Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery (32 page)

“You’re afraid she’ll go back to telling the same old story.”

“Yeah.” He gulped, close to tears.

I reframed my question to give him a few moments to collect himself. “All right. Let’s start again at the beginning. When you returned to the abandoned house from the Circle K, Ali wasn’t there, so you left again, this time for the Camerons’ place, thinking that after your argument she went home. Now pay attention. The minute you turned into their cul-de-sac, did you see anything or anyone in front of their house or leaving their street?”

He shook his head.

“Did you hear anything?”

Another head shake.

“Was the front door open or closed?”

“Open, but not by much.”

“So you were able to walk right in?”

“I knocked first.”

“And?”

“Nobody came. But when I knocked, it made the door open more, and when it did, I, uh, smelled something strange.”

“Tell me about the smell.”

He looked down at the puppy, which had fallen asleep on his lap. “Uh, like, uh…” He took a deep breath. “Like dog poop.”

“Right. Is that when you went in?”

“Yeah. I was trying to figure out what was up, you know? ’Cause, Dr. Cameron, he was a doctor, I mean, like, a medical doctor and had this thing about dirt, so even with Misty, that place was always spotless, so I walked in, just a couple of steps at first, calling for Ali, and at first I didn’t see anything, but then, but then, I saw, well, you know.”

The puppy woke up, stared at him, then struggled to get down. That’s when I realized how tense Kyle had become. His hands were clenched, and he was biting his lip so hard I thought it might bleed.

“Kyle?” Fiona’s voice.

“It’s all right, Mom,” he said, easing the puppy down to the floor, where it joined the kittens tormenting the Nerf ball. Looking back at me, he said, “I saw Dr. Cameron first. He was sitting in that chair with tape over his mouth, covered in something red, but I didn’t know what it was at first, I thought maybe he’d been painting, but I didn’t smell paint, just the dog poop, and then I noticed his hands were all taped up, and then I saw Mrs. Cameron, she had tape over her mouth and her hair was sopped in the same red stuff as Dr. Cameron’s and I knew then it wasn’t paint because her hands were taped too, and I saw Misty all in red next to Ali’s brother and he was all covered in red too and I…and I…I didn’t still get it and I walked over there ’cause I was going to take the tape off and make them tell me what happened and maybe help them wash off all the red…but then…but then when I got close I saw that they weren’t going to tell me, not ever going to tell anyone anything not ever again, and then I saw the bat and then…and then Ali came in and I thought…I thought…”

“You thought she’d done all that,” I said, so softly I could hardly hear my own voice.

A gulp. “I must have been crazy.”

“No, you were in shock.”

Violet eyes ringed in red, he continued. “Ali…Ali saw Misty wasn’t dead but I thought Misty was so awful-looking that I just knew she was dying and suffering and suffering, and I can’t stand to see an animal suffer like that and all I could think was to put her out of her misery real fast so it wouldn’t go on any longer and Ali was standing there saying all this crazy stuff and I was, like, remembering this note she wrote me about wanting them all dead so we could always be together and it was…it was…it was just…it was just awful.”

“What happened then?” I couldn’t seem to talk in a normal tone anymore, just whisper.

“Ali grabbed her mother’s purse, the purse with the car keys in it and we took Misty to the vet.”

“Then you headed for California.”

His handsome face twisted. “Oh, God, we were so stupid!”

Glen, who hadn’t said a word during all this, stepped forward. His hands were still clenched, as if ready to throw a punch. “Okay, Miss Jones. That’s it. I want you to leave now.”

“But…”

Glen started toward me, fist raised.

Not wanting to get beat up again, I grabbed my recorder, threw it in my carryall, and hurried to the door.

As I turned the knob, I heard footsteps. I turned to see Kyle, standing at the entrance to the family room, Glen and Fiona clutching at him, trying to drag him away. He was too strong. “Wait, Miss Jones! I just remembered something else!”

Braving Glen’s threatening fists, I asked, “What do you remember?”

“The van.”

I frowned. “The air-conditioning van?”

“No. The other one.”

“What other van, Kyle?”

“The panel van, the one that drove by me when I was still a few blocks from Ali’s house, I think it was around Shetland Street and Appaloosa Way, you know, the intersection just before you go into the neighborhood where she lives. Anyway, this van, I think it was a Ford or a Chevy, a real old one, too, maybe even from the seventies, it was coming from that direction, the direction of the big circle, I mean, like it had been in there, and it was weird, you know? I didn’t think too much about it before, but when I was talking to you in there, telling you about finding the Camerons all covered in bl…finding the Camerons like that, I remembered the van.”

Fiona looked at Kyle nervously, tugged at his shirt.

He pushed her hand away. “Don’t. I need to tell her.”

“What color was it, this van?”

“Mostly white, but it was all beat up and you could see other colors on it, too. Looked like it had been painted over and over, a real bad paint job each time, like some dumb kid did it.”

I already had the door open, but despite the heat rushing in from outside, the room’s temperature must have dropped thirty degrees. “You say the van was weird, is that because it had a bad paint job?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then what, Kyle? What was so weird about the van?”

“Because when it drove past me, it…it smelled like dog poop.”

***

Hacking the Motor Vehicles site to find the registration for a 1970s to 1980s Ford or Chevy panel van would be impossible; even Jimmy couldn’t work miracles. But Kyle’s description correlated with Clint Zhou’s, so there was little doubt both young men had seen the murder vehicle.

As I drove back to the Pima rez through the twilight, I ran the timeline through my aching head again.

Clint made his delivery to the still alive-and-well Camerons at 11:56 a.m., stayed parked in front of the house texting his girlfriend for a few minutes, then drove off and hit a white van while leaving the neighborhood. Later, Kyle, while on his way to the Camerons’ house to find Ali, had passed the same van near the intersection of Shetland Street and Appaloosa Way, mere blocks from her house. Kyle didn’t know the exact time he arrived at the Camerons’, but according to the veterinarian who’d taken care of Misty, Kyle and Ali arrived in his office—a thirty-minute drive away—at 3:02. This meant the murderers entered the Cameron house no earlier than noon, and finished their bloody work around two thirty.

Time is relative. Two-and-a-half hours doesn’t seem long, but it would have seemed an eternity for the Camerons.

Scottsdale PD had already checked with the Camerons’ immediate neighbors to see if their houses had surveillance cameras and came up with a negative. But now that I had confirmation of the killers’ vehicle, a concrete timeline, and a new intersection, there was a chance one of the houses near Shetland and Appaloosa caught the van’s license plate on a better-angled camera. Too dark now to check the neighborhood for cameras myself, but Scottsdale PD needed to be aware of this right away.

I placed a call to Sylvie Perrins, only to have the call roll over to voice mail. I left a message, then tried Bob Grossman. Same thing. Frustrated, I thought about giving my information to Captain Ulrich, their boss, then thought better of it. All I’d get from Ulrich was a lecture about sticking my nose into police business.

***

When I arrived back at Jimmy’s trailer, I found him sitting outside on his chaise, looking up at the stars.

“You do this every night?” I asked, getting out of the Jeep and into the warm night, where cricket songs and the rustlings of other small wildlife chased away the vast silence. For some reason, the coyotes weren’t out yet, giving some rabbit a temporary stay of execution.

“When there’s no dust storm.” He waved toward the other chaise. “Have a seat. And by the way, how are you feeling? You look terrible.”

“Thanks for the compliment.” If I joined him, it would make twice in one week I’d wasted time sitting outside. Last time I did, Monster Woman burned down Desert Investigations. I sat down anyway. What could she do now, throw another firebomb all the way from Tent City? Still, I felt as bad as he said I looked, and the chaise offered comfort.

“A little thing like a dust storm scares you?” I teased. “I thought you Pimas were tough.”

“We Pimas are peaceful farmers, cotton mostly, and farmers know better than to stay outside letting dust blow into their eyes when they could be sitting comfortably in their houses filling up on prickly pear ice cream.”

I gave him a sideways glance. “Prickly pear ice cream? You’re making that up.”

“Go check in the freezer.”

A minute later I returned to my chaise with a large bowl of bright pink ice cream.

“Bought a new ice cream maker yesterday,” Jimmy continued, as if I’d never left. “On sale at Fry’s. Gonna try to duplicate Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey tomorrow. Already have the bananas, chocolate, and walnuts. Maybe I’ll throw in a little mint, just as an experiment. Or would that be gilding the lily?”

“Gilding.” I dug into the prickly pear concoction and tasted Heaven. “You never stop surprising me, Almost Brother.” As I swallowed the gooey stuff, my headache receded.

Jimmy didn’t reply, just continued looking at the stars. I took the hint and looked at them, too, but it took no strain on my part. I’d always felt at home on the Pima rez; it had once taught me how tough I was.

Years earlier, Jimmy’s father, a tribal policeman, saved my life. I was around six or seven, in my third or fourth foster home, and deeply unhappy. With all the magical thinking of a child who’d seen too many Disney cartoons, one hot day I set off across the desert to find my biological parents.

***

That morning I had awoken fresh from a dream of my red-headed father and blond mother standing in a lush forest, looking at a creek as it danced around lichen-covered rocks. I didn’t remember much, but somehow I knew they lived “east,” in the direction the sun rose. All I had to do was get back there, where they’d be waiting with kisses and candy. So I snuck down to my foster parents’ kitchen, stowed two cans of Tab in my school bag, and left the Scottsdale house before they woke up. It was July, and the temperature already in triple digits. But by the time the sun was high overhead, I had already made it to the Pima reservation just in time for a dust storm.

As the curtain of red-brown dust rose before me, I tried to shield my face with my school bag, but it provided little protection. Sand bit into my face, my arms, my legs. When the storm was finished, so was I. Panting with fear and exhaustion, I lay in the sand, covered with dirt and debris. When I finally regained enough strength to look up, I saw vultures hovering above, big black birds I’d once seen in a John Wayne movie. I knew they ate the dead.

But they wouldn’t eat me.

Fear turned to anger, and when they dove, I was ready. When the first one landed and started to hobbeldy-hop toward me, its knife-like beak dripping with menace, I shouted, “Go away, bird!”

I glanced at the long-empty Tab I’d pulled from my school bag. Not desert-wise, I’d planned on finding a cool stream where I could fill it again.

“Bird! I’ll hit you!”

The vulture continued its progress.

I threw the can. It bounced off those glossy feathers, but at least halted the bird’s advance.

I reached out and snatched the can from where it had rolled almost back to me, then filled it with rocks and dirt. “I’ll hurt you bad this time!” I warned.

The vulture paid no attention, just hopped forward again as several of its friends swooped down to join the impending feast.

“I mean it, Bird! I’ll hurt you! I’ll hurt you all!” I didn’t really want to hurt any of them, but in that John Wayne movie birds like them did terrible things to people, sometimes before the people were totally dead. I didn’t want the same things done to me, so I had to make them go away.

The Tab can felt heavier now, more like a weapon. “I’ll break your wing!” I screamed to the lead bird. “Then your friends will eat you!”

The bird kept coming.

I threw the can and struck the bird in the head. With a squawk, it flew away. A small victory only, because the others remained.

The fight had taken a lot out of me, and I slumped against a rock. Sensing weakness, the rest of the vultures closed in. I had no weapon now, just my hands.

I clenched my fists. I’d fight them until they ate away my fingers, then I’d hit them with my stumps.

One bird reared up and…

A gunshot.

In a great flurry of black, the birds flew away.

Through the roaring in my ears, I heard a man’s deep voice. “Well, now, Little Miss. What’re you doing way out here on our rez? Why don’t I take you home?”

I gazed up into a mahogany-colored face, gentle brown eyes, and saw a policeman holstering his gun. His name tag read…

SGT. JAMES EDWARD SISIWAN.

***

“I remember your father, you know,” I said to Jimmy, as we studied the Milky Way.

“So you’ve told me.”

“He was my hero.”

“Wish I could remember him, too, but I was only a baby when he died. Then my mother died, and, well, I wound up in Utah. But unlike you, I lucked out.”

“I know.” I turned on the chaise and faced him. They say Indians don’t show emotion, but that’s bullshit. “How about I remember him for the both of us?”