Desert Cut (23 page)

I certainly did.

Now all Sheriff Avery had to do was figure out how to talk a judge into giving him a search warrant for any house near the Safeway resided in by an unnamed thin woman, an unnamed thin man, an unnamed fat woman, and four unnamed young boys. The judge might enjoy the laugh, but probably not enough to issue the warrant. I, however, was not hampered by such legal sensitivities. If I had to crawl through windows or dig my way into cellars to find Precious Doe’s killer, I would.

“One more thing, Miss Jones. I hear that the Cutter’s sister-in-law is with child again and will give birth soon. So you see? How many families can there be like that?”

Not many.

Before I left, I asked one final question. “You have been very helpful. Why?”

“Because it is terrible what has been done to those girls. And also because Mrs. Wahab once called my youngest daughter a bad name.”

Vengeance, thy name is Mother.

We talked for a while longer, but when further questioning elicited no more information, I rose to go.

“Wait!”

I sat back down.

“I must say one more thing. My husband did not want to speak to you, and therefore he made unkind statements, hoping to discourage you. Pay no attention. Men speak for effect, not to state the truth. That is part of what is wrong with this world.”

I suspected she might be right.

***

For the next hour, the Jeep’s police scanner kept me apprized of Los Perdidos’ petty crimes. While listening to accounts of purse-snatching and break-ins, I orbited the Safeway in ever-expanding circles searching for likely candidates for the Cutter’s family, or even the Cutter herself.

For a Sunday, front yards appeared oddly deserted and, in keeping with Arizona’s love of motor vehicles, few pedestrians strolled the sidewalks. Around two, my growling stomach reminded me that I hadn’t yet eaten lunch, so I parked in the Safeway lot and headed for the deli section. The pre-wrapped sandwiches had already been pretty much picked over, but the smiling African woman behind the counter offered to make me a fresh one.

“Special today is salami, mozzarella, smoked ham, sweet Italian peppers, tomatoes, onions, fresh greens, and hot mustard on a six-inch submarine role. Medium soda included. You like?”

Oh, yeah. I liked.

After paying for the sandwich, I looked for a place to sit, but the deli’s few tables were filled. Knowing that Los Perdidos City Park was only a couple blocks away, I decided it would be more pleasant to dine there under a tree in the front seat of my Jeep, so I headed there.

That turned out to be crowded, too, which explained the neighborhood’s relatively deserted streets. Children screamed with laughter from swing sets, teens kicked soccer balls across jewel-green grass, lovers cuddled on wood-and-iron benches. For a town its size, the park was amazingly well appointed, and would not have been out of place in Scottsdale. Then I remember seeing, as I walked by the park’s main entrance, a small sign bearing the words,
PARK LAND AND EQUIPMENT DONATED BY APACHE CHEMICAL
.

Ah, the largess of insecticide.

I spotted an empty bench near a family huddled around a picnic table, and the aroma of charcoal-broiled hot dogs and hamburgers made my stomach growl even louder. But before I reached the bench, a soccer ball slammed into the back of my knees, almost knocking me down.

“Sorry, miss!” piped a small, bright-eyed boy, as he snatched the ball away.

“Herman!” yelled a thin, middle-aged man I took to be his father. “Did I not tell you to stop playing and eat? You could have hurt that lady! Tell her you are sorry.” An African accent.

Clutching the soccer ball to his chest, the little boy ducked his head. “Sorry.”

I winked at this budding Beckham and said, “I’ll live.”

With an expression of relief, he ran to his family.

I reached the shaded bench without further incident, and was soon munching happily. The sandwich was every bit as good as the deli woman promised, but probably twice as fattening. If I didn’t watch myself, I could conceivably wind up as obese as the young soccer player’s jolly mother, who was laughing with the father.

Oops. Not merely obese. Pregnant, too, and already with a handful of children, all boys. At least the wizened woman with them was helping out, shoveling beans onto the children’s plates, even though her tiny hands trembled with Parkinson’s.

Parkinson’s, a bad disease. A slow decline, if its sufferers were lucky, then death. However, medical science created small miracles every day, and a cure loomed on the horizon. If the old woman could hold on long enough, she might live to see her great-grandchildren. As I watched, I wondered if her family would work her to death first. A real possibility, since the thin man treated her like a servant, not allowing her to sit down and eat with the others. He just kept snapping orders for her to do this, do that, and stop making such a mess.

The poor old thing’s manner toward the pregnant woman—she even bowed when she handed the smug-faced bitch a heaped plate—smacked of servility.

Frowning at this injustice toward an ailing grandmother, I started to take another bite of my sandwich, then stopped with it halfway to my mouth.

I studied the family again and counted heads.

A short, thin father. A tall, obese mother in the late stages of pregnancy. Four boys. A tiny, thin woman, who, because of the ravages of illness, I had assumed was a grandmother. As I watched them, I considered the way the man treated her. He exhibited none of the deference Africans usually accorded their elders, just a surly impatience with her Parkinson’s-induced clumsiness.

Because she wasn’t the children’s grandmother.

She was their
aunt
.

The Cutter.

Chapter Twenty-six

This time Sheriff Avery not only listened, he acted.

Within minutes of my arrival at his office, he dispatched a cruiser to pick up the Cutter, whose family I had followed from the park to their house. Ten minutes later, two deputies ushered in a frail old woman whose fear was so marked I actually felt compassion for her. Parkinson’s made the woman’s hands tremble so badly she could hardly hold the cup of water a deputy handed her, and sloshed the liquid over the rim onto the floor. To think those hands had cut into little girls!

But they had, and the inevitable finally happened. One slip of the knife and it was all over for my beautiful Precious Doe. And for Tujin Rafik, probably, although we would never find her body.

Sunday or not, the sheriff soon obtained his search warrant. As the deputies left to search the home of Dekah Ellyas Daahir, who, as it turned out, was the
wife
of Ellyas Dalmar Gulleet, not his sister. The pregnant woman was the man’s second wife, and no, there had been no divorce. When Dekah had been found unable to bear a living child—a frequent complication of the genital amputation she herself had undergone—he took another wife, keeping the first as his maid. So Avery brought in Dekah on suspicion of child abuse and her husband on suspicion of bigamy, a fine irony in a state which seldom prosecuted its many polygamists.

“Is this a pile of shit or what?” Sheriff Avery asked, after his deputies led Dekah and her husband into separate interrogation rooms.

“Steaming,” I said. “But aren’t you forgetting something?”

“All right, I’ll bite.”

“We still don’t know who killed Reverend Hall.”

He gave me a stupefied look. “
She
did. Dekah.”

“Motive?”

“The usual reason felons fall out, to protect her own ass. She was afraid that Hall—who loved the sound of his own voice, remember—would eventually implicate her in his scheme to ‘purify’ Los Perdidos’ female population. Hell, by the time we wrap up our investigation, we’ll probably find a trail of dead girls leading to her place.”

He was right, not that it mattered. “Sheriff, Hall wasn’t dumb. I listened to his rant on his church steps just before he was killed and noticed how carefully he couched his words. Not once did he come right out and say that he actually ordered genital amputations, just that his right to practice his religion was being compromised by a fascist government. He knew perfectly well that a person can’t be prosecuted for
believing
in criminal behavior, that the criminal action has to actually take place in order for any kind of prosecution. He was a careful man, and a smart one.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got our ‘criminal action’ now. Her name’s Nicole. What’s left of her.”

I shook my head. “Nicole told me she never saw the Cutter’s face, that she only heard her speak. So I ask you again, why would Hall implicate the Cutter when to do so would implicate himself?”

“Maybe Hall wasn’t as smart as you believe and the Cutter knew it. So, zip.” He made a cutting motion across his throat.

It would have been poetic justice, Hall dying of a slit throat, perhaps by the same knife that had sliced up so many little girls. But he died of gunshot wounds.

The sheriff gave me a condescending smile. “You’ve been a big help, Ms. Jones, but we’ll handle it from here. I’m needed in the interrogation room.” He held out his hand.

I shook it, but hung onto it for a moment, loathe to let him get away before I said my piece. “While you’re in there, make sure Dekah gets another glass of water.”

He tugged his hand away. “In Los Perdidos, we always see to our prisoners’ comfort. No rubber hoses, no water-boarding. All the Diet Coke and water they can drink.”

“Water will work fine. And watch her drink it. After she does, or tries to, ask yourself how someone in her condition could shoot Hall three times. Twice while he was a moving target.”

With that, I let him go.

Outside, the media was waiting. The brunette newscaster, apparently tired of harassing Dr. Wahab, pounced as soon as I stepped onto the sidewalk. “Is it true that the sheriff arrested a Somali refugee?”

At her use of the word
refugee
, I froze. The hardships of Africa’s refugees had justly become an international concern, and there was a chance the Cutter might be awarded automatic victim status right along with them.

I hadn’t planned on speaking to the media again, but their continued inaccuracies about Dekah’s crimes worried me. Cautiously, I said, “Arrested, no. However, a woman has been brought in for questioning in the case of Precious Doe. She is also being questioned about another child’s disappearance.”

“But isn’t the woman in flight from terrorism?” The reporter had focused on Dekah’s possible victimhood, and why not? Victimhood made for great stories, regardless of the truth.

My anger made me throw verbal caution to the wind. “Dekah Ellyas Daahir is the chief suspect in the death of two innocent, seven-year-old children. She is also suspected of mutilating that teenager you acted so outraged about the other day, so save your pity for the real victims here, not that child-butchering bitch!”

Slander lawsuit all but guaranteed, I hurried to my Jeep with the ladies and gentlemen of the press baying at my heels.

I tore out of the parking lot without regard for the speed limit, but the cops were too busy controlling the media to worry about me. By the time I reached the edge of town, somehow miraculously avoiding a collision, I realized I needed a quiet place in which to cool down. The guest cottage at the Lazy M came to mind, followed quickly by an image of all those guns on Selma’s living room wall. The river held no attraction for me, either, and the Los Perdidos Library was closed.

Which is why I wound up in the McDonald’s hilltop parking lot again with a cup of high-octane coffee. Here I was literally above it all.

Below, I saw the herd of satellite trucks mooing around the sheriff’s office. A block away, customers filed into the Nile Restaurant for an early dinner. On another hill sat Los Perdidos General Hospital, where Precious Doe’s body cooled in a locker. South, along SR80, sprawled Apache Chemical. A more attractive sight was Mendoza’s Mexican Pottery, with its crowded parking lot. Business boomed, even when hearts were broken.

Farther along the highway gleamed the tin roof of Freedom Temple, its own parking lot deserted except for the Halls’ ancient Taurus. The sheriff had impounded the Buick Nicole took when she fled with Aziza. Had none of the white-robed ladies stayed to comfort the grieving widow? From here it appeared they’d left her alone with her ugly memories.

Plenty of those to go around.

I shifted in my seat and looked toward the Dragoon Mountains. With the sun slipping toward the Western horizon, they blazed in red and gold. Beautiful, certainly, but how many more little girls lay buried in their canyons?

I closed my eyes, only to confront the face of Precious Doe.

Her lips moved, but I heard no sound.

“What are you trying to tell me?” I whispered.

“
Her hands
,” she whispered back.

Can the dead speak? Or do we, out of our own sorrow, speak for them?

When Precious Doe’s image faded, I opened my eyes and looked back down the hill to see several satellite trucks following a cruiser away from the sheriff’s office. As I watched, the cruiser turned down a street near the Safeway and drew up in front of a small house, the satellite trucks close behind. The cruiser’s door opened and two people emerged. Intrigued, I took my binoculars from my glove box and trained them on the scene. Even before I found the correct focus I identified the couple: the Cutter and her husband.

That could mean only one thing. The deputies who searched their house had turned up no evidence, so Sheriff Avery couldn’t hold them.

The man dashed into the house with the Cutter trailing behind. The cruiser left, but the satellite trucks remained, spilling out a clutch of reporters and cameramen. They ran to the door and pounded, but it never opened. Instead of returning to their trucks, the reporters positioned themselves dramatically in front of the house and began yapping into mikes.

I wanted to ask a few questions, too, but knew that attempting to talk to the Cutter now was useless. Better to wait until the press got bored and left.

Plan formed, I put on my headset, switched on my iPod, and listened to Hank Williams sing about cheating hearts.

***

Two hours later, when the last reporter left, I cruised down the hill to the Cutter’s house, hoping that none of the Gulleets had seen me previously on a news broadcast. Knowing better than to try the front door, I slipped around to the rear. I knocked quietly, the way a family friend would. The door opened and the Cutter’s husband peered out.

He frowned, as if he’d been expecting someone else. “Who are you?”

Good. He hadn’t recognized me.

“I’m a friend of Reverend Hall’s,” I lied. “And I need to talk to Dekah. It’s about the trouble your family is having. Maybe I can help.”

His own whisper proved he bought my story. “Are you a lawyer?”

“I’m in a law-related profession, and I really need to see Dekah or I can’t help.”

His face relaxed. “Ah, law help. Well, she is not here. Someone telephoned, then she left.”

Frowning, I asked, “Do you know who called?”

“She answered the telephone. I was watching soccer on ESPN. To calm down, you understand. The police, they were not good to us.”

As if I cared. “Do you know where she went?”

“Maybe on business, who knows what that stupid woman does?” He wasn’t interested in her problems, just his. “She is lazy, that one. Good for nothing.” He started to close the door.

Risking a bad bruise, I shoved my foot between the door and the jamb. “Did she take the car?” Missing from the driveway was the white minivan I’d seen them drive away from the park earlier.

“I told her not to leave but she defied me and left. So now what do we do about supper?” He seemed to expect me to come in and cook it.

Since I might need to talk to him again, I kept the fury out of my voice when I said, “McDonald’s has great fries, and it’s a short walk up the hill.”

I left him standing in the doorway with a puzzled expression on his face.

While driving the streets for the next hour, I spotted several white minivans, none driven by the Cutter. Although I searched as far beyond the town limits as Mendoza’s Mexican Pottery and Freedom Temple, I had no luck. Giving up, I drove back to the Cutter’s house.

In my business, stakeouts are the name of the game, so I parked across the street and zipped the Jeep’s top closed against the night chill. After switching on my police scanner for entertainment, I settled down to wait.

***

When the sun rose the next morning, I was still waiting. The Cutter never returned.

I soon found out why.

As I watched the Cutter’s house, considering the wisdom of leaving to pick up some coffee, the police scanner informed me that two teens on their way to school had found a woman’s body in a white minivan.