Desert Rage

by Betty Webb

  Seeing me stare at the pictures, Mrs. Young said proudly, “My family.”

  “Very nice.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “My son didn’t kill Janeese’s mother. Or that Pig Eye fellow.”

  I was saved from replying by the return of Dr. Young, who bore three glasses of iced tea on a hammered bronze tray. She set the tray down on the glass-topped coffee table, then handed one glass to her grandmother.

  “My father never hurt anyone,” Dr. Young said. “Regardless of what those people testified to in court, my mother didn’t involve herself with other men, especially not a lowlife like Willie Wyms.”

  Tea service complete, she lowered herself into a chair across from me, where she could keep those cold, hard eyes on my face. The dogs followed suit, but when she reached down to pat them, the animosity in their eyes disappeared and they looked at her with adoration.

  “You know why I have two black dogs, Ms. Jones?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Because more black dogs are euthanized at the pound than any other color.”

  I knew what else she was about to say, and she didn’t disappoint me.

  “Just like the American penal system. More black men in prison than white, more black men executed than white.”

  There was no arguing with that. Racial profiling continues right into the Death Chamber. But this wasn’t the time to get into a civil rights discussion, so I merely said, “The court records show there were eyewitnesses to the murders. Two men testified that they saw your father shoot your mother and Mr. Wyms.” I took a sip of the tea; its sweetness was tweaked with lemon slices.

  A bitter laugh. “Oh, sure, a couple of drug dealers, both of whom made deals with the prosecutor for lighter sentences. They lied.”

  Maybe, but more than twenty-three years of unsuccessful appeals said otherwise.

  What must it be like, I wondered, to be descended from a killer? To recognize that everyone knew what your father had done? To find every eye leveled on you in judgment, or even worse, pity? What was it like to attend your father’s execution, to sit there and watch while he breathed his last? Did it break your heart? Or did you bury your heartbreak under an avalanche of rage?

  However the deaths of her mother—and years later her father—impacted her soul, Professor Janeese Young was no fool. When I asked her where she was between noon and three p.m. on Monday, July 8, she told me oh so politely it was none of my business. Then she added, “Put your tea down, Ms. Jones. The welcome mat has just been withdrawn.”

  Despite an admonition from her grandmother, Dr. Young escorted me to the door. Just before she opened it, she leaned toward me, the desire for vengeance sparking from her eyes. “Do you know what my father’s last words were?”

  Having already briefed myself, I did, but she wanted to tell me so I let her.

  “My daddy said, ‘I’m sorry for everything I done put my family through. Oh, sweet Jesus, here I come.’”

  Chapter Twenty

  The late afternoon sun blazed a fiery outline behind the cumulus clouds that had collected in the west during my interview with the Youngs. It held out hope that an evening rain shower might bring some relief to the heat, but I was so depressed, even that possibility failed to cheer me.

  Although I was no fan of capital punishment, after some of the horrendous crimes I had helped solve I couldn’t say I was one hundred percent against it, either. Yet most of the arguments for or against capital punishment focused on the death itself, not the years leading up to the execution. After a short trial in which most of the other evidence was circumstantial, Maleese Young spent twenty-three years on Death Row with the knowledge that each sunrise brought him one day closer to the padded gurney where he would reach his earthly end. Could such knowledge be considered cruel and unusual punishment? Or was Maleese’s awareness little different than the same fear of death we all lived with, that each new day brought us closer to dying?

  Still…

  I had once interviewed a retired prison guard who pointed out that, given most of the condemned men’s violent pasts, their decades spent on Death Row actually lengthened their lives. “Drugs, brawls, knives, shootings—hell, Ms. Jones, left to their own devices, most of these guys wouldn’t have made it to their thirtieth birthdays. Say what you will about Death Row being a grim place and all, it’s still safer for them than the streets. Here they live twice as long as they would have out there.”

  His words had creeped me out at the time. They still do.

  When I exited the freeway at McDowell, I made a snap decision. Instead of turning east toward the Pima Rez and the dangerous comforts of Jimmy’s trailer, I turned west toward Scottsdale and the Best Western. The arrangement might be inconvenient, but I’d be able to have my nightmares in peace. Besides, his trailer and computers were only fifteen minutes away.

  As soon as I checked in, I called Jimmy and explained.

  He wasn’t happy. “Did you forget you left your things here? And that big box of Cameron material.”

  Yes, I’d forgotten, but wasn’t about to admit it. “As to the clothes, I’ll pick up more at Walmart. And I’ll get the box tomorrow.”

  A grunt. “With all the business you do at Walmart, they’ve probably run out of black.”

  “Then it’s on to Target. Maybe it’s time I moved up the style ladder.”

  “This is about last night isn’t it?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Lena, you need to…”

  “Oops! Landline’s ringing. Gotta go!”

  I ended the call before remembering there is no landline in a car.

  ***

  Shopping at Walmart did not take long. It never does when you limit your clothing choices to black and don’t care much what shampoo, deodorant, or toothpaste you buy as long as it’s on sale. The only thing that merited careful consideration was a laptop, but since I’m not fussy there either, I bought a basic Samsung and let it go at that. All I needed was something to tie me into Desert Investigations’ records so I could update the case file.

  Two hours later an emergency technician at Data Doctors had loaded enough basic software into the Samsung to get me started, so once ensconced at the Best Western, in the same room as before, I was able to transcribe the day’s interviews before they went cold on me. As soon as I finished typing, I merged all my transcriptions with the case file Babette had emailed me. Then I sat back and reread everything twice. When you get things down in black and white, inconsistencies can leap out at you, and today was no exception. I found several, which meant that follow-up interviews were in order.

  I checked my watch. Seven-thirty. In July the days are long, giving me plenty of time to find Ali’s party house, so I grabbed the usual equipment and headed out into the heat again.

  Due to the economic downturn, finding the party house took longer than planned and the light had dimmed. More than one bank-owned home lined the streets of North Scottsdale, so by the time I snuck my way into its backyard, dusk had fallen. No matter. Like any good Girl Scout, I came armed with a flashlight. Although the house was well-hidden from the street by high, untrimmed oleander bushes, entrance to 17712 East Appaloosa Way presented no problem. The houses on both sides sported FOR SALE signs and appeared empty. No snoopy neighbors to worry about. By now, the plywood sheeting across the back window which gave party-minded teens their egress had slipped to the ground. The only thing to worry about was the prospect of cutting myself on the few pieces of glass that remained in the window. Wrapping a couple of towels around my latex-gloved hands helped on that front.

  When I finally made it through, only to land in a puddle of water, the stench of mildew, old beer, and rotted junk food almost knocked me off my feet. Talk about your Teenage Babylon.

  A quick walk-through proved that this formerly two-million-dollar property had hit the skids big tim
e. Apparently so many properties been repossessed of late that the banks had given up policing them. A smashed crystal chandelier hung crookedly from the living room’s twenty-foot ceiling, and graffiti, most of it of a sexual nature, defaced the Tuscan plaster walls. Someone had taken a sledgehammer to the travertine marble flooring, which was further insulted by layers of used condoms and junk food wrappers. The nasty sleeping bags tossed here and there were more Goodwill Reject than Montbel.

  Ignoring the heat and smell, I searched through the rubble, hoping to find something that would back up Ali’s story. I hit pay dirt in what appeared to have been the master suite, where a relatively clean duvet and a backpack were tucked into a walk-in closet. I leaned closer and with the aid of the flashlight, read KYLE GIBBS printed on the side of the backpack with a Sharpie. The pack had been scavenged and most of its treasures, such as graded term papers and shopping lists for his pets, were torn to pieces. But zipped into a side compartment, I found several sales receipts and a still-intact but grubby note in Ali’s handwriting. It asked him to rendezvous with her at the house to “make mad, passionate love.” It gave time and date for the assignation: the day of the murders.

  Although any halfway decent prosecutor could shoot holes in my find—and in fact, the backpack’s contents proved little, other than a plan to get together—this was something the police needed to see, so after taking several pictures with my smartphone, I made my way back outside and called Scottsdale PD. Then, my hands still covered in the latex gloves, I took a closer look at the receipts.

  And everything changed.

  Eight thirty is a relatively slow time in Scottsdale, at least by police standards. The late-night bar fights hadn’t yet begun, and the drunks were hours away from wrecking their Porsches. Within minutes of my call, I was being given the third degree in the overgrown backyard by my old buddies, detectives Bob Grossman and Sylvie Perrins, as a squadron of crime techs made their way into the house.

  “We could arrest you for breaking-and-entering,” Bob said, sounding sorrowful.

  I gave him a smile to cheer him up. “You could, but you won’t. At least not for the ‘breaking’ part. As anyone can plainly see, that plywood’s been off the window for a while.”

  “Then how about we just kick your skinny ass all the way to Nogales?” Sylvie snarled. She had always been the more violent of the two.

  “That’s police brutality, Sylvie. Besides, you guys owe me.”

  “Yeah? For what?” She was so close I could tell she’d switched perfumes, from an oriental citrus blend to a musky floral. New boyfriend? I hoped so. A few rolls in the hay might take the edge off all that aggression.

  “You owe me because of that money I found for you at the crime scene. And for this.” I waved a receipt at her. “Proof that neither of those kids killed anyone.”

  “Nogales isn’t all that far. Just a simple dropkick…”

  “Point taken. I’m irritating. But what you don’t know, Sylvie, is that while doing my work for Ai’s attorney, I uncovered several other suspects, people who had stronger reasons to kill the Camerons than Ali and Kyle ever did.”

  Her glower deepened. “And you’re going to surprise us with those mysterious suspects’ names at the trial, right? That’s withholding evidence, another reason to arrest you.”

  “Everything I’ve found out will be forwarded to the prosecutor at the appropriate time. In the meantime, consider this receipt a gift to old friends. Auld lang syne, and all that.”

  She wasn’t ready to let it go. “How do we know you didn’t plant that backpack? And the receipt?”

  “The backpack will prove to have Kyle’s fingerprints all over it, certainly not mine, since I’m wearing these stylish latex gloves, but until the techs bear out my story, you’ll have to take my word. As for this particular receipt, it’ll match the records at Circle K. The receipt shows that at 1:30 p.m. July 8, when the Camerons were being tortured and killed, Kyle was buying eight Slim Jims, four bags of Fritos, and two packs of Twinkies.” I pointed at the receipt again. “And a Cosmopolitan Magazine. If I remember correctly, the July issue has an article titled ‘40 Sex Tips to Please Your Man.’ Excellent article. I picked up a few hints, myself.”

  “Oh, the sex tips will go over big with the county prosecutor. I hear he’s lonely. But that’s all you got? Kyle Gibbs bought fucking Fritos?”

  “Timeline, Sylvie, timeline. Get sex out of your head and listen. That receipt is time-stamped at 1:30, which proves that Kyle was elsewhere when the murders and house-trashing were taking place. According to the interview you guys did with the delivery boy at Zhou’s Mandarin Wok, he dropped off an order of almond chicken, moo goo gai pan, and egg rolls just before noon. We know from the medical examiner’s report that the family had just begun to eat when they were interrupted. The few bites of food found in their stomachs were only partially digested before they died, which narrows the time of death to between a few minutes after twelve and sometime before two thirty. Probably closer to the later, because of the time it took to torture them.”

  That finally got Sylvie’s attention. “Go on,” she said.

  “Not to sound monotonous about this, but remember the Circle K time stamp? I’ll say it again. One thirty. According to the autopsy, the Camerons were either dead or dying then, so let me ask you this. Do you really think that in, say, ten or fifteen minutes, a fourteen-year-old boy walked almost a mile from the Circle K at the corner of Indian Bend and Scottsdale Road to here, dumped his backpack, then went back out again, and walked another mile to the Camerons’ house, got inside, tied them up, tortured them, trashed the house, smeared dog droppings all over the walls—then walked away with only a couple of drops of blood on him? He just didn’t have enough time, Sylvie.”

  “He could have killed them earlier, say, around one, before he got to the Circle K. The autopsy doesn’t rule that out.”

  I didn’t want to bring up Kyle’s dog rescue, which could provide a further alibi, until I’d found the dog’s owner, so I just said, “Only if he could fly. Granted, the M.E. said the murder could have been committed a little earlier, but he also stressed that it was doubtful since the food in the victims’ stomachs had already begun to digest. Also, if the kid killed the Camerons earlier, then went to the Circle K for his junk food fix, why didn’t the Circle K clerk notice he was covered in blood? Or later, at the vet’s? The vet certainly noticed blood on Ali when they dropped Misty off, but he never said anything about blood on Kyle.”

  “Maybe the kid changed clothes.”

  “That makes no sense, Sylvie. I’d also like to remind you the crime lab found two very small smears of human blood, and no spatter at all, on Kyle’s clothes, not enough to account for the kind of slaughter that went down. Lots of canine blood on Ali’s. Yes, when the kids were arrested, faint traces of human blood were under one of Kyle’s fingernails, but that probably got transferred from the murder weapon when he picked it up. But let me remind you, Kyle didn’t leave enough fingerprints on the bat to have clubbed the Cameron family to death. That’s always been the weak point in the case against him. Yes, yes, I know, he and Ali both had the victims’ blood on the bottom of their shoes, they’d tromped around in it, but that’s it. You saw the crime scene. How could either one of them slaughter three people without getting drenched in gore?”

  Sylvie might have been a Grade A bitch, but she was also honest and smart so I gave her time to digest this. After clicking her tongue against her teeth for a few moments, she finally gave in. “Shit. You’re right. Thing is, we stopped looking at other possibilities when the kids confessed.”

  “And now they’ve retracted those confessions.”

  “Double shit.”

  “You can say that again.” This from Bob.

  Before I could add anything else, one of the crime scene techs exited the party house and walked up to us. She was a heavy, middle-aged woman
who looked like she’d attended one too many parties herself. Addressing Sylvie, she said, “Detective Perrins, how thorough do you want us to be? There’s a god-awful mess in there, everything from rat feces to smashed wine bottles. We’ve got a cookstove with Chef Boyardee ravioli slopped all over it, dozens of empty food cans ranging from Vienna sausages to canned peaches, and some pretty nasty sleeping bags.”

  “Do your damned job!” Sylvie snapped. “Scrape every inch of the place!”

  The tech snapped a snarky salute and waddled back into the house.

  “What a bitch,” Sylvie muttered.

  I could have said something about pots calling kettles black, but let it go. “Why don’t we forget about the kids for a minute and talk about the murder scene and what it suggests. An awful amount of rage went into that attack. Tell me, have you looked into the doctor’s background and thought about whoever else might have wanted to kill him? And his entire family? Don’t forget, if Ali had been home, she would probably have been killed, too.”

  Trying hard to keep her temper in check, Sylvie said, “Why would we bother checking into Dr. Cameron when we thought we already had our perps? Two kids who’d kill to be together, simple as that. Fuck that now. What else do you know? The name of someone or someones who held a grudge against Cameron?” She stressed the plural.

  “Because of my arrangement with Ali’s attorney, I can’t give you any names right now, but I can say this. If you look into the doctor’s background more closely you might get a big fat surprise.”

  “Such as?”

  I sighed. “Sylvie, I’m not going to do your work for you.” At least not until Ali’s attorney tells me I can. Until then, all you’ll get is hints.

  Before Sylvie could erupt again, Bob nudged her. “Ease up. Lena’s on file as Stephen Zellar’s investigator, which means she doesn’t have to tell us anything she doesn’t want to. Not now, anyway.”