Desert Shadows (9781615952250) (14 page)

“Did she travel to all these places just to take pictures of the graveyards of her ancestors?”

“Yes,” Rosa replied. “When Miss Gloriana have the Fever, she do anything.”

Yet another wall had been devoted to portraits, most of them posed by the tall window I recognized from downstairs: more photographs of Gloriana's husband; one of a furious-looking teenage girl in a headband and tie-dyed shirt; several of a handsome young couple dappled in morning light; then one of a little boy with haunted eyes wearing a funereal black suit. Zach.

“That her family,” Rosa said. “She take the pictures herself. So. You seen it all. We go back downstairs now.” She walked hopefully toward the double doors, motioning for me to follow.

“Wait.” I wasn't through looking. The photographs that interested me most were the three self-portraits on the family wall. One showed Gloriana as a young woman, smiling into a mirror, pointing a camera. Pale eyes, pale hair, the glacial beauty of a young Grace Kelly. Then, Gloriana at around forty, smiling into a different mirror, holding a different camera. Fine lines outlined her eyes and mouth, but her beauty remained essentially intact. The last picture, unflatteringly lit, showed Gloriana as an aged ruin. She no longer smiled into the mirror. Instead, her expression was empty of any emotion at all. The desert had done its work on her face, sucking the moisture out of her skin, turning it into crackled parchment.

I had to marvel at Gloriana's blunt honesty. It had taken courage to turn such an unforgiving lens on herself, to accept and document the ever-deepening lines and sagging flesh. Had her husband shared her courage? But he had died before his own beautiful face had begun to disintegrate.

“I said we go back downstairs now,” Rosa called from the doorway.

“Not yet,” I told her. I'd once taken a photography class at ASU, only to find that I had neither the talent nor the dedication for the craft, but my studies had given me the knowledge to understand what this room told me. The photography equipment in the studio was anachronistic. A large collection of cameras sat in glass-fronted cabinets: a couple of Leicas, a Rolleiflex, a Kodak Retina, some Nikons, and several brands I had not run across. Probably more than a hundred cameras in all, but not one digital unit among the lot.

“Is that the darkroom?” I pointed to a closed door on the far side of the room.

Rosa glared at me from the doorway. “What you mean, darkroom?”

I waved my hand at the cameras. “Gloriana was a wet room photographer, and I'm betting she developed her own prints.”

“It nothing but trays and machines and chemicals in that place. Smells real bad.”

I bet it did. “Show me.”

With a disapproving grumble, Rosa came back into the studio, fished a key out of her pocket, and unlocked the door.

“You should be ashamed,” she said over my shoulder as I shoved my way past her. “Nosing into Miss Gloriana's private life.”

I had worse things to be ashamed of, so I didn't apologize. Besides, after I'd pushed my way into the matt black room, past the long table crowned by a Litz enlarger, I was struck dumb by the dozens and dozens of prints clipped to several clotheslines to dry. Prints that explained the tripod at her bedroom window.

Photograph after photograph of Owen.

Owen picking up litter, his long dark hair shading his face. Owen, stripped to the waist, skin gleaming with sweat as he hoed weeds. Owen troweling cement onto the new patio outside. Owen hauling tiles in a wheelbarrow, bulked-up muscles stretching his skin taut. Owen sitting on a boulder in the back of the house, staring up at the face of Mummy Mountain. Owen urinating into the canyon, a pale tip of penis protruding from his dark jeans.

Owen. Gloriana's latest Fever.

Chapter 12

More interviews at Desert Shadows Resort turned up no new information, so I shed no tears when Captain Kryzinski finally let the SOBOP attendees return home.

My investigation proceeded anyway.

Two days after the last Californian climbed aboard Southwest Airlines, I headed for the Arizona State Prison complex in Florence. There are two ways to get there from Scottsdale, the quick way and the scenic way. Since the wildflowers were in bloom and the morning air so crisp you could almost touch it, I opted for the scenic route. Highway 60 to Florence Junction, then south on 79 to the old town itself.

Out-of-staters who visit Arizona in spring usually go away believing it to be Paradise. On 60 alone, they view purple mountains' majesty along with a riot of primary color, courtesy of the three-foot stalks of crimson monkey flower erupting from a carpet of yellow bottle primrose. These were accented by orange desert mariposa and the purple redmaids creeping near the tall green saguaros. Myself, I was partial to the more subtle oxeye daisy, with its creamy center peeping out from its surrounding white petals. A common flower, but unlike Gloriana, I was a common gal, and proud of it.

Then why my fixation on the past? Easy. Denials to Dr. Gomez notwithstanding, most past-obliterated adoptees and orphans want to know more about themselves. Even if you discovered you sprang from a long line of horse thieves, drunkards, and whores, you'd at least have the certainty of knowing the worst.

Knowledge is freedom.

Look at the Alden-Taylors. They obviously knew everything they needed to know about themselves. And it showed. When I had talked to Zach, he had exuded that casual self-confidence knowledge always brings. He knew where he'd come from, and didn't doubt where he was going.

However, self-confidence isn't everything, is it? The photographs in Gloriana's darkroom proved that even knowing your ancestors' names couldn't keep you from making a mess of your life. Neither could extraordinary beauty. Beauty fades, and always betrays you in the end. But does desire?

At the end of her life, as the final remnants of her beauty fell away, Gloriana desired Owen, a married man who probably saw her only as his employer, not as a woman with soft, giving flesh. What shared emotion could ever pass between them, what meaningful conversation? Her words to him could have been little more than—Owen, move that rock; Owen, fix that fence; Owen, build the patio….

So I can take pictures of your naked back.

I wondered if Owen had known the depths of Gloriana's obsession.

And if so, had he done anything about it?

***

After little more than an hour's drive, the cotton farms on the outskirts of Florence began sprinkling the landscape, and soon after that, I approached the town itself. Looming above it were the heart-numbing towers of Arizona State Prison. I could almost sense the hate and despair seeping through the reinforced concrete walls. It did no good to remember that some inmates were here because of me.

I parked in the visitor's lot and began the long clearance process to the sub-complex known as Death Row. My calls to my friends in the State Attorney's office had gained me access, but it still took more than an hour—and one uncomfortable, too-intimate pat-down—before I was allowed to clear the holding area and enter the Death Row visitor's room.

Barry Fetzner looked nothing like I remembered. When I had worked his arrest, he had been clean-cut enough to pass for normal, but those days had vanished. The sides of Fetzner's shaved head revealed a wealth of new tattoos. Intertwined snakes wrapped around his skull from ear to ear, and a blood-colored swastika the size of a saucer blanketed his bare dome. Running up his thick neck were the double lightning bolts I'd seen on the goons up at WestWorld and in Cave Creek. His new look left no doubt that Fetzner was a full member of the Aryan Brotherhood.

His sleeved-out arms were variations on the same theme. Tattooed all the way down to his wrists, the illustrations included more snakes, several naked women, Germanic-looking eagles, and a horrifyingly accurate lynching scene. I had to look back up at Fetzner's nightmare face simply to gain relief. But his eyes hadn't changed. Jittery, never resting for long on any person or object, always skittering around the room as if on alert for some unseen enemy.

Not too different from my own eyes, actually.

“It's been a long time, Officer Jones,” God's Avenger said with a broad smile.

I smiled back. “I left the force some time ago, Mr. Fetzner. I'm on my own now.”

“So I hear.” Still the smile. “You must still have friends in the D.A.'s office, or you wouldn't be here. They screen my visitors pretty good these days.”

All the smiles were beginning to creep me out, so I erased mine. “I've kept my contacts up. I came down because I was hoping you can help me. I'm working a case.…”

“Why should I help you?”

I gave him the only answer that would stand the remotest chance with this mad creature. “Just for the hell of it.”

His white-toothed maw opened and I heard a sound like two garbage trucks colliding. Fetzner was laughing. “Oh, I like you, I do, Officer Jones!” His laugh was so flagrant with madness that I marveled he had been judged sane enough to stand trial.

His laughter stopped so suddenly that I had to catch my breath. But his smile remained. “Yes,” he said. “I'll help you. Just for the hell of it. After all, Hell and I are intimate friends, aren't we?”

Fetzner leaned across the table, and I had to force myself not to lean away from him.

“What do you want to know, Officer Jones?”

There was no point beating around the bush. “Why did you write Gloriana Alden-Taylor and tell her to cancel publication of your book?”

Fetzner didn't reply right away. He kept staring at me with that horrible smile. Then, in an almost-whisper, he said, “Even serial killers have a code of ethics.” The garbage truck laugh again. “I discovered that Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor was not a Believer.”

“Not a believer? What do you mean?”

He looked at the ceiling and for the first time I noticed the tattoo under his chin: a cockroach crawling out of a bleeding wound. “You heard what I said. Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor was not a Believer. Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor was not a soldier in the Army of Righteousness.”

I knew better than to laugh. “I grant you that Gloriana didn't wear fatigues and combat boots, but judging from Patriot's Blood's publications, I think you could at least call her a camp follower.”

“A witty but unperceptive comment, Officer Jones. You are so wrong. Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor did not believe in the superiority of the true Aryan. Like a true agent of Satan, her belief was in the almighty dollar.”

“I don't think.…” I stopped, noticing for the first time how pointed his white teeth were. Somehow I kept from visibly shuddering.

“No, you don't think,” he continued. “But I do. Because I have so much time to think, I finally figured out the truth. That Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor would publish any lie as long as it made money for her.”

I remembered Patriot's Blood's book titles, the games, the CDs. “I'm not sure you're right there, Mr. Fetzner. Her publications all seem to have a certain, ah, slant.”

“American stain, American pain!” he howled. He slapped his manacled hand on the table. The two corrections officers guarding him moved forward a few inches.

With an effort, I kept my voice steady. “I don't understand. What pain? Yours?”

His voice returned to normal. “It's a book title, you idiot.”

“I still don't understand.”

“Then let me make it easy for you, Officer Idiot Jones.
American Stain, American Pain.
I saw it in the Patriot's Blood summer catalog they mailed me, the same catalog my book is in. To think that my book, which is so filled with light and truth, will share the same bookshelves as that…as that.…” Even Fetzner's evil mouth couldn't complete the sentence.

If Zach was to be believed, Fetzner's book would never make it to market. But I wasn't about to let him know that.

“Why does that bother you, Mr. Fetzner?”

He made a sound of disgust. “Have you never seen a publisher's catalog, Officer Jones?”

I shook my head. “I picked up a brochure at WestWorld which listed some of Patriot's Blood's past titles.”

“Ah, the past.” He closed his eyes for a second, and somehow I knew that he was remembering the scent of blood, the feel of knife against flesh. I tried not to shiver.

Fun time finished, he opened his eyes again. “Then let me enlighten you, Officer Idiot Jones. The Patriot's Blood summer catalog carries pictures of the books, pictures of the authors.” He paused for a moment, and smiled at some memory. “To do my part, I sent Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor several pictures with close-ups of my body art. But that was before I decided not to let her publish
A Man Stands Alone.
Or its sequel.”

“I'm still not clear on that, Mr. Fetzner. Help me out here.”

Garbage truck noises again. “You cunts are all so stupid.”

“Mr. Fetzner, I'm warning you.” A corrections officer.

Fetzner flicked his eyes toward him. “I'm finished with this non-believer. Take me back to my cell.”

I rose from my chair. “Wait.…”

But the corrections officers were already hustling Fetzner out the door. As they headed down the hallway, Fetzner called over his shoulder, “Look at the pictures, Officer Idiot Jones. Remove the blinders from thine eyes.”

Then he raised his fist and shouted, “RaHoWa!”

Racial holy war.

Chapter 13

I took the fast route back to Scottsdale and instead of going straight to my office, headed for Patriot's Blood. My timing couldn't have been better. I arrived just as Zach Alden-Taylor, both hands clutching several bags from Baja Fresh, was struggling with the front door.

“Let me help you with that,” I said, pulling the door open for him.

He gave me a grateful smile and didn't protest when I followed him from room to room as he portioned out tacos and fajitas to a surprisingly full office. He'd even brought a taco for Casey, who snapped it up with an ecstatic moan and disappeared under a desk.

“I called in all of our free-lance editors to tell them about Patriot's Blood's new direction,” he explained, handing over a sack to Poor Sandra, who looked even more disheveled than she had yesterday. “Most are pretty happy about it, and some have even put forth a few authors' names. I'm thinking about adding a few poets.”

Poor Sandra managed a smile, revealing lipstick smears on her teeth. She looked at Zach adoringly and said, “Poets are too often relegated to small presses, but with Patriot's Blood's current clout, we can get them into the public eye.” The other editors nodded enthusiastically.

As happy as I felt about the change in editorial direction from hate to flowers, or whatever poets were writing about these days, I hadn't come here for a literature lesson. “Has the copier been fixed yet?” I asked Poor Sandra.

Her smile disappeared. “The repairman said maybe tomorrow, that we're getting near the top of the list. I'll call you when it's fixed.”

And the check's in the mail. “I'd appreciate that.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Zach heading back down the hall to his office, so I left Poor Sandra to her fajita and hurried after him. He didn't appear to mind as I followed him into his tiny office and collapsed into the ripped Naugahyde chair across from his desk. It took me a moment to realize that I had been able to sit down without removing piles of manuscripts. Then I noticed the cartons stacked against the walls.

“Moving?” I said, waving at the boxes.

“Yep. Into Gloriana's office, one carton at a time.” He held a paper-wrapped taco toward me. “Want one? I've enough to share.”

Not really. After giving the others to his staff, he only had four left, and he was a big man. “I'm not hungry. But you go ahead and eat.”

“You sure?”

I could hear his stomach growl. I hoped mine wouldn't attempt a duet. “I'm sure.”

He took a big bite of a taco, and a stream of salsa spilled out onto the manuscript he'd obviously been reading. He didn't bother to wipe it away. “I wanted to move everything all at once, but it's not working out that way. There's too much to do. The coroner will be releasing my grandmother's body in a couple of days, so I have to get the funeral on track. And informing her pet authors that we're changing editorial direction has been a nightmare. They're not taking it well.”

I briefly wondered how many other publishers in the United States would take a nibble at their manuscripts. None, I hoped.

“Listen, Zach, I just had an interesting experience with one of your authors.” I filled him in on my visit to the Arizona State Prison.

“The really weird thing is that we have more pre-orders for Fetzner's anti-female screed than any other book in the catalog,” he said, when I had finished. “Frankly, that scares me to death. But I can tell you why Fetzner was disillusioned with Gloriana. No, on second thought, let me show you.”

He put his taco down on the manuscript and scrabbled around in one of the cartons. When he didn't find what he wanted, he stuck his head out of the office door and yelled, “Sandra, could you bring Ms. Jones a copy of the summer catalog?”

In a minute, Poor Sandra, a trace of red sauce hovering around her mouth, thrust a catalog into my hands.

“Anything else?” she asked Zach.

“Enjoy your lunch.”

“Sure.” With a bleak smile, she returned to the reception area, trailing a scent of garlic and cheese.

“Page eighteen,” Zach told me between bites of his taco.

When I turned to the page, I understood why God's Avenger wanted to change publishers.
American Stain, American Pain
was a scholarly treatise on slavery, and the caption under the author's photo explained why he was uniquely qualified to write it. George Willard Harris, Ph.D., professor emeritus of the Black Studies Department at Alabama State University, was the African-American descendant of two Alabama slaves. The short bio beside his picture said that he now owned the plantation where his great-great-great-grandparents had lived in bondage. He was in the process of turning the former slave quarters into a slavery museum.

I looked up from the catalog at Zach, who was now blotting his mouth with a page from the manuscript. “I don't understand. Given her usual material, why would Gloriana publish a book like this?”

“Why not? She had a talent for picking books that sell, and this one certainly will. Dr. Harris' work is not only scholarly, it's actually readable, which is more than you can say for most Ph.D.s. In fact, he is one of the only Patriot's Blood authors I plan to retain. I still want to continue with a certain amount of Americana.”

“But, Gloriana.…He…he's
African-American!”

Zach seemed amused. “Your point being?”

“My point being the obvious. Why would a woman with Gloriana's views on race publish the work of a black man, however scholarly? And why would a black man pick her as his publisher?”

“You're making the same mistake everyone does about my grandmother. You've seen our titles and have jumped to the conclusion that Gloriana was a racist. And that would be incorrect. Color was irrelevant to her. She chose her authors according to how much money she estimated they could add to the coffers. And that was strictly so she could pump money into that decrepit Hacienda.”

Maybe Zach was right, but Gloriana had taken the racism of others and funneled it into her cynical business. Which was worse? Honest hatred? Or cold greed?

Zach threw the remnants of his lunch into a waste basket, along with a soiled page from the manuscript. Then, evidently realizing what he'd done, he pulled the page back out and attempted to wipe it down. The salsa stains remained.

Poor author.

Oblivious, he continued. “As for Dr. Harris, I've talked to him. He knew his writing style wasn't convoluted enough for the standard university press, so he tried the big publishers in New York. He was offered a contract at one house, but the deal fell through during a merger. His book went homeless.

“Then his agent brought it to Gloriana, and she called him up and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Look, Dr. Harris is a man of the world. He told her he figured publication with Patriot's Blood was better than no publication at all, and at least the work would get read, which was all he really wanted.”

I don't know which shocked me the most: Gloriana turning out to be a mere money-grubber, or a black scholar allowing his work to be included in Patriot's Blood's catalog. I said as much to Zach.

He spread his salsa-stained hands. “Ah, well. Publishing makes for strange bedfellows. Another point in Dr. Harris' favor came when she discovered that his family had entered the country not long after the Plymouth Brethren—albeit in very different transport. They got here so early that she considered them also to be Founding Fathers, although lamentably unrecognized. Remember, it was
heritage
Gloriana cared about, not race. You wouldn't believe the number of lectures on genealogy I had to endure as a child. My poor father probably went through the same thing, too, which helps explain why he married my mother. It was an act of rebellion.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Because.…”

“Mom's grandparents immigrated from Lithuania right after the second world war. Just a bunch of Johnny-Come-Latelys, Gloriana called them.”

Johnny-Come-Latelys. I wondered if that was what my parents were, too. “If she disapproved of your mother, why didn't she stop the marriage?”

He chuckled. “Dad was as headstrong as she was, that's why. Oh, she tried. She threatened to disinherit him, the whole works. But in the end he always did exactly what he wanted. That's what Alden-Taylors do. These days, anyway. Somewhere along the way we acquired a little more backbone than our famous ancestor.”

Ah, yes. The “Speak for thyself, John” guy. “So did she disinherit him?”

“Of course not. He was an Alden-Taylor, and a male. What really upset her, though, wasn't the Lithuanian business, but the fact that her son married a maid. I think she'd been hoping to link up the Alden-Taylors with another old family. Maybe the Astors, although they've snubbed the Aldens for centuries. Some old quarrel over a goat.”

“Wait a minute. Your father married a
maid?
Whose? Your grandmother's?”

He shook his head. “No, my Aunt Lavelle's. Mother was working for her, which is how she met my father. They fell in love. Gloriana was furious about the whole thing, but in the end she must have decided that the grand Alden-Taylor heritage was strong enough to override those servant-class genes. Besides, after my parents were killed, she no longer had anyone else to leave Patriot's Blood to except Aunt Sappho and Poor Sandra. Sappho's refusal to have anything to do with the company worked against her, and Poor Sandra, well.…She's just a niece.”

“How about your aunts? Lavelle and.…”

“Lavelle and Leila,” he said.

“Don't they get anything?” I remembered what Owen had told me about Gloriana threatening them with some sort of legal action.

He didn't answer, merely wrote an address on a sheet of paper and handed it to me. “Why don't you ask them yourself?”

I looked down. An address in Phoenix's Arcadia district. “Could I have their phone number? I'd prefer to call first.”

A wry smile. “Don't bother. They won't answer the phone, but they'll be there. They never go anywhere.”

***

After stopping off at Baja Fresh for some tacos of my own, I drove to Arcadia, a small neighborhood tucked between Scottsdale and Phoenix proper. Although the area was a former orange orchard, developers had long since uprooted most of the trees. Now long ranch houses rambled over spacious lawns that soaked up the Valley's precious store of water. Attractive enough, perhaps, if you overlooked the fact that Arcadia seemed to be trying to pretend it was the lush Midwest or East, anywhere other than Arizona.

Gloriana's sisters lived in a multi-gabled monstrosity that reminded me of Hawthorne's sinister House of Seven Gables. On closer inspection, I realized the house's apparent size was merely an illusion. For all its dormers and meandering shingled roof, it was little larger than the typical Arcadia spread.

Unlike the other houses in the neighborhood, it appeared ill cared for. Several shingles had disappeared from the roof, and fading blue paint blistered the trim and door. Old-fashioned paper blinds, ragged at the edges, shuttered every window, hinting at gloom within. The garage leaned at a slight angle away from the house, making me worry about the safety of whatever it sheltered. Locusts hopped through the lawn, while two dying orange trees—remnants of the old orchard—drooped their branches in depression.

I parked my Jeep at the curb and walked up the weed-strewn cobblestone path to the house. A paper note taped to the screen door greeted me. Scrawled in wobbly script were the words:
NO SOLICITORS—THIS MEANS YOU
!

Underneath this dangled yet another piece of paper, a yellow flier uncomfortably reminiscent of one I'd recently seen. When I looked more carefully along the street, I could see the same yellow sheets fluttering from other doors. The National Alliance strikes again.

I peeled the flier away and found a slightly different message from that left at Zach's and Megan's house. My, the Nazi scriveners had been busy.

In big Gothic letters the flier proclaimed:
MILLIONS OF NON-WHITE ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE POURING INTO THE COUNTRY RAPIDLY CHANGING THE PURE COMPLEXION OF OUR POPULATION AND THE QUALITY OF THE CIVILIZATION OUR ANCESTORS BUILT
.

Complexion? I wondered how ineffectual a person's life could be when his only claim to fame was his complexion—something he'd been born with, not accomplished. Talk about your basic underachiever.

As I had done at Zach's house, I stuffed the flier into my carry-all. No point in troubling Gloriana's bereaved sisters with the thing.

I pressed the doorbell, but heard no sound. Out of order? I opened the unlocked screen and rapped on the edge of the heavy door with my knuckles. Nothing. I waited for a few seconds, then rapped again, louder. When no one answered, I counted to fifteen, then repeated the process with both hands.

In response to my thundering, the door finally opened and two elderly women peeped out. They stared at me through oyster-colored eyes.

The twins were identical, with a much stronger resemblance to Sandra than to Gloriana. Their dazzling white hair sat piled on their heads in identical top-knots, and faded twin house dresses hung loosely from their bony frames. But they were easy to tell apart thanks to the bruise one sister sported on her cheek.

“Leila and Lavelle Alden-Taylor?” I asked. “Your nephew sent me.”

They looked at each other briefly, then began to close the door.

I hurriedly stuck my foot in the opening and flashed my private detective's I.D. “I'm Lena Jones, a private investigator, and I want to ask you some questions about Gloriana.”

“Who?” The twin with the bruise.

I frowned. “Your older sister. Gloriana Alden-Taylor.”

“Sorry, she passed away.” The other twin, with no glimmer of sadness.

Had she purposefully misunderstood me? “Look, can I come in? The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I'll go away.”