Desert Rage

by Betty Webb

  Sam had kept his truck in tip-top shape, and it quickly ate up the miles. These days, once you have a name, you can usually Google a person’s address, and today was no exception. Less than an hour after leaving Florence, I was parked under the shade of a mesquite a block down the street from 6883 Avonlea. An earlier phone call had already given me the information that the owner was at work, but I still needed to be quick. Already the temperature was much higher here than in Florence, and as a result, the street was deserted. Not even dog walkers were out.

  Just what I’d bargained on.

  The size and appearance of the killer’s property didn’t surprise me. Situated on a corner lot, it was three times larger than its neighbors, a holdover from before the days of elbow-to-elbow zoning. The front yard’s tall border of pink oleanders was groomed within an inch of its life. So, too, was the desert landscaping visible through a break in the oleanders; not a leaf or twig appeared out of place. To make certain the earth-toned gravel didn’t go where it wasn’t supposed to go, a series of rocks the size of soccer balls lined the drive leading around the house toward the detached garage in back. The house, a long, one-story ranch, mirrored the owner’s compulsive sense of order. Not a flake of stucco chipped away, not a roof tile missing. The windows sparkled as if they’d been washed just that morning.

  In an odd coincidence, I saw that the house’s color palate was the same as Bella’s—beige stucco highlighted by immaculate turquoise wooden trim. This house, however, probably cost five times as much as the Provencios’. South Scottsdale might not be as toney as the northern end, but it’s still Scottsdale.

  In my earlier drive-by, I had noticed an alleyway running the length of the block, so I grabbed the items I brought with me, exited the truck, and set off on foot. Even from the alley it was easy to find the right house; all I did was follow the sound of barking dogs. Once I reached the back of 6883 Avonlea, I checked out the dumpster, hoping it would yield a fresh crop of dog feces. Unfortunately, it looked like garbage pick-up had already happened that morning because the dumpster was empty. To get what I needed, I would have to go over the property’s masonry back wall.

  As a general rule, boxers are a friendly breed, but as evidenced by Bella’s Jingo, they can be territorial. When the three show dogs spotted me scaling the wall, they went nuts. The din they raised could have woken the dead, yet no angry neighbor opened his window to scream out the standard curses. They were either used to the noise or they were at work.

  Like the rest of the killer’s property, the kennel area was immaculate, unless you counted a small pile of dog feces in the corner nearest the garage. At the southern end of the chain-linked dog run sat three doghouses painted the same color combination as the human house. They were even roofed in the same shingles. Each doghouse had a boxer’s name painted in Old English letters above the doorway. Tiberius Maximus of Avonlea, Octavius Maximus of Avonlea—and the prize-winning boxer Bella had captured in her photograph—Augustus Maximus of Avonlea.

  Altogether, the kennel area measured approximately twenty by fifty feet, plenty of room for the dogs to get exercise when their owner was gone. An automatic waterer dribbled fresh water into a sparkling clean trough. To further insure the dogs’ comfort, half the kennel was covered by a giant tarpaulin, casting all three doghouses and most of the run into shade. The killer was kind to his animals.

  I noticed one more thing. The gate to the run was only latched, not locked. Good. No more climbing.

  “Such good doggies,” I murmured, as I approached the kennel where the boxers awaited me with slavering mouths. “So good. So pretty.” Standing well away from sharp canine teeth, I reached into the grocery sack and pulled out the five-pound tube of extra-lean ground beef Bella had given me. “Are the good, pretty doggies hungry?”

  Upon smelling the meat, the din immediately subsided. Ears perked up. Stumpy tails wagged. Instead of trying to climb over the chain-link fence to rip out my throat, they sat expectantly, smiling as only happy dogs can smile.

  “Oh, such good, hungry doggies!”

  I continued cooing as I separated the ground beef into six equal portions, then stepped up to the fence. Aiming carefully, I tossed half the beef into the run’s far corner, away from the neat pile of feces. The second the boxers bounded after their treats, I unlatched the gate and hurried in. I had only seconds, so I worked quickly, scooping up three different turds—each from a different dog, I hoped—into three of the baggies I’d brought. I hadn’t finished tying off the baggies before the dogs bounded back.

  “Here’s more goodies for the good, good doggies.” I tossed the rest of the meat.

  Off they bounded again. While they were busy gobbling up the rest of the beef, I slipped through the gate and latched it behind me with a sigh of relief. No nosy neighbors had shown up to ask me what the hell I was doing, and my throat remained unripped. I dropped the baggies into the grocery bag, and headed for the garage.

  Like most detached garages, the structure had a front door, but this time my luck didn’t hold. The door was locked. When I tried the window, I found that locked, too.

  I didn’t have my lock picks with me—along with most of my equipment, they’d been victims of the fire at Desert Investigations—but so far the day had been a lucky one, and maybe my luck would hold. Taking a credit card out of my wallet, I slipped it between the doorknob and the jamb, and the lock popped right open. Note to self: always use deadbolts.

  I opened the door to a strong smell of bleach. After the blinding light outdoors, the interior of the garage was dark, but rather than flip on the light, I waited until my eyes adjusted. When I could see again, I found the garage further testament to the owner’s obsessive cleanliness. The concrete floor was swept, a work table’s surface was spotless, and a large collection of tools hung in orderly rows on a wall-long wooden pegboard. You could have performed open heart surgery in that garage.

  A late model Chevrolet Explorer conversion van, probably used to chauffeur the boxers to dog shows, gleamed under the light filtering through the window, but the item that most interested me sat parked next to it, covered by a tarpaulin.

  Ignoring the garage’s furnace-like heat, I crossed the cement floor over to the dark shape and stood there for a second, strangely hesitant to raise the tarp’s flap. What if I was wrong? What if the dog show connection had been a figment of my ever-hopeful, still damaged brain? What if Sam Provencio’s death had nothing to do with the Cameron murders?

  Like hell it didn’t.

  I lifted the corner of the tarp…

  And found a mostly white 1983 Ford Econoline van with a crumpled front fender.

  The van no longer smelled like dog feces because Carl DuCharme, president of DuCharme Chocolatiers, had thoroughly washed and bleached it.

  ***

  I had no time to celebrate before I heard the sound of tires on gravel, approaching the garage. The boxers raised their voices in yaps of welcome. DuCharme—despite his secretary’s assurance when I’d called his office earlier—had returned home.

  And here I was, trapped in his garage.

  Maybe he’d just come home to check on the dogs. I stood stock-still, hesitant to move, in case I made a noise.

  A car door slammed.

  Then another.

  Voices. A man’s and a woman’s.

  “Well, if you have a better idea, why don’t you share it?” Carl DuCharme sounded cross.

  “Shush!” the woman hissed. “The neighbors.”

  “They’re all at work,” Carl said.

  The woman’s voice sounded familiar, but…

  “It’s your funeral, then, but as usual, you never think anything through. If you’d listened to me, that ridiculous vehicle of yours would be long gone. I still feel soiled after my ride in it.” Lorraine DuCharme, his mother. Also the mother of Blaine DuCharme III, executed three months earlier for kill
ing two police officers and a civilian in a botched bank robbery.

  “You’re lucky I hung onto it, because it certainly came in handy.”

  “You never could let anything go, could you?”

  “It was Dad’s first delivery van, or don’t you care? I kept it just the way it was when he…he died.”

  “The Daddy Museum,” his mother sneered. “You’re as foolish as he was.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk about Dad that way.”

  “I’ll talk about him any way I want. If it hadn’t been for my direction, we’d still be selling chocolate out of a cheap storefront.”

  Footsteps on gravel, coming closer. They were headed for the garage, not the house.

  I tiptoed back to the Chevy and looked inside, hoping to see the automatic garage-door opener so I could flee out the back. None on the seat. Maybe in the console? The glove compartment? But there was no time to hunt around for it.

  Silently cursing Jimmy for taking possession of my .38, I looked around for something to use as a weapon. There. On the peg board, second row from the top. A monkey wrench longer than my forearm. Making as little noise as possible, I hurried to the board and grabbed the wrench. It was so heavy I almost dropped it, but its very heft made me feel more secure. Ever aware of the way sound carries on concrete, I then made my way over to the Chevy conversion van, praying it wasn’t locked.

  Once again, I lucked out. Not only wasn’t the Chevy locked, but due to its owner’s compulsive nature, its back door opened with nary a squeak. Clutching the wrench, I crawled into the cargo area, which had been refitted to transport the dogs back and forth. I moved aside two large dog carriers, then hunched down behind them on a pile of leashes. If the worst happened and I was discovered, at least I had a weapon. Of a sort.

  Then I waited.

  Keys jangling. A click. The door to the garage opened.

  “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times,” said Lorraine DuCharme, the brains behind the family business, “take the nasty thing to one of those chop shops we’re always hearing about.”

  “Oh, really?” Carl snarled. “You have an address for me? A phone number?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Just what I thought. You like telling people what to do, but can’t give any decent advice on how to do it.”

  The sound of a slap. “Don’t talk to your mother that way!”

  Hard breathing from Carl.

  “Why do I have to solve everything for you, Carl? Drive the thing out to the desert and set fire to it.”

  When her son answered, his voice trembled with rage. “The van’s registered to me. You think they can’t read a vehicle identification number, even after a fire?”

  “Then get rid of the VIN before you set fire to it.”

  More heavy breathing. “I already tried that. Took a hammer and chisel and chipped the VIN off the back of the engine block, as well as I could, anyway, then took a blowtorch to the imprint on the doorjamb. But sometimes VINs’re hidden in places you can’t get to, like on the frame itself. What then? If they ever ID’ed the thing, I’m sunk. Shit, since this whole revenge crap was your idea, we’d both be sunk.”

  Another slap. “Watch your language!”

  Ah, the incongruity. Torture and kill three people, one of them a child, yet be offended by a curse word.

  Mrs. DuCharme’s cold voice could have frozen the Amazon. “As for it being my idea, well, of course it was, since you’re just like your father, never had a creative idea in your life. If it weren’t for me and my vision, the company would have collapsed due to your mismanagement. Why, I even had to design the Camerons’ punishment myself, you incompetent! That vile doctor murdered your brother! No one kills a DuCharme and gets away with it.”

  “I do have ideas!” He sounded like a whiny child. “The dog shi…feces was my idea, wasn’t it?”

  She grunted a weak agreement. Yes, of course the dog shit had been his idea. Torture and murder aside, the almost-pathologically neat Carl DuCharme saw trashing a house and smearing everything with dog feces as the most horrible thing possible.

  As if having to agree with her son irritated her, Mrs. DuCharme rekindled her abusive tirade. “Left on your own you’d have done nothing. Nothing. You’d allow that man to kill your brother and would just turn away to resume your foolish little life with your nasty dogs as if nothing ever happened. You have no family loyalty and never did.”

  The whining child whined louder. “I proved my loyalty three times! Four if you count clubbing that little dog, which believe me, I wasn’t happy about. But I did it for you, so why can’t you ever show any loyalty toward me? Never mind, don’t answer that. Blaine was always your favorite. For twenty-five years I’ve worked my a…my butt off for you and never got one word of thanks. I’ve stopped expecting it, but it’s still a disappointment. You never felt one bit of…Wait.”

  “What?”

  “There’s something…something wrong.”

  I looked at the wrench in my hand, thought about the now-empty spot on the pegboard. If Carl DuCharme had noticed the wrench missing, I was in trouble. He was a big man, a couple of inches over six feet, and despite his sedentary job, well-muscled. Whatever happened, I couldn’t let him get his hands on me. Especially not my head. One more trauma there and I’d be sitting in a nursing home drooling into my lap for the rest of my life.

  That’s if he didn’t kill me outright.

  When Carl murmured something low to his mother, I was certain he’d spotted the missing wrench. I heard feet move away from me, then a scrape and a click, a metallic object rubbing against wood. It told me I didn’t have much time.

  I had to get in the first blow or I was doomed.

  Then I’d deal with his murderous mother.

  After wiggling my toes to get the blood moving again, I leaned forward on the balls of my feet.

  If Carl opened the passenger’s or driver’s door, I would be hidden behind the dog carriers. But he didn’t. Like me, he opened the back door to the van. The minute he saw me crouched there, he slammed the big hammer toward me. Given no other defense, I blocked the blow with my left forearm and heard a crack. The pain almost blinded me, but now Carl was off-balance. Taking my only chance, I sprang through the open door, and swung the wrench at him with all my remaining strength.

  The wrench connected with his head.

  The cliché is true. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

  When Carl landed facedown at his mother’s feet, the hammer skidded out of his hand and under the front bumper of the Econoline van. She bent down and grabbed it, leaving me with a decision.

  Could I hit an elderly woman? No. I couldn’t, no matter what she had done. I wasn’t that kind of person, I wasn’t Lorraine DuCharme. Not only was I more compassionate, I was stronger, younger, more flexible. I’d tackle her barehanded—one-handed, even, given my broken left arm. But then I remembered ten-year-old Alec, his tortured little limbs bent into impossible shapes.

  As soon as the doyenne of DuCharme Chocolatier straightened up with the hammer, I broke the bitch’s nose.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  As the two murderers lay unconscious I one-handedly hog-tied them with dog leashes, then called Sylvie. After an explosion of curses that would have enraged Mrs. DuCharme’s delicate sensibilities, Sylvie deployed a fleet of uniformed officers and crime techs to the garage, followed by Bob and her own sweet self.

  “If the tests on that Econoline come back negative, you’re up for kidnapping and assault,” she snapped. “What the hell were you thinking? And why does your arm look like that?”

  “I didn’t exactly plan this whole scenario and I think my arm’s broke, thank you for asking,” I grumbled, as the uniforms replaced the DuCharmes’ dog leashes with handcuffs.

  I was handcuffed, too, although loosely enough that I could have slipped out
of the cuffs if I’d wished. Throughout the odd procedure, Sylvie had been surprisingly gentle. “Just a formality,” she said, grinning. She was enjoying this.

  At this point, the only reason the DuCharmes were being taken into custody—although after being read her rights, Lorraine was rushed straight to the hospital—was because the Econoline van matched the vehicle seen on the CCTV cameras near the scene of the Cameron killings. Well aware that my own legal situation—trespassing, assault, kidnapping, etc.—was shaky, I’d had the good sense to rip the tarp off the van before the cops arrived, leaving the vehicle in plain sight. This gave the Scottsdale PD detectives enough ammunition to obtain a search warrant.

  Animal Control took custody of Tiberius, Octavius, and Augustus, all of whom trotted peacefully to the rescue truck. They probably thought they were on their way to another dog show.

  Several days later, when the tests came back on the Econoline van—the speed due to Congresswoman Juliana Thorsson’s influence, again—Sylvie informed me that a strand of Sam Provencio’s hair was found lodged under the rim of the right headlight, paint from the delivery van belonging to Zhou’s Mandarin Wok was present on the left fender, and a speck of Alec Cameron’s blood had been scraped off the carpeting under the passenger’s front seat. Furthermore, the feces the techs collected from Tiberius, Octavius, and Augustus, matched the feces found on the walls of the Cameron house.

  When a search of the house found a 9mm Beretta Millennium, and the ballistics test matched the bullet found in Dr. Cameron’s brain, it sealed the deal.

  Confronted with this avalanche of evidence, Carl DuCharme, still aggrieved that Mommy didn’t love him as much as she loved Blaine Three, started talking. Seemingly proud of his actions, he bragged about using his lunch time to scope out the Cameron house. Over a couple of weeks’ reconnaissance, he discovered that their neighbors were out of town, and that none of the houses on the cul-del-sac had surveillance cameras. The Camerons were sitting ducks, he’d told his mother.