The Librarian Her Daughter and the Man Who Lost His Head

by Sam Lee Jackson

  “Is she up here to find out who killed Uncle Dick?” Megan said.

  “Not really,” I said. “She’s up here on assignment. Today she’s part of the team that is investigating the bombing.”

  Dahlia frowned. “Did they know there was going to be a bomb up here?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t know what they knew. Must have known something, they sent her up yesterday.”

  “I’m scared,” Megan said.

  “Do you think there will be more?” Dahlia asked.

  “I think whoever it is, is making a statement. They’ll probably make more.”

  “That’s not very comforting.”

  I shrugged. “You never know what people like this will do. Usually, the next step is to claim responsibility and make more threats and beat their chest. They are trying to scare us. Trying to tell us that no one is safe. Most Americans think this kinda thing only happens somewhere else. It was just a matter of time. The good news is that we are a much more sophisticated country than most. These guys will get caught.”

  “You think so?”

  I looked at Megan, “My friend, the detective, is looking at surveillance tapes even as we speak. They’ll catch these guys; when is the question.”

  “Mom says you are trying to find out who killed Uncle Dick. She says it wasn’t Billy.”

  “We agree on that,” I said.

  “I never did like Uncle Dick, but I like Billy. He didn’t do that.”

  “Megan,” Dahlia said.

  “What?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “She’s just echoing what I’ve heard all over town. Mr. Mooney was not well liked.”

  “He was a prick,” Dahlia said. “Excuse my French.”

  “Why do grownups use a bad word, then think saying ‘excuse my French’ makes it okay?” Megan said.

  “Detective Boyce saved Jackson’s life,” Eddie said.

  Now I really looked at him. “You are a bucket mouth,” I said.

  “Saved your life? How did she save your life?” Megan said.

  “It’s a long boring story,” I said, “that doesn’t need to be told.” I said this directly to Eddie.

  “It won’t bore me,” Megan said.

  “Me neither,” Dahlia said.

  Eddie was grinning. “Couple of dirt bag gangbangers,” he said, “wrapped up a young girl, not much older than Megan here, in a plastic sheet and dumped her in the lake. Lucky for her they did it right beside Jackson’s houseboat. He dove in and brought her back up and CPR’d her till she was breathing again.”

  “You have a houseboat?” Megan said.

  “How did Miss Boyce save his life?” Dahlia asked.

  “I’m getting to that,” Eddie said. “He warned you it was a long story. How ‘bout we grab that table there and I’ll finish it.”

  Eddie turned to the bartender, who was pretending not to listen, “Two more beers,” he said. He turned to Dahlia. “Sure you don’t want just one drink?”

  “A margarita and a Coke for Megan,” she said.

  Once we were settled and the drinks came, I said, “I’m serious. You really don’t want to hear this.”

  A beautiful smile covered Dahlia’s face, “No, I really do want to hear this.”

  “You have a houseboat?” Megan asked again.

  “He lives on it,” Eddie said.

  “You live on a houseboat?” Megan said. “I never heard of anyone living on a boat.”

  “At Lake Pleasant in Phoenix,” Eddie said. “So anyway, to show how grateful she was to Jackson saving her life, the girl runs away the next day. Lo and behold, what Jackson found out was, that the girl was the granddaughter of the Columbian ambassador, and a drug cartel was trying to use the girl to get at the grandfather.”

  “Shut up!” Megan said, looking at me.

  “You’re joking,” Dahlia said.

  “It gets better,” Eddie said.

  “Enough,” I said.

  He looked at me, smiling.

  “Okay, I’ll shorten it down. So, long story short, the bad guys that had the girl wanted to sell her back but Jackson being Jackson, he was becoming a pain in the ass.” He nodded to Megan. “Excuse my French.”

  Megan grinned at him.

  “So,” he continued, “they decided to get rid of him and they sent a bad guy to shoot him and Detective Boyce sees what’s going on and shoves Jackson out of the way of the bullet and gets herself shot. And there it is. Detective Boyce takes a bullet and saves Jackson’s life.”

  “Wow,” Dahlia said. “That is quite a story. The detective looked pretty good to me. For someone that got shot.”

  “She healed up fast,” I said.

  “With help, I’m sure,” Dahlia said looking at me. “What happened to the girl?”

  “Jackson got her back,” Eddie said.

  I looked at Eddie and he was looking smug.

  I shook my head. “I’ve known you for over three years and that’s the most words I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth. I like it better the other way.”

  Megan looked at Eddie. “Did you make this up?”

  “Why do you think I made it up?”

  “Some of it just sounds made up.”

  “Which part?”

  “Nobody lives on a boat.”

  We all laughed. Dahlia turned and looked outside. The sun was behind the mountains.

  “We have to go,” she said, standing.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll take you up on that.”

  “I’ll wait here,” Eddie said.

  I followed them outside. They were parked around the corner and up the street. When we reached the car, Dahlia dug into her purse and took out a pen and a notepad. She wrote on it and handed it to me. It was her phone number. I told her mine and she wrote it down.

  Megan was looking around. “I don’t like this place.”

  “They’ll catch whoever did this,” I said. “Don’t be afraid.”

  She looked at me, and in the fading light I could see her mother’s dark eyes.

  “Easy for you to say,” she said. “You have that cop looking out for you.”

  She was serious.

  19

  Eddie didn’t want to check into another motel, and since we were just a couple of hours from the lake, we decided to drive down and sleep in our own beds.

  We barely got to cruising speed when Eddie said, “Sure is a pretty girl.”

  “She doesn’t believe I live on a boat,” I said.

  “Well, yeah. Her too. But I meant her mama,” he said.

  I knew what he meant. “You’re a born troublemaker,” I said.

  I drove awhile.

  “This thing has Megan scared,” I said.

  “This thing has a lot of people scared. Have you talked with your detective?”

  “She’s not my detective.”

  We moved out on the freeway and the traffic was light. I glanced at him and the dash lights accented the deep life grooves on his face. It was a strong face. “I tried to call her. No answer.”

  “You know son, the more I think about Billy, the more I wonder why they’ve charged him in the first place. Makin’ a threat to take a man’s head off, even if it did come to pass, don’t seem like enough to throw him in jail.”

  “There is the knife.”

  “Yeah, there is that.”

  “You know when you were resting and I took a ride up to Jerome?”

  He looked at me.

  “I started that ride at Billy’s place. He has an electric garage door with keypad security on the outside.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it.”

  “If a guy knows how, he could be in Billy’s garage in seconds.”

  He looked at me again. “You mean a guy like you.”

  “Just saying.”

  “And Billy was locked up when that other guy lost his hand.”

  “There is that.”

  “I was a beat cop
for a lot of years,” Eddie said. “I didn’t have to play detective but I’ve been at a lot of murder sites and I know the first thing the good cop asks is ‘what’s the motive.’ Find the motive and you almost always find the killer.”

  “Let’s call Joe Whitney and see what he knows about Wambaugh. See if we can’t link them up.”

  “Tomorrow,” Eddie said.

  “Yeah, tomorrow.”

  He settled back, slid his cap forward over his eyes and soon appeared to be sleeping. He didn’t rouse until I pulled into the parking area above the marina.

  The boat was like I had left it. I reset all the alarms, took a shower, fixed a scotch and sat on the stern watching the moonlight trail across the water. I had read that this lake was almost ten thousand acres of water. I knew that below me was eighty feet to the bottom. That was a lot of water. Most people think of Phoenix as hot and dry and sometimes it is, but there is a string of fine lakes that capture the snowmelt from the mountains and provide the people with the water they need. Most people also think of Arizona as nothing but desert but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I have traveled the state, and inside Arizona I have found places identical to parts of Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and even Colorado. I once heard a proud citizen brag that he could snow ski in the morning, come down the hill and play golf in the afternoon and be in the hot tub by dark.

  I don’t play much golf, and I’d need a special prosthetic for skiing, but the hot tub thing sounded good.

  I went to bed.

  I awoke early. I lay in the oversized bed looking out the double sliding glass doors and watched the slow-moving morning light climb its way up the western slope. I watched some gulls fishing. I finally climbed out of the rack, put on trunks and my swim foot, and dove in the icy water. I swam steadily to the No Wake buoy, then back. I did it three times. When I climbed out, the water seemed warmer than the air. I took as hot a shower as I could stand. I dressed, then fixed an omelet and a pot of coffee. After I cleaned the galley I worked for a couple of hours on the new brackets. It had been awhile since I had fired up the big Hercules diesels. I checked them over, fired them up and let them idle for a while. I cleaned the cabin and swabbed the upper deck.

  I went out on the stern deck and dialed Joe Whitney’s number. He picked it up on the first ring.

  “Whitney.”

  “It’s Jackson,” I said. “I’ve been wondering about the Wambaugh guy. Can you think of any connection between him and Mooney?”

  “Sure,” he said. “You already know he was in that militia with Mooney.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Everyone says they were just a bunch of nitwits running around playing guns.”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Taking a man’s head and a man’s hand doesn’t sound like nitwit work.”

  “That’s what the chief says.”

  “Since Wambaugh showed up dead, has the chief been rethinking Billy?”

  He was silent, then he said, “I’m not supposed to talk about what the chief thinks, but if you were here now, you would see me nodding my head.”

  “I get the impression you know most of the guys in this militia.”

  “I grew up with some of them. Never ran in their circles. Never seemed dangerous to me, however….”

  I waited.

  “Have you been watching television?”

  I didn’t want to go through the whole explanation of why I don’t have one, so I said, “No.”

  “Turn it on. Some dude with his face wrapped up in black, just his eyes showing, is in a video claiming credit for the bombing.”

  “What do the Feds say?”

  “They don’t. Not to us. They think we are backwater pukes and want us to get out of the way. They treat the chief like a red-headed stepchild.”

  “It’s on now?”

  “Been on all morning. But,” he hesitated, “I’ll give you a tip I’m not supposed to. We haven’t even told the Feds. Fuck ’em, let ’em find out on their own. If you watch the guy closely, and get a good look at his eyes, I swear to God, it’s Ramirez.”

  20

  I drove to El Patron. The customer parking was empty. Blackhawk kept his Jaguar covered and parked by the door where the area was marked Employee Parking Only. There were other cars there also. I parked beside them and punched the access code into the keypad beside the door. It buzzed and I went in, then punched the security code in when the door closed. It buzzed again. Now we were all safe and sound.

  Blackhawk was in his apartment.

  “Coffee’s on,” he said. As usual, he was immaculate. White silk shirt, tailored slacks, no socks. Mahogany colored loafers with the tassels hanging to the side, as his feet were crossed and at ease on the coffee table. He was reading the paper.

  I poured a cup, added some sweet ‘n low and creamer.

  “Mind if I turn on your TV?”

  He looked at me. “TV? When did you become human?”

  I told him what Whitney had told me.

  He picked up the remote and turned the set on. There was a soap opera on. He went through the channels until he settled on a 24-hour news station. It was showing a bombing but it was halfway across the globe. The world had become a crazy place. I sipped the coffee. As with everything of Blackhawk’s, it was excellent. Even his taste in women.

  Elena came into the room wearing an oversized terrycloth bathrobe and had her hair wrapped in a pure white bath towel. It looked like a turban, and she looked like the Queen of Sheba. My phone rang.

  “Jackson.”

  “Hi,” Dahlia said. “Are you watching TV?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Channel 264?”

  I signaled Blackhawk. “Channel 264,” I said.

  He thumbed it in. It took a second to switch over. When it did, the picture revealed a turbanned man with all his face, except his eyes, covered. There were other men in the background. Their faces were covered also. Blackhawk turned the volume up, but though it was apparent the man was talking, the voice was that of a news anchor. There was a scroll under the picture explaining that the man was claiming responsibility for the Sedona bombing in the name of a group, Khorasan America. Blackhawk turned the volume back down.

  “Do you have it?” Dahlia said.

  “Yes.”

  “Lucy thinks that guy is the guy that was at the bar when Billy and Dick fought.”

  “Ramirez?”

  “Yeah, that’s the guy.”

  “I don’t want to get Joe Whitney in trouble but he told me that just a bit ago. Is Lucy sure?”

  “Lucy is never less than sure, that’s how she ended up married to Mooney in the first place.”

  My phone beeped at me. I looked at it and it was Boyce.

  “Can I call you back? I’ve got another call coming in. Three calls all month and now two at the same time.”

  “You are just a popular boy. No need to call back, I’m heading to the library. Just thought I’d tell you.”

  “Thanks, I’ll call later.”

  I punched the screen on the phone to roll to the other call and it hung up. I was trying to figure out how to call Boyce back when it rang again.

  “I didn’t think you liked phones,” Elena said.

  I hit the button. “Jackson.”

  “You watching TV?” This was getting redundant.

  “Yeah, just now.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “I think the guy’s name is Ramirez.”

  There was a pause. “How’d you know that?”

  “Don’t get him in trouble, but Joe Whitney, the cop in Cottonwood, Billy’s buddy, he called to tell me.”

  “Who’s Ramirez?”

  “He was at the bar when Billy Bragg got in a fight with Mooney. The guy that lost his head.”

  “You sure?”

  “Mooney’s wife, Lucy, thinks so too.”

  “The waitress? The dead guy’s wife.”

 
“Yeah. Go scoop your boss.”

  “Can you tell where the video was taped?”

  “I see grass and trees, so it’s not the desert.”

  “We think it’s in Phoenix.”

  “What is he saying?”

  “Same bullshit. America is an infidel state and is going to suffer the wrath of Allah.”

  Elena came over to me. “That is Boyce? I want to talk to her.” Before I could stop her, she took the phone out of my hand. I looked at Blackhawk. He just shook his head and turned back to his paper.

  “How are you doing, girlfriend?” Elena said into the phone. She turned and walked out of the room, my phone firmly in her ear. I looked at Blackhawk again and he had the newspaper up, hiding behind it. The paper shook with his laughter.

  Nacho came in the door, went through the room, and immediately came back in carrying a beer.

  “Make yourself at home,” Blackhawk said.

  “Thanks,” Nacho said. “Who’s Elena talking to?”

  “How is that your business?”

  “Is it that girl detective?”

  “She is a detective, and she is a girl,” I said.

  He took a long pull on the beer and flopped into a chair. “That’s who I thought. Man, I’m glad I’m not you.”

  “Besides the obvious, why would you say that?” Blackhawk said.

  He shrugged. “Elena is giving you the business. What did you do to that poor girl?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said again.

  Now the TV had Nacho’s attention.

  “What’cha watching?”

  “Asshole’s claiming to be the one that set off the bomb in Sedona,” Blackhawk said from behind the paper.

  “There was a bomb in Sedona?”

  “Yeah, yesterday,” I said. “You don’t watch the news much, do you?”

  “Not if I can help it. Never anything relevant to us ex-con, reformed gangbangers. What are they doing at the park?”

  “The park?”

  “Yeah, the park.”

  “How do you know it’s a park?”

  “Hell man, fifty percent of the drug deals in Phoenix go down right there. Right where they are standing.”

  “Where are they standing?” I asked.