The Last Temptation

by Gerrie Ferris Finger

  “I had a strategy.”

  “So did I.”

  “Some strategy. Get us killed.”

  “The best defense is an offense, ever hear that?”

  “Some offense.”

  “Where are those men now?”

  “Dru, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Those men didn’t know if we had guns, or how many. They’re bad, but not stupid. They’d calculate the odds.”

  He waved the gun at the Jeep. “You got a plan to get us to the vehicle without getting ambushed?”

  “They’re gone.”

  “Your clairvoyance working overtime?”

  “You’re alive.”

  “You know what this looks like to me. Three little Indians out hunting one day and accidentally—or maybe on purpose—shoot at a window of the old ancestral flats. Like city kids shooting out street lights. Then they decide to come inside and smoke a joint. Lo and behold, a mad woman with a Glock comes running down the stairs, shooting up the walls.”

  “Earlier you thought someone was warning us to get out of the forbidden canyon. Now it’s a joy-shooting bunch of kids.” I ran for the four-wheeler.

  “Dru,” he shouted. Apparently he wasn’t totally convinced of his rationalization, because there was terror in his voice. He caught up and shoved me inside. He turned on me. “What the hell’s got into you? When we were partners, you never acted like you did in there. We shared the danger, and we watched each other’s backs. Have you forgotten your cop training?”

  “It’s been a while since I was a cop,” I fired back. “But I haven’t lost my instincts. I knew how to save us. I didn’t survive the worst the desert can throw at me and not have developed a sense of what I can do.”

  He snorted and put the gun in the holster. We rode back to town in hateful silence. He dropped me off at the airport, where I rented my own car, a little Honda.

  28

  I told Lake I was having a room service dinner and then getting a good night’s sleep. Maybe later, I’d get a good night’s sleep. I left for VillageFest. I wasn’t surprised to see him walking in the middle of the crowd. He lifted his chin and gave me a smeary smile and sauntered ahead, never looking back. As irrational as it was, I took two shallow breaths and blinked away tears.

  Zing didn’t have a donut stand that night, and Philippe wasn’t serving up trays of sushi. Tess didn’t have a table booth, and Dartagnan wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I ate an enchilada, a tamale, and drank a cold beer, and tasted nothing.

  On the way back to my hotel room, I spotted a familiar figure. He was broad-shouldered and dark-complexioned. He wore sunglasses and a fedora-type straw hat. I was certain he was the man at the airport. And he was very like the man whom we met at the cabin. I ran to catch up to him, but he disappeared behind a green-striped tent. I circled it. No one was there.

  Back in my hotel room, I looked at my missed calls. I almost threw the damned cell across the room. Lake’s number appeared twice. Mozart played as I held the cell. The name on the display surprised me: Bradley Whitney. I was in no mood for a contentious conversation with my ex-client.

  The concerto played again. Dartagnan. I answered, “What? You’re not on vacation, too?”

  “What’re you talking ’bout, girl?”

  “Zing, Philippe, Theodosia are all on vacation. They get a free trip to Vegas?”

  Dartagnan laughed. “It’s August, Miss Dru. People leave this hellhole in August.”

  “Where’s Tess?”

  I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he said, “I believe she had a show somewheres up Twenty-Nine Palms way.”

  I said, “Her folks’ house was shut up when I went there today.”

  “They go with her sometimes. Or they’re at the casino in Mission Palms.”

  “Is it open all night?”

  He laughed as if I’d asked a dumb question. “Hear you’re going back east tomorrow.”

  “Where’d you hear that from?”

  “The Springs is a small town, Miss Dru. Very small.”

  “I’m one hundred percent convinced.”

  “Sorry ’bout all that happened. Glad you’re better.”

  “Me, too.”

  * * * * *

  A three-hundred-pound casino bouncer told me that the Rosovos weren’t around. I was two paces from a door marked PRIVATE when three men walked out. Lights blazed inside a hallway behind them, and before the door closed, I saw someone else duck into a doorway.

  The bouncer escorted me to the exit and watched as I drove from under the marquee. I had to wait for traffic in the road to clear before I made a left. A Jeep came flying up the road. Once it passed, I could pull out. The Jeep’s right flasher came on, and the driver braked suddenly. Tess’s face glowed from the windshield. My eyes trailed down to the passenger-side fender. It was dented. I gripped the wheel so hard, the muscles in my hands hurt. Tess made a right in front of me. I watched in my rearview mirror as she stopped beneath the marquee and jumped out. The bouncer followed her into the casino.

  I yanked the Honda into reverse, backed up, and stopped in front of the Jeep. A valet came up as I got out. “Forgot something inside,” I said and dashed into the casino. Tess had opened the door marked PRIVATE. The bouncer saw me. I pointed to Tess. “I’m with her.”

  “Tess,” I called. But the door shut.

  I banged on it until the brute caught my arm.

  “Tell her I need to talk to her.”

  He looked at me as if I were a runaway lunatic.

  Suddenly the door jerked open. Tess said, “That’s okay, Harley.”

  Tess’s cheekbones were more prominent than I remembered. Her hair tangled. I said, “I’ve been trying to find you.” She didn’t answer but tilted her head to beckon me inside. “Are you all right?” I asked. She closed the door on the bouncer and led me down the hall. “Tess? Answer me.” She opened the door into an office and hung back for me to go in first. Rosa Rosovo sat behind a desk. Lake sat in a director’s chair.

  I felt weightless, like an astronaut untethered from his ship. “What’s going on?”

  Lake stood. “I found Tess for you.”

  Tess backed up against a wall and protested softly. “I wasn’t lost. I had a showing in Joshua Tree.”

  I stared at Lake, my hands curled into tight balls. “You were sitting here while that bouncer threw me out.”

  He said, “I didn’t know you were out there, Dru.”

  Liar. Tension hung like fog, and neither Tess nor Lake would look at me.

  Mrs. Rosovo, however, drilled me with her prune-like eyes. “We are sorry for your misfortune, Miss Dru. Please accept our hope for a continued recovery and please have a safe trip back to Georgia.”

  “I’ve recovered,” I said.

  She brushed a hand back. “One day your memory will return.”

  “It has,” I said.

  She exchanged a cagey glance with Lake and Tess, then looked at me. “Datura lingers.”

  Tess said quietly, “Dru, I didn’t take you to a moon ritual.” She suddenly got interested in her torn cuticles. “I told you about a moon ritual. We hold them—in different places.”

  “I was there,” I insisted. “The cabin, the girls, the heat. The dancing, the chanting, and then, being so dizzy . . .”

  Nervous eye signals flashed between Mrs. Rosovo and Lake. “Go on, Tess,” her aunt said.

  Tess’s words tumbled out. “I didn’t rescue you from the Flats. My Jeep didn’t burn up. You can see it sitting outside.”

  “Easy to re-create.”

  Tess plucked at a cuticle and glanced at her aunt. “I took you to see my aunt at our home. You got sick, you went outside and wandered away.”

  I stared into Mrs. Rosovo’s eyes. “I’ve never been inside your home.”

  Lake took a step toward me and held out a hand. “Let’s go.”

  I stared at him. “You go.”

  “Dru, this is going nowhere.”

  My ey
es went to Tess, who seemed fascinated by photographs on the opposite wall. “Why are you doing this, Tess? I trusted you.”

  “Doing what?” Mrs. Rosovo intervened.

  I walked toward her desk. “Trying to make Lieutenant Lake believe I’m delusional. You and I and Tess know better.” I rounded on Lake. “Tell them about this afternoon, at Adobe Flats.”

  “I talked with Mrs. Rosovo before you got here,” Lake said. “I was right. Some natives shoot at interlopers.”

  “Bull.”

  Lake took my arm. “Thank you for seeing me, Miss Rosovo. Mrs. Rosovo.”

  “No,” I said, trying to jerk my arm away. “I can’t go. Not like this.”

  “We extend hospitality, Miss Dru,” Mrs. Rosovo said, “but in the circumstances, it would be better . . .”

  “That little girl in the cabin—”

  “What little girl?”

  “In the cabin. A little girl, with a wig. She—she didn’t belong. She had the fair skin of a blonde.”

  Mrs. Rosovo had trouble keeping eye contact. She cleared her throat and said, “You are mistaken.” She folded her hands on the desk. “I’m afraid you are a victim of stereotyping. Not all Indians are dark-complexioned with dark hair.”

  “I have photographs of Eileen and Kinley, and—”

  “Please,” Mrs. Rosovo said. “No more.”

  I looked at Tess’s worried profile. “You’ve betrayed me, Tess.”

  Tess apparently reached into herself and found a defense, because she leveled a chilly gaze at me. “You are ill.”

  “That little girl, take me to her, prove to me who she is, then I’ll believe you.”

  Mrs. Rosovo said to Lake, “Our conversation is ended.”

  “Yes,” Lake said, gently tugging my arm.

  I faced him. “No, I can’t—”

  He stepped me toward the door, saying quietly, “Dru, please. Can’t you see? These people can’t help you.”

  “Won’t.”

  “Good day, Miss Dru,” Mrs. Rosovo said.

  I was barely out when the door closed forcefully. I turned on him. “What the hell were you doing here?”

  “Trying to help you.”

  “By going behind my back?”

  “Trying to find the truth.”

  “You know the truth.”

  He held my good arm and tugged me down the hall. I shook free. He spread his arms to block my retreat. “No, Dru.” He caught me around the waist and pushed me to the door. The bouncer was holding it open. Once through, I said, “Let me go.”

  “Don’t make a scene.”

  “You don’t know what a scene is.”

  Outside, I looked over Tess’s Jeep while Lake stayed close. Inside it, the key hung in the ignition on a boojum ring, but there wasn’t an eagle etched into the leather of the passenger seat. I said, “Same year, and model, but Tess didn’t have time to etch the eagle.”

  Lake’s eyes were watchful as if he thought I might jump in it and take off. “A good night’s sleep,” he said. “Things will seem different in the morning.”

  “Not unless people decide to tell the truth, and you decide to believe me.”

  “I believe you believe.”

  I don’t think I ever felt this bitter. “Go back to Atlanta.”

  “I am, in the morning. We both are.”

  No matter what I did, I couldn’t lose his headlights all the way back to Palm Springs.

  I tossed all night. Lake had pissed me off so thoroughly I could keep him benched at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t stop wondering why the hell these people were trying to make me believe something that wasn’t true. I began to make up scenarios. One made a lot of sense.

  29

  The FBI bureau office in Palm Springs is on East Tahquitz Canyon Way. The name on the office door read GILA JOE CORLEE. He opened the door. Tall for a Plains Indian, he was maybe forty-five, looking like a totem Indian without the war bonnet and ankle feathers, and when he introduced himself he pronounced his first name “Heela.”

  We shook hands, and I took a seat. I glanced around the small mess of a room. His desk took up most of it. I sat on the sort of straight wooden chair I call a butt throbber. The metal table to my right was loaded with papers and files.

  Agent Corlee looked amiable enough, but there was an impatient edge to him. “Miss Dru, Detective LeRoi said he’d explained to you that I’ve been on vacation. Some vacation. On the border looking for illegals.”

  I appreciated his attempt to make small talk. “Surely FBI agents get vacations.”

  “We would if we could get away from cell phones and PDAs.”

  “What would we do without them?” I said with disinterest. Corlee made an acquiescent grunt, and clearly it was up to me to start the conversation. So I did. “Detective LeRoi said y’all had swapped information on the Whitney case. But I wanted to hear what you’ve learned in your words.”

  His head tilted left. “There’s really nothing I can tell you that he hasn’t. Truth is, he’s more up on the case than I am.”

  “He said that, too.”

  His expression said, Then why are you here?

  “I thought you might give me a different perspective,” I said. “Do you know Arlo Cameron personally?”

  “Everybody knows Arlo.”

  “And Eileen?”

  He took his time answering. “Not well. They say she did drugs, but it wasn’t my problem. She didn’t deal or distribute, to my knowledge.”

  “You got snitches, don’t you?”

  His lips puckered. “Nobody’s been snitching about Mrs. Cameron and her daughter.”

  I must have looked as bleak as I felt. He said, “Maybe we can get farther along when we get the photos and particulars up on our website.” I almost laughed out loud. Whitney would have a hemorrhage.

  Corlee said, “Look, Miss Dru, I know your credentials. You know that these cases of parental kidnapping are mushrooming. It’s the nature of divorce and money and possessiveness. When I learned that your agency was investigating, I was overjoyed.” He waved his hand toward the table where piles of case files seemed about to tumble onto the floor. “In those stacks are thirty-one cases of parental kidnappings.” He smiled indulgently. “I’d hoped when you cleared this one, you’d take on some of my load.”

  I was supposed to feel a pat on the back and be happy about it. “The Whitney case took me into the desert, to the reservation.”

  He smoothed his black hair back with a large brown hand. “I heard that you were swept up in the monsoon. You okay now?”

  “I am.”

  “You got snakebit?”

  “My arm’s almost back to normal,” I said. “I believe Kinley Whitney’s on that reservation.”

  “Why?”

  “I saw her.”

  “When?”

  “A week ago. Last Friday night.”

  He picked up a pen. “Where?”

  “In a cabin where Mrs. Rosovo was holding a moon ritual.” As he wrote, he bobbed his head. For all I knew, he could have been doodling. “When I got out of the hospital and went back to it, the cabin had been turned into a hunting lodge.”

  He stopped writing and raised his head. “You think somebody’s playing games with you?”

  “My mind.”

  “Detective LeRoi told me that you had amnesia.”

  “Temporary. From Datura and the knock on the head, but it’s gone. However, there are those who want to make me believe I’m delusional.” He put his pen down. “I’m not, I assure you.”

  He chewed the corner of his lower lip. “I’ve got to get over San Diego way, but I’d appreciate it if you’d write a detailed report of who you spoke with, where you went, what was said to the best of your recollection. In other words, write out your every movement since you got to The Springs. Will you do that?”

  “It’s something I do routinely,” I said, looking at the table, at the heap of papers that looked unread.

  “But you know,”
he said, smiling kindly. “there’s a deep underground where these women take these kids. They can disappear for a long, long time. Or they can come back on their own next week.”

  “Eileen didn’t disappear into any maternal underground, Agent Corlee.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Not personally, but my investigation shows she wanted custody of her child, but she also wasn’t giving up her lifestyle. She was going through the courts like she should.”

  He made a moue of concession, and I wondered how well he knew Eileen. He asked, “In your opinion, what do you think prompted her to disappear with the kid then?”

  I spoke before I should have. “In my opinion, she didn’t disappear with her child. And I don’t think they’re together any longer.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Lord, I couldn’t go near intuition—the laughable woman’s intuition. As I thought of a way to word my suspicion, he asked, “You think Eileen Cameron’s dead?”

  “Likely.”

  “Why?”

  “Little things.” Like a man buying flowers who frightened her the day she disappeared. Like her child in a moon cabin. Like people trying to make me believe I’m nuts. Like people following me, shooting at me.

  He rose, my signal to get up, too. “Have you told this to Detective LeRoi?”

  “No,” I said, sure that Gila Joe Corlee knew Dartagnan was a little too close to the principals.

  He pulled a ten-gallon hat off a rack by his desk. “I’ve got terrorists to track down, homeland security issues piling up, illegals frying inside tractor trailers.” He held the door open for me. “I need hard facts. If you find out something concrete, start with Dartagnan.”

  Thank you, Agent Gila Joe Corlee. For nothing.

  And hell would freeze before he got a written copy of my report.

  30

  I sat in the back of the 747, and Lake sat at an emergency exit in the middle. I dozed most of the way to Atlanta, once snorting awake, embarrassing myself to the twenty-something man next to me. When I deplaned, I didn’t see Lake in the crowded B Concourse.

  The weekend came. I hadn’t heard from him. My skin hummed like small sweat bees crawled beneath it. Except for working road trips, this would be the first weekend we hadn’t seen each other in two years. Sure, we’d gotten sideways of each other, but he’d never disbelieved in me, nor I in him.