Cactus Heart (14 page)

***

She walked me out to the rocky drive and we talked again of Hayden Yarnell.

“I met him, you know. It was around 1938. He came by the newspaper one day. He was very formidable. I'll never forget his handshake—firm and honest, and for a nobody like me, a young girl working as a clerk. He was a legend, and it was a more innocent time. We were taught to venerate men like Hayden Yarnell.”

The wind had come up and I couldn't help a little shiver. “What do you think from the perspective of a less innocent time?”

She put her hands on her ample hips and stared out toward the High Country. “The republic is founded on a noble lie,” she said. “Plato, as you know. When Hayden Yarnell came to Arizona, it was a wilderness. Men like him made it a state. They dug the mines and took the wealth out of the earth. They killed the outlaws and forced the Apache to make peace. Then they mortgaged their land to build the dams that allowed that city down there…” She gestured angrily toward the dirty air. “All in all, I think it was a mighty achievement. They created a civilization so comfortable and safe that now they can be portrayed as exploiters and oppressors. Isn't that the history you teach now, Mapstone?”

“I…”

She really didn't want an answer. “But they were only men, and they had their flaws. Hayden Yarnell was a builder, but he was greedy, too. He was this engine that never stopped. You could see that even when he was an old man. Maybe the qualities go together. And he wanted to build a family that would carry on everything he built. Make his name immortal, if you will. He was an orphan, you know.”

“I didn't know.”

“He wanted sons of strong character more than anything, more than the Copper Queen Mine or the largest ranch in the state. And it was the one thing that was out of his grasp.”

I thanked her and started the BMW.

“Cops must make a lot more money now.” She eyed the car.

“It's a long story.”

“That's what they all say,” she said. “Did you find anything else in that building with the skeletons?”

Damn. I had nearly forgotten. “A pocket watch was with them. Does that mean anything to you.”

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Anything else down there?”

I shook my head. “There were tunnels under the building, but they didn't seem to lead anywhere. Why?”

She stared toward the brown metropolitan cloud.

“I don't know. Just thinking. Sometimes I think too much.”

27

I drove back to the city against the outbound afternoon rush, but the traffic was still miserable. The city limits went nearly to New River now, a good twenty miles north of where they sat when I had been in high school. I played the Heather Nova CD Lindsey had given me last summer. Now I was pricked by the lyrics of longing, love and regret. I had to stop midway through
Avalanche
. So I took it off and slipped in Sinatra. He got to “One More for the Road” as I blew over the Stack and into downtown. I shut the music off. I would rather have been thinking of Gretchen again, wondering about her next appearance.

I stopped off at the courthouse, where a plain envelope was sitting on the floor in front of the door. At least it wasn't one of those damned dolls. I took it in, put it on the desk as the phone was ringing. It was James Yarnell.

“How are you?”

I told him how I was.

“I'm no worse for wear,” he said, his voice a little raspy. “The good ladies and gentlemen of the Scottsdale Police are keeping a twenty-four-hour watch on me.”

“No problems?”

“No, everything's fine,” he said. “I should thank you for saving my life. I was three sheets to the wind last night.”

“Not a problem.”

“We'll talk more,” he said and hung up.

The phone again. I was suddenly a popular guy.

“They didn't find another doll.” It was Peralta. I muttered an obscenity.

“They checked two blocks around the Yarnell Gallery, even where the shooter probably stood.”

“Maybe he didn't have time to leave the doll.”

“Maybe this attack isn't connected to the Max Yarnell murder,” Peralta countered.

My own hands were shaking when he hung up. My heart was hammering in my chest. What the hell was wrong with me? I was alone in the room with my heartbeat and worries. It made me wonder why I had come into the office at all. I took out a legal pad and made more notes from my visit with Zelda Chain. Then I turned out the lights and locked up.

I drove through Ramiro's, where you can eat like a king for five dollars, and ordered a chorizo burrito and a Diet Coke. Then I went over to Encanto Park and walked to the lagoon. In the distance, the late-afternoon sun was painting gold into the folds of the South Mountains.

Encanto was the classic city park, green and lovingly manicured, built when Phoenix was smaller. It was about half a mile from my house, and as a kid, I had fished in the lagoon on lazy, lost spring afternoons, watched the sky from the empty old bandshell, and ridden the little train in the miniature amusement park. Encanto was still a beautiful oasis, but most days now it was largely Latino. Maybe the sounds of Spanish frightened away my yuppie neighbors. Today, with a cool wind whipping in from the west and only an hour's sun left, the place was nearly deserted.

I wanted to eat my burrito and try to clear my head of murder. I was about halfway through dinner when I heard lovely Castilian Spanish behind me. Then I turned and saw Bobby Hamid.

“I said, ‘History is a sacred thing, so far as it contains truth…'”

“I have a few phrases in Spanish for you, Bobby,” I said.

He ignored me. “Have you ever read Cervantes in his native language, Dr. Mapstone? It is a true epiphany. Rather like the difference between learning Shakespeare in Farsi, and then learning him in English. Or discovering for the first time the real Dante in Italian…”

I set aside my burrito. “Why are you here?”

“It is a public park. I actually bring my children here sometimes. They love riding the little train.” He pointed across the lagoon.

He studied me carefully. “Does it surprise you that I have children, David? Make it a little harder to see me as evil incarnate, as Chief Peralta believes?”

“Stalin had children,” I said. “Anybody can reproduce.”

“Not you, apparently,” he said. “You and Patty had no children, as I recall. Maybe she instinctively knew something.” For a moment I felt strangely stung by this man who mattered nothing to me at all, except as a threat to the community.

He sat next to me on the bench. His gray slacks draped perfectly. I wished I knew his tailor, or maybe not.

“You had an adventure last night,” Bobby said.

“Have your goons been monitoring the police radio?” I looked around for hired muscle with automatic weapons, but only saw the light fading on the greenish water. I wished that would just make him disappear, too.

“Businessmen do have to think about security nowadays, David,” he said. “Anyway, I get my news off the Internet.” Just two guys talking in the park.

“Do you think this murder of Max Yarnell and the attempted murder of his brother are related to the skeletons you found?”

“You know I can't discuss that.”

“So you don't know.”

“Do you know? Are you the man who killed Max Yarnell, Bobby?”

He smiled indulgently, then said, “All over the world there is violence. The violence of the murdered. The death squad. The secret wars. The violence against people who merely vanish. Political prisoners. Refugees from wars. My parents disappeared in the revolution, back in 1979. My sister, too. None of us is safe in the world, I suppose.”

I had heard one of Bobby's favorite methods for dealing with informants was to stuff them in oil drums and toss them overboard into the Sea of Cortez. But when I said that to him, he just gazed away and sighed.

“I hope you find your answers,” he said finally. Then, “I also read that you failed to positively identify the bodies found in the old warehouse. A frustrating week for my friends at the sheriff's department.”

“The DNA profiling was no help,” I admitted. It would be interesting to see how current his intelligence was.

“And what do you think that means?”

I suddenly wanted to strangle him. I understood Peralta's Ahab-like obsession. “Bobby, this is none of your goddamned business.”

“You don't have to shout and use profanity, Dr. Mapstone,” he said. “Actually, as I told you, buying that warehouse is my business. Do you realize the costs that even a week's fluctuations in interest rates can add to the bridge loans?”

“So, sell more cocaine,” I said, and went back to the burrito.

“Have you looked at the will of Hayden Winthrop Yarnell?”

The chorizo became a tasteless lump in my mouth. I was tempted to lie, but I said nothing. I could feel my facing turning red. Damn it.

“It is actually in the probate records,” he said. “You might find it interesting.”

So much for David Mapstone, expert researcher of historical mysteries.

I said, “And tell me again why this case interests you?”

“Just as I said, Dr. Mapstone, I have an interest in purchasing the building. I hope I can save our city's vanishing warehouse district before it is too late. Surely you won't begrudge me a desire for historical preservation.”

He smiled and looked at me with dark eyes encased in long lashes, eyes that seemed to reflect no light.

I said, “Okay, Bobby, what does the will say?”

“It has a codicil that states if any new evidence emerges that a Yarnell family member was involved in the kidnapping, then his entire estate and all its subsequent earnings will be passed on to charities, mainly the Yarnell Foundation.”

I let his words sink in, still not sure about his game. “So the old man didn't believe Jack Talbott kidnapped his grandsons?”

“At the least, he believed the kidnapping was more complex than it appeared.”

“Based on what evidence?”

Bobby spread his manicured fingers and shrugged.

“I'll look at the will. Anyway, this Yarnell case will be solved fast, we've got so many cops working on it. So I'm sure you can get the building at a fire-sale price from Yarneco.”

“Buy low and sell high,” he said. “In Phoenix, we buy high and hope we can sell higher. But Yarneco, they are difficult people. A very complicated company. So many shell corporations and obscure relationships. Almost the way an illegal enterprise would be structured, or so I have read in books.”

“It's not a good day for a mind fuck, Bobby.” I tossed the remains of the Mexican food in a trash can and rose to leave. My stomach felt like it was getting an acid bath. My life was descending into permanent weirdness. The biggest drug dealer in the Southwest was becoming a fixture in it.

I was about halfway across the grass when he called to me.

“David,” he said. “You know that he stalks them over the Internet? The Harquahala Strangler. That's how he gets his girls.”

“You're yesterday's news,” I called.

“So you know Peralta is using your pretty friend Lindsey as bait.”

“I know.” I kept walking away from him.

“Very well. I can imagine she probably likes the change—being out there on the streets as a detective. And with that handsome partner, I hear they are an item now…”

I ignored him.

“I thought the newspaper took a lovely photo of her for that article.”

I stopped and turned back. He was holding out a page from the
Republic
. I stalked back and tore it from his hand. Sure enough, a large photo showed Lindsey and Patrick Blair, standing outside the doorway to the detective bureau, and yes, she looked radiant.

“What the…?” I read the paper every day, and somehow I hadn't seen it. Then I checked the date: it was the morning after Lindsey's mother died. I had missed the paper that day. Now I skimmed the article, but soon I was rereading it closely, squinting in the gathering dusk.

“A nice feature story about the lead team on the Harquahala Strangler case,” Bobby chirped. “I have to say, the local newspaper is not enterprising enough to just go out and profile the detectives investigating a sensitive case, and I doubt the sheriff would cooperate.”

I finished reading it and looked at him. “What's your point?”

“Only that the sheriff wanted everyone to know that Miss Lindsey is on this case. And I do mean everyone.”

“Okay, so he likes publicity.”

“I see Chief Peralta's shrewd hand here, Dr. Mapstone. You see, this monster stopped killing prostitutes last year. He's killed college students. The most recent victim was a housewife. And they all have straight dark hair and pale skin…”

28

I drove to Sunnyslope in a fog of urgent anxiety that was unrelieved by the rivers of car lights on the busy streets. It had been weeks since Lindsey's mother had killed herself. It had been weeks since we had last made love, since I had last seen her. I was suddenly not in a mood to be a good, docile post-modern man. I didn't even think about my new affair with Gretchen. And it was only as I bounded up the outside stairway to her second-floor apartment that I realized I might well find her with a new lover. Suddenly I had a pornographic image of Patrick Blair impaling Lindsey as she writhed and moaned.

Instead, I found nothing but a locked, dark apartment and Pasternak nosing at me through the window. I waved at him with my finger. I folded one of my Sheriff's Office business cards into the door and walked slowly away, down the stairs, past the pool, through the breezeway, all the time wishing she would appear at the door and invite me back inside. Then I walked back up and retrieved my card. What the hell.

I drove home alone, feeling aloneness all around me as the SUVs and low-riders sped past me on Seventh Street. At Thomas Road, I was overcome by a feeling I was being followed. But when I tacked over to Fifth Avenue, nobody was in the rear-view mirror but my momentary paranoia.

Somebody was killing the Yarnell family.

The Harquahala Strangler was stalking Lindsey.

***

“Where did you hear that?” Peralta demanded, sitting up in the leather chair and nearly upsetting his Gibson. “I swear I'm gonna shut down your pipeline to Lorie Pope once and for all.”

Controlling my rage as best I could, I told him I heard it from Bobby Hamid. Peralta expelled a mulish breath. “I think he has a mole in the department.”

“Maybe he's the killer,” I said.

“God doesn't like me that much,” Peralta said. Then, “So you're gonna get all territorial on me about Adams? Anyway, I thought you had something new going with that tall redhead. Or are you doing both of them—damn, I always wanted to do that, but it seemed like a lot of trouble.”

I was still standing in the entryway at home. I needed a drink. “You didn't tell me you were using Lindsey as bait. I just thought she was working on the tech side of it, hacking the strangler's computer. Something safe. Why the hell is she working with Patrick Blair…?” I called all this over my shoulder as I mixed an angry Bombay Sapphire martini.

When I came back in the living room, he said mildly, “Are you going to get a Christmas tree?”

He was knocking my anger off stride. “I haven't even thought about it.”

“She volunteered for the job,” he said. “And she's a deputy sheriff, same as you, and she took an oath to protect and serve, even if it means personal danger, same as you.”

“Spare me the damned academy graduating class speech!”

He made a purring sound and set the Gibson aside. “What did you find out today on your case?”

I drank a big slug of gin and told him about Zelda Chain. His eyes became slits as he listened. Then he said, “Preliminary lab work on Max Yarnell says he was knocked down by a serious blow to the chin, maybe a kick. Then the petrified wood was driven into his heart. Nothing unusual in the trace evidence, fibers, blood, chemical workup.”

“What about that doll?”

“It's the same brand as the one delivered to your office. You can buy 'em at any Toys ‘R' Us. No prints, no unusual fibers or chemicals. The blood was painted on, a common, water-based art-store paint. Made in China.”

“So we're nowhere!” I said a little too vehemently, plopping down in the other leather chair.

“Look,” he said, leaning his bulk forward. “There's a whole subculture out there of escorts working on the Web. You have heard of the Internet, right Mapstone?”

“Fuck you.”

“I never can be sure with you and pop culture,” he went on. “Anyway, they cruise chat rooms and set up profiles to let guys know they're available for business. It's hard as hell to police, because they can hide their identity and screen potential customers.”

“Apparently not well enough,” I said.

He nodded. “All these girls were involved with meeting people online. The early victims were escorts. But the last two haven't been, although they did frequent chat rooms or dating sites. One was a college student. The other was a housewife. So the bastard has upped the stakes. He's broken out into the general population.” He made the killer sound like a disease.

“Lindsey's team was initially working with the Internet service providers to track the guy, but I guess it's so easy to hide your trail if you know what you're doing. So we felt we had to do something more.”

“Why her?” I demanded.

“She volunteered,” he said. “And, she looks kinda racy and cute. The other deputies I could call on look like East German swimmers.”

“It's not just that, and you know it! She fits his profile, right? Straight, dark hair, and pale skin. You wanted him to come after her. You put her photo in the paper!”

Peralta started to say something and stopped. He finished his drink and held it out to me to refill. I ignored him.

“Look, Mapstone, this is complicated, and very confidential. This guy is a risk-taker, always pushing the envelope. We think his first victim was a street hooker that he just picked up. Then, this whole Internet thing starts, and, believe me, not all these victims are crack whores. He kept moving more upscale. In some cases, these were party girls who made a little cash on the side with freelance prostitution. But now we've had two victims with no known ties to prostitution. He meets them online—he can pretend to be anybody. Then they meet for real, and sayonara. This city's on the verge of panic.”

I took pity on him and made a new Gibson. When I came back he continued, haltingly, hating to give up so much information.

“We heard from this guy. He sent a note, dropped it on the sidewalk in front of headquarters. He wrote that he was so powerful now he would kidnap and kill a female detective, just to show us he could. Nobody knows this outside the key investigators.”

“So you planted the story in the paper profiling the detectives. And, wow, one of them is Lindsey, looking just the way he wants his victims. Why didn't you just give him her address, too?”

Peralta just stared at me.

“Any luck?” I asked quietly.

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

“You could have told me.” Too many ten-ton rocks had fallen on me for one day.

“I did tell you.”

“You ought to run for sheriff,” I snarled. “You're starting to lie like a politician.”

He just sipped his Gibson calmly. “Mapstone, are you one of these knuckle-draggers who doesn't believe in women deputies? Anyway, you told me she's not yours. So what right do you have to interfere in her life?”

Trumped by the notorious liberal, Mike Peralta. I went to make myself another drink. When I came back I told him about my encounter with the man in the white van.