by Louise Ure
“Len’s not a bad guy, Jessie. He’s a good cop. But he’s nobody I’d like as an enemy,” Treadwell said, turning away.
Early Monday evening must not be high time for emergency room visits; I was in and out within three hours after lots of probing for nasal singeing, airway burn, and concussion. Back at Bonita’s house, drained by the adrenaline high, I sat at the dining room table in silence, punctuated only by the drip, drip, drip of the kitchen faucet.
Bonita’s neighborhood hummed with normal life—a laugh track on television, a dog barking down the block.
Those neighbors probably didn’t know the patina that charred human flesh leaves clinging to the back of your throat. The shiver that won’t leave your bones, even hours after the blast missed you. Maybe that’s how war veterans feel coming home: welcoming the peace but still burning with the proximity of horror.
I sat there in the darkness, replaying the blast, the heat, the shattering sound, the loss.
Ah, Jesus, that poor girl. She certainly wasn’t the person I talked to in Markson’s car, but she seemed to be a victim of the crime that night nonetheless. I hoped I hadn’t been the one to put her in jeopardy. She was afraid of something or someone, and I may have pointed them right at her.
I nudged the tower of pizza boxes in the corner with my toe, sending them sprawling across the floor.
There was a message on my cell phone from my landlords at Mind Your Manors. They didn’t see a need for my services any longer. Would I please clear out and drop off the key by tomorrow?
Things were really looking up.
Chapter Eight
That night I dreamed of firewalkers—rail-thin creatures standing on glowing coals, weaving in time to a rhythm I couldn’t hear. They beckoned and I came closer. One featureless creature reached out and grabbed my hand, her bony fingers cold even though they were on fire. When she turned I saw Felicia’s eyes, but what had been smooth mocha skin was now blackened and hung in tatters. She opened her mouth but nothing came out.
I woke in a sweat, teeth chattering and goose bumps on my arms. It took me a moment to recognize the unfamiliar room, with Bonita’s left-behind clothing still in cardboard boxes in the corner.
I pawed through the boxes, finally locating a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt that proclaimed: ROCK IS DEAD, LONG LIVE PAPER AND SCISSORS! I tugged the shirt over my head, then pushed the sleeves up over my biceps, showing off the tats.
I shut the front door quietly behind me. Dawn was only moments away.
I did a couple of stretches, using an old poster-laden telephone pole for support, then took off running north on Swan toward River Road. I had intended to jog along the Rillito River, but once I got to the dry wash I changed my mind and continued north. It would be the same five-mile loop I’d originally planned, but this way I could pass by the Markson house.
I wondered if Darren Markson had cut his trip short and come home.
The world turned from blue-gray to wheat, then gold, as the first rays of the sun peaked over the Rincon Mountains and my shadow lengthened to a ten-foot praying mantis beside me. Although my breathing was ragged, I held my pace as the road steepened and I entered the Catalina Foothills.
This part of town was a lot more built up than it had been when I was a kid. There were condo developments within spitting distance of million-dollar homes; and Burger Kings, McDonald’s, and Starbucks as prolific now as the saguaro cactus used to be. A couple of cars passed me going downhill. Business types, by the look of them.
I’d have loved to know if Felicia had some connection to Darren Markson. Or maybe she knew the guy who had stolen Markson’s car. Maybe Mrs. Markson would recognize Felicia’s name, not that she had any reason to see me again, or to tell me the truth if she did.
When I reached the Marksons’ house I stopped at the top of the driveway, jogging in place. No lights were on; no dogs barking. If the cops had released the Cadillac back to them, it was probably in a repair shop and not the garage.
I was turning away when a movement from the side of the house caught my eye. I stepped behind the lacy curtain of a six-foot creosote bush and held my breath. Thirty feet away, Paul Willard shut the Marksons’ kitchen door quietly behind himself, shrugged a white tennis sweater over his shoulders, and tiptoed across the gravel that separated his property from the Marksons’.
The jog back to Bonita’s house went faster than the trip out, my mind occupied with wild speculation. Emily Markson and Paul Willard were having an affair? No wonder he’d been the first to hear about Darren Markson’s phone call. But why had Felicia been killed? Somebody was still lying.
I bought two grande coffees at Starbucks and power-walked back to the house.
A car pulled into Bonita’s driveway as I was finishing the second cup. Small, tan, and unremarkable, it couldn’t be anything but a rental or an unmarked cop car.
The man who got out was almost gaunt, with sucked-in cheeks and slicked-back black hair. His skin looked like it had battled acne in his teenage years and lost. I’d last seen him in the back row of the courtroom on the day the verdict was read.
“I see you got your truck towed back,” he said without a greeting.
I nodded.
“Long time no see, Ms. Gammage.” He offered his badge as a calling card. Detective Len Sabin. Tucson Police Department, shield number 743.
“It’s Dancing now.”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “I understand you took the call the night Darren Markson’s car was stolen.”
“That’s right.” He already knew that. Why was he here?
“Had you ever met Mr. Markson before?”
“I still haven’t met him.”
He clipped his badge holder back onto his belt. “And you were also at the scene of a car bombing yesterday.”
I swallowed hard.
“Kind of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. A coincidence is something you can’t explain.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“What do you want, Detective?” I could feel that jail-cell chill creeping up my spine.
Sabin took a hard candy from his pocket, slowly twisted off the plastic wrapping, and popped the candy in his mouth. Butterscotch.
“I don’t give up, Ms. Gammage. Ask anybody, they’ll tell you. Lenny Sabin is like an elephant, they’ll say. He doesn’t give up and he doesn’t forget.”
“I was found not guilty, Detective.”
He made sure there was no grime from the blast, then leaned back against the cab of my truck. “That’s the funny thing about the justice system. It makes no distinction between not guilty and innocent. I do.”
“Then the police department should have acted a lot faster in stopping Walter Racine.”
“Is that a confession?” His cheeks sucked in and out, working the candy.
“No. It’s a fact.” I’d tried to tell them. If the police had listened to me then, it wouldn’t have ended with two bullets in Walter Racine’s head. I spun around and stormed back into the house, slamming the door.
I waited until Sabin had driven off before breathing easy. At least the guy hadn’t warned me not to leave town. I showered, packed the khakis and shirt I’d worn on the way down, and picked up my truck keys before realizing that my truck was going nowhere. I didn’t even know if the engine still worked, but the melted front tires and blasted-out windshield were enough to keep it off the road.
I arranged to have the truck towed to a shop for either a diagnosis or last rites.
Bonita wouldn’t mind my using her VW. I grabbed the keys off the dining room table and jotted a note to Martin in case he came by and thought the car had been stolen.
Why did Len Sabin have such an anvil of a grudge against me? Surely he’d investigated other crimes where the jury had returned a not guilty verdict. Maybe he had known Racine or they had belonged to the same golf club or something. Whatever it was, Sabin still wanted me behind bars.
The
re are no back roads between Tucson and Phoenix, just I-1o and a couple of frontage roads that could be dubbed Middle of Nowhere and Next to Middle of Nowhere. I was past Picacho Peak when I realized that I did, in fact, have a choice of roads before me.
I’d have to return Bonita’s car at some point, but other than that, I had no reason to return to Tucson. And without a job or a home, I had no reason to stay in Phoenix, either. Maybe now was the time to make the break that I should have made two and a half years ago.
Back then it had seemed like dropping a surname and moving a hundred miles up the road was a big step in putting distance between my new life and my history. But that was an illusion—a suggestion of movement when none really exists—like the wavy promise of a mirage that disappears the closer you get.
Maybe now was the time to start fresh. A new name. No Dancing allowed. And a new place. Somewhere green and soft. Or blue and cold, although I’d feel like an alien being in either one of those environments. A dry, scaly time traveler who didn’t know the secret handshake. Could I reinvent myself convincingly enough in that new world that even I could forget I was a murderer?
Killing leaves a mark on the killer as well. Not as lethal a mark, certainly, but a stain—a stench—all the same. And you wonder if others can smell what you’ve done. Sabin was right—not guilty was different than innocent.
I drove straight to the HandsOn office, parking purposefully in the visitor’s space by the front door. Nancy Horowitz had left my check at the reception desk. I waved good-bye to the receptionist and headed to the Mansion Manqué.
There wasn’t much to pack. Three years ago, I’d been a person of substance. I’d had a job—well, bartending, but at least it was regular work—I had furniture, and a real savings account. A future, for God’s sake. Now all my belongings fit into two wheeled suitcases and a pillowcase full of dirty clothes, and future was just another tense.
I took a last look around at the good life and said good-bye.
Back in the car, I cranked the airco to frigid and debated my options. The Mind Your Manors office was in central Phoenix. I could go in any direction from there.
I cashed my paycheck at a bank branch on Van Buren and took out all but a hundred dollars of the two thousand I’d managed to set aside. Not much, but enough to live on for a couple of months. Enough gas money to get me far, far away. Maybe enough for first and last deposit on a little room somewhere overlooking a creek. In the time it had taken me to drive across town, I’d decided there were only three rules for this new life of mine: take nothing larger than a county road, eat at any place called Mom’s, and turn in another direction if the sun gets in your eyes.
I headed northeast out of town, crossing the Tonto National Forest and the Mogollon Rim before arriving at Mormon Lake south of Flagstaff at nightfall. Pleased that my “smaller roads” guideline had gifted me with soaring cliffs and pine forests for a view, I was regretting the decision to wait until I found a café called Mom’s. I had to settle for dinner at the gas station mini-mart and a room at the Duck Blind Inn at Mormon Lake.
The motel was squat and ash colored, with a massive neon sign towering overhead like a stern teacher. I bought a Diet Coke from the vending machine and walked to the edge of the lake. Stubby oak trees and thin, dry firs were scattered around the shoreline. Pale tufts of grass tried to wag in the evening breeze. Even with last month’s monsoon rains, the lake was a shrunken, muddy pond, the water’s edge receding like an old man’s hairline. I took a deep breath, hunting for the pine scent I needed.
A child cried from one of the rooms on the end, “I don’t want to go to bed yet!”
I wondered how little Katie was doing. Her mother, Catherine, had been dead more than three years now, washed away in an unusual October rainstorm that swept her car into the flooded arroyo like it was a twig, and then turned it upside down in the riverbed silt. There was no question of culpability; there had been other people there as witnesses. The driver behind her who had managed to brake before plunging into the torrent had done everything he could to reach Catherine, but hadn’t made it in time.
If she hadn’t died before going to the cops…if she’d lived long enough to testify against her uncle Walter…if I hadn’t seen the danger for myself. Shit. All the ifs in the world wouldn’t change anything. In the end, I’d had to do it alone—accuser, witness, judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one.
I inhaled again, storing up the scent of water for the desert days ahead.
My cell phone rang as I unlocked the door to my room.
“Jessie? Where are you?”
“Mormon Lake, Deke. Taking a little R and R, since your partner got me fired.”
“Get back here now.”
“Why?”
“They’ve found a body.”
My mouth hadn’t caught up with my mind yet.
“And not just any body. Darren Markson,” he continued.
“But he’s in New Mexico…”
“It doesn’t look that way.” Deke Treadwell, the master of understatement.
“Was he…” How could I put into words that vicious beating I’d heard?
Treadwell seemed to understand. “Yeah, it looks like somebody strung him up by the heels and used him for a piñata, but that’s not what killed him. He was shot in the back of the head.”
“Where did you find him?” Focus on the details, Jessie. That way you don’t have to think about his death.
“Buried under some loose rocks out in the Saguaro National Park. A hiker’s dog found him.”
“East or west?” Only a cactus-lover would consider them parks, but the two massive areas made parentheses around Tucson’s east and west borders.
“East.”
It was pretty desolate land out there, but only a couple of miles from where his car had been found.
“How long has he been dead?” Was his really the voice I’d heard on the other end of that call? Had he died only moments later?
“We’re doing the autopsy now.”
I asked what Emily Markson had had to say.
“She’s still insisting that she talked to him in New Mexico. When we started to ask more questions, her lawyer stepped in and shut her up.”
Lawyer-lover, I wanted to say, then remembered I hadn’t told Deke about either Emily Markson’s bruises or her late-night visitor. And she’d told me she didn’t recognize the voice on the HandsOn disc. Had that been her husband’s voice?
“I still don’t understand what this has to do with me. I never met the guy.”
“We found a scrap of paper buried with him. With your name on it. Len Sabin’s getting a warrant to pick you up.”
I thought about heading north and leaving Tucson and Len Sabin behind forever. Hell, I was going to change my name and identity anyway. What difference would it make if I was hiding from myself or from the police? I threw off the guilt-warmed sheets and splayed myself across the bed. I could throw away the cell phone. Sell Bonita’s car and send her the money.
I had no real reason to go back, except the desire to prove my innocence. Declared not guilty of a crime I had committed, I was not about to be railroaded into one I had not.
The sun rose in a clear sky, etching sharp shadows across the squat motel and the gray grass. There is an urgency to the shadows in Arizona, a clarion call to choose the light or the dark, to find refuge or freedom. There is no ambiguity between shadow and sunlight. Only decision. And I had decided that starting anew also meant starting clean, with no gallows hanging over me. I headed south.
Forgetting my allegiance to county roads, the drive back to Tucson took a lot less time than the trip north. I had no explanation for the note found on Markson’s body, but I had a guess. Emily Markson had my name; she’d called HandsOn and requested that I come to Tucson and play the recording for her. The only thing that made sense was that while-she was burying Markson’s body, the note she’d written herself with my name on it had slipped into the grave with him.
The detectives had probably come to the same conclusion themselves.
Treadwell met me in the TPD parking lot, and I didn’t give him a chance to say anything.
“Emily Markson wrote that note, right?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t match her handwriting.”
“But who else—?”
“Come on inside, Jessie.” He led me by the elbow past the ID checker behind bullet-proof glass at the front door and through the lobby. Len Sabin was waiting for us in an interview room on the third floor.
My heart stuttered when he read me my rights.
Chapter Nine
I told the cops about Emily Markson’s bruises, about the anger on her face when she listened to the recording, and about seeing Paul Willard sneak out of her house at dawn. They took notes, but didn’t seem surprised by the information.
“My only association with Darren Markson was that phone call,” I insisted for the sixth time. “And the only person who knew my name was his wife.” Except for the 911 operator, and the cops, and my bosses at HandsOn, that is.
“Mrs. Markson has an alibi for the evening her husband disappeared,” Treadwell said.
“Who? Her lawyer?”
“We know who wrote that note,” Sabin said, unwrapping another butterscotch.
“Who was it?” And why the hell wasn’t that person sitting in this claustrophobic interview room instead of me?
“It matched the handwriting on that beer coaster you gave me,” Treadwell said. “We think Felicia Villalobos wrote it.”
“And there you were, right beside her when she was killed,” Sabin added.
“I told you about that. I met her out in the desert where Markson’s car was hit…I didn’t know her from Adam. She must have written down my plate number or something…got my name that way.” Much the same way I’d gotten her details when I called in for MVD information from Mad Cow at HandsOn.
“You don’t really think Felicia had anything to do with killing Markson, do you?” I couldn’t imagine the teenager shooting a man in the back of the head. On the other hand, three years ago I couldn’t have imagined myself doing the same thing.