Desert Noir (9781615952236) (6 page)

Kryzinski was no happier than I. “Shit, Lena. You resign from the force because you're sick of getting shot and look what's going down. You might as well come back. Get shot on company time.” 

We were back to our old argument. “I
didn't
resign from the force because I was sick of being shot. I resigned because I was sick of sitting at that stupid desk you put me at.” 

“I
didn't
put…”

“The hell you didn't!”

“Children, children! Don't fight.” Dusty uncoiled himself from the chair and approached my bed. Giving Kryzinski a neutral look, he said, “Let's leave the who-pissed-off-who-first argument for another time.” Then he turned his attention to me. “And you. You need to get some rest instead of picking at old scabs, so why don't we all clear out of here so you can sleep? Dr. Elfride told me that if you keep improving, he'll release you tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow hell. I'm going home tonight.” With that, I struggled out of the stiff hospital sheets, taking care that the split-back hospital gown was closed. No point in shocking my visitors. When my feet touched the floor, a wave of dizziness swept over me but I fought my way through it and staggered towards the closet.

“Hey, kid, you can't…” Seeing the look on my face, Kryzinski shut up.

Jimmy knew better than to say anything. He did heave a great sigh, though.

Dusty strolled after me like I was a recalcitrant calf and slid the closet door closed. “I brought you some fresh clothes. The others are all messed up.” 

“We're impounding them as evidence,” Kryzinski managed, his turquoise-studded bola tie bouncing with anger. “I don't plan on letting this fuck get away with shootin' one of my officers.” 

I started to say, “I'm not one of your officers anymore,” but didn't, because as far as he was concerned, I still was.

Dusty drove carefully—for him. He wrestled his wide pickup truck through Scottsdale's narrow side streets, somehow managing to avoid the omnipresent bicyclists and inline skaters enjoying the relative cool of the evening. He was so considerate that he didn't even nag me about checking out of the hospital against Dr. Elfride's orders. He did, however, lay down the law in another respect.

“I'm staying over, just in case you start seeing two of everything,” he announced, in a don't-you-dare-talk-back tone. “The horses can take care of themselves tonight.” 

I shrugged before I remembered my shoulder. The pain almost made me drop Cliffie's yellow roses. “Did you bring your gun?” Because of the permissive Arizona gun laws, just about every man, woman and child in the state was packing, and Dusty was no exception.

“What do you think?”

“I think you're a regular Boy Scout.”

“You're a perceptive woman. Sometimes.”

I smiled.

I'd met Dusty just before I was transferred to the Violent Crimes Unit, when I stopped him as his truck sped along Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, going—as my radar gun affirmed—thirty-seven miles above the speed limit. I flashed my blue lights and he pulled over immediately. As I wrote out a ticket to Grant “Dusty” Norris, his politeness impressed me almost as much as his handsome face.

“Anybody ever tell you that you look like Clint Eastwood?” I asked, handing the ticket through the truck's rolled-down window.

“Only several hundred people,” he said, receiving the summons with as much grace as if it had been an invitation to a White House dinner. I noticed that he wasn't wearing a wedding ring.

Since cops aren't supposed to put the moves on their
clients
—as Scottsdale cops are encouraged to term them—that would normally have been that. But a week later my fifteen-year-old Toyota gasped its last on a lonely stretch of the Beeline Highway about thirty miles northeast of Scottsdale, stranding me in 116-degree heat. Like all sensible desert dwellers, I carried several water containers in the trunk, but the radiator was the least of my car's woes. I exited the car and stood in its shade, sipping water and feeling pretty sorry for myself when a familiar-looking truck pulled off the road behind me. I leaned back in the car, grabbed my gun from the glove compartment, and unsnapped its holster. Just in case.

I didn't know whether to be pleased or alarmed when last week's Clint Eastwood double stepped from the truck and started towards me. “Anything I can help you with, ma'am?” 

When he recognized me, those amazing blues eyes narrowed, and for a moment, a frisson of fear crawled up my spine. Something told me this man could be dangerous. My hand had already begun easing the .38 out of its holster when he finally grinned and said, “They say revenge is a dish best served cold but it's too damned hot out here for any of that, don't you think, Officer? What say I give you a lift to the nearest gas station and then we figure out what we're going to do with each other? If anything.” 

All fear gone, I grinned back.

Four years later, I knew little more about Dusty than I'd learned that day and the shame was that I didn't care. With knowledge came intimacy, something I'd never been very good at. Foster homes aren't the greatest places for learning how to love—or even how to like. Just when I began to settle into any particular family, to trust them—to
like
them—something would happen, necessitating a move to another family. After hundreds of tear-filled nights, I finally learned not to get attached to anyone.

So I was content with our relationship as it stood, with Dusty living on the dude ranch where he was head wrangler and me living above my detective agency. Dusty preferred it that way, too, which sometimes made me curious. I knew quite well why I had trouble getting close to people, but what was Dusty's story?

An interesting question, to be sure, but not one I needed to answer now. I needed to know who killed Clarice. Gut instinct told me my own shooter was connected to the Kobe case, but I'd only agreed to take the case the day before it had happened. To my knowledge, the only people who knew of my involvement were Albert Grabel, Kobe himself, and Kobe's attorney. Then again, Kobe's release on bond meant that he'd been out and about and probably shooting off his mouth in every bar in town.

“Shit!” Dusty swerved the truck suddenly to the left.

I snapped out of my reverie. “What?”

“Goddamn skater almost ran into me.”

I turned around and in the glow of a streetlight, saw a woman dressed in a Day-Glo bikini with matching kneepads flipping us the bird. “Probably some goddamn Californian,” I said.

“Goddamn Californians are ruining this town.”

I said the most optimistic thing I could think of. “But the statistics show that for every three Californians who move out here, two go back.” 

“Leaving one more son of a bitch every half block to make us miserable.” 

For the past decade, Scottsdale—founded after the Civil War by Winfield Scott, a U.S. Army chaplain, and which had once called itself “The West's most Western town”—had been overrun by Californians fleeing earthquakes, New Yorkers fleeing crime, and Chicagoans fleeing snow. The city had grown from 130,000 to 180,000 residents in just six years, and while the influx was good for the tax base, Scottsdale now suffered from streets too narrow for the increased traffic. Not a day went by that some rancher didn't sideswipe some underdressed immigrant on rollerblades.

Nobody liked it, but there wasn't a thing we could do about it. In twenty years, I figured, the Valley of the Sun would look just like Los Angeles.

And smell like it, too.

That night the pain in my shoulder kept me awake so I lay staring at the ceiling, thinking about Clarice and all the other battered women I'd come in contact with in my years with the Violent Crimes Unit. Each year, an estimated one-and-a-half million women were severely beaten by their husbands, and everyone in VCU believed that Scottsdale had more than its share of these dysfunctional couples. We'd arrest the batterers and refer the women to shelters, but nine times out of ten the next day the scarred and beaten women would be down at the jail bailing out their men. The psychologists told us it was because the women could see no way out of their situation, but while that theory might explain some victims, it didn't explain Clarice. She was a childless, educated beauty with money of her own. She didn't need to be dependent upon anybody else's paycheck, she owned a house worth a half million, and she could get any man she wanted.

Why had she wound up with Jay?

A sudden rumbling pulled me from my reverie. I rolled over and nudged Dusty, to whom insomnia was a stranger. “You're snoring, babe.” 

“Mmph.” He gave me a few minutes' reprieve, then started up again.

Careful not to wake him, I pressed my hand against his cheek and caressed it slowly, surprised as always by how soft his weathered skin actually felt. He turned his face into my hand and, eyes still closed, kissed my palm. I moved my hand away.

I didn't love him. I didn't.

I was still safe.

Dusty was gone by the time I crawled out of bed, but he'd filled a vase with water and arranged Cliffie's yellow roses in it.

My head still hurt, but not as fiercely. I showered carefully, keeping my bandaged shoulder out of the spray, dressed in jeans and a loose T-shirt, then limped downstairs to the office.

Jimmy greeted me with a disapproving glare. “You should stay in bed. There's nothing going on down here I can't handle.” 

I ignored him. “The Violent Crimes Unit ran an AFIS check on Jay Kobe and came up with a few things I want you to follow up. See if he owes money, stuff like that.” 

“Great minds think alike. The print-out's already on your desk.” 

“Remind me to give you a raise.”

The glare vanished as he laughed. “You can't give me a raise. We're equal partners, remember?”

I smiled, even though my shoulder was screaming at me. “You talk to the Golden Apple yet about that light-fingered manager?” 

“They're very pleased, didn't even ask about the bill.” 

Which I knew would be considerable. “They might make a few comments when they receive it. How about our little insurance claimant?” 

He was silent for a moment then said in an oddly even voice, “I think one of us ought to run some surveillance on her with a video camera. Those credit charges don't prove a thing on their own.” 

“You looking to get out of the office?”

Another long silence. Then, “If I do, will you promise to take it easy?” 

“Sure,” I lied, anxious for him to leave so I could do some work without him nagging at me. “Just remember what I told you the last time we discussed surveillance. Don't ever, ever let her get a look at you or it's all over. With your size, long hair, and tribal tatts, you don't exactly blend in with the scenery.” 

Jimmy agreed to rent a nondescript car and conduct the first day's surveillance parked down the street, with his hair tucked under a baseball cap and his tattoos hidden by cosmetics. We both knew that the woman wouldn't be foolish enough to sashay down the sidewalk in broad daylight but she might drop her guard at night. If so, Jimmy would be waiting. If she didn't…

Well, surveillance cameras weren't exactly unknown in my profession. Nothing a little breaking and entering couldn't take care of, although I'd have to wait until my shoulder wasn't quite so stiff. I wasn't about to send Jimmy in there to do my dirty work. He needed a police record like I needed another bullet wound.