Desert Wind (41 page)
Considering everything that had happened, all the deceit, all the deaths, I shouldn’t have asked my next question, but I couldn’t help myself. “What happened to the dog?”
“When Laveen left the scene, the dog was with him. He took it to the vet, paid for the necessary repair work, and adopted it. The dog’s name is Bobo, kind of a Jack Russell terrier mix. Cute. It even has its own Facebook page. As do all the Laveen’s other dogs.”
“So Laveen’s brush with the law doesn’t count.”
He chuckled. “Strict law and order types wouldn’t agree with that assessment, but as another animal lover, I applaud his crime. Other than that one incident, I found nothing but awards and accolades from other businessmen, state senators, and the people who run the community centers and homeless shelters the Laveens are funding. All in all, they look as pure as the driven snow.”
“Even snow gets pissed in.”
“Invariably. But I couldn’t find the pissing place.”
I could; the Laveens’ stairs.
Maybe some people really were saints. Maybe pigs could fly, too. I eased back in the uncomfortable motel room chair and smiled at my partner. “You’ve done a lot of work for one morning.” Now it was time to ask him something I’d always been curious about, but hadn’t wanted to bother him with. “This case has dug up many troubling issues. For instance, look what happened to the Paiute. The nukes decimated the tribe.”
Jimmy shifted his eyes away, something he always did when trying to hide his feelings. He probably knew what I was going to ask, and didn’t like it. “Your point being?”
“When I realized there might be a connection between Ike Donohue’s murder and what went on sixty years ago, I began to wonder. Your people seem to always get the shaft.”
Still not looking at me, he answered, “There’s no ‘seem’ to it, Lena.”
I thought about the East Coast Indians being sold to Caribbean slavers, the Indian Removal Act, the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee…Four centuries of genocide, planned and unplanned, a history written in the rage on Earl Two Horses’ face at the Downwinders meeting.
“Jimmy, don’t you or any of your biological family ever lust for revenge?”
When he finally turned back to me, a faint smile had returned to his handsome face. “Almost Sister, if we Indians were the vengeful sort, not one white person would be safe from us. Instead, we oh so graciously invite you to visit our casinos.”
“Vengeance enough, Almost Brother?” I smiled back.
“Time will tell. Uh, why haven’t you asked
what else I found on Olivia Eames?”
From his tone of voice, I knew the news wasn’t going to be good. “What did she do, strangle a nun?”
“She’s dying, Lena.”
With my lame joke already leaving a bad taste in my mouth, I remembered Olivia’s ghost-pale face, the bleeding sore on her lip, the amount of weight she’d lost since I’d first met her. The signs had all been there, but I’d chosen not to see them.
“What’s wrong with her?” Although I could guess the answer.
“Stage Four breast cancer, Lena. Metastasized. She’d been undergoing chemo at Sloan Kettering in New York, but stopped last month because it was no longer working. That’s when she flew out here to write her last story, then die on her home turf. I’m sorry. I know you like her.”
Yes, I liked Olivia. Her journalistic vision. Her courage. And—recalling her tenderness with the grieving Nancy Donohue—her compassion.
The poet William Blake had it right when he’d written,
Every night and every morn,
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night,
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Olivia might have experienced moments of sweet delight, but it seemed to me that overall, her life had been one of endless night. Born into a fallout-cursed family, she’d been gang-raped in New York City mere months before losing her lover on 9/11. Now this. I wondered how the woman remained sane, or if she still was.
Ignoring the lump in my throat, I said, “There’s no way you could hack into hospital records.”
“It took all night and half the morning, but I got into Admissions. Even you ought to know that with everything computerized these days, nothing’s one hundred percent secure. Some sites just take longer to hack, that’s all. As soon as Olivia arrived in Walapai Flats last month, she checked in with Dr. Amos Carrollton, an oncologist at Arizona-Northwest Medical Center. I couldn’t make it into the hospital’s pharmacy records, but considering how long she’s been sick, it’s my guess the doctor gave her a prescription for Fentanyl. You know what that is?”
“Medication for extreme pain, administered when morphine no longer works. It’s applied in patch form, usually on the upper arm.”
He nodded. “She was probably stoned at least half the time you talked to her. You never noticed?”
“Dilated or pinpoint pupils are the first things I check for during an interview, and I never saw anything like that with her.” However, Olivia had been oddly nervy during our drive to Silver Ridge for the Downwinders meeting, picking at her lip, rubbing her forehead. Maybe she’d backed off the Fentanyl in order to make the trip. The fact that she continued working on the Black Basin story at the same time as the Downwinders story was testament to her toughness, but Jimmy was right; there was only so much pain a human being could bear. At some point Olivia would have to apply another Fentanyl patch or shoot up or take whatever the hell else she was using.
Then I remembered her behavior as we stood on Nancy Donohue’s patio, the headache she’d admitted to, the bitter tone in her voice when she told me Excedrin couldn’t help.
My leaving her to care for another suffering woman had been one lousy judgment call.
***
The drive to Sunset Canyon Lakes went faster this time, only partially because I was prepared for the detour. Although detectives and crime techs hadn’t yet finished working the Stark crime scene, afternoon traffic was sparse. Before I’d left Jimmy’s motel room, I’d tried to reach Olivia to tell her that I was on my way; my call went straight to voice mail. The same thing happened when I tried Nancy Donohue’s phone. Frustrated, I’d called Information, but the operator informed me that Elizabeth Waide, Nancy’s lavender-haired neighbor, had an unlisted number.
I hoped Olivia could hold off on her meds and Nancy would continue her drugged sleep for several more hours. As soon as I arrived, I would cross the street to Elizabeth’s house and ask her to watch Nancy. Then I’d take Olivia back to her timeshare to drug away her own misery.
As it turned out, Olivia had been realistic about her physical limitations, and when Nancy Donohue’s door opened, Elizabeth Waide stood facing me. With finger pressed to her lips, the loyal Book Bitch whispered, “Nancy’s sleeping. If you need to talk to her, come back tomorrow.”
I whispered back, “Where’s Olivia?”
“Gone. She told me she needed some fresh air and was driving up to Sunset Point.”
Sunset Point.
The place where Olivia had killed Ike Donohue.
If the desert between Walapai Flats and the resort was beautiful, it paled next to the severe majesty of Sunset Point.
Red rock walls plunged toward a blue-green ribbon of water below, where the Virgin River wound its way toward the Colorado. Sixty years ago, the river had been despoiled by radioactive fallout, but now it flowed clean, delivering life-saving moisture to plants and wildlife that would otherwise be doomed. Above, a pair of red-tailed hawks floated in the hot updrafts, calling out to each other when they spied their scurrying prey below.
As I parked my Trailblazer behind Olivia’s Explorer, I saw her sitting on the very rim of the canyon, watching the river’s zigzag progress south.
“Thinking about jumping?” I approached, training my .38 on her back. You could never be too careful with murderers, however much you like them.
“Not yet,” she answered, never taking her eyes off the river. “I’ve already filed the Black Basin story, and I’m several hours away from finishing the one on the Downwinders. Once I do…” she shrugged her bony shoulders. “I’d originally planned to jump, but maybe I’ll shoot myself instead. It would be poetic justice, don’t you think? Live by the gun, die by the gun?”
Her voice held a slight slur. Once she turned around to face me, I saw the dilation of her pupils. I also saw the .38 lying next to her, the weapon with which she’d killed Ike Donohue, Roger Tosches, and Deputy Ronald Stark.
I ignored it. “You can’t write in your condition.”
When she smiled, it was with the rictus of death. “I can once the Fentanyl wears off, which will be soon. Put your gun away, Lena. Neither of us is going to shoot the other.”
She was right, so I holstered my handgun and sat beside her, dangling my feet over the ledge. I would have comforted her with a hug, but there’s a limit to my risk-taking. The drop was more than twelve hundred feet straight down, except for the narrow ledge a few yards to our right where Donohue’s body had prematurely come to rest.
“Gorgeous view,” I said, apropos of nothing.
“If you’re into rock and river. Myself, I prefer Snow Canyon. The terrain is gentler.”
“The place where John Wayne filmed
The Conqueror
.”
A wry smile. “Girlfriend’s been doing her research. Did you also find out that during Wayne’s last days he refused all pain medication? He wanted to be awake when Death came for him.”
I shook my head.
“Most people don’t know. He could do anything, that man, but John Wayne as a Mongol? Wasn’t happening. I’ve seen all his movies, the Westerns, even the war films where he played the big hero. But he wasn’t a war hero. That old man sitting in jail back in Walapai Flats, he’s the real deal, a hero several times over. You know what he did?”
“He saved Leilani from drowning,” I said.
“Before that. When he was serving in Korea, a sniper shot a man in his unit. Everyone else in the platoon took cover, but Gabe crawled over to him while the sniper was still firing. He dragged the man to cover, stopped the bleeding, and took care of him until the medics arrived. In the process, he got shot up pretty bad himself. They gave him a fist full of medals, but when his wife died the way she did, he threw them out. He felt betrayed by the very government he almost gave his life for. Now he’s a hero all over again, taking the blame for a crime I committed just so Ted Olmstead would get released from jail.” Another rictus smile. “He had no way of knowing that by Monday I’d have confessed anyway, so his heroism wasn’t needed.”
“You’re not going to leave Gabe to rot in jail, are you?”
“Give me some credit, girlfriend. We talked about it and came up with a plan.”
At my look of surprise, she laughed. It sounded genuine, if slightly druggy. “Oh, yes, when I found out Gabe had ‘confessed,’ I arranged that interview with him and offered to turn myself in immediately. He’s not young and fit like Ted, might not bounce back, so I was afraid of what jail might do to him. But he insisted I wait until I finished my story on the Downwinders. He even volunteered to take the blame for everything, to go to prison for me, but I couldn’t allow that. So we compromised. He’d stay in jail for a while longer, I’d make a videotape confessing to killing Donohue, Tosches, and Stark, then send it to Sheriff Alcott as soon as I filed my last story. But like I was saying about John Wayne. Turns out he
was
a hero, only a different kind. Hanging around without pain meds so he could look Death in the eye and tell him what a sonuvabitch he was. It takes true grit to endure that kind of torment, grit I don’t have.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.” Gesturing toward her gun, I asked, “Why don’t you give that to me?”
“It’s the only thing I have left of my fiancé. He gave it to me for protection after I’d been raped.”
“It was a throw-down, right? A weapon he picked up at a crime scene and kept in case he needed it later. That’s why it was matched to a bullet dug out of a four-year-old girl wounded during a Detroit home invasion. Thugs travel, and their guns with them.”
“You’re thorough, Lena, I’ll give you that.”
“So’s Sheriff Alcott.”
“Yeah, but he’s held back by the kind of legalistic red tape you ignore, so he’s not as fast, is he? He had a false confession and a mountain of evidence to sift through—cops need that stuff—but you focused on motive.” That awful smile again. “Anyway, Gabe’s and my plan was to leave a message on your voice mail telling you where I hid the videotape, but since you’re here in the flesh, I might as well tell you now. It’s at my timeshare, in my nightstand drawer, wrapped in a hand-written, signed confession.”
“Give me the gun, Olivia,” I repeated. “Since you’re not going to use it.”
She picked up the .38 and cradled it in her lap. “I’m not going to use it now, certainly not on you, but being a free-thinking woman I reserve the right to…Well, you know.”
I did, and I didn’t like it. For a moment, I was tempted to make a grab for the gun, but I decided that would be foolish. During the struggle, Olivia and I might both fall into the canyon. So I held back and changed the subject, mainly to keep her talking. Not that it was necessary, because I’d already figured out the truth.