When It All Comes Down to Dust (Phoenix Noir Book 3)

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

When It All Comes Down to Dust

PART I: HOPE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

PART II: FEAR

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

PART III: LOVE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

REQUEST FROM THE AUTHOR

About the Author

“You move through my dreams like a trout moves through a pool.”

— Greg Brown

“When it all comes to down to dust

I will kill you if I must.

I will help you if I can.”

— Leonard Cohen

W
e don’t know when the first star exploded, or when the sun caught on fire. We don’t know when the sun will stop burning and turn cold and dark, though we know it will.

In between the fire and the cold, life beginning and ending, Laura, sometime after being born and before dying, plays a game and talks to a sister who has never existed, while Frank tells a little girl named Whitney a story about the life and death of a dog, a story that he sometimes believes while telling it.

In the cities of the Sonoran Desert, the sunshine follows you into the shade. When you drink water anywhere, however pure the water, you’re drinking the piss of dinosaurs. The volume of water in this world has never varied. Nothing comes or goes, increases or decreases.

On a speck of dust in what they call the universe, David and Frank search for Laura, and Laura searches for David and Frank.
La Llorona
searches for her children. Whitney wants to not be sad. All of them search for love.

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W
hen his parole hearing was over, they told Frank del Rio that he would be informed of the board’s decision in due course. Then they took him back to his cell. As they started to lead him away, he heard Laura Ponto call to him.

“Hey.”

He pretended not to hear her, but he couldn’t get away. The chains on his ankles and wrists were fastened to the one at his belt, and he could only take tiny steps.

“Hey! Frank del Rio! Turn around and look at me!”
Her voice was so loud that the turnkeys on either side of Frank were startled. They turned around and looked at her, and so did Frank.

He couldn’t believe how pretty she’d turned out to be. She hadn’t been all that pretty as a little girl, but now, dear God, that black hair and tanned skin...

She looked straight at him, but her face showed nothing. “Listen to me,” she said. “I think you’re going to get your parole. So, you better hear this: keep away from me. Stay out of my way. If I see you anywhere, even by accident, I’ll shoot you in the face.”

Frank kept looking at her but he didn’t say anything. So pretty. Then a lawyer went and said something to Laura, and Frank was led away.

As Laura walked out of the prison, the Attorney General’s flunky said, “Laura, I understand how you feel... but you can’t just threaten someone...”

“I just did, so obviously I can. What you mean is you don’t want me to. They’re not the same thing.”

One of the journalists present was David Regier, from the Phoenix alternative weekly. He was somewhere in his thirties, and Laura guessed that he wasn’t a native of Arizona, because he was dressed in the way that people from other states think Arizonans dress – cowboy boots, red western-style shirt, bola tie. He fell into step with Laura. “Hey, excuse me. Do you have anything to say about del Rio’s being paroled?”

“I said it in my testimony.”

“Yeah. You did. Uh, do you have anything to say to del Rio about what he did to you?”

“I just said it to him. I think you heard me.”

“Right. Do you have anything else to say?”

“Yeah.” She stopped walking, turned and looked at him. “You’re a piece of vermin, and to say that your newspaper sucks ass would be insulting to ass and all those who suck it. Please quote me on that.”

She walked away before any of the other reporters could accost her. She’d never met a member of the media she respected. They were people who didn’t do things, they just observed those who did, and yet they always thought of themselves as being important.

It was a hundred and eight degrees outside, but she didn’t hurry to her car, since its air-conditioning was on the fritz and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to spend the money it would cost to get it fixed. She put on her sunglasses and walked through the dust, not looking back at the prison. It was in Florence, and it was the center of the town’s existence. Around ten thousand people lived in the town, and half of them were inmates of the prison. Many of the other five thousand wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for the prison – in any store, bar or restaurant, it was hard to find anyone who didn’t have a family member employed by the Arizona Department of Corrections.

Laura had visited the prison more times than she could count. She was an investigator for the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Phoenix, and her job was to find mitigating evidence in death penalty cases. She came to the prison to interview clients, and she had witnessed two clients be executed there.

Frank del Rio wasn’t a client, though Laura wouldn’t have minded watching him being strapped to the executioner’s gurney. 

She got in her Subaru Legacy and rolled down the windows, then reached under the driver’s seat for her 44. She didn’t like being without the gun, but they’d never have allowed her to take it inside the prison. She undid the belt of her suit pants, threaded it through the holster, fastened it again, covered it with her shirt. Then she started the car.

It took her an hour and a half to drive back to Phoenix. Her office was in the downtown area, on Central Avenue and Monroe. She was nearing it when she changed her mind.

She got out her cell phone and called the lawyer who was her immediate boss.

“Capital Habeas. This is Pat Murphin,” he said.

“Hey, it’s Laura. I’m not coming in today, if that’s all right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just frazzled.”

“How did it go?”

“It went. You’ll probably hear about it on the news.”

“Oh, shit. What happened?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you really okay?”

“I’m fine, honestly. Can I go home?”

“Sure. Take it easy, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.” She ended the call.

She got on the freeway and headed for Tempe. When she reached her apartment complex near the university, she half-expected to find reporters waiting outside, but there were none. As she unlocked her apartment door, she heard Tubby Franklin, her huge gray tabby, start to meow.

“Shut up, you stripy sociopath,” she said as she went inside.

He continued to meow, and rubbed against her legs.

“Just because I’m home doesn’t mean it’s your dinner time... Oh, hell, I’ll feed you now if it’ll shut you up.”

She put some food in his bowl, then went to the bedroom and stripped off her clothes. She put on shorts and a tank top, then went back to the kitchen. She got a beer from the fridge, and sprawled on the couch in the living room. The drive in the heat had taken more out of her than she knew, and she fell asleep before the beer was half-finished.

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W
hen she woke it was early evening. She stretched, took a piss, drank some water, then poured out the beer she had started earlier. She got a fresh one from the fridge, and drank it as she stood in the kitchen and chopped potatoes, onions, tomatoes and garlic, which she cooked in a sauce of white wine, thyme and fresh parsley. As the vegetables simmered, she heated a cast-iron skillet, then dropped a steak on it. She seared both sides of the steak, then kept turning it until it was a little more than rare. She ate sitting at the kitchen table, reading a magazine and drinking another beer. Her front door was open, but the screen door was locked. Tubby Franklin lay curled against it, as close as he ever got to the outside world. The apartment had gotten smoky from the pan-grilling, and the smoke drifted past Tubby Franklin and out through the screen.

The phone rang. Laura started to get up to answer it, then decided to let the machine get it. She went back to eating, and heard Pat leave a message.

“Hey, Laura, it’s me. I saw the news, so I know what happened today. I hope you’re okay. I don’t know if you heard, but they granted del Rio his parole. Guess that’s no surprise. Anyway... I’m gonna head up to the Rhythm Room tonight, so that’s where I’ll be if you feel like stopping by.”

She kept eating. No matter how upset she was, it never diminished her appetite. She was tempted to turn on the T.V. and watch the news, but she had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t.

After eating, she took a shower and decided to go out. She was afraid that if she stayed home she’d cave in and watch the news.

She got on 202 and drove to central Phoenix. It was dark now, but the darkness felt as hot as sunlight. She got off the freeway and went to Indian School Road, where the Rhythm Room was. The blues club’s dirt parking lot was almost full, and she saw Pat’s car as she drove around. She could hear the music coming from inside, and smell the meat being cooked by the old man who sold barbecue just outside the door.

She found a parking space, but then she realized that for some reason she didn’t want to go into the club. She pulled out and drove to Seventh Avenue and McDowell, and parked outside the Emerald Lounge.

The Emerald was one of the city’s dives that was becoming halfway gentrified as the yuppies who worked downtown got brave enough to go there. They usually had to spend a few hours in other bars first, chugging down enough Dutch courage, so the Emerald was still quiet. Laura had been going there for years. She sat at the bar and talked with the bartender, a woman who had been pouring drinks in the city for more than fifty years.

At around ten, the place was filling up, and a band started to play in the back room. Laura went and listened. She was buzzed, so she drank some water to help her get sober by the time she left. A guy started talking to her, and asked for her number. He was cute but she wasn’t sure, so she said, “Give me yours,” and he did. About an hour before the place closed, her buzz had worn off. She drove home.

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T
he next morning, her alarm clock woke her at a quarter till six. She hit the snooze button and briefly considered skipping her morning workout, but as soon as Tubby Franklin realized she was awake, he jumped on the bed, sat on her stomach and demanded breakfast, so she knew she had no chance of going back to sleep.

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F
rank woke in his cell. He had been dreaming about a dog that had starved. He realized he wouldn’t be in the cell for much longer. He cried, not knowing if he was crying for the dog he loved and missed, or about being able to leave the prison.

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L
aura got up, fed Tubby Franklin, drank some water and ate some granola. She wouldn’t have fed granola to an Attorney General, but she knew it was better for her than the bacon and eggs she craved. She put on shorts, a sports bra, a T-shirt and running shoes, got in her car and drove to A-Mountain. She parked, got out, limbered up, then started to run.

She did this every other morning, and it wasn’t getting easier. In her early twenties she had once run a marathon without training for it, and had felt fine afterwards. But she was thirty-two now, and those days were gone.

It felt like the heat of the sun was trying to flatten her into the dirt. She kept running, digging in, until she reached the top of the mountain. Once she was there, she did some jumping jacks, then got down and did fifty push-ups. When she finished the last push-up, she hoisted herself to her feet, shook the dirt from her hands, and ran back down the mountain. When she was about a hundred yards from her car, she ran faster, then went into a sprint. When she reached the car, her face was dark red, and sweat ran from her like it was coming from a faucet. She reached inside the car, got a towel and a bottle of water. She drank all the water, then stood leaning against the car and toweled herself. She spread the towel on the driver’s seat, sat on it, and headed home.

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“Y
ou okay?” Pat asked her when she walked into his office.