Desert Run (3 page)

Recently, Jimmy's own cousin had narrowly escaped being tried for murder, so he could hardly be blamed for viewing the justice system with a jaundiced eye. I felt the same way, and wondered why the police hadn't followed up on Ernst's late-night visitor. Or perhaps they had, and found no connection to the crime. Ernst could have been a dirty old man and his visitor merely catering to his needs. As for the shouting the neighbor heard, sex could be a noisy number for some folks.

For the next couple of hours, Jimmy and I concentrated on our separate tasks, avoiding any mention of his imminent departure. I finalized the paperwork on several cases and began sending out invoices. Despite the glamorous image of television PIs, most of a real private detective's days verged on dull, entailing everything from skip-tracing deadbeats to background checks on errant or prospective spouses. For instance, Beth Osman, a wealthy Scottsdale widow descended from one of Arizona's original copper mining families, had met Jack Sherwood, a shopping center developer who was relocating to Scottsdale from Mississippi. They had been dating for little more than a month but he was already talking marriage. Beth professed strong feelings for the man, but wanted Desert Investigations to give him a once-over. We had, and found him clean—on paper, at least. No wants, no warrants.

When I called to relate my preliminary findings, she sounded unsatisfied. “Lena, I…I just feel that there's something…” Her voice caught. “He
is
from out of state.”

“Unlike yourself, Beth, most people here
are
from out of state. People move here from other places. Of course, most go back to where they came from after their first Arizona summer.”

“Ha ha.” Her laugh held little amusement. “You said, ‘on paper.' What's the next step up?”

Remembering my own fear of commitment, I felt for her. “A more comprehensive investigation. I could run surveillance on him for a few days and check a few out-of-state-sources.”

A trembly sigh. Obviously, she hated what she was doing. “Yes. Do what you have to. I'll pay you for another ten, no, make that twenty hours. I want to make certain before I…”

I could have finished her sentence for her.
Before I fall so hard there's no return.
I simply reiterated my fee. “Plus expenses.”

Another sigh. “Right.”

In total sympathy with her relationship paranoia, I hung up. The first man in my life, a fellow student in the ASU Criminal Justice program, dumped me for another girl (“I need someone less complicated.”). A few years later, a fellow police officer in Scottsdale PD demanded I give up my career for him (“I want a wife, not a colleague.”). More recently, Dusty had vanished and reappeared in my life depending on his sobriety status, frequently trailed by the women he'd romanced while on his bender. One of them had tried to kill me.

Considering everything, I was tempted to ask Jimmy to run a background check on Warren before tonight's date, then decided against it. Anyone with Warren's high profile would have little to hide.

“Hey, Jimmy, I'll be shadowing Jack Sherwood for the next few days, possibly longer. Would you mind holding down the fort?”

“No problem.” He looked so relieved to have me out of the office that I figured his conscience had been bothering him. We had started Desert Investigations together and I'd been foolish enough to believe we'd continue running it together until…well, until. Now “until” was here.

I rummaged through the supply closet for the items I'd need on the Sherwood surveillance. Camera with zoom lens, tape recorder with long-distance mike, two wigs: one brunette, one auburn. From past experience I knew that the wigs, along with the help of makeup, various sunglasses, and extreme wardrobe changes could make me look like three different women. I also needed to rent a couple of cars less noticeable than my customized Jeep. A Neon, perhaps, and some kind of generic Ford? No. Jack Sherwood was a high-flier and the places he frequented would call for something more upscale than Neon-and-Ford territory, such as a Beemer and a Lexus. As I picked up the phone to punch in the number for Hertz, it rang in my hand.

“Desert Investigations. Good morning.” Unless the caller was a new client with a fat wallet, I was determined to get him—or her—off the line quickly.

“Is Miss Lena Jones?” An Ethiopian accent, hollowed by the echoes of other men's voices. In the background, one man cursed loudly while another wept.

My stomach clenched. “Yes, Mr. Tesema, this is Lena Jones. But before you get started, I need to tell you that my fee…”

He didn't wait for me to finish. “I call you from jail. You will help me, please. I not murder Kapitan Ernst but they going to kill me for it anyway.”

Kill him? Even if Tesema was eventually found guilty, why did he believe he'd wind up on Death Row? Sure, Arizona still had capital punishment, but only for extreme situations, such as the child rapist who had killed both his two-year-old victim
and
her mother, then dumped their bodies in a canal. “Oh, Mr. Tesema, that won't hap…”

“They stick needle in my arm and I die. Then my family starve. You help me, please.”

Why wouldn't he listen? “I'm sure your public defender…”

“I have wife, four sons, two daughters back in Ethiopia. I make family's only money. If I die, they starve. If I not work, they starve.”

I knew little about current Ethiopian economic conditions and hoped they weren't as extreme as Tesema painted them. But in the end his fear—which impressed me as being more for his family than himself—swayed me. Desert Investigations could at least look into his situation and perhaps steer him toward the appropriate government agencies to help his family while his case snailed its way through the court system. “I'll come down to the jail this afternoon and we'll talk. But I can't make any promises.”

“You are blessed woman.”

Regardless of the extremity of Tesema's situation, I smiled. Men had frequently used a “B” word to describe me, but “blessed” wasn't it.

Chapter Four

“I not kill Kapitan.”

The black-and-white-and-pink jumpsuit should have made Rada Tesema look foolish, as was its apparent intent, but Tesema's innate dignity won out. While only of average height, his delicate features and straight carriage even in shackles lent him a nobility seldom seen in the Fourth Avenue Jail. He didn't look like a murderer, but few murderers did.

“My wife, my children…” He swallowed, then tried again. “You must help them!”

A spate of cursing rang through the corridor outside, mingling with a woman's answering please-baby-don't-be-like-that-I-just-sucked-him-not-fucked-him. Although relatively new, the jail already reeked of damaged dreams and lost hope.

Tesema didn't belong here.

I leaned across the table. “Mr. Tesema, did you or didn't you show up at Ernst's house yesterday morning? If you did, why didn't you call the police immediately? And if you didn't, why not?”

A flicker in his eyes, a quick look away. Here came the lies. “I told police I busy with other Loving Care client that morning. I call Kapitan Ernst, say I come later in day. He say is fine.”

“Loving Care?”

“Name of agency I work for. Have many clients, not just Kapitan.”

“Did you give the police the other client's name?”

He looked down at the floor. “Name not important.”

There had been no other client. Maybe the police were right and Tesema had snapped. But when I recalled the murder scene, the duct tape tying Ernst to his wheelchair, it didn't make sense. Tesema had a practical nurse's well-developed arm muscles formed by lifting people in and out of beds and wheelchairs. He wouldn't need to tape an old man down in order to beat him to death.

A woman might, though.

The cursing and crying outside started up again even worse than before, so I fired off my next question to get Tesema's mind off it. “Did Ernst have any female visitors?”

“Women?” He glanced at the door leading to the corridor. “He too helpless for…” A flush darkened his already ebony skin. Then he recovered himself. “The Kapitan once talk to me about crazy woman, how she bother him. But I never see her.”

Could this have been the same woman Ernst's neighbor saw banging on his door the night of the murder? “Did Ernst say why this ‘crazy woman' was bothering him?”

He started to spread his hands, but the shackles around his wrists prevented the I-don't-know gesture. “He say she call and call. He very angry.”

“Did he give a name?”

“No. He just call her bad word.” Deeply uncomfortable, he looked away again, tried not to listen to the shrieks outside.

Mrs. Hillman had described the woman as skimpily clad. “This bad word, was it ‘whore'?”

Tesema seemed ready to faint from embarrassment. “You nice lady. Please not to talk like that.”

“But was that the word he used?”

“Yes,” he whispered, unable to meet my eyes.

The woman finally stopped her caterwauling, but the man continued to curse. From what I could make out, he'd gutted the man they were arguing about. But at last Tesema had given me something concrete to go on. There would be a record of the calls to and from Ernst's house. In the meantime, Tesema was doing himself no favors by sticking to his improbable story.

“If there was no other client, and if you did show up for your regular appointment at Ernst's house yesterday morning, you probably got some of his blood on you. Innocently, of course.” As had I. Last night, when I undressed for bed, I discovered blood smears on my Reeboks. I threw them in the garbage with my bloodied shirt.

Someone in the jail had been coaching him, because he admitted to nothing. “Police took shoes and all clothes I wear.”

That didn't sound good. It was my guess that he had arrived on schedule, found Ernst, checked to see if he was still alive—bloodying himself in the meantime—then fled. “Mr. Tesema, if there is one spot of blood anywhere on your clothes, they will be able to determine exactly whose it is through DNA typing. Do you understand?”

“They can do this?” His words were little more than a mumble.

Didn't he have a television set? On most cop shows, which I couldn't bear to watch, crime labs processed DNA samples within minutes. “Oh, yes. The police can also pull Ernst's phone records to see who called him in the past few weeks. For instance, when he didn't show up on set, Warren called him twice from his cell before asking me to check on him. There'll be a record of those calls. If you, as you said you did, phoned to tell him you were too busy to show up for work, there'll be a record of that call, too. If you didn't…” Home care agencies preferred their care-givers to call them to report any cancellations, not the client: that way they could send out a replacement. His story stunk. “How long have you been Ernst's care-giver?”

“Seven…no, eight months. Man before me, he quit. Said Kapitan Ernst too mean.”

Which begged the question of why Tesema was still hanging around. “During your time with him, how often did you miss your regular appointment?”

When he looked back up at me, his eyes were filled with outrage. “Never! I not do that! He need my help!”

I gave him a grim smile. “Do you see, Mr. Tesema, how easy it is to find out if a person is lying? You told the police that you were ‘too busy' to show up yesterday, but you just admitted to me that you never missed an appointment.”

He hung his head. “I not kill Kapitan Ernst.”

That part I believed, not that my opinion made any difference. Tesema's utter transparency made him a prosecutor's wet dream. He needed a good criminal defense attorney, but with his lack of funds would probably wind up with the usual public defender: young, inexperienced, overwhelmed. “My advice is to stop listening to your cell mates and tell your lawyer the truth. That's the only way he can help you.”

“Only rich men have lawyer.”

“This is America, Mr. Tesema. The court will appoint one for you.”

Tesema shook his head. “Cell mates, they tell me about these free lawyers. They say I be lucky if lawyer remembers my name.”

Having observed the often less-than-scintillating performances of some public defenders, I didn't argue his point. Still, I tried to sound optimistic. “Don't give up so fast. For all we know, you might get lucky and draw someone good.”

“I not that lucky.”

Another sad truth. “Have you called your wife yet? Does she know about your situation?”

The visiting room was close and muggy, but the large drop of moisture on his cheek resembled a tear more than it did perspiration. “I try, but jail not allow call to Addis Ababa. Cousin there have phone, not wife.”

I wondered if there was an Ethiopian consulate in Arizona. Probably not, and for the same reason we didn't have a Chad consulate nor a Moravian one: not enough Chads or Moravians in town to make the cost outlay worthwhile. We used to have what passed for a Swedish consulate down at the Volvo dealership, but the car salesman/diplomat moved to Oregon after suffering through his first one-hundred-and-fifteen-degree Scottsdale summer.

“I'll call the Ethiopian consulate in New York, Mr. Tesema, and see what they can do for you. And I'll…” I would what? Make sure his wife and children were fed? “I'll talk to someone about her situation and find out how much she needs…” I trailed off. Why was talking about money so embarrassing?

Not for Tesema. “She need my money. I get paycheck yesterday but not wire home before police arrest me. Paycheck in my room, on dresser. It already signed. Roommates show you where I keep. You cash and send to her, but not to tell her I in jail. That make her worry.”

“I can't cash your check!”

“Then my babies starve.”

Getting my hands on his check might be more of a problem than Tesema realized, since the police had probably sealed off his room during their search for evidence. It was a good thing I still had contacts at Scottsdale PD. With a growing sense of unease, I took down the address of Tesema's apartment, where he lived with three other Ethiopian nationals, as well as instructions on how to wire money to his wife in Addis Ababa. “Write a note authorizing me to act on your behalf and I'll see what I can do.”

“That mean I your client now?”

I fought off the impulse to pull out my hair. With Jimmy leaving, I needed clients with money, not sad stories. But then the woman down the corridor started up again, screaming that I-loved-him-more-than-your-lazy-ass-and-he-was-bigger-than-you-anyway, and for some reason, when I opened my mouth to tell Tesema no, the word that emerged was, “Yes.”

His gloom vanished and he gave me a blinding smile. “You an OK woman.”

First he'd called me blessed, now I was just OK. At least he was becoming more realistic.

***

Upon my arrival back at Desert Investigations, I called Reverend Melvin Giblin, my ninth or tenth foster father—I'd had so many during my childhood I'd lost count—and after the usual how-are-you's, told him about Tesema's situation and his family's needs. As soon as the Rev promised to look into the matter, I thanked him and rang off. Then, switching over to the Beth Osmon/Jack Sherwood case, I phoned Hertz and reserved a BMW for tomorrow, a Lexus for the next day. That accomplished, I punched in the number for Scottsdale PD and left a message on Captain Kryzinski's voice mail. Then I stared at my partner's back and tried to figure out what I could say to keep him from leaving me.

To my relief, Kryzinski returned my call immediately and asked me to come to the station. Happy to escape from the tension in my own office, I jumped into my Jeep and headed up Hayden Road for Scottsdale North.

T. S. Eliot might have said April was the cruelest month, but he didn't live here. For us desert rats, April is by far the kindest month, the last breezy, balmy time before the temperature began its inexorable climb into triple digits. In appreciation of this perfect day, I had stripped off the Jeep's bikini top and drove no more than ten miles over the speed limit. The landscaping bracketing Hayden Road was a riot of color, with pink oleander blooming alongside Mojave goldenbush. Sage and honeysuckle scented the air, which was only slightly tainted by the exhaust of the big, fat Hummer ahead of me which bore the bumper sticker,
admit it—you're jealous
.

Fighting down the urge to ram the Hummer, I concentrated on the problem at hand, which was to pump as much information as possible out of Kryzinski. Perhaps he would tell me why his detectives zeroed in on Tesema so soon, ignoring Mrs. Hillman's statement about a big-bazookaed redhead.

By the time I arrived at Scottsdale North, I had inhaled enough carbon monoxide to make me queasy so I did little more than wave to the officer at the front desk, an old friend. He buzzed me through and I rode the elevator up to the third floor, where Captain Kryzinski sat in his glassed-in office, wearing a gray suit as subdued as his face. The new police chief had swept the department clean of all expressions of style or originality, such as the Western-cut suits Kryzinski had once flaunted, and I knew that most of the cops were unhappy with the changes. So I paid little attention to Kryzinski's dour expression.

I didn't bother with the basic pleasantries, but started right in, careful to keep my voice down so that passing brass couldn't hear me. “Okay, so Rada Tesema lied about his whereabouts. Big deal. What makes you think he's a good candidate for the Ernst murder? Why not Ms. Big Tits? You know, the silicone sister who showed up in the middle of the night and screamed the house down?”

Usually Kryzinski kept his voice low, too, but not today. As if unconcerned who heard him, he fairly boomed his answers. “You must be talking about MaryEllen Bollinger, that's B-O-L-L-I-N-G-E-R, lives in Scottsdale at 8175 East El Cordobes, Unit 220-A. For starters, her alibi's a lot tighter than Tesema's. At the time Ernst was getting his brains bashed in, she caught a speeding ticket way the hell up in Anthem, that planned-up-the-ass community off I-17, where she was headed to see her boyfriend. The DPS officer who wrote her up said she didn't have a speck of blood anywhere on her, and considering the way she was dressed, he could see pretty much everything. Oh, and we found a neighbor—not your adorable Mrs. Hillman—who heard Ernst yelling at her when she ran back out to her car and took off like a bat out of hell. So he was still alive when she left.”

“Who is this neighbor?”

“Guy on the other side of Ernst's house. A deacon in the Scottsdale Baptist Chuch.”

I bared my teeth at him. “And deacons never lie.”

“Don't start. But your friend Tesema? He's a whole different story. First, our same witness saw that old blue car of his pull into Ernst's driveway not long after Ms. Bollinger left. And regardless of what Tesema may have told you, he spent a good deal of time in the house, too. Secondly, we matched Tesema's shoes to some bloody footprints in Ernst's bedroom. That and the kitchen both looked like they had been ransacked. And guess whose bloody fingerprints we found on all the drawers?”

He didn't give me time to answer. “Your precious Mr. Tesema's, that's whose. Thirdly, MaryEllen Bollinger, the ‘silicon sister' you're so snippy about, wasn't the only person known to have had a screaming fight with Ernst. Our witness told the detectives that Tesema and Ernst went at it a couple of days ago, too, with Ernst yelling ‘You
Schwarzer'
this and ‘You
Schwarzer'
that.”

“Schwarzer?”
I knew what it meant but wanted to see how he'd say it.

Kryzinski's face twisted in distaste. “The German equivalent of the ‘N' word. Nice guy, your Mr. Ernst. Anyway, according to the neighbor, Mr. Tesema didn't take the insult kindly and yelled back something to the effect that if Ernst kept using the ‘S' word, he, Tesema, that is, would cut out Ernst's tongue and feed it to the jackals. I guess he hasn't been here long enough to learn that we don't have jackals, just pit bulls and coyotes.”