Desert Lost (9781615952229) (17 page)

The landscaping, however, was glorious.

As I picked my way along the disintegrating cobblestone walk, I passed through a veritable jungle of flowering bushes a-flutter with butterflies and bees. Despite my concerns about facing down the old battle ax, I smiled at this tropical profusion of color. Bright red poppies nuzzled a lavender-bloomed wisteria. A few yards away, green and white caladium circled a yellow ginkgo tree, themselves surrounded dazzling beds of bearded iris, pansies, begonias, and gladioli.

Among all this botanical beauty stood the alleged victim of Angel's rapacious Tree of Paradise: a sickly American sweet gum tree, its branches drooping, its five-lobed leaves in the process of falling unseasonably to the ground.

“Who the hell are you and what the hell do you want?” a raspy voice called.

I looked away from the dying sweet gum to see a tiny woman, her face smeared with green goo, standing on the doorstep, arms akimbo.

“My name's Lena Jones and I'm a private detective. May we talk for a moment?”

“Whatever it was, I didn't do it, and you couldn't prove it if I did,” she snapped. “Now get the hell out of my yard before I sic the dogs on you.”

If she owned dogs, they'd be barking by now, but I approached her carefully, one rickety cobblestone at a time. “My client Angel Grey has been receiving…”

“I don't care if Ms. Grey's been receiving smallpox. I want her out of this neighborhood, her and those ugly twins of hers. What are they, albinos?”

I had no problem with people insulting me or even Angel, but they'd better not insult those two precious girls. “They're natural blondes, actually.” I pointed to her own dark-rooted goldilocks. “Unlike you. What's the matter, miss your touch-up appointment at the salon? Or did the last check you wrote them bounce?”

To my surprise, she laughed. Her teeth were her own, although yellow. “I like a woman with spirit. Care to step in for a chat and a nice cuppa hemlock? I'd love to hear about Ms. Grey's grievances. In sordid detail. Other people's unhappiness makes me feel so much better about my own.”

The old bat was growing on me. “I'll pass on the cuppa, but I'm up for the chat.”

After its exterior, the house she led me into came as a shock. It was spotless and in museum-perfect condition, furnished in an assortment of antiques most dealers would kill for. Eclipsing all that splendor, a large painting of a youthful Nadine, looking ravishingly beautiful and completely untrustworthy, hung above a fireplace big enough to roast an entire cow.

“Wow,” was all I could say.

“Don't be too impressed. I'm selling off everything, one piece at a time. With any luck, I'll be dead before the Jacobean armchairs go. Sure you don't want a drink?” She held up a crystal decanter. “I've been drinking down the wine cellar so this stuff calling itself merlot is nothing but cheap plonk, but any plonk in a storm, huh?”

I declined this gracious offer and lowered myself into one of the armchairs, which was as uncomfortable as it looked. Her own drink poured, Nedon sat down in the matching armchair across from me, and raised her glass. “Here's to trouble.” She took a drink, sighed. “Now let's hear the threat.”

“Threat?” I hadn't yet mentioned the letters.

“Oh, c'mon. Nobody drops by just to pass the time. You're here to threaten me either with police action or a lawsuit, possibly both, so kindly spell it out. Be warned, though. Whatever crimes I've committed, the statute of limitations elapsed long ago.”

She seemed so forthright I decided to test her. “Did you forge your father's will?”

“Of course I did.”

“How about shoplifting?”

“Ten times more often than they caught me for.”

“Hitting your maid?”

Her face took on a sly look. “Since that's part of an ongoing lawsuit, I cannot comment at this time.”

“Did you write threatening letters to Angela Grey?”

“Don't be an ass. Why would I do something like that?”

“Because you're angry about that ailing American sweet gum tree of yours, and what Angel's Tree of Heaven might be doing to it.”

“To paraphrase that big-eared alien in that stupid space opera, there is no ‘might be,' there only
is
. One day phony Indian Maiden Ha Ha is going to come out and find every last goddamn root of her murderous plant chopped up into one-inch pieces.” She took another drink, a larger one this time. “Look, Miss Jones, if that really is your name, the only thing I have left worth caring about besides my portrait and my Jacobean armchairs, is my garden. Screw with it and you screw with me.”

The woman was indomitable, but I hid my admiration. “Give me a yes or no, Ms. Nedon. Did you send threatening letters to Angel?”

She crossed her arms over her scrawny chest and said, “That's for me to know and you to find out.”

***

Once back at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, I related my findings while Angel listened attentively. “Both Nedon and Jenks had reasons to write those letters. So did…” I flicked my eyes toward the Black Monk, who glared at me from his seat at the dining table. “So did Otto.” Hating myself, I added, “And maybe Warren.”

She didn't looked as shocked as I'd wished. “Because of the custody thing?”

“Yes.”

“I know him better than you, Lena. Warren wants the twins, but there's a limit to how far he'll go. With him, there's
always
a limit. Hey, what's wrong now?”

“Nothing.”

The Black Monk made a disgusted sound. “Can we get on with this?”

I cleared my throat and continued. “As for Speerstra, you're right, he and your ex haven't left that Idaho rehab facility for weeks. And your other ex is still in South Korea. I've scared Nedon and Jenks off, I believe, so what do you want me to do now? Take my findings to the police?”

She shook her head. “No. Maybe whoever's been sending the letters will stop now that you've outed them as forgeries. If they don't stop, then we'll see. I'll tell you this, though. I'm moving back home first thing tomorrow. As for Warren, I'll fight him to the bitter end. I want my babies back.” Her voice trembled slightly; talking about her little girls always made her emotional.

“If I may make one suggestion?”

“Suggest away.”

“Get rid of that Tree of Paradise.”

She managed a smile. “I'll call the gardener now.”

***

Flouting Hollywood convention, Angel and I shared an early dinner in the hotel restaurant while the Black Monk looked on with no apparent appetite. Angel was more relaxed than I'd seen her in some time, and it was fun going over new script ideas now that
Desert Eagle
might be moving to one of the networks. If the writers' strike ever ended.

“You'll get a raise,” she said. “Networks pay consultants more money than cable.”

The amount I was already getting seemed astronomically high for doing nothing more than reading scripts and flying out to L.A. once a week to point out their errors. Then I remembered something. “Jenks told me I was fired.”

“Doesn't he wish. But I've made it clear that you're part of my package—if I'm the
Desert Eagle,
you're the
Desert Eagle
's baggage, so to speak. Who else has enough balls to sit at a conference table and tell the writers that revolvers don't eject shell casings?”

“Women don't have balls,” the Black Monk grumped.

Angel laughed. “The hell they don't.”

***

Two hours later, while I was returning my rental car to Hertz, my cell phone chirped.

Jimmy began shouting even before I got the phone to my ear. “Jesus, Lena, why haven't you been answering your phone? I've called a dozen times!”

“I was busy doing interviews, so I turned it off and only a few minutes ago realized I'd forgotten to turn it back on. How'd the trip out to the Florence Junction property go? Did Madeline make an offer?”

“There was no trip, because someone broke into your apartment last night. Jesus, Lena. There's blood all over the place. And Madeline's missing.”

Chapter Twenty

Scottsdale detectives Bob Grossman and Sylvie Perrins, with Lieutenant Dagny Urich listening carefully, were interviewing Jimmy when I arrived at my apartment. As he had told me over the phone, blood spattered the living room, most of it located near the door.

“There's not enough blood to indicate fatal injury.” Dagny's voice was unexpectedly gentle. Maybe because it wasn't my blood.

Jimmy's own voice reflected a combination of fear and pride. “Madeline put up a hell of a fight, didn't she, Lena?”

The television, its screen shattered, lay on the floor. The coffee table, tossed all the way to the other side of the room, now had only three legs; the fourth had come to rest against the opposite wall. Papers, books, and Madeline's slides littered the carpet. Everything, including the door frame, was smudged with fingerprint powder.

“Looks like whoever did this was wearing gloves, but if we lift anything promising, we'll run it through AFIS,” Dagny said. “We have your prints on file, Lena, and Mr. Sisiwan's. Has there been anyone else up here lately we need to rule out?”

“Just Madeline. And Warren, my ex-boyfriend. He was up here a couple weeks ago.”

Her eyes sharpened. “Acrimonious break-up?”

There being no point in going into the details, I shook my head. “No worse than usual. But he'd never do anything like this.”

After a noncommittal grunt, she thrust a baggie toward me. Secured inside was a block-printed note that said, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS OR SHE DIES. “This was on your kitchen table. Any idea who wrote it?”

I opened my mouth, but for some reason couldn't make a sound.

Before I could wave him away, Jimmy guided me to the sofa, sat down beside me, and slipped his arm around my shoulders. “Put your head down between your knees. Take deep breaths.”

How could I, when I couldn't breathe at all?

“Lena!” Jimmy pounded me on the back with his fist.

Air rushed back into my lungs, and with it, bile rose in my throat. Covering my mouth with my hand, I staggered to my feet, and stumbled toward the bathroom. I almost made it.

“There goes the crime scene,” Dagny muttered as I fell to my knees and heaved all over the carpet.

“No prob,” Bob Grossman replied. “Techs finished testing that area fifteen minutes ago.”

“We can get prelim results as early as tomorrow,” Dagny said. “Blood type, anyway. DNA'll take weeks. If we're lucky, this might not all be the victim's blood. When the final results come in, CODIS might be able to identify the perp.”

Would Madeline's medical records still be at the hospital where she'd been treated for breast cancer so many years earlier? Before I could ask, another bout of nausea hit me. This time I managed to make it to the bathroom, Jimmy trailing behind. When my brain began functioning again, I realized he'd never left my side. Once finished emptying my stomach, I threw cold water on my face and gargled. Somewhat refreshed, I ran back to the living room, grabbed my vest, and charged out the apartment door.

“Lena! Where are you going?” Jimmy called.

“To the compound. Those bastards are responsible for this.”

He caught me in the stairwell and stopped me before I made it to the street. “They won't let you in.”

“Then I'll climb the goddamn fence!”

“I already filled Lieutenant Ulrich in on everything. She decided there's probable cause for a search warrant. It's in the works right now.”

“On what grounds?”

“Before you got here, I told the lieutenant about Darnelle and what I saw on the monitor Tuesday night. Assault. Possible rape. I even gave her a copy of the tapes. You can see Prophet Shupe back-handing Darnelle, clear as day, blood on her mouth, him dragging her toward the house. Everything he said's as clear as a bell, too. And I made certain
those
tapes were legal.”

“By the time Dagny gets her warrant, if she does, Madeline could be…” I couldn't say the word that scared me the most. “…could be hidden away at some compound in Mexico.” Figuring I could make it to the one in Scottsdale within ten minutes if the traffic lights were with me, I started out the door. This time my rush was interrupted by a herd of cops thundering down the stairs behind me.

“Headquarters just radioed that the warrant came through,” Dagny said, as she trailed me down the sidewalk. “We're on our way to the compound, but you have to stay here. The last thing we need is for you to muddy the waters.” To Jimmy, “Hold her down.”

“Yes, ma'am,” my friend and my traitor answered, taking hold of my arms so firmly that I couldn't follow as Sylvie and Bob rushed past.

Helplessly I watched them disappear onto the street, listened as sirens wailed into the night. “You bastard,” I said to Jimmy, while trying to figure out a way to knock him down the stairs. A knee to the groin?

He released me. “They're gone now, but I want to drive. You're in no shape.”

How could I have doubted him? We ran to the parking lot and jumped into his pickup. Fortunately, it was a weeknight and traffic was light because we blew through a few red lights without getting killed. On the way to Ten Spot Construction, my panic settled into a white-hot calm.

“Leave your .38 in the truck,” Jimmy said, as he rolled to a stop behind several blue-and-whites.

I didn't argue. If I'd learned one thing from my years on the force, it was that rage and guns were a lethal combination. In my mood, I was as apt to shoot a cop as I was Madeline's kidnapper.

Dagny hadn't stationed any uniforms outside the compound, so we were able to enter the house in time to see a thunderous-looking Prophet Shupe finish reading the search warrant. When he handed it back to Dagny, he gave Ezra a venomous glare that would have poisoned a weaker man.

“Is Ms. Madeline Grissom on these premises, Mr. Shupe?” Dagny asked. I noticed she didn't call him “Prophet.”

He blinked, but didn't answer. Ezra just looked scared, as did the other men grouped in guard formation around him: jackals protecting a lion. One of the jackals had a freshly-bandaged ear.

As I was considering the import of that, Dagny caught sight of me. “What are you doing here?”

“You have to ask?”

She looked at Prophet Shupe, then back at me. “Step onto the porch and let us do our job.”

As the cops spread out through the house on their search, I could hear sleepy children's voices supplanted by those of frightened women, among them Darnelle's and Opal's. Doors opened and closed, closet doors slid back. Yes, the cops were doing their job, and doing it well. I nodded at Dagny, and as she'd requested, backed onto the porch, Jimmy acting as my shadow.

“Let's make sure the outbuildings are checked,” I whispered. “The construction company, too.”

“Already on it,” he whispered back.

But the cops were already covering the other buildings. Their voices drifted toward us on the cool night air, overpowering the whisper of wind, the disgruntled mutterings of awakened nightbirds. After watching them come up empty time after time, I realized that Madeline would not be found here. They'd taken her somewhere else.

I remembered the legal problems that sometimes arose with search warrants, which by their nature, were necessarily limited in scope. “Jimmy, that search warrant Lieutenant Ulrich was able to wrangle?”

“What about it?”

“It's probably just for this address, this property. Since Madeline hasn't been found here, there's no legal foundation for the cops to collect DNA from those men without a court order, and you know the lieutenant, these days she does everything by the book.”

“Unfortunately.” He sounded as depressed as I felt.

“I have an idea.”

Mind made up, I trotted back to the house.

Although the noise from other rooms proved that the search continued, the glum expression on Dagny's face revealed that she wasn't expecting our luck to change. She didn't even seem angry when she said, “I thought I told you to wait outside.”

“You did.” My only satisfaction came from seeing that Prophet Shupe's protective God Squad, apparently once more smug in their ability to evade the law, had relaxed their guard over him.

With a sigh, Dagny turned away from me and back to the men. “I'll ask you once again, gentlemen. Have you ever…?”

She never finished, because with a loud screech intended to show I'd lost my mind—and maybe I had—I charged Prophet Shupe, and with my right hand, slashed him across the face. My fingernails were short, but long enough to do the job. Before the jackals could close their protective circle again, I slashed Ezra with my left hand. Then, when Band-Aid Man muscled me away from his holy men, I bit him hard enough to draw blood.

Mission accomplished, I stopped my screeching, and in a normal voice, said to Dagny, “It might be a good idea to check my victims' I.D.s, since I'll now be prosecuted for assault, right? You need to know for certain who I assaulted.”

The alarmed look that passed between Prophet Shupe and Ezra showed they understood what had just happened.

So did Dagny. Her voice held less outrage than I'd expected when she said, “That's the way it works, all right. Bob, bag her hands and cuff her. Sylvie, get the victims' identification. When you get the assailant down to the station, have a crime tech check her out and take those DNA samples. For the future assault case, of course.” Her next words, directed toward the men, sounded harsher. “We prosecute lawbreakers around here.”

Then, my mouth and fingernails loaded with polygamist DNA, I listened to the sweetest sound I'd heard in the past hour: my old pal, Sergeant Robert Grossman, intoning the Miranda as he snapped cuffs around my wrists.

But it wasn't over. Just as he was about to lead me away, I heard a strangled sound, followed by a thud. I turned to see Prophet Shupe on his knees, arms outflung, his eyes rolled back so that only the whites showed. His body was twitching so violently that two of his men put their hands on his shoulder to stabilize him.

“Elohim, Elohim, Lord God of Highest Heaven!” Spittle flew from Shupe's mouth. “Smite the whores and their associates, smite the unbelievers! As you promised in your covenant with me, together we shall bring about a great awakening and a great slaughter, and…and a…and a…” His mouth moved silently for a moment. Then he began to drool.

“A Revelation!” Ezra cried. “The Prophet is having a new Revelation!”

He sure was. Spittle flew as Shupe continued his rant. “…and a great crying of condemned souls from the flames of Hell and a…and a…”

“Go on, Prophet,” Band-Aid Man urged, his face aflame with religious fervor. “We hear your words and as your obedient servants, we will obey.”

Dagny was less impressed. “Epilepsy, is my guess. Or a brain tumor. Whatever the problem, he needs medical care, not a pulpit. Want me to call 9-1-1?” She directed her question to Ezra, who gave an angry shake of his head.

“You are witnessing a holy moment, Unbeliever.”

Dagny sniffed. “Whatever.”

“…and a rising of saints up to…into…Heav…Bazeiel Alamoama Gramael…”

As the assembled police officers stared in disbelief, every member of the God Squad fell to their knees and bowed their heads. Thus loosened from their steadying hands, Shupe slumped all the way to the floor. His twitchings became convulsions, but this didn't stop the words streaming from his foaming mouth. He was now in full Speaking-In-Tongues mode, the spate of names—or whatever they had been—degenerating into nonsense syllables. The more he raved, the more fervent his witless followers became.

“You are truly the Living Presence of God on Earth!” Ezra called out, his voice choked with emotion.

“Verily!” Band-Aid Man agreed, tears streaming down his face.

“…hakimo walzeribab uleeria nizheilrak…”

“Enough of this crap,” Dagny snapped. “Bob, take Lena down to the station and book her ass. In the meantime, I'm calling 9-1-1.”

***

Just after midnight, Jimmy made my bail. As I was being processed out, Bob Grossman stopped by to tell me that the Living Presence of God on Earth, who'd recovered from his seizure by the time the EMT's arrived, had refused medical treatment. No surprise there. Unlike the average person who suffers from epilepsy, Shupe, like his father before him, was also a lunatic. Regardless of his very obvious mental problems, his followers continued to turn over their lives—and the lives of their wives and daughters and sons—to him. Compared to Shupe, Dean Orval Nevitt was sanity itself.

Bob had more immediate news, too. “The early results just came in from the blood spatters in your apartment, Lena. Female, type 0 negative; male, type AB positive. You think that guy with the bandage on his ear is Mr. AB?”

“The odds are strong.”

“Just so you know, we have the plate numbers on all the vehicles at the compound, including a couple of cars that were parked there last week when we did the welfare check on those kids. An Aerostar van is missing and Lieutenant Ulrich's already sent out an APB on it. Anything pops up, I'll let you know.”

I gave him a peck on the cheek, my thanks for him being so gentle with the handcuffs, then waved everyone goodbye.

“What now?” Jimmy asked, as we drove out of the cop shop parking lot into the deep night. A gentle rain had started to fall. Reflections of street lights glimmered off blacktops.

“We go back to my apartment and wait.”

“But…”

“There's no point in driving up and down the streets of Scottsdale looking for Madeline. Prophet Shupe isn't stupid, and he won't have told the God Squad to stash her anywhere near the compound. Now that they're aware Band-Aid Man can be I.D.'d as one of her kidnappers, Shupe will order the bastards to let her go.” In other words, he'd decide that the kidnap conviction of one of his believers was preferable to a homicide conviction.