by Betty Webb
As if in sympathy, her red-headed infant began crying. Sunflower cooed at it, then flipped out the other breast and walked away.
When I got back to the well area, Sheriff Rizzo was addressing the crowd like an old-time politician on the stump. “What your leader has been telling you about the benefits of ‘raw water’ is pure bunkum, folks. Why, in Africa, where my son’s been working, more than three hundred thousand kids die every year from contaminated water. Three hundred thousand! And more than a million are blinded. Is this what you want for your children? For yourselves?”
There was a great shuffling of feet and more than one incredulous face. Having been thoroughly indoctrinated by Mother Eve, they weren’t buying it. But at least ADEQ might save them from their silly selves.
Recognizing their intransigence, Rizzo threw up his hands and escorted Neck Brace Man and his precious valise to his car.
“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” Sylvie said, as we drove away in her flashy Camaro.
“Oodles. Watching Mother Eve leave in a squad car made my day.”
She grinned. “And the social worker didn’t have a meltdown after all.”
I kept thinking about Sunflower and her baby, and about Ford Laumenthal’s emaciated body riddled with giardia lamblia. I was almost certain that Reservation Woman was Laumenthal’s wife, and that the two had been the couple Sunflower knew at EarthWay. But what had caused their transformation from obese to skeletal? And why had the woman been found on the Pima Rez, and her husband almost sixty miles away?
I filed away my concern about the Laumenthals when I walked into Desert Investigations and found the Honorable Juliana Thorsson waiting for me.
“What took you so long?” Without waiting for an answer, she said, “DPS spotted Ali and Kyle near Nogales last night.”
Chapter Fifteen
The U.S./Mexico border city of Nogales, Arizona, is about one hundred and eighty miles south of Desert Investigations, and as luck would have it, there’d been an accident between three semis on I-19, so we had to crawl down one lane at about forty-five miles per hour all the way from Arivaca Junction to Rio Rico. After that, the pace picked up to a nifty sixty, and Juliana and I rolled into the desert-surrounded town almost four and a half hours after we left Scottsdale.
Although divided in half by the ugly border wall, Nogales is a pretty city. Its lush green hills harken back to the days when Americans, Mexicans, and the Tohono O’odham and Yaqui Indians could walk back and forth down International Street from one country to another without being stopped and frisked. These days, because of the border wall, the city was becoming best known for its infuriatingly long traffic backups at the crossing into Nogales, Mexico. Fortunately, we didn’t have to head that way, just into the half-empty parking lot at 3030 Grand Avenue, where the Department of Public Safety was located.
Lieutenant Jaffrey, the DPS trooper who’d called in the sighting, had already gone home for the day—he’d spotted the kids’ vehicle parked at an all-night McDonald’s while working the graveyard shift—but Sergeant Gonzales said that if we wished, he could give him a call.
“Not that he’d be any help, because by the time he got turned around, they’d already left. He never spotted them again, but that’s the way it goes, doesn’t it?” A gray-haired man obviously nearing retirement, he exuded serenity and was soft-spoken to a fault.
Juliana wasn’t. “Which McDonald’s?” she snapped.
He hunt-and-pecked a few keys on his computer, making her huff with impatience. Leaning closer, he squinted through his bifocals and read, “The one on Mariposa Road. Not the Super Center.”
“Where’s that? Mariposa Road?” She was almost shouting.
I tugged at her sleeve. “Calm down. The Jeep’s got GPS, remember?”
“I don’t trust those things!” she snarled.
Behind her, Gonzales rolled his eyes, but when she turned back to him, his face had resumed its serene expression. “Well, turn left out of the parking lot…”
If you’ve seen one McDonald’s, you’ve seen them all, but at the Mariposa Road McDonald’s, there were more people enjoying Sausage McMuffins than at any Scottsdale McDonald’s. In Scottsdale, late-day noshes tended towards breakfast burritos with plenty of hot sauce. After we made it through the serving line, the Yaqui woman behind the counter—her name tag said LILY—told me the shift manager who talked to the DPS trooper last night wouldn’t be in until eight that evening, so we’d have to come back then.
“Do you know who waited on the kids?” I asked.
“Jeff. He’s not here now, but he was talking to me earlier about how many yogurt parfaits they ordered. They must’ve had a cooler with them.”
Lily started to add something, then noticed Juliana hovering behind me. “Hey, aren’t you that woman’s running for Senate?”
Oh, great. Juliana wasn’t exactly running on the Vlad the Impaler ticket, but close, which is why I’d told her to stay on the down-low in this Indian-friendly place.
Ignoring my warning, she said, “Yes, I am. And my daughter’s missing and I’m scared to death for her. She may have been here with her boyfriend last night.”
To which Lily said, “I’m a skeet shooter myself, and I’m tellin’ you, you shoulda taken the Gold. The Silver, at the very least.”
Her comment wasn’t as odd as it seemed. While still in college, Juliana had been on the Olympic Skeet Shooting Team, and had returned home with a Bronze Medal. All these years later, she still enjoyed a loyal following of skeet shooting fans.
Juliana forced a smile. “Thank you. I tried hard for the Gold, but…” She shrugged her elegant shoulders. “You know how it is. Some days you’re not your best when it counts the most.”
“Don’t I know it.” Lily looked around, leaned forward over the counter, and whispered, “Try our night manager Maralita Simmons-Naquin. She works part-time at PreLoved, the resale shop next door. She’s there right now.”
Maralita Simmons-Naquin was not only at work, but when we showed her Ali’s and Kyle’s pictures, she remembered them. A sixty-something woman whose figure hinted at the enjoyment of too many Big Macs and Sausage McMuffins, her shoulder-length, silver hair was glorious enough to grace the cover of American Salon.
“I have grandkids about their age, and I would never allow them to be roaming around that late on a school night,” Maralita said, explaining why she’d noticed the two. “We had a new cook working the shift, and he was having problems with the range, or I’d have paid more attention to them, maybe even called the police. They didn’t stay long, just ate fast—Big Mac Meals for the both of them—ordered ten yogurt parfaits to go, and then took off. But as to which way they were headed, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe the Border, not that they’d ever get across by themselves, being that young.”
Therein lay another flaw in the kids’ plans. With the tightened security at the Border, there was no way the guards would let two obvious runaways without parents or passports to cross into Mexico to fulfill their dream of buying a beachfront adobe hacienda complete with horses. Especially if the runaways didn’t even have driver’s licenses. Teenagers being teenagers, they hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“Did they look okay?” I asked. “Healthy?”
“Oh, they looked fine. More than fine. You don’t see kids that beautiful every day.”
Her use of the word “beautiful” didn’t make me as happy as it should have, because sex traffickers are always on the lookout for good-looking young teens. Before Juliana could think the same thing, I quickly asked another question. “Are there any camping grounds nearby?”
“You mean other than the parking lot at Walmart? Yeah, we’ve got a ton of them. Why? You think the kids are camping out?”
“It’s a possibility.”
The list she rattled off was lengthy, including Kino Springs, Patagonia Lake State Park, and th
e entirety of the Coronado National Forest. Searching for them would take more manpower than we had, and more bearish equipment than my tricked-out Jeep. At times like this I hated Arizonans’ predilection for white cars. If the kids had been driving something purple or florescent green, they’d be more easily spotted by helicopter. As it was, from the air they’d be just one more white car amidst thousands.
After learning nothing else, we thanked her and left. We spent the next few hours talking to various local and state police officials, then cruising the streets of Nogales ourselves, but once the sun set and darkness crept across the lovely hills, we had to admit defeat. I needed to be at Desert Investigations first thing in the morning, and Juliana was scheduled to speak at another prayer breakfast. As soon as everyone said “Amen,” though, she would return to Nogales on her own.
We were both quiet during the long drive back to Scottsdale, but as we passed another teepee-bedecked souvenir stand, she said, “You know, if I had been stricter with her, this would never have happened.”
35 years earlier
The place Helen thought was Eden has turned into Hell.
Deep green forest surrounds the red-spattered bodies, and the pine-scented air is filled with moans from the dying. Liam, oh, beautiful Liam, is mortally wounded.
She hears more shots as the wounded are finished off.
But she can’t move. Her arms are frozen, her voice nothing more than a dry whisper, so she can’t even plead for their lives. Christina is silent, too, as body after body is tossed into the yawning mine shaft.
“You’re a man now. Old enough to do a man’s work.”
Who said that?
Oh. Yes. Abraham.
He has finished telling the other men what to do, and is speaking to his son, the one Christina calls Golden Boy. And he is golden, he truly is, with his white-blond hair and sharp blue eyes. He looks like a young Apollo, almost as beautiful as…
Liam.
Oh, God. Her Liam.
Wait.
Is that an owl hooting? But how could it be, when the shots and the screams have flushed the birds out of their nests and into the night sky to seek refuge in a place outside of Hell?
No, not an owl.
It’s Jaimie. Her baby boy still lives.
Abraham speaks to his son again, using that tone which must be obeyed.
“Finish it, according to God’s Holy Word.” He hands his rifle to Christina’s twelve-year-old husband.
Golden Boy, happy to be accorded a man’s status, smiles as he takes his father’s rifle.
Shoulders it.
Aims.
Shoots.
Kills her baby boy. Then Liam.
Helen, finding her voice, begins to shriek.
Four-year-old Christina remains silent.
Chapter Sixteen
A half hour into our morning horseback ride across the Pima Rez the next morning, the scar on my temple began to throb. Always fortified against such an occurrence, I slid the packet of Excedrin out of my jeans pocket and gulped one down.
“Another headache?” Jimmy asked, pulling up beside me.
“Same old, same old.”
“We can go back, if you want.”
“Nah, the horses are having too much fun.” No lie there, because my Adila pranced instead of walked, and even Big Boy champed at his bit. Despite my earlier concerns that the two would make poor stable mates, the high spirits of my leopard Appaloosa mare had been good for the stately pinto gelding, lending him a coltish gleam in his eyes.
Me, I felt less prancy. Last night’s dream had been a bad one, and it had woken me, I hadn’t been able to go back to sleep. So I just lay there awake in Jimmy’s arms, fearing the worst for Ali and Kyle. Toward dawn I’d slipped off to sleep for a few minutes, just time enough to dream about the kids being kidnapped by career criminals who were holding them for a million-dollar ransom, and if Juliana didn’t pay up, they’d send her a new body part (ear, finger, etc.) until she did. At least I didn’t wake screaming from that one, just biting my tongue until it bled.
“I’m worried about Ali,” I told Jimmy.
Jimmy reached across from Big Boy and patted my thigh. “Kyle will take care of her, Lena. Like most former foster kids…” He gave me a knowing look. “…that boy’s got amazing survival skills.”
“Such as riding horses across a Nogales beach?”
“Maybe his sense of geography could bear some improvement, but not his love for her.” He smiled.
My Jimmy, always looking on the bright side. I still couldn’t figure out why it had taken me so long to love him, why I’d taken so many side roads with so many men. Thank God—who maybe did exist, after all—I’d finally come to my senses.
No new emaciated corpses disturbed our ride today. Instead, a V-shaped gaggle of Canada geese honked above us as they headed for one of Scottsdale’s lakes. Not far behind, and flying much more slowly, was a snowy egret, its white wings dazzling in the morning sun. The desert floor teemed with life, too: chuckwallas scurrying about on their lizardy business, a small family of javelinas grunting through the underbrush, and too many jackrabbits to count. At one point, we spotted a bobcat bounding along, carrying a still-wriggling black snake in its mouth.
With such a bounty of wildlife spread out before us, our ride lasted longer than planned. By the time we made it back to the trailer, Wolf Ramirez and his teen apprentices were hard at work. I waved at Wolf, which gave Adila another excuse to buck. It wasn’t a serious one, though, and I barely had to shift my weight to stay in the saddle.
“You can do better than that,” I said, patting her neck.
She snorted a reply, which I interpreted as, Just you wait.
An hour later Jimmy and I were taking phone calls at Desert Investigations.
One of the first was from Sylvie. “Can you believe that bitch was released on bail?”
“What bitch?”
“Priscilla Marie Heywood Stahl! Mother Fucking Eve! Didn’t you watch last night’s news? Or the morning’s?”
I was so shocked, it took me a moment to answer. “I was busy. But how the hell did that happen?”
“She got old Griswold, who everybody knows should have retired from the bench twenty years ago. I’m sure the old fart’s got Alzheimer’s.”
“But what about the outstanding warrant from Kentucky?”
“She told him it was all a mistake and that she would never embezzle money from a house of the Lord. Then she began to pray, and so help me, Griswold wound up praying with her. I’d watch my step if I were you. That woman is stone cold crazy.”
Dial tone.
Three emaciated bodies, one—perhaps two—with links to EarthWay. According to the Medical Examiner’s timetable, artist Megan Unruh has been the first to die, then Reservation Woman, and several days later, former EarthWay resident, Ford Laumenthal. They had all died the same way: heart attacks caused by extreme malnutrition.
What the hell was going on?
I would probably have stewed about the problem all day, but ten minutes later a phone call from a mother whose sixteen-year-old daughter had disappeared two months earlier put an end to my ruminations. No, Lorraine Gideon confided, she hadn’t gone to the police. There’d been “family problems.”
“This ‘family problem,’ Mrs. Gideon. Could you expound on that?”
“I’d rather not.”
After years in the PI business, I recognized the hesitation. “Father? Brother? Stepfather? Uncle?”
“I’m divorced. But, ah, Nikki—everybody calls Nicola ‘Nikki’—doesn’t like my boyfriend.”
“He molested her, right?”
“No! That’s what she claimed, but she was always making up stuff to get him in trouble.”
“What’s his side of the story?”
“You mean Mike’s?
I, uh, I didn’t ask.”
Same old, same old. A mother more interested in her romantic attachments than in the welfare of her child. I had a pretty good idea how this story would end but hoped I was wrong.
I asked her a few more questions, mainly to get her to relax, then told her to email me the girl’s picture. Fifteen minutes later—I guess she had to think about it first—the picture arrived. It revealed an angelic-featured girl who appeared closer to twelve than sixteen. Mike liked them young.
After hitting the speaker command, I signaled Jimmy, then called her back. “Okay, I’ll check out the obvious places, then get back to you. But I strongly advise you to call the police and tell them about her daughter’s claims against your boyfriend.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”
“Since she’s only sixteen, her claim about sexual molestation should be taken seriously, and you should most definitely file a missing child report.”
“No, no, I don’t want any of this to get out. You know how people talk, and it’s not worth getting Mike mad. Hey! I thought whatever you tell a PI was protected information”
“You’re confusing us with lawyers.”
She said something nasty, then hung up.
“Did you hear all that?” I asked Jimmy.
“And recorded it. Jeez, Lena. Sometimes I hate people.”
Stifling my own fury, I sent out a series of emails to a couple dozen likely places, attaching Nicola “Nikki” Gideon’s picture. Then I sat back and waited.
It only took ten minutes.
Wayfarer, a South Scottsdale shelter, had been started ten years earlier by ex-prostitute Wendy Janouzek, street name, DeeZee. Very much on the down-low, it catered to teens who had managed to escape from sex traffickers but who weren’t yet ready to return home for one reason or another.