Desert Run (4 page)

“That's one bright spot for my guy, then. Ernst was beaten to death, not cut.”

“Maybe Tesema was so pissed off he didn't bother to choose the right cutlery.”

It was my turn to scowl. “You're saying he was in too big a hurry to grab a knife, but took time to gag and hogtie his victim?”

“C'mon, Lena. You know as well as I do that most murderers are irrational, otherwise they'd figure some way out of their problem that doesn't entail prison time.”

True, but Tesema had never struck me as irrational, just a stranger in a strange land. Yet his behavior when he discovered Ernst's body was troublesome. Why had he gone through Ernst's drawers? I didn't want to believe he was a thief, but with a whole family to feed back home, he might have been tempted to supplement his Loving Care paycheck by a little pilfering. And if the unforgiving Ernst caught him…“Was anything missing from Ernst's house? Money? Jewelry? Credit cards?”

Kryzinski shook his head. “Not that we know of. His wallet was still in his pants, along with a full complement of plastic and forty-two dollars in cash. As to jewelry, he was wearing a watch and one ring, a clunky-looking thing with an Iron Cross. Before you ask, we didn't find a cache of diamonds and rubies anywhere, but that doesn't mean he didn't have them and that they weren't stolen.”

“Just because Tesema's prints were all over the house doesn't mean he was the person who tossed the place.”

A chuckle from Kryzinski. “Maybe it was elves.”

“Why would Tesema steal from his employer? If caught, he'd lose his job.” The minute the question was out of my mouth, I realized how silly it sounded. It wasn't all that unusual for hired help to filch from employers they hated.

But Kryzinski took the question seriously. “Tesema admitted that Ernst had cut back on his hours, so maybe he felt he had nothing to lose.”

I raised my eyebrows. Ernst had cut back on his care-giver's hours? It didn't seem sensible to me that an elderly amputee wouldn't take advantage of all the health care he could afford. Ernst wasn't poverty-stricken, because his house, while not quite
Architectural Digest
cover material, was stuffed with the standard Scottsdale luxuries. On my way into the kitchen, I'd seen a Bose stereo system, a big-screen plasma TV, and a salt-water aquarium that took up most of one wall. Even the car Ernst no longer drove, yet which remained parked in his garage for Tesema to chauffeur him around in, was upscale: a Mercedes-Benz S Class retrofitted for hand controls, about ten years old.

Since there was nothing else to learn, Kryzinski and I spent the next few minutes commiserating over what had happened to the Arizona Diamondbacks, but the team's fall from grace didn't seem to bother him as much as it did me. Which was odd, because he was the bigger fan. In fact, nothing much did seem to interest him, not even my news that his favorite Western wear shop had gone out of business. “You feeling all right, Captain?” His ruddy complexion was wan, and he'd lost weight. And all that gray hair…

“I'm fine.”

“You don't look fine.”

“I've just got a lot on my mind these days. Look, I'm due at a meeting in just a couple of minutes, so if you're done…”

“I can take a hint.” Before leaving, I showed him the note Tesema had written granting me permission to retrieve his paycheck. After a phone call to smooth my way, he said, “The detectives have finished going over Tesema's room. I advise picking up his check as soon as possible. After that, you never know. I might not always be here to run interference.”

I started to ask what he'd meant by that, but before I could, he hustled me out the door and closed it between us.

***

Tesema's apartment was in Mesa, a city of approximately a half-million people. To get there from Scottsdale, you have two choices: the always crowded freeway or down Pima Road to McDowell, the recently widened six-lane highway through the narrow end of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation. The day being so beautiful, I opted for the latter.

Although the reservation did not share Scottsdale's manicured elegance, the wild, wide-open spaces were a respite from the city's ever-increasing skyline. Thanks to the casinos that opened several years back, the Pima Indians, whose fortunes hovered near the poverty line for decades, were enjoying boom times. Houses had replaced the old shacks, and new pickup trucks sat in their driveways. The raven-haired children who played in front of the day care center wore new clothing emblazoned with the logos of rap groups and action film stars, but horses still grazed under the mesquite trees and wild javelina still drank from the irrigation canals. There was little traffic along McDowell other than a few gravel trucks from the local quarries. Once, out of habit, I mistakenly took the dirt turn-off toward Jimmy's trailer, the one he'd bought when he moved back from Utah five years earlier in search of his Native American roots. I realized my error as I pulled into the gravel drive.

I had always liked Jimmy's trailer, an old Airstream. His uncle, who owned a body shop, had decorated its exterior with paintings of Earth Doctor, the father-god who had created the world and everything in it; and his adversary, Elder Brother, from whom he'd fled into a labyrinth beneath the earth. Between them, Spider Woman tried to make peace. Strife was a constant, the trailer told me. In your time here, walk gently upon the earth, respect the animals, and leave your descendants a name that can be spoken with pride.

In the back, rooting around the prayer lodge Jimmy had constructed out of mesquite branches and native grasses, were a javelina sow and her three piglets. I watched them for a while, enjoying the wind as it swept across the mesquite-dappled fields, listening to the piglets' grunts as they dug in the soil for tasty roots. When the little family finally moved away, annoyed by the two laughing Pima teenagers who galloped their horses through the brush toward them, I turned the Jeep around.

How could Jimmy could abandon such riches?

***

The Ethiopians lived near the Mormon Temple in a one-bedroom apartment so decrepit it should have been condemned. The walls looked like they hadn't been painted since Ernst was a U-boat captain, but layers of paint still managed to cement the windows shut so that the small living room was hot and stuffy. Cheap linoleum designed to look like bricks covered the floor, but was so thin in some areas you could see the black backing. The few pieces of furniture were limited to a wobbly kitchen table and chairs, and a ratty brown sofa the men had probably recycled from a nearby alley. The apartment wasn't completely bleak. Rada and his roommates had livened up the place by thumb-tacking brightly colored African folk art posters on one wall and several hand-carved crosses to the other.

A man introducing himself as Goula Hadaradi, the only Ethiopian not yet at work, greeted me with a polite gravity. After I showed him Rada's note, he led me into a tiny bedroom and gestured toward the bottom level of one of the two bunk beds. “This where Rada sleep.” Then he tapped on a plastic storage container pushed against the opposite wall. “This where he keep clothing.” He crossed the room to a scuffed chest and opened one of the drawers. “This is drawer for his papers. When police take him, I put paycheck here, keep safe.” Before handing the check over, he read Rada's note again. “Yes, he says to give to you. That Rada's signing, I recognize from back of check. So I give. But you send to wife. She
need.
”

The passion in his voice hinted of yet another family left behind, so I assured him I would wire the money to Addis Ababa immediately. “By the way, Mr. Hadaradi, why didn't Rada bring his family with him when he immigrated?”

Hadaradi looked away for a brief moment, but not before I saw sadness slip over his face. “Like rest of us, Rada only have money for one person to come. Before coming, we all move families from north, where is still fighting, and now we save up to bring families over.”

“Fighting?”

Anger replaced sadness. “Is big war over border. Many die. My father, my uncle, two brothers, all dead. Like Rada's father and brothers.”

I vaguely remembered a CNN report about Ethiopia's border war with Eritrea. Not being personally affected by other than a brief stab of pity for everyone concerned, it had then slipped from my mind. “You guys are political refugees?”

“U.S. not worry about our war. We win lottery for green cards. Now all make big money. Can afford to bring family soon, be happy. Family is life. Without family, life is nothing.”

Not being able to remember my own family, I wouldn't know. But “big money”? Judging from the looks of the Ethiopians' apartment, they didn't even make medium money, and what little they did, they never spent on themselves. But that's the immigrant life. Years of toil and sacrifice for their children, who, when they grew up, were ashamed of their parents' accents. I wondered about my own family and what they might have sacrificed for me. But whatever they had done or not done was blurred forever behind the scar tissue on my forehead. My parents only emerged at night, in pieces of memory-nightmares.

I wondered if all the Ethiopians had immigrated together. “Mr. Hadaradi, did you know Rada in Addis Ababa?”

“No. I come here two years ago from little village to south. Rada comes later. I meet him at Ethiopian Church, at what they call Social Evening. Rada not go to church but that OK.”

“I didn't know there was an Ethiopian church in Mesa.”

Hadaradi shook his head. “Phoenix. I think we are only Ethiopians in Mesa. Some Sudanese here, some Somalians. Many Mormons.” He gave me his first smile.

I appreciated his attempt at levity, but needed to find out what, if anything, Tesema had said to his roommates about Ernst. “When Rada…”

He interrupted me by taking keys out of his pocket and walking toward the door. “No time. I only home to watch policemen look around, keep our things safe. Now I due at other job.”

“Other job?”

“Need three. All of us, even Rada. He help take care of four people. Almost never sleep. You go now, please. Have to lock apartment.”

Unlike Tesema, Hadaradi didn't have a car, so I dropped him off in front of the Burger King where he worked. From there, I went to Tesema's bank, where a bank officer helped me through the laborious process of international wire transfers. Good deed accomplished, I drove back to Desert Investigations, thinking hard all the way. Four clients and little sleep. I wondered how irritable I might feel if I were exhausted, yet had to care for so many people, one of them a foul-mouthed U-boat captain.

Irritable enough to commit murder?

***

At five, I pronounced Desert Investigations closed for the day. After a few final taps on his keyboard, Jimmy headed out to spend the evening with his fiancée, leaving me to lock up. This accomplished, I clenched my teeth and climbed the stairs to my apartment.

“No problem, no problem,” I muttered, as with my snub-nosed .38 drawn and ready, I unlocked my triple-locks, let myself in, triple-locked the door behind me, and began my routine search for an intruder. So much for therapy. But as Dr. Gomez had so astutely pointed out, a few months of court-ordered anger management couldn't erase a childhood filled with abuse. And they did nothing to soften the memory of the foster father who had hidden himself in my bedroom closet, the better to rape me when I arrived home from school.

I'd been nine years old at the time.

My search revealed no rapist in any of the closets. No rapist under the bed. No rapist hiding in the bathroom or the kitchen cupboards. Relieved, I put my .38 down on the clothes hamper, stripped, and showered. Thirty minutes later, after scrubbing my skin raw, I still felt dirty.

Warren arrived promptly at seven, not the least taken aback that I eyed him for a long time through the peephole before beginning the complicated unlocking process.

“You look beautiful,” he said, stepping into the apartment. “I've never seen you in a dress before.”

Although I'd purchased my all-purpose black dress off the sale rack at Robinson's-May, Warren's Armani suit had a loftier pedigree and his aftershave probably cost more than the dress. “You look beautiful, too.”

He glanced around the living room. “Did you just move in?”

“About four years ago, but I'm not much on decorating.” An understatement if there ever was one. The room was basic, since the only items I had added after leasing it fully furnished were a Kachina doll, a Navajo rug, a couple of toss pillows, and an oil painting done by an Apache artist. Seeing the apartment through Warren's eyes—and remembering Jimmy's colorful trailer—I realized my home sweet home had the personality of a motel room.

Outside in the rapidly cooling spring air—did I smell magnolia blossoms, already?—Warren helped me into the passenger seat of his leased Land Rover as though I were some frail creature who couldn't manage the climb, and I didn't know whether to be charmed or insulted. I decided on charmed. “Where are we going?” Someplace dark, I hoped, where no one I knew would see us in case dinner ended badly.

He pulled away from the curb and headed off into the night. “How about that three-star restaurant at the Phoenician?”

The chance of my not being recognized at one of the city's premiere resorts was slim. Not only was I on a first-name basis with the maître d' because I'd once helped him find his runaway daughter, but I would probably also know half the diners, too. In these litigious days, private detectives get around. But Warren was trying to make an impression, so I tried not to let my disappointment show. “That's nice.”

Stopping at a crosswalk, where a gaggle of Bermuda shorts-wearing tourists were crossing, he gave me a look. “Too public? Then you recommend a place.”

He could read moods, a good sign. A man who paid attention to people. Relieved, I directed him to Pasta Brioni, a nice little Italian restaurant tucked discreetly into a shopping center. The place was quiet, dimly lit, and the owner/chef served original dishes rivaling the Phoenician's. Best of all, the clientele didn't blab.