Forcing Amaryllis

by Louise Ure

  “Maybe. I’ve probably blown this all out of proportion, but I’ve got to know if he could be the one.” I shredded the paper napkin that was already sodden from the cold glass of horchata.

  Enrique spread hummus on a piece of bread. “You don’t have to put your job in jeopardy,” he said in the same tone of voice I bet therapists use with delusional patients. “Let’s find out as much as we can about Mr. Cates and whether he could really be Amy’s attacker. If he is, we’ll find a way to take it to the authorities.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I have a friend who’s a private investigator,” he continued. “If he’s free, I’ll bring him over to your house this weekend. You explain the situation to him, and we’ll see if he can come up with more evidence one way or another.”

  I stayed for a hamburger with Havarti cheese, and we talked about families and days gone by. I didn’t realize then that Enrique’s help was going to make matters even more complicated.

  6

  By Wednesday I couldn’t postpone a response to Kevin McCullough any longer, and we arranged to meet at his office at eleven o’clock. When I arrived at Whitcomb, Merchant & Dryer, the air conditioner panted with exertion but the lobby was still so warm you could almost smell the horses in the paintings.

  I enjoyed a restful twenty minutes on the deep couch until the receptionist showed me into his office.

  “—and I’ll confirm that with Calla, now that she’s here,” McCullough said into the phone, and hung up.

  “Confirm what?”

  “A question about pretrial publicity that I was discussing with Mr. Merchant. We may want to make use of the media, see if we can use it to get our side of the story out.”

  I didn’t let the distaste I felt show on my face. I knew that lawyers and trial consultants often used the media to influence potential jurors. They called it “presenting a balanced picture of the defendant” or “educating the community,” but it all boiled down to trying your case in the streets and not in a courtroom. Not my way of doing business.

  “I’d be happy to discuss the pros and cons with you.” The words were more enthusiastic than my tone of voice.

  Clients usually get their own way, but I could at least lay out the options for him before he threw himself headlong into this publicity effort. We talked for a half hour, but I’m not sure McCullough heard any voice but his own.

  At the end of the discussion he asked me to deliver some papers to Cates at the jail during lunchtime. “Your rates are cheaper than a delivery service.” So much for being perceived as an integral part of the legal system. I stuffed my ego back down under my wallet and agreed to the errand.

  Wednesday didn’t seem to be a big visiting day at the Pima County Jail, so I found a parking place in the front row. The same sheriff’s deputy from my first visit was also on duty today and nodded to me with familiarity. This wasn’t a first-name relationship I really wanted to encourage. Prison guards are not high on my list of potential boyfriends, although they’d probably have a healthy respect for law and order.

  Who was I kidding? There was no list of potential boyfriends. In seven years I hadn’t been able to shake the specter of Amy’s attacker. Any man could be a monster. Except for Enrique, that is, and he had taken on the contours of a guardian angel. I spent my nights alone.

  It took ten minutes for them to bring Cates to the small attorney-client interview room. I sat across from him and slid McCullough’s file across the table. It wasn’t sealed; the jailer had exchanged its original manila envelope for a lighter-weight envelope without a metal hasp closure.

  “It’s hotter than hell in here,” Cates said. “If it’s this bad in June, imagine what August will feel like this year.”

  If he was guilty of killing Lydia Chavez, then I hoped that by August he’d be facing life in prison or the death penalty, and I wouldn’t care how hot it was while he waited. I tried to regain my objectivity, but I couldn’t take my eyes off his right hand; it was as mesmerizing as a rattlesnake.

  As if in response to his comment, I said, “When did you hurt your hand?” If it had happened since Amy’s attack, then he couldn’t be the Animal.

  “Oh, this?” He waggled his finger toward my face like a tongue. “Long time ago. I was just a kid.” He still looked fairly boyish. No gray in his hair and a smirky kind of grin that I bet some women found attractive.

  I stared into his eyes to see if the vagueness of his reply was done on purpose, but there was no telltale flicker of deception. He hadn’t said exactly when it happened or how it happened. Could I have taken the silly coincidence of a damaged hand and a murder charge and built a whole city of lies around them? I nodded at his response and left the county jail without the answer I really wanted.

  McCullough had left me a phone message to say that he was set on doing the early research we’d discussed. “Let’s get our side of the story out there,” he said when I called him back. You mean, let’s contaminate the jury pool, I thought.

  In the end, I agreed to recruit potential Tucson jurors for a focus group session to find out their attitudes about the case. Then McCullough could decide where to concentrate his efforts for Cates’s publicity campaign.

  I didn’t like this part of the business. Trial consultants have a bad enough reputation as it is, and I didn’t want to add to it. I’d heard all the comments about the industry offering “the best verdict money can buy,” and sometimes that was true. A trial consultant’s recommendation on strategy, presentation style, or juror selection could often make the difference in the final outcome of a trial.

  I preferred to concentrate on the parts of my job that leveled the playing field between the parties—the parts that clarified the evidence, not those parts that clouded the truth.

  But it didn’t look like I was going to get out of this image-building research until Jessica was free, so McCullough and I worked out the final details on the timing and demographic makeup of the focus groups, and I contacted a local research facility to begin the recruiting.

  Cates, the county jail, and the summer heat had wrung me out like a sweat-soaked handkerchief. At home that evening I took a glass of iced tea and an old puzzle of Giulia’s out to the patio and turned on the misters to cool the air on the open porch. Rainbows caught between the droplets of water and the setting sun, creating a jewel box of colors around me. Easing back in the canvas chair, my mind drifted away from the Civil War theme of the crossword puzzle.

  If I was going to get any answers about Amy’s rape, then I had to start taking action. I picked up the cordless phone and called Enrique.

  “I saw Cates again today, and he didn’t tell me exactly when he damaged his finger.” I explained about his vagueness. “God, I don’t even know if I ought to be looking for something wrong with a finger at all.”

  “We can find out about the date. Check with his family. Friends. People who knew him growing up. We’ll find out when it happened.” Enrique paused. “But I don’t want you to pin your hopes on this.”

  A baseball game growled in the background. It sounded like the D-Backs were losing.

  “Here’s something else to think about,” Enrique continued. “It’s one thing to dig into Cates’s background. But maybe we can do more than that. Amy’s rape was never investigated. We never looked for other similar attacks. But I’ll bet that whoever attacked her has also gone after other women.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “If we can find another woman who remembers what Amy said—the black truck or the cowboy hat or the knife or the belt buckle—” I spoke faster with each item.

  “Don’t get carried away, Calla. If there was something obvious that tied several attacks together, the police or sheriff’s department would have spotted it. But it can’t hurt to double-check. I’ll do some investigation here and see if anything comes up.”

  I thanked him and started to hang up, when I remembered the real reason for my call. I told Enrique about the Santa Cruz County a
ttorney’s suggestion that we look for DNA evidence on Amy’s clothes.

  “I’ve had those clothes in a paper bag for seven years now. I couldn’t bear to touch them—not even to throw them away—after the hospital gave them back to me.”

  I thought about the ruffled white blouse that could be pulled down over her shoulders on hot days, about the short denim skirt that showed off Amy’s smooth legs. Although they represented a vile, despicable moment in Amy’s life, I couldn’t bear to lose them. I needed to hold on to any part of my sister I could.

  “We use the Department of Public Safety’s crime lab here in Tucson, but there are a couple of good private DNA labs that I can recommend. I’ll get the names for you,” Enrique said. “Oh, I reached my investigator friend, and he’s free Saturday morning. How about ten o’clock?”

  I agreed to the time and crossed mental fingers that my new credit card could bear up under the expense of the DNA testing. Maybe I’d get the testing results back before they found out I couldn’t pay for them.

  The lab work probably wouldn’t show anything, but I felt good about having taken at least a small step. And when I filled in the crossword answer for “farthest west site of a Civil War battle” with Arizona’s Picacho Peak, I felt a real sense of accomplishment.

  7

  On Saturday I woke early and took a walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the double-digit temperatures before they soared again. The university area was always more active, so I headed that way. I passed the handmade-sandal shop with the smell of rawhide and leather leaking out into the street, an oddly quiet fraternity house, and a Starbucks. I stopped to get a cup of coffee and perused the obituary section of the newspaper to see what Aunt Giulia had been up to.

  Except for that leave of absence when my parents died, she’d been with the Arizona Daily Star for almost forty years, all of which time she’d spent in “the Morgue,” as they called the library. One of her jobs was to keep updated obituaries on the famous and near famous, in case they died unexpectedly. She said once that she’d written Richard Nixon’s obituary twenty-nine times, “always hoping this one would take.” Nobody famous had died today.

  When I got back to the house, there was a strange dark car in the driveway. I hesitated at the sidewalk, thinking about turning back to a more populated street, when Enrique opened the driver’s door and got out.

  “Nice wheels,” I said, saluting him with my cardboard cup. The shiny new sedan was a big improvement over the ten-year-old white van he usually drove. I gave him a quick hug and turned to unlock the front door when I was stopped by his voice.

  “This is the investigator I told you about. My friend, Anthony Strike. He’s about the best in the business, and we’ve known each other for years.”

  I spiraled around, spilling coffee all over myself and the front stoop. Oh no. Standing in my driveway was the mustachioed, lazy-smiling investigator from Whitcomb, Merchant & Dryer.

  “Howdy,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat in my direction. His eyes lit with complicity, as if he knew there was a game going on, and he liked it.

  I pushed my glasses farther up the bridge of my nose and turned back to Enrique.

  “I know you’re trying to help, but this isn’t going to work. Mr. Strike is employed by the same law firm that hired me.”

  Enrique looked back and forth between us, clearly confused by this development. Strike seemed to enjoy our discomfort.

  “I didn’t tell him anything about the case, Calla. I just said I had a friend who might need his investigative skills.” Enrique shuffled his toe in the dirt like a young man too shy to ask for a date.

  “So far that’s still all I know,” Strike said. “Here’s a lady who may need my help.”

  I sighed. “Let’s go inside.”

  Over coffee and day-old, sugary churros from the bakery down the street, I showed Strike Amy’s picture and told him about her rape and current condition. I also told him why I thought Raymond Cates might be her attacker.

  “You knew the minute you saw me that this would be a conflict, Mr. Strike. I’m sorry to have wasted your Saturday.”

  “Wait just a minute,” he said, setting down his coffee mug. “I’m not sure that I’ve decided it is a conflict. From what I’ve heard so far, you’re a lady who’s interested in getting as much information about her sister’s attack as possible. I don’t see a conflict there with any other case I’m working on.”

  “But you know that I think Raymond Cates could be her attacker. And we’re sworn to confidentiality regarding his case.” Why couldn’t he see what was so patently clear to me?

  “I never go into a case with any assumptions,” he said, wiping sugar off his fingers, then taking a sip of coffee. “Even if you told me you knew for sure that Cates was your sister’s attacker, I’d still start the investigation with a clean slate and see if the evidence proved it. They’re separate cases in my mind.”

  I rolled my eyes at his circuitous logic.

  “Look,” he said, “I’d like to help you find your sister’s attacker. Right now I’d say it’s probably not Raymond Cates. It’s just a coincidence that you met somebody charged with a similar crime who has something wrong with his hands, and that might not be what Amy even meant about her attacker. So whether I’m doing it to clear Cates’s name or to help you find out the truth doesn’t matter. Let me dig around a little bit, and we’ll see where it goes.” He rolled up the cuffs on his long-sleeved shirt as if he was ready to start that digging right now.

  I nodded. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay for this, but go ahead and give it a couple of days.” I watched him take a sip of the cooling coffee. “But I want to go with you.”

  He almost spit. “That’s not the way it works, lady. I work better by myself. Just let me do my job.”

  I held my ground. “If you want to help me, this is how you can do it. I can’t find these things out on my own, but I’ve got to be there, see it with my own eyes.” He didn’t look convinced. “It would mean a lot to me. And maybe I can help with something.” I knew I was pleading, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  He shook his head. “You remind me of that story about the man who goes out and buys a dog and then does all the barking himself.”

  “Woof.”

  Strike smiled. “You remember the legend of the Arizona Robin Hood?” Enrique and I shook our heads.

  “He put the shoes on his horse backwards so the posse couldn’t tell which direction he was going.”

  “And … ?” I waited for the punch line.

  “That’s the same way I do my job. It’s going to look like I’m going backwards for a while before I find anything new. You can come with me, but you can’t tell me how to do this job. No assumptions, right?”

  I nodded.

  As I walked them back to the car, Enrique passed me a note with the name of a DNA testing lab in Phoenix.

  “What ever happened to that desert Robin Hood?” I asked as Strike folded himself into the passenger seat.

  “Oh, he got killed. The guy who put the horseshoes on for him turned him in.” He grinned and tipped his invisible Stetson again in farewell.

  I didn’t understand why Strike was willing to help me. There wouldn’t be a lot of money in it for him, and it could jeopardize his job with Whitcomb, Merchant & Dryer if someone found out. Maybe it was better not to look a gift horse, in this case a pay-by-the-hour horse, in the mouth.

  And there was something about that droopy mustache—something that made me comfortable and warm. It had been a long time since anyone but Enrique made me feel that way. First Amy, then Selena’s fate at the hands of her brutal husband. The damage to both of them had built a wall of fear around me. Could this man or that man be a batterer, a killer, a rapist? How would I know?

  When Enrique and Strike had gone, I went out to the storage room off the open carport and pulled out the three cardboard boxes labeled “Amaryllis.” I had gathered all her belongings from the university dorm room, but
I’d never had the heart to go through them before. I pictured the dorm room exactly as she had left it to go to the rodeo that Halloween afternoon—clothes strewn over chairs, nursing textbooks splayed like dropped handkerchiefs on the bed. It was a room held in mid-sentence, waiting for someone who would never return.

  The first box held clothes, mostly lightweight cottons and T-shirts, the kind of thing a student could get by with for most of the year in an Arizona climate that rarely reached freezing. I refolded two sweaters and Amy’s jean jacket and put them to the side. The second box had toiletries—desiccated now into lumpy, fragrant blobs—and a small black velour bag with a drawstring. In it I found a hammered silver ring with a chunk of black-veined turquoise in the middle, carved into a flower. Franco Del Arte had made it as a gift for our mother when Amy was born: a gesture of welcome for his almost new wife and brand-new, flower-named daughter. To Amy it was a milky blue manifestation of our parents’ love, and she had worn it with pride. I brought it to my lips for a quick kiss, then tucked it into my pocket.

  The paper bag holding Amy’s clothes from the night of the rape was on the bottom of the box, still crumpled closed at the top the way the hospital had given it to me. I sat cross-legged on the floor with the bag in my lap and uncurled the brown paper. Nestled at the bottom were the strips of cloth he’d slashed to bind her, some of them speckled with rusty brown dots. If that was blood, then it was probably Amy’s, and I didn’t think that information would help us. Sighing, I rose to my feet and went to find a mailing box big enough to contain all the clothes for the DNA lab. There wasn’t a box big enough to hold all my lost illusions.

  8

  Since I had to do focus groups Monday night for McCullough, I decided to take Monday morning off as partial comp time. After all, it was June 24, the Saint’s Day celebration for San Juan Bautista. Thanks to the Indian influences on the town, there are two other—less Catholic—ways that Tucsonans mark the day: pray for rain and get a haircut.

  When I was a child, my family honored this onset of the rainy season by gathering at the Santa Cruz River to wash our hands, sometimes carrying a bucket of water back to splash on the garden at the house. In the last few decades the water table had dropped precipitously with increased use, and now even digging deep in the dry dirt of the riverbed wouldn’t get you any water. These days a shower, a bath, or a lawn sprinkler had to do the ceremonial work that the river had done long ago. I hung a branch of creosote in the shower and celebrated with both the water and the smell of a desert deluge.