Coyote Gorgeous
by Vijaya Schartz
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 Vijaya Schartz
Cover Art by Kendra Egert
ISBN: 978-1-4659-5221-9
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to a person or persons, living or dead, business establishments or events is purely coincidental.
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Chapter One
"There’ve been three killings." Jake, the blond poster boy with clear blue eyes, winked at Madison as he swaggered into the fluorescent glow of the break room, in the Arizona Game and Fish Department headquarters. Just in time for morning coffee.
Ranger Madison Huntley set up her Starbucks tray on a round table. She resented the way her boss still flirted with her after she’d dumped the womanizing jerk six months ago. She managed to keep her voice even. "What kind of killings?"
"Two dogs, one foal." Dashing as usual in his crisp tan uniform, Jake stared into her eyes as he handed her the assignment sheet. "Better catch the culprit fast or there will be more victims."
Madison snatched the paper, avoiding his roving fingers, and adjusted her side arm to sit more comfortably. She perused the document. "Wild animal attack?"
"Right in our little corner of paradise." Jake grabbed a cup from the cardboard tray and pulled off the lid, then sat next to her. Too close.
Madison scooted her chair away from him and his overly sweet cologne and frowned. "In North Phoenix?"
"In Cave Creek, a few miles away. Such a sleepy little town, too." He inhaled the aroma from his cup with gusto. "If we can’t keep the inhabitants safe from wildlife near our own headquarters, it will invite bad press for the department."
"Indeed." Madison scoffed. Heaven forbid. A scandal getting in the way of Jake’s great political ambitions?
Attracted by the coffee, a gangly front desk clerk with doe eyes walked into the room and selected a latte. "Thanks, Maddy."
As she left, the young woman batted her lashes at Jake, who ignored her. Probably one of his past conquests.
Rangers and game wardens in khaki uniforms broke their morning joke contest near a snack machine and approached the table to get coffee as well.
A ranger on his way out to the terrace toward the tables beyond the glass wall raised his cup to Madison and gave a thumbs up. "Thanks for bringing the good stuff, Maddy."
Madison nodded and smiled but quickly returned her attention to Jake. "We’ve had a resurgence of rabies lately. Could it be a rabid animal?"
"I don’t think so." Jake leaned over and whispered in her ear like a lover. "But I’d like to keep it quiet all the same."
Madison cringed but ignored his advances. Good thing the room cleared quickly as the rangers left for the field. "What happened to my transfer request?"
"On my desk." Jake leaned back in his chair, sipping coffee. "Still catching up with paperwork after a week in the hospital."
"Getting hit by lightning on your last field trip didn’t improve you any." She bit her lips to avoid getting into trouble again. It wouldn’t help her cause to antagonize her boss.
"Don’t worry your pretty little head. I’ll send the forms." Was he patronizing just to push her buttons?
Madison refused to take the bait. "When can I expect an opening?"
"Not anytime soon." He grinned, happy about it, the rat.
"Why not?" Madison struggled to keep her tone casual.
"In this economy, with all the cutbacks, people hang on to their jobs." He flashed a satisfied smile.
Madison repressed a sigh of frustration, clenching her fist at her side. Reacting to his insufferable attitude would only make things worse. She didn’t want to file a sexual harassment complaint either. After all, she’d dated the jerk willingly. She could deal with Jake until that transfer arrived. Picking up the assignment sheet, she rose and said matter-of-factly, "I’ll take care of whatever killed these animals."
"Discreetly?" He stood up.
"Promised."
As Madison headed for the door, Jake followed on her heels, walking along a wide hallway. From the wall, color posters of animals and drab mug shots of men wanted for wildlife crimes seemed to stare. The soles of her tan leather boots squeaked on the polished floor.
"I’m counting on you," Jake breathed on her neck.
Madison quickened her pace to escape his proximity and couldn’t help the impatience in her voice. "I get it, boss. I’ll handle it."
To Madison’s relief, Jake ducked into his office.
Finally rid of him, she emerged into the bright morning sun of the employee parking lot. The crisp desert breeze washed away the clinging smell of his cologne. But the cool morning air wouldn’t last. Spring in Phoenix meant three-digit temperatures and sticky asphalt.
She strode through the rows of cars between the large office building and the labs then entered a fenced area to the side, where a fleet of white pickup trucks, perfectly lined up, displayed the round Game & Fish logo on their doors. Distant gunshots from marksmen at the Avery shooting range mingled with the sounds of morning traffic on the busy highway.
Madison opened the door of her truck and stepped inside then checked her laptop and her bio kit. Angling the rearview mirror, she glanced at her blond bobbed hair streaked by the sun. Her natural tan didn’t need makeup. Satisfied with her looks, she slipped on her sunglasses, started the engine, readjusted the mirror, then drove off the lot through the open sliding gate and around the main building.
She yielded to a faded, green Ford pickup, beat up and dull with age, turning left into the public parking lot. Madison recognized the driver’s strong profile and turquoise and silver necklace. The old Hopi chief, White Eagle. What was he doing here? Then she remembered that each spring he applied for a permit to capture protected golden eaglets for his tribe’s ritual sacrifices. What a barbaric custom.
*****
At the light, Madison turned east on Carefree Highway. Merging into morning traffic, she pulled down the sun visor against the bright glare. Ten minutes later, she turned into a pot-holed driveway that crunched under her tires and sent dust flying in her wake. She drove along a corral to the right, where a dozen well fed horses rested in a shaded area, while others nibbled at the scarce grass. On the left, a huge open barn revealed square bales of hay and various carts and carriages.
At the end of the dirt road, Madison stopped her truck in the shade of a tall sycamore tree. In front of her spread an old adobe hacienda, large by any standard. She read the numbers on the mailbox shaped like a cowboy hat then double-checked the address on her assignment sheet. Reaching for her laptop on the passenger seat, she opened it and started a new report.
When she cracked both windows against the quickly rising heat, she inhaled a whiff of hay and horse manure and sneezed. Blasted allergies. After grabbing her bio kit from behind the seat, Madison stepped out of the truck and strode toward the house.
The yellowed front lawn displayed a battered pioneer wagon, with missing wheel spokes, and rusty, broken ribs sticking out of tattered canvas. A wooden sign nailed to it advertised Hay Rides and Horseback Riding in faded red paint. A horse neighed nearby.
Force of habit, Madison noticed every detail. The adobe ranch house had sienna walls, a flat roof, and a wide ar
ch shading the front porch. A last, rustic remnant of what the Phoenix Valley had looked like in the last century. Now the quaint Wild West look served as bait for tourism. Anything for profit.
Wind chimes on the shaded front porch jingled in the desert breeze above a wooden bench painted purple and green. Before Madison could pull the knotted cord to ring the antique brass bell hanging by the entrance, the door opened. She plucked her sunglasses and smiled. "Mrs. Esteban?"
A dark-haired woman in her forties, wearing jeans and red cowboy boots, wiped mascara-smeared brown eyes with a tissue. She swallowed a sob and nodded.
"Officer Madison Huntley answering your call." Madison caught a whiff of huevos rancheros drifting from the dark interior. The rancid smell made her coffee churn in her stomach.
The woman stiffened as she glanced at Madison’s firearm. "Are you the police?"
"I’m with the Arizona Game and Fish Department." Madison tried to sound reassuring. "The Cave Creek Police do not investigate wildlife incidents. We do."
"Incident? It’s downright criminal! And destruction of property. It’s an outrage! Who is going to pay for this?"
Surprised by the woman’s aggressive reaction, Madison resisted the urge to step back. To diffuse a potentially volatile situation, she said calmly, "I’m very sorry. We’ll do everything we can to find what did this."
As if regretting her outburst, the woman sighed and her shoulders sagged. "Never mind. This way."
Mrs. Esteban stepped out onto the porch and Madison followed her around the side of the house, stepping around pails and water hoses as they made their way toward the back. Madison stifled a sneeze as the pollen from wild flowers growing under the faucet tickled her nostrils. Positioned at ten o’clock, a brand new stable with a corrugated roof and fresh white paint sheltered a long row of vacant stalls. Above the door of the closed room on the end of the structure, hung a painted Tack Room sign framed with horseshoes.
"You didn’t touch anything, did you?"
"I left everything as I found it, like they told me on the phone." The ranch woman led Madison toward a ramada, in this case four posts holding a trellis roof, shaded by a pink vine of queen’s wreath crawling up the lattice. "This is bad for business. We need our customers to feel safe leaving their animals with us. The foal was mine, and very valuable. Such a waste."
"Surely you had it insured."
The woman sighed heavily and dabbed at a tear. "It’s not about the money. I loved my babies."
"I understand." Madison loved animals, too. So much so, she’d sworn to protect wildlife as a vocation.
"I can’t believe they are gone." Mrs. Esteban stopped under the ramada, as if afraid to tread any further.
Stepping onto the brown Saltillo tile, Madison gazed over what passed for a meadow in the desert, half gravel, half grass. But in the meager pasture, a few feet away, a bay foal and two large Rottweilers lay mangled and very dead. Blood splattered the turf, dirt and rocks around them. Madison steeled herself against the gruesome sight.
"Here they are." Mrs. Esteban barely glanced at the carnage in front of them, her shoulders shaken by sobs. "My babies! My only family."
Babies? Surprised, Madison blurted aloud, "These are large, strapping dogs, males, not easily overcome."
She did not mention aggressive. This was no typical mauling. Madison gazed beyond the grisly scene at the stretch of living desert. In the distance, the Black Mountains jutted from the valley floor, harboring a fuzz of spring green. The culprit was hiding out there.
"I don’t know how the foal got out of his stall." The woman furrowed her brow. "Pablo told me he locked everything last night, as usual."
Madison took mental notes for her report. "Did you hear anything? Didn’t the dogs bark?"
"I take night time pain pills so I can sleep." The woman rubbed her denim-clad shoulder. "Rheumatoid arthritis. But before bed, I went for a stroll and saw dry lightning overhead. I heard thunder, and coyotes howling." She nodded gravely. "It was the full moon."
Madison refrained from shaking her head and bit her lips to prevent another blurt. Coyotes howled at night, full moon or not.
Leaving Mrs. Esteban under the ramada, Madison approached the foal carcass, careful not to disturb any tracks or telltales on the ground. The body already buzzed with flies in the rising heat, the stench of congealed blood and guts filled her nostrils.
Kneeling near the foal, Madison opened her kit and filled small vials with samples of blood and tissue from the mangled wounds, hoping to get some saliva from the bites. Then she placed a ruler next to the deep slashes and snapped pictures for her report.
She glanced up toward Mrs. Esteban. "The claw and tooth marks indicate unusual strength. It takes a large animal, maybe a mountain lion, to inflict such wounds."
"A mountain lion?" Mrs. Esteban turned away from the scene.
Madison went through the same sampling procedure with each dog. Once finished taking pictures, Madison rose. "The killer didn’t go for the neck but for the soft part of the abdomen."
Mrs. Esteban turned back with interest. "What does it mean?"
"It kills for the sake of killing. Such a bloodthirsty creature, rabid or not, will have to be put down before it kills again." Most bothersome was the fact that the beast did not eat the prey, or drag the carcasses away to eat them later. Madison had a dangerous animal on the loose. The hard ground didn’t lend itself to tracks, but Madison noticed a paw indentation, too large for a dog or a coyote, and the wrong shape. "I’ve got a paw print."
"A mountain lion?" Mrs. Esteban ventured closer.
"Not likely. Lion paws have only four pads. This track shows five, like the wide back paw of a bear, but more elongated." Madison took digital snapshots. She compared the depth of the tracks with her own footprints on the same ground. "The animal weighs about three hundred pounds."
Mrs. Esteban’s body shuddered, but she made no comments.
Madison found more partial tracks. Instead of going back to the desert, the beast seemed to have wandered toward the next property. Shading her eyes against the morning sun, Madison surveyed the neighbor’s house in the distance.
Beyond a low tree line along a dry riverbed, rose a tall A-frame structure, not unlike a church steeple, with shiny glass and metal panes on a steep, shiny roof. Skylights? Solar panels? The futuristic architecture clashed with the old west style of the area. The owner had an acute sense of identity.
Madison closed her kit and stepped into the shade of the ramada where a dark, stubby Latino man with a grey moustache had joined Mrs. Esteban. Sweat stained his yellow T-shirt as he fidgeted with the wide brim straw hat in his hands. Probably Pablo.
Madison nodded a greeting. "Officer Madison Huntley. Pablo, right? Did you hear or see anything last night?"
Pablo’s face took on more color. "I see Chupacabra!" The strong Spanish accent indicated a Mexican immigrant. "I get the gun." Still holding his sombrero, the man mimed the action of shooting a rifle. "But when I come back, Chupacabra is gone."
Mrs. Esteban scowled. "Don’t spread such stories, Pablo."
"Chupacabra?" Madison chuckled. "The legendary blood-sucking creature? Four-foot tall? Hairless? With a spiked spine and a long snout? Hops on two legs?" She couldn’t help the sarcastic tone and shook her head, amazed that anyone could take such tales seriously.
Pablo’s eyes widened and he nodded frantically. "I tell you I see Chupacabra... is not legend... is real... big, like a man."
"Every bit of so-called evidence of the Chupacabra ended up being large coyotes with severe cases of mange." Madison regained her professional composure, but obviously, Pablo had seen something that scared him.
"Shut up, Pablo!" The sharp order from the boss lady brought immediate silence. She scowled and pointed toward the stalls. "Don’t you have work to do?"
Pablo shrugged then pounded the straw hat on his head and stomped away mumbling in Spanish.
Mrs. Esteban smiled an apology. "You have to exc
use him. Pablo also believes he’s seen aliens and spaceships."
Madison nodded but wondered why the woman had reacted so strongly to mere superstition. "I’ll radio in to have the carcasses removed."
"Do you have to take them all?" The dark brown eyes implored. "Can I keep the dogs? I’d like to bury them close to the house."
"I guess we can manage with only the foal."
The woman offered a grateful smile. "Thank you. I hope you find what did this and keep it from killing again."
"Rest assured we’ll do everything we can." And that’s all Madison could promise. She motioned with her chin toward the futuristic house, two hundred yards to the east. "Do you know your neighbors well?"
Mrs. Esteban frowned. "Rarely talk to him. An artist from the Reservation. Moved here last year. Keeps to himself."
Madison scanned the gruesome scene a last time, making sure she didn’t miss anything. "I guess I’m finished here." She and the woman retraced their steps around the hacienda, toward the front of the property. "Do you mind if I leave my truck here while I look around?"
"As long as you don’t stay all day. I’m expecting customers this afternoon." As they reached the front of the house, the woman pushed the front door open and paused. A black cat coming out hissed at her and scampered away toward the barn. Mrs. Esteban shrugged then turned to Madison. "And please, keep me posted. I want regular updates. Whatever you find, I want to know."
"Sure." Madison nodded but found Mrs. Esteban’s insistence unusual. Then again, the world was full of strange people.
Mrs. Esteban turned away and walked through the door, into the cool darkness of the house.
*****
Madison went to the truck, stepped in, turned on the air conditioning and opened her laptop. After typing a preliminary report, she dialed headquarters on her cell phone.
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