by J. A. Kerley
“And you had it in when?”
Dave squinted at the form. “Monday through, uh, Friday, for its three-month checkup. Let’s see … Mr Escheverría wanted it tuned, alignment checked, tires rotated.”
“‘Three-month checkup’?” I said.
Another service guy – Carlos, by his pocket – went to a locker behind Dave and lifted a set of keys from the hook, checking the name tag.
“Mr Escheverría really likes that car,” Dave continued. “And the model. It’s his fourth in eight years. He brings them in for regular checkups … like it’s a kid or something.”
“He kind of a scary guy?” Novarro asked.
A smile. “First time I saw him I wanted to hide in the can. But he loves his Camaros, so good for him.” Dave looked down the list, said: “Oh yeah, in addition to the tune and so forth we also installed a new muffler.”
“The muffler died after a year?” I said.
“I don’t see a warranty repair, so I expect—”
“You talking about the red SS?” Carlos said, turning from the key locker.
Dave nodded. “Yeah.”
“I did the install. It was kinda weird.”
“Weird how?” I asked.
“I think it had a bullet hole in it.”
“A ‘bullet hole’?” Novarro said.
Carlos nodded and moved his pointed forefinger horizontally. “Right through the center. In one side, out the other.”
“It’s gotta be a set-up,” I said as we pulled from the dealership. “Planned. And damned canny.”
“How you figure?”
“Escheverría probably wanted to be seen with the car. It shows there was a guy that looked like him in Florida last week, but obviously wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t? You’re backing out on your 90 percent?”
“I’m talking lawyer-speak, Detective Novarro. Any second-year law student can now use the picture showing Escheverría was in Florida …” I let it hang.
“To prove he wasn’t in Florida,” she sighed.
“He was there; I’d bet my pension. In a car similar to his actual vehicle, which was demonstrably in a reputable, record-keeping shop. All he needed to do was lay on his belly and—” I stuck out my forefinger like a gun and twitched my thumb, “put a round through his muffler to make sure it stayed in the shop longer than an afternoon.”
We headed back to HQ so I could pick up my rental and head back to my lodging.
“Wanna grab a drink?” I said, nodding to the side as we passed a row of bars. “Something wet after a dry day?”
I saw her consider it, but it ended with a shaken head. “Gracias, but I’m beat down. Plus I want to see that trail tomorrow, early. Where the kid fell. No need for you to go if you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” I said. “When?”
“It’s gonna be hot tomorrow, well into the nineties. We should set out early. I’m thinking sunrise, which is around six a.m. Which means I’ll pick you up at five. Or do Floridians need more beauty sleep than Arizonans?”
“Not that it makes any difference,” I said, “but I’m from Alabama. I’ll see you at five.”
She dropped me off beside the Avis Forerunner I’d barely used. My rental digs were on West Washington Street near downtown, a cute little adobe-esque bungalow with an arched overhang on the porch and an orange tile roof. The yard was smooth pebbles the size of grapes. Pressing from the earth were spike-quilled yuccas as tall as my shoulders, plus some weird blue-green multi-trunked tree that, had it been red, would have reminded me of a close-up of human capillaries.
Novarro’s taillights retreating in the distance, I walked the concrete path to the door and went inside, suddenly cooler by fifteen degrees. I had often heard about the heat of the Southwest being a “dry heat” and thus more bearable. I’d been skeptical but it seemed true, 7–12 percent humidity far less wilting than the often seventy-plus humidity of Florida and South Alabama.
I passed through a small and neatly arrayed living room to the kitchen and realized I’d not had time to provision up. All that waited in my refrigerator was cold air. The pantry yielded a former renter’s can of mushroom soup and a packet of Ramen noodles.
Supper, with a water chaser.
19
Novarro showed up one minute early. She hit the drive-through at an all-night Mex joint where we grabbed coffee and tortillas crammed with eggs, beans, and chorizo sausage. Like all cops, Novarro was an expert at eating while driving. I got to use both hands, filling the void left by last night’s meagre meal.
Thirty minutes later we were at the trailhead, Novarro shouldering into a backpack while I slung two canteens. The eastern amber of promised sunlight cast long shadows from the saguaros, as individual as humans in their arrangements of arms and veins and craggy hollows. I couldn’t stop staring into the landscape, stark and dramatic.
“Sunrise is my favorite time of day,” she said, echoing my appreciation. “There’s a sense of hope.”
The path began level, ascending after a hundred yards, expertly planned, switchbacks reducing the grade wherever possible. As we climbed higher I noted green plants resembling jellyfish with head, or bell, jammed into the sand as the tentacles waved in the breeze.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Ocotillo, my favorite. Over there’s a barrel cactus.”
“What are the bushes with the tiny yellow flowers?”
“Creosote. And this is Mormon Tea. Over there’s sage.”
“That’s a weird tree up there. I have one in my front yard.”
“Palo verde. I have one in my yard as well. And a lime tree.”
“Instant margaritas! What’s that fuzzy thing down by that gulley?”
“A teddy-bear cholla, also called a jumping cholla. And out here they’re called arroyos or washes instead of gullies.”
“You’ve lived here all your life?” I asked, impressed by her knowledge and pausing to take a swig of water.
“I grew up on the Pima Indian reservation,” she smiled. “We’re supposed to know this stuff.”
“I thought you looked Native American. But then I also wondered, the name and if you might, you know, the ending vowel and all …” I was babbling, what I did when suddenly uncertain of my position. Novarro seemed to find it amusing.
“You thought Mexican because of the name? My father was Pima on his mama’s side, Mexican on the other. My mother was mostly Pima.”
“I confess to knowing little about Native American tribes.”
“The Pima are also the Akimel O’odham, the River People, historically regarded for their skills at irrigation. Making every drop count. They also wove a helluva basket.”
“You much of a basket weaver?”
“Never tried it.”
“Does the word ‘Pima’ mean anything?”
“I don’t know.”
I nodded. “Yep, I guess the meaning could get lost in antiquity.”
“No, literally,” she said. It may be from pi añi mac, which means “I don’t know,” a phrase often used in early encounters with the Europeans.”
“Probably the safest thing to say.”
“Didn’t work.”
We grunted upward for the next forty minutes, traversing open stretches of trail followed by tight passages between house-sized boulders, the now-bright sky so blue it seemed luminescent. Novarro kept one eye on her footing and the other on the GPS coordinates as we clambered up a rocky staircase to find a wide outcropping overlooking a plunging gorge.
Keeping my walking stick firmly planted with each step, I followed Novarro to the edge of the outcropping and looked down a dizzying stretch of near-sheer rock. I looked up to see another ridge angling in the far side and figured I was looking into a box canyon. Novarro checked the coordinates.
“This is where Shackleton went over. He landed straight down there, to the left of the gray boulder.”
“Jesus,” I whispered, thinking you’d have several seconds betw
een stumble and landing to know it was all over.
Novarro surveyed the scuffed ground in the vicinity, a hodgepodge of footwear tracks. As with many overlooks where people can rest or gaze, self-centered morons had carved their initials or love yearnings into the rock. Novarro went back to the edge of the outcropping for a final gaze, then rejoined me, leaning against the rock wall at our backs.
“Let’s think the worst,” she said. “Bradley Shackleton was murdered. How would it happen?”
“Thrown off the cliff seems the correct answer.”
She crossed her arms and thought. “Possible. But that’s a big risk. Look.” She pointed across the valley to the adjoining ridge. I saw a trio of mountain bikers rolling down a trail.
“And over there,” she said, pointing in the farther distance.
I saw a pair of riders on horseback, ant-sized. “It’s not as isolated as it looks up here.”
She nodded assent. “This stretch of trail probably sees three dozen hikers a day, plus another dozen mountain bikers and a half-dozen horseback riders. They tend to be here later, like when Shackleton was out. Unless the kid came here with people he knew and trusted and they pushed him off, it would be hard to drag a struggling man up here. He’d have to be incapacitated. Bound. Gagged.”
“And carried,” I said. “Someone’s gonna notice something like that.”
She returned to the outcropping and looked over, then pulled off the backpack. “Castle was joking when he said bring a rope, but we’ll pick our way down. Just be careful.”
I glanced over the edge. No trail, just rock outcroppings.
She pointed to the west. “We’re going about two hundred yards up the trail where there’s more of a slope.”
I studied the jagged stairstepping of broken rock thinking slope was being hopeful.
We started down, me watching every place Novarro put her feet, trying to emulate her every step. I would have felt a lot better if there had been a railing.
“Just watch where you put your hands and your feet,” she said. “Rattlers love to sun on warm rocks.”
Great.
The descent to the bottom took ten careful minutes. I followed her up the canyon to below the vertical cliff where Shackleton had been found. “Here’s where he must have landed. I’ve got bloodstains. Some on this rock over here as well. And here’s boot tracks from the medic dropped down on a line from the chopper.”
I looked up at the outcrop knifing into the air seven stories up. We were near the terminus of the box canyon, scrubby trees and spike-branched bushes in every direction, broken rock beneath our feet. I looked up and saw a vulture wheeling in the hot air.
“Where from here?” I asked.
“This canyon widens out to the west and ends after a couple miles. I want to walk some of it.”
Pushing through thorny brush and ducking mesquite limbs, we continued down the canyon, Novarro checking the map every couple of minutes. She pointed out horse shoe prints belonging to Castle and company.
“It flattens out from here,” she said after we’d gone a half mile, Novarro occasionally crouching to stare into the pebbles and sand.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“There’s an old Indian saying, Detective Ryder: “T’annai al talla m’oshona.”
“Don’t know that one.”
“Close up, it’s clear the rabbit is not a fox.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“How about, I’ll know it when I see it.”
We kept walking, me studying the looming gray cliffs on three sides. I saw no footprints in the looser sections of sand, almost beach-like. “It’s beautiful here,” I said. “Why no hikers?”
“Off limits. This particular canyon’s a habitat of pygmy owls. They’re endangered.”
We came to a sandy wash overhung with mesquite. “I think I see something,” Novarro said. “Let’s take a look.”
It was easier to say than inspect. We had to butt-slide down rounded boulders and edge past clumps of prickly pear. Novarro took the lead, crossing a rocky wash and being careful where she put her feet. I stepped to where she stood, finding a wide impression on a stretch of loose brown sand.
“ATV tracks,” she said. “Which means either the rangers have been back here recently or it’s someone else.” She opened the map and stared for a few long moments.
“Yes?” I said.
“Time to head back up.”
We spent hard-breathing minutes pulling ourselves from ledge to ledge back up to the trail. We arrived at the trailhead as a group of middle-aged female hikers exited a van. They were all fit, wearing proper gear, and chattering like giddy magpies. Another half-dozen vehicles sat in the lot, arrivals after we had set out on the barely sunlit trail. It was not a good place to try and sneak someone up a mountain to toss him over.
Novarro drove to the park office, a rock and log structure. She spoke with a ranger in his thirties who’d been setting maps in a display rack. “This about the kid yesterday?” the guy said, shaking his head. “Horrible.”
“You get much of that?” I asked. “People falling?”
“Mostly what we see are sprains and bruises. Dehydration. Cactus-spine punctures. But yes, every now and then someone takes a tumble.”
“We went down in the canyon where the victim landed,” Novarro said. She opened the topo map. “There’s a sandy wash in this section; you know it?”
“Main drainage for the canyon. When there’s water in there it drains into the Gila River.”
“You can get an ATV most of the way in, right?” She tapped the map. “Until maybe here or so … the big pile of boulders.”
The guy nodded. “The end of the road for anything with wheels.”
“Has anyone taken an ATV back there recently? Plant or animal survey, checking fire conditions, anything like that?”
“Not in a month.”
“Ever get people back there? Civilians?”
A shrug. “Not often. Most people don’t know how to find the entrance. Plus it’s posted as off limits. Now and then we’ll get locals going back there to party, kids mainly.”
From there we drove around the mountain, Novarro pulling off twice to consult the map and check her GPS coordinates. We pulled onto a road barely a road, just tire tracks in the hard earth. The tires kicked up stones which drummed the undercarriage. And then we were between two diminishing ridges, an opening perhaps a quarter mile wide and studded with boulders which had tumbled from the ridges eons ago.
“The opening of the canyon,” she said. “Can you guess my thinking on this?”
“Shackleton’s incapacitated, brought here. An ATV takes him up the canyon. Wait … how about the noise?” Every ATV I’d ever seen sounded like a chainsaw on steroids.
“You can get special mufflers. Super quiet. They’re big with hunters who don’t want to scare off game.”
“Gotcha. Go on.”
“Shackleton’s driven up the canyon until the buggy can go no farther, just a quarter mile from the end. She paused. “The poor kid has to be busted up bad to look like he fell down a cliff. Maybe bashed with a heavy rock. He gets his neck broken.”
“Ugliness,” I said.
“But is it likely? Or am I putting way too much into a fall? Believing just because I need to believe in something, anything, that it really was just an accident?”
“There were the ATV tracks you pointed out.”
I watched her expression fall to self-doubt. “Bored kids from one of the nearby ranches going back at night to drink beer and smoke weed.” She sighed, putting the car in gear and driving away. “It’s all bullshit … it’s stuff I’m making up because I need to believe something.”
We wound our way back to Phoenix. I understood Novarro’s sudden depression because I’d been there before: every road a dead end, every thought little more than speculation. We needed a solid lead, or at least an idea to advance the case.
I had exactly nothing.
>
20
We got to Phoenix PD a bit after eleven a.m., Novarro still in her funk as we crossed to her cubicle. I saw a pudgy fifty-something guy in the cube next door, kicked back in his chair with his feet on his desk and his keyboard in his hands. His tie was askew and his gray suit jacket was in a ball on his desk.
“Here she comes, ladies and gennulmens,” the guy announced like a carnival barker, his eyes alight with mirth. “Tasha Novarrooo, queen of Phoenix and of my heart.”
Novarro continued to the guy’s doorway and gestured me over. “Detective Ryder, this is Mike Fishbach. If you can figure out what he does, you’re a damn good detective.”
The guy extended his hand and I took it. “And if you can discover if those Indian sayings Tasha’s always spouting are real or made up on the spot, you’re an even better detective.”
I looked at Novarro, she was giving nothing away. Fishbach looked to her, concern in his eyes.
“You look worn, Tash. You OK?”
She shrugged. “There’s something going on out there, Fish. But whenever I look at it, it disappears. There’s nothing to hang on to.”
Fishbach looked at me. “I had hip replacement a week back and I’m supposed to stay home, but all I do there is drink beer and yell at the dog. So I come here and the cap gives me little projects.” Fishbach turned to Novarro. “But he ran out of doodle work. Since I got shit to do, I looked at your reports. Tash. You’re thinking El Gila is involved?”
“How well you know Escheverría, Mike?” Novarro said.
Fishbach retook his chair, tapping the desk with a sturdy finger. “I was working a homicide, oh, fifteen months back. Before you got here, Tash. A drug dealer got whacked. Not a street rat, a guy up the ladder. We figured a rival ordered the hit. A well-placed snitch of mine put the deed on good ol’ Ramon: contract hit for a rival kingpin.”
“And?”
“I made Escheverría a personal study. He’s bad news squared. The hit had Escheverría all over it, well-planned and executed: The dealer lived in some fortified place in west Phoenix, pulling strings by phone, never went outside. He’s got no life outside of running his business.” Fishbach pause, winked. “Except … he loves lucha libre. Watches it all day long. Fucking bets on it, if you can believe that. It’s completely fixed; a big story line. But the asshole gambles on it.”