Laura turned at that corner, Moenkopi. The rest of the street, with a few exceptions, wasn’t as nice. She drove by dented mailboxes, mobile homes in various states of disrepair, cars on blocks, and the ubiquitous pines that still managed to look beautiful even in this setting. Up on the right a waist-high chain link fence wrapped around a yard mostly taken up by a decrepit school bus and two snake-headed pit bulls.
A faded turquoise mobile home sat far back on the lot, a slender young woman sitting on the warped wooden stoop, one arm resting on her knee, a long cigarette between her negligent fingers. Her wheat-colored hair a straggle, a man’s long-sleeved shirt unbuttoned over a Neapolitan-colored striped tube top, dirty jeans and boots.
It took Laura a minute to realize it was Shana, and that the chocolate in the Neapolitan on the tube top was dirt. Laura walked up to the gate.
The dogs raced to the fence, sticking their noses through the spaces in the links, their eyes golden and unknowable.
Shana looked in her direction, flicking an ash from her cigarette out to the side. A young man sat up from a weight bench, wiped his face with a pink dish towel, and sauntered up to the gate. Tank top, tats, earring. He had black hair and haunted eyes with dark smudges underneath, and a heavy chain looped from his belt to the front pocket of his jeans. He unceremoniously dragged the two dogs by their collars around the house to a shed, pulled the door closed with a metallic shriek.
Giving her the evil eye, he opened the gate.
Laura walked in, avoiding a rusted Weber grill lid lying on the path to the door.
Shana remained on the stoop, tangling her fingers into her hair and pulling it back and around her neck so that it fell over one shoulder. Laura noticed dark roots, maybe because the hair was dirty.
Laura said, “Mind if I sit down?”
Shana sighed, took another drag from her cigarette. She was trying to appear as if she didn’t care, but Laura could see her arm was shaking.
Troy had followed Laura up to the trailer and stood there, looking from one to the other. “You don’t have to tell her anything,” he said.
“Troy,” Shana mumbled.
“You called me,” Laura said, keeping her voice low and reasonable. “You must have a reason.”
Shana dug into her hair again. Laura noticed her nails, which were ragged and in some places cut down to the quick, rims of dirt underneath. Ridges of dirt in her knuckles, too.
“You said you had to dig. I guess you weren’t kidding. What’s that all about?”
Troy stood over them, arms crossed, glowering. “Look, you want her out of here—”
“Nuh-uh,” Shana said wearily. And then she started talking.
*
At the house on the corner the wedding was in full swing. The handsome young couple stood under the white lattice arbor reciting their vows. As Laura slowed for the turn, Shana said, “Wait a minute.”
Laura let the car idle. Shana stared out the window, her expression wistful. Laura thought that if Shana cleaned up she would look a lot like the bride.
Over the rushing water in the pond and the rattle of quaking aspens at the edge of the bright green lawn, Laura could hear the murmur of the reverend’s voice. She glanced at Shana, who was twisting the cheap engagement ring Bobby Burdette had given her back and forth on her finger.
After a few minutes, Shana sat back, all animation gone from her expression.
Laura said, “Shall we go?”
Shana looked straight ahead. “I don’t see why I have to go to the hospital. I’m fine.”
“We have to get you checked out, Shana. You could be dehydrated. You’re sunburned and you said yourself you were pretty sick when you got to Troy’s.”
“So I threw up. Wouldn’t you, if someone did what Bobby did to me?”
“The sooner we go, the sooner we get this over with.”
As Laura put the car in gear, Shana muttered something.
Laura asked her what she’d said.
“I never had a wedding that nice.”
*
The hospital in Flagstaff kept Shana overnight for observation. As Laura suspected, the girl was dehydrated and needed to have her fluids replenished. The abrasions she had received in digging herself out of the makeshift grave Bobby Burdette had made for her also needed tending.
Shana protested, but weakly. Laura got the impression the girl liked the attention. She’d already called Shana’s parents, and they had broken land speed records to get here. Laura talked to them in the waiting room. Mostly to alleviate their fears, but she didn’t touch on what Shana had told her about her harrowing experience of the last few days.
Laura did not tell them that she feared Shana was involved in something dangerous. She still had to figure out if this was a crime of domestic violence or if there was more to it than that.
She found a motel just up the street from the hospital on Business Loop 40—old Route 66—and had a dinner salad at the motel coffee shop.
She’d been debating most of the day whether to call Richie, who would be back in Tucson by now. Shana had called her specifically, which indicated trust to some degree, but she’d been vague about exactly what happened to her in the desert north of Phoenix. Richie’s presence would introduce another element into the equation, and it might not be a good one. Still, Laura knew she had to let him know what was going on. She needed to let Jerry Grimes know, too.
Sitting out by the pool, steam rising from the heated water. Staring at the tall mountain overlooking Flagstaff and listening to the sigh of car tires of the traffic plying Business Loop 40, Laura called Richie at the office and left a message, repeated the same with Jerry Grimes. The coward’s way out.
*
The hospital released Shana at ten thirty the next morning. She was ready for show-and-tell. She had enjoyed the sympathy and attention at the hospital, and when Laura suggested they go looking for the hole where she’d been buried, she jumped at the idea.
For the moment, the horrors of being left for the better part of three days in a boarded-up hole in the ground had receded, replaced by the idea of an adventure. This didn’t mean she wasn’t rude to Laura. Her first instinct, as always, was to withhold certain key pieces of information and force Laura to drag it out of her.
Laura had not cared much for Shana from the beginning. She thought she was spoiled and self-centered, and dealing with her had been maddening. She was at turns sullen or defiant and had never once broken out of that mold. But Shana had lost her twin brother. And now the man who supposedly loved her had buried her out in the middle of the desert and left her to die.
Shana’s self-esteem had always seemed fragile to Laura, but what must it be now?
The drive down I-17 had taken them down from ponderosa pine to juniper and grassland, and finally back to the Sonoran Desert. The desert baked under midday sun, but it was beautiful to Laura’s eyes. Her country. She felt a pang, missed her nidito in Vail.
Missed Tom.
As they approached the exit for Rock Springs, Shana broke her silence. “I have to pee.”
Laura turned into the parking lot of the Rock Springs Café.
Shana shoved the door open and stalked across the parking lot to the old pueblo-style trading post. Laura noticed a pay phone out front, probably where Shana had called her ex-boyfriend to come pick her up. Burdette had taken Shana’s cell phone when he buried her in the desert.
Laura gained the shade of the building and decided to check out the general store while she waited for Shana. She wandered between the half-empty shelves in the old store, past stacks of Rock Springs Tshirts and a few curios. She heard a familiar sound, though, and followed it to a dark room that looked like somebody’s basement except for the beer banners strung under the ceiling, neon beer signs, and the old-fashioned mahogany bar against the back wall.
Up above the bar was a TV simulcast of a horse race at Turf Paradise. The familiar sound was the race caller, his voice getting more urgent as the horses swe
pt around the turn and flashed under the wire.
“What can I getcha?” a gray-haired woman behind the bar asked, setting down a napkin.
Laura’s gaze didn’t move from the horses, now galloping back after the race. “I’m just waiting for someone.”
“Okay.”
Laura watched the Thoroughbreds coming back, and was surprised at the longing she felt. Nothing was more beautiful to her eye than a Thoroughbred at the top of its game.
She still missed her mare Calliope, even after all these years. Jay Ramsey’s brother had given her the phone number of a woman who owned one of Calliope’s colts, but so far Laura hadn’t done anything about it.
Inertia. She had done nothing for her own life, only for her job, and even in that she had been screwing up.
“What are you doing?”
Laura looked around, feeling unaccountably guilty. Shana stood in the doorway, arms crossed, looking pissed off.
“Waiting for you.”
“I don’t want to be here all day. Troy and I are going to dinner tonight.”
The sun’s glare after the darkness of the bar made Laura squint. “Where to?” she asked as they pulled out of the parking lot.
“That way,” she said, pointing to the right. South on the access road, in the direction of Phoenix.
Shana leaned against the passenger door, as far away as she could get from Laura, her face pensive.
“Stop! You went too far.”
Laura braked, backed up along the dirt verge.
“I think that’s it,” Shana said. On the right was a dirt road, a post-and-wire fence pulled taut across it, a metal sign attached saying NO TRESPASSING.
“This was where he took you?”
“Un-huh.”
Laura got out, pulled up the wire loop connecting the weathered gate post to the fence, and dragged the gate across the road. She drove through and glanced at Shana. Shana ignored her, so Laura had to get out and close the gate behind them.
“How far?”
“I don’t know. I’ll know it when I see it, though.”
They started up the road, two tire-track paths worn around a hump of dirt, rocks and low bushes in the middle. It was slow going in the low-slung car, which almost bottomed out when the road became part dry creek bed. “This is somebody’s ranch. Did you see anyone?”
“Some guy picked me up and drove me to the trading post.” She added, “He asked me if I wanted to have a ball.”
“What?”
“He was joking. Some old cowboy, had to be at least eighty. He said Rock Springs Café was famous for its mountain oysters. Have a ball. Get it?”
Laura wondered how many hitchhikers the old cowboy had regaled with that one. “You’re lucky he came along.”
Shana didn’t say anything, but kept twisting her engagement ring. Laura didn’t know anything about carats, but she thought the diamond on this ring had to be one of the smallest ever made. The last size down before you got to a chip. Bobby Burdette hadn’t gone to much expense to get Shana to go with him. Even for window-dressing, the ring was unbelievably cheap. But she also knew that in Shana’s mind it was still an engagement ring.
Laura thought that Shana had a habit of expecting both too much and too little at the same time.
They drove for what seemed like a long time, up a long hill encrusted with rocks and cactus.
“I think that’s it,” Shana said, pointing at a ghost of a road heading off into the brush. Laura glanced at her odometer. They’d come two-and-a-half miles.
They followed this road over another couple of hills and then down into a wash.
“It was near the wash.” Excited now.
They got out of the car and followed the wash east. Hot, probably ninety degrees out here, and Laura could feel the sweat beading in her hair. Glad they each had a bottle of water. Shana looked at several spots, but there was no disturbed ground, no indication of the makeshift grave where she had been trapped for so long.
At last Shana stopped. “Maybe it’s the other way.”
An hour and a half later, it became clear to Laura that Shana had no idea where they were or where she had been buried.
“You sure it’s around here?”
“It’s here, somewhere. Why, do you think I’m lying? Because I’m not!”
“Why’d Bobby bring you out here?”
Patiently, Shana went through the story again. How, when he picked her up in Tucson, he said they’d drive back up to Williams and they’d tell her parents they were getting married. How, on the way up, he had turned off at Rock Springs, asking her to go on a little detour with him, because he wanted to show her something.
“What did he want to show you?”
“He said he had some pot stashed around here.”
But when he led Shana to the place in the desert where he said the marijuana was, she had gotten the shock of her life. He had showed her his “fort,” just like the kind he used to dig in the ground when he was a kid.
*
“It was plywood,” Shana said. “He piled dirt on top of it, a lot. I could hear him shoveling it over me—”
She shuddered and started to cry. Adventure had suddenly turned to reality.
Laura hated herself for disbelieving Shana even for a moment. She found herself opening her arms and letting Shana into their circle, felt the girl’s hot tears coursing down her own neck, her sobs coming from her depths.
Above her, Bobby’s muffled voice telling her she had water, she had food, she even had toilet paper. Telling her he had to have her play hostage, but he would be back soon, and then they would get married.
She just had to do this for him.
Her fear was real. Her torn, ragged fingernails were real. She couldn’t find the hole, but she had been there. She had faced the dark alone.
Bobby had been true to his word, Shana told her. He’d left her a case of bottled water, a twelve-roll of toilet paper, and some energy bars. But no light.
She had, literally, dug her way out.
*
“The thing I don’t understand,” Laura said as they drove back toward Flagstaff, “is why he’d do that to you.”
Shana twisted her ring again.
Laura let her own left hand drop to her side, drift into the pocket of her slacks. She felt around for the button on her portable digital recorder and turned it on. What she was doing was well within the law. She did not have to inform Shana she was taping her or ask for her permission.
All’s fair in love and police work.
Laura said again, “It’s just hard for me to understand. What do you think he was trying to do?”
Shana just stared ahead.
“I mean, if a guy was going to marry me—”
“He didn’t mean it.”
Laura said, “I’m sure he didn’t.”
“He told me he was coming back.” Defiant.
Laura said, “I guess he wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it, would he?”
“He meant it.”
“Don’t you think he’d be worried, though? About you, being down there?”
“He was coming back for me.”
“Is that what it felt like when you were down there? Weren’t you scared?”
“Of course I was scared! Wouldn’t you be?”
“Do you think he feels bad about scaring you? I mean look at you. Your nails. All that dirt—that fort could have caved in on you.”
“It did.”
Laura didn’t say anything, let it sink in. In her agitated state, Shana would likely deplore a void and would probably rush to fill it.
Shana was still looking out the window when she said, “He shouldn’t have done that to me.”
Laura said, “You’re right. It wasn’t fair.”
“I was scared.”
“I know.”
“I could have died in there.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t die,” Laura said. “What I can’t understand is why he did it. H
e said he wanted you to play hostage. What does that mean? Do you think it was a game?”
Silence. They were headed up the long grade to Cordes Junction, passing some cars as if they were standing still. A car was parked in the breakdown lane, hood up—Laura had seen many cars over the years blow up on this grade. She glanced at Shana. She could almost see the wheels turning. Laura said, “I think it must have been a game. But what was the point?”
Shana turned on her. “I don’t know, okay?”
“Okay.”
Shana’s voice broke. “He wouldn’t try to kill me.”
Up ahead a tanker truck and a semi took up both lanes. The same trucks that had borne down on her like the hounds of hell on the flats had now slowed down to a crawl at the top of the grade, their tail lights blinking steadily. Laura would have to slow down, lose her momentum.
Laura glanced at Shana, whose arms were crossed, her fingers tightly gripping her sides. Shana wanted to be reassured. She wanted her belief to be validated. “I’m sure that killing you wasn’t his intention,” she said. “He left you the water and the food. But what if something happened to him and he couldn’t make it back?”
“I was able to get out, wasn’t I? He didn’t bury me that deep. He probably did that on purpose. Made it easy for me to get out.”
“Was it easy?”
Shana was trying not to cry. But she was losing the battle.
Laura said, “When do you think he was coming back? Today?”
There was a long pause, and then Shana said something so faintly Laura wasn’t sure she heard it right. But she thought Shana said, “Never.”
*
They hit Camp Verde, drove over the Verde River, past the cottonwood trees along the river, past the RV park water tower and the Jesus is Lord sign, and up the double-laned hill.
Laura said, “Does this have anything to do with the Earth Warriors?”
Alarm in Shana’s voice. “What’s that?”
Mortal Crimes 2 Page 85