Kate pulled in her carport and got out. She’d only lived in this house, a renovated miner’s shack bought on spec by an out-of-towner, for a month. Before that she’d stayed with Dakota. A small house on a narrow winding street, almost quaint but not quite. So the rent was pretty low.
When she’d first moved in, the shabby little house on her left had housed a portly bass player, who practiced long into the night. One night the police came and talked to the bass player, Kate watching through her bedroom window, and then he was gone and now a ‘For Rent’ sign hung crookedly on the wire fence that surrounded the front yard.
In the house on the other side, a line of bright zinnias grew along the little picket fence. It was twilight now, and the lights were on inside. An elderly woman, Estelle, lived there alone with her two cats. ‘Hello, cats,’ Kate would hear her say in the early morning. ‘You’re the most beautiful cats in the whole entire world.’
If anything happened she could scream, and Estelle might even hear her. Still, it was scary. She unlocked the door and went inside, slamming the door behind her. If she didn’t slam it pretty hard the lock wouldn’t catch. She rented the house furnished and hadn’t done much to make it her own, except throw a Mexican shawl over the couch. Spiders had spun their webs in the corners, and occasionally a tiny packaged insect would fall on to a countertop or a table or the floor.
Kate checked the side door to make sure it was locked, and then went round to all her windows to make sure they were all closed and locked. She put the dinner, tandoori chicken, in the microwave for two minutes. Her laptop was on the kitchen counter, and she opened it to check her email while the dinner was heating. Not much except yet another email from Harry – he sent them once or twice a week.
She usually deleted them right away, but this one she started to read.
I don’t care how awful this letter is, he wrote, it’s just too damn bad. What you are is a self centered, inconsiderate, unthinking, spoiled princess and you—
She stopped reading and hit delete.
The microwave pinged, and her cellphone chimed.
Bill, her stepfather, calling from Long Island. Her mother had died three years ago, but she was still close to her stepfather.
‘Bill,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’
‘You okay?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Saw something on my Google home page – you know I have the Arizona section, ’cause of you living there. Said two people got shot right there in Dudley. That’s about all it said though.’
‘I can’t tell you anything else.’ She went to her home page on the laptop. ‘I’m home, don’t worry, I’m safe. Everything’s fine,’ she lied.
‘Good, good.’
She typed in ‘Dudley, AZ shooting’, got nothing that was newer than what Dakota had told her. ‘So, Bill,’ she said, ‘how are you?’
‘I’m all right.’ He paused. ‘But the other day, I was thinking, I don’t know why. You remember, Kate, how me and your mom used to play Scrabble all the time?’
‘Of course.’
‘I was just thinking, what a bad sport your mother was.’
‘She was,’ Kate said. ‘A terrible sport.’
‘It made her so happy to win,’ said Bill. ‘I should have let her win more. I see that now.’
‘Bill, it’s all right. You were the best thing that ever happened to her.’
There was a pause.
‘How are you, Katie?’ Bill asked. ‘I know things have been rough these last few months.’
‘I’m okay. Better. I like this job I have. It’s maybe not my future, but it lets me rest for a while.’
‘Well, hang in there. You deserve the best. Don’t forget that, okay?’ His voice broke a little. ‘Gotta go, Kate. You be careful now.’
‘You too,’ Kate said, but he was already gone.
She ate the tandoori chicken in front of the television, feeling nervous, unfocused, too alert, as if she were waiting for some reason to act.
The house felt stuffy with everything locked up. She needed some air, so she opened the door that led out to the porch. It was on the side of the house by Estelle, so relatively safe, the street light close by. Crickets chirped in the cool dark. Somewhere down the street a neighbor she had never met had the television going, an audience, eerie in the dark, erupting in laughter at some comedian making a joke.
She saw the headlights of trucks above on the bypass faraway: first the front headlights bright white, then the red as the trucks receded. She saw her mother from twenty years ago, standing in her garden, wearing a big floppy hat. She had a spade in her hand, and she was laughing.
Then someone knocked on her door.
FIVE
Lupita Flores, a waitress at El Serape restaurant, heard the commotion too, the sirens of the police cars going up the hill. Suddenly, it seemed like everyone in the restaurant was on a cellphone, followed by a mad dash to the door.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked the Lonely Man. That was what Lupita called him to herself, though she knew his real name. Malcolm, Malcolm MacGregor. He was a cop from Mesa, on some kind of sick leave. Somewhere in his forties, not too bad-looking for an old guy, nice, always polite, good tipper.
Malcolm was checking out his cellphone. ‘Some tourists got shot.’
‘What. What?’ said Lupita. ‘Got shot where? Here? Here in Dudley?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Lupita. ‘Where? Who did it?’
He stood up. ‘Think I’ll go see.’
He’d been coming in a lot in the last few weeks, always by himself. He and Frank the owner got along really well; one night when it was slow they’d serenaded Lupita with a terrible rendition of ‘Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa’.
‘Wait,’ Lupita said. ‘Take my cell number, okay? Five five five, two three zero zero. Text me when you find out.’
‘Then here’s mine,’ Malcolm said and gave it to her. ‘Text me if you find out.’
It was kind of a joke, really. They were always kidding around.
He put a ten-dollar bill and a five on the table and left.
Drunks, thought Lupita, a bunch of drunks, probably, that killed those tourists. Drunks shooting off their guns down on the Gulch, showing off. Assholes.
The restaurant was pretty much emptied out – nothing left inside now but Lupita, Frank in the back, and silence.
Lupita imagined all the tourists jumping into their cars, their trucks, their SUVs, driving away from Dudley, heading for home. She surveyed the tables with their red-checked tablecloths, silverware and napkins neatly laid, a tiny glass vase with one fake red rose on each table. The smell of oregano and poblano chili lingered in the air – Frank’s posole, and no one to eat it.
No customers, no tips.
Her nana’s birthday was coming up. She’d planned to buy her two CDs – one by the mariachi singer Jose Maria Solis and one by Vicente Hernandez – but now maybe she’d just get one. She and her brother Chico lived with their nana Ariana, who had raised them after their Anglo mother ran off with a beer distributor. Their father had pretty much lived in the bars until he died. They still lived with their nana – partly to look after her in her old age, and partly because it saved them a lot of money.
‘Jesus. Benny just called, told me what happened.’ Frank, the owner and chief cook, short, rotund and bearded, came out from the kitchen, out the front door, leaving it open as he lit a cigarette. ‘Two people got shot! Both of ’em dead.’
‘Dead? Oh, no.’
Lupita came out and sat down on the empty smoker’s bench where normally all the customers they got on busy nights would sit and wait for a table. She was too thin, dark complected, almost but not quite beautiful. ‘Who?’ she asked.
‘No one we know. They were tourists,’ Frank said.
‘I mean, who did it?’
‘If anyone knows they’re not saying.’
‘Oh god.’ Lupita put her heads in her hands. ‘Every
one will be scared off. They won’t come to Dudley any more. We’ll all be poor.’ She paused. ‘I mean, poorer.’
Frank laughed. ‘No sympathy for the people who got killed?’
‘I do, I do have sympathy,’ Lupita cried. ‘I didn’t mean it, the way it sounded.’ She crossed herself dramatically.
‘He’s not gonna forgive you,’ Frank said.
‘Who?’
‘That guy in the sky you’re crossing yourself for. In fact, not even is he not going to forgive you, he’s not even there.’
‘Sinner!’ Lupita hit out at his arm, but he danced aside and she missed.
‘Go home,’ Frank said. ‘I’ll close up; no use you hanging around. Wait—’ He stood up, went into the kitchen and came back with a takeout container. ‘Some posole for your nana.’
‘Thank you.’ Lupita took the container, smiled and threw him a little kiss.
‘You be careful now,’ Frank called after her, ‘walking home.’
She didn’t live too far away if you were young, eighteen and didn’t mind a steep hill. She trudged up slowly, tired from her day, carrying the takeout of posole. Her brother Chico loved posole too; it would be great if he were home, but he usually came in late after she was asleep. He was an artist and had a studio downtown; another artist let him use for free. Maybe she would wait up for him tonight – he would know all about the tourists getting killed. He always knew what was going on downtown.
The house was wood frame and ramshackle and needed a paint job. By the rusty wire gate was a large totem-like figure, painted in an intricate lace of colors, that Chico had made a few years ago. As she came closer, Lupita heard a sound like a baby crying, except there weren’t any babies in the neighborhood. She ran up the rest of the steps and into the house.
It was dark except for the light of the television and the light from a votive candle lit under nana’s plaster statue of the Virgin of Guadaloupe. The sound was off on the TV, and her nana was standing in the middle of the living room in her nice purple velour running suit, and her hair, always so perfect (she had worked for the city of Dudley for many years before retiring) – her hair was all messed up. Her nana was standing in the middle of the living room, wringing her hands and weeping.
‘What’s wrong!’ Lupita cried. She ran over her and put her arms around her. ‘Nana, what is it?’
‘They came up here,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘The police. That Debbie Hannigan and Sergeant Ben Luna.’
‘Why? What about?’
‘Chico. They told me— They— They arrested him.’
‘No! For what? Chico never does anything wrong. It sounds like harassment. Was it marijuana?’
‘No, no. They’re saying he killed those tourists.’
Malcolm stood just off the road at a spot with a good view of the crime scene. The ambulances had gone, but law enforcement was still working on stringing yellow crime-scene tape everywhere and gathering evidence. It was dark now, but the crime scene was lit up by the street light.
So much blood.
When he’d first moved here to live in his sister-in-law Sally’s investment house in Dudley, he’d read a bunch of old books from his father’s library that his brother and sister-in-law had stashed in the house. After a while it wasn’t enough, so he gave up on that and started hanging out like some old fool in the El Serape restaurant.
Still, he got a chuckle out of the quote at the front of Willeford’s New Hope for the Dead, a quote by Pascal: ‘Man’s unhappiness stems from his inability to sit quietly in his room.’
So now he was sneaking up on crime scenes for a little vicarious thrill. His shoulder was bothering him, as usual, but he’d learned to ignore it.
A bearded man in jogging clothes came towards him, nodded with his head in the direction of the crime scene. ‘Man, oh, man,’ he said with a distinct New York accent. ‘Can you believe this? Some drunk shot a couple of tourists.’
‘That what it was?’ Malcolm said. ‘Some drunk?’
‘Yeah. A drunk with a gun. That’s what I love about the great state of Arizona. Everybody and anybody gets to pack heat.’
For a moment they stood together companionably, two strangers united by catastrophe.
The man raised one hand. ‘Ciao,’ he said and walked away.
Malcolm stood for a long time, watching yet not watching, in a kind of trance. A drunk with a gun.
Something bothered him about the scene, but he wasn’t sure what. He turned away and started down the hill, picking his way around the potholes in the decaying asphalt, bits of fluff from the desert broom that flowered along the side of the road following him like the flicker of memories in the brain, just below consciousness.
It was the blood, he thought. There was so much of it. What kind of firearm was it, anyway? An AK-47?
His cellphone pinged a text. Lupita. He remembered now he’d said he would text her when he found out what was going on. He opened it.
Help, it said. Call me.
SIX
Kate froze for a moment when she heard the knock. Someone knocked again. She went to the window closest to the door and peeked out. A man and a woman; the woman was wearing a uniform. The police. Her stomach gave a little lurch. The police were standing there at her door, and behind them she could see mostly dark apart from a street light a way down, a mist of bugs swirling around it.
Thoughts swirled in her mind like the bugs: a homicidal maniac was on the loose in Dudley and they were going door to door to warn everyone; Harry Light, in a rage, had concocted a false story about some crime she had committed, such as leaving him when all he’d done wrong was to treat her like shit. Or someone somewhere that she loved was dead.
Cheer up, she told herself, it’s probably just the homicidal maniac.
She went to the door and opened it.
‘Kate? Kate Waters?’ said the woman in the uniform. Plumpish with dark wavy hair.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Officer Deborah Hannigan, and this is my sergeant, Ben Luna, Dudley PD.’ Sergeant Luna nodded politely, dark hair graying handsomely.
‘Yes?’ Kate said again.
Sergeant Luna cleared his throat. ‘Would you mind answering a few questions?’
‘Questions about what?’ Kate said. ‘I mean, no, please. Come on.’
They came in.
‘I know it’s kind of late,’ said Sergeant Luna, ‘but we’d like to talk to you now while things are fresh in your mind.’
Kate led them to the section off the kitchen that might be called a dining room, four chairs around a table. ‘What things? Sit down, please,’ she said. ‘Would you like, um, some coffee?’ she offered, before she remembered she’d run out.
‘No, thank you, ma’am,’ Sergeant Luna said, and Officer Hannigan shook her head. They sat down, so Kate did too.
‘What on earth,’ Kate asked, ‘is this all about?’
Sergeant Luna cleared his throat. ‘I understand you’re acquainted with Caroline Cooper?’
Kate sat down on the other chair. ‘Who?’
‘Caroline Cooper.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Kate said. ‘I’m sorry, you must have come to the wrong house. I’ve never even heard of Caroline Cooper. I mean, why are you asking? Who is she?’
Sergeant Luna leaned across the table at her. ‘Caroline Cooper and her husband Wesley were shot to death tonight.’
‘The two tourists? Is that who you’re talking about?’ Kate stared blankly at Ben Luna’s nice pleasant face. What he was saying didn’t make sense, and she had never in her life heard of Caroline and Wesley Cooper. ‘How would I know them?’
Officer Ryan opened the file folder and produced two computer printouts of photographs and slid them over to Kate. One was of the mural at the Natural Foods Co-op, and one was of—
‘Carrie,’ Kate said. ‘That’s me and Carrie.’ She looked up. ‘Carrie? Is Carrie—?’
‘Caroline Cooper,’ Sergeant Luna sai
d.
‘Oh, no.’ Kate put her hand over her mouth. She looked at the photograph again, seeing how pretty Carrie was, but even in the photo her smile was not quite happy. ‘She was scared,’ she said. ‘When I talked to her at the Co-op, she was scared about something.’
‘Really,’ said Ben Luna. ‘And did she tell you what?’
‘No. No, she didn’t.’ She thought of Carrie. She was dead? It really didn’t register. ‘I’m so sorry. I – I don’t know her. She was at the Co-op, and she wanted some melatonin. She seemed shaky to me, so I was concerned. Then Windsong came and took that picture with her cellphone, and then she left.’
Kate took a breath. ‘I don’t see – I mean—’ She felt herself babbling. ‘Someone shot her and her husband? She’s dead?’
Sergeant Luna nodded.
‘We hardly talked at all,’ Kate said.
‘Shaky. You said shaky. Like, how, exactly?’ Sergeant Luna’s voice was patient. ‘What made you think she was scared?’
‘She didn’t say she was scared, but I could tell she was, the way she acted.’ Kate paused. ‘That’s it. What about who did it? Are they still out there?’
‘We have a suspect in custody.’
Kate leaned back in her chair in relief. ‘Well, thank God for that. Who?’
They gave her a name, Hispanic. No one she knew. Though she hardly knew anyone in town, anyway. ‘Was he drunk or what?’ she asked.
She looked at them for some kind of answer, but the faces of Sergeant Luna and Officer Hannigan bore no expression at all, as if they had turned to wax dolls right there at Kate’s dining-room table.
‘Nothing else you remember?’ Sergeant Luna asked.
‘Not really.’
Officer Hannigan and Sergeant Luna rose in unison. ‘If you think of anything else,’ said Sergeant Luna. ‘Please let us know. Here’s my card.’
Kate took it. ‘At least you’ve arrested someone,’ she said. ‘Now I don’t have to worry about someone coming over and shooting me.’ She laughed, a little self-consciously.
Empty Houses Page 3