by Betty Webb
Braving Glen’s threatening fists, I asked, “What do you remember?”
“The van.”
I frowned. “The air-conditioning van?”
“No. The other one.”
“What other van, Kyle?”
“The panel van, the one that drove by me when I was still a few blocks from Ali’s house, I think it was around Shetland Street and Appaloosa Way, you know, the intersection just before you go into the neighborhood where she lives. Anyway, this van, I think it was a Ford or a Chevy, a real old one, too, maybe even from the seventies, it was coming from that direction, the direction of the big circle, I mean, like it had been in there, and it was weird, you know? I didn’t think too much about it before, but when I was talking to you in there, telling you about finding the Camerons all covered in bl…finding the Camerons like that, I remembered the van.”
Fiona looked at Kyle nervously, tugged at his shirt.
He pushed her hand away. “Don’t. I need to tell her.”
“What color was it, this van?”
“Mostly white, but it was all beat up and you could see other colors on it, too. Looked like it had been painted over and over, a real bad paint job each time, like some dumb kid did it.”
I already had the door open, but despite the heat rushing in from outside, the room’s temperature must have dropped thirty degrees. “You say the van was weird, is that because it had a bad paint job?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Then what, Kyle? What was so weird about the van?”
“Because when it drove past me, it…it smelled like dog poop.”
***
Hacking the Motor Vehicles site to find the registration for a 1970s to 1980s Ford or Chevy panel van would be impossible; even Jimmy couldn’t work miracles. But Kyle’s description correlated with Clint Zhou’s, so there was little doubt both young men had seen the murder vehicle.
As I drove back to the Pima rez through the twilight, I ran the timeline through my aching head again.
Clint made his delivery to the still alive-and-well Camerons at 11:56 a.m., stayed parked in front of the house texting his girlfriend for a few minutes, then drove off and hit a white van while leaving the neighborhood. Later, Kyle, while on his way to the Camerons’ house to find Ali, had passed the same van near the intersection of Shetland Street and Appaloosa Way, mere blocks from her house. Kyle didn’t know the exact time he arrived at the Camerons’, but according to the veterinarian who’d taken care of Misty, Kyle and Ali arrived in his office—a thirty-minute drive away—at 3:02. This meant the murderers entered the Cameron house no earlier than noon, and finished their bloody work around two thirty.
Time is relative. Two-and-a-half hours doesn’t seem long, but it would have seemed an eternity for the Camerons.
Scottsdale PD had already checked with the Camerons’ immediate neighbors to see if their houses had surveillance cameras and came up with a negative. But now that I had confirmation of the killers’ vehicle, a concrete timeline, and a new intersection, there was a chance one of the houses near Shetland and Appaloosa caught the van’s license plate on a better-angled camera. Too dark now to check the neighborhood for cameras myself, but Scottsdale PD needed to be aware of this right away.
I placed a call to Sylvie Perrins, only to have the call roll over to voice mail. I left a message, then tried Bob Grossman. Same thing. Frustrated, I thought about giving my information to Captain Ulrich, their boss, then thought better of it. All I’d get from Ulrich was a lecture about sticking my nose into police business.
***
When I arrived back at Jimmy’s trailer, I found him sitting outside on his chaise, looking up at the stars.
“You do this every night?” I asked, getting out of the Jeep and into the warm night, where cricket songs and the rustlings of other small wildlife chased away the vast silence. For some reason, the coyotes weren’t out yet, giving some rabbit a temporary stay of execution.
“When there’s no dust storm.” He waved toward the other chaise. “Have a seat. And by the way, how are you feeling? You look terrible.”
“Thanks for the compliment.” If I joined him, it would make twice in one week I’d wasted time sitting outside. Last time I did, Monster Woman burned down Desert Investigations. I sat down anyway. What could she do now, throw another firebomb all the way from Tent City? Still, I felt as bad as he said I looked, and the chaise offered comfort.
“A little thing like a dust storm scares you?” I teased. “I thought you Pimas were tough.”
“We Pimas are peaceful farmers, cotton mostly, and farmers know better than to stay outside letting dust blow into their eyes when they could be sitting comfortably in their houses filling up on prickly pear ice cream.”
I gave him a sideways glance. “Prickly pear ice cream? You’re making that up.”
“Go check in the freezer.”
A minute later I returned to my chaise with a large bowl of bright pink ice cream.
“Bought a new ice cream maker yesterday,” Jimmy continued, as if I’d never left. “On sale at Fry’s. Gonna try to duplicate Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey tomorrow. Already have the bananas, chocolate, and walnuts. Maybe I’ll throw in a little mint, just as an experiment. Or would that be gilding the lily?”
“Gilding.” I dug into the prickly pear concoction and tasted Heaven. “You never stop surprising me, Almost Brother.” As I swallowed the gooey stuff, my headache receded.
Jimmy didn’t reply, just continued looking at the stars. I took the hint and looked at them, too, but it took no strain on my part. I’d always felt at home on the Pima rez; it had once taught me how tough I was.
Years earlier, Jimmy’s father, a tribal policeman, saved my life. I was around six or seven, in my third or fourth foster home, and deeply unhappy. With all the magical thinking of a child who’d seen too many Disney cartoons, one hot day I set off across the desert to find my biological parents.
***
That morning I had awoken fresh from a dream of my red-headed father and blond mother standing in a lush forest, looking at a creek as it danced around lichen-covered rocks. I didn’t remember much, but somehow I knew they lived “east,” in the direction the sun rose. All I had to do was get back there, where they’d be waiting with kisses and candy. So I snuck down to my foster parents’ kitchen, stowed two cans of Tab in my school bag, and left the Scottsdale house before they woke up. It was July, and the temperature already in triple digits. But by the time the sun was high overhead, I had already made it to the Pima reservation just in time for a dust storm.
As the curtain of red-brown dust rose before me, I tried to shield my face with my school bag, but it provided little protection. Sand bit into my face, my arms, my legs. When the storm was finished, so was I. Panting with fear and exhaustion, I lay in the sand, covered with dirt and debris. When I finally regained enough strength to look up, I saw vultures hovering above, big black birds I’d once seen in a John Wayne movie. I knew they ate the dead.
But they wouldn’t eat me.
Fear turned to anger, and when they dove, I was ready. When the first one landed and started to hobbeldy-hop toward me, its knife-like beak dripping with menace, I shouted, “Go away, bird!”
I glanced at the long-empty Tab I’d pulled from my school bag. Not desert-wise, I’d planned on finding a cool stream where I could fill it again.
“Bird! I’ll hit you!”
The vulture continued its progress.
I threw the can. It bounced off those glossy feathers, but at least halted the bird’s advance.
I reached out and snatched the can from where it had rolled almost back to me, then filled it with rocks and dirt. “I’ll hurt you bad this time!” I warned.
The vulture paid no attention, just hopped forward again as several of its friends swooped down to join the
impending feast.
“I mean it, Bird! I’ll hurt you! I’ll hurt you all!” I didn’t really want to hurt any of them, but in that John Wayne movie birds like them did terrible things to people, sometimes before the people were totally dead. I didn’t want the same things done to me, so I had to make them go away.
The Tab can felt heavier now, more like a weapon. “I’ll break your wing!” I screamed to the lead bird. “Then your friends will eat you!”
The bird kept coming.
I threw the can and struck the bird in the head. With a squawk, it flew away. A small victory only, because the others remained.
The fight had taken a lot out of me, and I slumped against a rock. Sensing weakness, the rest of the vultures closed in. I had no weapon now, just my hands.
I clenched my fists. I’d fight them until they ate away my fingers, then I’d hit them with my stumps.
One bird reared up and…
A gunshot.
In a great flurry of black, the birds flew away.
Through the roaring in my ears, I heard a man’s deep voice. “Well, now, Little Miss. What’re you doing way out here on our rez? Why don’t I take you home?”
I gazed up into a mahogany-colored face, gentle brown eyes, and saw a policeman holstering his gun. His name tag read…
SGT. JAMES EDWARD SISIWAN.
***
“I remember your father, you know,” I said to Jimmy, as we studied the Milky Way.
“So you’ve told me.”
“He was my hero.”
“Wish I could remember him, too, but I was only a baby when he died. Then my mother died, and, well, I wound up in Utah. But unlike you, I lucked out.”
“I know.” I turned on the chaise and faced him. They say Indians don’t show emotion, but that’s bullshit. “How about I remember him for the both of us?”
It took him a moment, but when he spoke again, he had worked through his feelings. “Deal. For now, though, let’s forget the past. Too depressing. Tell me about Kyle. Bet his family was happy to have him back.”
I licked the last bit of ice cream off my spoon. “Oh, they were.”
Once I finished recapping the interview, Jimmy said, “Maybe that van will show up on some surveillance camera, but that would be almost too easy, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“It was probably stolen.”
I groaned, for two reasons. Jimmy was right: the possibility that the van had been stolen had occurred to me, too. And now, notwithstanding the ice cream therapy, my headache was back.
“If the van was stolen,” I said, trying not to think about the pain in my head, “the killer probably dumped it long before now. Still, I’ll keep bugging Scottsdale PD until they track the thing down. Maybe you could check with your buddies in the tribal police since the rez is such a popular dumping ground. Bodies, stolen cars, the usual. Even the most careful killer can screw up and leave something behind, especially in a vehicle. A scrape of DNA on a door latch, a hair on the floor…Speaking of DNA, it works with dogs, too. The dog feces on the Camerons’ walls? Evidence. Let’s not forget the case in Tennessee, where a man was convicted of murder based on a lone cat hair transferred from the victim to him.”
“That conviction’s being appealed, so don’t get your hopes up.”
“I’m an ex-cop, remember, which means I live on hope. Oh, look.” I pointed to the sky, where one of the bright dots appeared to be moving, albeit very, very slowly. “Is that a comet? And if you wish on a comet, does your wish come true?”
“It’s probably just another communications satellite. But go ahead and wish. Can’t hurt.”
So I did.
And it worked.
Chapter Thirty
I had just finished the Spanish omelet Jimmy had whipped up and was savoring my second cup of coffee when my cell rang. Up until then, he’d been cross-examining me on the state of my health, especially the part that concerned my sore head.
On the phone, Detective Sylvie Perrins sounded excited. “Couple of weeks ago, Phoenix cops found an ’78 Ford Econoline van abandoned in the lot at Papago Park and had it towed to the impound lot. I just called over there and the manager said that, yeah, it’s white. Techs are on their way as we speak. Thanks for the phone tip.”
Before I could cheer, she added, “I already ran the VIN and it’s registered to one Reuben Alvarez, of Buckeye. Reported stolen from the Pebble Creek Club House parking lot, where he was doing some yard work. Guy’s a gardener.”
“That’s clear on the other side of Phoenix. He have any connection to the Camerons?”
“We’re checking it out. Him being a yard man, there’s no telling where-all he works. Or admits to working. These guys, they do a lot of under-the-table jobs. Maybe the whole car theft story’s one big lie and he once did some work for the Camerons, got stiffed, and took his sweet revenge.”
Anything was possible, but it didn’t feel right, so I asked, “He have a sheet?”
“Couple of traffic tickets. Otherwise, no wants, no warrants. No history of domestics, either.”
A man’s propensity to violence often announces itself in a string of domestic violence calls, yet that didn’t seem the case here. Then again, women don’t always report the abuse. Alvarez could have been beating his wife, if he had a wife, black and blue for years and there could still be no record.
Sylvie knew that, too, so there was no point in mentioning it. “What happens now?”
“Since the van might be connected to a high-profile case, the techs’ prelim report could reach us tomorrow. Or maybe early next week. Then we sit around and wait to see if there’s a DNA match to anything from the Cameron house. Hey, even dog shit DNA! Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“A laugh riot. What’s the lab’s back-up these days?”
“Oh, around fifty, sixty other cases, the usual. But, and don’t tell anyone I said this, you know how it works, some cases have higher priority than others. We got us bunch of dead transients with no ID. Heatstroke, of course. Got around twenty, twenty-five illegals down by the border, thirst, more heatstroke, then we got that serial rapist working south Phoenix—he’s still doing his thing—a couple of drive-by fatals in Maryvale, and a decomposed female some hiker’s dog dug up in the Superstitions last week. The lab’s overwhelmed.”
These days, with violent crime on the increase and lab workers being laid off willy-nilly because of county budget cuts, DNA tests often took months to complete. In many states, the back-up ran into years. But as Sylvie pointed out, some cases had higher priority than others. DNA connected to the torture/murders of one physician’s family rated higher than a host of dead illegals and transients. Death, as in life, had its own caste system.
Sylvie was being so helpful I almost hated to ask the next question. “What about the possibility of surveillance cameras near Shetland and Appaloosa? You do anything about that yet?”
She vented a string of expletives for a while, then calmed down enough to snap, “What?! You think Scottsdale PD’s got nothing better to do than do your footwork for you? Send me a list of addresses and I’ll get to them when I can!”
She hung up.
Jimmy stared at me. “Sounds like a rough call. By the way, you look worse than yesterday. If you ask me, you’d better take it easy.”
“I didn’t ask you.”
He shrugged. “Just making an observation. That was Sylvie, I take it. I could tell by the squabbling. She get anything on the DNA yet?”
“Nope.” Ignoring my headache—worse than yesterday’s—I grabbed my carryall and headed for the door. “I’d help with the dishes, but I need to look at some houses.”
He gave me a wry smile. “Not to purchase, right?”
“Oh, sure. I’m going to buy me a tract home in Scottsdale, join the local women’s club, and live h
appily ever after.”
As I left, I heard him mutter, “Stranger things have happened, although in your case, probably not.”
***
At the intersection of Shetland and Indian Bend, I found two houses with security cameras. The good news was that they were situated kitty-corner from each other, thus able to videotape the murder van from different angles. The bad news? One camera looked old enough to have been used on Noah’s ark. I phoned in the addresses to Sylvie, who accepted them with nary a thank you. Police work sure played hell with a person’s manners.
Deciding I could use another cup of coffee to chase away my growing fatigue—so early in the day?—I headed for the Starbucks I’d passed on the way over. The crowd was thin enough that I was able to get an iced Frappuccino in what seemed like seconds, and after a couple of quick glances at my black eye, I was ignored. Frapp in hand, I made my way to an isolated seat in the corner, the better in which to think.
I felt certain that when the DNA results came in, the van in the impound yard would be turn out to be the murder van, and the surveillance cameras—if working that day—would give a jury something to look at. But the real question was this: did the killer leave any DNA of his own in the van? And if so, would that DNA match up with any already on file? Unless it did, the DNA wouldn’t be that much help in finding the killer, only in convicting him when he arrived in court.
It occurred to me that I might do some DNA collecting of my own, at least as far as doggie-do was concerned. With the exception of Felix Phelps, each of the people I’d interviewed owned at least one dog. From the sound of its barks, Monster Woman had something big, the Hoppers owned a German shepherd mix, the white trash Hoyts’ property was overrun by a whole pack of ravenous mutts, the Youngs owned those two black something-or-others, and Carl DuCharme had a prize-winning boxer. I doubted if Mr. Hopper or his grieving wife would let me anywhere near their shepherd mix, and if I dropped by the Hoyts asking to borrow a cup of dog feces, I’d be lucky to get off their property alive. If I asked the Youngs for a sample of their dogs’ doggie-do, Janeese would call the nut squad on me. And Carl DuCharme? He’d probably dropkick me into a vat of molten chocolate.
