Desert Wind

by Betty Webb

“Oh, it’s you, Jones. What the hell do you want?”

  Following her example, I skipped the social pleasantries. “Did your husband ever work with a man named Gerald Heber?”

  A catarrhal bark, probably a laugh. “Talk about a blast from the past! Why do you want to know about old Gerald?”

  “I take it, then, your husband did work with him.”

  “Of course he did. Gerald was Ike’s boss. When Gerald left C&C, Ike was promoted to head of the public relations department. But I repeat, why do you want to know about that old bastard and what business is it of yours, anyway?” In the background, I heard ice cubes rattling against glass.

  “Mrs. Donohue, aren’t you in the least curious about who shot your husband? Or why?”

  A slurp, then a satisfied smacking of lips. “What difference does it make? As you so succinctly pointed out the last time we talked, Ike was dying anyway.”

  She slammed the phone down.

  So there it was. The Atomic Energy Commission had hired Gerald Heber to lie for them. It had been his job—and the sonofabitch did it exceedingly well—to convince people that nuclear fallout posed a no larger safety risk than dewdrops on apples.

  As a result, thousands of people—perhaps hundreds of thousands—had died.

  Among them, Gabriel Boone’s wife.

  ***

  After that discovery, I knew sleep was a long way off, so I pulled my iPod out of my carry-all and brought up John Lee Hooker’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” the bootlegged version with my father playing guitar. It had been surreptitiously recorded in some blues bar near where we’d once lived and although my father’s name—whatever it was—did not appear on the credits, I recognized his voice and style, remembered his open, loving face. I hit REPEAT and listened to him until I drifted off…

  ***

  I was back in the mine, but this time my father, not my mother, held my hand. For some reason, my mother had refused to attend the ceremony; she was too sick, she said, to see the surprise Abraham had prepared for us.

  The mine was lit by torches. Incense filled the air. Abraham swept by, followed by his acolytes. He wore his priestly robes, and the light of God shone down upon him.

  “Those who follow the Lord, draw nigh!” he commanded, his voice that of the angels.

  My father, suddenly tense, tried to hold me back, but I was four years old and curious, so I wiggled out of his arms and moved forward with the rest of Abraham’s flock. Hands pushed me along until I reached the front and saw the stone altar Abraham had prepared. On it lay a boy of about my age, dressed in nothing but a breechclout. He was smiling. Everyone was. Abraham’s smile was brightest of them all.

  “How do we show our love for the Lord?” Abraham asked his flock.

  “By following his bidding!” his flock chorused.

  “Does the Lord demand sacrifice?”

  His flock responded, “The Lord demands sacrifice!”

  “What does the Lord tell us to sacrifice?”

  “Our firstborn!”

  In the back, I heard my father scream my name until he was drowned out by the chants of the flock. “We do as the Lord bade us!” a hundred voices sang. Only then did I notice the knife in Abraham’s upraised hand. Before I could tell him to stop, he plunged it into the boy’s chest.

  “Oh, great are the works of the Lord!” Abraham cried, as blood rolled down the sides of the altar to pool on the floor of the mine.

  “Great are the works of the Lord!” the flock responded.

  Confused, I ran back to my father. “I don’t understand, Daddy. Why isn’t the little boy getting up?”

  My father couldn’t answer, because blood was pouring from his own mouth.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  When the sirens woke me, the clock on my nightstand was flashing 6:03. a.m.

  Not that I’d been sound asleep to begin with. After I’d awoken from that first nightmare and thrown my iPod across the room, the rest of the night was broken by short, sharp dreams about little girls with crumbling bones, Paiutes with melted faces, women keening over fresh graves. For once, my dreams about Abraham seemed gentle in comparison.

  The continuing racket outside sounded like the entire Walapai County Sheriff’s Department had been activated. Tumbling from the bed to the window, I pulled back the blinds to pinpoint the source of the racket. All I could see was the pool and one bath-robed tourist hunched over a steaming mug. He didn’t look alarmed, and when the sirens faded into the distance, I closed the blinds and trudged to the bathroom.

  The hot shower revived me somewhat, and once I brewed some coffee in the room’s one-cup coffee maker, I felt almost human. As I sipped, I punched in Jimmy’s cell phone number; he’d always been an early bird.

  “Boone’s legal situation just got worse,” I told him.

  “Speak up. I can’t hear you.”

  No wonder. The background noise—people laughing, dishes and silverware rattling and clanking—made him almost unintelligible, too. “Where are you? Ma’s Kitchen?”

  “What?”

  When I repeated myself, only louder, he shouted back. “Yeah! Ma’s! I’m almost finished with breakfast, but if you want to talk, I’ll hang around!”

  This was no conversation to be conducted around nosey diners, many of whom wouldn’t want the area’s tragic history aired in a crowded restaurant. “Not Ma’s!” I screamed. “Meet me at the park! In a half hour!”

  “Meet you where?”

  “The park!”

  “Did you say the park?”

  “Yes!”

  “Where in the park?”

  “Same table as the other day!”

  “In a half hour?”

  “Yes, dammit!” Hoarse from yelling, I rang off.

  ***

  This early in the morning, the Walapai Flats City Park was as deserted as I’d hoped it would be, and Jimmy and I had it to ourselves. No toddlers played in the sandbox, no starlings rioted in the waste cans. In between bites of the Danish I’d picked up on my way to the park, I told him about the Downwinder’s meeting, then asked the question that had kept me up all night.

  “You were raised in Walapai Flats, Jimmy, which means you had to know all about those damned bombs. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He looked off into the sky, which was an innocent blue, its radioactivity long since vanished. “It wasn’t relevant to the case.”

  The outrage I’d kept inside bubbled to the surface. “Are you serious? Chances are it has everything to do with the case.”

  “How could it? The testing ended years ago.”

  “Not the cancer cases!”

  He didn’t answer right way, and when he did, just mumbled, “You don’t understand.”

  “Really? Try me.”

  Turning away from the sky and facing me, he said, “All right. Maybe I made a mistake. But not being from here, you don’t know the cloud this community was living under and I don’t just mean the radioactive kind. You’ve seen how the people make their living. Tourism. Yeah, I heard about the tests when I was a kid, and the problems the Downwinders were having, but talking about them was a forbidden subject around the dinner table, so…so I guess it all just got pushed to the back of my mind.”

  Now I was really getting mad. What good was a partner who withheld information that might be pertinent to a case? “Don’t you try to tell me…”

  “Look, most of the damage was done when we were still living in Salt Lake, and back then I was too young to grasp what was going on when the news started leaking out. When we moved down here, I was still a kid and still didn’t really understand. Yes, I finally got it, but by then I’d become like everyone else around here—since there was nothing I could do about it I made myself forget. Once I moved to the Pima Reservation and took back my birth name, Dad was so angry he didn’t exactly keep me apprised of local events—not even what was happening with the Downwinders and their lawsuits against the Feds. As for Ted, he and the other kids were busy w
ith their own lives. Whenever we got together, that’s what we talked about, our lives, not a series of bomb tests before most of us were born.”

  “But…”

  He waved my objection away. “You’ve met my father. You know what he’s like. We were drilled in silence on the subject and that’s what we promised. Absolute silence. He reminded me of that when I came up here to help Ted.”

  I thought about that for a moment, his father’s demands, Jimmy’s own conflicted soul. “You can hardly stand to be in the same room with him, yet you remain loyal to him?”

  “Loyalty is a way of life. If you choose it. Which I did.”

  I didn’t understand and probably never would. Just as Jimmy would never understand how much my childhood had shaped me. After all, I couldn’t even remember my own birth name, could I? In our different ways, we were both haunted.

  Pushing away my own ghosts, I stretched out my hand and covered his with my own. “Still friends, Almost Brother?”

  “Forever, Lena.” He didn’t move his hand away.

  As if there’d been no rift between us, I continued telling him what I’d learned. “Apparently the government switched to underground testing in the early sixties, not that it helped all that much. Seems the ground around the test site was so pocked with mine shafts and naturally-occurring vents that the radioactive dust continued to shoot into the atmosphere. And onto the rest of the country. Especially Walapai Flats. It coated the damn place.”

  With a great show of busyness, Jimmy took a pen and notebook from his shirt pocket and began jotting down notes. “You’ve done a good job on the history, but when I get back to the motel, I’ll see what else I can find. That’s if you can trust me to.”

  Did I? Yes, I decided, I did. “I’d appreciate it. Dig especially deep on Gerald Heber, Donohue, Tosches, and the lovely Mia.” I thought for a moment. “Even Earl Two Horses and Monty Carson, the farrier. They were both at the Downwinders meeting. Oh, and Ma, the restaurant owner. He was there, too, with Tara, that waitress who’s sweet on you. Did you ever learn Ma’s name?”

  A smile. “Marcello Sabbatini. He’s Tara’s father.”

  I couldn’t see frail little Tara shooting Donohue or Tosches, but to keep everything politically correct, I added her name to the list. “On the off-chance that Tosches’ death is connected to the Downwinders, you might want to do more checking into Cole Laveen. He’s the new partner in the Black Basin Mine, and now that Tosches is dead, he might take over. I checked him out online myself, but he looked so blameless it made me suspicious. Check out Katherine Dysart, too, and her husband Trent. Being from Boston, Trent probably didn’t have a personal grudge against either Donohue or Tosches, but there is such a thing as a hired hit man. The guy’s killed before, and maybe it wasn’t as accidental as Katherine would like people to believe. Prison tends to make people worse, not better.”

  “Is that it?” He started to close the notebook.

  “One more thing. Add Sheriff Wiley Alcott to the mix.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “How many Arizona sheriffs have you met who wear Rolexes and Armani suits?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Top of the list for him, then.”

  Because of the strain between us, I didn’t tell Jimmy about the other person who needed to be looked at more carefully. Hating what I did for a living, I decided to have another word with Hank Olmstead.

  But only after I visited Desert Investigations’ new client.

  ***

  Jails aren’t the sanest of places, but today the Walapai County Complex was weirder than ever. The guard manning the metal detector looked spooked, and even the calm old deputy at the front desk was flipping nervously through his copy of Urban Living. When I told him I was there to see Gabriel Boone, he made the appropriate call, but as soon as he disconnected, he whispered, “Stop by and see me before you leave.”

  When Boone was ushered into the interview room, he looked peaceful. I didn’t want to change that, but it was necessary. “Mr. Boone…”

  “Call me Gabe, Miss Jones. Everyone does.”

  “Only if you call me Lena.”

  He frowned. “I’m not used to treating women so familiar.”

  “This is the twenty-first century, Mr. Boone.”

  “Pretty day out, isn’t it, ah, Lena? There’s a window real high up in the corridor between the cells and this room, so I was able to see out. Bright blue sky, a clear Arizona day. Makes a person glad to be alive. Were there any clouds at all? This time of year, we sometimes get a light afternoon shower. Makes the earth smell like it’d just been born. Isn’t that right, Duke?” He looked to his left, and cocked his head, as if listening to a distant voice.

  Growing uncomfortable, I rushed, “Yes, I love the desert after a rain, especially in August. It helps cool things off. Gabe, do you know Nancy Donohue, Ike Donohue’s wife?”

  His eyes flickered, but that was all. “Good woman with horses and dogs, lousy with people. Except her husband, a course. I felt bad about making her a widow, because she sure did love that piece of dirt she was married to.”

  If Nancy Donohue had loved her husband, it was news to me, but I let it slide. “In what way was he a piece of dirt?”

  “Let me give you a little tip, Miss, uh, Lena. Never trust a man who always follows orders. A hired gun, that’s all Donohue was. Standing up there in front of the TV cameras, swearing in front of God and everybody that the mine would be safe when he knew damned well how many Navajos died at Moccasin Peak. He was used to making bad men look good, just like his old boss could. That man…”

  He broke off, and I knew why. It was too early in the interview to bring up Heber’s name, so I skirted around it. “When you took that trip up to Salt Lake City for your grandniece’s funeral, did you have car trouble?”

  His face brightened. “Boy, did I! Let me tell you, finding a clutch for a sixty-seven Ford pickup takes some doing. Guy at the repair shop, Sam, he said I’d be better off junking it and buying something newer, but me and that truck, we’ve driven a lot of road together, so I told him to do his best. He got on the Internet and found a clutch in a junkyard over in Colorado Springs, and they sent it over. Amazing thing, that Internet, isn’t it? Sam worked on the clutch some, and it turned out fine. Took a few days, though, so I had to find me a motel.”

  “Sounds like an expensive trip.”

  He looked to his left again and muttered something I couldn’t hear, but I could guess who he was talking to. Or thought he was. “Gabe, is John Wayne in this room?”

  “Sure is, and he’s hanging onto every word you say. To answer your question, yeah, my trip cost a bit, but I had me money put aside. I don’t go out drinking any more, and Mr. Olmstead pays me a good salary, plus throws in room and board, so the only thing left to spend some money on is Blue. Unlike a lot of people I know around here, Blue’s hale and hearty, thank the stars. I used to own his great-great—forget how many greats-grandpappy.” His eyes unfocused for a moment, as if remembering. “That first Blue, he died way too young. Got sick. Real sick.”

  To keep him on track, I said, “Must be hard losing a pet. Still, motel rooms and meals must have cost you quite a bit during your trip. Didn’t you have any relatives you could stay with up in Salt Lake?”

  He stopped looking to his left and met my eyes. “My grandniece, she was the last of my family. She was born here in town, moved to Salt Lake when she married. She had better luck than her mother and sister did, made it all the way to fifty-one.”

  “They must have died young. What’d your grandniece die of?” I was edging closer to Heber now.

  “Breast cancer.”

  “Is that what took her mother and sister, too?”

  A nod. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Does the name Gerald Heber mean anything to you?”

  The breath went out of him in such a rush I was surprised it didn’t knock me down.

  “Come again, Lena? My hearing’s not so good thes
e days.”

  There was nothing wrong with Gabe’s hearing; he just wanted time to formulate his answer. I played along by raising my voice. “Are you familiar with the name Gerald Heber?”

  “Why are you asking about Heber?”

  “Tell me what you know about him.”

  Continuing to ignore the imaginary presence on his left, he lowered his head and seemed to be studying something under the table. I looked down and saw nothing, only that the table was bolted to the floor. So was his chair. While it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for men in lockup to start tossing furniture around, such measures seemed incongruous for a shackled man in his eighties. Then again, what did I really know about him? During my last visit I hadn’t believed his murder confession, but after attending the Downwinder’s meeting, I wasn’t so certain. And he was crazy, no doubt about that.

  “Could you please answer my question, Gabe? I’m here to help you.”

  When he looked at me again, he was a changed man. His eyes narrowed and his lips pulled tight against his teeth. “Heber? All you need to know about Gerald Heber is that the liar is dead and burning in hell, but it didn’t happen soon enough for me or my wife and my mother-in-law and my best friend and my grandniece and her mother and sister and all them other folks who died in Walapai County. Not to mention the animals. Now I’m through talking, Miss Jones.”

  “But Gabe, how can I help you if…?”

  He didn’t move or say another word until I signaled the nervy-looking detention officer to lead him and his imaginary friend back to his cell. Gabe delivered a polite goodbye, but he had trouble doing even that.

  Gabe Boone had hated Gerald Heber enough to kill him, so now I had more work for Jimmy. When, exactly, did Heber die? And where? My own rough Internet search had found no obit for the man, or any other mention of him after he left Cook & Creighton Tobacco. Had he remained in North Carolina, or did he relocate to the Southwest, like so many retired people were doing in the Seventies? I was so deep in thought I forgot about the deputy at the front desk, but he waved me over as I came back into the lobby. From the open pages on his desk, I saw that he was still hung up on Urban Living.