Desert Rage

by Betty Webb

  My vision finally back to normal, I finally spotted a rickety table placed catty-corner from him so he could look directly at it. The table held a yellowing photograph of Felix as a handsome young teenager, embraced by a smiling serial killer.

  “You don’t have any aunts, uncles, or cousins to help you? No friends?”

  “Mama was all…I had.”

  Felix had been just shy of fourteen when his mother had been arrested. With no kin, he was turned over to Child Protective Services, where—like Kyle—he made the rounds of foster care and at least two group homes. Like other children in his situation, at the age of eighteen he’d been released from CPS protection to fend for himself. These damaged kids, first damaged by their parents, then by the state, were expected to get by with whatever skills and/or education they had already acquired, which wasn’t much. If they had health problems, whether physical or mental, that was also too bad. Once they aged out of the system they were no longer insured, and their well-being was no longer the state’s concern. The good news was that the kids’ health problems seldom lasted all that long, the bad news was the reason why: there was a high suicide rate among eighteen-year-old foster care graduates.

  I remembered some of the children I had met during my own long, orphaned slog through the CPS system. Johnny Frasier, dead of an overdose at eighteen. Harmony McMillan, seventeen, who overdosed with Johnny. After a year of hooking on Van Buren Avenue, D’Anne Otumbo, nineteen, drove a stolen car into a freeway abutment, leaving no sign she’d attempted to brake. Those were just a few of my fellow fosters who were no longer in this life.

  Now Felix.

  Maybe a visit from Adult Protective Services could help him. Then again, maybe not. The fates of so many of my friends had taught me that no matter how incapacitated, when a person wants to die, he can always find a way to accomplish that sad task. Felix had found his.

  Under the circumstances this interview would be pointless, but I began anyway. Once he answered two questions, I would leave this house of past and present horror.

  “Felix, what were you doing between noon and 2:45 p.m. on July 8?”

  “Huh?”

  “July 8. It was a Monday.”

  “Then I was…here. Prob’ly. Don’t get…out much.”

  “Did you hire someone to kill Dr. Arthur Cameron?”

  He squinted up at me through eyes that were little more than slits in an almost basketball-sized head. “Who’s that?”

  “He’s an ER doc at Good Sam. Or to put it more correctly, he was.”

  Felix’s fleshy mouth twisted in puzzlement as he struggled to speak. “Last doctor…I seen was Washrowski or…Kryzoski or something like that…over at Peoria General, couple years ago…but Good Sam’s too far to drive…last time I drove more than…a mile, the engine light…came on. So sorry…never met any…Doctor Cammy.” He drank the rest of his beer, tossed the empty bottle on the floor, and in the same smooth motion, retrieved a new beer from the ice chest. “Want one?”

  I declined. “His name was Cameron, not Cammy.”

  “What I…said, isn’t it? So this doctor…he got himself killed?”

  “Yep. Plus his wife and his son.”

  “Geez…A kid?”

  “Ten years old.”

  “Just as well…then.”

  It was my turn to be puzzled. “What do you mean, Felix?”

  “No point in hangin’ out after…your mama’s gone…since she’s the only one…ever loved you.”

  ***

  As soon as I returned to my Jeep I called Adult Protective Services and explained Felix’ condition. The woman on the other end of the line sounded efficient enough, but promised little. Maricopa County was heavily populated, she said, and there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of adults in worse shape than Felix, adults who for one reason or another, were being victimized by their caregivers. Those cases were given priority status by Adult Protective Service. Compared to grannies being beaten by daughters and grandsons, a person killing himself slowly with food, cigarettes, and alcohol didn’t even rate an in-home visit. She didn’t come right out and say that last part, of course, but by the time I ended the call, the between-the-lines hung in the air.

  No point in hangin’ out after your mama’s gone since she’s the only one loves you.

  I placed another call, this one to Curtis Racine, Kyle Gibbs’ attorney. He wasn’t pleased because I’d apparently interrupted him in the middle of something.

  “This better be important,” he grumbled, sounding out of breath. In the background I could hear a woman’s voice, soft, yet irritated. I could also hear clothes rustling. Or was it sheets?

  “As per our earlier agreement, you’re not talking on the phone to me, anyway, so this intrusion into your personal life never happened,” I said. “Here’s what I suggest you do. Visit Kyle, tell him Ali’s about to retract her confession and that she’s going to deny planning her family’s murder. She’s also going to say that the only reason she made up the story about hiring a hit man was because she thought she was protecting Kyle. Since then, she has come to believe that he doesn’t need protecting because he had nothing to do with the murders.”

  No comment for a moment, just a hurried shush to the muttering woman before Curtis came back on the line. “Aren’t you forgetting something? A certain person’s fingerprints on a certain piece of sports equipment?”

  “I’m sure he has an explanation for that. Especially since the crime techs found only one set of fingerprints on the bat. If Kyle killed those people, his fingerprints should have been all over it, not merely confined to the grip area. His prints should also have shown up in the master bedroom and Alec’s bedroom, at the very least. But they didn’t.”

  “I planned to use that in a certain person’s defense. Dammit, stop!” This last wasn’t addressed to me, but to the woman, who from the tone of her voice, was pleading for something. Having been around that block a few times myself, I could guess what.

  “Curtis, just get the kid to tell the truth, okay?”

  “The truth. Now there’s a concept.”

  “Another thing, and you didn’t hear it from me, remember. Desert Investigations has discovered that for the past three years, right up to his death, Dr. Arthur Cameron was moonlighting as the Arizona state executioner, during which time he put ten men and one woman to death. He was paid, in cash, a total of eighteen thousand dollars per head. So to speak.”

  An unlawyerly squawk.

  I ignored it. “Which means there were a lot of other people who might have wanted Dr. Cameron dead, grieving family members and such.”

  “Holy. Shit.”

  “You can say that again. Well, it’s been nice talking to…”

  He interrupted, his voice lowered to a whisper. “You haven’t been talking to me, and I’ve certainly heard none of this information from anyone, let alone you. But just out of curiosity, I have to ask, why are you doing this?”

  Because I don’t want Kyle turning into Felix Phelps, I could have answered. Instead, I just said, “If you can convince that dumb, deluded boy that Ali had nothing to do with the murders—and at this point I can assure you she didn’t—he’ll probably retract his confession, too.”

  With that, I let him get back to whatever important task he’d been performing for womankind and called Fiona Etheridge, the dumb, deluded boy’s soon-to-be-adoptive mother and imparted much the same information. The only thing I left out was Dr. Cameron’s lucrative sideline, which she didn’t need to know.

  After giving Fiona time to make happy noises, I added, “Get down to juvie today and start working on him. He needs to retract that bullshit confession.”

  “But what if he thinks he’s still helping Ali?”

  “It’s your job to convince him otherwise.”

  I ended the call, then pressed speed dial for Jimmy.


  The conversation was tense, but after first refusing, he gave me the local addresses where the families of four recently executed men lived. If nothing substantive turned up in my interviews with them, I’d range further afield.

  “You okay?” Jimmy asked, before I could hang up.

  “Considering what happened last night, I should probably be asking you that question. How is it, anyway?”

  “How is what?”

  “Your nose.”

  “Sore.”

  “You should have just let me scream it out. That’s what I usually do.”

  “My partner starts screaming in the middle of the night and I’m supposed to ignore it?”

  “You know how I am.” A partial lie, because I’d never told him about my nightmares, and certainly not about Golden Boy.

  “I knew you had issues, but I thought you were getting help.”

  “I did. My therapist was so good that yours was the first bloody nose I’ve caused in, oh, several months.” Keep it light, keep it light.

  When he took a deep breath, I knew a lecture was coming. He didn’t disappoint. “This is serious, Lena. You should…”

  “Hmm. Let me see. The address for the Hoppers was 4891 West Corinth, right? In Maryvale? You recited those numbers so fast I wanted to make sure.”

  “Yeah. 4891 West Corinth.”

  “Thanks.”

  I killed the call before he added anything else.

  On Sundays the Black Canyon Freeway flows relatively smoothly, so as the Jeep cruised south toward the Maryvale area of west Phoenix, I erased last night’s embarrassment by worrying about someone with worse problems than mine. Felix Phelps would be dead by the end of the year, but there was nothing more I could do. If God existed and if He was as merciful as some people believe, Felix would pass away peacefully in his duct-taped recliner, staring at his mother’s photograph. Despite her horrific crimes, she had somehow managed to make her son feel loved.

  Felix and I had one thing in common. My mother had almost killed me, yet despite the bullet scar on my forehead, I remembered her with longing. Were we damaged children programmed to love our mothers, regardless? And despite CPS’ case files of horrific maternal abuse, those very mothers invariably swore they loved the children they nearly killed, too. Somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, love continued to flow both ways through the polluted maternal stream.

  Genetic mysteries being beyond my capacity to solve, I shuttered my mind by shoving a Big Joe Williams CD into the Jeep’s newly installed under-dash player. As the blues singer growled his way through a song about a cheating woman, I exited the freeway at Bethany Home Road and headed west toward Maryvale, the childhood home of Kenny Dean Hopper. His parents, described in the news stories as staunch blue-collar types with no criminal history, still lived in the same house. They sounded like good people, but you never know. On the surface, almost everyone looks good.

  Unlike Felix’ ramshackle place, the Hopper residence was a perfectly maintained John F. Long one-story only slightly bigger than Felix’ heap. But the tiny lot was adorned with pristine desert landscaping, and as I parked in front, the lifted arm of a saguaro appeared to welcome me. Splashing sounds and children’s laughter floating over a high backyard fence completed the happy suburban picture, and by the time I made it to the front door, I smelled barbeque. Kenny Dean had been executed little more than three weeks ago, but they were having a pool party.

  Life, regardless of the wounds it inflicts, goes on.

  I leaned on the doorbell for what seemed forever, but eventually the sound of hurrying feet proved my strategy effective, so I switched my recorder on.

  “Coming! Coming!” a man yelled. “Hold your horses!”

  The door opened, revealing a fit, sandy-haired man somewhere between fifty and sixty. Over cutoff jeans and a wife-beater shirt that revealed well-toned biceps, he wore an apron that said MY GRANDKIDS ARE CUTER THAN YOUR GRANDKIDS. Standing by his side was a mean-looking shepherd mix. The way it stared at my ankle made me nervous.

  “Mr. Emery Hopper?”

  His friendly smile conflicted with the worry lines around his mouth and the purple bags under his eyes. “What can I do for you?” he said. “Better make it quick, because I’ve got seven grandkids in the pool and my wife and one loopy teen are the only ones watching them.”

  When I gave my name and flashed my ID, the genial manner disappeared. “You here to talk about my son?”

  “Yes, I have some questions about Kenny, and I…”

  He slammed the door in my face.

  I didn’t hear him retreat, so I leaned on the doorbell again.

  The door opened. Like its owner, the shepherd was growling. “What’s the matter with you? Ring my doorbell like that again and I’m calling the cops. My family’s been put through enough without having to put up with this P.I. shit.”

  Investigators don’t mind confronting hostility; angry people tend to let things slip. “Mr. Hopper, do you know an Arthur Cameron, M.D.?”

  The anger softened and a line of puzzlement formed on his forehead. “No, I’m pretty sure I don’t. But the name sounds familiar.”

  “How about Terry Jardine?” Otherwise known as Monster Woman, who had been foolish enough to get engaged to your homicidal, wacko son.

  A sneer. “Just another delusional Death Row groupie. My son had dozens. And if you think she was engaged to him like she claimed in the newspapers, ask to see the ring. There was none, because he was stringing her along, like he did with all the others, having his sick fun.”

  “I see. Back to Dr. Cameron. He was murdered a couple of weeks ago, along with his wife and ten-year-old son. His fourteen-year-old daughter is accused of murdering them.”

  “Yeah, I remember reading about that, but what’s it got to do with Kenny?”

  “Trust me, there’s a connection. I’m just not free to reveal it right now. May I ask you where you were on Monday, July 8, between noon and 2:45 p.m.?”

  “You’re kidding, right? You’re aware that Kenny died the night before, right? But I still had to go to work, God bless America. In fact, I work two jobs, seven days a week, and if you’re interested, which I doubt, I’ll be working seven days a week for the rest of my life in order to pay Kenny’s legal bills.”

  “You’re not working today.”

  “Laid off from one of the jobs yesterday. Looking for a new one tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I just bet you are.”

  “Anyway, that girl—my client—needs your help.”

  A flicker of concern in his gray eyes, but it was only temporary. “What makes you think I can help some kid I don’t even know? And why should I, anyway? She didn’t just murder her parents, she murdered her little brother, too. After torturing him for hours, the papers said. Nice girl. Real queen of the prom.”

  “The girl has been accused of the crime, yes.”

  “Confessed, is what I read.”

  “There’s confessions and there’s confessions. Invite me in and we can talk more comfortably.” Sweat was running down my neck, and there was no breeze to use it as a coolant.

  “You’re not taking one step inside this house. My wife’s probably going to walk in any minute to see why I’m not back, and I won’t have you upsetting her. This is the first day she’s smiled since…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. This is the first day she’s smiled since our son was executed.

  I tried again. The more he talked, the more I’d learn about him, regardless of how loud he yelled or what lies he told. “It’s a hundred and five degrees out here, Mr. Hopper.”

  “Poor you.” He crossed his arms, and that’s when I realized that throughout this conversation he had been holding a barbeque fork with tines long enough to eviscerate me. The shepherd mix was drooling now, still focused on my
ankle. Maybe having a long chat wasn’t a good idea.

  I tried once more. “C’mon, Mr. Hopper, you’re a father, and a grandfather, but you’re making it sound like you don’t care what happens to that little girl.”

  My question had ignited his earlier anger into something far more dangerous, and his eyes narrowed into slits. “Did you care what happened to our son?”

  Having read Kenny rap sheet, no, I didn’t. But I said, “I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m trying to help a child.”

  He gave a dry laugh. “Oh, really? Let me tell you what happened to my child. They say death by injection is painless, but my wife and I were both there. We saw him convulse. We heard him gasp for breath.”

  In the face of such grief and rage, further questioning was hopeless. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Hopper.”

  I walked away quickly, before he and his dog came through the screen door at me.

  ***

  There were three more names and addresses on Jimmy’s list, but my stomach reminded me I was starving. This morning I’d been too embarrassed about my late night scream-a-thon to hang around Jimmy’s trailer for breakfast. Plus, there’s something nerve-wracking about seeing your business partner leaning over you in bed, wearing nothing but his undershorts. Looking back, I realized I should have followed my instincts and stayed at the motel, but there was nothing I could do about that now, except make certain it wouldn’t happen again.

  Maryvale being a heavily Hispanic area, I headed out to the main drag in search of enchiladas. Four blocks from the Hoppers’ house, a crowded parking lot next to Mi Casa Supremo made me ease up on the Jeep’s accelerator. The scent of garlic and chilies wafting through the air held great promise, so I swung a sharp right and pulled into the lot. After a fifteen-minute wait, the hostess ushered me to a tiny table near the kitchen, which might have been able to seat two very thin people if they were in a close relationship, but it was more suited to one normal-sized detective. The fiery enchiladas were worth the wait, and having the table to myself enabled me to check my phone messages. There were six of them, five from clients.