Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery (2 page)

“Now open the paper to the middle.”

I did, and found a candid photograph of a teenage girl slipped between the pages. It was slightly out of focus, as if been taken from a distance by a shaky hand but you could still tell that the girl would grow into a beauty. Perfect oval face, blond hair, blue eyes, the lanky but perfectly proportioned build of a budding runway model. She’d been snapped carrying a load of books in her arms, walking down a palm-lined street.

“I took that picture,” Juliana said.

“It’s a bit out of focus.”

“I’m not much of a photographer,” she admitted.

“Who is it?”

“We’ll get to that shortly. Now tell me what you think of this.” She lifted the rest of the newspapers in the magazine rack, revealing a framed studio portrait hidden underneath.

When she handed the portrait to me, I still couldn’t figure out why I was here. Comparing the blurred snapshot to the formal portrait, it was easy to see they were the same person, and I told her so.

She shook her head. “Wrong. The snapshot was taken two months ago, just before school let out. The studio portrait is more than twenty years old.”

“But…”

“The girl in the formal portrait is me at the age of fourteen.”

I inspected the two photographs more closely. The girls were so alike they could have been identical twins, but given the age gap, there could only be one explanation. On second thought, two explanations.

“Your niece?” I asked, recalling that Helga, Juliana’s older sister, had a daughter named Ilsa. Both blue-eyed blondes often appeared in the congresswoman’s campaign ads.

But Juliana shook her head. “Ilsa is two years older than this girl.”

I had an idea where this was going, and I didn’t like it. Cleaning up a politician’s peccadilloes isn’t my thing. “Then at some point you had an illegitimate daughter, who up until now, you’ve successfully kept hidden.” I waved toward the campaign posters. “Obviously, you’re about to make a run for the U.S. Senate, so you want me to make all this go away.”

Those cold blue eyes never wavered. “You’re right and you’re wrong. The girl is my daughter, yes, but she’s not illegitimate.”

I realized I’d forgotten something. While still studying at Arizona State University, Juliana had briefly been married, but less than three months after the wedding, her husband was shot to death in a road rage incident. The tragedy had actually helped her first congressional run: brave widow carrying on despite personal heartbreak, still a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment.

“Fine. You had a child, but for some reason kept her a secret. What’d you do, adopt her out?”

“Once again, you’re partially right and partially wrong. If you’re familiar with my official biography, you know that my parents weren’t wealthy, not even close, and they could barely afford my tuition at ASU. Getting a bronze at the Olympics didn’t bring me much in the way of endorsement deals, either. My parents were prepared to take out a second mortgage on their home to see me through school, but there was no way I would accept such a sacrifice. They’d worked too hard to get where they were. I was about to quit school when I saw an ad in the back of the
New Times
, that leftist rag you can pick up for free on any street corner.”

Here she paused to give me a frosty smile. “My politics weren’t fully formed then, you understand. Anyway, the ad I’m talking about was paid for by a private party, and it offered fifty thousand dollars for the right young woman to perform a certain service. When I checked it out, I realized it was the perfect solution for my situation.”

At the look on my face, her smile broadened, but somehow became even colder. “It’s not what you’re thinking. I didn’t become an escort.”

“But you…?” I let the sentence hang there.

“I became an egg donor.”

It’s not often, these days, that anything a politician says shocks me, but Juliana had managed. “You’re telling me that to pay your tuition you sold your, ah, eggs?”

“Correct. Eggs from young women of my description—Nordic, tall, athletic, blue-eyed blondes with high IQs—we bring top dollar. Since I was all of those, I signed on. And was accepted right away.”

Now I knew I didn’t want her for a client. “Interesting, but irrelevant. Here’s the deal. I really don’t care what anyone does with their sperm or their eggs. Freedom of reproduction, and all that. What I do mind are your motives. You’re afraid someone will leak news of your little clone to the media and you’ll lose your extreme right-wing base. Well, Congresswoman, if you think you can hire me to hush this up and find some way to keep the girl hidden, maybe even funnel enough PAC money to pay for her removal somewhere else, you’re asking the wrong private investigator.”

I stood to leave, but her next words froze me in my tracks.

“Ask me the first girl’s name.”

Curious despite myself, I complied. “All right, Congresswoman. What’s her name?”

“Alison Cameron. Yesterday, Ali—as she’s known to her friends—was charged in Juvenile Court for masterminding her family’s murder.”

Chapter Two

I sat back down.

“No one knows about the egg donation, not even my sister,” Juliana continued. “At first you thought Ali might be my niece, which is wrong. What you don’t know is that Ilsa, my sister’s daughter, is the result of in vitro fertilization, too. After more than ten years of marriage with no pregnancies, Helga learned she suffered from a condition that keeps her from producing viable eggs. It broke her heart. Her first thought was adoption, of course, but there’s a long waiting list for infants, which she and her husband preferred. Also, adopting an infant from overseas can be both expensive and risky, so my first egg donation was to her.”

The woman continued to surprise me.

“No money exchanged hands, just love and several weeks of intramuscular hormone shots. I’ve had better times, but it was worth it because now my sister and her husband have a wonderful daughter. Since she looks more like her father, whose features are different than mine, there has never been any question about her parentage.”

“But she’s still your daughter.”

“No, she’s my sister’s daughter. Helga is the person who gave birth to Ilsa, raised Ilsa, loves and protects Ilsa. I’m merely the donor who facilitated that process.”

“Donor? Nothing more than a campaign contributor?”

She gave me a look of distaste. “Sorry if I shock you, Lena, but yes, little more than that. I am not ‘mother’ to that child. I am her aunt, albeit an aunt who loves her very much.” She paused and took a deep breath. “All Ali has is an uncle who’s out of the country…” Another pause. “And her egg donor.”

Sometimes the people you’ve made up your mind to dislike surprise you. “Look, Congresswoman, I can understand your feelings—I think—but at this point Ali is very, very fortunate that the case will be adjudicated in juvenile court. Considering the seriousness of the crime, it probably should have gone the other way, so I’m guessing you must have hired one hell of an attorney. Given that small miracle, what other miracle, exactly, do you think I can perform?”

“Find out who killed the Cameron family.”

“Excuse me, but according to the newspaper accounts, Ali and her boyfriend confessed to the crime. She to planning the murders, he to carrying them out.”

Juliana shook her head so fiercely a cloud of blond hair swirled around her head. “Impossible. I know my family’s history and there’s not a drop of violence in any of us.” Seeing my eyes drift toward the elk heads on the wall, she frowned. “Game animals don’t count.”

“PETA might disagree.”

“The electorate doesn’t care what PETA thinks, and neither do I.” She made a sound of disgust, then stabbed a finger at the newspaper. “Beating an entire family to death with a baseball bat? That is violence overload. Don’t forget, one of the victims was Ali’s brother, a child of ten. And before you ask, yes, I believe in the power of genetics. The science backs me up.”

Ah, the old nature versus nurture argument. “Some science, not all. Upbringing counts for a lot.”

The cold smile returned. “Upbringing? The kind you had? You were raised in a series of foster homes. If upbringing is all that counts, you should be a mess. But you’re not.”

Juliana didn’t know me as well as she thought, did she? My nightmares…There was no reason to go into any of that. Still, I felt the need to further the argument.

“If genetics count for everything, with your own Viking heritage—which you so proudly pointed out to some of your more racist constituents during your first run for office—you’d be cleaving people’s skulls with a battle axe instead of serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Another hair swirl. “The Vikings lived more than a thousand years ago. They’ve gentled since then. Now the Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Icelanders are some of the most peaceful people on Earth.” As an afterthought she added, “If unfortunately Socialist.”

“Aren’t you forgetting Anders Breivik? ‘Pure’ Nordic blood, yet he killed seventy-seven people, most of them kids.”

“A madman,” said dismissively.

As a former police officer, I’d seen ghastly violence perpetrated by the most unlikely people—mothers, loving grandfathers, and yes, children. In rushing to the defense of her biological daughter, Juliana was forgetting something basic.

“Okay, let’s pretend I buy your genetics theories, which, actually, I don’t. How much do you know about her father? Dr. Cameron. After all, he’s responsible for half of Ali’s genetic makeup.”

“Little more than the newspapers have reported,” she admitted. “He was head of Emergency Medicine at Good Samaritan Hospital, in Phoenix. That’s where you come in.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You want me to check out his genetic heritage? Maybe find a wife-poisoner in his family tree? An axe murderer?”

She blushed, whether from anger or embarrassment at being called out for her borderline racist proclivities, I couldn’t tell.

“I’m sure Dr. Cameron himself was an upright citizen, but there’s always the chance he might have had unsavory connections. Many people do, not just Italians.” The blush deepened. “Dr. Cameron’s mother was Italian.”

“Oh, you’re hoping I’ll find a Borgia, then. Or maybe a Mafia don here or there. Why? So Ali’s attorney can raise the so-called ‘warrior gene’ defense in her case? That her genetics made her do it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Then, as if realizing she might have gone too far, she raised her hands in surrender. “If you dislike me, Lena, fine, but my politics are of no importance here. The only thing that matters is that little girl. Find out what really happened. If it means looking more deeply into my past, not just Dr. Cameron’s, go right ahead. Now that you know my one secret, the rest of my life is an open book.”

I doubted it. Everyone has something to hide, and the fact that Juliana had already admitted to one skeleton in her closet didn’t mean there weren’t more old bones rattling around in there. For instance, after her husband’s death she had never remarried. What was up with that? Maybe she was gay. If so, her Religious Right supporters would run like rats in the opposite direction if they found out.

Despite my feelings about the woman herself, the case intrigued me. I didn’t like the idea of two fourteen-year-old kids facing trial for multiple murders, but I was curious about their motives. Had Dr. Cameron and his wife really been the vessels of virtue the newspapers portrayed? Maybe they’d been secretly abusing Ali. Also, the news of the teens’ supposed confessions bothered me. How, exactly, did a fourteen-year-old boy manage to kill a fully grown man, his wife, and a ten-year-old with a baseball bat? Oh, and batter the family dog half to death.

The dog.

“Juliana, that dog I saw when I came in. Is she yours?”

“Misty?” Juliana shook her head. “She’s Ali’s. When the murders made the ten o’clock news, the vet called the police. The information about the missing kids—and Misty—made the papers the next day. Upon reading that, I visited the vet and paid the bill, which turned out to be quite hefty, and he was more than happy to foster out Misty to me. Don’t worry, it’s on the up-and-up. I signed the requisite papers, agreeing to turn the dog over to its owner upon demand. Of course, I didn’t mention my relationship with Ali, just told him I was happy to do something for the Camerons. And Misty.”

“The vet wasn’t suspicious about you?”

“Why should he be? He’s a constituent.”

I shrugged. “Even if he wasn’t, the color of your money probably changed his mind. But what about the boy?”

“What about him?”

“Kyle Gibbs. Ali’s boyfriend. Was he covered in blood when he showed up at the vet’s?”

“No, the vet said he looked fine, but the boyfriend could have cleaned up, even changed his shirt after killing the family.”

Yet Ali didn’t? Something wasn’t right.

“Before I decide whether I’ll take the case or not, you need to tell me how you found out Alison Cameron was your biological daughter.”

She sat back, remembering. “A couple of months ago I was at Fancy Feet, that shoe store in the Seville Shopping Center, looking for some comfortable flats. Ali was there with her mother. Both were so intent on shoes that they didn’t notice me staring at them. When I walked in, I was struck by the girl’s resemblance to that old picture of me, and when I looked down and saw the instep of her right foot, I knew.”

She slipped off her left shoe. Just above the toes was a heart-shaped birthmark. “My sister and niece both have this, so did my mother. And my grandmother.”

With such an obvious multi-generational reminder, no wonder Juliana was a dues-paying member of the nature-versus-nurture crowd. “Fine, so you saw her at Fancy Feet. What then? Did you follow them out of the store?”

“All the way to their house. It wasn’t far. They live…lived…less than a mile away.”

The snapshot. Ali had been carrying schoolbooks, not shopping. Which meant that the picture had been taken on a different day. “You’ve been stalking the kid!”

The flush came back. “Not really. Once I saw where she lived, I went back just that one day when I knew she’d be returning home from school. I fitted out my camera with a good zoom, and took the picture while she was walking up the street with some friends. She seemed happy. Normal. That was all I needed to know. I left her to live her life and never went back.”

Happy. Normal.

So much for a book and its cover.

After thinking a moment, I made up my mind. “All right. I’ll take the case, but only for seven days. After that we’ll see where we are.”

She closed her eyes briefly and moved her lips, probably in prayer to whatever fierce version of God she worshipped. When I explained my fee structure, she didn’t blink, just wrote out a check on the spot.

“Paying for it with campaign contributions?” I asked, only half in jest, as I took it from her.

Frost again. “That would be unethical, as well you know. The minute I heard about Ali’s situation, I cashed in some bonds. And if necessary, I’ll take a second mortgage out on my condo. I am not going to let that girl rot in some horrible cell.”

My dislike for my honorable congresswoman stepped back a bit.

But not completely.