Desert Cut

by Betty Webb

  There was no arguing the fact that detectives saw more dead bodies than the average person, so I accepted his apology, and for the sake of peace, changed the subject. “How are the twins?”

  Warmth returned to his voice. “Precocious as always.” Ever the proud father, he bragged about his girls for a few minutes, then asked, “Angel said she was going to ask you to fly out here tonight.”

  Since they shared the twins, living memories of their five-year marriage, Warren and Angel were always on the phone with each other. “Yes, she did,” I told him, “but I had to turn her down.”

  Now he sounded exasperated. “Angel needs you, Lena. That series of hers is in trouble. The only taste Speerstra has is in his mouth, and even there, nada. Blindfolded, he couldn’t tell a taco from a turd.”

  A pithy observation, but irrelevant. Even though it would upset him, I decided to be frank. “I can’t fly out there right now because I’m in Los Perdidos trying to find out what happened to that little girl.”

  “You’re involved in another murder case?” His exasperation mutated into fear. “Don’t you remember what happened last spring?”

  It’s hard to forget almost being killed, but that’s the risk P.I.’s take, I reminded him.

  He groaned. “Then move to L.A. and work in the film industry full-time.”

  I would rather be dipped in honey and staked to an anthill, but this was hardly the time to admit it, because my refusal to abandon Desert Investigations was becoming an increasingly sore spot in our long-distance relationship. “I’ll think about it.”

  Warren was no fool. “Lena, you might not mind living like a nun, but I’m no monk. There’s a limit to how…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I certainly did, although I would describe the exclusivity of our relationship less religiously and more militarily, sort of like the Army’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. In other words, don’t ask me if I’m screwing around, Lena, and I won’t have to tell you the truth.

  “Understood, Warren, and remember, the agreement works both ways.” Not that I had any candidates in mind.

  He didn’t like my answer, and his voice turned frosty. “Well, it’s been nice chatting with you, but I’ve got places to go, people to see.”

  I hated to leave the conversation on that note, but another ambulance came screaming up the hill, so I shouted a good-bye and rang off. The ambulance pulled up to the emergency entrance and paramedics jumped out, ran around to the rear doors, and jerked them open. I was parked at least twenty yards away, but could still hear moans emanating from the ambulance’s interior. Carefully, but with great speed, the paramedics eased out a stretcher. On it lay a woman with hair as blond as mine. The sheet covering her was soaked with blood.

  Something terrible had happened to her, but at least she was alive.

  ***

  It being the middle of the week, I figured the chances of catching my elderly informant at the Geronimo Lounge were slim, but I stopped by the bar anyway. Since Dr. Lanphear had refused to tell me anything about Precious Doe’s autopsy, another run at the old guy was in order.

  I fought my way through the smoke and beer fumes to the long bar, ordered a Coke, and as soon as my eyes accustomed themselves to the dim light, looked around. He wasn’t there. Swallowing my disappointment, I called the bartender over and described the man I was searching for.

  “You must mean Clive Berklee,” the bartender said, a thin man whose bushy salt-and-pepper hair harkened back to the Afros of the Seventies. “Old guy, drinks Molson’s, always working a crossword puzzle? Usually comes in Sundays?”

  Thank God for bartenders. “That’s him. Do you know his nephew, by any chance, the one who’s the medical examiner’s assistant?”

  He shook his head. “All I know, his name’s Herschel and he’s some kinda lab tech or male nurse. Not a lot of the hospital crowd comes in here. Any drinking they do, they do at home.”

  At least now I had a name. Herschel. I already knew that the medical examiner’s assistant had a loose lip. Maybe, with the proper incentive, he would tell me more.

  Before hunting Herschel down, I drove by Geronimo’s Rest Mobile Home Community, where Duane Tucker and his mother lived. I’ve seen better trailer parks and I’ve seen worse. Near the entrance perched several rows of double-wides, most of them in fairly good shape. Some even boasted tiny, picket-fenced yards filled with flowers and whirligigs.

  As the lane wound its way through the park, however, the real estate degenerated into single-wides so battered they might have been plundered from salvage yards. At the end of a line of particularly damaged trailers was a deserted play area with a slide and creaky swing set. I saw no children anywhere.

  Even more worrisome were the suspicious faces that watched from trailer windows as the Jeep crept down the lane, so it came as a relief when I finally found Duane’s rusting single-wide. His trailer was anchored next door to a sleek Airstream, against which leaned a wrecked Harley-Davidson partially covered by a tarp.

  Two little girls, both freckled redheads, sat on the steps of this gleaming paragon, engrossed in what appeared to be homework. When I pulled my Jeep to a stop, the older girl passed her notebook to the other, and stood up.

  “If you’re huntin’ Duane, he ain’t home.” She was about ten, wearing clean but frayed slacks and a sweater several sizes too large.

  The curtains in the trailer twitched. Someone was inside, listening.

  “How about his mother, then?”

  The girl snickered. “Joleene’s ‘asleep.’” Her hands made the common quote gesture. “You their friend?”

  “Just somebody who wants to talk to them.”

  Another snicker. “You must be a cop, then, ‘cause Duane ain’t got no social worker no more. Hey, that sure is a pretty Jeep, all painted up with them Indian signs and everything. Would you take me and Labelle here for a ride?”

  Given the circumstances of my visit, her over-friendly attitude worried me. “Didn’t your mother tell you it was dangerous to get in a stranger’s car?”

  “Got no mother. So what’s your name, pretty lady?”

  I guessed where this was going and I was right. As soon as I told her my name, she said, “I’m Ladonna Lundstrom, I’m ten, and that there’s my sister Labelle, she’s eight. Now we’s friends, so can we go for a ride?”

  “Sorry. The answer’s still no.”

  Her Cupid’s bow mouth turned down. “You’re a bitch.”

  “And you have a dirty mouth.”

  “Screw you.”

  At that, the curtains gave a final twitch. The door opened and a man wearing a torn Foo Fighters tee shirt hobbled out, his leg encased in a thigh-high cast. In his right hand he carried a baseball bat. “Ladonna, what did I hear from your mouth?”

  Ladonna didn’t flinch at the sight of the bat. “Labelle said two dirty words.”

  “Did not.” Labelle, sounding bored.

  The man, who had the same red hair as the girls, had obviously been around this block before. Scowling at Ladonna, he said, “You think I can’t tell your voices apart? Get your lying butt in here.”

  Ladonna threw me a look that blistered paint and slunk into the trailer.

  Foo Fighter Man turned his attention to me and raised the bat. “You’d a started to put them in that Jeep, I’d a bashed your ass.”

  I so admire protective parents. “Sir, do you have any idea when Duane will be home?”

  “Never, I hope. You a friend of his, you better not let me catch you talking to my babies again.” He grabbed the other girl by the arm and pulled her into the trailer.

  So much for a minor’s arrest record being expunged when he turned eighteen. The whole nosy trailer park probably knew about Duane’s background, but being poor and powerless, they could do nothing to rid themselves of his presence. I wondered how Duane was faring now that Precious Doe’s body had been found. For that matter, I also wondered about Floyd Po
lk’s safety.

  How long would it be before a Los Perdidos vigilante took matters into his own hands?

  Chapter Eight

  While waiting for Duane to get home, I killed time with a cup of coffee at a nearby Burger King. The coffee was fine, but the view from the parking lot lacked the scenic scope of that from McDonald’s, and all I could see was the back end of a feed store. I sipped until six, then zipped my jacket against the cooling October air and returned to Geronimo’s Rest Trailer Park. This time I struck lucky, if you can call talking to the town tough and his drunken mother lucky.

  “I never touched that kid,” Duane Tucker said, leaning against his trailer door as if to block me from entering. His mug shot had not revealed his lack of height or eroded teeth, the kind that came from smoking crystal meth.

  His mother, Joleene, reached around him and snatched my I.D. out of my hand. Her lips moved as she read. Handing it back, she told him, “She ain’t a cop, just some kinda private detective like the ones on TV. We don’t have to talk to her.” A bleached blonde, an inch of gray-brown roots showed at the base of her stringy, shoulder-length hair. She swayed, one hand on her son’s arm, the other wrapped around a Budweiser.

  “That’s true,” I told her. “You don’t have to talk to me, but the sheriff sees Duane as a possible suspect in the girl’s death. Maybe I can help straighten things out.”

  Duane sized me up with a practiced sneer. I must have passed inspection because despite his mother’s protests, he invited me in. The trailer smelled almost as foul as Floyd Polk’s place. Flies buzzed merrily near the tiny kitchen’s sink, where a pile of food-encrusted plates moldered away. Budweiser cans littered the avocado shag carpet, and the pink floral sofa boasted almost as much rotting food as the plates in the sink.

  Someone had at least made an attempt at decor, if not cleanliness, by taping a large, brightly-colored cartoon strip over the sofa. The artwork appeared to be original, and while gory in subject matter—a werewolf chomping his way through a teen slumber party—it had been rendered with obvious skill.

  “Can’t nobody prove I done anything,” Duane said, stepping over a crushed beer can.

  I forced a smile. “I’m sure you didn’t, but do you have an alibi? The girl died sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning. Where were you then?”

  “With me,” his mother said, flopping down on the filthy sofa. Due to health concerns, I remained standing.

  Duane threw her a sour look. “I was with Shirley.”

  “That slut.” Joleene took another swig from her Budweiser and belched.

  “Ain’t no worse than you, Ma.”

  I interrupted this jolly family interchange. “May I have Shirley’s address?”

  Duane, who at least wasn’t illiterate, picked up a pencil and paper, and in delicate script, wrote MRS. GENEVA ROUSSE, 4210 SO. WICKIUP. “We was at Happy’s Cantina til they closed down Friday night, then we followed some friends over to their apartment and partied til noon. They’ll back me up. And yeah, you can talk to Shirley’s mom, too We had a big fight over me keeping her out all night, so she’s sure gonna remember. If that kid died when you said she did, I couldn’t a done it. I told the sheriff as much when he came nosing around.”

  Joleene spoke up again. “That bastard’s always been after good people like us.”

  I kept my smile in place. “Cops are like that, aren’t they?” I produced the newspaper clipping with Precious Doe’s picture. “Have either of you seen this girl?”

  The mother gave it a brief glance and snorted a negative, but Duane surprised me. “A few months ago I saw somebody like her standing in front of that mosque-thing they rigged up by the Unitarian Church.” He darted a quick look at his mother. “I used to go to Al-Anon meetings in one of the buildings.” He stopped, flushed, then tried again. “Anyway, she was talking to an Egyptian girl around the same age. The Egyptian kid was wearing one of those head scarves.”

  “Do you mean a hijab?”

  “Yeah, that’s the word. A black one.”

  Interesting. “Did you tell the sheriff this?”

  Joleene answered for him, a self-satisfied smirk on her face. “I told Duane not to ever tell the cops nothing.”

  Not even when the information might help clear him? I didn’t know which infuriated me the most, the woman’s hostility or her prideful ignorance. She had accomplished a minor miracle by actually making me feel sorry for Duane. When I glanced at the cartoon strip above the sofa again, I saw that one of the teens being chomped by the werewolf bore a strong resemblance to her.

  “Your work?” I asked Duane, pointing. “It’s very good.”

  His false sneer slipped into a genuine smile, but before he answered, Joleene snatched the artwork off the wall, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it to the floor. “Shit stuff. Any five-year-old can do better.”

  A millisecond of hurt flashed across Duane’s face as he bent to pick up the cartoon.

  The corners of my mouth began to cramp, so I let my smile go. “Well, thanks for the help. I’ll check with Shirley and her mother, and if Duane’s story holds up, I’ll pass that along to the sheriff.”

  Joleene belched again. “Suit yourself, Miss Fancy Pants.”

  Fighting the urge to smack her, I asked Duane, “Anything else you know that might help?”

  He held his crumpled artwork in his hands and smoothed it the best he could. When he looked at me again, the sneer had returned to his face. “I told you everything I know, so why don’t you just leave?”

  With great relief, I did.

  From the trailer park, I drove to Happy’s Cantina, where the bartender said that, yes, the night Precious Doe died, Duane and his girlfriend stayed at the bar until closing time, when they left with a crowd of other drunks. He directed me to a booth toward the rear, where a group of Duane’s friends were sharing a pitcher of beer.

  Three were sober enough to agree that, yeah, the dude and the hot bitch had spent the rest of the night at their apartment, and by the way, why didn’t I join them ‘cause I wasn’t half bad myself. After declining their gracious offer, I drove to the Rousse house. While Shirley, clad in a skimpy middy top and crotch-hugging jeans, sulked in the background, Mrs. Rousse confirmed Duane’s alibi.

  “He brought Shirley home drunk past noon, for Christ’s sake. You tell him if I ever see his meth-smoking face again, I’ll take a shotgun to it.”

  Unless they were all lying, Duane was in the clear.

  By now it was almost seven, but on the off chance Sheriff Avery was still in his office, I stopped by. He was there, all right, standing in the reception area, staring at the picture of the dead child tacked up on the bulletin board. His blue eyes were bloodshot, and his already craggy face seemed to have lost flesh.

  “What do you want now?” Even his voice sounded tired.

  “Duane has an air-tight alibi.”

  He eased into a chair across from a just-as-tired deputy. The deputy’s desk was piled high with Precious Doe’s DO YOU KNOW ME? fliers. Since my newspaper cutting was getting ragged around the edges, I helped myself to several.

  Avery frowned but didn’t take them away. “An air-tight alibi? Lot of those going around, these days. Floyd Polk’s pickup truck hasn’t been running for a couple of weeks. I know because we checked it out ourselves. The guy had no way of transporting anyone’s body, not even his own. He’s been hitching into town for his provisions.”

  Comparing notes wasn’t the only reason I had decided to brave Avery’s hostility. “Sheriff, given the mood of the town, perhaps you should arrange for some sort of protection for those two. Polk, especially.” I remembered that isolated shack and the old man’s vulnerability. A knife would be inadequate defense against an angry mob.

  The deputy started laughing but Avery silenced him. “Believe me, we would if we had the manpower, but unfortunately, we don’t. With this cooler weather, crime is up. Car thefts, break-ins, and old ladies spooked by illegals cutting throug
h their yards on the way to Tucson. It’s all we can do these days to keep the Mexes from getting shot.”

  “What about the FBI? Didn’t you tell me earlier that they’ve taken an interest in the case?”

  He snorted. “That turned out to be just so much hot air. Thanks to the Patriot Act, the Feds are too busy opening everybody’s mail than to help us catch child killers. A couple of agents did show up yesterday, asked a few questions, then drove back to Tucson, probably to sneak-read their neighbors’ credit card bills. Like I said, we’re swamped. Polk and Duane have to fend for themselves.”

  A common excuse, but true. If the police had enough manpower, there would be no crime. Of course, there would be no freedom, either, but that was another issue entirely.

  “Duane said he saw someone resembling Precious Doe talking to another girl of her age at some mosque near the Unitarian Church. An ‘Egyptian kid’ is how he described her.” Too late I wondered how Duane could tell the difference between an Egyptian, an Iraqi, or any other Middle Eastern person. Then I remembered his beautifully-detailed cartoon. He had an artist’s eye.

  Avery shook his head. “There’s no real mosque in town, not enough Muslims, although Lee Casey up at Apache Chemical is doing what he can to change that. They’re cheaper labor and less trouble than the locals. The Unitarians let them use their hall for Friday services and various social get-togethers. Maybe that’s what Duane meant.”

  “Do you have any idea who the Egyptian girl might be? She wears a hijab.” Most Middle Eastern immigrants I’d met in Phoenix eschewed traditional dress, so there was a good chance this detail might help identify her.

  He thought for a moment. “I wonder if he means the younger Wahab girl. Aziza, I think her name is. Her father, Dr. Kalil Wahab, is one of those Egyptian chemists Casey sponsored. Talk about strict! From what I hear, Wahab really makes his kids tow the line.”