A drunk waving a gun around? It was bizarre. Totally bizarre.
God only knew how the legal system worked down here.
In his opinion, the Coopers had been killed by a trained hit man.
All those rumors swirling around seemed to be true; this could easily be drug cartel stuff. Drug cartel stuff? He didn’t believe it for a moment. Since when did drug cartels go for nice middle-aged tourists from Pennsylvania? Or were they nice middle-aged tourists from Pennsylvania?
But one thing was obvious – he couldn’t imagine anything more damaging to a town that relied on the tourist trade than the rumor of a drug cartel killing right in the middle of town. Better to blame a drunk, arrested immediately and safe in jail.
The gun in Chico’s hand? For all Malcolm knew it could have been discarded by the killer and then picked up and planted in Chico’s hand by law enforcement. It happened, not usually, but for a moment he was filled with disgust at the knowledge that it did happen. But not in this case; this struck him more as a kind of panic, blame someone fast.
In his mind right now Chico was either innocent or had an elaborate secret life he’d managed to hide from his own sister.
People were coming down the courthouse steps. Dr Paul Sanger passed close by, loping down the steps, dodging a reporter. Malcolm got up and went back inside. The courtroom was empty except for the bailiff and Lupita, back in a corner, her face sad.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
She sniffed. ‘The judge denied the motion for release. He said he wanted to wait until it went to the grand jury.’
‘Didn’t the lawyer tell you that was probably what would happen?’
‘Kind of. But it just seems like—’ Her lip trembled. ‘Like Chico’s going to be in jail forever and ever. I miss him so much, and so does our nana.’ She began to cry.
Lupita wept and wept. The bailiff got the box of Kleenex always kept conveniently nearby and brought it back to Lupita, who refused it.
Malcolm took it. And now here was Lupita, weeping by his side. He let her cry; she had good reason. In the meantime, he contemplated the framed blown-up photographs of former Cochise County Superior Court judges that lined the wall, one of whom he noticed bore a striking resemblance to Frankenstein’s monster.
Lupita’s sobs subsided, and she hiccuped.
‘It’s okay,’ he said to her, patting her arm. ‘It’s okay.’
But of course it wasn’t okay at all. It was close to lunchtime. Outside the courtroom, people would be lingering in the halls to chat, cars pulling away down in the parking spaces. Things returning to normal, except there was no such thing as normal, he knew that.
He pulled some Kleenex out of the box and handed it to Lupita.
She took it, blew her nose loudly, then turned her head to look at him. ‘It’s not okay, and you know it.’ Her face was battered, swollen with tears and fatigue, tragic and unbeautiful.
He felt a kind of love for her, unconnected to who she was personally.
‘It is okay,’ he said, the words coming out of his mouth as if from a stranger, words he knew perfectly well as he said them he might later regret. ‘If it’s not okay, I’m going to fix it. I promise.’
Malcolm spent the evening doing some googling, checking out Wes and Carrie Cooper – the drug cartel king pins? – from Millville, Pennsylvania. They’d gotten married, it looked like, five years ago, when Carrie was forty-two and Wes was forty-seven. Wes had sold insurance for State Farm but was retired. Carrie had a crafts store with her sister Rose. Before she married Wes, Carrie went by the last name of Murrah.
No mention of a previous husband or husbands for Carrie, so Murrah must be her maiden name. Married for the first time at forty-two? Well, nowadays people didn’t always marry.
Wes had a previous marriage to Nancy who had died of cancer. He had a daughter Polly Hampton of Phoenix, Arizona. Phoenix wasn’t all that far, a three and a half hour drive, but Polly Hampton hadn’t come to the release hearing. In his experience, the relatives of murdered people usually tended to show up at all the hearings when they lived within driving distance. So that was interesting, kind of, maybe. Maybe the Dr Sanger guy was sitting in for her.
Malcolm delved into the public records, found no criminal record for either Wes or Carrie Cooper, none for Carrie Murrah either, not even one single major drug bust.
Well, he hadn’t expected any. If they had any drug involvement at all it would be as amateurs, not really players.
He googled Kate Waters. And there she was on Facebook, with a picture or he wouldn’t have made the connection, running a community arts center in Vermont. A community arts center.
He’d liked the way she’d smiled at him, though they had spoken very briefly, at that gallery where Chico Flores’ glittery baby dolls hung. Then she’d gone out to talk to some old guy with a white beard.
He could have stopped her, with some witty comment about art; what exactly the comment would have been he had no idea.
The page hadn’t been updated for a while. What was she doing here?
He went to bed and kind of slept.
ELEVEN
‘I hear you,’ Stuart Ross, attorney at law, said to Malcolm. ‘This must be quite a change from Mesa. Bored out of your gourd.’
Malcolm laughed. ‘It’s not just that,’ he said, wondering as he said it if in fact it was just that.
‘If you don’t mind my asking—’Stuart Ross leaned back in his chair. ‘Other than total boredom, what is your stake in this?’
‘My stake?’ Malcolm asked. ‘I don’t have any stake. I just felt sorry for Lupita.’
‘Kind of like Jesus Christ, huh?’
‘Just like him. Lupita thinks you’re avoiding her.’
‘I am.’ Stuart Ross sighed. ‘I know, I know, but what can I do? All this takes time. She wants him out yesterday, and it ain’t going to happen.’ He paused. ‘Poor old Chico doesn’t have a clue about the whole incident. It’s all foggy.’ Stuart leaned across his desk confidingly. ‘You know what I’m thinking?’
‘What?’
‘Rohypnol.’
‘Rohypnol?’
Stuart made his hand into a gun and pointed it at Malcolm. ‘You got it. Or something like that. Who needs alcohol any more, huh? Just slip a roofie into your sweetie’s drink and you don’t have to bother with seduction.’
‘Ah.’
‘Someone got poor Chico stoned, took him for a walk, killed those tourists, then put the gun in his hand.’
‘I’m with you on that,’ said Malcolm, ‘all the way.’
Stuart sighed. ‘The thing is, worst come to worst, and I don’t think it will, but let’s just say it ends up going to trial – I mean, I’m sure as hell not going to plead it out. Rohypnol would fly with a jury.’
‘Ah.’
‘It’s everywhere now. In books, in movies. People who might never have thought of it in the normal course of things getting these ideas. That ballet movie Black Swan? It’s even in that.’
‘You saw Black Swan?’ Malcolm said.
‘My date wanted to.’
Malcolm had an innate distrust of defense attorneys; he’d seen too many that were sleazy. He wondered now if Stuart had slipped a roofie in his date’s drink afterwards.
‘Course, we’ll never know,’ Stuart said, ‘since the cops didn’t run any drug tests. And there’s always the possibility that Chico is in fact a professional hit man and he hasn’t shared that information with his sister and his nana. Or his lawyer.’
‘And the Coopers were serious drug dealers.’
‘Or worse, amateurs.’
‘This whole investigation is being weirdly bungled,’ Malcolm said and added, ‘even for cops.’ This last not because he believed cops were that bad, but for Stuart.
Stuart harrumphed. ‘Chamber of Commerce, like the crazy locals are saying. I don’t always agree with them, but I do in this case. So you’re seriously up for being my investigator? I got someone I usually
use, pretty good, but a Mesa PD detective? Golden.’
‘I went online for a while last night,’ Malcolm said. ‘Wes Cooper has a daughter in Phoenix.’
‘Ah, let me remind you of something that, as a cop, you already know,’ Stuart said, ‘about talking to the designated victims – in this case the relatives of the deceased. Legally, they have no obligation to talk to the defense.’
‘The defense,’ Malcolm said. ‘Who’s that? Never heard of them.’
‘Tell you what – I still got to pick up some more disclosure files at the County Attorney’s. I’ll have my secretary make copies of everything and hand it over to you, say, by late this afternoon.’
‘Sounds good. I can do some stuff today, like maybe talk to that woman, Kate Waters – the one in the photograph with Carrie Cooper.’
And cards, thought Malcolm, riding a little wave of psychic energy. He would get some cards printed up – just ‘Malcolm MacGregor, investigator’ and his cell number and email address.
Ryan, the current Co-op manager, and Kate were sitting in the deli area with coffee, going over the list of items customers had written down on the big piece of poster board that asked in block letters, ‘WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE AT THE CO-OP?’
‘Amanita muscaria,’ Ryan read out loud. ‘Sensimilla.’ He rotated his eyebrows. ‘Well, not up front anyway, maybe round the back.’ He glanced at Kate to see if she got the joke.
She laughed.
‘More coffee?’ he offered.
‘Sure.’
Ryan got up with both their cups and went over to the urn, and as he did so Kate saw a silver gray Hyundai pulling into a parking space outside. A man in a black shirt, black jeans got out. Kate’s heart gave a little jump in her chest. It was Harry. How could it be. God. How had he—?
Her shoulders tensed up. Then she saw it wasn’t him. Didn’t even look like him really, except for the black clothes.
‘You okay?’ Ryan said, putting down a cup in front of her and sitting.
‘Fine.’
‘You look – I don’t know—’
‘No, I am fine, really.’
‘I was wondering,’ Ryan said. ‘We’ve got an order coming into the Sierra Vista Co-op – it should be there five thirty or six, and we need someone to pick it up. Not the regular order, like crates and stuff, just those strawberries that everyone’s so crazy about. You up for that? We’d pay your gas.’
‘No problem.’
‘Ryan!’ someone called from the back. ‘We need some help back here.’
‘Shit!’ Ryan stood up.
After a moment Kate stood up too and stretched. She took a walk, past an elderly couple buying some supplements that promised to restore them to youthful vigor, past the cash register, and outside to the vista of red mountains, tiny quaint shacks. She felt tired; she didn’t sleep as well at Dakota’s. Where am I, she wondered. Where the hell am I? Another planet, outer space?
‘Hey,’ someone said beside her.
She turned her head, and there was that guy, Malcolm MacGregor, who she’d met at the gallery. Who was he, anyway?
‘What?’ she said flatly.
‘You okay?’ he said, with what sounded like genuine concern in his voice.
There was something vulnerable in his eyes that Kate wanted nothing at all to do with.
‘Just fine. Excuse me.’ She turned and walked to the back of the Co-op, past the sign that said ‘Employees only’.
‘Wait,’ he called, ‘Kate Waters, wait,’ but she was gone.
Around four, Malcolm stopped by Stuart’s office and got the disclosure files. Something was going on with that Kate, Malcolm thought as he drove home. He dumped the files on the dining-room table, then put some cat food into a bowl and took it outside to the back yard.
‘Hey, Buddy,’ he called. ‘Here, Buddy, Buddy.’ Then he went inside to give Buddy some space.
Buddy was the closest thing Malcolm had to a pet. He’d just shown up one day, a big orange tom, scars on his face, ears ragged from fighting. Buddy was always hanging around, but every time Malcolm came near him, he hissed and ran under the porch. So he went to Safeway, bought some cat food and set it out. That first time, the cat ate the food in big noisy bites like it was starving.
Kate. She’d smiled at him at the gallery, but today she’d acted like she didn’t want to have anything to do with him, like she was mad at him or something. He’d just wanted to ask her a few questions about Carrie Cooper. What the fuck did I do? he thought.
He opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of Blue Moon beer. He usually went for Sam Adams, but he thought he’d try this, after that cop from Boston drank it at the White House. His shoulder had been aching all day. He rubbed it, trying to get the blood flowing.
Kate’s rudeness bothered him; she’d seemed edgy, stressed out. Maybe Carrie had said something disturbing to her and the local law had told her to keep it a secret. He could tell by the way she’d looked at him when he’d asked if she was okay that she thought he was a loser. Why?
The problem was, what was he supposed to do? He’d tried, tried hard to change his life, take it easy, take this time off, hopefully temporary time off, to relax, recharge his batteries, learn to live in the moment, etc etc.
He hated that jargon.
Malcolm took a swig of beer. The beer was okay, but he liked Sam Adams better.
He would have saved Cindy if he could, but he didn’t see how. He’d tried really hard at first, always being there for her, encouraging her to see all those doctors, never getting mad when she was particu-larly difficult. And there was always hope every time some new pill came along. She would take it, and for a few weeks, sometimes months, it would work, like a miracle, then suddenly it wouldn’t. It would be back to the beginning. Even now when an ad came on TV for a new kind of antidepressant – and there was always something new, half the people this country must be depressed – he found himself thinking, even though she was gone, maybe this is it.
But nothing had worked. Nothing.
Maybe he was kidding himself, helping Lupita like he was; maybe he was going to turn into one of those old guys without a life that hung around courtrooms. Circling back to the expression on Kate’s face when he’d asked if she was okay, suddenly a thought struck him.
Kate was crazy. She was crazy, just like Cindy. He didn’t know exactly why he thought this, what it was based on, and why this infuriated him so much, but it did. He looked down at the bottle of Blue Moon he was holding. Then he threw it hard as he could against the wall. Pain like a knife blade went through his shoulder.
The funny thing was, he thought as he swept the shards of glass in a dustpan, mopped up the beer from the kitchen floor, when Cindy was happy, she was happier than anyone he’d ever seen. Her happiness flowed around her, filling up all the empty spaces between them, and she was beautiful.
TWELVE
It was still light as Kate drove back through Sierra Vista with the load of strawberries from the Sierra Vista Co-op. There were dark clouds overhead but no rain. She passed the Walmart, turned on to Highway 80 past Target and Fry’s. Then the town petered out after a couple more stop lights and the long stretch of desert began. It ran pretty straight, dipping at the San Pedro River, where giant cottonwood trees brooded, then up again. On her iPod shuffle, Neko Case sang ‘Prison Girls’.
It was fifteen miles or so to the stop sign and the turn to Dudley.
On the left, the Mule Mountains were dark purple in the distance, lit suddenly from time to time by jagged lightning. The car swerved slightly; bump in the road? Wind? She accelerated a bit to keep herself awake and alert. Oddly, just then in her mind, Harry, in one of his tantrums, ice-cold tantrums, sneered at her.
No cars in front, one behind. Tailgating. How fast was she going? Only sixty. The old Honda Civic didn’t have much power or pickup. She accelerated to sixty-five, but on a long empty stretch the car behind passed her, little red tail-lights receding. Then she was alone on the hig
hway again, up ahead the stop sign where she would make the right-hand turn that would take her to Dudley. The summer rains had brought out all the vegetation: grasses lined the road’s edge, a big clump of mesquite on her right, but on her left the highway was clear.
She accelerated a little more, then out of nowhere came a bang. Loud, over Neko Case singing ‘The Pharaohs’. What!
She stopped the iPod just as there was another bang, the tires of the car made a funny grinding noise on the blacktop, and suddenly she wasn’t even on the road, how the hell did she – shit – she’d driven right off the road and up the mountain slope behind.
The car bounced and jounced up the rocky hill, its undercarriage banging and grinding as it scraped on the rocks, her purse flying, a stray pen hitting the windshield. Then the car hit something, pretty hard, stopped, and for a split second there was an unearthly silence. The car engine ticked, ticked, winding down. Crickets chirped.
Smell of strawberries.
Sirens whined in the distance.
Finally, it began to rain.
THIRTEEN
Malcolm heard the raindrops ping-pinging on the tin roof as he was cooking up a bunch of hamburger with Beef Stroganoff Hamburger Helper in his big frying pan. Ah, rain. He went outside. The air smelled clean and fresh. He breathed it in for a moment, then went back inside and threw some frozen peas in with the hamburger. He stirred it around until the peas had thawed and heated up, then he took the pan into the living room and ate dinner in front of the TV news.
Maybe it was oncoming rain that had been making his shoulder act up more than usual. It couldn’t be throwing that bottle of beer, oh, no, no way.
He finished eating, put what was left of it in the fridge and washed up. Then cleared the kitchen table of its usual debris: old bills, dead newspapers, envelopes containing important and exciting offers he had not even opened, catalogs, and circulars of supermarket specials – Fry’s, Safeway and Food City from two months ago.
He brought the files Stuart had given to him over to the table, sat down and began to read. It still all fit the hit man theory. The gun in Chico’s hand was a six-inch Smith and Wesson, model 686. Forensics had determined that the 357 Magnum caliber bullets in the gun matched the bullets that had killed the couple. Smith and Wesson 686 model was a good gun, not a Saturday special type. A professional’s gun, the serial numbers filed off. He started to make notes on a legal pad – things to ask Lupita.
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