Cactus Heart

by Jon Talton

Chapter Twenty-one

  It was nearly nine on Friday night and I stood at the office window, listening to carolers down in a nearly deserted Patriots Square. They sang “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and then “Jingle Bells” before a fire truck went by with siren screaming. I picked up the phone on the second ring, but there was only a light buzz in the background. I was about to put it down when a voice said my name.

  “You know who this is?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Everybody knows my voice. The damned president knows my voice. It’s Max Yarnell.”

  I sat down in the wooden swivel chair. “How may I help you, Mr. Yarnell?” He sounded very drunk.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said. “I need to see you. Tonight. Can you come out here?”

  “Where is ‘out here’?”

  He started into directions heading me into the McDowell Mountain foothills in the far north of Scottsdale. I scribbled them onto a sheriff’s office memo pad.

  “Mr. Yarnell,” I said. “It’s late, it’ll take me an hour to get out there.”

  “Goddamn it, Mapstone, you could do it in thirty minutes. I do. I really need to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “Not on the phone,” he slurred. “Out here, where it’s safe.”

  “Safe from what?” I could hear “Frosty the Snowman” wafting through the open window.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll call you back.” The line clicked off.

  It reminded me of an eccentric old professor at a university where I had taught. At work, he was distinguished and aloof, a giant in his field of research. But he drank alone at home and after the first few glasses, he reached for the telephone—sometimes he called female students he had a crush on, sometimes colleagues he was peeved at. He was quietly pushed into retirement after he made an obscene call to a dean’s wife. I made a note to call Max Yarnell the next day.

  When I got the car out of the garage to head home, though, I felt differently. It was nothing as formed or sophisticated as a premonition. Just a murky anxiety. I pulled out the address and drove toward Scottsdale. I slipped onto the Red Mountain Freeway at Seventh Street and shot through the older neighborhoods of east Phoenix, cruising at seventy-five at treetop level. Then the freeway jogged southeast into Tempe, past Rural Road, and I took the connection to the Pima Freeway. That took me north into Scottsdale, the city off to my left, the Indian reservation off to the right. I got onto surface streets at McDonald, put the top down, and drove through north Scottsdale. The night was crisp but I was warm inside my leather jacket.

  You couldn’t touch a house out here for less than a half-a-million dollars, and it was the older part of Scottsdale. I went through McCormick Ranch into the horse properties. Past Shea Boulevard, across the Central Arizona Project Canal, and into the estates running up to the McDowell Mountains. A discreet sign promised “gated canyon living.” Twenty years before, this had all been empty desert.

  Before I got into Fountain Hills, the developments thinned out as the road climbed. I reached the scenic lookout for the city lights—we used to come up here in high school to make out. Then off to the left was a road named Cheryl. I took it and climbed deeper into the foothills until I reached a gate of black steel.

  I slipped the car into park and it purred at idle, just the way the engineers in Munich intended. All around me, hills and mountains stood out black against the night sky, and beyond them the city glowed with a ghostly sheen. A small black communications box stood by the gate. I pressed a glowing red button. I waited and nothing happened. I shut the car off and listened. The hum of traffic on Shea, and farther away on Beeline Highway coming down from the Mogollon Rim. Closer in, the desert sounds: the breeze in the palo verde leaves, a rustling in the mesquite, the indescribable but very real sound of the emptiness. You could even see the stars out here. But I couldn’t see what was on the other side of the gate, and the communications box failed to return my affections. I gave another couple of tries and turned back toward the city. Apparently the booze had answered whatever questions Max Yarnell had for me.

  He was right: It took about half an hour at this time of night. I exited off the Red Mountain at Third Street and turned toward home. It was around eleven-thirty, and I was suddenly feeling jumpy. The vastness of the city felt claustrophobic. I was too aware of every breath. I raised the top and didn’t feel better. When I turned onto Third Avenue and headed into Willo, I swear I saw that damned Ford Econoline van again, making the turn with me, on my tail. When I checked the mirror again, crossing Palm Lane, the street was empty behind me. Time to call it a day.

  Back at home, Peralta was snoring contentedly in the guest bedroom. I closed his door, got undressed for bed and slid in the sheets naked to read. That’s when the phone rang.

  I thought it might be Max Yarnell. But it was Gretchen.

  “Did I wake you?” she asked.

  “Nope, I was just reading.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t wake you. How is your quest going?”

  “Oh, not so good. There don’t seem to be any answers.”

  “There are always answers, David. You just have to know where to look.”

  “Well, you have the patience of the archaeologist,” I said.

  “I’m not always patient,” she said. “In fact, I can be very impulsive.” She paused and I was very aware of the softness of the sheets against my body. “In, fact, I was calling to ask you if I could come over and be with you.”

  “I would like that very much,” I said.

  “I hoped you’d say that. That’s why I took the chance.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  When I came awake, Gretchen was lightly stroking my hair and staring at me intently.

  “You have the softest hair. Just like a baby’s hair.”

  Then the pounding on the door resumed. I sat up a little and groaned. My head ached like I’d finished off a bottle of red wine, but I hadn’t sipped a drop. My shoulders and arms, legs and back ached, too, but I knew what that was from.

  “Who could that be at this hour?” I whispered through a cotton mouth. The clock on the bedside table said one but it was bright sunny outside.

  “Jesus,” I said, and sat up. Gretchen just watched me. She was wearing one of my white dress shirts and nothing else. I looked back longingly at her, slipped on my robe and limped out into the house. Peralta’s bed was made and he was nowhere to be seen. Out the window was an unmarked police unit. Something bad.

  “Quit screwing around,” came a voice through the little grille in the heavy wood door. The voice went to the body of Sheriff’s Detective Patrick Blair.

  “What the hell, Mapstone?” he said. “I’ve been pounding on the door for fifteen minutes.”

  “What’s going on?” I demanded, suddenly wide awake. I was instantly worried about Lindsey, so worried that I momentarily forgot who had been in my bed last night. Then I felt immediately guilty.

  “Can I come in?”

  “The house is a pit,” I said. “What do you need, Blair?”

  He was as tall as me, and several light years more handsome. Just about thirty, he had luxurious black hair, merry Irish blue eyes, a perfect central casting face, a robust body. He had on a denim shirt, chinos and a Glock in a cross-draw holster, but he still looked like he just stepped out of a fashion magazine.

  “What do I need?” he demanded. “What did you have going with Max Yarnell?”

  I opened the door, suddenly angry. “Quit giving me the cop fuck-around,” I said. “I was doing that when you were in grade school. Give me some straight talk.” It brought out all the adolescent jerk in me, but it worked. His gorgeous face registered surprise and he said simply, “Max Yarnell has been murdered.”

  We drove out to Scottsdale in silence, Blair at the wheel of a department Ford Crown Victoria, and me sitting in the passenger seat cloaked in a feeling of oppressive strangeness. Sometime after Max Yarnell had called me at the courthouse last night, he
had been killed. Blair didn’t know the details; he had simply been sent by Peralta to fetch me. And Blair was the guy who was seeing Lindsey every day. Jealousy is the most irrational and destructive of emotions, and I let it take a run through my mind all the way out to Max Yarnell’s gated canyon living. Lindsey and Patrick Blair. Lindsey who didn’t return my calls anymore. So this was why.

  But almost as a backbeat was my memory of Gretchen from last night. When I had met her at the door, we had fallen hungrily into each other’s arms with the telepathy of lonely people. Every centimeter on my body had been electrified as her mouth explored my lips, my ears and my neck, and then her hands had worked their way around me. I had kissed her greedily, wrestling her tongue gently with mine, stroking that miraculously lovely reddish brown hair. I had felt so lucky that she wanted me.

  Gretchen Goodheart. She was very different in bed than I would have imagined. I loved aggressive women, but she had surprised me. The kind of gentle foreplay that Lindsey craved had just made Gretchen more demanding. We shouldn’t make comparisons among lovers, but we all do, don’t we? Lindsey had that little oscillating move when we made love in the missionary position—it was the most amazing sensation and when she started it, I could never last long. Gretchen—Gretchen had her own moves, but they were all so different. I learned quickly that Gretchen’s favorite position was from behind. There’s no polite, romantic way to put it. This was pure fucking, as she had clenched the sheets and screamed into the pillow and pushed back to me for more. Gretchen was a screamer. I had trusted the thick walls of the house for our privacy. I hoped she’d still be at home when I got back.

  The deliciousness of the memory lost some of its taste as we pulled up into the desert cul de sac, past half a dozen sheriff’s cruisers, Scottsdale Police units and unmarked Crown Vics. A TV van pulled in after us and started setting up. Blair shifted into park and said, “You’re Lindsey’s friend, right?”

  “That’s right,” I said, mindful of any ironic inflection in either of our voices. We slipped our badges onto our belts and walked through the gate.

  The house was long and low, hugging the side of a hill with lots of glass and modern adobe. From one side, the McDowells towered above. From the other, the city fell off through an arroyo, the view going all the way to the Estrellas, which today were cloaked in yellow-brown smog.

  I walked through the double doors into the home and Peralta met me.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Just watching your ass,” he said. “Yarnell’s house is in a little piece of county land. So technically, it’s our case, although we’ll cooperate with Scottsdale. I want every constituent served, even the dead ones.”

  I followed him into a large room where evidence technicians were taking still and video photographs. The room was sparsely but expensively furnished with the kind of modern pieces you see in decorating articles in the New York Times Magazine. One wall was entirely glass, facing toward the city. The light show must be breathtaking. Then there was an airy chrome and wood desk, and beside that I could see a man’s head on the floor.

  I didn’t understand what had happened until I walked carefully to the other side of the desk. Yarnell was on his back and a milky-colored stake was jutting out of the mashed bones and tissue where his breastbone used to be. There wasn’t much blood dirtying up the spotless hardwood floor. His eyes stared up with the peculiar glaze of the dead.

  “God,” I said in spite of myself.

  “It’s petrified wood,” Peralta said. “Looks like it came from over there.” He indicated a minimalist bookshelf off to the left. “A good Arizona kind of murder.”

  “Somebody must have been strong as hell,” I said.

  “This thing looks pretty heavy, so all you’d need is gravity,” said an evidence technician named Hernandez. “Especially after you cracked him on the jaw. Look at this.” He knelt and ran a gloved finger over the bottom of Yarnell’s face, which was discolored but not quite bruised. “Somebody hit him good,” Hernandez said. “You’d see a hell of a strawberry if he still had a heart beating.”

  “Maybe he was a vampire,” said a uniform and everybody laughed.

  “That’s enough,” Peralta said. He caught me by the shoulder and steered me out on the broad stone terrace.

  “Tell me why your phone number is on the note pad on the dead man’s desk.”

  “He called me last night and said he wanted to talk. He sounded like he’d had a few too many.”

  “What did he want to talk about?”

  “Beats the hell out of me. I told him I’d call today. Then I thought about it—he hasn’t been cooperative and now he wanted to talk—so I drove out here. No answer at the gate. So I drove home. You were already asleep.”

  “This was what time?”

  “Maybe ten-thirty.”

  “Did he want to talk about the skeletons, or what?”

  “He didn’t say. He said he’d only talk in person, not on the phone.”

  Peralta shoved his hands into his pants pockets and stared down at the brown cloud enveloping the city.

  “He had enough enemies,” he said. “You’ve heard about this new copper mine? He had the environmental whackos on his ass.”

  “I don’t get the sense there are very many environmentalists in Arizona, much less whacko…”

  “Well, the neighboring property owners aren’t too happy, either. They wanted to develop subdivisions.”

  “When I first interviewed him, he said the company had received threats. He had some major-league bodyguards in the office.”

  Peralta crooked his mouth down as he mulled it over. “Well, he was all alone out here last night. But he had a state-of-the-art alarm system, and a .38 in his desk drawer. When the housekeeper showed up this morning he was like this.”

  “Maybe it’s the Yarnell curse.”

  “I only worry about bad luck that shoots back, Mapstone. I want to know what progress you’ve been making on this case.”

  “Not much,” I said. “The pocket watch belonged to Hayden Yarnell, according to his son, James. I can’t find any other twins who would have been missing and buried in a basement in downtown Phoenix during that same time. Yarnell’s businesses were having cash problems…”

  “That’s not good enough,” he said harshly. I felt a flush spread up my face, angry and embarrassed to be brought up short by him. He went on: “Max Yarnell had a stake driven through his damned chest last night right after he told you he needed to talk to you. Doesn’t that raise your curiosity a bit, professor?”

  I looked at the smog. “I’ll get you some answers.”

  “I want to know if this homicide had anything to do with what you’re working on. This isn’t just a little Phoenix Police matinee anymore, Mapstone. It’s a real case. Try not to fuck up.”

  “I’ll see if I can measure up.” I turned and strode to the door.

  “Mapstone,” he called. When I turned, a mischievous grin momentarily played across over his dark features. “Hope you got a good night’s rest.”

  I shrugged and walked back into the big room. I wanted out of Max Yarnell’s big house, back into my big bed with Gretchen where all the violence of the world couldn’t reach us. I sidestepped a Scottsdale cop making a diagram and an evidence technician setting up some high-tech contraption. I made my own mental notes. The room was neatly arranged considering the physical violence that had occurred. Whoever attacked Max Yarnell did it with suddenness and precision. He was probably someone Yarnell knew and let into the house. Yarnell was dressed in slacks and golf shirt. I looked around for a glass that might have held his libations, and sure enough one sat on a table by two leather chairs on the other side of the room. A cordless phone sat nearby. The evidence technician was preparing to bag them up.

  Then I saw it.

  Something cold crawled up my shoulders and slithered slowly up the back of my neck. I didn’t say a word. But Hernandez, the evidence tech, was watching me, and he
followed my eyes.

  “Christ!” he said, and then all the cops were looking, too.

  It was on one of the shelves behind Max Yarnell’s desk. You might have missed it in the sheer size of the room and the distraction of a man sprawled on the floor with a piece of petrified wood sticking out of his chest. But I knew what it was instantly. A doll. Just like the one that had been delivered to my office a week ago, only this one didn’t have a little sheriff’s star. Instead, its hands were smeared bloody red.

  I sensed Peralta behind me. “What the hell is that goddamned thing?”

  That was when I realized how long it had been since I took a breath.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Patrick Blair dropped me off at home a little after five. Gretchen was gone and the house felt huge and forlorn and freighted with the knowledge of how quickly life turns against human beings. I wanted to call her, but I realized I didn’t even have her phone number. And for a long moment, I was relieved that I didn’t. I couldn’t say exactly why. Then I didn’t want to be alone. Even Peralta would have been welcome.

  The dusk gathered outside the picture window, a fading, unfocused, weightless part of the day. Even the winter lawns looked dead. The lights hadn’t come on in the neighboring houses and it looked as if the neighborhood had been abandoned a long time ago. I sat on the living room staircase and thumbed through the books on the tall shelves. The Price of Admiralty by John Keegan, one of my books. The House by the Buckeye Road, one of Grandfather’s. A heavily thumbed Modern Researcher by Barzun and Graff, a classic when I was being trained as a historian. Inside lurked a five-by-seven color photo of Lindsey, the desert wind whipping her dark hair. Back in the days when she was smiling at me with lust and joy.

  The phone cut into the silence like a scream.

  “David? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You don’t sound fine.” It was Lorie Pope. I told her I was okay, and, carrying the cordless phone, walked into the kitchen. I peered into the refrigerator, which held leftovers from half a dozen ethnic restaurants, and a fresh case of Coors for Peralta. I got out ice and started making a martini.