Desert Cut

by Betty Webb

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Shalimar, the Wahab’s oldest girl, she was sick once.”

  I thought about that. “Before or after your conversation with Mrs. Wahab?”

  “After. My granddaughter, who was in her class, says Shalimar missed a week of school. When she returned she was very different and spoke to no one. Afterward, when I saw her watering the flowers in her garden, she limped. That particular kind of limp, it is common in Egypt. The scar tissue, you see, it sometimes pulls at the leg. Many girls who are cut do not walk well ever again. I was more fortunate. I do not limp.”

  When I realized what she was telling me, that she herself had been cut, I shuddered. I tried to say something, but failed.

  Dismissing remembered pain, Mrs. Nour waved her hand. “In Cairo, these things are usually done by midwives or barbers, women who are experts with straight razors. For Shalimar, well, American barbers do not perform such procedures. Neither do American doctors. So the Wahabs went to the woman known as the Cutter.”

  Further along the alley, a dog barked. Farouk scampered out from under the pickup and resumed his perch on the empty crate. Mrs. Nour smiled at him, he purred back.

  I hated to break up the love fest, but an obvious question needed to be asked. “Mrs. Nour, if you suspected what was going on, why didn’t you report it?”

  An expression of shame crossed her face. “Because I am a widow with no man to protect me, and after 9/11, I have been afraid. After all, what proof did I have to claim bad things about another Muslim when we are all so disliked now? Not that the Wahabs are true Muslims. Like the terrorists, they only practice the sections of the Koran that suit them.”

  Terrorists?

  She must have noticed my alarm. “No, no. I have not made myself clear. Dr. Wahab is no terrorist. He is happy here in America, he likes it very much, especially the money! In Egypt, despite his education, he was considered to be from a low family. The same with his wife. In the Middle East, family is everything. This is why they so desired that particular marriage for Shalimar. You know about the marriage?” At my nod, she continued. “That family is a good one, very respected. But the groom is the youngest son.”

  This information begged another question. “Then what did this ‘good’ family want with Shalimar, if her family was, um, low?”

  A bitter smile. “To strengthen a connection to America. Like her parents, Shalimar is a citizen now. Her new husband and two of his brothers wish to immigrate to make their own fortunes. Having an American in the family eases that process, correct?”

  “I don’t know anything about immigration law, Mrs. Nour.” My anger, formerly under control, surged again. “Let’s see if I have this right. In anticipation of making a ‘good’ marriage for Shalimar, the Wahabs had her genitals cut off.” I refused to use that inaccurate word, circumcised.

  “Of course. And now she is gone. To Egypt, to marry a man she has never met, a man who already has one wife. When he emigrates, he will probably leave First Wife behind in Egypt, that is the usual way of things. Or he might bring her here, too. The first wife would act as maid—how do the young people say it here?—a maid ‘with privileges’? This is sometimes done.”

  At my shocked expression, she said, “Ah, I see that you disapprove. Well, Shalimar did not want this marriage, either. As you must have noticed, our houses are close to each other, and the night before she left, I heard her crying.”

  So much sorrow hardly bore thinking about. “That’s terrible,” was all I could find to say.

  “It is wicked, and someone should stop it. But no one ever does. It is as if little girls do not matter. Not even here, in America.”

  I’d often thought the same thing myself. For all our so-called concern about human rights, when the world’s victims were women and girls, America turned a blind eye. Churches and charitable groups, for instance, made so much fuss about the Lost Boys of the Sudan, yet never spared a though for the Sudan’s lost girls.

  Weren’t girls human, too?

  No time to worry about American hypocrisy now. “Mrs. Nour, do you have any idea who the Cutter is?”

  Her dark eyes burned into mine. “If I did, she would no longer breathe.”

  ***

  The sun had almost set when I arrived at the ranch, where I saw Selma in the corral with a mare and a brand new foal. She waved. I would have walked over to talk to her, but she looked every bit as exhausted as had Mrs. Nour. Ah, the joys of owning your own business. Up before the sun, to bed with the moon—if even then.

  My work wasn’t finished yet, either. While the sun cast a buttery glow through the window, I plucked my cell phone out of my carry-all, and started returning messages.

  “The Hassans are in real trouble,” Jimmy told me, when I reached him at Desert Investigations. Half-owner of the business, he was still working and probably would be for a couple more hours. “A little bird in Phoenix PD told me that the Hassans entered the U.S. with one more daughter than they can presently account for, and she’d be around seven years old right now. They claimed they sent her back to Somalia last week, but INS says that’s the first they heard of it, and they would know. Both parents just had their mouths swabbed, too.”

  For a DNA test. “Already?” Getting that kind of court order usually took longer.

  “CPS doesn’t like the condition the two girls were in. Little Bird says they were missing essential parts.”

  In other words, the girls’ genitals had been amputated.

  “Did Little Bird have anything else to say?”

  “Nope. I guess he figured that was enough. Lena, I want to drive down there and help. You don’t need to be by yourself in an investigation like this. Those poor children.” His voice broke on the last word.

  To give him time to recover, I stressed how much I needed him to remain in Scottsdale, then filled him in on my search for the Cutter. “She’s a menace, Jimmy, and needs to be deported. At the very least.”

  “Deported?” Fury replaced sorrow. “I’m thinking serious jail time! Life without parole! In a windowless cell! With rats!” This, from Desert Investigations’ gentler partner.

  “I’m working on it.” I could not keep a picture of the Cutter from forming in my mind. Big, well-muscled—she would have to be to hold a struggling girl down—lips curled in sadistic pleasure as she sliced through tender flesh. I was certain I would recognize this handmaiden of evil if I ran into her on the street. And then I would…

  Jimmy snapped me out of my own revenge fantasy. “All right. I’ll mind the store up here as long as you need me to, but call me the second you need help, promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Good. Now promise something else.”

  Sighing, I said, “What?”

  “That you won’t go anywhere without your service revolver. People who would do such rotten things to children wouldn’t hesitate to hurt an adult.”

  “I promise. Again.”

  “You sure?”

  Sometimes my partner’s over-protective tendencies became irritating, but I didn’t let my impatience show. “Yes, Jimmy, I’m sure. The .38 goes wherever I go. Listen, I have a few more calls to return, so I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  He grumbled a good-bye and hung up.

  Several phone calls later to clients anxious to know how their cases were progressing, I was ready to return the message I’d been putting off.

  “It sure took you long enough,” Warren said, picking up.

  Sometimes I hate Caller I.D. It makes first words so abrupt.

  “I had places to go, people to see,” I told him.

  He caught the mockery. “Too bad I wasn’t one of them. Listen, we really need to start working on our…”

  “Relationship?”

  “Exactly. And that’ll be easier once I move to Scottsdale. Speaking of, have you done any house-hunting?”

  What gall. “No, I haven’t. I’ve been working a case.”

  “Oh. That’s right.” H
is embarrassment bounced off the satellite all the way from California. “Don’t tell me that what I’ve been hearing on the news is true. Female circumcision? In America?”

  I disabused him of the “circumcision” part, insisting on the proper terminology by describing the procedure. “It’s amputation, Warren, not circumcision. You’re circumcised, and it sure hasn’t kept you out of action. But these people, they slice everything off the little girls, right down to the root, without anesthesia. Now let’s change the subject. When I was in L.A. Friday, I drove over to your house.”

  “At about what, ah, time?” He sounded wary now.

  “At about, ah, the same time you and the blonde were leaving on what looked like an out-of-town trip. You two still together, or are you tired of her already? I’ve noticed that you Hollywood types seem to have a short attention span.” A real short attention span.

  After a moment’s silence, he said, “Lena, didn’t you recognize her?”

  His question kept me from hanging up. Come to think of it, there had been something familiar about the woman, but in my shock, her face hadn’t truly registered. “What do you mean, did I ‘recognize her’? And what difference would it make, anyway?”

  “That blonde was Delphi Forrester. I was taking her to Promises, the rehab facility.”

  Delphi Forrester. As the blonde’s face came into focus, I remembered reading a tabloid story while waiting in line at Safeway. A former child star whose film career had been sidetracked by heavy partying and even heavier drugs, Delphi’s friends had been trying to get her into rehab for months. “You know Delphi Forrester?”

  “She’s been my next-door neighbor since she was a kid. And that kiss you saw? I didn’t initiate it and I certainly didn’t respond to it. That’s just the way Delphi is, gloms onto people all the time, especially older men. There were problems with her father when she was younger. I’m sure you can guess what kind.”

  Another scandal the tabloid had hinted at. Supposedly, Forrester Senior had his own drug problems, not that drugs excused his treatment of his daughter. He was currently doing time in some medium security facility, and if it were up to me, he’d never get out.

  Warren was still talking. “When Delphi finally made the decision to check into Promises, I happened to be the only person nearby that she really trusted, so what was I supposed to do? Tell the poor kid to call a cab?”

  No, he couldn’t. He wasn’t that kind of man.

  Before I had time to respond, he said, “Look, I know you’ve got trust issues, Lena. What with your childhood and all, it would be a miracle if you didn’t. I can deal with them, but you need to meet me halfway. Don’t go running off half-cocked when you see or hear something you don’t understand. Talk to me first. And as long as we’re having this heart-to-heart, I should probably tell you that regardless of our arrangement, I haven’t been with another woman since we got together. I haven’t wanted to. You’re the only woman I want. Will ever want.”

  At that, I couldn’t say anything.

  “Lena? Are you crying?”

  “Of course not,” I lied.

  “Oh, lord, I can’t stand this. I’m flying out there. Tonight. No, on the next plane leaving LAX.”

  That promise or threat, whichever it was, reminded me of the business at hand. “No! There’s too much going on.”

  “I don’t care. We need to be with each other before this whole long-distance relationship thing goes south for good.”

  He was right, but at the wrong time. I filled him in on what had been happening in Los Perdidos, the two runaway girls, their defiant parents, the possible Phoenix connection to Precious Doe, the still-unknown identity of the Cutter. “It’s a real mess, and I can’t…I can’t…” I searched for a tactful word, couldn’t find one, so I just blurted out the rude truth. “I can’t be distracted.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Warren?”

  Finally, a sigh. “I understand.” He didn’t sound angry, just disappointed.

  “I want you with me, I do. But those children…”

  I could almost hear his smile. “I wasn’t just using the word, Lena. I do understand. You could no more turn away from a child who needs you than you could forget to breathe.”

  Tears stung my eyes again, but I refused to let them distract me. “Thank you,” I just said.

  We talked for another few minutes, and the last thing he told me before hanging up was, “I love you, Lena.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, I tried to recoup my sanity through a frenzy of activity. I fussed around the cottage, closing the drapes against the late afternoon glare, straightening a pile of magazines on the coffee table, and rearranging my toiletries in the order I would use them in the morning. But the more I fussed, the more disoriented I felt.

  Giving up, I fled the room, seeking solace in the Arizona twilight. Refusing to think about anything, especially my rocky relationship with Warren, I headed up the trail toward the San Pedro River and its cocooning silence. As the sun sank lower, tipping the leaves with gold, I walked the bank and listened to the rush of the river, the cheeps of sleepy songbirds. Step by step, my tension slipped away.

  By the time I reached the teen camp, I was almost back to normal, or at least what passed for normal with me. To my relief, the camp was deserted, although strewn with even more refuse than before. Deciding to do my part in keeping Arizona beautiful, I grabbed a Circle K bag and started picking up Coke and beer cans, SuzyQ wrappers, and empty trail mix packets. The cigarette butts were the nastiest. Hundreds of them littered the ground, many of them lipstick-stained. Hadn’t anyone told these kids about lung cancer?

  Three full Circle K bags later, with the light fading into dusk, I was almost finished picking up butts. As I stuffed two pink-smeared Salem Lights into the bag, a spray of dirt kicked up into my face.

  Simultaneously, my ears registered a gunshot.

  “Hey!” I yelled. Did some idiot think I was a deer? Another gunshot. This time, I felt the heat of the bullet as it just missed my head.

  Dropping the Circle K bag, I dove into the underbrush and landed on my stomach underneath a creosote bush, a cholla cactus bristling dangerously near my face. Better a poke in the eye than a bullet in my brain.

  Another shot.

  A pistol, but what kind? A .38 revolver like mine? Or a semi-automatic with a fully-loaded clip?

  Dirt kicked up again ten feet to my right. Either the shooter had lost his fix on me, or was attempting to lull me into a false sense of security. Already frozen in place, I now stilled even my breath. Around me, Nature did the same. No sound emerged from the crickets or nightbirds, just uncaring chuckles of water from the San Pedro River.

  The shooter made no noise, either. He planned to wait me out.

  I saw two choices of action. Stay hidden under the creosote bush in hopes he would eventually give up and go away, or find a more defensive position. I remembered seeing a tumble of granite boulders a few yards to my left, and wondered if it was possible to reach them without alerting my attacker to my position. I certainly couldn’t defend myself from here. Although I’d taken care to strap on my holster before leaving the cottage, the snap as I freed my .38 might betray me in such silence.

  Since action comes more easily to me than inaction, I began to crawl. Praying that the dim light hid my movements, I slid on my belly until reaching the spot where the boulders hunched against me and the surrounding tall weeds helped obscure my form.

  Then I heard twigs snapping.

  Footsteps.

  Were they coming closer? Or moving away?

  As I breathed in dust and dirt, nearby crickets began to chirp again, which meant that the shooter was moving in the wrong direction. I waited a while longer, then as quietly as possible, unsnapped my holster.

  The snap sounded to my ears every bit as loud as a gunshot. Then, taking even more care, I flipped out the .38 and cocked the hammer back.

  Another gunshot, not mine.

&n
bsp; This time my attacker’s bullet zinged through the underbrush only inches from my face. Yes, the shooter almost achieved his end, a dead Lena Jones, but I’d seen a flash from between two cottonwoods. I raised myself up over the weeds and fired two quick shots in that direction.

  A gasp.

  Fright? Or had a bullet found its mark?

  Footsteps charging away through the underbrush answered the question. The shooter, thinking his quarry was unarmed, had acted boldly. Things changed when his quarry returned fire.

  Coward.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I was in the sheriff’s office signing off on my report about the shooting, when Raymundo Mendoza shoved his way through the door.

  “Where’s Nicole?” he cried.

  The deputies rushed forward. One of them, the stone-faced mountain of a man who’d taken my report, said, “Calm down, son.”

  Raymundo turned a fierce face on him and clenched his fists. “Don’t you tell me to calm down! Where’s Sheriff Avery? I need to talk to him!”

  Deputy Mountain—his badge said KENNY SMALL—didn’t answer, just pushed at him somewhat less than gently. Raymundo didn’t like that, and raised a fist. Before he could throw a punch, I stepped between the two. “Nicole’s not here, Raymundo. CPS has her. She’s safe.”

  The boy noticed me for the first time. “Safe? Are you crazy?” The usual teenage contempt for authority raged in his eyes, but he lowered his fists. “You brought her back here, didn’t you? I should never have told you where she was!”

  The door to the sheriff’s office opened and Avery walked out. “Raymundo, go home.”

  “Not without my girl!”

  To Deputy Mountain, the sheriff said, “Got any more room in the cells tonight?”

  Deputy Mountain reflected. “Well, considering everything, it’s been relatively quiet for a Saturday night, so we have a few vacancies.”

  Seeing which way this was headed, I took Raymundo by the arm. “Let’s talk outside.”