Desert Shadows (9781615952250) (27 page)

She calmed, and a note of pride entered her voice. “It was easy. Everybody thinks pregnant women can't do anything but sit around and knit, but we can hike as well as anyone else. When Zach came back that morning and told me about everyone picking that water hemlock, I realized he'd given me the solution to our problems. So I got on the Internet and found out what it looked like. Then I drove up to Oak Creek Canyon and hiked in. Zach was so busy at WestWorld that he didn't even notice I'd disappeared for half the day.

“Once I got back to Desert Shadows, everything went just like clockwork. The publishers were in the last seminar, so all I had to do was slip into the banquet hall and put the hemlock into her salad.”

“What if someone had seen you?”

She shrugged, and the nose of the gun went up. “All they would have seen was a pregnant woman leaning over a table. And anyway, if that had happened, I would have removed the hemlock and tried something else. But nobody did see. I just…I just.…” The pride drained from her face, leaving it forlorn.

“What, Megan?”

“I just wish it hadn't hurt her so much. If I'd known, I'd have found another way.”

Of course. This was a woman who couldn't bear to see an animal hurt. And a human being was a kind of animal, even cold old Gloriana. Given Megan's druthers, she would probably have preferred disposing of Gloriana via a nice clean shot of potassium cyanide. Or a decompression chamber, the kind they used at the dog pound.

“Now I have to kill you, too.” Tears threatened her eyes again, but the nose of the .38 came back down, pointing toward my heart.

I held my hands higher. “Megan, did you ever see a person get shot?”

She looked at me in surprise. “Of course not.”

“Well, I have. It's not like you see on television. Not at all. Gunshot victims usually don't die right away. They linger for a while. They gasp. They convulse. Oh, Megan, if you think Gloriana died hard, wait until you see what a .38 does to the human body.”

The gun wavered. This tender-hearted murderer didn't really want to hurt me.

Just kill me.

“Megan, you haven't told me everything yet. What about the office? Once Gloriana was dead, why did you need to bomb Patriot's Blood? You knew that Zach had already canceled production of those awful books and games, so there wasn't really any need to destroy the place. And how did you know how to build a bomb, in the first place?”

Never had I seen a face so miserable. “Oh, God! That was wrong of me, so wrong. I…I didn't know that Sandra would be there. Zach had already brought Casey home, so I took it for granted that Sandra was home with her kids. But I guess Rosa was still taking care of them. I certainly never thought for a minute that anyone else would drop by the office, either. When I heard…when I heard that I'd almost killed two people, I wanted to kill myself.”

I remembered her visit to me in the hospital, her haunted face. How could I not have realized, then, that I was looking at guilt?

I shifted my weight on my sore feet, making sure she saw me. No matter how she'd hardened herself in the past weeks, she remained acutely attuned to suffering.

I was right. Her face crumpled even further, and tears began trickling down her flushed cheeks. “Oh, Lena, I'm so, so sorry for what I did to you and Sandra.”

Not sorry enough to put the gun down, though. I had to keep her talking.

“You still didn't explain why you bombed the office. Or how.”

“Because I'd been wrong about Zach. Instead of selling the land out here and using it for the no-kill shelter like we'd talked about, he decided to put everything back into Patriot's Blood. So I thought…I thought that if I bombed the damned place, he'd give up in disgust and go back to our original plan. But I was wrong. He was almost like Gloriana, hell-bent on getting his way no matter how it affected anyone. As for knowing how to make a bomb, well, Gloriana had published this horrible book called
Recreational Explosives and How to Build Them.
All I had to do was follow the diagrams.”

Poetic justice, then. Patriot's Blood had been reduced to rubble by one of its own products.

“Lena, I'm sorry.” The voice firmed, the finger tightened. The time for talk was over.

I threw myself to the side a split second before the gun went off. Rolled. Toward Megan.

The noise of gunshot. A thud of impact as the bullet hit a saguaro behind me. Before Megan could adjust her aim, I grabbed her around the knees. Brought her down.

But even as she fell, she maintained a death grip on the .38.

I lunged at her again, and we fought for the gun. Ordinarily, I am very strong, but since my injuries, I'd allowed myself to go to seed. No visits to the gym, no jogs in the park, no weight-lifting. All I had done was sit around nursing my sore feet, and now a pregnant woman proved stronger than me. I couldn't bring myself to do the one thing that would probably have worked—kick her in the stomach. When I tried pinning her to the ground with my knees on her shoulders, she easily rolled me off. I scrambled to regain my footing, but she sat up, straightened the .38, and pointed it at me again.

But something in her eyes had changed.

“Back up,” she ordered, her voice flat, devoid of all inflection.

Trying to read her and failing, I scrambled backward over the sand, feeling behind me for a stick, a rock, any weapon.

Then I saw. Understood.

She turned the .38 toward herself.

Toward her mouth.

She was done with killing, couldn't take it anymore.

Now only one victim remained.

“No, Megan!” I cried, as I scrambled toward her, reaching for the gun. I could smell her sweat. “No!”

For a second, I touched cold steel, but then her foot came up and kicked me in the stomach. The air left my lungs in a wheeze, and I fell away from her, coming to rest against a barrel cactus. The spines poked into my skin but I hardly felt it, so desperate was I to catch my breath.

“I have to end this,” she said, the gun almost at her mouth now, hammer still cocked. Then she closed her eyes tightly, as if she couldn't bear to see herself die.

I finally managed to take in some air. In desperation, I blurted out the only thing I could think of.

“Megan. Remember the baby.”

Her eyes flew open.

“You can't kill the baby, Megan.”

“The baby.”
A mere whisper. But she halted the gun's progress toward her mouth.

I rose to my feet.

Ran toward her.

Bent down.

Took the gun away.

This time, she didn't resist.

She didn't resist when I pulled my cell phone out of my carry-all and called Kryzinski. Didn't resist when I told him what had happened and where to find us. Didn't resist when I took the handcuffs out of my carry-all and snapped them around her slender wrists.

“I'm sorry, Megan,” I told her.

She still didn't resist when I sat down next to her and waited for the law to arrive.

“I'm sorry, Megan,” I said again, as I put my arm around her trembling shoulders.

She didn't resist my touch.

And there we were. Two sad, sorry women, sitting together in the desert.

Chapter 32

A week later I drove back to the Hacienda, this time in the Jeep. My feet had healed, if not my soul.

Rosa let me in, but with no smile this time. “Why you do that to my sweet girl?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I had to.” It did not escape my notice that I sounded like Megan.

Megan, who remained under suicide watch at Maricopa County Medical Center.

But I had saved Owen. Exchanged one life for another.

As I walked into the Hacienda's spacious hall, cats and dogs swarmed around me. Now that their savior was gone, what would happen to them? Maybe I.…

No. I couldn't.

“Mr. Zach, he in the library waiting for you.” She gave me a not-too-gentle shove in that direction, almost knocking me off my feet. Her sweet girl. Had Gloriana ever been someone's sweet girl? Probably not. Maybe that had been her problem. A woman can only go so far on strength alone; at some point, she needed tenderness.

Zach was standing in front of the desk when I entered the library. He motioned to the chair across from the basinet where Marcello Alden-Taylor slept, milky drool covering his chin.

I had been at the hospital the night he was born, four hours after his mother had been charged with murder.

“Satisfied, Miss Jones?” Zach asked, his glare as hostile as Rosa's. “Thanks to you, my son has lost his mother.”

I shook my head. “I'm sorry.” It seemed like I couldn't stop sounding like Megan.

No surprise there. What Megan didn't know, what Zach didn't know, what none of them knew, was how much she and I had in common. They also did not know that as I first stood over Megan in the desert, watching her weep, that I almost—almost—didn't call Kryzinski. That I almost walked away from the whole thing. Almost pretended that I didn't know what I knew.

Almost.

Until I remembered Owen and the wife and children who needed him.

“You said you had something to show me, Mr. Alden-Taylor.” I recognized that the time for first names was over.

He leaned down and opened a drawer in the desk. Took out a sheaf of papers, most of them singed at the edges. “The ATF returned these to me. They belonged to my stepmother.”

Stepmother?
Then I realized he meant Gloriana.

“Sit. Read.” He thrust the pages at me.

I moved two cats out of the chair, sat down, and looked at the pages in my hand. The stationery and handwriting were familiar, but they reflected an entirely different tone than those I had read before. There was no self-satisfaction here.

Yesterday my life changed.

Yesterday I learned that Zach is not my grandson, not my son's son. The boy I raised with such great hopes isn't an Alden-Taylor at all, although he bears our name.

He was Michael's son. My husband, who couldn't keep his hands off the help, had impregnated my own sister's maid.

Did my son know?

I think back, remember my son's face when he held that baby in his arms, and I must believe he couldn't possibly have known. There was too much love in his eyes.

But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps he always knew he was raising his brother, not his son.

Last night, when Zach came by the Hacienda, I confronted him with the DNA test results. As I watched him read the report, I steeled myself to tell him that he wasn't an Alden-Taylor, that he didn't belong to us, that he had to resign from Patriot's Blood, that he had to give his house back to me, that he was disinherited, that when I died, my money would go to the Nature Conservancy.

Not to a bastard with none of my blood.

But before I could say any of this, he put his arms around me and said that it didn't matter, he still loved me. That blood made no difference.

When I pushed him away and looked at him—really looked at him—I saw no proud Alden-Taylors there. No Plymouth Brethren. No presidents. No generals.

Just my husband's eyes.

And oh, God, I loved Michael so.

There was no way I could disown his son.

Shaken, I handed the papers back to Zach. “She says that she thought about leaving your share to the Nature Conservatory. Why not switch heirs and leave everything to Sandra?”

I had never seen such a sad smile. “Because the DNA tests revealed something else. Sandra isn't my cousin—she's my half-sister.”

My mouth dropped. “Sandra was Michael's child, too?”

He nodded. “After Gloriana pulled herself together and left, I drove over to my aunts' house and demanded the truth, all of it. They told me that my grandfa…that my father had an affair not only with their maid, but with both of them, too! Lavelle got pregnant. When Gloriana went over there waving the DNA results around, they told her the entire truth. That only Sandra—through Lavelle—had real Alden-Taylor blood. They told Gloriana that if she didn't rewrite her will and leave it all to my cous…my half-sister, that the entire estate would go to someone with no Alden-Taylor genes. Me. A maid's worthless bastard.”

I digested this for a moment, thought about the damage one selfish, promiscuous man could do to a family. And then I considered Zach's own culpability.

“But Zach, if you knew Gloriana had a change of heart about the will, that she decided not to disinherit either you
or
Sandra, why didn't you tell Megan?”

His eyes welled. “My grandmo…my stepmother didn't tell me she'd gone by our house, so I didn't know Megan knew anything. I…I probably would have told her, because everything had changed for me, too. But I needed some time to work it out, to come to terms with who I really was. To think about my real father. And my…my brother. And sister. In the end, I waited too long. I was too caught up in my own dreams.”

A single tear ran down his face. “I waited so long I turned my wife into a murderer.”

That made two of us, then, mired in guilt. Zach, because his own Fever had blinded him. Me, because.…

Well, because.

Chapter 33

The greeting Dr. Gomez gave me was warmer than Rosa's, but not by much. I knew I had already failed at my anger management sessions, and unless I was wrong, she'd tell the Court that, too. They would probably lift my license, but at least Jimmy would be able to keep Desert Investigations open.

As for me…

I didn't know and I didn't care.

“Let's see,” Gomez mumbled, flipping through my file. “Where did we leave off last week?”

I looked out the window. Who knew that blue could look so unforgiving?

“We were talking about the foster homes,” I told her. As if she didn't know. “And why I started stealing.”

Nothing about her smile looked genuine. Her eyes were too calculating. “That's right, Lena. You started stealing when you lived in foster home number six, I believe.”

“No. Foster home number nine. The artist. The one who got breast cancer.”

The smile vanished. “Her getting cancer was certainly unfortunate for the both of you, but I still want to hear about home number six.”

“
Foster
home number six,” I reminded her. “And I've already told you. It was nothing special.”

The monster in the closet.

“Why don't I believe you, Lena?”

“Because…because.…” Because I was lying.

I got up from the sofa, but instead of leaving Gomez' office, I merely walked to the window. On the west lay the faux adobes of Scottsdale, on the northeast, the cotton fields of the Pima reservation. Where Jimmy had been born. Where his parents died. Where he had been found and adopted by a loving Mormon couple.

So lucky. Oh, so lucky.

“You want to know about foster home number six?” I asked, turning back toward Gomez.

She said nothing, merely nodded.

I walked back to the sofa and sat down. My feet didn't hurt at all, anymore. In fact, I didn't feel anything anywhere.

“Let's see. Foster home number six. That was Norma and Brian Wycoff. He was an engineer, she was what we call today a stay-at-home mom. She was perfect, everyone said. Hand-made quilts, home-baked pies. Tidy print house dresses, never too much makeup. Never talked back to her husband. A meek, agreeable mouse, but a pretty mouse. And Mr. Wycoff, he was so understanding. Every Thursday he'd come home early from work to watch me so that she could volunteer at church.”

“What was he like, Lena. Mr. Wycoff?”

I hoped that my laugh would loosen the tightness in my chest. It didn't. “Mr. Wycoff liked little girls.”

I told Gomez, then, how it began. There had been touchings. Innocent, at first. Later, not so innocent. I had tried to tell Mrs. Wycoff that the way he touched me made me uncomfortable, but she ignored me. And why not? Who was I, really? Nobody at all. Just a foster kid in a state where there were too many foster kids. Everyone knew that foster kids made stuff up, that they weren't to be trusted.

“I have a memory…” I began.

***

It was Thursday. I came home from school to a house that seemed empty at first. Sandy greeted me at the door with his little yips, his pink tongue kissing my ankles. I petted him for a while, then let him into the backyard where we both danced among the dandelions. Me, gracefully. He, the best he could. The day was one of those Arizona miracles, a sky-dome of pure blue broken only by the silver flash of two planes leaving Sky Harbor Airport. As the jets continued their path, the contrails crossed, forming a crucifix.

“Sandy!”

He ran toward me with his endearing hobble. I hugged him, his yellow fur giving rise to the most beautiful perfume in the world.

“Sandy, do you love me?”

He woofed his answer.

“You're my family, Sandy. My only family.”

I left my dog in the dandelions and went back inside, where I picked up my schoolbooks and climbed the stairs to my room. I shut the door behind me, locking it carefully, as foster kids always do. We know what the world is like.

But then I discovered that all I had done was lock the danger in. When I went to my closet to hang up my sweater, he was there.

Waiting for me.

Mr. Wycoff.

The monster in the closet.

***

“He raped me.”

Silence from Gomez, as if she had been expecting this. Who knows? Maybe she had.

I took a deep breath. “Mr. Wycoff raped me. And he continued to rape me every Thursday for the next year.”

See? Telling isn't so hard when you don't feel anything.

Gomez finally spoke. “Why did it go on so long, Lena? Why didn't you tell anyone? Any doctor…”

Exasperated, I snapped, “Well. I didn't know that, did I? I was only nine.”

But there was another reason.

I didn't tell because of Sandy.

I brought myself under control again. After all, it didn't matter anymore. Nothing did.

“Before the rapes began…this dog I had, Sandy. A little yellow dog that reminded me of a dog I'd owned years before. Sandy was a butt-ugly cross between some kind of terrier and a pug, but he was my own dog, not the Wykoffs'. I'd rescued him from the middle of Camelback Road right after he'd been hit by a car. I ran out into the street, picked him up and carried him to a veterinarian's office I'd passed on my way home from school. I told the vet I'd pay for his treatment out of my allowance. She didn't say anything to that, merely gave me a strange look, but she kept him from dying. She couldn't save his leg, though, and she told me she wasn't sure she could find a home for a three-legged dog.”

A three-legged dog, like Megan's Stumpy. And we all knew what happens to ugly, three-legged dogs, don't we?

Gomez frowned. “How did you manage to keep Sandy? You told me foster children weren't allowed to keep pets.”

No, they weren't. Not unless the pet could be used as a bargaining chip for a nine-year-old girl's silence.

I looked up at the ceiling. White. Textured. One black fly walking across it.

“Mr. Wykoff followed me one day and found out what I was doing with my allowance. To my surprise, he paid the entire bill, brought Sandy home, and said I could keep him. Oh, I was so happy! I finally had something of my own to love! The rapes began about a month later. That first time Mr. Wycoff said if I told, he'd hurt Sandy.”

I felt nothing now, of course. Feeling nothing makes life so easy.

Silence again. A silence so complete I could hear a car's horn on the street below. I could even have heard my heart beat.…

If I'd had a heart.

“When it got really bad, I'd beg Mr. Wykoff to stop. Then he'd whisper one word,
Sandy,
and I'd shut up.”

Sandy.
With his wet, brown eyes and snaggly smile.

Sandy.
My only family.

Sandy.
Mr. Wykoff's only weapon.

“What finally stopped it, Lena?”

I went back to the window. Looked out. Nothing. Only traffic. No birds, no three-legged dogs. I closed my eyes against the afternoon glare, and for a moment remembered my cheek against soft fur, my voice assuring Sandy that I'd never let Mr. Wycoff do anything bad to him. Not ever.

Or at least as for long as I could stand…

It.

I turned back to Gomez. “What stopped it?”

I walked back to the sofa, sat down again.

“I have a memory.…”

***

Thursday, a winter day, rape day. The taunting sky as blue as ever. Like I usually did in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, I'd thrown up, but still I forced myself to pretend nothing had happened and got ready for school. If I stayed home Mr. Wykoff would…

It
would last all day.

As I dressed, I realized I couldn't take
it
any more, that if Mr. Wykoff did…
it
…to me again, I would die. Just die. Nothing, not even Sandy, was worth the pain anymore.

Before I left for school, I went into the kitchen, and when neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wycoff was looking, I slipped a butcher knife out of the drawer. I ate my bacon and eggs quietly, ignoring Mrs. Wycoff's vacant chatter, Mr. Wycoff's deep looks. After he left for work and his wife began baking muffins for the church bake sale (apple cinnamon—on bad days I could still smell them), I went out in the backyard and did what I had to do to Sandy.

Because it was Thursday.

After the business with Sandy was finished, I hitched up my backpack again and continued on to school. By then, I felt nothing, not even the nausea that had plagued me during the night. That nothingness was to follow me for the rest of my life, but I had no way of knowing it, then. If I had, would I have changed any of my actions? Probably not.

Because it was Thursday.

I must have looked and behaved the same as before, because none of the teachers noticed, none of the students. But surely there had to have been something in my face.…

But perhaps my face was as cold then as they say it is now.

The morning passed and the teachers talked about plants, the glorious American Constitution, the misery children suffered in the rest of the world.…

“We must think kindly of those poor children in China,” the social studies teacher told us.

We all nodded our heads. Those poor children in China.

When afternoon arrived, I skipped my last class and walked home quickly, determined to finish what I had begun.

Mr. Wycoff arrived a few minutes later, but this time, I was the monster in the closet.

He opened the closet door to play his peekaboo game, but I was there waiting for him, holding the butcher knife in my shaking hands. With Sandy gone, there was nothing else Mr. Wycoff could take from me.

He opened the closet door…

He opened the closet door…

Saw me.

“Why, little Lena…” he began, that horrible smile on his face.

His smile disappeared when the blood began.

***

“He didn't die,” I continued, to erase that look on Gomez' face. “I was only a nine-year-old kid, not strong enough to get the knife in very deep. But looking back and knowing what I know about anatomy now, I think I nicked an artery.”

Gomez' voice, usually so controlled, trembled when she asked, “What did you do next?”

What did I do next? The short answer would be, I walked out of the house and never looked back. But there was more, the most important part of the memory, really. I understood that now.

“The police found me a few hours later at the edge of the park near my school,” I told Gomez. “My hands and clothes were still stained with Mr. Wycoff's blood. I was just standing there, looking into the yard of a house across the street, watching the little girl and her parents play with their new dog. An ugly yellow dog with only three legs.”

Not my Sandy anymore. Theirs.

Before I'd gone to school that morning, I'd given away Mr. Wycoff's only weapon.

Given away my only family.

Given away my Sandy.

Sandy must have smelled me, because for a moment he stopped chasing the little girl, stood unmoving on his three spindly legs and pointed his nose toward the park. Whined. Tried to clamber over the fence. Then the girl grabbed him around the neck, gave him a big hug, and he turned away from me for the last time.

I felt numb.

“You can probably guess the rest of it,” I told Gomez. “The police took me to Juvenile Hall, and you know how it goes there. They examined me. Mentally. Physically. I remained true to the Foster Child's Code. I didn't tell the police a thing.”

I didn't have to.

The “incident,” as CPS called it, had been hushed up. Why remind the public that little girls seldom fare well in foster homes? But when the state's doctor handed over his report, the police swooped down on Mr. Wycoff in his hospital bed and charged him with child rape. As it turned out, there had been other “incidents” with little girls.

When last I checked—last week, as a matter of fact—Mr. Wycoff was still in prison. If he ever gets out, well, I'll be waiting.

I didn't tell Gomez that, though. It wouldn't look good on my anger management report.

“That was the end of it,” I told Gomez, finishing the story. “After a brief stay in Phoenix Children's Hospital, CPS released me to foster home number seven. Reverend Giblin and his wife. I guess CPS was learning to be more careful. Life got better.”

But I never saw my Sandy again.

***

When the session finally ended and I headed for the exit, Gomez did something she had never done before. She rose from her desk and crossed the room, stopping only inches from me. I turned to her in surprise.

“You have so much courage, Lena Jones,” she said. “Don't you ever wonder where you got it?”

I didn't answer her right away. Instead, I remembered my dream of the young man and woman standing in that long-ago meadow, saying goodbye to one another, the man looking at me with the knowledge of death in his eyes, telling me to remember him.

I made my escape from Gomez' office. But before I closed the door behind me, shutting away the sorrow in her face, I told her something that should have made no sense, yet made all the sense in the world.

“Where did I get my courage, Dr. Gomez? I haven't the faintest idea.”

But I was lying again. I knew where my courage came from.

I'd inherited it.

Gloriana Alden-Taylor would have approved.