Desert Shadows (9781615952250) (19 page)

More hissing on the line. I rolled the Jeep forward a few feet, and the hissing stopped. I repeated my question.

“Sandra Alden-Taylor. That's…ah, I'd rather not talk about her over the cell. Come on back to the office and we'll discuss it.”

I looked at the darkness around me. Time for Jimmy to go home. I pointed this out.

“I'll wait until you get here. This is stuff you need to know.”

I ended the call, curious about Sandra's other sins. Before turning the key in the ignition, I placed yet another call to Myra Gordon/Mbisi. No answer. I would have to drive to Wyatt's Landing and hunt her down, either at home or at the library. I no longer cared which.

Then I switched on the Jeep's lights, and headed toward my office, yellow National Alliance fliers glowing in my rearview mirror.

***

When I arrived back at Desert Investigations, Jimmy looked the picture of misery. “Sandra Alden-Taylor is in the red at all the local casinos, and she's carrying some pretty heavy online debt, too. Her credit cards are maxed out, she's behind on the consolidation loan she took out a year ago, and her car's been repossessed. She's been using one of Gloriana's cars to get back and forth from work.”

Gambling debts. Apparently, like many put-upon people, Sandra had found an escape. And like most obsessive-compulsives, she had turned her escape into an even worse trap.

“Um, there's more.” Jimmy's eyes flicked away from mine.

“Such as?”

“I called one of my cousins at the casino, and he told me he'd heard some rumors about her.”

“Rumors?” What was wrong with the man? Such coyness was unlike him. “Come on, Jimmy, spit it out.”

He ducked his head in embarrassment. When he spoke, he addressed the floor. “The rumors are that she likes a little action.”

“Which means?”

“Geez, Lena. Do I have to say it?” When he looked back up at me, Jimmy's mahogany-colored face had flushed bright red, making the tribal tattoo on his forehead stand out in startling contrast. Suddenly I realized what he meant by “action.”

Amused, I said, “So Sandra's promiscuous, eh? Hardly a big deal these days.”

“It's more than a little messing around, Lena. My cousin told me that Sandra got herself hooked up with a casino crowd that likes to party hearty, sexually speaking. He also said that during one of those parties somebody got busy with a camcorder and posted the whole deal on the Net.”

Good thing for Sandra that Gloriana didn't like computers. If she had known about the orgy, the scandal would probably have been the final straw. Bye-bye new house.

“Good work, partner,” I told him. “Listen, you go ahead and lock up. We'll talk about this more tomorrow.”

On my way back to Desert Investigations, I had noticed that the lights were still on at Patriot's Blood. On the off-chance that Sandra was burning some midnight oil, or stealing more petty cash, I decided to pay a visit.

She looked surprised to see me, and her face, smudged with dirt from moving cartons, paled when I confronted her with what I had learned.

“I never stole from the office,” she said, her voice quavering. “Whoever told you that is lying.” Then she chewed on her already well-gnawed fingernails.

“Okay, Sandra. Let's say you're telling me the truth about the petty cash. What about the videotape?”

Her mouth gaped in guilty horror. “Videotape? What videotape?”

“
Sandra Does Scottsdale.
Did Gloriana see it? Someone could have downloaded it, shown it to her.”

Sandra refused to meet my eyes. “I don't know what you're talking about. Now please go away. I've got a lot of work to do, that's why I'm still here.” She made a big show out of shuffling papers. Some of them were blank.

I refused to let up. “Sandra, it's going to come out when.…”

I never finished the sentence because the air around me suddenly changed, as if someone had sucked all the oxygen out of the building. Then a wall of heat rushed toward me at the same time a roar slammed against my eardrums.

Before I could react, I felt myself lifted into the air.

So this is what death is like, I thought, as the bomb's shockwave hurled me through the plate glass window.

Chapter 20

For an instant I lay stunned on the pavement, able only to stare at the flames licking the remains of Patriot's Blood. The bomb's concussion had deafened me, so even while glass continued to shatter and beams fell, the horrific scene appeared no more dimensional than a silent movie.

Then I remembered Sandra.

Was she dead? Or was she trapped inside, screaming for help to a woman who could no longer hear?

Mercifully numb, though I knew the pain would come, I scrambled to my feet and looked desperately along the pavement. My carry-all lay a couple of feet from me, but the cell phone peeking out of it had cracked down the middle. So much for calling 911. Still, someone nearby must have heard the blast and would send help. But probably not soon enough for Sandra. If she had any chance for survival at all, it would have to come from me.

I took a deep breath and ran back into the building.

The reception area was a shambles, with overturned file cabinets and desks partially covered by smoldering heaps of crumbling drywall. Thankfully, the worst of the fire was still confined to the back of the building, but it was only a matter of minutes, possibly seconds, before all of Patriot's Blood's paper-rich offices blossomed into a funeral pyre.

“Sandra!” I shouted, ignoring the fact that I couldn't hear her even if she answered. If she still lived, I wanted to give her hope.

The heat was intense, bearable only because the blast had punctured the roof so that the flames at the back of the office vented upward. My immediate problem was the acrid black smoke rolling slowly toward me, lit at the edges by sulfurous yellow and orange. Remembering that more people die of smoke inhalation than burns, I ripped off my blouse and tied it, bandana-like, over the lower part of my face. A weak protection against the approaching smoke's deadly chemicals, but better than none.

I screamed Sandra's name again.

“Sandra! Where are you?”

As I staggered barefoot through the rubble, keeping my head as low as possible, my ankle slammed against something hard. Looking down, I saw Gloriana's old Underwood typewriter. The blast had thrown it through the wall and into the reception area, where it now rested on its side against a metal filing cabinet. Nearby, a tongue of flame licked through the yard-wide hole the typewriter had left behind.

“Sandra! I can't hear! You'll have to move, show me where you are!”

Nothing.

The flames from the back marched silently toward the reception area, consuming stacked manuscripts and books. All of Gloriana Alden-Taylor's ugly dreams. And me, eventually, if I didn't get out of here.

But not without Sandra. Refusing to give in to my fear, I forced myself to look away from the flames' steady progress.

“Sandra! Please! Show me where you are!” My throat was so raw with inhaled dust and smoke I wondered if I had made any noise at all. I continued calling her name, turning over large pieces of drywall that could hide a human body.

“Sandra! Move! Do something!”

Then, from underneath a toppled file cabinet, a movement. A small hand inching its way out, fingers fluttering.

Sandra was still alive, the cabinet that crushed her also protecting her.

I stumbled sore-footed across fallen beams to reach her, screaming that I was coming, that I would save her, to hold on. Ignoring the splintered beam that raked its teeth across my leg, I knelt down and grasped her hand. “Don't worry, I'm getting you out of here.”

Could she breathe? The air around us was beginning to thicken, sucking away what little oxygen remained in the ruined room. I probably had only seconds before, blouse bandana or not, noxious fumes overcame me.

I let go of her hand, grabbed the corner of the file cabinet, and heaved. Nothing. The file cabinet was too heavy, probably loaded down with manuscripts.

“Sandra, try and help me! Push against the cabinet!”

A feeble twitch, then nothing. She was too weak. God only knew what injuries she had sustained.

I pulled at the cabinet again, but even with my years of weight-training at the gym, I didn't have the strength to do more than shift it slightly. Was I injuring her further? Was she screaming?

Greenish-black smoke belched toward us, and right behind it, a wall of flame. Now the heat was almost unbearable. If I stayed here, I was as doomed as Sandra.

Who was I kidding? The whole situation was hopeless.

I turned away from her, hoping that the way remained clear to the door. It did. Hardening my heart, I started toward it.

Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sandra's hand again. Reaching up, palm out. Begging for her life.

I turned back.

“I won't leave you!” I screamed at her, struggling once more with the file cabinet.

After one more heave, the file cabinet shifted, but not enough to free her. I needed something to give me leverage.

And then I saw it.

Like Gloriana's typewriter, the toilet plunger had been thrown through the reception room wall all the way from the bathroom. It lay on top of an overturned desk, rubber suction cup half burned away, but with the wooden handle miraculously intact.

In one fluid movement, I grabbed the plunger, shoved it under the edge of the filing cabinet and heaved. The cabinet shifted. I slipped the handle even further under the cabinet and heaved again.

The plunger snapped in two.

But not before I saw Sandra, lying on her stomach, one hand over her head, the other stretched toward me.

Still alive.

The smoke rolled closer, followed by the hungry flames. Desperate, adrenalin spiking, I looked around for another tool.

There. A two-by-four, fallen from the ceiling.

I took it in my hands and shoved it under the cabinet. Then, with one final heave, the cabinet slid away from Sandra. Her mouth opened in a scream I couldn't hear. “There, there,” I said, leaning down, trying to lift her into my arms.

Sandra was too big. She was every bit as tall as I, but much heavier. A safe carry wasn't possible, so I'd have to do the best I could.

Realizing I was probably aggravating her injuries, I slipped my arms under hers, wrapped them around her chest, then locked my fingers together. I could feel her uneven breaths. Was she still screaming? No matter. Gritting my teeth against the heat, I began to drag her limp form over the rubble-strewn floor. Behind us, the flames consumed the wall and started across the floor. The file cabinet I'd found Sandra under was already scorching.

“It's okay,” I lied. “We'll be fine.”

Once, her shoe—miraculously still on—snagged on a splintered piece of wood, and I had to stop to free her once again. In my haste to rip her shoe away, I tore her skin and she began to bleed from yet another wound.

But pain was better than death. I should know.

“Hold on. We're almost there,” I grunted, wishing that I could hear her, if only to know that she was still alive.

The smoke was blinding me now, an almost solid mass churning around us, as if purposely keeping us from escape. The blouse I'd wrapped so hopefully around my face no longer kept out the fumes, and I could feel them enter my nostrils, my throat.

Would I be able to make it to the blown-out door before the smoke won and I lost consciousness?

Better not think about that. Think about the jasmine-scented night air, and beneath it, the cool pavement. All I wanted was to reach the street, lie down, and sleep. Then again, why wait? I closed my eyes against the smoke, thinking that all I had to do was drop my burden, buckle my knees, and go to sleep right here. Why continue this ridiculous struggle?

Then Sandra's hands grasped mine. I opened my watering eyes, squinted through the seductive tendrils of black smoke, and saw her lips move.

I think she was saying “My babies, my babies.…”

No, I couldn't give up and die right now. Not with a clean conscience, I couldn't.

Refusing to look at the flames, to breath in the acrid smoke, I hitched her up again and hauled her forward.

Toward the soft night.

Chapter 21

I hate hospitals.

I hate doctors, nurses, and all those vampires who draw your blood.

Yet none of them are half as bad as the visitors.

During my first full day at Scottsdale General Hospital, it seemed like half the people in my life—with the noted exception of Dusty—trooped into my room, shoving flowers in my face, waving their arms, and moving their mouths at me, totally ignoring the fact that I couldn't hear a word they said. Every cop I'd ever worked with dropped by, and they were the worst of all. They flapped their mouths like ventriloquists' dummies, while all I could do was grin and nod, hoping that I wasn't agreeing to marry one of them.

At least Jimmy understood that the blast had pretty much deafened me. Besides keeping the press at bay (I'd made headlines again), he kept me informed via notepad on Sandra's condition: smoke inhalation, first and second degree burns, a broken collarbone, three broken ribs, a punctured eardrum and various cuts and scrapes. But she would live.

The paramedics who had scraped us off the pavement after a flurry of 911 calls from a gaggle of tourists had rendered expert care to us both on the way to the hospital. Not that I could remember any of it.

My own injuries were confined to flash burns, minor smoke inhalation, miscellaneous cuts, and a plate-sized bruise on my ass where I'd landed on the sidewalk. The most painful wounds of all were those on my feet, which were covered with burns and gashes, one of them almost to the bone. The blast had blown me out of my shoes, and I had run back into the building barefoot, stepping on a burning beam here, a little broken glass there. I couldn't remember feeling much pain at the time, but I felt it now. So much so that the doctors insisted I remain in the hospital for one more day.

This made me a captive audience for too many garrulous visitors.

Megan Alden-Taylor, my eighth drop-in of the day—it wasn't yet noon—stood with Zach by my bed, shedding dog and cat hairs all over the hospital's clean white linens.

She said something, but I couldn't quite make it out. Figuring that she'd asked me how I felt (that seemed to be the standard question for everyone), I said, “I'm fine. I've been to rougher parties.” I lied in as chipper a tone as I could manage without being able to hear myself. I wished she and Zach would go back to the ICU's waiting room where they had been hanging out all night, waiting for word of Sandra's condition.

But Zach had a few things to say, too. From what little lip-reading I could manage, he blamed himself for the situation. If he hadn't taken such advantage of Sandra's need to be abused, she would not have been at the office when the bomb went off.

“Don't be silly,” I told him. “You didn't hold a gun to her head. You.…” Then I shut up in shame, remembering that only recently, I'd done exactly that to a woman.

The
Scottsdale Journal
, which Jimmy handed me, revealed that Patriot's Blood Press, as well as the insurance office next to it, had burned to the ground. A spokesman from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms divulged that the bomb in Gloriana's office was basically an incendiary device. Unlike the more common pipe bombs which were set off in the Phoenix area from time to time, this bomb resembled those arsonists used, designed to destroy real estate, not lives. The ATF spokesman also pointed out that the bomb's timer had been set for 7:00, when by rights the office would have been closed and all employees long gone. The bomb-maker could hardly have known that Sandra would return to finish up some work.

Nice theory, but I wasn't sure I bought it. The Aryan Brotherhood, whom I suspected had planted the bomb, was hardly known for its compassion. In my own opinion, the time had probably been picked to give its maker time to get far, far away. Like to some whack-brained militia compound in Idaho. Gaining access to the office wouldn't have been a problem. Most of the Brotherhood knew how to pick locks.

Jimmy interrupted my thoughts by handing me a note.
When you are released, you are coming home with me.

I shook my head, then regretted it. The movement made my ears ring.

Jimmy scribbled some more, then stuck the notepad back in my face.
Don
't argue. You will do this.

Blinking in surprise, I looked up at him. Jimmy was the mildest of men. For him to order someone around was almost unheard of.

I opened my mouth to protest, but he raised a warning finger and shoved the pad in my face again. He hadn't erased the message.

I shrugged as best I could, considering the soreness in my shoulders. “Okay.” Maybe my ears were getting better, because I could swear I heard him sigh with relief.

Eventually I dozed off, only to awake later to find Jimmy and the Alden-Taylors gone and Reverend Giblin sitting in a chair next to my bed, Bible in hand. His lips were moving, so I figured he was praying for me. What the hell. It couldn't hurt.

I went back to sleep.

***

The next morning, in response to my pleas, a nurse handed me a mirror. One look assured me I wouldn't be entering beauty contests any time soon. My eyelashes and eyebrows had been singed, my eyes blackened, my swollen face resembled a ripe tomato, and half my hair was missing, burned off as I was dragging Sandra out of Patriot's Blood.

“Aw, hell,” I moaned. Then gasped. I'd actually heard myself! Not perfectly, but the words were audible, rumbling through my ears like a poor tape recording played at a too-slow speed.

“How now brown cow. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” I heard every word.

“We're feeling better, are we?” the nurse asked.

“Oh, yes, we are.” In fact, I felt so good that I didn't even protest when the nurse gave me our bath.

Clean once more (but how dirty can you really get lying in bed all day?), I slipped on the robe Jimmy had brought me, and with the nurse's help slid into the wheelchair the hospital provided. Then I rolled myself down the hall toward the ICU waiting room, where Zach and Megan sat.

“Sandra's doing as well as can be expected,” Zach said. “Thanks to you, she's going to live. In fact, she should be able to go home in a couple of weeks. The scarring on her arms won't be too bad. Plastic surgery can perform miracles these days, even with burns.”

Zach and I chatted for a while. He told me that Gloriana's funeral had taken place that morning and that it had been gratifyingly well-attended. I didn't volunteer my opinion that the woman's enemies probably wanted to make sure she was dead.

After a little more desultory conversation, I rolled back to my room, struggled from the wheelchair into my bed, and promptly fell asleep.

When I woke again, Reverend Giblin had returned.

“How's my little girl?” He spoke loudly enough that I could hear him without too much trouble. He looked ten years older than he had the day I'd seen him at WestWorld.

“Your little girl's doing fine.”

He smiled, but it was a sad smile. “That's what you always said when I'd ask what was wrong.”

I didn't like the way this conversation was going. Trips down Memory Lane weren't my style. Too many nightmares had built their houses there.

The monster in the closet.

I forced that particular nightmare away.

“No, really. I'm fine. The doctors said they'll release me tomorrow, and then I'm going to stay with Jimmy.”

“Didn't the court order you into therapy after that last incident?”

Oh, here we go. “Anger management, that's all. I'm fine.”

“Word is that Shakespeare helped write the King James version of the Bible.”

I was about to ask him what that had to do with anything, when he continued.

“Shakespeare knew a lot about human nature, such as women who protest too much. When you first came to stay with us, we'd been foster parenting for fifteen years, but in all that time, I'd never seen such a frightened little girl. And the saddest thing was, you were even more terrified of showing that fear. Did you think we'd do something terrible to you, more terrible than had already been done? You'd wake up in the middle of the night screaming. By the time Mary Kay and I made it to your room, you'd have this forced smile on your face. You'd tell us you were fine, just fine, and order us back to bed.”

I coughed up some more smoke. “Look, Reverend, I'm fine. I was fine then, and I'm fine now.”

“Lena, you are one of the bravest human beings I've ever known. But for all that, you keep running away from your memories as if they'd kill you if they ever caught you. Don't you think it's about time you faced them?”

I didn't answer. Instead, I stared at the ceiling and tried not to remember.

Then, since the Rev showed no signs of leaving, I rolled over and feigned sleep.

After a few more minutes of silence, the Rev gave up. But before he left, he placed a book on my bedside table. After the door shut behind him, I squinted at the title.

The Only Demons Are Those We Create for Ourselves.