Desert Noir (9781615952236)

by Webb, Betty

  “Evan?” I whispered, cradling his head in my lap. “Don’t worry. I’m here with you.”

  He smiled the guileless smile of a child and I knew he didn’t recognize me. “Clarice? Clarice, honey, is that you?”

  “Sure it’s me,” I said, lowering my voice so I’d sound more like her and stroking his hair while his ear bled onto my thighs.

  “I’m sorry Clarice. I was wrong to hurt you. It was just that… It was just that without the money, no woman would ever love me again.” I leaned over him and put my lips to his ears. Still trying to sound like his sister, I said, “It’s all right, Evan. I forgive you.” Evan turned his head, brushed his lips against my palm, and died.

  Who knows when spirits leave their bodies? The Navajo believe they leave right away, sometimes hanging around the earth, though, to make trouble for the living. I didn’t know what the Pima believed about death. If I lived through this, I’d ask Jimmy. Whatever the truth was, I wanted to make sure I’d covered all the bases for Evan. I let his head remain in my lap for a while and stroked his hair, murmuring, “There, there, Evan. There, there.”

  Eventually, though, I had to move him. I couldn’t continue sharing the lean-to with a dead man. Not in this heat.

  I looked over at the Infiniti, about twenty feet away. At the trunk, the opening of which was about three feet off the ground, at least. That solution was hopeless. So, whispering my own apology, I dragged Evan out as far into the desert as my failing strength would allow. But it wasn’t far enough.

  The buzzards found him just before sunset.

  They circled down from the sky like pieces of black confetti. As one alighted, it looked back at me through glittering black eyes, reminding me of Eleanor Hyath. Repulsed, I turned my head away from their red eyes, their scabrous necks. They enjoyed Evan very much. They squawked and cawed over him, fought over the tastiest morsels.

  Even covering my ears didn’t keep out their happy chatter.

  When twilight fell and the heat began to wane, I returned to the Infiniti, carefully keeping my eyes averted from the action in the brush. In addition to the buzzards, a few thousand blowflies were having themselves a high old time with Evan, but I tried to ignore them, along with the odor that wafted not-so-sweetly from their juicy banquet. I jumped on top of the car’s hood again and looked around, hoping to see lights of any kind—cars, houses, maybe even lights from the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, which had to be somewhere close by. But I saw nothing. The desert was devoured by shadows.

  I jumped off the hood, opened it again, and smeared as much dirt-encrusted engine oil as I could onto one of Evan’s socks. I closed the hood, and using the sock as a makeshift paintbrush, wrote S-O-S in letters so large they took up the entire hood. Even in the gloom, they stood out well on the Infiniti’s metallic gold surface.

  As a breeze started down from the mountains, I checked my hand-made water processing plant and found almost a half-pint of fresh water. Thanking the Baptists, I drank it down, not even minding the slightly plastic flavor. Now refreshed, I dug another hole and deposited the windshield-washing fluid container for my cup.

  I made another visit to the cactus patch and this time used a curved hubcap as a water bowl. Then I took a piss, a good sign because it meant that my body was still a long way from dehydration.

  My needs satisfied, I went back to the car and scraped Evan’s clothing into a soft pillow. Then I slit the duffel bag down the side and lay down in the back seat, grateful for the soft, cushiony leather. Sleep crept up on me and I felt my eyes begin to close. Although the car’s windows remained half-open (I had to be able to hear help if it arrived), I hardly noticed the hot, dry wind that swept down from the mountains. I was as snug as a bug in a rug.

  I woke up during the night and stared at the mercilessly clear sky. Where was the monsoon when you needed it? At some point while I’d been dozing, the coyotes had found Evan. I could hear ripping sounds, along with a rubbery flopping as if something large was being repeatedly picked up and dropped.

  Shuddering, I tried to sleep.

  Awake before the sun even hinted at its presence, I checked both of my little water processing plants and was gratified to find two more half-filled containers of water. I drank them both down and then, with another of Evan’s socks wrapped around my hand for protection, picked up the tool kit. I tried not to look in Evan’s direction.

  I chose a crescent wrench from the tool kit and slid under the car. My fumbling hands soon found the radiator release screw. After some grunting and knuckle-rapping, I managed to get it unscrewed and rusty water splattered down into my two plastic containers. As soon as they were full, I pressed the screw up to the radiator again, tightened it, and stopped the flow. Then I went back to my home-made wells and saturated the buffalo grass again, secure in the knowledge that I’d be able to harvest more water by noon.

  I decided to wait until dawn before I attacked another barrel cactus. Directions and distances could be treacherous in the dark, and I didn’t want to risk losing my bearings. Instead, I returned to the Infiniti and began hitting short taps on the horn every fifteen seconds. The sound carried well over the flat desert and hopefully would annoy some bad-tempered rancher who’d drive his truck over to complain that I’d interrupted his sleep.

  At first, the noise chased the buzzards and coyotes away, but after they realized it held no threat, they returned and the ripping sounds began again.

  I made myself think of Dusty’s eyes. Jimmy’s friendship.

  I thought about the scar on my forehead and how much I had already survived. If my mother hadn’t been able to kill me, how could the desert?

  Then I remembered my moments of despair at Rocky Point, the temptation to swim out to sea and never return.

  As a mockingbird began to trill the morning, what could possibly be my last morning, I at last realized how much I wanted to live.

  The sun rose over the White Tanks, only hinting at its later excesses. The Infiniti’s battery was a good one, and it was still going strong when the heat drove me out of the car. Before I took shelter again under my lean-to, I attacked another barrel cactus.

  How long could I survive like this? My slim water rations wouldn’t keep me alive forever. And I was beginning to experience symptoms that could indicate heat stroke—lightheadedness, clammy skin, stomach cramps. I had to stop moving and start resting.

  So I curled up with the Tom Clancy novel and read about a submarine rushing through Arctic waters while the predators ravaged Evan’s corpse in the hot sun. The irony was not lost on me. From time to time, I dabbed precious cactus juice on my face and fanned myself with a piece of cardboard. It didn’t help all that much.

  How long could I hold out?

  I dozed on and off all day, emerging from my shelter only when the sun went down to harvest water and to savage another cactus. I noticed, now, that I had to hit the cactus several times before I could puncture its skin.

  Either the cactus was getting tougher or I was getting weaker.

  I spent the night in the Infiniti, staring out the windows and thinking about death.

  The next day was hotter.

  The sun rose, a malicious red ball that seared my skin. When the car began to heat up, I crawled back into my lean-to, spending the morning splashing cactus juice on my face. But nothing seemed to help. Once, in desperation, I even returned to the oven-like Infiniti and turned on the air-conditioning, but after a few minutes of life-lengthening cool blasts, the battery died.

  Now I didn’t even have the car horn to summon help.

  Firing a few rounds from the gun wouldn’t help, because anyone passing near enough to hear it would automatically think someone was out here hunting. Or practicing for a raid on the State Capitol.

  As I returned to my lean-to, I didn’t even bother looking over towards Evan. There probably wasn’t much of him left.

  Somehow I survived the morning.

  Around noon, I began to feel woozy and as I looked out o
nto the desert’s stark, minimalist beauty, I began to see shapes moving towards me through the wavery heat. I attempted to rise but fell back onto my pallet. No problem. The shapes got closer, closer, until I could see that there were Indians, a band of about six—men and women both—from a tribe I couldn’t identify.

  They were shorter than the Pima but taller than the Yaqui who lived near Phoenix. And their clothing…

  I squinted my eyes as they grew nearer.

  The women, burned deep brown by the desert sun, wore only rawhide skirts, leaving their breasts exposed. Like the men, who were clad only in short loincloths, they had painted zig-zag stripes on their bodies in red, yellow and white. Their long, unbound hair waved from their heads like pennants in the hot wind.

  Hohokam.

  “But you’re all dead,” I whispered, as they passed only ten feet from my lean-to. “You’ve been dead for centuries. You’re with Earth Doctor now.”

  They ignored me and continued their silent journey eastward towards the Superstition Mountains.

  I allowed myself another sip of cactus juice and sank back onto my pallet, aware that I had started hallucinating—the first step on my own long journey. But would it really be that bad? I’d lived near this desert all my life, listened to its hawks and its wind, breathed in its wildflowers and sage. If I died here, I’d simply become a part of it.

  Would that be so bad? To nourish the soil or enter the coyote? There were crueler deaths, more wasteful graves.

  That night, dreams came in short snatches, as if my unconscious mind was too weak to sustain them. Earth Doctor, Elder Brother, they all came to visit and offer their advice. The desert was a good and clean place, they said, but it took endurance to live there. I agreed with them and they were sucked up into a whirlwind. When the night was almost over, a red-haired young man with eyes the color of mine leaned over me and caressed my cheek. “There, there, Tina. There, there.” I recognized his tender hands, his sweet smile.

  “Daddy,” I whispered.

  Like a ghost, he dissolved into the air, but I wasn’t alone for long. When dawn broke, a coyote approached with what appeared to be a smile on her bright blond face.

  “I know you,” I said. “We met at Papago Park.”

  She laughed and bared her long fangs. Then she stuck her nose into the lean-to and bit me on the ankle.

  “Ouch!” I complained. “I’m not dead yet, dummy! You’re supposed to let me die first.”

  She snarled and bit me again. I tried to go back to sleep, but every time I drifted off, she nipped me again. Finally she took hold of my jeans leg and began to tug, as if she was trying to drag me out into the sun.

  “Stop that! It’s hot out there!” My voice sounded like a bark.

  But the coyote wouldn’t leave me alone. She tugged and tugged. And every time I laid my head back down she gnawed on me some more.

  She eventually made me so angry that I staggered to my feet, stumbled out of the lean-to, and took a swat at her with the Tom Clancy book.

  She yelped, then pointed her muzzle skyward, as if demanding I follow her gaze.

  I did. That’s when I saw the plane.

  The coyote grinned in triumph, then trotted off in the same direction the Hohokam had taken.

  Finally roused from my stupor, I shuffled over to the Infiniti. With my last bit of strength, I grabbed the rearview mirror I’d pried off during my first day on the desert. As I stood there looking upwards, the blue-and-orange Cessna floated across the horizon, looking to my sun-dazzled eyes mighty like an angel. Capturing the sun in the Infiniti’s mirror, I began to signal.

  The Cessna floated on, oblivious.

  Although I’d thought I was too dehydrated to cry, tears trickled down my cheeks.

  “Pray for me, Agnezia!” I shouted.

  I signaled again.

  And the Cessna waggled its wings.

  Chapter 29

  I was a hero once more.

  During my two-day hospital stay, the papers made me a celebrity, and I could already see new business rolling in for Desert Investigations. The headline on the Scottsdale Journal blared, SCOTTSDALE DETECTIVE SOLVES MURDER OF SOCIALITE, SURVIVES THREE DAYS IN DESERT! The only thing that annoyed me was the picture they had chosen. It was an old one from my Violent Crimes Unit days, which in itself was okay, but they had retouched it and my scar had vanished. I guess they thought they were being kind.

  The story left out plenty, too. The reporter wrote only that Evan’s body had been recovered by the Search and Rescue team radioed by the Cessna’s pilot. He didn’t mention how little of Evan remained, or the noisy protest the coyotes had set up as the Search and Rescue team dragged Evan’s body away. Most of the Hyath family scandal had been expunged from the article, too, perhaps out of fear of a lawsuit. The story did note, however, that Clarice had filed a civil action against her father only to drop it mere days before her death. Other than my near-beatification, most of the article was about Clarice. Gus Baylor had been reduced to a mere afterthought, which I thought was fitting.

  I also appreciated that the reporter took pains to point out the culpability of the proposed zoning change in Clarice’s murder, and I hoped the Zoning Commission might have second thoughts. Knowing Scottsdale as I did, though, I doubted it. The Hacienda Palms Golf Course was history.

  When I turned to the jump on the second page, I saw an article recounting another death.

  Finally understanding that the last night in the desert I’d dreamed only of the dead, I turned my face to the pillow and wept.

  They let me out of the hospital the next day, saying that it was a miracle I had survived in the shape I had. My arms were so full of floral arrangements that I felt like the Queen of the May, but the object most precious to me I held in my right hand: a thirty-six ounce bottle of chilled Evian.

  “God helps those who help themselves,” I muttered as Dusty led me out front, where a pack of reporters and live TV cameras lay in wait.

  “That’s not what you said when I got to the hospital,” Dusty said, as the media closed in. “I even remember you muttering something about prayer. And ghosts.”

  Ignoring him, I beamed at the reporters, then turned my scarred profile to the cameras.

  They pressed in close and a live remote camera stuck itself right in my face. I started talking.

  On what I was assured was a live feed, I told the press exactly why Clarice had filed that civil action against her father. I told them that her mother had always known about the molestation but refused to do anything about it because she might lose some money. I recounted almost verbatim the last conversation I’d had with both of the Hyaths and the damning contents of their pre-nupt.

  When one of the reporters asked me if I wasn’t afraid that the Hyaths would sue me, I shrugged. “After three days surviving in the Arizona desert, it’s hard to be afraid of anything else.”

  Then I bid them good day and headed for Dusty’s truck.

  “Started a little firestorm back there, didn’t you?” Dusty said, as he pulled out of the parking lot.

  “The Hyaths can afford the fire-fighting equipment,” I answered. Then I noticed that he had already turned down the street that led to my apartment above Desert Investigations, so I put a restraining hand on his arm. There were a couple of stops I wanted to make first, I told him.

  He opened his mouth to argue then thought better of it and turned the truck around.

  It took us only a few minutes to get to the cemetery. Clarice’s grave had already taken on a look of neglect. A solitary bouquet of red roses nestled at the base of the headstone and as I leaned over, I saw that the card read, “From your loving father.”

  Loving? Perhaps that was the way he’d seen it. Only he and the Devil knew for sure.

  I knelt down and carpeted Clarice’s grave with my own flowers. My friend’s face may have been false, but she’d cared as much for me as she could care for anyone, and for that I owed her roses.

  Perhaps some
day I would even learn to forgive her.

  During my years as a detective with the Violent Crimes Unit, I had learned many ugly things about human behavior, chief among them the fact that evil always arrives with a bellyful of excuses. Those excuses were as false as Clarice’s smiles. Yes, she had been sexually abused, emotionally abused, but it still didn’t excuse her later behavior. She ruined Dulya Albundo’s family, and indirectly, killed Dulya’s mother. She had used George Haozous for her own purposes, and when she was through with him, tossed him out with the rest of the garbage. She was even preparing to ruin Cliffie, who had been her friend for years. God knows what damage she would have done to my life if she had lived.

  The humiliations Clarice had suffered at the hands of her parents didn’t excuse her later behavior; they didn’t even explain it. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of children live through years of unimaginable hell, yet grow up to become decent, productive citizens.

  Very few of us, and in truth I must include myself on the list of the abused, become killers.

  Oh, yes. That too. Clarice was a killer, in intent, if not yet in action. Evan’s answer to that final question I had asked him out on the desert had haunted me for days.

  “Yes,” he’d told me before he died. “Gus told me all about it.

  He thought it was hilarious.”

  Clarice had scheduled that meeting with Gus because she had also been in the audience at that infamous fight in Tudor Hills. Like Evan, she’d recognized a killer when she saw one.

  And she’d wanted to hire him.

  Clarice planned to kill her mother. With Mommy dead, there’d be more money for Daddy and Clarice.

  The next grave I visited was more sorrowful. Other mourners joined me in laying armloads of flowers at the foot of the simple wooden cross. There were tears of regret, talk of yet another zoning change. Always alert to a photo op, the mayor was there. As reporters swarmed around her, she proposed a buffer zone to separate the reservation from the city, a buffer zone lined by a high fence, one too high for coyotes to climb.