Fatal Refuge: a Mystery/Thriller (The Arizona Thriller Trilogy Book 2)

by Sharon Sterling

  Finally they neared the place the body had lain. Chaos threatened to ensue. Cuddles had scented and alerted soon after being removed from his crate at the trail head, and now he repeated his “down” as if his owner just didn’t get it. Terri’s dog barked and strained at the leash, eager to run. In his first year after being certified he hadn’t yet learned the finer points of canine search etiquette. Terri, as the Nav/Com, the backer, wouldn’t need to use her dog but he didn’t know that yet.

  Raney retrieved the double-bagged binoculars and handed them to Kim. She untied the orange plastic bag, carefully opened the zip-locked evidence bag and gave Zayd the target scent.

  Afterward, the morning was a blur for Kim from the moment she let Zayd off leash. She remembered mostly the glare of the rising sun, the sight of Zayd’s jet black hind-quarters, and the feeling of her chest heaving as she followed him at a dead run. She knew Terri, who backed by keeping dog and handler within the set grid with her GPS monitor, struggled and sometimes lagged far enough behind so she had to yell her instructions to change direction. During the search Zayd alerted only once, but it was a false alarm. She lost sight of him briefly when they had been at it almost an hour.

  “Done,” the backer yelled, finally. They had searched the area around the body’s location to a distance of two miles in each direction. It had been a marathon, with no triumphant cross of the finish line. Instead, exhaustion for women and dog. They returned to the deployment site at a wind-recovering walk, the no-find outcome contributing to mutual silence. Kim shrugged inwardly, confident no target item lay out there within the perimeter. Zayd had done his job.

  When Angelo and Cuddles began what would prove to be their own slower but equally unrewarded search, Lon Raney asked her to sit and talk while they waited. They found a boulder flat enough to sit on, shaded by a gnarled mesquite tree. Zayd lay on the ground next to the rock and close to his collapsible water bowl.

  Lon started and led the conversation, which made Kim comfortable. She always warned prospective friends she was not a chit-chatterer, but she enjoyed Lon’s knowledge of his work, his calmness and matter-of-fact manner. They talked about the victim and the investigation, and then about what had brought them to their jobs.

  Finally, Lon asked about her family. She told him about her father, mother and older brother who lived on the tiny Middle Verde reservation in north-central Arizona, one of the five separated parcels of the six-hundred thirty-six acre reservation. Middle Verde, in the town of Camp Verde, was the headquarters of the tribe. It held a small administrative building at the entrance to a neighborhood of two winding streets, mundane and quiet, and totally unlike most Whites’ notion of what a reservation would look like.

  Lon fixed her with an unreadable expression. “Thank you for telling me about it. I don’t like being ignorant about the people I work with.”

  Kim looked at her bare legs and arms, acutely aware of her own body and its condition. “I can’t wait to get home and shower,” she said to him. “Hell, I might shower and then take a bath. It’s not just the dirt and sweat. I feel like the odor of decay is in my nose, inside my lungs, on my skin. I’ve dealt with plenty of decaying corpses after two years as an EMT, but for some reason this is different.”

  She noticed that Lon’s mildly inquiring look invited her to share more personal information, but when she didn’t respond, he said, “I used to feel like that sometimes when I first started on the job, but it isn’t really the odor. It’s the mental images you have to wash away, not the smell.”

  “How?”

  He took her hand and bent his face to the inside of her elbow. She started. What was this? She resisted the urge to jerk her hand away. Lon wasn't looking at her face. He inhaled slowly, then with hands on her shoulders he leaned in to smell the skin of her neck. She was immobilized by the deliberateness of his actions, and by the heat of her body’s response.

  She saw his eyes shift from her sweat-soaked shirt to the curve of her thighs against the rock, then he looked into her face. He said, “You smell like life to me.”

  “Life?” It was all she could say. Her mind felt numbed, confused.

  “Our jobs attract two kinds of people: those who love life and those who love death.”

  Kim blinked, mentally transfixed by self-questioning. Which am I?

  “I’d like to come home with you. We could shower together. I’d wash your back and . . . there are other things I’d do to help you forget.”

  For a long moment she didn’t answer. She lifted her chin to look at him, feeling the fire of defiance that she hoped was in her glare. “Yes, I think you could,” she said quietly. She hesitated. “And I think someday you will. Until then, if you ever touch me again without a clear invitation, I’ll break your arm.”

  He jerked back in surprise. His face revealed a split second of shock. He shook his head and his expression softened. “Yes, I get it. And I apologize. Sexual harassment of colleagues has never been my style.”

  • • •

  Kim went to bed that night knowing she would have to rise at five a.m. Her current shift with the fire department ambulance squad started at six. She had followed her usual ready-for-bed routine, but sleep would not wash away the events of the day. Thoughts of Lon Raney and the possibilities of their relationship, of Allie’s dead friend Cindy, who by now lay safe in the county morgue, kept her mind active and her muscles tense.

  Most of the trouble came from what Wagner had said, from doubts and dread spilling out of the wound his words had opened. Fear she would dream about Apache atrocities hadn’t fueled her insomnia since her early teens, but now, minute by sleepless minute, the fear grew into a palpable presence in the darkened room.

  At the age of twelve Kim had read about Apache women’s custom of giving birth under a tree. After the birth they placed the placenta onto a limb of the tree; the tree then became the infant’s double. Throughout their lives, when brave or squaw felt debilitated or bereft, he or she went back to the tree to renew their life force. They customarily returned in the spring in a kind of pilgrimage at Nature’s universal time of renewal.

  When the Chiricahua Apache were finally subdued by the Army in 1886, Geronimo and his people were removed from their homeland and imprisoned on a reservation. The fiercest warrior of them all hurled bitter accusations at the government for the sufferings of his people. He said they weakened and died because they could no longer return to their soul-twin trees to be restored by a sacred ceremony.

  When Kim heard the story, it brought hope to restore her own childhood zest for life. She asked her mother, “Where is my tree?”

  “Your tree?”

  “My twin tree, my soul tree.”

  Her mother laughed. “Daughter, the Verde Valley Regional Medical Center knows where your tree is, and it’s probably at the town dump, or where-ever they put their medical waste.”

  And so it continued. The innocent delights of her childhood were overshadowed by the knowledge her ancestors delighted in the agonies of others. Then, should she doubt even her occasional joy, for what it might foreshadow about her? She didn’t question her parents or her teachers any further, and no one questioned her. Her self-doubts and confusion went unnoticed by the adults, who didn’t understand her love of fairness and her capacity for deep feelings.

  Eventually she found that inner struggle leads to a search for peace through understanding. As a young adult, she read about religions and philosophies until she felt she had found her own beliefs, and along with them, her role in life. She would be a defender of the weak, a champion of justice and an instrument of karma. She believed it and lived it – until the incident with the man at Montezuma Well. Her ancestors would have approved of the very inventive manner she had chosen to kill him.

  The stillness of memory gave way to a muted sound from the floor. Zayd. She rolled out of bed, dragging her pillow with her, and lay down on the throw rug beside the bed, where Zayd snored his soft doggy snore. He woke and turned to g
ive her face one sleepy, approving lick. She pressed her cheek against the back of his neck and her knees against his warm hind quarters. She sighed with relief. This was better. Then she wondered, Would Allie call this self-soothing, or self-punishment? It was her last waking thought.

  • • •

  Chapter Nine

  The 1999 pickup truck could be an apparition from the recent past, an anachronism rolling down Yuma’s 8th Street at midnight, its faded colors blending with the night shadows. The vehicle’s near-antique status and mechanical longevity are far from Sara’s thoughts this night or any night. It has never occurred to her the truck might someday reach the end of its life cycle and stop running, and so it hasn’t.

  She can see over the steering wheel only because she sits on a lawn-chair’s thick cushion she re-purposed years ago. She eases her spine against the back of the seat. It wears a bright yellow t-shirt, size x-large, recently purchased at the local Goodwill store for a dollar. In a newer car the shirt might have been a jaunty decoration. In the Chevy, it hides the decomposing upholstery’s look and feel of un-tanned alligator hide. The shirt may be just one more thing that holds the vehicle together.

  Sara turns to her companion in the passenger seat. His name is Michael, and after these many months she trusts him – completely. She says, “Wouldn’t do this on a Friday or Saturday night. Nope. Too many people wanderin’ the streets, drinkin’ and carousin’ on the weekends. And wouldn’t do it on a full moon, either.” She glances up at the lunar crescent emitting an anemic glow.

  She brings the truck to a stealthy halt at a corner and dismounts. Taking a large canvas tote bag from the cab, she says, “I must’a been guided when I made fifty copies of these at that office store up in Utah. Paid dear at eight cents a copy. Now comes the work. Important work.”

  The sidewalks are empty. The lackluster moon and yellow street lights play foil to reality, casting pale purple shadows on the pavement and darkening the truck’s color to brown, while in this altered state of existence, Sara’s tanned skin takes on the greenish hue of decay.

  As one very much alive and intent she moves swiftly down the sidewalk, hugging the store fronts, away from pools of light cast by the street lamps.

  Soon she stops, pulls a sheet of paper from her bag. She uses her teeth to tear a strip from a large roll of packing tape, and with it presses the paper onto the store window. She moves to the next window just feet away, and slaps another sheet on it, and one on the door, then two more on the other windows. Five yards down the sidewalk she repeats the process at another store. She turns, looks around and when she sees no one, trots back to the truck where her companion keeps look-out.

  Sara drives, slow and law-abiding to the upscale mall on 16th Street. She sees the City police patrol car before the officer sees her. When they pass, he inspects her and her passenger closely. She smiles because he doesn’t follow them or try to stop them. He probably thinks they are nothing more than ordinary.

  She begins to hum, the sound at first a mere vibration in her throat, then louder. She sings, “Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin…” She stops humming and turns to her companion. “Martin Luther, Martin Luther…King had nothing to do with it.”

  At the mall she exits the truck and again tapes her written manifesto to the targeted windows and doors. In large block print, it starts:

  Have no love for gems! Although

  bright diamonds sparkle, so do tears

  coursing down pale cheeks of saints. . .

  She is especially proud of the last lines:

  Gold: wasted years; long labors lost.

  For glint of gold, please lust no more!

  The words reverberate in her mind as she works. She regrets having to exempt the jewelry stores and banks nearer downtown from her attentions, but the police patrols there are too frequent. By three a.m. she has covered all the establishments on her hit list but hasn’t yet exhausted her supply of poems. She decides to tuck a few of the pages under other doors, under the windshield wipers of a few parked cars, wherever there is a paper-width crack. She returns to her truck, saying with satisfaction, “There, Yuma’s first warning that greed leads to war and war will beget the apocalypse.”

  Then her face goes slack, deepening the furrows from mouth to chin, and emphasizing the two vertical lines between her deep set eyes. “It’s the first promise they might escape it. It’s guidance for their salvation. They’re only words, but we have to try. It would trouble me to have to do more. But – sometimes it takes death to warn of death, what the war-mongers have in store.” A sudden smile. “There, I’m rhyming again.”

  • • •

  Chapter Ten

  Before Kim could take the first sip of her at-work coffee, a call squawked over the loudspeaker. She paused, cup against her lips, eyebrows raised at her partner across the table. Both sets of eyes asked the same question: fire truck, ambulance or both? In Yuma sixty percent of calls were injury/illness calls. For those, the truck and ambulance were dispatched together. If the EMT-trained fire-fighters decided the caller needed to go to the hospital, the ambulance would deliver them. The exception happened when police were on scene first and requested only an ambulance.

  The dispatcher’s voice announced, “Police call, single victim injury. Ambulance rolls.”

  Kim gulped her black coffee and bolted from her chair in unison with her partner Jerry, who, in this caffeine-fueled work environment, was known as “Latte” for his blond hair and pale skin.

  When they reached the end of the corridor and entered the bay, they slowed a little. Before they entered the ambulance, Kim leaned over to nudge her partner’s shoulder with hers. “Hey, Latte, I didn’t even get to ask how you are today.” She was fond of her younger partner, who at twenty-two still had the slender build and bland face of vulnerable adolescence. A slight slump of his narrow shoulders revealed a basically introverted personality, unusual for an EMT. His body also displayed a biologic non-sequitur, an unruly, blond, Afro-kinky hair style that hinted at his hereditary diversity.

  Jim smiled at her, hesitated, then jostled her in return. “Mas o menos, Straight Up. How did your day off go?”

  She climbed behind the wheel, gave his boot a casual tap with the side of her shoe. “You’re too young to know, kid. Light us up.”

  Out of the bay, he obediently turned on the siren and lights. The conversation would have ended in any case. Kim had told her partner during their first ride together that she didn’t like to talk when she drove, unless it was about the case ahead of them. Right now they had no information except that police had summoned them.

  Five minutes later she pulled the ambulance into a diagonal parking place next to the police car. On the jewelry store in front of them, sheets of paper taped to the windows and door lifted and dropped languidly in the light breeze. One window of the display case had been shattered, with much of the broken glass inside. Several larger shards littered a small section of the sidewalk, some covered by splatters of fresh blood with thin red stems. The scene provided an instant crime report and instant patient diagnosis: attempted theft, arterial bleed.

  Two uniformed officers wearing latex gloves attended the victim who lay face-up on the sidewalk, emitting high-pitched whining sounds. The scruffy-looking man had been bound at the ankles with plastic zip ties. The female officer stood on his left, one foot resting lightly on his left arm to secure it against the sidewalk, although it didn’t appear to Kim that he would be able to rise if unrestrained. The male officer had one hand around the victim’s right wrist, holding the arm straight up, while his other hand pressed a piece of blood-soaked cloth around the victim’s upper arm. “Hurry it up,” he growled. “I’m getting tired of this.” His prisoner commented with a deep groan.

  Kim dropped her red medic bag and turned to Jim. “More gauze, then go back for the gurney.” Jack trotted back to the ambulance. She turned to the officer holding the make-shift bandage. “Looks like a smash-and-grab.”


  He lifted his chin toward a metal bar the length of a forearm protruding from the display case. Kim’s eyes followed his to where gold and gems gleamed and sparkled in multiple hues amid bits of glass, then they went quickly back to the officer and victim. The officer gave her a sour-faced nod. He held his arms straight out from his body with his rear jutting back in an attempt to get as far away as possible from any more spurts of the victim’s blood.

  “You’re doing a great job,” she said. “Just hold on for a second more. Jerry is bringing more bandages for direct-pressure and a tourniquet.”

  She squatted at the victim’s side. The man’s face had a grey tinge and a sheen of sweat. That wasn’t good. She pulled his uninjured wrist from under the officer’s foot and began to take his vital signs. She saw Jerry coming back at a brisk pace, carrying gauze pads but then he slowed, distracted by the sheets of paper taped to the jewelry store windows. “What’s with all the papers?” he asked. “What is that, poetry?”

  “Get over here!”

  • • •

  Chapter Eleven

  Allie sat in her worn office chair, staring at the exquisitely detailed and well-framed drawing of a Navajo girl which decorated the office wall opposite her. Above her desk hung the diplomas and license to practice psychotherapy that validated her. She knew she was procrastinating but the knowledge didn’t help. Dealing with situations involving friends was so much harder and essentially so different from counseling clients.

  Of course Kim had once been her client but in the three years’ time since that relationship ended they had both moved from central Arizona to Yuma. Kim had found a new occupation and their relationship had evolved and deepened into friendship. Now Kim, who knew Cindy only through her, had found her friend’s body.