Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery (36 page)

Calls completed, I got off the bench and went inside the library.

Florence may be small, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t joined the twenty-first century. Same for its library, which offered a bank of new Internet-connected computers on the second floor. Once a helpful librarian showed me how to sign on, I was off and running.

I’m no Jimmy Sisiwan, but using my Desert Investigations password allowed me access to the Cameron case files. Although I’d been careful not to let anyone know, that blow to my head had fuzzed my memory to the point where it could no longer be trusted, so a refresher course on the facts seemed wise. I’m a quick study, and within minutes, had brought myself up-to-date on the investigation. Jimmy’s own recently added notes weren’t as helpful as hoped, but at least I found out how much we still didn’t know. Sighing, I closed out the file and stared at the red and blue FLORENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY welcome screen until my head started hurting again and I had to look away. As I did, something nagged at me, something about those case notes…

Whatever it was, I couldn’t track it. A glance at my watch revealed I’d been at the library a little more than an hour. From her studio, it would have taken Madeline around forty minutes to drive to Scottsdale, a few minutes to fill out some papers and chat with the gallery owner, then another forty for the drive back, let’s say two hours total. Enough time to give my poor, under-exercised legs a good tune-up.

I shut down the computer, waved good-bye to the librarian, and went outside. After calling June-Mae at home and telling her where and when to meet me, I hitched into a race-walk and tooled along Florence’s mesquite-shaded streets for a while, finally slowing down to study the authentic Western storefronts once used in the Sally Fields-James Garner film,
Murphy’s Romance
. Like much of the town, they took me back to a simpler time, a time when you were on speaking terms with your neighbors and knew which ones to be wary of. Finally tiring, I ambled over to the bank and made a large withdrawal from Desert Investigations’ account—windshield replacement is expensive these days—then headed for one of my favorite places: the Pinal County Historical Society & Museum, where I’d told June-Mae to pick me up.

The museum was an oddity in a town filled with oddities. Like everything else in Florence, the prison complex dominated its exhibits. Not unusual, when you realize that of the town’s population of twenty-five thousand, only eight thousand were civilians; the other seventeen thousand were inmates. Besides the Indian and pioneer artifacts, which included furniture built from saguaro cactus spines, the inspiration for my own apartment’s décor, one full room of the museum was dedicated to prison memorabilia. My favorites were the actual nooses used to hang condemned prisoners. Placed in the center of each noose was a small card giving the prisoner’s name and his death date.

A few women’s nooses numbered in the exhibit, too, including that of infamous Eva Dugan, a former cabaret singer who, after being found guilty of murdering a local rancher, was sentenced to death by hanging. In 1933 Eva became the last guest of honor at a state-sponsored necktie party. It didn’t go well. Due to a miscalculation by the state executioner, when Eva dropped through the scaffold floor she was instantaneously decapitated. The resulting mess (several witnesses fainted when her head rolled toward them) spelled the end of official hangings in the great state of Arizona. Today we no longer pop off a condemned person’s head. We just put them to sleep via the needle, in the same way we would a sick dog.

Until recently, Dr. Arthur Cameron had been Arizona’s dog-killer-in-chief.

***

June-Mae was prompt. Her raggedy Nissan clattered to a stop in front of the museum at the appointed time. I saw no sign of the triplets.

“Where are your beautiful granddaughters?” I was trying to be polite, because from what I had been able to view under all that red-faced, snot-nosed screaming, they didn’t even rate as cute.

“At home with my husband. Thank God his shift’s over.”

I hadn’t thought about her being married, and a quick look at her left hand revealed how inattentive I’d been. “He work at MacDonald’s, too?”

“No, Miss Nosy. He works at the prison complex. Most people in Florence do, except for the lucky few, such as myself.”

Still trying to be polite, I asked, “He like it? Working at the prison, I mean.”

“Don’t make me laugh. Where’s my money?”

I forked over the fat envelope the bank teller had given me. Before we pulled away from the curb, she counted it right down to the last penny.

***

I was staring out the upstairs window when Madeline returned home. A coyote was dragging something furry into the arroyo.

“How you doing up there?” Madeline called out.

“Just watching good old Mother Nature, red in tooth and claw,” I called back, clomping down the stairs. “I’m hungry. You going to make lunch, or should I?”

My offer came too late. She was already in the kitchen, concocting something that involved rice, beans, and carrots. While I had to admit her vegetarian lifestyle was healthier than mine, I was jonesing for a Big Mac. Put it down to June-Mae’s unhealthy influence.

“Uuumm, that looks good,” I said.

She gave me a maternal smile. “I sure wish you wouldn’t lie so much, Sweetie.”

“Caught me.”

“Vegetables are good for you.”

“I know,” I said, glumly. “Here, I’ll help you chop.”

Lunch was ready in an hour, and by then I was hungry enough to eat anything. To Madeline’s satisfaction, I cleaned my plate.

“Looks like you got your appetite back, Sweetie.”

I opened my mouth to answer that it was probably due to my morning’s exercise, but caught myself in time. “I’m feeling better. So much better I think it’s time for me to get out more, say into Florence, maybe pick up some library books.” Something about the Cameron case file still niggled at the back of my mind. If I could just log on again, maybe I could figure it out. There was something…

“You’re still too sick to read,” Madeline answered, stopping my train of thought.

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

“But Madeline, I’m bored!”

That maternal smile again. “See? You’ve got your spirit back. It proves rest is doing you good. No, don’t bother arguing. We’re staying with the plan. The doctors said it would be a mistake to let you overdo it, that it would set you back.”

“I wouldn’t call a trip to the library ‘overdoing it.’” True, that. My morning out and about made me feel almost like my old self. My brain was working better, too.

“With you it wouldn’t stop at the library, Lena.”

The woman knew me well. “Okay, if you won’t drive me to the library, how about letting me take another walk? Just around the property, like yesterday.”

“Now you’re talking sense.”

It was early afternoon and hot outside, but the heat didn’t bother me. Thrilled to be on the move again, I race-walked the triangle several times, then sat down on the large boulder to rest.

And to try to figure out what was bothering me about the Cameron case file.

Chapter Thirty-three

“Lena! Get back in here!”

Madeline, hands on hips and looking fierce, stood at the door of her studio.

I rose, stunned. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Why hadn’t Jimmy?

But I knew why. Sometimes you get so mired in small details that you forget about the Big Obvious. And in the Cameron case, the Big Obvious was the fact it had taken Jimmy days to discover Dr. Arthur Cameron was the official executioner of the state of Arizona. Even given the clue of Cameron’s secret bank account and those mysterious eighteen thousand dollar deposits on certain days, finding the doctor’s freelance job stretched Jimmy’s hacking skills to the limit.

Unless I was wrong, none of my suspects knew the exact amount of money Dr. Cameron charged for his services. Certainly not the obese, doomed Felix Meyers, the white trash Hoyts, Kenny Dean Hopper’s father, neither of the Youngs, nor anyone in the DuCharme family. As for Terry Jardine, who definitely had the makings of a murderer, her steroid-pickled brain wouldn’t have been able to focus long enough for the kind of deep Internet crawl required. Sure, most of them, with the Hoyts as the lone exceptions, probably had the needed brainpower to slither through the dark side of the Net, but Jimmy knew the identities of Arizona’s other web outlaws, and none of our suspects’ names triggered an alarm.

Then how did the killer discover Dr. Cameron’s big secret?
The Big Obvious was that he must have had a connection to the prison.

I was trembling with excitement when someone grabbed my arm.

“Are you having a seizure?” Madeline asked, her voice filled with concern. “Should I take you to the hospital?”

“I’m…I’m fine,” I forced myself to calm down. “I was just thinking, that’s all. Come on, let’s get out of this heat.”

As we walked back to the studio, my mind raced.

The prison complex was a tightly guarded place, the Death House even more so. Access to the Death House was confined to the execution team, made up of guards, the prison medical staff, the clergy, and the warden. Of those, only the warden and the medical staff—nurses present to place the IV catheters into the condemned man’s arms—could know the executioner’s identity. The warden certainly wouldn’t reveal anything, neither would the clergy. That left the medical staff and a small number of guards as the only possible sources of the leak.

Madeline’s air-conditioned studio came as a welcome relief after the heat outside, and I gratefully accepted the tall glass of iced tea she poured for me after I’d settled myself into a rocking chair by the window.

“Sure you’re feeling okay?” she asked.

“I’m feeling better than I have in weeks.”

“It’s all the rest.”

“Must be. Say, aren’t you going to paint today? I know you’re probably beat after that drive into Scottsdale, but…” I needed more time to think, and chatting with Madeline, while pleasant, was getting in the way.

She glanced toward the big easel at the end of the great room. “Maybe in a few minutes. Right now I’m a bit distracted because while you were out there, I got a call from my accountant. Seems I’m being audited. Damned IRS.”

“My condolences.” Having once been audited myself, I didn’t have to fake sympathy, but I did want her to return to her easel. When it came to painting, Madeline’s “a few minutes” could be hours. “Painting will take your mind off it. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine right here, rocking in my chair, looking out the window at the pretty desert.”

“Just as long as you’re all right.”

“Oh, I am, I am.”

She frowned. “Lena, you almost sound like you’re trying to get rid of me.”

“Why would I do that?” I tried to look innocent.

After studying me through narrowed eyes for a moment, she headed toward her easel.

Now, where was I when Madeline had so lovingly interrupted me? Oh, yes. I was thinking about the prison and the possibility that someone working there must have leaked Dr. Cameron’s identity to the killer.

Right.

By necessity, everyone working the Death House was hand-picked, the cream of the prison crop. Their very numbers, though, made me wonder. Bill Wycliff, the journalist covering Kenny Dean Hopper’s execution, reported three medical techs in attendance, with the doctor himself hidden behind a partition. The journalist spotted eight guards, but I doubted they ever entered the alcove where the executioner stood ready. Still, at this point, the number of people who might, just might, have caught a glimpse of Dr. Cameron totaled twelve.

But what about the guards manning the gate?

A decade earlier, Arizona executions took place at one minute past midnight, but for the past few years they’ve taken place in the afternoon. So in his article, Wycliff reported that on a sweltering Arizona day, Butte Avenue, the street in front of the prison, rang with the chants of death penalty protestors. Trying hard to ignore the crowds were the members of Kenny Dean’s family, who had to enter the complex through the main gate. That gate was heavily fortified and guarded, not only to keep prisoners in, but protestors out.

Wycliff described the security procedures in effect that afternoon, including the methods used to protect the identity of those involved. For instance, the executioner never used the Butte Avenue gate. To avoid the crowds, the doctor—in Arizona the executioner had to be a doctor—drove his car around to the back of the prison and into the industrial yard. Once parked inside the secure perimeter fencing, he walked through the less fortified, but still well-guarded pedestrian gate, where he was met and escorted to the Death House by a member of the execution team.

The question I now had was this: by the time Dr. Cameron pushed the plunger that sped a fatal dose of drugs into the condemned man’s body, how many of the prison staff, in total, had seen his face? Twenty? Thirty? Because the doctor wore no standard-issue name tag, nothing connected his face to his name. His car, with its easily recognizable medical license plate, would seem his only identifier.

“Maybe you should take a nap,” Madeline called, looking around the edge of her latest canvas.

I forced myself to smile. “I will later.” Unless I was too excited to sleep. “Don’t worry about me.”

She muttered something I couldn’t quite make out, and returned her attention to her canvas. Before she’d returned from Scottsdale, I’d stolen a look at it. Long ago, when I was her foster child, her work had been vibrant, colorful. This new work wasn’t. Today she was putting the finishing touches to a gray-and-black coffin-shaped canvas. Like June-Mae, my new BFF, living so close to a prison had an effect on Madeline’s work.

“Mind if I borrow some drawing materials?” I called.

“Knock yourself out.”

Snagging one of Madeline’s sketch pads and a Wolff’s carbon pencil, I made a rough drawing of the prison yard as I remembered it from the time I’d visited an inmate during a recent Desert Investigations case. I’m no artist, but by the time I was through, it was plain Dr. Cameron would have passed through two separate guarded areas: the vehicle entrance to the industrial yard, then on foot through the pedestrian gate.

I knew that preparations for the execution began hours before the actual deed was done. The doctor would have arrived at the prison well before lunch, his silver Escalade standing out like a sore thumb from the inexpensive compacts, motorcycles, pickup trucks, and other vehicles in the lot. Only once his ID was checked and his license plate run, would he be waved through.

In my mind, I pictured him parking, the Escalade shining like an angel in the bright sun. I saw him exit his car, lock the door, then proceed alone across the wide expanse of the lot. Waiting for him was a second set of guards.

At that point, I realized, the second set of guards could also connect that solitary, walking man with his vehicle, a vehicle with an easily traceable M.D. license plate.

I stared at my drawing and thought for a while.

Finally, not bothering to check in with my conscience, I swiped Madeline’s cell phone out of her handbag, and tiptoed upstairs to make a call.

“No,” June-Mae said, after picking up. I heard the triplets bawling in the background. “My husband works in CB-2, nowhere near the industrial yard. Anyway, why do you need to know?”

Politicians have this kind of conversation down flat: if you don’t want to answer a question, ignore it. So I countered her question with one of my own. “Does he know anyone who worked the industrial yard any time from the beginning of January to the first week in July?”

“That’s when the Supreme Court ruled to allow executions again! Tell me why ours are any of your business.”

“Just curious.”

“Don’t try to play me, Jones. I don’t live in a prison town for nothing. Look, if you want to hire me to chauffeur you around again, have at it, but you’re not going to get any names from me, so save your breath. Those men deserve their privacy. That aside, how about another ride into beautiful downtown Florence? I could use the money.”

I know a hint when I hear one. Taking the bait, I said, “Five hundred for the list of names. I promise not to bother them.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.

A long pause, then a smoker’s cough. “Eight.”

“Seven.”

“Done. When do you need the list?”

“When’s the soonest you can get it to me?”

“Later today, but you have to promise me to never tell anyone who gave it to you.”

This time my promise was no lie. “I understand. Your husband needs his job.”

“And I need mine, crap though it is.”

After a brief discussion on method of payment—cash on the barrelhead, again—I added, “Uh, one other thing. I’m calling you from Madeline’s phone, and you can’t call me back on it. How will you get the list to me?”

“I’ll just drop it by later this afternoon.” Before I could protest, she said, “I’ll tell her I left my Winsor Newton red sable No. 3 after class, and while we’re hunting for it, I’ll slip the list to you.”

I’d been around artists long enough to know that a Winsor & Newton red sable was a top-of-the-line brush, more expensive than you would expect the driver of a broken-down Nissan to own, let alone carelessly leave behind after an art class. “Maybe you left it by the easel you were using. I’ll take a look.”

A phlegmy cough. “Don’t bother. You’re not the only liar around.”

We rang off in mutual admiration, and I went downstairs and returned the cell phone to Madeline’s handbag. Less than an hour later, June-Mae’s old Nissan came chugging up the gravel road to the studio. Her timing was perfect. Madeline was in the middle of applying a glaze, so I told her I’d see what June-May wanted.

“When you gonna pay me?” she whispered when I answered the door.

I whispered back, “Next time I make it into Florence. Scout’s honor.”

Without further ado, she slipped a piece of paper into my hand.

I saw seven names, one with a star beside it. I pointed to that name, and said in a whisper, “Why the star?”

She put a finger to her lips. “When I leave, walk me to the car and I’ll tell you.” Then, she shouted, “Hey, Madeline, I think I left my Winsor Newton No. 3 here yesterday!”

Madeline craned her neck around the canvas painting. There was a patch of Payne’s gray on her cheek; it looked like a bruise. “Don’t worry. If it’s here, we’ll find it.” She went back to her glaze.

After a brief search by June-Mae and myself resulted in no Winsor Newton—gee, what a surprise—June-Mae suddenly remembered that, silly her, she might have dropped the brush into the trunk of her Nissan. “And in this heat, I’ll bet it’s ruined!” she wailed. Not an Academy Award-winning performance, but good enough. Madeline murmured a few words of condolence and returned her attention to her canvas.

I told Madeline I’d walk June-Mae out and help look through the car trunk.

As soon as the Nissan’s trunk went up, we both leaned forward and pretended to search.

“Okay, tell me about the name with the star.”

“First you’re going to have to explain why you needed this list,” she said, her voice echoing around the surprisingly neat trunk. All traces of deceit were gone from her face, replaced by a combination of anger and fear. “I know you’re a private investigator, but for the life of me, I don’t understand why you’re so interested in the prison staff. Do you think something’s about to happen, like a riot, or an escape? Because if you know anything that might jeopardize any of those people, you better tell me right now. My husband and most of our friends work there. If their lives are in danger, I need to know.”

Where had all this concern been when I’d first asked her for the guards’ names? Something must have happened within the last two hours.

As it turned out, I was wrong. The “something” had happened the day before the Cameron killings. The only reason June-Mae was alarmed now was because a dead man’s name, the name with the star, was on the list. It being put-up-or-shut-up-time, I filled her in on the Cameron case. Once she recovered from her shock—she’d read about the murders in the newspaper—she pointed to the name with the star.

“Sam Provencio,” she said. “He was killed by a hit-and-run driver the day before that family was murdered.”

Provencio had been killed on July 7, the same day Kenny Dean Hopper had been executed.

But I said nothing, while she went on to tell me that Provencio, who worked the outer industrial yard gate at the prison, left home to go jogging on the morning of July 7, before the heat became too intense. Three hours later, when he hadn’t returned, his concerned wife put the kids in the car and went out looking for him along his usual route. She found his crumpled body lying by the side of a gravel road several miles south of Florence. A subsequent investigation showed that Provencio had not only been knocked down by a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed, but that the vehicle had backed up and run over him two more times. So far, the search for the driver had been unsuccessful.

It was too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. “I take it there were no witnesses.”

June-Mae shook her head. “Just about the only people who use that road are joggers and a couple of ranchers, because after a couple of miles it dead-ends at a feeder lot. Besides, he was always out there well before sunup.”