The Fault Tree

by Louise Ure

  She squirmed in her seat.

  “What were you doing Thursday night while he was at work?”

  “Nothing. I watched TV. Read a magazine.”

  “You had the car. You didn’t go out?”

  She shook her head.

  “Who did you meet, Priscilla?”

  Priscilla shredded the Kleenex into damp confetti. If anxiety were an indicator of guilt, he could have arrested her right then and there.

  “No one.”

  It was a damn lie, and they both knew it.

  Chapter 27

  “Are you okay?” A woman’s voice, high and fast with concern.

  I groaned and rolled onto my back. “What happened?”

  “I was looking out my kitchen window and saw this car come down the street and clip you. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I was sure that I wasn’t. I had landed on the bag of laundry, so my ribs and arms weren’t as sore as the last time, but everything else throbbed as if I’d been thrown out a second-story window carrying a barrel cactus. There was new gravel rash on my face and one tooth wiggled when I tried to talk. My left hip was frozen with pain and I could feel a wet, bloody gash on my knee. I shook like a palsy victim, adrenaline masking the terror inside me.

  I pawed the ground, in search of Lucy/Lucinda. There. Thank God she was still in one piece.

  “Did you see the car? Get the license?” A whirlwind roared between my ears and my teeth made grinding sounds. I wasn’t sure I was making sense or even if I was saying it out loud. I tried to calm my heart with little sips of air.

  “You’re the blind lady from down the street, aren’t you? Oh, my God, they hit a blind person.” Her hands fluttered from my face to my hips like a wounded dove trying to take flight.

  I didn’t know why she thought running over a blind person deserved a different penalty from hitting anyone else, but then I remembered the game we used to play as teenage drivers. “Two points for the little old lady in the wheelchair!” Maybe I was the butt of the joke now and merited two points in somebody’s Sunday joyride. But it was no joyride from this side. I had never felt so vulnerable, so unable to protect myself.

  “Did you see the car?” I repeated.

  “No, not really. Just a glimpse. It was big and boxy. Maybe an SUV or a minivan. Tan.” Oh great, now kids were taking joyrides in minivans. “And it had a company name on the side. Like one of those magnetic signs.”

  I tried to stand, but my hip and knee refused to hold my weight.

  “You need someone to look at that knee. Let me give you a ride to the hospital. And we ought to call the police.” She grabbed me around the waist and I leaned my weight against her.

  “I don’t think I can make it as far as your car. Do you mind calling an ambulance?” I think I managed both sentences before I blacked out.

  A half hour later, I was lying on the examining table in an emergency room cubicle close to the hospital lobby. I could hear the tense conversations of patients and families waiting to be seen, the cessation of their pain forestalled by a six-page hospital entry form and the magic trick of a medical insurance card. The smell of ammonia filled the warm air, and paging announcements spurted from overhead speakers every few seconds. A gurney with a squeaky wheel was passing by when a swish of the curtains surrounding my bed announced an arrival.

  “I’m Dr. Santos.” A deep voice with too many emergency room nights behind it. “Let’s see what we have here. Car accident, huh? It looks like the car got off easier than you did.”

  I grunted agreement as he swabbed my knee with something cold and stinging, then blew on it to cool or dry it, just like Aunt Caroline used to do with our scrapes and cuts when we were kids. I was hoping he’d plant a kiss on it the way she used to, to make it feel better.

  Dr. Santos checked my limbs, my range of motion, and the inside of my mouth. “That tooth isn’t going to fall out today, but you’ll want to have your dentist check it soon.”

  He collared an orderly to push me up to X-ray and we passed the squeaky gurney again as it headed back to the lobby. There was something in that sound that made me pause. My head throbbed in the same rhythm as the squeak.

  What had I heard when the car ran me down last Thursday night? An engine out of tune, certainly, but there’s nothing unusual about that in Arizona, where the majority of cars on the road look like contestants in a demolition derby. What else? The rhythmic squeak of the gurney continued down the hall.

  That was it! I’d heard a squeak in the left front suspension of the car on the night Mrs. Prentice was killed, and heard it again this afternoon as I spun away from the oncoming car. Metal on metal, a dry grating sound that echoed in a left-to-right pattern around the front wheelwell.

  After the X-rays confirmed no broken bones, Dr. Santos stitched the gash in my knee, declared me “bloodied but unbowed,” and pronounced me well enough to go home. My knee felt as big as a football and throbbed in announcement of its discontent.

  But the most grievous damage was that done to my self-confidence. Would I ever be able to cross a street alone again? Raise my head and step confidently into the dark? I limped out to a waiting taxi, now clearly using Lucinda for support.

  Dupree and Nellis arrived only thirty minutes after I phoned. Nellis, smelling of breath mints, wheezed onto the couch. Dupree paced from my kitchen to the front door and back again. The afternoon sun had warmed his earthy aftershave into something primal and passionate.

  “I’m positive it was the same car that I heard Thursday night. Same engine, same suspension problem.” The sun slanting through the front window warmed only half of my face. I scooted to the left to enjoy it.

  “Did you smell antifreeze again?” A smile in Nellis’s gravelly voice, but not the right kind. He didn’t believe me.

  “No, I didn’t notice it this time.”

  Dupree was quiet. This was the first time that either detective had been inside the house. I’ll bet the room looked Spartan to them. Furnishings chosen the same way I pick my clothes: neutral colors so I never have to worry about an unintentional clash. No extraneous furniture for me to trip over. No family photos. No mirrors or pictures on the walls.

  From where he was sitting on the couch, Nellis probably couldn’t see the one piece of artwork I do have in the house, above my bed. It’s a three-dimensional picture of the buttes and mesas at Red Rock, all carved by computer out of layers and layers of paper, to shape the scene. I use my hands to see that picture, including the feathered wings of the eagles in that placid sky. I bet that by now my fingers had left grimy paths, like smoke, where they had so often read that desert landscape.

  “I know it was the same person, and now we have a description of the car.”

  “Tan? Could be a minivan or an SUV? And she doesn’t remember what the sign on the side said? I guess it’s a start, but it doesn’t narrow it down much. Who was this witness who saw the car?” Nellis used a singsong voice, as if he were listening to a story made up by a child.

  “I’m sure she gave her name to the cops or the ambulance attendants. She lives right on that block where I was hit.”

  Nellis grunted. “You know, if you’re not using a red and white cane, drivers can’t be expected to know you’re blind. You weren’t even in a marked crosswalk. If they hadn’t left the scene we might not even cite them for this accident.”

  I shook my head. I knew I couldn’t help the police much, but I desperately wanted to. How else could I dare to take a sightless step across a street again? Breathe deeply and know that I was safe in my darkness? I had to make them believe me.

  Detective Dupree was softer in his reply. “We’ll talk to the neighbor who helped you. Maybe she can tell us more about that sign on the car door—whether it had a logo or a picture, maybe printed letters or italics. Anything she can give us will be a head start.”

  His comments were more open-minded than Detective Nellis’s, but it still sounded like he was humoring me, and humor was the last
thing I needed. If it was the same car in the neighborhood today, I was in a killer’s sights and his aim was getting better.

  Chapter 28

  Nellis unwrapped a stick of cinnamon gum, wadded up the foil, and started the car. “That was a waste of time, huh? She wasn’t much of a witness to start with. Antifreeze? And an engine that needs a tune-up? And now this big news: it also has a squeak in the suspension! What a crock of shit. Coming out here when we ought to be following real leads.”

  Dupree heard the frustration in his partner’s voice. He still couldn’t understand why Nellis had requested a transfer from Robbery. He’d been doing well there. Give him a good bank robbery or white-collar crime and Nellis could shine. But Dupree wasn’t sure that his new partner had the heart for the kind of purposeful infliction of pain and misery you’d see every day in Homicide. It damaged you in ways that etched lines into a previously smooth face and made the heart go gray with grief.

  They’d only worked two murders together so far. One of those was a jeweler’s wife who’d been taken for ransom, and the suspect had been apprehended in Tucson’s Garden of Gethsemane, a life-size biblical reconstruction done in concrete, where the money exchange was to have taken place. Of course, she was already dead by then. The second case was an abused woman who’d finally had enough and killed her husband. “She put him out of her misery,” Dupree had quipped. Nellis didn’t get it.

  “That’s what Homicide is all about,” Dupree said, opening a stick of gum for himself. “Following a hundred bad leads in the hope of finding one good one. Hey, something I’ve been meaning to ask…why would anybody use antifreeze in the desert, anyway?” He’d never found it necessary growing up in saunalike Louisiana.

  “Still feeling like a newcomer, August? Antifreeze works just as well to keep things from boiling over as it does to keep them from freezing.”

  Dupree nodded. That made sense. “And what other real leads did you have in mind?”

  “Shit. I mean, maybe this blind lady was there and everything, but we don’t even know if the car she heard belonged to the killers. How’s that going to help us? Goddamned snowbirds.” Nellis blasted the horn at the slow-moving Cadillac in front of them, seemingly as much angered by the car’s Michigan plates as he was by its speed.

  Dupree shrugged and tested his seat belt. “You never know. There was a blind lady back home who could ID somebody by the shape of his fingers or the sound of his breathing.”

  Nellis continued as if he hadn’t heard him. “Now this second hit-and-run. Probably nothing more than a blind lady not using a red-tipped cane and not walking in a crosswalk. Hell, she might even be one of those people who like to be in the middle of a crisis, so they make things up to stay involved. Attention junkie, know what I mean? And did you get a look at the tatas on that woman? Talk about an attention junkie.” He whistled his admiration and continued, “I’ll bet that’s the kind of thing every woman knows, even if she can’t see herself in a mirror.”

  Dupree looked back at the road. “Did you hear the sarge this morning? He’s getting a lot of heat on this one. All those baby boomers who remember Wanda Prentice from the TV show have started a reward fund. It’s already up to thirty thousand.” Maybe Wanda Prentice wouldn’t wind up in a tiny plot paid for by the county after all.

  He used his cell phone rather than the police radio under the dash to call the Homicide Unit. “Linda? Check for me if anybody on our burglary or home invasion list drives a tan minivan or SUV.”

  “Nobody,” she replied two minutes later.

  “Yeah, that would have been too easy.”

  Nellis picked up the prescription receipt and waved it at him.

  “Linda? One more try. How about a John Stephanos?” He read her the pharmacist’s home address, thumbing the medical receipt while he waited.

  “A blue BMW, huh? Thanks anyway.”

  Chapter 29

  It was only sundown, but I’d had as much as I could take for the day. I limped into the bedroom, settled gingerly onto the bed, and braced my damaged knee between two pillows to create a tent that would keep the weight of the blanket off my stitches.

  Wanda Prentice had been dead for three days now, and I hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to help solve her murder. The only thing I’d succeeded in doing was drawing the attention of a madman who seemed intent on running me down.

  A mourning dove, probably bedeviled by the neighbor’s cat, gave an eerie late afternoon call just outside the window. Four monotone, plaintive notes.

  It sounded like, “Who looks for you?”

  Chapter 30

  On Monday morning, the shrieking pain in my knee kept me in bed until an ice pack and a double dose of aspirin had taken effect and I could hobble to the living room. When I phoned the shop to ask for the day off, Walt didn’t even ask for a reason, so I didn’t have to admit being hit-and-run prone. I also didn’t want to tell him that I had a serious case of the heebie-jeebies, second-guessing every move I made.

  Juanita’s call woke me from a deep sleep on the couch at eleven, and I told her about my latest visit with the cops.

  “Detective Nellis treats me like I’m communicable.”

  “Don’t let it bother you.” She paused, then changed directions. “Say, do you want me to do a grocery run for you? I could do it over my lunch hour.”

  Kevin’s shopping trip had only provided enough for our boiled dinner; I was running low again.

  My loose tooth felt more solidly attached today. Maybe it would take care of itself and I could avoid a trip to the dentist. I winced and flexed my knee. “It’s probably a good idea for me to keep moving. If you swing by here first, I’ll go with you.” I groaned and slid out from under the ice pack.

  She arrived an hour later. I used Lucy as a crutch to the car.

  We parked near the front door of Raley’s and stopped to buy a dozen fresh green corn tamales from a Mexican family that was selling them out of the trunk of their car in the lot. Once inside the store, I turned to the right and headed to the only section where I was comfortable: produce.

  My head swam with the mingled odors. Bright, acidy tomatoes; sharp, oniony leeks; fecund, almost too-sweet bananas. I reveled in the slick feel of the cucumbers and handled the Idaho potatoes as if they were chunks of mined ore.

  I love the produce aisle, and if I could do all my shopping there I would be happy. But put me in the frozen food section or in front of the shelf of packaged rice and I am as lost as if I stepped onto an alien planet.

  We filled the top of the shopping cart with the foods I could identify, then headed to the coldest part of the store. Juanita opened a freezer door and read off my choices. “Beef Stroganoff? Macaroni and cheese? Meatloaf?” We selected a week’s worth of entrees that wouldn’t put much strain on a loose tooth. When we got home, I would label each with a Braille tag to identify the dish, the cooking time, and the temperature required.

  I paid at the register and limped behind Juanita as she pushed the cart to the car.

  “Here’s a good one, Cadence. There’s a car over there with a sign in the window. ‘For Sale by Owner.’ Well, who the hell else is going to be selling a car? For Sale by Car Thief? For Sale by Mother-in-Law?”

  As we stowed the bags in the trunk, a car passed down the aisle behind us and sat at an idle at the end of the row. The driver revved the out-of-tune engine to keep it from dying. I smelled antifreeze.

  “Juanita. Don’t be obvious, but check out that car at the end of the aisle.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What kind is it?”

  “Chevy Lumina, I think. You know, a minivan. Maybe five years old or so.”

  “What color?”

  “Light brown.”

  “Does it have any kind of signs—like company logos—on it?”

  “Yeah, there’s something painted on the door, but I can’t read it, he’s turning.”

  I gulped so loud that I thought that distant driver might hear me. The car wasn’t
moving fast enough to create that telltale suspension squeak, but I knew it was the right one. He was still here. And he was following me.

  “Get the plate number. Now.” I heard the minivan turning away from us to the left.

  “It’s not an Arizona plate. California, I think. It has seven digits. Let’s see. Five…MSU…and the last three are either zero eight eight or zero three three. Something like that.”

  “Can you see the driver?” I heard the car coming back toward us in the next aisle.

  “Sort of. He’s got a baseball cap on. White guy. Maybe in his twenties. Dirty blond hair.” Her voice tilted back up to me from a downturned chin. “He’s looking this way.”

  I kept my back to the cruising car. The Chevy turned right and moved away from us. I tugged her toward her car. “Quick. Let’s follow him.”

  “Why?”

  “This is the guy who ran me over twice now.”

  Juanita pulled me to a stop. “Girl, you’re jumping to conclusions. It’s just a guy looking for a parking space.”

  “His engine needs a tune-up,” I said. “You can smell the antifreeze, and if he speeded up, I know we’d hear that squeak in his suspension. And the lady who helped me said it was a tan minivan with a sign on the door. How much more do you want? We can’t let him get away this time!”

  “Are you nuts?” Juanita asked. “Just call the cops. That’s what they’re for.”

  I realized how irrational I was being. Of course I wouldn’t be of much help in a car chase. I pulled my cell phone from the bottom of my purse.

  This time the detectives had to listen to me. I called their direct extension instead of going through 911.

  “Detective Nellis? This is Cadence Moran—”

  “Yes, Ms. Moran, what is it now?” Barely restrained patience there.

  “I’m down at the Raley’s on Grant, and I think the guy who ran me down is here in the parking lot.” I put my hand over the mouthpiece and whispered for Juanita to keep an eye on the car.