Desert Shadows (9781615952250) (12 page)

She threw a disgusted look at the copier. “If I remember. I have so much to do. I have to get the plumber over here before we all float away, there's seven manuscripts on my desk waiting to be read, the fall catalog needs to go to the printer.…Oops. Not that. Not anymore.” Her smile was malicious.

“Then why don't you give me your card and I'll call you.” Daily. Starting tomorrow.

“I'll try to find one.” She turned on her heel and began walking down the hall. I grabbed the few pages the copier had spit out before it broke down and followed her. Back at her desk, Poor Sandra rummaged through a drawer and finally came up with a card that looked as if mice had been chewing on it.

I looked at it.
SANDRA DESIREE ALDEN-TAYLOR
. “You took your maiden name back when you got divorced?”

She shook her head. “I never changed it. Gloriana didn't change hers, either, when she got married. When there aren't enough boys around to carry on the family name, the husbands of Alden-Taylor women are expected to change theirs instead so that their children will be Alden-Taylors.
Tradition
, you know.” Showing the first sign of spirit, she spat out the word as if it were an Anglo-Saxon expletive.

I'd heard that aristocratic English families sometimes required that men take their wives' names, but this was the first time I'd seen an American version of the custom. Not my business, but I asked, “How did your husband feel about that?”

A wry smile twisted her face, making her look even more unattractive. “Bob was fine with it as long as he believed I'd inherit.”

“But Zach was the actual heir. Did you know that then?”

A dark laugh. “Of course I did. Excluding Vicky, Zach is Gloriana's only direct descendant. If I'd told Bob that, though, he never would have married me. And I was pregnant, so what was I supposed to do? Have an illegitimate Alden-Taylor? As it is, he eventually found out the truth and left. Now the laugh's on him. I do inherit something, enough to buy a house for cash. Frankly, a little independence looks good to me. Now that Zach's got a kid of his own on the way, I can foresee all kinds of problems if I stay where I'm at.”

She knelt down to pat Casey, who had emerged from wherever she'd been hiding. “It's not easy being a single mother.”

“I'm sure it's not.”

When I got back in my Jeep I sat there for a moment, wondering how hard Poor Sandra's life really was. Would she kill to change it?

Chapter 9

I have a memory…

A memory of a soft hand against my cheek, a quiet laugh. My mother's laugh. The woman who would later shoot me.

“You see?” she says, the wind whipping her blond hair across her face. “We'll finally be free.”

She is not talking to me, her eyes are on the man next to her. A tall, red-haired man.

We are standing by the door of a white bus. It is open, calling us in. The wind increases, chilling me. I begin to cry. I don't want to leave this place. It is my home.

“None of this feels right,” the man says.

The woman caresses me again. “Life's too hard here. Do it for her. For me. Things will get better.”

The man again, quietly. “Only because I love you.”

He follows us onto the bus.

Chapter 10

It should have taken less than five minutes to get back to my office from Patriot's Blood, but throngs of tourists swarmed on foot back and forth across the streets in pursuit of postcards and bolo ties. So intent were they upon finding these treasures that they paid little attention to traffic lights. More than once as I edged the Jeep down Main Street, I almost hit some sunburned fool.

“Light, light!” I shouted to one wingtips-and-shorts-clad man who'd stopped in the middle of the street to goggle at my ride. Yes, my sandstone-colored vehicle, with its custom paint job of Pima symbols (courtesy of Jimmy's uncle) and hood-mounted steer horns, was somewhat unusual, but he could have admired it safely from the sidewalk.

“You interested in selling that thing?” Mr. Tourist asked, refusing to budge. I noticed that his big, red nose had begun to peel.

“It's not for sale,” I snapped. “Now move before you get gored.” I revved the Jeep's engine. He moved.

I beeped and nudged the rest of the way back to my office, and with relief parked in the side lot. I couldn't wait for summer, when most of the tourists, shocked by the city's 120-plus-degree heat, would return home. We natives didn't like summer either, but at least it thinned the herd.

Jimmy was in the process of shutting down his computer when I walked through the door.

“Good news, partner,” I announced. “Zachary Alden-Taylor is on his way to bail Owen out.”

Jimmy threw me a brilliant smile, his facial tattoo softening into smokey curves. “Zach called Janelle and told her. She's busy with the kids, so I volunteered to pick Owen up. The paperwork will probably take a few hours, but I don't want him to wait a second more than necessary.”

I waved him goodbye as he headed out the door, then sat down at my desk and flipped through Gloriana's memoirs. Seventy-seven pages had made it through the copier before it broke. The smudgy copies promised a challenge, but plowing through them would be worthwhile if they held the answer to her murder.

I began to read.

How does one begin to tell the history of such an illustrious family as the Alden-Taylors? With great humility, I, Gloriana Alden-Taylor, will attempt to do so for the benefit of not only my descendants, but for the world.

I had a bad feeling about this.

What magic, what divine touch of the Godhead brought the Alden-Taylors from the cold villages of England, first to the unfriendly, narrow streets of Holland, then finally to the warm, welcoming arms of Plymouth Rock?

Rocks had arms?

No Mayflower family, not even the Astors, has made as many contributions to American history as the Alden-Taylors. We count among ourselves presidents, senators, governors, judges, and if I may be so bold—publishers. Yes, publishers! Those upholders of America's first and most important Freedom, the Freedom of Speech! Truly, God has infused our Alden-Taylor blood with a rare and precious gift. We are.…

I hurried through the rest of the pages and found them filled with more of the same purple-prosed swoonings. Sadly, I saw nothing that would provide clues to her murder. Except on the last toner-challenged page.

…but that person down in Florence, not being of Alden-Taylor blood, he is incapable of grasping the concept. How could he? Superiority is not found in the color of our skins—it is found in the DNA passed down to us from our sainted forefathers and foremothers. Oh, foolish man! But thus is it ever so for men of his ilk to believe.…

Here the copier's ink failed completely and Gloriana's stilted words faded from the page.

I stared at the manuscript. Could the passage be alluding to Barry Fetzner, aka God's Avenger? I leafed back a few pages, then a few more, and I didn't see his name anywhere. But who else could Gloriana have meant by “that person down in Florence”? Outside of a few ranches and cotton farms, Florence was best known for the Arizona State Prison complex.

Then I recalled the letters Fetzner had sent to Gloriana, their increasing ferocity. And the long reach of the Aryan Brotherhood.

***

After calling the State Attorney's office and securing access to Death Row, I locked up Desert Investigations and went back to the Jeep. One more appointment to keep before I headed up to Gloriana's house.

An appointment I dreaded.

Heart thumping with anxiety, I drove to the new office complex on the edge of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation and parked in back where no one would see my all-too-recognizable Jeep. This created an additional problem for me, for it meant I would have to use the building's deserted rear entrance.

I did not start up the stairs until I thoroughly checked the stairwell's shadowed corners. Then, .38 in hand, I hurried to the second floor, listening carefully for footsteps other than my own. Once I arrived at my destination, I opened the door and looked into the small waiting room to make certain no one lurked within. Satisfied, I put my .38 back into my carry-all and headed for a chair. Before I could sit down, the door to the inner office opened and Dr. Dolores Gomez smiled her practiced smile at me.

“Hello, Lena. How have you been?”

“Fine.” Never tell a psychologist the truth.

Gomez' smile never wavered as she ushered me into her large corner office. When I had settled on the leather couch (sitting upright, of course, I was damned if I would lie down), she started in on me.

“This is what, Lena, our fourth session together?”

I didn't answer. We both knew which session it was.

Gomez pretended not to notice my silence. “Right. Our fourth session. Our fourth
court-ordered
session. And we're making absolutely no progress, are we?”

My turn to smile. “No, we're not.” Only six more sessions to go. I could do that standing on my head. I looked out the window. The view revealed the graceful palms of Scottsdale to the west, the barren flats of the Rez to the northeast. Overhead, hawks rode the thermals, while a V-shaped formation of Scottsdale geese flapped their way from one manmade lake to another. How I wished I flew with them.

“Defendant admits to spontaneous bursts of anger that sometimes result in physical violence.”
As Gomez always did at the beginning of a session, she flipped through the court documents, stopping every now and then to read aloud.

And as I always did, I laughed out loud at this legalese version of my righteous actions. “Spontaneous! Oh, come on, Gomez. When I saw the creep beating that child, I did what any decent human being would do. I stopped it.”

“You are saying that any decent human being would knock the woman down?”

This was such a waste of time. “I didn't really hurt her. If I had, I'd be in jail with my PI license under review, wouldn't I? Not sitting here talking to you.”

“You bloodied the woman's nose, Lena.”

“But I didn't break it. Besides, she asked for it.”

Gomez sighed. “When the police arrived, you were sitting on her chest, threatening to.…Let's see.” She looked down at the court papers again. “Threatening to, it says here, ‘Rip off your head, bitch, and shit on the stump.'”

I shifted in my seat. The sofa seemed lumpier than usual. “Something to that effect.”

A month earlier, I'd been shopping for ramen noodles at my neighborhood Safeway. On my way back to the Jeep, I saw a woman built like a Sumo wrestler standing beside an elephant-sized SUV, pounding away with closed fists on a sobbing child. As I explained to the judge, I'd simply brought an end to it. Why the judge saw fit to sentence me to a series of anger management sessions remained a mystery. After all, I wasn't the problem; the child-beater was.

“Lena, just before you arrived, I read the witnesses' account again and noticed something interesting. The victim of the initial assault was a little girl four years of age.”

I shifted around again but couldn't seem to get comfortable. In my opinion, leather is much too hot a fabric for the desert. Backsides tend to stick to it. “So?”

“Weren't you four years old when you were, ah, found unconscious by the side of the road?”

“Hardly a news bulletin, Gomez. The story made all the papers at the time, and every now and then, some sensation-mongering reporter resurrects it.”

“That's right. Someone shot you.”

“Call it like it was, doc. My mother shot me.”

I saw my mother's face every night in my nightmares. It was the same face that stared from the mirror at me every morning. You would think that a woman who looked so much like her daughter would cherish her child, not shoot her.

“When you regained consciousness, you couldn't remember your name or who your parents were, and they never stepped forward. You were raised in foster homes.”

I yawned. “You're sharp, Gomez, no doubt about it.”

She stretched a brown hand toward me. “Tell me why you were never adopted, Lena. Blond-haired, green-eyed Caucasian children are always at a premium in America.”

I looked out the window again. Something big was gaining on the geese. An eagle? They drifted down from the mountains every now and then, when pickings were lean. But when I squinted, Big Bird revealed itself to be a blue heron. He caught up to the geese and stationed himself near the rear of the formation. I chuckled. Herons in the desert. What next? Two-headed dragons?

“Lena, you didn't answer me. Why weren't you adopted?”

“Maybe because little girls with behavior problems aren't at a premium anywhere, regardless of their coloring.”

Her voice softened, which I had learned to recognize as a danger signal. “What kind of behavior problems are we talking about, Lena?”

The flock turned sharply west, the heron still bringing up the rear. They were headed for the manmade lake at Eldorado Park. Good fishing there, I've heard. At least for birds.

“Lena?”

Gomez really should replace the sofa. It wasn't fit for the Salvation Army, let alone a shrink's office.

“Lena?”

Exasperated, I finally gave her what she wanted. Nothing else. The rest was my business, not hers. “I kept getting in fights, that's why. And stealing. Now are you satisfied?”

She frowned. “Didn't you receive therapy as a child?”

“In Arizona? You must be kidding. The state legislature slashed funding for children's mental health services years ago, so therapy wasn't an option.” I took a deep breath. “Not that I needed it.”

“I'm familiar with the state's budgetary problems,” she said, as she continued flipping through the court papers. “So. Unable to find permanent placement with an adoptive family, you were warehoused in the state's foster care system. Hmm. Am I right in surmising that some of those foster homes were less than satisfactory?”

The monster in the closet.
I shut that particular nightmare out. “Give or take a few beatings, they weren't so bad.”

With a “gotcha” smile, she leaned toward me. “After all you've been through, Lena, you must be very angry with your mother for not only shooting you, but leaving you to be raised by.…” She stopped, obviously searching for the right words. “Ah, raised by
uncaring
people.”

Uncaring? I stood up and walked to the window, still wishing I could follow the heron. “Gomez, your insight amazes me.”

She didn't answer right away, and when I looked back, I saw her staring at me with no visible emotion other than narrowed ebony eyes. After a few moments of mutual silence, she spoke again.

“You realize, Lena, that you can't go on like this. Creeping into rooms as if something horrible were waiting for you.…”

I hadn't realized she'd noticed. “Don't be silly.”

Gomez ignored me. “…taking the law into your own hands whenever you see a child being threatened.…”

I returned to my seat on the lumpy sofa. “Look, Gomez, the child wasn't being threatened, she was being beaten. There's a difference. And what's with this
whenever
business? I've only done it a couple of times before.” That I could remember, anyway.

She nodded. “Perhaps you could get these outbursts of violence under control if you quit running away from your fears and began to face them.”

What an idiot. “Run away from my fears? If anyone is crazy in here, Gomez, it's you. I've never run away from anything in my life.”

As a cop, I had been shot, stabbed, beaten, and even spit upon by HIV-positive perps. As a private detective, I have faced down murderers in both city and wilderness, yet I had never once backed down. So where was the running away?

“I never said you were crazy, Lena.”

I was shaking now, but not with rage. Gomez' precious hide was safe from me. “You implied it.”

“No, I didn't. All I did was point out the obvious fact that it's time you quit running away from your memories. You need to heal your broken life.”

After I could speak again, I said, “You sound like some cheap pop psychology book. I thought shrinks were supposed to sit there and take notes, not give advice.”

She smiled faintly. “I'm a cognitive therapist, not a Freudian. But I'd be glad to jot down a few notes if that would make you feel more comfortable.”

I glared at her.

When the session ended thirty minutes later, I was still glaring.