Desert Noir (9781615952236) (13 page)

I struggled off the floor, nowhere as gracefully as Haozous. The dampness of the concrete had settled into my hip, making me limp after him like some elderly woman with osteoporosis. The top part of my body wasn't doing any too well, either, because ever since I'd hit the floor, my bullet wound had been nibbling at me with tiny, sharp teeth.

“George, do you know anybody else Clarice might have pissed off?” There was no point in letting him know his story had more than a few holes in it—including his so-called alibi.

He looked at me again, his face composed, his eyes guarded. “Why don't you try that family of hers? Those are some pretty weird people.” 

“I've already talked to her mother and father.”

He picked up his palette and studied the painting, where an Apache woman was bent over the decapitated body of a child. Her mouth opened in a bottomless well of grief.

His continued silence told me that the interview was over, so I shouldered my carryall and limped towards the door. Just before I stepped out into the glaring sunlight, Haozous called after me, “Try talking to her brother. Or her sister.
That
one's even crazier than Clarice, if such a thing is possible.” 

When I looked back, he was painting furiously, his brush almost digging into the canvas.

 

By the time I had completed the journey back down 60 and turned off Loop 202 at the Scottsdale city limits, the fat black clouds I'd noticed earlier in the day had completed their voyage from the Mexican border. Lightning blazed across the darkening indigo sky. Like a fool, I'd forgotten to put up the Bikini top on my Jeep and raindrops the size of dimes slapped me on the head. Easing off 202 at Thomas Road, I drove carefully along the drenched side streets, using my left hand as an umbrella, trying to both steer and shift gears with my right. How I ever reached the parking lot behind Desert Investigations without getting into an accident, I'll never know.

Smelling like a wet dog, I climbed the stairs to my apartment, gun in hand. I unlocked the door, conducted my usual look-inall-the-closets drill, then put some Slim Harpo on the turntable. His enraged mutters on “I Need Money” followed me all the way to the bathroom, where I stripped and stepped into the shower. I didn't even mind that the hot water heater was broken again—the cold water felt good on my skin. I soaped myself down several times, washed my hair, and was just toweling off when the phone rang.

I told Slim to hush up and rushed to answer it, hoping that it might be Dusty. It was.

“Hey, good-lookin'. The campfire sing-along's been called on account of rain, so how'd you like some company?” Slim switched to “My Little Queen Bee
,”
making my smile grow even wider. “Sounds fine to me, Cowboy. I just got out of the shower.”

“I'm taking it that's a hint?”

“Unlike Catherine the Great, I'm not too crazy about sleeping with horses. Or men that smell like them.” 

I heard him laugh. “I'll check if the horse trough is free. If it is, you're in luck.” 

“And if it's not, Cowboy, you're
out
of luck.” 

An hour later, Dusty arrived, smelling like Brut and looking more handsome and weather-beaten than ever. He toted a grocery bag full of Pete's Wicked Ale and strawberry smoothies, with which he proceeded to stuff the refrigerator. Not even waiting for him to finish, I grabbed a smoothie.

He finished putting the drinks away, then stood there for a moment, watching me guzzle. “I figured you needed your vitamins, you being so sick and laid up and all.” 

I wiped the strawberry mustache off my upper lip. “Sick and laid up. Right. So sick I can't even fool around.” 

He expelled a theatrical sigh. “Looks like I've wasted my drive.” 

“And the strawberry smoothie.”

“Guess I'd better go, then.” He made a big to-do out of putting his rain-slicked duster back on.

“Um, before you go…”

I put my smoothie down on the counter and started peeling off the duster. I continued to peel until he was down to his briefs. “My, my,” I whispered into his ear. “Aren't you hard and fit.” 

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” With that, he slipped his arms around me, picked me up, and started for the bedroom.

I nuzzled my face against his chest. “Hey, Cowboy, haven't you forgotten something?” 

“You mean the condoms? Honey, I've got a month's supply on me.” 

“Hell, no. I meant my smoothie.”

Regardless of Dusty's comforting presence—or perhaps because of it—my usual insomnia kicked in around 1:00 a.m. As I lay in my dark bedroom staring at the ceiling, I reviewed what I'd learned about Clarice.

She had been a complicated woman, more so than I originally thought. Possibly sexually abused—no, make that
probably
sexually abused—as a child, Clarice had grown up to be a woman of many contradictory parts: a sophisticated (if not tasteful) art dealer, a financial opportunist, a battered wife, a bigot. Would I still have counted her among my friends if I had known as much about her when she was alive? If it came down to that, was friendship nothing more than a coalition among like-minded people?

At some point during the night, I must have fallen asleep, because Dusty woke me at 4:30 as he was crawling out of bed. “Got to feed the horses,” he whispered, giving me a perfunctory peck on the cheek.

I reached up and rubbed his naked chest. “Give them a kiss for me.” 

He winked. “Woman, don't you know by now that I don't kiss horses?” 

The rain had stopped by morning. The
Scottsdale Journal
told me that a lightning strike on the transformers on Hayden Road had knocked out power to about twenty-five thousand customers, but other than that, the Valley had gotten off easy. The big storms were yet to come. Turning the page, I saw that a Satanist inmate at the state prison in Florence had lost his Supreme Court fight to keep his goat's head, black candles, and other religious artifacts in his cell. In another story, Sheriff Joe Arpaio had run into trouble with Amnesty International; seems they thought serving green bologna at the jail was cruel and unusual punishment. On the wildlife front, a javelina had wandered in off the Pima Reservation and been captured in the front of Baby Kay's Cajun Kitchen. Fortunately for the javelina, the cook hadn't caught it—the Scottsdale cops had, and they simply drove it back to the rez.

While I was still laughing over the newspaper, Jimmy arrived complaining about the washed-out roads on the rez, but after a glass of cactus juice he settled down and he ran a quick check on George Haozous. What he found surprised neither of us.

Haozous had been arrested several times, each time for assault. The worst incident happened in 1993 when he'd served a short stint in the Madison Street Jail for beating up a bouncer at a Phoenix bar. Nothing since then. Presumably, after the barroom incident he'd taken an anger management course—or joined A.A.

Jimmy handed me the print-out. “Told you those Apaches were rough guys.” 

“That's a racist statement.”

He shrugged. “It's not racist when you say it about your own people.” 

“You're Pima. George is Apache. Not exactly the same, is it?” 

He gave me a sly smile. “Pimas are non-violent, always have been. You can't say that about the Apaches.” 

I thought about Geronimo, Cochise, and Naiche, all the old gang that raised hell across the Arizona territory. “They were just defending their own,” I finally said.

“Yeah, like the Crips and the Bloods. You sound like one of those knee-jerk liberals.” 

“And you sound like a nineteenth-century Mormon.” Now that both of us were offended, I studied Haozous's rap sheet, taking careful note of how severe some of those beatings had been and what triggered them. Then I noticed something that set my mind at ease.

“Jimmy, all of these assaults were against men.”

“So?” Not appreciating my reference to his Mormon upbring-ing, he was still sulking.

And I was still feeling guilty because I knew what a good job the Mormons had done with him. I gentled my voice as I said, “I don't see any mention here of Haozous ever hitting a woman.” 

“He probably beats his wife. And like most wives, she doesn't turn him in.” 

I remembered Haozous's wife, her unmarked, friendly face peering out the trailer door, her almost humorous attitude towards her husband's temper. She hadn't acted like any battering victim I'd ever encountered.

But then, neither had Clarice.

“Point taken,” I said to Jimmy. Then I sat down at my desk and thought for a while.

While I still needed to talk to Clarice's brother and sister, I remained dissatisfied with my interview with her parents. There seemed to be no point in talking to Stephen Hyath again—he was as close as a clam with lockjaw—but I had a sneaking suspicion that his wife, if I got her alone and sober, might be more forthcoming. Eleanor Kobe hated her daughter, and I knew from experience that hatred loosened the tongue even more than love. She had no desire to protect her daughter's reputation, no reason to lie for her. I made a mental note to find out about Stephen Hyath's schedule and then try the house again. I doubted that Eleanor went out much. Before I made the trip back up the mountain to Castle Hyath, though, I needed to talk to Clarice's sister and brother, whoever and wherever they were.

A quick call to the Violent Crimes Unit resulted in the information I needed. Confirming what Stephen Hyath had told me, Kryzinski said that Serena Hyath-Allesandro was a partner in Hyath Construction, but that neither Clarice nor Serena bothered much with the day-to-day running of the business. Didn't want to get their manicured hands dirty, he snickered. Where Clarice had concentrated on her gallery, Serena was written up in the society columns because of her affiliation with the Arizona Kidney Foundation, the Arizona Heart Institute, the Arizona Opera League, and the Scottsdale Symphony Guild. She had, however, been relatively inactive in those organizations for the past year and there had been rumors of health problems.

“I know the way your twisted little mind works, kid, but we've already checked out bubba and sis,” Kryzinski said. “Ain't none of the Hyaths ever been arrested for anythin'. Sterling citizens, bless their black hearts.” 

I took down the telephone numbers and addresses Kryzinski gave me, delivered a big, smacking kiss over the phone, and hung up. Then I dialed Serena Hyath-Allesandro's number.

To my surprise, she immediately agreed to see me. I left Jimmy sulking over his keyboard and went out to the Jeep.

Last night's monsoon hadn't done too much damage and only a few stray palm fronds littered the parking lot. As I drove along Scottsdale Road towards the Boulders, the exclusive golf resort near which Clarice's sister lived, I could see that the storm hadn't been quite so benign north of Old Town Scottsdale. At several points, Scottsdale Road lay submerged under several feet of water and traffic had been diverted onto side streets where huge eucalyptus trees lay felled by the wind. L.L. Bean-clad residents hauled debris out of muddy pools, while others took chainsaws to collapsed palms. Judging from some of the arguments I overheard between the casually clad L.L. Bean contingent and some more formally dressed men, the insurance adjusters were out in full force—and they didn't want to fork over one thin dime.

I had good memories of this section of the Valley. After one of my foster fathers had been sent to prison for raping me, I'd been turned over to a Baptist minister and his family. Every Friday night, weather permitting, we had driven out into the desert somewhere around here where we'd pitched a roomy tent and built a big bonfire. The pastor had read Scripture to us as we roasted marshmallows over the fire, and while I'd eventually re-belled against the family's hyper-religiosity, I'd enjoyed the close contact with nature. Besides Scripture, the family had taught me the desert was my friend—if I remembered to respect it.