me. Well, let me tell you, sweetheart, you're not the only woman hot for this ripped Italian bod. There's a whole line of chicks…”

I took a deep breath. “Sorry, Vic. Sometimes I get ahead of myself. Lena Jones here, your ex-partner. So how's things with you? The wife? The kiddies?” Vic's third wife had recently filed for divorce, and the kiddies—ages 24, 28, and 30, products of marriages No. 1 and 2—had long ago fled the scene.

“Bitch,” he said, companionably. “Now that I've reminded you of your manners, here's the deal. Yeah, it's true. Jonah King propositioned an undercover cop in Phoenix, and when he was taken downtown, his name and face struck a chord with the homicide boys. Er, homicide
persons
. Anyway, when the detectives talked to him, he folded like origami, got downright hysterical. After he stopped screaming, Phoenix PD reached out to little ol' us, and Dagny sent Bob Grossman and Sylvie Perrins over there. Kid's already been charged with solicitation and possession of an illegal substance with intent to sell, but by the end of the week, he'll probably be hit with a homicide charge, too.”

Bob and Sylvie would be careful enough to dot all the i's and cross all the t's, but I still needed to ask the obvious. “Did the kid actually confess to the murder?”

“Sylvie says not really.”

“
Not really
? But you still expect him to be charged in the killing? What am I missing here?”

Some throat-clearing, then a muffled, “Morning, Lieutenant. Right. Just talking to one of my sources. Sure. I'll be in your office as soon as I've finished up. Definitely. Yeah, like, immediately. See ya in a sec.”

Dagny's voice. More throat-clearing from Vic. A pause. Then, a whispered, “You heard that? I gotta go.”

“C'mon, Vic. Just give me the highlights.”

As rapidly as an auctioneer, he fired back, “He said had big fight. Said hit her. Said couldn't remember much else. Said too stoned. I say bye.”

Dial tone.

I sat there staring at the mouthful of Tab I'd spit on the floor. Vic's rushed last words had conjured up the vision of a troubled young man, the usual polygamy throwaway. The image of a eighteen-year-old boy who could barely read or write wandering the unfriendly streets of downtown Phoenix, was a haunting one. Taught since birth to be paranoid about the outside world, Jonah would have avoided the rescue missions and instead, banded together with society's other lost children. For the kids, especially the good-looking ones, drugs and prostitution were the next logical step.

How long had Jonah been out there selling his ass for a high, wondering what he had done to deserve his torment? Weeks? Months? Had he, caught in a downward spiral of rage and despair, somehow made his way to the Scottsdale settlement and taken his revenge on the woman who'd allowed it to happen? And what about Celeste? Rosella had described her as a maternal woman, but had she, like so many sister-wives, abandoned her own son to the streets?

Unsettled, I just sat there for a while, staring at the pool of Tab on the floor. A new question nudged at me: if Jonah had truly killed his mother, where had he found the car he'd used to dump Celeste's body?

Jonah's street friends could have shown him how to hotwire a vehicle, but when I tried to picture that particular series of events, the images in my head began to dissolve. The typical meth user couldn't carry out such a complicated plan to save his life—or to end someone else's. Roll a john for extra cash, sure. Beat someone to death in a spontaneous, drug-induced brawl, sure. Shoot a Circle K clerk in the midst of a robbery, sure. But hotwire a car in advance in order to drive across Phoenix into Scottsdale, find his mother, beat her to death, roll her into the pre-stolen car, then drive around until he found a secluded spot to dump the body? And finally, leave the scene before I could make it from the RV storage yard into the street?

That scenario required too much forethought.

I continued sitting at my desk until the speckles of spilt Tab began to dry. Then, disgusted with myself, I reached into a drawer for a paper towel. By the time my mess was gone, I'd formulated my next step.

A visit to the Fourth Avenue Jail.

***

Cutting through the red tape wasn't easy, but after calling in an outstanding you-owe-me, a couple of hours later I found myself in the jail's stuffy visiting room. It being Monday, only a few other visitors were present, among them a thin black woman holding a fidgety baby as a corn-rowed inmate responded to her questions with monosyllables; and a much older white couple talking to an even older inmate covered with Aryan Brotherhood prison tats. Felonious Gramps? I'd always hated these rooms. They strip away the veneer of civilization we all rely on to get through the day.

After several minutes, an officer led a shackled Jonah King through the door. The boy's eyes were rimmed in red, whether from crying or withdrawal I couldn't yet tell. As the officer guided him to a chair, I noticed his hands twitch. Drugs, then. Probably meth.

“I'll be just outside the door if you need me,” the officer said, and with that, left us alone.

Jonah looked exactly like what he was: a street kid going to seed. Unkempt hair, runny nose, small sores polka-dotting chin and cheeks. Otherwise, he resembled his dead mother; a tall, blue-eyed, blonde with features harkening back to the days of Viking raiders. I'd bet his mother never had his mouth, though.

“The fuck you want, bitch?”

That made it twice in the same day I'd been called a bitch and it wasn't even noon yet. “To help.”

A dirty snigger from a kid who long ago stopped believing anyone wanted to help him. “What's in it for you? Gonna write an article and sell it for millions or something?”

It took me a moment to digest that odd question, and when I did, I realized that as a non-reader and non-television watcher, he didn't know the difference between a private investigator and a reporter. I explained my job to him in terms he could understand.

“Somebody's gotta be paying you.” He sat back, his shoulders jerking. The long fingers on his manacled hands twitched as if they'd been plugged into a live electrical current.

After a few minutes of trying to explain the concept of
pro bono
and failing, he still didn't believe me. Frustrated, I segued into polygamy-speak, the one thing he knew a lot about. “I'm doing it to get right with God.”

Another snigger, although due to his increased spasms, it emerged with a stutter. “You g-gentiles got no g-g-god.”

To a polygamist, any non-polygamist was a “gentile,” whether the person in question be atheist, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, Muslim, Wiccan, or whatever. I decided to go with the flow. “Smart man. You caught me out.”

He preened at the compliment, a positive stroke he rarely heard. Polygamists pride themselves on discipline, not love.

The story I fabricated would have been greeted with hoots of laughter by an ordinary teen, but Jonah wasn't ordinary. He might have been living on the streets, but his experiences probably hadn't yet overridden his upbringing under Hiram Shupe, a possible schizophrenic who believed in Blood Atonement and all the other Holy War claptrap that false prophets had spewed for decades. My new tactic would fight fire with fire, false prophet with false prophet.

I gave him a big smile. “The truth is, Jonah, a man hired me to come over here, a man who, like you, who was raised by polygamists and was eventually cast out. Just like you. This man made his way in the world and eventually became a millionaire. Now he…” I decided that my fictional prophet needed a name, so I pulled one from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. “Now Prophet Joe has started his own Army of God, an army devoted to the
true
religion, and he's recruiting strong young men like yourself who understand the concepts of obedience and loyalty. He needs faithful soldiers to help overthrow Hiram Shupe, whom he deems a false prophet. That's where I come in.”

A few feet from us, the black woman's baby began to cry. When the woman began crying, too, her inmate made a disgusted sound and left, which only made her cry harder. The old Aryan Brotherhood inmate grinned; so did his visitors.

Jonah briefly eyed them all with contempt, then turned back to me. “W-why would P-Prophet Joe hire a woman? A woman can't do no good for anybody.”

I resisted the urge to slap some sense into him. “We gentile women have powers you know nothing about.” Not exactly hogwash, either, since polygamists believed women could achieve nothing on their own, not even conversation. In Jonah's undereducated and superstitious mind, the very fact that I was able to talk to him as an equal must have made me appear an alien creature.

“What kind of powers?”

“Prophet Joe ordered me not to divulge that information. Now let's get back to you and your troubles. Like I said, Prophet Joe wants you for his Army of God, but you can't do him any good as long as you're in here, can you?”

His tremors subsided slightly, enough that his stuttering stopped. “Will Prophet Joe make me one of his Select? Give me lots of girls? Pretty ones, not just the retards?”

I tried not to wince. “Dozens. Now, in order to get you out of jail, I'm going to need some information. You told the police that you visited your mother on the night she died, and that you two had a big fight. How did you get to Scottsdale from Phoenix?”