Desert Noir (9781615952236) (3 page)

I thought about that for a minute. A nightclub bouncer? That was a long way from the art galleries of Scottsdale. I said as much to Kryzinski.

“God works in mysterious ways. Seems while he was sitting around the correctional facility counting his toes some bleeding heart came in and started giving art lessons. Guess it was supposed to make the cons appreciate the finer things in life or somethin' like that. Turned out Kobe had a knack for painting. But you know something else?” 

He gave a dark laugh, as he always did when confronted by the more twisted pathways of human nature. “When Kobe got released, he moved in with his art teacher, who apparently had been swayed by his highly sensitive nature. Two weeks after movin'in, our boy beat the crap out of her, too. What is it with these women, tell me that? When Clarice Kobe threw him out, he moved in with Alison Garwood within two fuckin' weeks. He's already knocked her up, too. Not that he let that stop him from having his heavy-fisted fun. When our guys got there the night of the murder, she was lyin' in bed with an ice pack pressed to a black eye. Face swollen the size of a football. Kobe was passed out next to her, scabs all over his knuckles. Hell, Lena, I just can't wait for this trial. Men like Kobe oughta be euthanized or somethin'.” 

I closed my eyes. Whatever had possessed me to take the Kobe case? The man was an unrepentant thug. It was probably a miracle he hadn't killed someone before now. Or maybe he had.

“You still there, kid?” Kryzinski sounded smug.

“I'm still here and I appreciate you giving me all that information. Now what about the rest of it? The case file?” 

He didn't answer and I knew he wanted a promise I couldn't give. Instead, I threw him a bone. “Look, Captain, you let me take a look at the case file and I'll give some serious thought to coming back to the Department. How's that sound?” 

He sounded perkier. “Sounds good. The VCU just ain't the same without you. But hell, kid, you know that case file's classified information. It's not supposed to leave department hands, or at least not until the prosecutin' attorney gets his shot at it.” 

“The case file doesn't have to leave the building. I'm a speed reader. Let me come up there, I'll be done with it before you know it.” 

“Ah, shit, Lena.”

That's when I knew I'd won.

The next day, Jay Kobe's first words attacked me as the jail guards ushered him into the urine-scented visiting room, “You could be a beautiful woman if you did something about that scar. McKinnon told me you got shot in the ass, not the face.” 

Still the brute. Jail hadn't settled him down at all.

“I was shot in the hip. Or as my doctor phrased it, my pelvic girdle.” 

He frowned. “Then what about that awful scar on your forehead” 

What a guy. “I was shot for the first time when I was about four years old.” 

“First time?”
Kobe let out his breath in a hiss. He had halitosis. Living in the Madison Street Jail will do that to you. “Jesus, who'd shoot a kid?” 

For some reason, I never minded telling criminals my story, perhaps because violence was already so much a part of their own lives. A bullet wound here, a knife scar there—all were badges of honor to them. But there was another reason, too. Since violence attracted violence, there was always the chance that they knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew something about it. This was the way most crimes were solved.

I settled myself back into the visitor's chair. “It's nice that you're concerned, Mr. Kobe, but nobody knows who shot me or why. When I turned eighteen the social workers told me some Hispanic woman brought me to St. Joseph's Emergency Room and then took off. She didn't leave her name and nobody ever showed up to claim me. You know anybody who knows anything about a kid getting shot around thirty-two years ago?” 

Kobe, who probably wasn't more than thirty-two himself, shook his head. “So that's why you don't have it fixed. You're still hoping someone will see it and recognize you.” 

The disappointment hurt, it always did, but I shoved it away. “Smart man. Now tell me why I should believe that you didn't murder Clarice.” 

Even dressed in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's black-and-white striped jail duds, Jay Kobe was still a handsome man. The hazel eyes were unclouded by guilt or allergies, the cleft in his chin rivaled that of Kirk Douglas, and his bulked-up bod proved the efficacy of free weights. His only physical imperfections were his bruised knuckles. From Clarice? Or his girlfriend?

Yes, he was a pretty boy, but like most wife-beaters, I knew he would reveal himself to be a moper, a self-described perennial victim forced into unseemly behavior by his nearest and dearest. Jay didn't let me down. As he recounted his wife's many sins—arrogance, stinginess, duplicity, and an all-around inability to recognize his many sterling qualities—his black-fringed eyes took on a wounded look.

“I'm an easygoing guy but Clarice could really press my buttons, you know? But with all her faults, I loved that woman with every inch of my being.” 

“Apparently you had an inch or two left over. Somebody down at VCU told me your new girlfriend is pregnant. Congratulations, stud.” 

Kobe's bedroom eyes narrowed and for that one unguarded moment, psychopathy radiated off him like skunk skat. “The bitch told me she was on the pill. And since you're working for me, what the fuck are you doing hanging around the police department?” 

“All my best friends hang out there, remember? Jay, I hope you don't expect me to take your word for anything, not with your track record.” 

His eyes opened baby-wide. “I told you, Clarice knew how to push…”

“Your buttons.” I yawned. “Now before I fall asleep here in Sheriff Joe's Motel, why don't you tell me your version of the events last Thursday night?” 

Kobe looked like he wanted to hit me but since he knew I might help him beat a Murder One rap, he recounted the events of last Thursday. According to him, he was sleeping it off at Alison Garwood's house, Clarice having thrown him out of the house a couple of months earlier. He and his girlfriend had been partying hard all day, he admitted, and he seemed to remember bopping her one.

“Alison can really push…”

“Your buttons. Continue.”

He ground his teeth. “Listen, bitch,
you're
pushing my buttons, you know that?” 

I smiled sweetly. “Touch me and you'll be shitting teeth for a week.” 

He flinched. Like most batterers, Jay was a coward. He'd never hit a woman who might hit back.

“Come on, Jay. I'm not staying down here all day. Tell me more about the night of the murder.” 

“There's nothing else to tell. The cops came and dragged me out of bed about two in the morning, and after one of them found those damned Nikes in the Dumpster, that was it. I told them and told them I hadn't seen those shoes in months, but they wouldn't listen to a word I said.” His fingers tapped a nervous rhythm on the wooden table and I could see that his nails were growing a little long. He was overdue for a trip to the manicurist.

“Why couldn't your girlfriend convince them you'd been with her all day?” 

“Ummmm.” He looked thoughtful. “Alison, um, well…” 

It was obvious he wasn't going to tell me the truth, so I cut to the chase. “How's this sound? Alison was mad at you for hitting her so she told the police she was in bed with an ice pack and didn't know if you'd gone out later or not. She also told the detectives that you'd often talked about killing Clarice before the divorce went through so that you'd be able to keep all that lovely money.” 

I enjoyed the expression on Jay's face. He looked like he'd swallowed a scorpion and it was stinging its way back up. “She's nothing but a lying whore. Look, I admit I had problems with Clarice, but I wasn't the only one.
Everybody
did.” 

Here it came, the I-Didn't-Kill-Her-But-I-Know-Who-Probably-Did Tango. I raised my eyebrows and slouched lower into my chair, prepared for a long monologue.

“See, Clarice was always having trouble with her family. There was something weird going on there, especially with dear old dad, you know what I mean?” 

I shook my head.

“Ah, come on, a woman like you? You've been around, you know what's what.” 

I shook my head again.

He looked exasperated, which was what I wanted. Exasperated people were careless people. “What I'm trying to tell you, lady, is that Mr. Stephen Hyath himself had one big skeleton in his closet where Clarice was concerned.
Capice?
” 

I began to
capice
all right but needed to hear more. “I'm afraid you've lost me, Jay.” 

“Incest, you stupid bitch! Before things went bad between us, Clarice told me that her daddy used to crawl in bed with her when mommy dearest was too drunk to care!” 

I thought about that for a moment. Even if the rumor was true, would it make any difference to the murder case? It seemed to me that if long-ago incest had been the Hyath family secret, it would have been Clarice murdering Daddy, not Daddy murdering Clarice. I said as much to Kobe but he just sneered knowingly.

“She was getting ready to take him to court.”

I laughed. “C'mon. Clarice was thirty. The statute of limita-tions on child molest would have run out years ago. Or was she going to use Recovered Memory Syndrome as an explanation for a tardy filing? That wouldn't get her much in
this
state, because none of those judgments are holding up on appeal.” 

Kobe shook his head. His fingers stepped up their nervous drumming on the table. “Clarice wasn't interested in justice, just money. She was going after her father in civil court to the tune of thirty million dollars. I doubt if old man Hyath was crazy about the idea of forfeiting any of his millions. He'd rather see her dead. That whole fucking family worships money.”

“And you don't?”

The fingers stopped drumming and clenched into a fist. He began to rise from his chair but made the mistake of looking into my eyes. What he saw there stopped him. He sat back down slowly and forced his hand open again. His nostrils flared and I could hear the hot, fast breath whizzing through them.

I couldn't remember disliking anyone so much on first meeting, not even the serial child molester I'd once caught in the act. But I remembered McKinnon's promise to help me out with my own problem.

“OK. I'll interview Clarice's father, see what he has to say. But somehow I just can't see him rending his Brooks Brothers suit, throwing ashes upon his head, and confessing to me that he feels guilty about diddling his daughter.” 

Kobe frowned. “Jesus, you're vulgar.”

I tried not to laugh at this pot calling the kettle black. “Got any more likely suspects?” 

“Well, there was that Indian artist giving Clarice trouble over his stuff being kicked out of the gallery. Apache guy, mean looking. From up on the San Carlos rez.”

An incestuous father and a mean Apache. What next? The case was starting to resemble
As the World Turns.

Kobe was oblivious to my skepticism. “And I remember her getting into some kind of legal boondoggle with somebody over at the new Museum of Western Art she and the family built. It had to do with some old Mexican broad who got displaced when eminent domain gobbled up her neighborhood. Anyway, the old bitch up and died and for some reason, her family blamed Clarice.” 

Some old Mexican broad.

From what I could remember about the eminent domain case, the court fight had gotten pretty ugly, with the Hispanics screaming discrimination and the Hyaths screaming progress. As usual, progress—backed by serious money—won. The fact that an elderly Hispanic widow had been bulldozed along with her home had meant little to anyone other than her family. But that was Arizona for you. Anglos loved the state's Hispanic heritage: Hispanic food, Hispanic beer, Hispanic art, Hispanic clothes, Hispanic architecture. In fact, Anglos loved everything Hispanic except the Hispanics themselves.

“Well, you've given me a few things to look into, Jay, so I'll see what I can do,” I said, shoving my chair away from the table. “I'll get back to you.”

“That's it?” My indifference appeared to shock him, or maybe he was just used to having a bigger impact on women.

Whereas I didn't even kiss him goodbye.

Although I'd timed my jail visit for early morning, the temperature had already climbed past 110 degrees by the time I reached my car—a refitted hot pink 1945 Jeep I'd bought four years earlier from a desert touring company. I still hadn't bothered to repaint it or even remove the chipped steer horn decorating the hood, so as I ground gears through downtown Phoenix, derisive hoots from pedestrians accompanied me. Ignoring the tasteless rabble, I swung a hard left at the pseudo space age grandeur of Pioneer Park, where triangular-shaped “sails” hovered over large round globes tacked onto improbably curved pieces of metal. What
was
the architect thinking?

I then shot down Central Avenue past the Westward Ho Hotel. The grand old building had once housed Marilyn Monroe when she filmed
The Misfits,
but since those days of glory it had degenerated into a welfare hotel, which was the true story of the West. Forget Marilyn and Roy Rogers and the Riders of the Purple Sage. The West has become a place where luxury sedans run down coyotes and arrogant architects look upon shaman-haunted vistas as nothing more than empty lots suitable for building monuments to their own egos. Every time I drive along this raped section of the Valley of the Sun, my trigger finger starts to itch.

But back to the business at hand.

What had I learned so far? Although the Violent Crimes Unit had a strong case against Kobe, McKinnon could still have a field day with the loopholes. The shoes looked good for the prosecution, but after the Simpson case, cops were no longer sanguine about the holiness of DNA and other material evidence. What if Kobe's girlfriend decided to alibi him after all? What if she swore upon her father's grave that Kobe was snoring next to her all night? She had no police record herself and might make an unfortunately credible witness.