He gestured to a gray-haired woman who stood behind the kitchen counter spooning freshly baked muffins on a plate. She wore a white knitted sweater and her collarbone stood out like a coat hanger under a layer of crepey skin.
“This is Bernie,” Jesky said.
Malin assumed it was short for Bernadette and shook the hand of a small woman; pale lips gave a flicker of a smile and there was no peace in that haunted expression. The type of face that avoided a mirror. You could tell by the disheveled silver hair.
“I heard sirens,” Mr. Jesky said, leaning back in a recliner and brushing crumbs from his shirt. “You weren’t in no accident, were you?”
Malin felt the bubble of a chuckle in the back of her throat. “Just freeing the neighborhood of one less crook.”
“You should get a real job,” he said, pointing to an easy chair. “Something steady with regular hours.”
“Wanted to be a detective ever since I was twelve. I work homicide now. More logical. You know, reactive.”
“Is that a promotion?”
“A lateral move.”
Malin spared Jesky the reasons why she had been partnered with Temeke and sent to Northwest Area Command. It was due to a spark of defiance that Temeke was picked on; a rather large spark, which latterly detonated in the face of top brass. Not a good move.
“That’s admirable,” Jesky said. “I did all sorts. Now I sell insurance.”
“It’s the road you like, isn’t it. The freedom, the independence. Kind of like a detective, only without the chase.”
“You understand, then?”
Malin nodded but she had a feeling he wasn’t talking about himself. A picture hung on the wall between the kitchen and the living room, an explosion of sage and brown hills, the type you only get in New Mexico. A photograph leaned against the stem of a ceramic lamp, a small boy with unruly hair and a cheeky smile standing in front of a sign. She couldn’t read it from where she sat but it looked like a road closed sign if she could guess.
“They treat you good?” Jesky asked.
“For the most part.”
Bernie stooped over Malin with a black coffee and a muffin. Both were an odd combination at the latter end of the day unless you were working nights. But Malin wasn’t complaining. She took both and studied a neatly furnished living room. Crochet runners, armrests, coasters, looked like the old lady next door was running a thriving business with the neighbors.
“I just wanted to know if you’ve heard from Flynn,” Malin said, trying to do a subtle sweep of the room. No sign of a house phone but there had to be a work phone somewhere registered through Rover’s Insurance in Gallup.
“I have no reason to believe he’ll call.” Jesky finished the muffin off in two bites and nodded at his wife for another. “It’s the papers that bother us, dredging up all kinds of stuff. They said something about bondage and sexual torture. My son weren’t into any of that.”
“I’d ignore it if I were you. There’s rarely a grain of truth in every article.”
“He’s a good lad. Always helping people.”
“You mean for as long as you’ve been his stepdad. You are his stepdad, right?”
“He’s like my own son.”
“Was he a good kid?” Malin stared at Bernie.
“Yeah,” she said, eyes floating to the floor as if she recalled something special. “He was easygoing, although I don’t think he ever forgave me for leaving his real dad. Abe was an alcoholic. It were bad sometimes.”
“Did Flynn have many friends?”
“He had one in particular,” Bernie said with a faraway gaze. “Dennis. Nice boy. Lived two streets away. Got up to all sorts.”
“He was sentenced to weed-pulling in the back yard a few times,” Jesky gave Malin a wink. “’Course there is no back yard, just a crap-load of spiky tumbleweeds. He was at it for hours.”
“Is there anywhere he’s likely to go? Somewhere he likes to be alone?” They both shook their heads and Malin gave a tight smile. “A friend, perhaps? A house in the mountains? Sometimes people leave for a time. But they always come home.”
Still no answer and Malin tried to form the first impression of two potential suspects. She told them the police could access phone records and explained how it was done. She confirmed they would be keeping an eye on all calls.
“What can you tell me about Tarian?” she asked.
“Loaded is what she was. Only ever met that kind through work.” Jesky looked the living room over as one would a cheap imitation of good jewelry. “Course I earn more now than I’ve ever have. But we like it here.”
Bernie nodded, eyes misting up ready to brim over. She looked down at her lap and swatted an imaginary crumb from her thigh. “She’s family.”
“I’m so sorry,” Malin whispered.
“The wedding was hard,” Jesky continued. “It was hard on our boy, all that money. He knew he was out of his depth.”
“What about Rosie Ellis?”
“One day they was dating, the next... well, it happens. Bernie misses her. Don’t you, hon?”
Malin detected a quality to Bernie’s voice that made her realize talking about Flynn was an effort. The drawn out sighs, the occasional flinch. She was sitting on the edge of her chair now and rubbing her knees.
“Flynn was like an idol to her,” Bernie said. “Rosie was like a daughter to me. Then he met Tarian. Things changed.”
“Did you like Tarian?”
“Yeah.”
There was a moment’s hesitation and a question in that yeah that Malin recognized as a maybe. Sometimes it was hard to transfer feelings to another potential daughter-in-law, especially one they’d set their heart on.
“She’d invite us over for dinner at her mom’s house and we’d eat roasted rack of lamb and lobster tail, things we’d never had,” Bernie said. “She’s a neat freak. So is her mom.”
Malin couldn’t help returning Bernie’s smile. The Walley-Beckett mansion was probably a far cry from the comfortable little home the Jesky’s had.
“Her dad’s one of the nicest men I’ve ever met,” Bernie said. “He helped them get the house they live in. Neighbors are friendly. Larry and Pat and the Quinns. We usually see them at Thanksgiving.”
Malin knew Jarvis and Maggie had already questioned the neighbors and came up empty handed. Nobody had anything to add, nothing remarkable, that is. She watched Jesky occasionally cock his head at Bernie and nod when she did.
“Did Flynn use Rover’s for the household insurance?” Malin asked. She knew he hadn’t but she wanted to get an idea why.
“Rich thought it would cause conflict.” Bernie straightened her shoulders. “Said he’d prefer someone outside the family. If you ask me, he got a good deal off a friend.”
“I’m sorry about the house,” Malin said.
Bernie seemed to consider the question. “They say it’s gutted.
“You haven’t been over there?”
“Nah,” Bernie watched Jesky take a few more bites of his muffin.” I can’t bring myself to go.”
Malin felt the compulsion to detour toward something new. As for Bernie’s comment about the house, either she saw it in the newspaper or someone must have told her. “Do you have a recent photo of Flynn?”
Jesky’s eyes drifted to the ceiling. “I might have one.”
He sauntered into the kitchen and opened a drawer. Came back with a picture of Flynn jogging in the foothills and said she could take it. Flynn seemed stronger, taller somehow. He was a good-looking man.
“You’ll be going to the funeral?” she asked.
Jesky bowed his head into his coffee and took a sip. “Not after all the publicity in the papers. Wouldn’t be fair on Bernie.”
Malin focused on lamplight sparkling off the windows and a brown withering desert beyond. Not a great view. “Do you know Cliff Jaynes?”
Jesky’s chin jerked up and his breath hitched before coming to a stop. “I’ve met him once. Friend of Tarian’s
. Why?”
“I gather she knew him quite well.” Intimately, Malin wanted to say. “He was interested in being more than friends. Might have made Flynn behave differently when he found out.”
Malin saw they weren’t following what she was getting at and pulled the photocopy of the poem from her jacket pocket. “We found this at the scene. Any idea what it is?”
Jesky tilted it to the light and paused over it for a moment. He passed it to Bernie. “I thought the house and contents were burned, detective?”
Good question. “Everything but this,” Malin said. “It was hand delivered to the mailbox. It’s only a guess, but we understand from Cliff Jaynes the words Dead Cold might refer to meth.”
Bernie and Jesky both exchanged a look, as if they’d finally settled a bet.
TWENTY-ONE
There was no sign of the units in the parking lot, only a long driveway shrouded by loose swirls of sand. Flynn found his bike where he’d left it and powered down East Butler Avenue. He filled up at a Chevron gas station, bought a loaf of bread and a pack of sliced cheese. A six-pack of amber ale beckoned on the bottom counter and he took that as well.
A Tracfone store loomed ahead on the corner of Babbitt Drive and the sign on the door indicated they were closed. The glare of a fluorescent light and movement inside promised the opposite. He was in luck. A young woman came out to empty the trash in a nearby dumpster and went back inside. She picked up a coffee pot, cocked her head at Flynn and tapped it with a black painted fingernail. He could almost hear the click, click, click through the window.
“Just making a fresh pot,” she said as he walked in.
There was no one else in the store and Flynn studied an attractive young woman with plump cheeks and the type of mouth where the front teeth were always on display. “Looks like you’ve got a good selection,” he said.
“What type of phone are you looking for?”
“One that texts.”
She looked him over and gave a giggle. “They all do that nowadays.”
He smiled back and pointed at an iPhone 5. He wasn’t that old, was he?
“Bottom of the range,” she said, “but good for the price. Hundred and sixty bucks, no contract. We only have white in stock.”
“Sounds good.”
“Help yourself,” she said, pointing to the coffee dispenser which was coughing out a dribble.
She disappeared into the back of the store and he imagined her rifling through a pile of boxes to find the right one. There was a Saturday morning newspaper on the counter. He swiveled it toward him and found an article on page two titled Out Of His League. No picture this time but a short paragraph confirming families were being questioned about Tarian’s death. The sound of her name seemed to reach like hand into his gut, twisting and twisting until the bile crept up into his throat. It was freaking dangerous, he thought, being in a store that happened to be closed. He heard a loud metal rattle coming from the back, a security gate to the rear parking lot perhaps.
The young woman returned with a box and a receipt. She ran through the features of the phone, voice glossing over the retina display, the eight megapixel camera and the ninety day seller warrantee, none of which Flynn could care less about. He suddenly wanted to get the hell out of there and the thought of the six-pack of amber ale in his backpack came out of nowhere.
With the promise of a fistful of cash and a healthy commission, Flynn had bought a new phone and a fully charged battery. No credit check. No sweat.
He thanked her and glanced toward the back of the store where light streamed in through the open gate. Two figures stood in front of a delivery truck, caps pointed downward as they lifted three boxes apiece from the cargo space. Wiry and strong and arms rivered with blue veins, one with a ponytail, one with a slick-back that curled up at the nape of his neck.
There was no point wasting time. No point bringing attention to himself either. He half expected to be chased to the front door, having to crouch to the floor in order to thread himself beneath a slowly descending security gate as it came down on his waist.
He must have been running by the time he got to his bike. He was certainly whistling by the time he got to I-17, straddling a high-speed beast going eighty plus on the straight. Hardly any traffic all the way to exit 320 to Schnebly Hill Road, a thirteen mile highway snaking west through ranches and grassy cienegas to Sedona. He wanted to pull over and soak up the rough-hewn wall of Mingus Mountain at the edge of the Verde Valley. But his heart was beating out a manic rhythm as he passed hikers weaving through a thin fringe of woodland near the roadside. They wouldn’t suspect a lonely traveler on a motorbike, nor could they see his face under the helmet.
He meandered along a potholed road flanked by high cliffs and curling onward like the helical stripe on a barber pole. He could only glance at the red-rock nirvana and its forests, and half an hour later he found the road closed sign and the large saguaro cactus his mom had described.
As the bike threw up a spray of red dirt on the trailhead, he saw it. Rising majestically into the sky a formation with the appearance of two gabled walls at each end. It reminded him of a large manor house where the front façade had collapsed and left a tumble of debris on the hillside. When he came closer, it was merely the shadows and the shifting colors of the sandstone that had made it so.
Steering the bike through the ruts the jeep tours had left behind, his lungs burned and his muscles ached. Sometimes walking, sometimes riding, until he noticed a cleft in the rock almost entirely covered in elder and agave and their large fleshy leaves. He found a flat piece of rock on which to stand his bike and judging by a single groove in the mud—a block-type tread pattern—his wasn’t the only bike around.
Sweat prickled his temples and crept down the cleft in his buttocks. He skirted the side of the hill, twisting from boulder to boulder and ducking under a canopy of low-hanging branches. All the numbness from the past few hours seemed to slip from his bones. Not a soul about.
There on a wide ledge sat the railroad car, peering out beneath the cover of trees. How in hell they got it up there Flynn never knew, but the view in the old days must have been something else. Now it was thick and overgrown, no chance you could see the opposite cliff. The good news was if he couldn’t see out, no one could.
The underbody rigging and tanks were a muted shade of orange, cracked and rotten and punctured with grass. The only sign of life was a second set of tire tracks running to a lean-to made of wood. He could smell the occasional whiff of resin and thinner, and if he wasn’t mistaken, old tires.
“Hello?”
Flynn’s voice echoed back. He examined the shed, felt a lightness in his chest when he found a blue and white striped railroad cap hanging on a hook. The adrenaline rush made his skin prickle and he snatched it and put it on his head. His dad was here. Somewhere.
Threading his way to the railroad car, he hauled himself up by the grab irons and stepped into a narrow living space. No old man huddled beneath a dirty blanket looking ravaged and horribly drunk. No unwashed plates in the cracked sink, no generator to keep the place warm and not a stitch of bedding. Not even an unopened letter propped against the window with his name on it. The power connectors above the door hummed in the breeze and a tattered curtain twitched at the far end. It took him a while to take it all in; the sleeping birth, a scrap of flowery wallpaper barely visible around the light fixture. Traces of his mom.
Flynn balked at the thought of coming all this way, only to find the man he worshipped was long gone. He was gutted in the silence, soaking up the residue of what might have been Abe McCann. Rubbing the dust off the window with his cuff, he was surprised at how far he could see through the leaves. A new vantage point on the rugged world beyond, the trails, the hikes.
At times like this he felt his life was full of joy and promise, a life apart from Tarian and in a place she had never been. Shielded from view, he watched a distant jeep as it ploughed a furrow through the landscape. Noisy pass
engers would soon spill out at the end of their tour, rebelling against the thought they had left the peace of the wilderness behind.
Given the dark days he’d endured, this silent omniscience was the bonus at the end of his trail and he was damned if he was going to give it up. Only occasionally did he feel a twinge of the highs and lows that lay ahead. The dusk before the dawn.
He reached into his backpack for a bottle of water and the loaf of bread. The sandwich he made tasted better than the gourmet variety found on a convenience store shelf next to the pickled eggs and circus peanuts. He read and reread the instructions to his cell phone and found a disable caller ID function in the general settings. He also found a cool flashlight icon at the bottom of the screen. He wondered if the phone worked out there, but he needn’t have worried. He was near enough to Sedona to hit a cell tower and the number he dialed went straight through to Jesky’s truck.
“You old sap head,” Jesky muttered. “Where are you?”
“Hard to tell.”
“You got enough money, son?”
“For now.”
“The detective came over again. Showed us a poem. Hand delivered to your house. Said something about drugs. Mean anything?”
“I don’t do drugs.”
“Yeah. Well, she asked me for a recent photo. So I gave her the one of you standing next to the prisoner transport van on Roma.”
Flynn let out a chuckle. The straggly hair in the photograph Jesky had given her was gone and according to the barber in Holbrook, so yesterday.
“The one I took of you on La Luz trail a month ago, son. Didn’t look so miserable then.”
Flynn remembered the day. Jesky had driven him to the Sandia foothills for a brisk hike up the mountain and a view of the volcano cinder cones and Mount Taylor. Instead, the old man stayed in his truck, took a nap and waited for Flynn to come back. The lazy jackass took the picture from his truck window. “What else did she want?”
“The usual. When I last heard from you, what number you called from. Said she had a warrant to get CDR records. Something about a pen register. It’s all jargon to me, son.”
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