The Desert Waits

by J. Carson Black

  He couldn’t let it go.

  Other things bothered him. Who sent her those cards? Did she send them to herself for publicity?

  Davy shook his head. “I’d say dying on your birthday is one way to make people remember you, but who knows what she was thinking? By the way, did you ever find what made the second ligature on that Purlie guy?”

  “There was a second ligature?”

  “Looked to me like a shoelace. I take it there wasn’t anything in his effects like that? Killer probably took it with him.”

  He’d been right all along. Nick fought the fuzziness behind his eyes. “Are you telling me someone killed him before hoisting him up on the shower nozzle?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Davy laughed shortly. “He was definitely garroted. I’ve got the photograph back at the morgue—you want to see it?”

  Nick did. The sheriff’s office in New Year had ignored his request to see the autopsy photos. Now Nick understood why. The mark of the belt was clear, a U-shape where the noose jerked up, cutting right through the soft part of Booker’s throat under the chin. The second impression was nearly obscured by this deeper injury. A thin line, horizontal. While the belt had gone up on each end, following the jawline, this ligature slashed straight across.

  “Straight as a die,” Livermore said.

  “ Must’ve come up behind him with the shoelace and strangled him,” Nick said. Anger stirred in his chest like bees awakened from their winter stupor.

  Sheriff Johnson had gone on television and told the public that Booker Purlie had stalked Caroline Arnet, killed her, and in remorse for his own actions had taken his own life. As the cameras flashed and the videotape ran, he’d gone on at length about the new anti-stalker law his cronies in the legislature planned to bring to the floor and how he’d go up there himself and demand they pass it. Catering, no doubt, to the one group of constituents who didn’t like or trust him—women.

  A great sound-bite, but apparently Sheriff Kyle Johnson had known all along that Booker Purlie had been murdered and that the murderer most likely killed Caroline Arnet as well. It was hard to believe a law enforcement official would be so cavalier with the public good, but the evidence was right here, staring Nick in the face. The photographs, the autopsy results.

  Nick’s stomach clenched as he thought of Alex. Someone had framed Booker by first sending Caroline cards. Whether or not Caroline’s death had been a suicide, the stalker probably killed Booker.

  And Alex might be next.

  When Alex opened the door to her room that afternoon, she saw the red light blinking on the phone. She picked up Lily and stroked her for a few moments, enjoying the purr and the way the young cat kneaded her shoulder. Then she called the clerk and asked for messages, hoping for one from Nick.

  “I asked him if this was all he wanted to say and he said yes, this was it.” The clerk cleared his throat. “It says, ‘Happy times are here again,’ and it’s signed ‘Uncle Wiggly.’ “

  Alex tried to remain calm, making sure she set the phone down without haste. The room closed in around her.

  Uncle Wiggly.

  Was he really here at the hotel? And what did he want with her?

  She closed her eyes, tried to remember the guy at the beach. He must be in his fifties by now. All she saw was Caroline, sitting on his lap, her arms around his neck.

  No, that couldn’t be right. She sat down on the bed, her head throbbing. Lily, curled in her lap, started to clean her forearm with her rough tongue. Alex barely noticed.

  Caroline had come back from the beach. She’d been even angrier than before, spitting mad. Insulting Alex with every breath. At last Alex couldn’t take it anymore and she went to the room they shared, pulled out her suitcases in a childish attempt to make Caroline feel bad. Slamming drawers. Throwing her clothes in.

  “Good!” Caroline had shouted from the other room. “Just go home! I didn’t want you to come in the first place!”

  The smell of the ocean. And the other … the spicy, medicine smell . ..

  Old Spice? Something shifted behind her solar plexus, like heavy furniture moving, catching on a rug. Lily finished with Alex’s arm and started on her own. She curled her paw inward and licked industriously.

  Had the guy worn Old Spice? Could that be why she’d always hated the smell?

  She couldn’t remember. She closed her eyes, but all she saw was Caroline, an adult now, sitting on the hotel-room bed, cigarette between her fingers, throwing her head back and laughing. You don’t want to open that door, honey!

  Old Spice? Where had she smelled it recently?

  Now the images came, fast and hard. Caroline, in shorts and a halter, sitting on the guy’s lap, brown legs and bare feet entwined with the cheap dark material of his trousers.

  She was kissing him.

  That was why Alex couldn’t see the guy’s face. Because Caroline Arnet, thirteen years old, was kissing some thirty-year-old man as passionately as she had in any any clinch she’d performed since. One bare foot rubbing his leg. Turning, her lipstick smeared.

  What do you want?

  Alex was unable to speak.

  We want to he alone. You understand that, stupid?

  Shocked to the core, she was aware of reaching out for something to support her, her hand curling around the Mexican lamp stand, pulling it toward her. The shade tipping, banging her arm as it fell.

  Caroline shrieking. Don’t think he likes you, you wouldn’t know what to do with a real man. You’re such a baby. You don’t know anything! I’m sick of you, so get out, go home, you baby!

  Alex had gone back into the room, and this time she’d packed her clothes neatly, trying to stop the movie running in her head. It didn’t work.

  Kissing him. Kissing that creep.

  She’d known it was wrong. Sure, they’d fantasized about older men—they’d both been in love with Tom Selleck. But it had been just a fantasy. All of a sudden, it was real.

  No wonder she’d put it out of her mind. The memory of Caroline’s smug face, her pink-lacquered nails tiptoeing across the guy’s chest ...

  Shit. Alex’s headache was full-blown now. The jaguarundi and her kittens were forgotten. At that moment, she was thinking like an adolescent, her heart breaking all over again.

  Her best friend, her best friend in the whole world.

  Caroline had been jealous of her. The enormity of Caroline’s betrayal blotted out everything else. They were best friends. How could she choose that ... loser, that pedophile, over her?

  Soulmates, Caroline had told her many times over. You and I, we’re soulmates.

  And then this ugly man, this ugly day, had to intrude on their friendship and change it forever.

  That was what she’d felt. And why she’d found it necessary to forget.

  But if she’d blocked out that scene, had she blocked out something else? Had Uncle Wiggly raped her and she didn’t even know it?

  Feeling sick, she padded to the bathroom and put the toilet seat up, crouched beside it. Nothing. She put her finger down her throat, but whatever was lodged there wouldn’t come up easily.

  If it ever, ever could.

  Twenty-one

  It was about that time that Caroline confided in me something too horrible to think about: she was molested as a child. The secret destroyed her. On two occasions she tried to commit suicide, a cry for help. I remember finding her in the bathroom, sprawled naked on the tile of our big, walk-in bath, an empty vial of Valium near her hand. My first thought was that this was how another beloved star, Marilyn Monroe, died. It gave me chills. Thank God I got to her in time!

  —from FALLEN ANGEL: THE CAROLINE ARNET STORY, by Ted Lang

  His mind on Alex and Booker Purlie’s killer, Nick was almost on top of the abandoned truck when he saw it.

  At that instant, he remembered where he’d heard about a truck like it. Delbert Walker’s intruder, the one with the cellular phone.

  He wondered if this truck had any
thing to do with smuggling endangered species. Del’s house was very close to the abandoned Crocker place.

  He pulled onto the shoulder of the road. The heat had been swarming in the Crown Vic’s interior since Tucson; he was glad to step out into the fresh air.

  From long practice, he approached the truck from behind, the driver’s side, his hand hovering over his weapon despite the fact that the red sticker wouldn’t be there if a person were with the vehicle. The truck had been jacked up a little; monster tires and high wheel wells. As he approached, Nick glanced under the chassis as a precaution.

  The truck cab was unoccupied. Still careful, Nick cupped his hands around his eyes and peered into the camper shell. It was piled with expensive junk. A cammo-patterned tent, a big orange Igloo jug, several cans of Raid, mosquito netting, bottles of insect repellent, and a World War II-issue duffel bag. Bulky, long objects in the bag—weapons?

  A member of some militia he didn’t know about?

  He glanced around at the rest of the stuff: a cot and rolled-up sleeping bag, boxes of MRE’s—ready-to-eat meals—ammunition, a portable shooting bench, binoculars, a cammo nightscope, presumably for the rifle which until recently had resided in the imitation-walnut gun-rack in the truck’s rear window. Survivalist gear.

  Whoever owned this truck, he had one morbid hobby.

  Nick was amazed that this truck had been out here in plain sight long enough for someone to come by and slap a sticker on it, yet the stuff was still here. Maybe the bumper sticker on the back, THIS VEHICLE GUARDED BY SMITH AND WESSON, did the trick.

  He went back to the cab. The doors were locked, windows rolled up. He saw a CB and a cellular phone. A topo map rested on the dash under a plastic Dunkin’ Donuts cup, and a pile of receipts had fallen onto the floor below the shift knob. He strained his eyes and saw the heading of one: Bob’s Bargain Barn. A signature at the bottom of the page—he couldn’t make it out, but the writing looked familiar.

  He checked under the hood. The radiator cap sat on the top of the battery. The truck must have overheated. That was one mystery solved.

  Leaning against his own vehicle, Nick breathed a mixture of burning oil and dry desert shrubs. In the distance, the Cascabels lay like a blue-satin ribbon against the hot sky. Over to his right, a billboard for a motel in Palo Duro cast a sliver of shade over two sorry-looking horses.

  Nick couldn’t figure out why a guy would leave his truck out here, especially with this one’s expensive cargo. There was a tow truck in Palo Duro, only twenty miles away.

  Maybe the truck’s owner had tried to walk it and had been overcome by heat. But Quartz Springs Junction was only a mile or two away. He wondered if he was faced with a legitimate mystery, like Roanoke or the Marie Celeste.

  His mind shifted back to Alex. It had been several days since Booker Purlie’s death. If anyone had been harassing her since, she hadn’t told him about it. But he didn’t like to think of her out in that remote canyon nights at a stretch. He wished he could order her to stay out of the canyon, go back to Tucson, forget about the jaguarundi. In another century maybe, if he was the husband. But Nick had neither the credentials nor popular opinion going for him. Bossing women around wasn’t politically correct. Besides, she wouldn’t listen.

  What he had to do, was find out who had killed Booker Purlie.

  He picked up his radio and ran the truck registration through Motor Vehicles. The truck was registered to a man named Elvis Bardeaux. The tow truck was on its way from the impound in New Year; they’d planned to pick it up today.

  On an impulse, Nick stopped by the hotel and found Barry Dolan in his room. His face closed up with suspicion, the assistant director did not ask Nick in. But Nick found out what he wanted to know.

  Barry had not furnished Caroline Arnet with cocaine, but with prescription sleeping pills. Caroline had trouble sleeping, he said, but she didn’t like to go to her own doctor because she was afraid he might do more tests and slow down production on the film.

  Again, if Barry Dolan was to be believed, Caroline had a driving need to finish Jagged Impact ahead of schedule.

  Nick reached Grey Sullivan at Ventana Canyon Resort in Tucson later that day.

  “You’re starting to upset me. I don’t want to think about Caroline anymore. For the next week, I’m on vacation.”

  “Just one more question. I promise. Do you think Jean Harlow would have wanted people to see Saratoga the way it turned out?”

  “If she was anything like Caroline, she wouldn’t.”

  Rollie Watkins didn’t consider himself a photographer, but he knew he could do an adequate job. It took him a long time to line up each shot with his sister’s Canon 35 millimeter because there was so much to think about and none of it came naturally to him. The light meter, the focus, the speed. Even after seven or eight shots, he wasn’t sure he was doing it right.

  Being the systematic type, Rollie had a plan. He would stand in one central location and then rotate slowly on his feet until he had pictures from every angle. Like Margie would have their daughter do when she was hemming up a dress. Just a little bit at a time. When he snapped a photograph, he tried not to move, and then, very carefully, he would turn a couple of degrees, just far enough to include part of the last shot in the new one. That way he wouldn’t miss anything.

  While he took the pictures, Rollie’s mind ranged ahead. There were two ways to do it. One way was a lot of fun, the kind of thing a man’s man would do. The other way was more subtle, required cunning and some deep deliberation. Both played to his strengths.

  He shot one roll of film. Just to be on the safe side, he shot another.

  Then he sat down cross-legged in the dirt and unfolded the topo map. The area was circled in red.

  Groves Canyon looked like the main vein of a leaf. Several tinier veins branched off, and around them concentric, open-ended circles fanned out, each line marking a new elevation. Green and beige.

  This little box canyon was just a squiggle. It didn’t have a name. Yet.

  He tried it out, spoke it aloud. Watkins Canyon. Sounded good. Damn good.

  “Officer McCutcheon’s out of the office today.”

  “Can’t you radio him? It’s important,” Alex asked, pacing and fingering the phone cord.

  “He’s in Tucson. If it’s that important, maybe I can help you,” Deputy Childers replied crisply.

  Alex hesitated. She’d rather talk to Nick. “Please ask him to call me as soon as possible.” She gave him her name and room number at the hotel.

  He took it as a personal affront. “I’ll see he gets the message.”

  Alex doubted he would.

  She set the phone down, her pulse stammering.

  What did the guy want with her?

  Ted had hinted she might be in danger because she was the only one who knew about Uncle Wiggly. But that didn’t make sense. His molestation of Caroline was a long time ago, and Caroline herself was dead. Besides, it looked more like it had been a mutual thing from where Alex stood—

  The uncharitable thought brought Alex up short. That was a rotten thing to put into the air. Caroline had been a victim. If Ted was right, she’d been ten when Uncle Wiggly started molesting her. It had to have warped her entire view of sexuality, and relationships in general. Who knew why she’d acted as she did?

  Alex forced herself back to the issue at hand. The only threat she would be to Uncle Wiggly was if she could identify him as Caroline’s killer.

  Alex couldn’t remember what he looked like. Uncle Wiggly had nothing to fear from her.

  Suddenly thirsty, she decided to get ice for a couple of glasses of ice water. But she found herself outside Ted Lang’s door, wondering what possible help he would be.

  At first she thought he wasn’t there. Maybe he’d already left with the movie people, although she’d noticed him yesterday, sunning himself by the pool.

  He opened the door, blinking at the sunlight. His face was wrinkled from pillow creases; his usu
ally neat hair stuck up like a cock’s comb. He wore burgundy silk pajamas. “Alex.” The puzzlement in his voice changed to genuine pleasure as he pulled the door open wider.

  “I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “Just taking a nap.”

  “Then I won’t bother you—”

  “Come in, please.” He left the door open and padded to the bed, climbed in and pulled the covers up over his knees. “Hope you don’t mind the informality.”

  Alex understood his joke; he was referring to the time he’d barged in on her in her nightclothes. Embarrassed, Alex hovered by the door. “I shouldn’t have come,” she said truthfully.

  “It was just a joke. Sit down. You look nervous. Anything wrong?”

  The story spilled out: the message from Uncle Wiggly, the memory of Caroline embracing her molester. She stopped short of telling him she wasn’t at all sure what had happened before Caroline had come back to the beach house.

  “I wouldn’t lose any sleep over what Caro did, Alex. We read a lot of books on the subject, as you can well imagine. A molester ties a child to him emotionally so she won’t tell, it’s kind of like they’re Siamese twins; the knife cuts both ways. If the kid blows the whistle on him, she’s also admitting to the world she was a full partner.”

  “Full partner? At ten? That’s ridiculous.”

  Ted smoothed down his hair. “I’m not saying it’s true; it’s just what the kid believes. They’re trained to blame themselves, take half the responsibility.”

  “She was all over him,” Alex blurted out.

  “Like it or not, Alex, as disgusting as it is to believe, she was getting something out of that relationship. I’m not saying it was good; I’m just saying that in order to cope she had to find something there she perceived as good. But I’m more worried about the message. Happy days are here again, huh? Sounds like he’s trying to torque you around emotionally.”

  “Do you know anything about him? Did Caroline ever tell you his name?”