Desert Rage

by Betty Webb

  Which is why body work costs us all an arm and a leg. “What did the Lindells say when you finally showed up with cold takeout?”

  “I didn’t. My girlfriend, she zapped it in the microwave for me.”

  Ah, true love. “Describe the van you hit.”

  “White. Mostly.”

  “What do you mean, ‘mostly’?”

  “Well, it was really, really old, older even than our van, and besides the white, there were bits of different colors all over it, and even some sections of primer. It looked like it’d been painted a million times.”

  “Was there lettering on the side? A logo?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Make?”

  He shrugged. “Ford, I think. Maybe a Chevy. I’m not all that good with cars, especially old ones, but I think it was something from the seventies. Or maybe early eighties.”

  “Panel van? Recreational van?”

  “Plain old panel. No windows, except for the driver’s.”

  “Where’d you hit him?”

  “Left front fender.”

  “Did you see any damage to his vehicle?”

  “You kidding me? That whole van was messed up. Dents all over, even worse than ours. Like I said, it was old. Really old.”

  “You didn’t think it was odd that the driver didn’t stop?”

  “Well, yeah, looking back I guess it was kind of weird, but at the time I was more worried about what Mom would do if she found out I’d been…” He trailed off.

  “Texting while driving.”

  He had the decency to look embarrassed. “Something like that.”

  “How old are you?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t a minor.

  “Eighteen. Mom wouldn’t let me do deliveries if I wasn’t. She’s picky that way.”

  No, kid, she’s smart that way. “Have you washed the van since then?”

  “Not me, but maybe one of my brothers did.” Then he second-thought himself. “No. Wait. They usually drive their own cars while making deliveries. I don’t have a car yet, but Mom said if I’m real careful and don’t get any tickets, she might buy me one for Christmas. I’m hoping for a Camaro, but a Mustang or a…”

  Sensing a long teenage wish list coming on, I interrupted him again. “Just ask your brothers if they washed the damned van, okay?” I leaned across the table again. “Now listen carefully, Clint. As soon as I leave, I want you to call Detective Sylvie Perkins and tell her everything you just told me. Everything, you understand?” I wrote down Sylvie’s number on a napkin and handed it to him. “If she’s not in, ask for Detective Bob Grossman. And get me a doggie bag.”

  “Huh?”

  “For the General Tso’s chicken.”

  He fetched me a large Styrofoam container, to his mother’s obvious delight. She probably suspected I was going to throw the fiery stuff out, and she was right. I just didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me do it.

  “One more thing,” I said, after scraping my uneaten meal into the container. “You need to show me the van you used that day.”

  Eager to get rid of me, he gestured toward the door. “It’s out back. Tan. Has ZHOU’S MANDARIN WOK painted in big red letters on the side. And it’s all banged up.” In a burst of independence, he added, “You can’t miss it.”

  “Clint, Clint. You still don’t get it, do you? It sounds like you might have had a run-in with the Camerons’ killer, and I want to see the exact area where your van whapped the other van. Ever hear of paint transfer?”

  His Adam’s apple went into overdrive. “Killer?! You…you think that guy, the guy I hit, was, like, the Camerons’ killer?”

  “There’s a good chance. C’mon. Time’s a-wasting.” Now my stomach was beginning to get blisters, too. Good thing there was a Walgreen’s two blocks away.

  The Zhous’ delivery van looked like something left over from a demolition derby. There were dents along the sides, the front bumper hung down at an angle, and the rear one was attached to the body with baling wire. The red, two-feet-high lettering—ZHOU’S MANDARIN WOK—wasn’t bad, though. You could read it from a mile away, which I guessed was the point.

  “There,” Clint said, pointing at on the front bumper and fender. “See those scuffs? That’s where I hit him.”

  I leaned down to take a closer look. The left front fender was crumpled from his clumsy body work and the bumper had experienced numerous run-ins, so in addition to white, streaks of yellow, blue, and some dark color—it might have been brown—nearly obliterated the original chrome.

  One of those streaks had come from the killer’s van.

  “Clint, forget what I said about calling Detective Perkins. I’ll call her myself right now. And no matter what your mother tells you, don’t take this van anywhere until Perkins gets here.”

  “What’s she gonna do? Interview me again?” The worry-lines on his forehead deepened.

  I was already punching in Sylvie’s cell number. “Without a doubt.” What I didn’t tell him was that after I told her about the van’s adventures with oncoming traffic, she’d probably get a warrant and have it towed to the impound lot.

  After considering the emergency of the situation, I remained with the vehicle until Sylvie and Bob rolled in. They took one look at the fender and bumper, heard the kid out, and made some calls. While we waited in the sizzling heat, Sylvie caught me up on hers and Bob’s side of the investigation. Finally, assured that a friendly judge had issued an emergency search warrant and a tow truck was on its way, I left Clint to the mercies of his tiger mother and took off.

  But as I drove toward Walgreen’s to pick up some Mylanta for my burning stomach, I couldn’t help but think what would have happened if the kid had arrived at the Cameron house five minutes later.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  After spending part of the night hugging the commode, I arrived early the next morning at St. Simon’s Catholic Church. I positioned myself in a back pew, the better to see who showed up, and in what order. The light that filtered through the church’s multitude of stained glass windows washed the interior in jewel tones of color, easing the gloom. The flowers helped, too. So many decorated the three caskets that their scent competed with the omnipresent incense.

  Detectives Bob Grossman and Sylvie Perrins came in together and like me, found a place in the back, but on the other side of the aisle. As was the custom in homicide cases, they hoped someone might dance down the aisle, singing, “I did it, I did it, I did it and got away with it!” The fact that this seldom happens makes no difference; hope never dies in a homicide detective’s breast.

  Stephen Zellar, Ali’s attorney, arrived shortly after the detectives as a show of support for his client. He gave a nod as he passed by. Next came a tearful Eldora Morales, the Camerons’ former maid, chauffeured by Armetta Zielsdorf, her new employer. They took a middle pew. Right behind them came Margie and Monty Newberry, then Ralph Parelli, the Camerons’ other neighbor. Parelli appeared much more subdued than the vulgarian I’d first met; real grief was etched upon his face.

  As the church slowly filled, it was obvious that Scottsdale had turned out in full force to support one of their own. I thought I spotted the members of Alexandra’s book club: six well-dressed women sitting together, looking equally traumatized. Sitting not far from Bob and Sylvie were teachers, students, and staff at Four Palms Middle School, wearing orange and green ribbons, the school’s colors. Near them, I saw what could have been little Alec’s entire fifth grade class. It hurt to see so many young faces looking so solemn.

  I tried not to look at the smallest casket in the front of the church—Alec’s—but seemingly independent of my will, my eyes kept drifting back. Ten years old. Tortured for God knows how long, then murdered. I remembered his room, the sports posters, the photograph of Einstein, the advanced science books. What discoveries had th
e world lost when he died? Next to Alec’s, Alexandra’s coffin. So beautiful, so unhappy. Yes, her promiscuity was troubling, but if there was one thing I could understand, it was the desperation a lonely woman could feel. In that way, we were two of a kind.

  The casket on the end was Dr. Cameron’s. A saver of lives, a taker of lives. An aloof, sometimes cold man, the fibers found on the back of his shirt proved that in his last minutes of life, he’d held his wife and child behind him, attempting to shield them from harm. How could anyone understand a man like that? Had he understood himself?

  One of the reasons I hate funerals so much is because they make you ask too many questions.

  There was no way to know how many of Dr. Cameron’s associates at Good Samaritan Hospital were in attendance. From his lack of popularity, I guessed not many. Then again, I could have been wrong, because the Valley medical community held his skills in high esteem. Judging from the size of the crowd in the church and the expensive cut of their clothes, a third of the mourners could have been other doctors showing up as a final gesture of respect.

  One of the last people to enter the church was U.S. Representative Juliana Thorsson. There was an expression on her face I couldn’t quite identify, and it made me uneasy. Once more I wondered about the wisdom of her attendance. If anyone noticed her resemblance to Ali, she could kiss that U.S. Senate seat good-bye. But try telling a politician anything.

  Then the door opened again, and here came Ali, wearing an ill-fitting black dress instead of jailhouse orange. Arms and legs shackled, she hobbled out of the bright sunlight and into the dark church, flanked by two stern-looking women, each of whom could have wrestled on the WWF circuit. Her eyes were red, but dry. That’s my girl.

  “Hi, Lena,” she whispered, as she her guards guided her into the pew in front of me.

  “We warned you, Miss Cameron, no speaking!” the guard to her left snapped. She sounded like a drill sergeant.

  My hand itched to brush an errant strand of blond-rooted black hair away from the child’s face, but I controlled myself. No point in getting her in more trouble than she already was in, so I just nodded a hello and smiled.

  Ali forced a smile back.

  Finally, here came Dr. Bradley Teague. As soon as he saw Ali, he moved to the other side of the aisle as if she carried some infectious disease. He said nothing to her, no hellos, no words of condolence, nothing, just hurried away toward a pew near the front.

  I wanted to slap the son of a bitch.

  Maybe I would have, but just then Eldora Morales turned around in her seat and spotted Ali immediately. With a loud sob she left her seat, rushed up the aisle, and climbed over the knees of one of Ali’s guards. Before the guard could react, she wrapped Ali in her arms.

  “Mi pobre pequeña!” Eldora wailed.

  She was still wailing as the guard grabbed her and hustled her away.

  The service began.

  Not being the religious type, I paid little attention, just kept my eyes and ears attuned to Ali, who never once cried.

  Dr. Teague made up for it.

  He wept so loudly throughout the service, much of it conducted in Latin by a priest old enough to rival Methuselah, you’d have thought Alexandra had been his wife, not his half-brother’s. This made me wonder if his admitted love for her had ever been consummated. If so, how had he felt when their love affair, either a one-nighter or longer, ended? Heartbroken? Angry? But on the day of the Cameron killings, Dr. Teague had been thousands of miles away in the African bush, vaccinating children.

  Or had he?

  By the time the service was over and we drove in a long procession to the cemetery, Dr. Teague was pretty much all cried out. After we wended our way through weeping angel statuary to a canopied area where three empty graves waited to be filled, he stopped his outright sobbing and ground down to a hiccup here and there. As the graveside ceremony progressed, he was able to make it through a Shakespearean sonnet extolling Alexandra’s virtues with only a few hitches. His control was complete while delivering a short eulogy for his nephew. He said nothing about his murdered brother.

  Bastard.

  At ten a.m. it wasn’t too hot. Not yet, anyway. A soft breeze blowing in from California took the edge off the heat. A mockingbird perched in an olive tree added musical accompaniment to the sound of passing traffic, while the barking of a nearby dog provided a staccato counterpoint. Since the sun almost always shines in Arizona, all that light and all those flowers can often put a funeral in danger of taking on an unintentional festive aspect, but there was no danger of that happening today. Yes, the sun still danced its merry dance over the Superstition Mountains, but a pall of guilt and gloom hung over the three side-by-side graves.

  Unlike her uncle, Ali remained dry-eyed at the graveside service, but she didn’t fool me. From the condition of her swollen eyes, she had cried all night with no one to comfort her, no one to hug her or whisper that old, well-meaning lie—There, there, sweetheart, everything will be all right.

  Poor damn kid.

  Juliana Thorsson stood unnoticed and alone in the shade of an Aleppo pine, her eyes riveted on her biological daughter. She still had that odd, unidentifiable look on her face. When she saw me watching her, she moved further into the shade.

  Finally it was over. Without allowing Ali to speak to anyone, her guards hustled her into a van and drove her back to juvie.

  Detectives Bob Grossman and Sylvie Perrins followed me out of the cemetery. “Notice the uncle?” Sylvie asked, after we had put enough distance between ourselves and the others. “Weird, huh? Bet he was getting it on with the wife.”

  Bob tsk-tsked. “Weird family, period. Kid didn’t even cry. Hey, Lena, were my eyes deceiving me or was that Congresswoman Thorsson standing under that tree? What would some fancy-ass politician be doing here?”

  “The family lived in her district, I believe,” I answered, careful not to say too much. “At least that’s what I hear.”

  “Damned decent of her to show up like that, then.”

  Sylvie snickered. “She’s running on the Decency Platform, didn’t you know? I’m surprised she didn’t drag along some whore of a photographer to get a picture of her feeling someone else’s pain.”

  After a hurried good-bye, I went back to my Jeep. But as the Jeep pulled away from the curb, I finally identified Juliana Thorsson’s odd expression.

  It was hunger.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Emotionally exhausted, I headed back to the motel to shower off the cloying scents of incense and flowers. Sometimes I do my best thinking in the shower, and today was no different. While soaping myself under the cool water I realized something had been missing from the case file Babette had sent me. After drying myself off, I logged onto the file and double-checked.

  I was right. Probably because by then Kyle and Ali had already confessed to the murders, the cops hadn’t bothered to look at Dr. Bradley Teague’s passport.

  So I picked up my cell and called Sylvie Perrins.

  For all Sylvie’s sound and fury, I trusted her more than any other detective at Scottsdale PD. She didn’t care what you thought about her, she just wanted to get to the truth, even if the truth would benefit someone she loathed. Me, for instance.

  “I wish you’d stop being right for a change,” she muttered, when I told her about my rising suspicions re Dr. Bradley Teague. “Oh, by the way, remember those surveillance cameras? Well, we already got the results, and they’re gonna make a lot of people happy, not to mention you and that liberal schmuck Curtis Racine. He’s the boy’s attorney, right?”

  “Right. Lay it on me. Don’t make me beg.”

  “But wouldn’t that be fun?” Not waiting for my answer, she reeled off information that, yes, did make me happy.

  The security camera at the Circle K showed an unbloodied Kyle Gibbs buying Slim Jims at 1:30 p.m. the day of
the murders, an hour and a half after Clint Zhou made his delivery. By that time, the Camerons were either already dead or in the process of dying. Furthermore, several homeowners along Kyle’s route back to the party house had allowed access to their own security cameras, and those cameras captured the boy walking along innocently, no blood on his white tee-shirt.

  But the clincher was the home security camera three doors down from Ancient Alice’s house, which had picked up Kyle at 12:12 p.m., carrying a small ugly dog, and wearing the same clean tee-shirt that appeared more than an hour later on the other cameras.

  Alibis don’t get much better than that.

  “Those kids’ll be out of juvie by this time tomorrow, Thursday at the latest.” Sylvie had said. “At least as far as the girl goes, since she’s got that hotshot attorney you’re working for.”

  I placed a call to Curtis Racine, Kyle’s non-hotshot attorney. He received the information with glee.

  “I’d stay on the line and flirt, you sexy thing, but I can’t wait to call the prosecutor’s office and give him a kick up his fat ass. If that doesn’t cut Kyle loose, I’ll contact the judge. In the meantime, have a glass of champagne on me.”

  Dial tone.

  I wouldn’t be taking his advice. Not knowing what genetic predisposition I was born with, I had always stayed away from liquor and drugs. For all I knew, my biological parents were drunkards, addicts, or a combination of the two. What other kind of parents would shoot their four-year-old daughter in the head and leave her in the street to die?

  So no champagne for me. But I did have a big pile of chocolate waiting at the Best Western. After stopping off at the nearby Walgreen’s for another bottle of Mylanta, I headed back to the motel.

  ***

  A half-cup of Mylanta, two chocolate bars, and twelve white chocolate-covered pretzels later I lay back on the cool sheets of my Best Western room and thought about the case.