Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery (21 page)

Felix and I had one thing in common. My mother had almost killed me, yet despite the bullet scar on my forehead, I remembered her with longing. Were we damaged children programmed to love our mothers, regardless? And despite CPS’ case files of horrific maternal abuse, those very mothers invariably swore they loved the children they nearly killed, too. Somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, love continued to flow both ways through the polluted maternal stream.

Genetic mysteries being beyond my capacity to solve, I shuttered my mind by shoving a Big Joe Williams CD into the Jeep’s newly installed under-dash player. As the blues singer growled his way through a song about a cheating woman, I exited the freeway at Bethany Home Road and headed west toward Maryvale, the childhood home of Kenny Dean Hopper. His parents, described in the news stories as staunch blue-collar types with no criminal history, still lived in the same house. They sounded like good people, but you never know. On the surface, almost everyone looks good.

Unlike Felix’ ramshackle place, the Hopper residence was a perfectly maintained John F. Long one-story only slightly bigger than Felix’ heap. But the tiny lot was adorned with pristine desert landscaping, and as I parked in front, the lifted arm of a saguaro appeared to welcome me. Splashing sounds and children’s laughter floating over a high backyard fence completed the happy suburban picture, and by the time I made it to the front door, I smelled barbeque. Kenny Dean had been executed little more than three weeks ago, but they were having a pool party.

Life, regardless of the wounds it inflicts, goes on.

I leaned on the doorbell for what seemed forever, but eventually the sound of hurrying feet proved my strategy effective, so I switched my recorder on.

“Coming! Coming!” a man yelled. “Hold your horses!”

The door opened, revealing a fit, sandy-haired man somewhere between fifty and sixty. Over cutoff jeans and a wife-beater shirt that revealed well-toned biceps, he wore an apron that said MY GRANDKIDS ARE CUTER THAN YOUR GRANDKIDS. Standing by his side was a mean-looking shepherd mix. The way it stared at my ankle made me nervous.

“Mr. Emery Hopper?”

His friendly smile conflicted with the worry lines around his mouth and the purple bags under his eyes. “What can I do for you?” he said. “Better make it quick, because I’ve got seven grandkids in the pool and my wife and one loopy teen are the only ones watching them.”

When I gave my name and flashed my ID, the genial manner disappeared. “You here to talk about my son?”

“Yes, I have some questions about Kenny, and I…”

He slammed the door in my face.

I didn’t hear him retreat, so I leaned on the doorbell again.

The door opened. Like its owner, the shepherd was growling. “What’s the matter with you? Ring my doorbell like that again and I’m calling the cops. My family’s been put through enough without having to put up with this P.I. shit.”

Investigators don’t mind confronting hostility; angry people tend to let things slip. “Mr. Hopper, do you know an Arthur Cameron, M.D.?”

The anger softened and a line of puzzlement formed on his forehead. “No, I’m pretty sure I don’t. But the name sounds familiar.”

“How about Terry Jardine?”
Otherwise known as Monster Woman, who had been foolish enough to get engaged to your homicidal, wacko son.

A sneer. “Just another delusional Death Row groupie. My son had dozens. And if you think she was engaged to him like she claimed in the newspapers, ask to see the ring. There was none, because he was stringing her along, like he did with all the others, having his sick fun.”

“I see. Back to Dr. Cameron. He was murdered a couple of weeks ago, along with his wife and ten-year-old son. His fourteen-year-old daughter is accused of murdering them.”

“Yeah, I remember reading about that, but what’s it got to do with Kenny?”

“Trust me, there’s a connection. I’m just not free to reveal it right now. May I ask you where you were on Monday, July 8, between noon and 2:45 p.m.?”

“You’re kidding, right? You’re aware that Kenny died the night before, right? But I still had to go to work, God bless America. In fact, I work two jobs, seven days a week, and if you’re interested, which I doubt, I’ll be working seven days a week for the rest of my life in order to pay Kenny’s legal bills.”

“You’re not working today.”

“Laid off from one of the jobs yesterday. Looking for a new one tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I just bet you are.”

“Anyway, that girl—my client—needs your help.”

A flicker of concern in his gray eyes, but it was only temporary. “What makes you think I can help some kid I don’t even know? And why should I, anyway? She didn’t just murder her parents, she murdered her little brother, too. After torturing him for hours, the papers said. Nice girl. Real queen of the prom.”

“The girl has been accused of the crime, yes.”

“Confessed, is what I read.”

“There’s confessions and there’s confessions. Invite me in and we can talk more comfortably.” Sweat was running down my neck, and there was no breeze to use it as a coolant.

“You’re not taking one step inside this house. My wife’s probably going to walk in any minute to see why I’m not back, and I won’t have you upsetting her. This is the first day she’s smiled since…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.
This is the first day she’s smiled since our son was executed.

I tried again. The more he talked, the more I’d learn about him, regardless of how loud he yelled or what lies he told. “It’s a hundred and five degrees out here, Mr. Hopper.”

“Poor you.” He crossed his arms, and that’s when I realized that throughout this conversation he had been holding a barbeque fork with tines long enough to eviscerate me. The shepherd mix was drooling now, still focused on my ankle. Maybe having a long chat wasn’t a good idea.

I tried once more. “C’mon, Mr. Hopper, you’re a father, and a grandfather, but you’re making it sound like you don’t care what happens to that little girl.”

My question had ignited his earlier anger into something far more dangerous, and his eyes narrowed into slits. “Did you care what happened to our son?”

Having read Kenny rap sheet, no, I didn’t. But I said, “I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m trying to help a child.”

He gave a dry laugh. “Oh, really? Let me tell you what happened to
my
child. They say death by injection is painless, but my wife and I were both there. We saw him convulse. We heard him gasp for breath.”

In the face of such grief and rage, further questioning was hopeless. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Hopper.”

I walked away quickly, before he and his dog came through the screen door at me.

***

There were three more names and addresses on Jimmy’s list, but my stomach reminded me I was starving. This morning I’d been too embarrassed about my late night scream-a-thon to hang around Jimmy’s trailer for breakfast. Plus, there’s something nerve-wracking about seeing your business partner leaning over you in bed, wearing nothing but his undershorts. Looking back, I realized I should have followed my instincts and stayed at the motel, but there was nothing I could do about that now, except make certain it wouldn’t happen again.

Maryvale being a heavily Hispanic area, I headed out to the main drag in search of enchiladas. Four blocks from the Hoppers’ house, a crowded parking lot next to Mi Casa Supremo made me ease up on the Jeep’s accelerator. The scent of garlic and chilies wafting through the air held great promise, so I swung a sharp right and pulled into the lot. After a fifteen-minute wait, the hostess ushered me to a tiny table near the kitchen, which might have been able to seat two very thin people if they were in a close relationship, but it was more suited to one normal-sized detective. The fiery enchiladas were worth the wait, and having the table to myself enabled me to check my phone messages. There were six of them, five from clients.

The sixth was the most interesting: Detective Pete Halliwell, from Scottsdale PD, informing me that a Ms. Terry Jardine had been arrested early that morning as a suspect in the Desert Investigations arson. I returned the call immediately, only to reach Halliwell’s voice mail. Disappointment led to disappointment as I responded to the client calls, only to wind up in their voice mail systems, too. Irritated, I turned my attention to my enchiladas and forgot everything else.

Thirty minutes later I was on the Black Canyon Freeway, headed toward the I-10 interchange. Several more minutes later, I glommed onto Loop 202 east until it dumped me out in Queen Creek, almost fifty miles away. Good thing I like to drive, even though the Jeep was becoming increasingly testy. Not as testy as some of the drivers I encountered on the way, though. In summer, road rage is the price you pay for living in Arizona.

The family of Sidney Hoyt, who had burned his wife and three children alive to collect on their insurance, lived in a once-quiet farming community that had now been gobbled up by suburbs. My seventh foster home, or was it my eighth, had been in Queen Creek, and it had been one of CPS’ better placements. The Stearson family owned a dairy farm, and I had helped them out by attaching automatic milking machines to placid cows’ udders. As a reward, I’d been allowed to ride Sparkle, the family’s just-as-placid old quarter horse mare, and by the time I’d been yanked away from the Stearsons—I forget why—I’d become a passable rider.

The minute I hopped off the 202 at the San Tan Village Parkway exit ramp, I realized that the Stearsons’ farm was only a memory. The drive down Greenfield Road toward Queen Creek showcased housing development after housing development, broken up every now and then by bustling shopping centers. The fact that the smell of cow manure no longer hung in the air came as no comfort. Then, after turning east at the new, stop-lighted intersection of Greenfield and Herford roads, I got a fresh surprise. While the Stearsons’ dairy acreage had vanished, the farmhouse—the one I’d once lived in—remained. But something terrible had happened to it.

The clapboard siding the Stearsons had kept a pure white was now almost stripped of paint, all shutters but one were hanging askew, and the roof appeared beyond repair. Next to a cyclone-fenced lot with a sign FOR SALE, was a slapped-together chicken coop that boasted no chickens. In the front yard, two eucalyptus trees were in the process of dying from lack of care, and in the back, the dairy barns were gone. Bewildered, I double-checked the address Jimmy had given me. 37567 E. Keltie Lane. This was the place where the baby-burner’s family lived, all right, only when I lived there with the Stearsons, the address had been Rural Route 37. No wonder I hadn’t recognized it.

I parked my Jeep on the rutted drive behind two pickup trucks that looked like they’d been abandoned sometime during the Reagan administration, and picked my way up the path to the house. The snarls of several huge dogs chained to metal stakes near the front steps accompanied me on my trek. By the time I arrived at the stairs, burrs clung to my black jeans. Jimmy must have made one of his rare mistakes; surely no one lived here. They only dropped by every now and then to throw trespassers to the hounds.

Before I could mount the stairs, the front door flew open and an elderly woman hobbled out. She wore a printed housedress as faded as she was.

“What you want?” she yelled, in a voice harsh enough to finish stripping the paint off the house.

I flashed my ID but she didn’t even look at it. Maybe she couldn’t read.

“I said, what you want?”

Just what I needed, another hostile interview.

“Ma’am, I’m here to…”

Suddenly two men, both at least six-three, loomed up behind her. Middle-aged, red-faced, and dentally challenged, they looked enough alike to be twins, but only one brandished a baseball bat.

Bat Boy yelled, “Fucking reporters, think you can come ’round here botherin’ us! Well, we got us some advice for you! Get the hell off our property!”

“But I’m not a…”

Bat Boy shoved past the old woman and started across the porch, accompanied by frantic snarls and barks from the hounds.

I like to think of myself as brave, but I’m also smart.

So I got the hell out of there.

***

Regardless of the distance between them, I had meant to visit all five families on Jimmy’s list today, since on Sundays most people are home, but after my unsettling morning I decided to return to the office instead. Well, Jimmy’s office, the situation at Desert Investigations being what it was. While fighting the freeways back to Scottsdale, I mulled over what I had already learned.

Unless Felix Phelps had enough money to hire a hit man, which I doubted, he hadn’t killed the Camerons, and he was physically incapable of carrying out the crime himself. But the family of Kenny Dean Hopper harbored at least one individual who—half-mad with grief—appeared to possess the will and ability to kill for revenge. Ditto for the Neanderthal-ish Hoyts.

Grief does odd things to people. Whether a dull pain or a sharp knife, grief is a wound that never heals, no matter how or by whom it is inflicted. With these people it wasn’t as if their loved ones had died of natural causes—they’d been purposely put to death by the state of Arizona. It might seem odd that innocent families grieved over the execution of a conscienceless killer, but in reality, such sorrow was the most natural thing in the world. After all, the survivors bore wounds, too. Kin was kin, regardless of what crimes had been committed. Some survivors were able to pretend they felt nothing, but the majority of the wounded limped along, dealing with what had to be dealt with as well as they could, day after sad day.

Thinking about the various ways of handling grief made me wonder how Ali was doing. Since I couldn’t call her from my Jeep, I did the next best thing: called her attorney.

“It is Sunday,” Stephen Zellar grumped, after picking up before the second ring had finished. “You think I don’t deserve time off?”

I could barely hear him over the road noise, which even this far away from Phoenix proper, was considerable as a caravan of RVs, moving vans, and even a boat on a flatbed roared by. “I called your office number,” I yelled over the din, “so apparently you don’t think you deserve time off, either.”