Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery (16 page)

She’d just given me the perfect intro to bring up finances. And maybe secret bank accounts. “Sounds like Alexandra must’ve done all the bookkeeping.”

Margie nodded. “As if she didn’t already have too much to do. Sometimes when I went over there I’d find her half-buried in bills and financial reports, investment portfolios, the whole nine yards. Not that she ever complained. Number-crunching was her thing. Before she married Arthur, she was a CPA for Saxe, Hartnell, and Schaeffer, that big Phoenix accounting firm. She only quit because he wanted her to.”

“Did she ever mention anything about missing money?”

“What do you mean, ‘missing money’? Alexandra knew where every dime came from and where it went.”

“Just wondering.” It explained why Dr. Cameron had opened a secret savings account. His wife acted as chief financial officer at their house, and whatever secret thing was going on with him, he wanted to keep his extra income a secret. “You know, Margie, so far everyone I’ve talked to has described Alexandra as a near-saint, but in my business, and probably yours, we know that very few saints walk the face of this Earth.”

A wry smile. “I know what you mean, but if Alexandra had a fault, I never saw it. She was beautiful, but even more than that, Alexandra was
good
.” She didn’t look at me when she said it, though.

“No hint of an affair?” At her narrowed eyes, I added hastily, “A beautiful woman whose husband worked long hours and sometimes vanished for an entire night, it wouldn’t surprise me if she got lonely from time to time.”

Margie pursed her lips so tight they almost disappeared. Recognizing that further questions about Alexandra’s faithfulness wouldn’t be welcomed, I changed the subject.

“How well did you know Alison?”

The fierceness disappeared. “Ali? Like her mother. Bright. Independent. Certainly no killer, regardless of what the papers are hinting, although for legal reasons they aren’t outright saying.”

“She did confess to planning the murders.”

“Show me a teenager who isn’t above telling a fib every now and then.”

“A murder confession can hardly be categorized as a fib.”

She snorted. “Semantics.”

Further questioning gleaned no more useful information, other than the fact that Alexandra Cameron was as saintly as she was beautiful; Alison wouldn’t hurt a fly; ten-year-old Alec was a budding Einstein; and despite his profession, Dr. Arthur Cameron had the cold soul of a snake.

As the lovebirds, holding hands, escorted me to the door, I asked one final question. “What you do you know about Ralph Parelli, the guy across the street?”

Margie laughed. “An interior decorator with a great art collection. And inherited money.”

“Interior decorator?” There went that stereotype.

“Casinos,” Mr. Newberry explained. “And nightclubs, the kind movie stars go to. Mobbed up, would be my guess.”

Margie gave her husband a warning look. “Better not let Ralph hear you say that. We’ll find a dead fish on our doorstep.”

He gave her a pat on her skinny rump. “Don’t worry, Hon. I’m not as dumb as you think I am.”

When the door closed behind me, Geronimo’s great-great-granddaughter was giggling like a schoolgirl.

***

Outside, the day had heated up even further, and the Jeep’s upholstery felt like it would ignite any minute. I dug my phone out of my carryall and called Jimmy. He answered right away and he didn’t sound happy.

“Why do you keep turning off your phone? I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. There’s news…”

Before he could finish, I said, “Last time I drove around with my phone on I killed the battery. Anyway, I’d like you to run checks on an interior decorator named Ralph Parelli, and Elmont and Margaret Newberry. She’s an attorney; I don’t know for sure what he does, maybe something in banking, but I’m sure you can…”

“We need to talk, Lena. That’s why I’ve been calling.”

“We’re talking, but it’s hot as hell out here, so make it quick.”

An exasperated sigh. “I’ve found the source of Dr. Cameron’s secret bank account, but it’s nothing I want to discuss over the phone.”

“Great. I’m on my way back to the office…” Oh. There was no office. “For obvious reasons, scratch my last remark. Do you want to meet for coffee somewhere?”

“This isn’t the kind of information you’ll want bandied around a public place. Where exactly are you right now?”

“Indian Bend area, just west of Scottsdale Road.”

“Then hop on Loop 101 and come down to my place. I’ll put the coffee on. Or, considering the heat, would you rather have iced tea?”

My partner’s tea—a mixture of tea leaves he’d cobbled together himself—was as good as his coffee could be when he wasn’t getting fancy, so I pulled out of the cul-de-sac and headed for the freeway. Fifteen minutes later, after muscling my way through a herd of Volvos and Audis, and stopping-and-going around a jackknifed Ikea tractor-trailer, I took the McDowell Road exit east onto the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Reservation.

***

Although a frequent visitor to Jimmy’s place, I’d never checked out his new home office. Last winter he had bought another single-wide and attached it to the back of his house trailer. On the outside, he continued the painted frieze of Pima designs so that from the road the two units blended together perfectly. But inside, the office extension resembled a NASA command center more than a tribute to his tribe’s mythology and history. No friendly kachinas danced across those walls, no tribal rugs covered the dull gray linoleum floor. Instead, eight computers in various stages of construction sat atop a long workbench, while on a large U-shaped desk, two more hummed happily away. Another workbench hosted a scanner, two printers, and several machines I couldn’t identify.

“Cozy,” I said.

“It gets the job done.”

When envisioning the life of a private detective, most people summon up the clichéd image of a fedora-hatted, trench coat-wearing man stalking the mean streets of some dark, rainy city. While that may once have been true, it isn’t anymore. These days, seventy-five percent of all investigative work is carried out in these brightly lit computer rooms.

Jimmy sat down in an ergonomic chair and patted the seat of its mate. “Sit down. This will take a while.”

I wasn’t looking forward to that. While the temperature in his living area was cool and comfortable, the office felt like an igloo. How Jimmy had managed to attain meat-locker temps using only window air-conditioning units was a mystery, but goose bumps popped up on my arms the second I stepped inside. Grumbling, I sat down, prepared to make the best of it.

“See if you can hurry this up,” I said. “I’m freezing in here, and while the tea is good, it’s adding to my misery.” I rattled the ice cubes in my tall glass for emphasis, then set it down beside an old Bakelite telephone that looked weirdly out of place in its high-tech environment.

Jimmy tsk-tsked. “Such a delicate flower. But all right, I’ll make this fast as I can. Remember my telling you I’d check around to find out why Dr. Cameron received eighteen thousand dollars cash at irregular intervals?”

“Sure. It’s one of the stranger elements of this case.”

“So is the answer. To start off, I put together a program with a two-year window that compared the dates Cameron received those payments with events that happened around central Arizona at the same time, giving or taking a week. No more, though, because Cameron probably wouldn’t allow that kind of money to kick around the house for long.”

“Nobody in his right mind would.” Especially when he was keeping it secret from his wife.

“Too true. Once I got the program running, it came up with too many possibles. Fatal car crashes. Marriages. Divorces. Births. Rotary dinners. Zoning meetings. School violence incidents. The list of match-ups was extraordinary, so I narrowed the time gap to two days before and after the deposit. I wasn’t optimistic, but lawdy lawdy Miss Clawdy, it worked. Here’s the timetable. The hits started back three years ago, when Dr. Cameron made the first eighteen thousand dollar deposit into his account on, ah, October six. In the last couple of years, he made five more deposits, then there was another gap. Skip to this year and he made two deposits, one on the second of January, another on the twelfth. Then one on March twenty-three, another on May two. The date on the deposit slip you found was July eight, the very day of the murders. It all looked, well, weird, so I double-checked, and checked again. Wait’ll you see this.”

With an intent look, he hit a command on the other computer. A man’s face popped up on the screen. I recognized him immediately. Sydney Hoyt: convicted in 1993 of burning his wife and three children alive to collect on the insurance money, executed by lethal injection recently at the Arizona State Prison. He appeared no more vicious than your run-of-the-mill bank clerk.

Jimmy tapped the key again and another man’s face came up. I recognized his bland face, too. Kenny Dean Hopper, convicted in 1995 of the execution-style killings of four competing meth dealers and one sixty-seven-year-old grandmother, executed by lethal injection a few days days after Hoyt bit the big one.

Nine more taps, nine more murderers, nine more executions. Only a few of the men actually looked dangerous, which just goes to show.

“Did you notice the execution dates?” Jimmy asked.

“Not after the first two. I was too busy watching the beauty contest. The only state that executes more people than Arizona is Texas, so none of this comes as a big surprise. But why is this related to the Cameron case?” The chill in the room was making me cranky.

Jimmy swiveled his desk chair around to face the other computer, hit a command, and two columns of dates appeared on the screen. Neither column meant anything to me, and I said so.

“Patience,” he murmured, then pointed at the screen. “The column on the left gives the dates of the last eleven executions in Arizona, all performed by lethal injection. Those two big gaps? Easily explained by the two times all state executions were put on hold while awaiting a ruling by the Supreme Court. Now look to the right. That column shows the dates Dr. Cameron made an eighteen thousand dollar cash deposit to his mysterious savings account. Look carefully and you’ll notice that each deposit was made exactly one day after an execution at the state prison in Florence.”

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room’s hyped-up air-conditioning. “Jimmy, what are you saying?”

He pushed himself away from the computer and faced me. “Lena, unless there’s a flaw in my program, and I’m confident there isn’t, the good doctor was moonlighting as our official Arizona State Executioner.”

Chapter Thirteen

Knowing what I had already heard about Dr. Arthur Cameron, it wasn’t difficult to imagine him in pursuit of his state-sponsored duties.

In the execution chamber the condemned man lies strapped to a gurney, his arms outstretched. He is connected to a cardiac monitor which in turn is connected to a printer located in the curtained-off anteroom where the good doctor is waiting. The warden, standing next to the condemned man, asks him if he has any last words.

The condemned man shakes his head.

Outside, in the witnesses’ gallery, the condemned man’s mother begins to sob.

The warden begins reading the execution order aloud.

Dr. Cameron is listening. He smiles.

As soon as the warden finishes reading the execution order, he leaves the death chamber and joins Dr. Cameron in the anteroom.

He nods to Dr. Cameron. Aware that he is now being watched, the doctor has stopped smiling.

The doctor pushes a plunger, sending a lethal dose of the newest Supreme Court-approved drugs flowing into the condemned man’s veins.

The condemned man yawns; he feels sleepy.

His mother’s sobs increase.

Dr. Cameron can’t hear her, not that it would make any difference. His focus is absolute.

Ten minutes later, the good doctor checks the readout on the printer.

Flat line.

It is finished.

***

“Seems Cameron didn’t take the Hippocratic Oath all that seriously,” Jimmy said.

I swallowed. “Guess not.”

As I scanned the lists in Jimmy’s home office, the computers hummed their electronic symphony while their master explained the results of his online investigations. “Ten executions at eighteen thousand per comes up to one hundred and eighty thousand dollars, the exact amount he had in his savings account. If Dr. Cameron had lived to make that last deposit, it would have been ninety eight.”

“Talk about your Angel of Death,” I muttered, watching the numbers scroll by.

“Not sure I’d agree with the ‘angel’ part.” Jimmy had never been a proponent of the death penalty. Me, I’m on the fence. Some people are too evil to be allowed to walk this Earth, but…Well, mistakes can be made, and once someone’s dead, apologies don’t bring the dead back to life.

When I reached the bottom of the lists, I swiveled my chair around. “You realize this could be a game-changer for Ali and Kyle.” As an ex-cop, I knew revenge was the third most common reason for murder, following closely behind greed and lust.

“That’s what I thought, too. If word somehow leaked about Cameron’s role in those executions, there’s no telling what one of his victims’ family members might have done.”

“Victim?”

Jimmy looked thunderous. “I consider ‘victim’ to be the proper word here, yes.”

I didn’t feel like arguing. “Okay, okay. What it boils down to is that if Cameron’s role in the executions was leaked—although I can’t imagine how, just look at the trouble you had coming up with this—then a number of people had good reason to want him dead.” Torturing the doctor’s family to death in front of him must have made the killer’s revenge even sweeter.

Who made the most likely killer? The anguished relative of an executed man, or a love-besotted teenager? If nothing else, Alison’s attorney could play up this information nicely in the defense strategy. And when I informed the Honorable Juliana Thorsson, she’d dance a jig.

“Ali’s attorney needs to know about this right away.” I said, picking up my cell. And to hell with ethics, Kyle’s attorney deserved to know, too.

Jimmy’s hand stilled mine. “Don’t call the lawyers yet.” With that, he slid a fat stack of papers toward me. “Once I double- and triple-checked everything, I did some research on each of the executed men’s cases. One of them…Let’s just say I came across something very, very interesting. Keep reading. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“No hints?” I stared down at the papers. The top page featured mug shots of each executed murderer. Grouped together like this, they looked more menacing.

“You won’t need hints. Want me to fix us more tea while you read?”

Now that the first shock of Jimmy’s discovery had worn off, I realized how cold I was. “Yeah, but let’s get out of this refrigerator first.”

We left the computers singing their electronic songs and went back to the living area of the trailer, where the temperature felt at least fifteen degrees warmer. While Jimmy busied himself at the kitchen counter, I started reading the account of Kenny Dean Hopper’s storied criminal career. The first of his family to go to college, the blond, blue-eyed, preppy-looking Kenny dropped out in his sophomore year to pursue a more lucrative field than the teaching career he’d originally planned. Within months, he was the northwest Phoenix go-to guy for your crystal meth needs. Three years and two missing partners later, his distribution area had inched up to Cave Creek, where even the bikers feared him.

The party ended in 1995, when a dust-up over Black Canyon City distribution left four men dead and a wounded Kenny Dean bleeding heavily. He hijacked a car at a rest stop off I-17, and after killing the driver—one Rosealee McMannus, an elderly volunteer at St. Mary’s Food Bank—eventually crashed Mrs. McMannus’ stolen Ford Contour into the guardrail near the exit ramp of Glendale Boulevard. Fortunately, the eight-lane shoot-out that ensued as soon as DPS officers arrived on the scene, hurt no one except Kenny Dean himself. He took another bullet, this one to the knee, which left him with a permanent limp.

Not that it mattered.

After more than twenty years of appeals, Kenny Dean was given a new pair of denims and a blue work shirt. He had already received visits from family members, the prison chaplain, and the warden. According to prison tradition, he ordered his last meal. Fried chicken, white meat only, corn on the cob slathered in real butter, green beans cooked with fatback, sliced tomatoes drizzled in Wishbone Italian dressing, lime Jell-O, and a liter of Mountain Dew.

A man of huge appetites, he finished everything. Then waited.

When the time came, the warden, the chaplain, and a gaggle of guards escorted him down the hall to the execution chamber. The guards strapped him onto the execution table.

He didn’t put up a fight.

Kenny Dean’s last words on Earth were, “Fuck you all.”

“Nice guy,” I said to Jimmy, as he set a fresh glass of iced herbal tea in front of me. “But I don’t see the ‘very, very interesting thing’ you were talking about. Just the standard sleazebag bio.”

“Take a look at next of kin.”

I turned the page over. Kenny Dean left a mother, two sisters, and a fiancée.

“Someone wanted to marry this loser?”

“Love is blind. Keep reading.”

“Nag, nag, nag.”

Halfway down the last page, I found it.

“Oh.”

“‘Oh,’ is right.”

The name of Kenny Dean Hopper’s fiancée was Terry Jardine.

Otherwise known as Monster Woman.

***

Although not the most emotional person in the world, Ali’s attorney sounded pleased with the information I relayed over the phone while sipping yet another glass of Jimmy’s custom-blended tea.

“My, my,” Stephen Zellar rasped. “Looks like you’re well worth your exorbitant fee, Ms. Jones.”

“Takes one to know one, Mr. Zellar.”

“Hmm.” A pause. Then, “Who would have thought that a respectable physician like Dr. Cameron would have been living such an odd secret life? Killing people for money, tsk tsk. In certain circles, he’d be called a hit man. Oh, well. Judge not, and all that. He probably had expenses. A mistress, perhaps. A gambling problem.”

“Don’t think so. From what I’ve been able to ascertain, he was obsessed with classic cars.”

“Those can be more expensive than women. Or poker.” Zellar sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

“You realize why this opens up our investigation.”

A dry chuckle. “The revenge motive, of course. You’ve told me Dr. Cameron executed eleven men. Eleven! Which means there are eleven grieving families out there, five of them just this year! Any one of those men might have a son, brother, whatever, who believes in an eye for an eye. This will certainly make for an intriguing defense.”

“If it gets that far. By the way, I might even have a name for you shortly, but I want to do a little more digging first.” Not that I was looking forward to interviewing Monster Woman, aka Terry Jardine, since there was a good chance she’d rip my head off. “How are things on your end? Have you managed to get Ali’s confession thrown out yet?”

“I’m afraid the wheels of justice grind more slowly than that, Ms. Jones. Yes, I’m working on it, have already had the papers served to the county attorney, but the whole process will take time. Even if I succeed in getting the confession thrown out, that won’t guarantee her release from custody. Don’t forget, besides the canine blood, her clothing showed a smear of the victims’ blood, too. Her shoes were soaked in it. Yes, the clothing alone is a bit flimsy, and yes, I might be able to get that evidence thrown out, too, but again, it will take time.”

Lawyers. With them, it was always one problem after another. “Whatever. I’m going to talk her into retracting that stupid confession.”

“Unfortunately, due to a sense of misplaced loyalty to the boy, so far she’s been unwilling to do that.”

I stifled a groan. Ali’s wasn’t the only confession needing retraction. There was still a chance—however remote, it now appeared—that Kyle had, in fact, carried out the carnage at the Cameron house. I would know as soon as I got the answer to the question I’d told Fiona Etheridge to ask him.

“Speaking of the Cameron case, Babette’s finished putting another hard copy of the case file in a box, and if you check your email, you’ll see it duplicated in an attachment. We close at four, being Saturday, so I suggest you pick up the box before then.”

“That’ll be my next stop,” I told him. I was about to end the call when Zellar added, “Ms. Jones, have you given any thought to what will happen if Alison is released? With no surviving relatives nearby, she has no place to go other than a group home, which could be risky for both her and the other children.”

“Her uncle…”

He headed me off at the pass. “Dr. Bradley Teague is a resident of Pasadena, California, when he’s actually in the U.S., and it’s doubtful any judge would allow him to take her to California while she remains under indictment.”

“He could move here. Temporarily, of course.”

“You’ve met the man, Ms. Jones. Can you see Dr. Teague doing anything like that?”

I could almost see Zellar’s dry smile. “No, I can’t,” I confessed.

Which is where we left it.

Immediately upon ending the call to Zellar, I punched in the number of Kyle’s foster mother. Fiona didn’t answer, perhaps because she was already at Juvenile Hall visiting Kyle.

“Call me as soon as you get home,” I told her voice mail. “It’s important.”

As I stuffed my cell back into my carryall, Jimmy said, “We have an appointment to meet with an arson investigator from Scottsdale PD and a representative from Scottsdale Restore at three. The insurance guy’s going to be there, too. And, oh joy, the owner of the building. Have you had lunch yet?”

“I’m not really hungry.”

He frowned. “Thou shalt not fib.”

“Who says I’m fibbing?”

“Your growling stomach. Why don’t you let me fix us something? Or we can head over to Denny’s. It’s on the way.”

“You cook?”

“
Iron Chef
is one of my favorite TV shows. You’d be amazed at what I’ve picked up.”

Soon we were lunching on chicken salad crunched up with slivered almonds, served on a mixture of Bibb lettuce, heirloom tomatoes, and alfalfa sprouts. The Parmesan whole wheat muffins he’d baked himself were pretty good, too.

“You keep surprising me,” I said, licking herbed butter off my fingers.

“Maybe you should pay closer attention.” He glanced at his watch. “We’d better get a move on. Want to ride over in my nice air-conditioned truck?”

I briefly considered it. Yes, I needed to talk to Kyle’s foster mother, which I could easily accomplish by cell, but an in-person visit to Ali was definitely in the cards, and as soon as possible. If the interview with Ali proved as successful as I hoped, I would need to talk to the Honorable Juliana Thorsson, too.

“Separate cars,” I answered.

Thirty minutes later we were touring what was left of Desert Investigations. Percy Simms, the building’s owner, looked near-suicidal until a consultation with the insurance agent lifted his spirits. After that, he drove off without saying a word to me.

The conversation with Detective Howard Lopez was brief, too. “Other than this Terry Jardine person, do you have any other known enemies?” he asked.

This made Jimmy grin. “Would you like the list in alphabetical order or by date of threat?”

“Terry Jardine’s vehicle matches an eye-witness’ account,” I said, heading off the long recital of people Desert Investigations had helped jail. “We had Ms. Jardine’s vehicle towed for continually parking in our private space, which I doubt she was happy about. Besides that, there are indications she might have drug issues. As well as, ah, other personal problems.”

Such as a history of being romantically attracted to homicidal maniacs like Kenny Dean Hopper.

After jotting down the names of other grudge-holders Jimmy so merrily supplied, Detective Lopez left, and Gavin Biddle, our insurance agent, took over.

“It could be worse,” he said, ever the optimist. “The office will have to be rebuilt, although the contents of your fireproof cabinets may be salvageable. Still, the computers and furniture were totaled, as were the carpets and paneling. The good news is that the flames didn’t reach your upstairs apartment. The bad news? Some water damage, plus the smoke odor permeates everything: walls, carpet, furniture, mattress, linens, clothing, et cetera. But Scottsdale Restoration will take care of that for you, no problem.”

“How soon before I can move back in?”

“The apartment or the office?”

“Apartment.”

“Two weeks, maybe. The office, well, that’s going to take longer, because essentially, you’ll be building a new one. What with the construction boom we’re having now…” He shrugged. “Who knows?”