Desert Wind (24 page)

This changed everything. “Is there a possibility he committed suicide?”

“Nope. The killer was standing at least five feet away, as much as eight.”

In Nancy Donohue’s conversation with me, she had attributed her husband’s behavior to the effects of nicotine withdrawal on a body already stressed by Type 2 diabetes, not the pain of end-stage lung cancer. By the time Donohue had sworn off cigarettes, it had been nothing more than a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable. The autopsy explained something else that had been bothering me, too. Like some terminally ill people, Donohue had tried to right his wrongs in order to die with a clear conscience, thus the advice to a friend’s granddaughter to stop smoking.

This line of thought brought about two intriguing possibilities. Donohue, in his attempt to make peace with his Maker, might have reopened one too many old wounds and gotten killed for it. On the other hand, maybe his wife, who knew her way around firearms, had played Jack Kevorkian. Was the “murder” actually a mercy killing? One that might even garner her a higher insurance settlement than death by natural causes?

“Lena? You’ve got a strange look on your face.”

“I’m thinking this case just got a lot more complicated.”

“You can see why I didn’t want to discuss this over a phone. Well, I still have more research to do, so…” Having delivered the polite Pima version of
Get lost!
he bent over his laptop and started typing.

Before driving back to my own motel, I sat in the Desert View’s parking lot for a few minutes, thinking about the peculiar relationships between husbands and wives as the Trailblazer’s air conditioning chased away the heat. At what point did married people share moral responsibility for their spouse’s immoral lives? If you knew you were married to a war criminal, did that make you guilty by association? If you knew you were married to a child rapist and kept quiet about it—as my sixth foster mother had done—were you a criminal too? Or because you loved him, did you get a Get Out of Jail Free card?

At what point does love become a crime?

Because Ike Donohue had been the mouthpiece for a tobacco company, some moral sticklers might claim he’d led a wicked life, but to give the devil his due, Donohue was a smoker himself. Near the end, he was at least trying to play catch-up in the ethics arena. Nancy, however…

When I pondered this conundrum, a rust-eaten 1997 Chevy with Utah plates pulled up next to my Trailblazer. It disgorged three screaming children and a careworn woman with a lit cigarette hanging from her mouth. She looked old enough to be the children’s grandmother, but judging from her twenty-something leggings and ultra-short skirt, she was probably their mother. Her mouse-colored hair was faded but not gray, and as yet no wrinkles had appeared around her stunned-looking eyes. An old man, his face liver-spotted and gaunt, remained in the front passenger’s seat. He was smoking, too.

The results of Ike Donohue’s public relations efforts?

Before Parking Lot Woman reached the motel office, the smallest of her children, a girl wearing a lacy pink dress, tripped and fell over a curbing. Instead of getting up, she simply lay on her side howling. With an expression of infinite patience, the woman picked the child up and nuzzled her hair. Because my window was rolled up to keep the heat at bay, I couldn’t make out what she said, but the child stopped sobbing, gulped once, and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek. Parking Lot Woman kissed back, and with that, the quartet vanished into the motel office.

Once the Trailblazer had cooled to a comfortable temperature, I began backing out of my space. Before I made it, two of the children I’d seen earlier burst from the motel office followed by their haggard mother, who was still carrying the little girl. She waved a single key at the elderly man; the entire gang was going to share one room. With two adults puffing away, I didn’t want to think about those children’s lungs. Balancing the girl on her hip, the woman unlocked the door next to Jimmy’s room and ushered her rambunctious brood inside, then returned to the car and tenderly helped the old man out of his seat and into the room. Before closing the door behind them, she tossed the stub of her still-lit cigarette out onto the pavement. Then she put the little girl down and lit another cigarette, inhaling deeply while she watched the traffic go by on John Wayne Boulevard.

If I live to be a hundred and twenty, I’ll never understand people.

That thought reminded me to make a phone call, so I pulled forward back into my parking space and punched a number on my cell phone. Nancy Donohue picked up immediately. She didn’t sound pleased.

“You again, Jones. This is getting tiresome.”

“I’m sure it is, so I’ll be as brief as possible. Did you know your husband was ill?”

“I told you, you ninny. Ike was a Type 2 diabetic, and Lord, was that man a whiner. You’d think he was the only person in the world to ever come down with something. Me, my arthritis is flaring up but I don’t go around whining about it.”

Instead, you take out your discomfort on everyone you know.
Aloud, I said, “I’m talking about the other thing.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, what other thing, Jones? Make it snappy, because I have places to go and people to see.”

Maybe she didn’t know the truth about her husband’s health. Nancy wasn’t the type of person a dying man would open his heart to, so he might have kept her in the dark while he scurried around, trying to right his wrongs.

In case I was wrong about everything, I said with as much compassion as I could muster, “Nancy, the autopsy results on your husband have come back, and the medical examiner found something you should know about.”

“Like what? Syphilis?” The old harridan actually laughed. “Wouldn’t surprise me, given those times Ike stayed out all night. VD, or STD, or whatever PC bullshit they’re calling the wages of sin these days. Serves him right. If it was the clap or whatever, I’ll dance on the cheating bastard’s grave. Then I’ll get my own ass checked.”

There was no gentle way to say it. “Your husband didn’t have a sexually transmitted disease, Nancy. He had end-stage lung cancer.”

Now her laughter sounded forced. “Don’t be ridiculous. Granted, the fool huffed and puffed all the time like the big bad wolf, but that was because he was dumb enough to smoke three packs a day. His problem, not mine. But dying? What kind of fool do you take me for?”

“No fool, Nancy, just a woman whose husband didn’t tell her everything. Look, if you want to talk to the medical examiner yourself, I have his phone number. It’s…”

She slammed the phone down, almost deafening me.

***

A couple of hours later, when I called Jimmy to see if he wanted to meet for dinner at Ma’s Kitchen, he declined, saying that he was still working.

“It doesn’t help, having the family from Hell bunked down next door. The kids have been screaming nonstop. The noise is so bad I knocked on their door to see if someone was getting killed, but they were simply running around, shooting off cap guns. Happy as clams, if clams are happy. The mother invited me in for a game of Monopoly, but I declined. Say, if you want, you can come over here and share some pizza. I’ve already ordered out, but there’s probably enough for two.”

“What kind of pizza?”

“Cheese, ham, onions, pineapple, and anchovies.”

Pineapple, anchovies, and screaming kids: not a good combination. “I’ll pass, but tomorrow morning, say, around seven, let’s meet at Ma’s for breakfast. Afterwards we can see if the jail’s still on lockdown because I have more questions for Ted. I want to see the sheriff, too, and make certain Deputy Smiley Face turned in his report on that shooting. Along with the bullets and cartridges.”

He made a disgusted sound. “Sure would be bad if it got lost in the system, wouldn’t it? In the meantime, promise me you won’t go driving around alone in the desert.”

“See you at breakfast, partner. Eight sharp.”

“Lena! You didn’t pro…”

“No, I didn’t, did I?” With that, I hung up.

After a quick steak dinner at The Stagecoach, I returned to my room and tried to read the Sue Grafton novel I’d begun, but my mind refused to focus. Unbidden, it harkened back to my conversation with Earl Two Horses about Detective Smiley Face’s abused wife and daughter. In a perfect world, a loving mother would have long ago rescued both herself and her child, but past experience with battered women told me she’d stay until someone got killed. Maybe her, maybe the child, maybe…You can’t expect common sense from abused women. They were like battle-weary soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome: they either let the beatings continue or went crazy themselves.

Not feeling hopeful, I picked up the Sue Grafton novel again, but a half hour later I was still on the page I’d started. I gave up on the literary world and clicked on the TV. A few rounds of channel surfing turned up little more than news accounts of the latest terrorist attacks or so-called reality shows that featured snotty, over-dressed, overly made-up women pretending they were Beverly Hills housewives. After opting for pay-for-view, I watched a cadre of zombies sweep across the White House lawn. One wore a straw hat emblazoned with a red, white, and blue hatband that read DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT. As they staggered up the steps, I finally drifted off.

***

The pine-scented night air closed around me as I became aware of pain in my hands. My four-year-old self was back at the mine entrance, clawing away the last board that covered it.

Behind me, my mother said, “Oh, honey, look at your hands. They’re bleeding.”

When I turned around, I saw she was bleeding, too, but her wound was in her right temple where the bullet had struck her.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, just drew me to her in a hug. “Shhhh, now. We must be quiet or Abraham will find us. And you know what Abraham does to children.”

At the name, I clutched her tighter. “Will he hurt me like he did the other kids?”

She started to answer, but then I heard more gunshots.

“They’re closer,” my mother said. “Do you trust me?”

I nodded. Of course I trusted my mother. Didn’t every little girl?

She kissed me on the forehead, and said, “I’ll always love you, Tina.” With that, she shot me in the face, then kicked me in the stomach. I fell backwards into the mineshaft to join the other dead children.

***

I was still falling when the sound of my own moans woke me. I didn’t get back to sleep until around three, but even then I tossed and turned. When the phone at my bedside rang at six forty-five, I was almost glad for an excuse to crawl out of bed.

“’Lo?” I mumbled, still half-asleep.

It was Jimmy. “Ted’s getting released!”

That happy news worked better than a good night’s sleep. “What happened? I asked, fully alert.

“Dad called, said he was going down to the police station this morning to turn himself in.”

“Your dad confessed to killing Ike Donohue!?”

“No, no, the other guy, he confessed everything. I’m only telling you what Dad told me when he called.”

“What other guy? I’m confused, Jimmy. Take a deep breath, slow down, and begin at the beginning.”

He tried, but he was so excited he made little sense. “It was the cook who killed him. The cook at Dad’s ranch. He’d been out of town for a funeral and didn’t get back until late last night, didn’t even know anybody was in custody until he started making breakfast this morning. That’s when Dad told him about Ted and the whole murder thing, while he was chopping up potatoes for the home fries. I mean, the cook was chopping up the potatoes, not Dad. As soon as he, the cook, heard Ted was in jail, he put the knife down and told Dad everything, that he shot Donohue. Then he went and finished making breakfast, can you believe it? He’s on his way to the police station to confess. Dad called Ted’s attorney, and he’s driving in from Silver Ridge right now to file some legal papers. I don’t know exactly what they are, but they’re supposed to be able to help get Ted released and Dad said…”

I listened while he babbled on in a stream-of-consciousness that would have made James Joyce proud. When he finally ran down, I said, “Let’s see if I’ve got this right. The cook at Sunset Trails killed Ike Donohue and he’s turning himself in.”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“In a roundabout way. Why did the cook kill Donohue?”

“Didn’t I say?”

“No, Jimmy, you didn’t.”

“He said he murdered his wife.”

Damn the English language.
“Who killed who’s wife?”

Speaking more slowly, Jimmy said, “The cook said Donohue killed his—the cook’s—wife.”

Ran her down in his car, maybe, when he was lit to the gills? Strange, because the background check Jimmy had run on Donohue hadn’t revealed any brushes with the law.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the jail in an hour. By the way, what’s his name?”

“The cook’s?”

I laughed. The brightness of Jimmy’s joy had chased away the dark terrors of my night. “Yes, Jimmy, the cook. Donohue’s murderer. What’s his name?”