The Well - Book One of the Arizona Thriller Trilogy

by Sharon Sterling

  “If I’m honest, I have to say maybe they did.”

  The therapist cocked an eyebrow.

  “Oh, nothing unethical or anything like that, maybe just over-involvement.”

  “Let’s go back to the question you asked earlier. I’m a little confused. It wasn’t your ex-husband who told you he had the X-rated dream about you, was it?”

  “No. And this is something I’ve been struggling with that no amount of introspection seems to solve.”

  “Interesting. Let’s have at it.”

  “Okay then.” Allie had to coach herself silently to tell a story she was not proud of. “This guy...he’s someone I’m attracted to but he’s married. I’m not even sure why I’m attracted to him except that he’s intelligent and interesting and it seems he’s attracted to me.”

  “This isn’t Bob you’re talking about, is it? I thought you had a friendly relationship with him, not an intimate one.”

  “It isn’t Bob. Besides, Bob’s not married. I don’t think I feel comfortable telling you who the person is.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t need to know.”

  “Honest, I don’t know why I’m attracted to him when I’m not sure if I even like him.”

  “You know what they say. The most powerful sex organ in the body is the human brain. If it’s not hormones, it’s the cerebral cortex and the pheromones communicating with the limbic system.” She smiled. “Knowing someone is attracted to you is an aphrodisiac for most people. Did he express this sexual interest in you before you became attracted to him?”

  “Hum. Yes, as a matter of fact. What has me freaked out is that his wife seems to be involved. I mean, she watches him say and do things that--things most wives wouldn’t tolerate from their husbands. It makes me wonder what would happen if I said, 'yeah, let’s get a room.' Do they have a ménage-a-trios in mind, or is she just pimping for him?”

  The therapist slapped the arm of her chair hard, startling Allie When she spoke her voice held the coolness of contempt. “He wouldn’t say either, Allie. He would say, 'I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re obviously projecting your own desire for me, and it’s not going to happen.' And then he’d walk away with a snide smile on his bearded, obnoxious face.”

  Allie leaned forward in her chair. “You know who it is!”

  “Do you think you’re the first woman he’s engaged in this little farce of his? Or that he’s the first man to get a thrill from chase and conquest? Another variation is to let it progress to a sexual encounter and afterward cut the woman off cold, with no explanation. The ones who do that are probably proficient in the sexual relm. Ralph never takes it that far. I’ll bet I could guess which little ploys he used on you. He lacks imagination. He uses the same provocations over and over again.”

  Allie felt paralyzed by a memory flooding back in vivid detail, the look on Ralph VanDeusen’s face when Wanda had insulted him by commenting about his crossed eye and she had inadvertently deepened his pain with a clumsy comment. The look had been one of deep resentment, then appraisal and then self confidence.

  Now she understood. This whole episode was his way of getting revenge. What a price he wanted as payback for his wounded ego! She felt small, deflated. When words finally came, they were a whisper. “You know, in the movies the bad psychiatrist is a serial killer, a cannibal who eats his victims. In real life, he tries to eat your soul.”

  The therapist looked at her with an expression of deep compassion. “Allie, there are lots of ways that damaged people try to take control, or stay in control, or wield power.”

  Allie clenched her fists. “Damn him, damn him, damn him!” Then she opened her hands and lowered her face into her palms, knowing self pity was a bitter second away.

  Blood rushed to her face with a sudden realization. She felt her cheeks burning, burning against her hands and when she looked up at the therapist, her eyes were wide but unseeing.

  Upshall and VanDeusen, she thought. The same sick motivations drove them both. They are monsters vomited out of a common maw, narcissistic, pathologically selfish and willing to betray the most basic moral precepts in their attempts to gain control and dominance. In that struggle for primacy, sexuality is their weapon.

  The therapist saw her in deep reflection and waited for Allie to speak. Silence persisted. The therapist’s voice was soft. “Anger and remorse are very appropriate emotions when you’ve been hurt or humiliated. But what are you going to do about it?”

  Chapter 8

  After her appointment with Allie, Crystal’s sense of urgency grew while she drove home. By the time she braked to a stop in the driveway of her modest little starter home in Camp Verde, urgency had progressed to anxiety.

  The time needed to get a drowsy and limp Toby unbuckled, un-entangled and lifted out of his car seat felt like an hour. He didn’t protest when she put him down in his tiny youth bed for a nap, leaving her free to call Kim at the hardware store. When the store's other clerk put Kim on the line, relief flooded her. “Kim, you’re there!” she said. “I was afraid…”.

  “Me too. I waited all the rest of last night and all morning for the police, the deputies, but when they didn’t show I got ready and here I am at work, still waiting. I can only talk for a minute,” she added, “or until the next customer comes in, anyway. So what happened, what have you heard?”

  “She knows. Allie knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  “She knows about Upshall in the Well last night.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re imagining it.”

  “No I’m not! She was talking about him and then she mentioned the Well and last night.”

  “Are you sure she meant him?”

  “She said his name and she said if anyone tried to harm him, the police would come after me or Danny. Because of that stupid threat I made. I guess they know I couldn’t have thrown him in the Well, so my husband is the logical suspect. A 'person of interest' they call it. But that means she knows about last night, and it means he’s still alive.”

  “How could she know?” Then Kim answered her own question. Maybe it was Allie at the Well...or someone she knows. She hesitated. If she revealed that suspicion to Crystal, it might compromise her friend’s tenuous relationship with the therapist even more.

  “Kim, I don’t think he told them it was you.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” Before Crystal could answer, a thought flashed into Kim's mind that was infinitely more fearful than the prospect of arrest. He didn’t tell because he planned revenge. He would come for her. Wary of sharing that alarming thought with Crystal, she blurted, “I have to go. I’ll get off work early and come over there. Bye.”

  Kim felt lucky that her boss was in a good mood that day. He let her leave work two hours before the end of her shift. The six block drive to Crystal’s house took less than five minutes. Crystal had unlocked the door for her. When she walked in without knocking, Crystal had just given the children a snack of milk and homemade cookies and they were watching TV in the living room.

  Kaylee looked up from the frantic action on the screen, a roadrunner with coyote in hot pursuit, and saw Kim. She smiled, held out her arms and kicked her legs up and down on the sofa in anticipation. Kim picked up the little girl, spun around with her a few times just short of dizziness, then kissed her cheek and put her back down on the sofa. Then she reached over to tweak Toby’s hair.

  “Hi Toady,” she said.

  He looked up from his child sized rocking chair, stopped rocking, pursed his lips and glared at her in a mock scowl. “Not Toady. Toby!”

  “Oh, that’s right, I forgot. Toby. Hi, Toby.” She high-fived his tiny hand. He rewarded her with a radiant, toothy grin. Then, having exhausted most of his speaking vocabulary, he resumed rocking with reckless vigor.

  Kim's ritual greeting with the children gave her a minute of respite from the cold fear that had gripped her since her telephone conversation with Crystal. She went to join her friend at the table in
the dining area, which afforded a full view of the children. It seemed to Kim that Crystal always had her eye on them.

  Crystal placed a glass of cold milk in front of Kim and pushed the plate of cookies within her reach. Kim ignored them. “Thanks for picking me up last night. What did Danny say when I called and woke you up at one a.m.?”

  “His exact words were 'Oh, crap!' Our phone never rings in the middle of the night so he was spooked. I’m glad I was the one who answered it. I told him it was Auntie, that she fell and she said she was okay, but I would go over to her house to make sure.”

  Kim rubbed her eyes with hands scored by dozens of scratches then asked, “So what happened out there last night after I left? Do the police even know? And where is Upshall?”

  “After I talked to you today, on a hunch I called the hospital. That's where he is. He’s in stable condition, whatever that means. Somehow, he survived. That person you heard last night must have saved him. I can't figure out who or how or why.”

  “A mystery to me,” said Kim. She shook her head. “Maybe he didn’t need to be saved.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I guess he needed to be saved from me. I was within seconds of shooting him. That would have killed him. Hypothermia or drowning might have done him in, too, but the leeches wouldn’t have killed him.”

  Crystal cocked her head in question. “Why not?”

  “After I got home last night, I went on the internet. I found out the leeches are a different kind. They don’t suck blood, they eat, like, water bugs. They’re harmless to people.”

  Crystal stared at her friend in disbelief. Then, “Weren’t we stupid?”

  “Not stupid, Crystal. Just uninformed.”

  “It seemed so right for him to die that way.” Glancing at the children, she lowered her voice to a fierce whisper. “I should have stayed there and killed him when I had the chance, that night in his garage.”

  “I don’t think so. When you told me you wanted the gun for target practice I knew that was bullshit. I knew who the target would be, but I didn't believe you could actually do it. Then, when you told me your idea about the Well, I knew I had to help. It’s my karma.”

  Crystal put her elbows on the table, closed her eyes and put her face in her hands. “I’m exhausted,” she said, “and you look like you’ve been in a cat fight, with real cats.” She looked up sideways at Kim. “I thought karma was something that happens automatically, maybe in a next life time, if there is such a weird thing. You know, like reincarnation.”

  “Maybe. What if there isn’t any next lifetime? What if there’s no reincarnation, no heaven or hell? There’s no proof of any of that, is there?”

  “I haven’t thought about it much but I guess there isn’t. They say it’s faith that makes you believe in that kind of stuff.”

  “Some people don’t have any faith. Or they just don’t want to wait. They want justice now, right now, when and where they can see it, not after the person dies and goes to hell or on to some next lifetime.”

  “So is killing him your karma or not? You're confusing me.”

  Kim shook her head. “I guess I don’t know any more. Maybe I don’t have that faith people talk about. Maybe I’m unconvinced and impatient.” She took several deep swallows of her milk while she considered it and then leaned back in the chair, wiping her upper lip with a pinch of thumb and forefinger. “Let’s face it, after what he did to us we both wanted him dead. I still do.”

  Crystal closed her eyes. One tear slipped from under an eyelid and slid down her cheek.

  Kim took one of the chocolate chip cookies from the plate and broke it in half. “What I do know is that taking him to the Well was a mistake. The Well is sacred. Generations of Indians like me, maybe even some of my own ancestors, lived and died there. We owned it for a thousand years and it’s still special to us. It didn’t deserve to be violated by him. I should have known better, but the Well knew. It’s like--it spit him back out, knowing how evil he is.”

  When Crystal opened her eyes, her brows drew together and her face contorted in an expression that could have been rage or anguish or both. “Kim, he knows you tried to kill him but I don’t think he told the police. I don't think he will.”

  “Maybe the flaming coward is embarrassed to say a woman got the best of him.”

  “Or maybe the reason he didn’t tell the police is that he’s going to come looking for you. He’s going to try to kill you, Kim.”

  “If he can spare the time from molesting little kids.” Kim quickly put down the uneaten cookie and wiped melted chocolate from her finger tips with a paper napkin. “I have something that shows what he's still doing to kids.”

  “What? Pictures?”

  “They’re on a memory card from his phone.”

  “My God, Kim. You should give it to the police!”

  In a reflex, Kim patted her breast pocket, as if to feel the memory card, although she knew this wasn’t the shirt she wore last night and the card wasn’t there.

  “I'm not sure they could convict him on just the pictures,” she said. “He could deny the card is his. The kids look like they’re from Vietnam or Thailand or somewhere like that. They could never find them and get them to testify in court.” She looked directly into Crystal's eyes. “But we could always report him, like Allie told you.”

  Have some idiot judge let him out on bail, so he could run? If he stayed, we’d have to testify. My family would know, the whole town would know and someday even my own kids would know. I can’t do it, Kim, I can’t.” Silent tears slid down Crystal’s face, wetting the strands of brown hair that fell across her cheeks.

  “I need to find that darn memory card first and then figure out what to do with it.”

  “Kim, we're not talking about the important thing. What if he comes after you? He has guns, rifles and handguns. You’re my best friend,” she said, as if that summed up everything. “He’s done enough to us already!”

  Kaylee turned quickly to look at her mother with a question on her face, alarmed by her mother's voice. Crystal shook her head at the little girl and gave her a reassuring smile. Kaylee turned back to the TV.

  Lowering her own voice, Kim said, “Don’t worry, Crystal. He’s not going to win. I want you to call the hospital every day to check on him. Then you call me. The minute you say they're about to release him, I’ll take a little unplanned vacation from work and go somewhere safe. Just until we figure out what to do.”

  ***

  Allie sat alone by the swimming pool on the evening she arrived at the hotel. The patio surrounding the pool held several small groups of travelers absorbed in their own concerns, which allowed her to enjoy the quiet and solitude undisturbed. Lit from below the surface, the water gleamed like pale aqua cellophane, the play of shifting light and shadow across it hypnotic.

  A soft breeze lifted her hair and stroked the surface of the heated water. In response, it rippled and undulated voluptuously, releasing a few small tendrils of mist here and there.

  She loved the soothing display and mused to herself that it could be set to music, perhaps the strains of the 'Moonlight Sonata'.

  The hotel hosting the seminar she would attend tomorrow made the best of Arizona sunshine and seventy-degree weather, an irresistible lure for hordes of tourists from northern climates.

  The four-story hotel was set in a luxurious landscape of acres of lush green grass, pools and fountains, palm trees, hibiscus bushes covered with red flowers the size of saucers, and bird of paradise shrubs, shamelessly fecund, displaying arm-like fronds of orange and yellow blossoms.

  Allie thought how different from the Well it looked. On that night just a few days ago, the surface of the Well resembled a black mirror reflecting the stars, while mist conspired to obscure its victim. She felt relieved that the episode merited no more than a paragraph in the local paper, in which her name had not appeared. She had begun to doubt that Kim or Crystal were involved at all. She could almost forget it had e
ver happened.

  A clanking sound recalled her to the present. The wrought iron gate to the fence that surrounded the pool swung open. A man in tennis shoes, shorts and a Hawaiian shirt entered and walked around the pool to the row of chairs and lounges where she sat. She thought that like her, he didn’t plan to swim. He merely wanted to enjoy a leisurely evening comparable with life on a tropical isle.

  “Do you mind if I sit here?” he said, indicating the lounge next to hers.

  “No, not at all.” The muted lighting showed a man in his late forties or early fifties with a muscular build, a receding hairline and blue eyes that were large and round like those of a baby. They lent a fresh and innocent quality to his otherwise mature, masculine appearance.

  He settled back into the plastic lounge chair and took a deep breath. “Isn’t this place the best?” he said. “I wish I were staying longer than two days. I’m here for the conference on ethics and the law.”

  “So am I. It’s a good way to start the New Year. Now that all the holiday hullabaloo is over, I’m trying to refocus on my career.”

  “I’m focused on getting those CEUs,” he said, smiling.

  “Of course,” she said, “me too.” Allie had also come for the continuing education units that therapists needed to renew licensure every two years. Some of the CEUs had to cover specific topics such as professional ethics. This two-day seminar in Phoenix would complete her own requirement for re-licensure.

  The man still smiled at her. “I’m Phil Wilson. I’m staying on the ground floor, right over there,” he said, pointing to a room that overlooked the pool. Then he extended his hand for her to shake.

  “Allie Davis,” she said, as their hands touched. “I’m up on the fourth floor.”

  He was a nice looking man. It occurred to her that the Moonlight Sonata in her head might at any moment fade into the soft strains of a romantic refrain for violin. She told herself not to be silly and juvenile.

  Phil was easy to talk with. He told her he lived in Tucson and worked at a shelter for homeless veterans. This same seminar would be offered in Tucson in another month, he said, but he needed his CEUs now, and his agency was willing to reimburse him for most of the cost of travel and tuition.