Desert Rage

by Betty Webb

  Lorraine DuCharme didn’t hold back, either. When questioned about her motive for the Cameron killings—yes, she’d been present for every vicious minute—she said, “Of course we killed them. Arthur Cameron killed my baby, so it was only fair that he suffer the same pain I did.”

  Question: what is a mother?

  Answer: an animal that avenges its young.

  ***

  Since my left arm was out of commission and Sam Provencio’s truck was a stick, as soon as the doctor cleared me, Jimmy drove the truck back to Florence with me riding shotgun. My new cast had been signed by just about everyone in Scottsdale PD, including Sylvie and Bob. Sylvie had even drawn a big heart on it; the heart had a smiley face—with fangs.

  Once we arrived in Florence, Bella met us at her front door, her newborn son in her arms. He had his father’s chin dimple.

  June-Mae was there, too. She had been helping out since Bella went into labor. After introducing Jimmy, I handed June-Mae the phone I’d borrowed, explaining, “I only used it to look up Carl DuCharme’s address. Oh, and to call the cops.”

  She smiled for the first time since I’d met her. “After you’d bashed him and that bitch mother of his?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good on you. And thanks for the check. It was more than I expected.”

  Her smile faded when she saw Bella heading for the kitchen. “Bella!” she yelled. “Sit down! You’re not ready to do all this running around. Didn’t I tell you I’d get the iced tea?”

  Bella sat.

  Knowing how it felt for a grown woman to be baby-sat against her will, I gave Bella a sympathetic look. When June-Mae hustled off to the kitchen, she said, simply, “Thank you.”

  I shook my head. “No, thank you. If you hadn’t taken that picture and sent it to the newspaper, it would have taken me a lot longer to figure everything out. If ever.”

  “You’d have gotten there eventually, Lena,” Jimmy said, his voice hoarse. “You always do.” Since he’d lectured me about my foolhardiness all the way from Scottsdale to Florence, I was surprised he could talk at all.

  I crossed the room to the credenza memorial, picked up Bella’s memory book with one hand, and pointed out the photo and caption to Jimmy. “Jingo, that’s her boxer’s name, won his class at the Saguaro State Kennel Club show. Bella was there and took the picture. That’s Sam on the left, the guy with the dimple in his chin. Look who else is in the frame.”

  Included in the shot was Augustus Maximus of Avonlea, who had taken Best of Show. Standing behind Augustus and beaming proudly was Carl DuCharme.

  “Were Sam and DuCharme friends? Or just acquaintances?” Jimmy asked Bella.

  “More like acquaintances. The dog show world, it’s kinda small. They’d run into each other at shows from time to time, and they’d talk, maybe have a beer together, stuff like that, talk about dogs, sports, that kind of thing. Once I even heard Sam and that DuCharme guy talking about their exercise routines. DuCharme was into weight lifting, and Sam…” Bella’s face clouded over. “Sam told him he was more into running, that he was training for the Iron Man. He even talked about his favorite running route out by the Jefferson ranch, said he ran there every morning before going to work.”

  We would probably never know the entire truth for certain. Carl DuCharme kept changing his story to put himself in the best light and his mother in the worst, but it was easy enough to imagine what had happened. Sam had seen Dr. Cameron enter through the industrial gate and immediately recognized him as the same ER doc who had once treated his torn tendon during the running of the Phoenix Marathon. Because of the press coverage in the days leading up to Blaine DuCharme’s execution, he would have known the condemned Blaine was his dog show-buddy’s brother. As the day for Blaine Three’s execution approached, Sam must have decided to ease his buddy’s pain as much as possible.

  At least these days it’s done by IV now, not the noose or the chair. Compared to that, the IV is merciful, I guess, just like putting a dog to sleep, he’d told Bella.

  And so he told Carl that the fatal drug would be administered by the skilled, efficient Dr. Arthur Cameron, hoping to alleviate any fears the man had about his brother dying by a botched and painful execution.

  Because it would be just like putting a dog to sleep.

  With that act of compassion, Sam had sealed the fate of not only the Cameron family, but his own as well, because Carl, although vicious, wasn’t stupid. He’d known that once news of Dr. Cameron’s death reached Florence, Sam would put two and two together.

  Therefore Sam had to be removed.

  After some tea and cookies, I called Madeline and told her we were ready for her to pick us up and drive us back to Scottsdale. By now, Jingo knew we weren’t going to eat the children so Bella let him out of the kitchen to see us. He slobbered on my new black Reeboks, then walked over to Jimmy and jumped into his lap.

  “That’s exactly what he used to do with Sam!” Bella said, clapping her hands.

  As Jingo turned in a circle, making himself comfortable on Jimmy’s lap, I laughed at my partner’s discomfort. He always said he wasn’t a dog person, but dogs knew better.

  “The boxers,” Bella suddenly exclaimed. “What’s going to happen to Carl DuCharme’s dogs?”

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “They’re with Arizona Boxer Rescue and there’s already a long list of people wanting to adopt them.”

  A happy ending for Tiberius, Octavius, and Augustus. Not so much for Carl and Lorraine DuCharme, since capital punishment was still popular in Arizona. Lorraine wouldn’t live long enough to be executed, though; she was suffering from esophageal cancer. Her last wish on this Earth had been to avenge her precious Blaine. She carried that out the moment when, after two hours of torture—as she bragged to Sylvie during a videotaped interview—she shot Dr. Cameron in the face.

  As for Carl, twenty years down the line he would die in the same small room in which his brother died.

  It would be just like putting a dog to sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  A week later Desert Investigations was back in business. So was my apartment and my blues collection, even the album featuring my father playing back-up guitar for John Lee Hooker. As I surveyed Desert Investigations’ new walls, new carpet, and new furniture, I breathed a sigh of relief. No more working out of Jimmy’s trailer, no more fears that my screaming nightmares would bring Jimmy to my bed. Some people don’t mind sharing their fears. I’m not one of them.

  “Didn’t you tell me Juliana Thorsson is dropping by this morning?” Jimmy asked. He had already personalized his new office computer and was doing the same for mine as I stood over our new coffeemaker, waiting for the brew to trickle into my cup.

  “Yep. Says she wants to pay her bill in person.”

  “Should be a whopper, what with all those bribes.”

  “Bribes?”

  “You bribed June-Mae to ferry you around behind Madeline’s back.”

  “That wasn’t a bribe, it was payment for services rendered.”

  “Whatever.”

  It was even nice to be bickering again. Especially knowing that at the end of the day, Jimmy would drive home to his trailer, and I would walk upstairs to my apartment.

  Life was beautiful, even though my left arm was still in a cast.

  I raised my cup to my lips. No-frills black. Just the way I liked it.

  “Here she is,” Jimmy announced.

  I turned to see Juliana enter, dressed in politician chic. Ali, blooming like a rose in Arctic Black, was with her. My morning was now perfect.

  Since Jimmy was busy with my new computer, I took Juliana into the conference room, while Ali hung back to watch Jimmy work. The kid was into that sort of thing.

  To my surprise, Juliana closed the conference room door behind us. She needed privacy to pay a bill?r />
  “Nice,” Juliana said, looking around.

  The old color scheme was gone, and the conference room was now a hymn to the desert. Sand-colored carpet, sandalwood walls, a reclaimed-pine conference table, chairs upholstered in hand-worked Pima designs. One of Jimmy’s cousins had furnished the art, a series of petroglyph-style paintings, featuring Earth Doctor, Spider Woman, and Night Singing Bird. It no longer looked like some Yuppie’s refurbbed basement; it looked like us.

  Like Desert Investigations.

  “Out with the old, in with the new,” I said. “You’re here to pay your bill, right?”

  “And to dispute a portion of it.”

  It figured. No politician could rest easy unless he—or she, as in this instance—had screwed you over one way or another.

  Ten minutes later, we arrived at a settlement which was only eighteen dollars less than the entire bill. All in all, it had been a pointless exercise in miser-dom, but if it made her happy, what the hell. “Nice doing business with you,” I said, as she wrote out the check from her private account. No campaign fund hanky-panky for her.

  She gave me a genuine smile, not her usual camera-ready one. Motherhood apparently became her. “Same here, Ms. Jones. We’ll do business again sometime. Meanwhile, I’ll be sure to recommend you to my friends.”

  Ms. Jones. So we were back to formality. Fine with me. It’s always wisest to hold a politician at arm’s length.

  “Desert Investigations can use the business,” I replied. “Especially now. Turns out our insurance policy has a larger deductible than I realized.”

  “Insurance companies. You can’t trust them, can you?”

  “Among other professions I could mention. But so much for that. How’s Ali doing?” But I didn’t need to ask the question, because the girl would be fine. Her laughter drifted through the closed conference room door as she chatted with Jimmy. She had learned to enjoy any moment of pleasure that came her way.

  “The judge signed off on the custody agreement,” Juliana continued, “which makes it easier, now that Dr. Teague has returned to Africa. For the life of me I can’t understand abandoning a blood relative for children you’ve never met.”

  Neither could I. “I hear you’re going to be a mom full time, now. Wonder what your electorate will think when they hear about the IVF, and they certainly will.”

  She laughed. “Fuck the electorate.”

  Yep, motherhood most definitely became her. I just might wind up liking the Honorable Juliana Thorsson. I already liked her kid.

  “I hear you’re moving,” I said.

  “That’s putting the cart before the horse, but yes, we’re looking at houses.”

  We. Meaning, Ali and I. The both of us.

  “Does she know yet?” I asked. “About her real relationship to you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m leading up to it. Once I’ve told Ali who I really am, there’ll be a formal adoption, which is why we’re looking for a family home, something permanent. Maybe a house closer to Kyle’s. He’s a good kid and their bond seems unshakable, but time will tell.”

  Our business finished, and a big fat check in my hand, I started to rise. I didn’t have another appointment for a while, and I wanted to spend some time chatting with Ali. I’d missed the brat.

  Juliana motioned me back down. “Sit, sit. I have something else to discuss.”

  What now? Another case?

  “It’s about Ali. She’s one of the reasons I wanted to meet you here in person, rather than simply mailing a check. That girl admires you, and she wants to know if you’ll serve as her honorary godmother. In case something ever happens to me, the political scene being what it is these days.”

  I looked down at the reclaimed pine table, the new carpet, then over at the sandalwood walls, eventually settling on one the Pima paintings. Spider Woman, who’d woven a giant blanket to protect the Earth. It gave me time to get my breath back.

  “Yeah, okay.” My reply sounded more like a croak, so I nodded my head, to make sure she understood me.

  “Excellent. I’ll tell her you said yes. In case you’re confused about the duties of a godmother, I’m sure Jimmy will look it up for you on the Internet.” For once, there was no edge to her voice; it was almost tender. “Another thing. Some advice.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The man who raped you when you were a child. He’s getting out of prison next week.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I am well aware of that.” In fact, I was planning a little welcome home party for the bastard, having already chosen the knife.

  “Here’s the advice.”

  She could give me all the advice she wanted to, but that didn’t mean I had to take it.

  “Don’t let yourself turn into Lorraine DuCharme, Lena.”

  What little breath I’d recovered left me again. I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach. “Well, thanks for the advice, but you don’t understand.”

  “Actually, I do. You’re an excellent detective, Ms. Jones, but like every other human being, you have your blind spots.”

  Considering the near-impossible case I had solved for her, I felt offended. But only slightly. The check in my hand would more than cover any insult to my ego. And after next week, I would be relieved of a grudge I’d been carrying around since I was nine.

  The knife was lovely. Part of the Interceptor series, it was appropriately called The Vindicator. Over ten inches long, with a double-edged tip for extreme penetrating capability, it had a serrated top edge for cutting and hacking. I couldn’t wait to use it, to finish the job my nine-year-old self had failed at.

  Unaware of the way my mind was working, my congresswoman continued. “You’re good at putting two-and-two together and coming up with the right answer, and God knows you’re not short on grit. But I suspect you don’t yet fully understand the human heart, at least not its softer side. Probably because of all those foster homes you were raised in—abused in, rather—you learned to be more attuned to threat than to love.”

  No argument there, so I just shrugged. The ability to guess where the next blow was coming from had kept me alive.

  So had my dreams of vengeance.

  Juliana looked down at her long, slender fingers. Although her husband had been dead for more than twenty years, she still wore her wedding ring. For her public? Or because she still loved him? I was beginning to suspect the latter.

  “Back to the idea of vengeance,” she said.

  I blinked to hear her use the very word I’d so lovingly used over and over in my dark imaginings.

  “When I came to you, Lena, I used the word ‘justice,’ remember? That’s what I wanted, justice, not vengeance. And that’s what you gave me. You arranged for Ali to be freed from custody, and you found the people who killed her family. They’re headed for prison, if Mrs. DuCharme lives long enough to ever see the inside of a cell. But for all your questioning, for all your sleuthing, you never once asked me an important question.”

  “Which was?” I was getting tired of this. I’ve never handled lectures well. I was impatient to visit with Ali. And to return to my bloody daydreams.

  “Are you…?” As if what she wanted to say was more difficult than she’d planned, like me she stared at the painting of Spider Woman, at the giant blanket sheltering the Earth. Then she focused on me again. “Are you aware that you never asked what happened to those extra eggs the fertility doctor harvested from me?”

  “Why ask when I already know the answer? Unused eggs get dumped. Everyone knows that.” Although not everyone was happy about it.

  The highlights in Juliana’s hair, usually a cold white-blond, were softened into warmth by the colors in the room. “Yes, sometimes they’re dumped. But eggs can also be stored for future use. As in my case. Several years after Ali’s birth, Alexandra decided she didn’t want the girl to be an only chi
ld, so she underwent the procedure one more time. The result was Alec.”

  “Are you saying…?”

  “Yes, Lena. The DuCharmes murdered my son.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Question: what is a mother?

  Answer: the woman who cries out for justice.

  Epilogue

  Ali

  Ali frowned at the closed door. Juliana was great, but all this secrecy was getting irritating. Whisper, whisper, whisper. What did Juliana think she was protecting her from?

  As if she needed protection, like, if she hadn’t already lived through all the hell a person could live through, finding her family dead like that, then spending all that time in juvie with the gangster girls threatening to kill her every day.

  Yet whisper, whisper, whisper.

  So random.

  Ali had, like, a whole list of questions she wanted to ask Lena, mostly things like how you become a private investigator, do you have to be a cop first, or can you just go out and do it? Ha! Just do it, like the Nike commercials. Just do it!

  Not a bad way to live. That’s what she wanted. To be a private investigator.

  Just like Lena.

  Ali smiled, and sure enough, that Indian guy, Jimmy Sisiwan, thought she was smiling at him because he smiled back, all white teeth and brown skin. That was okay. He was a good-looking dude, a hunk, even, with that big curvy tattoo on his forehead. Tribal, that’s what it was. Not tribal like some of the lame-ass phony tats the kids at school wore, but real-deal tribal, like old Indian tribal. Pima, that was his tribe. Cool dudes, those Pimas.

  She looked down at her new watch. If Juliana didn’t hurry up in there, she wouldn’t have time to have a nice long talk with Lena about becoming a private detective like her someday, and helping people like she did, because helping was important, maybe the most important thing in the world.

  But if they didn’t stop yakking…Well, then Ali and Juliana would have to rush straight out to see that real estate lady and it would be rush rush rush and Ali hated to rush. This house might be THE ONE, Juliana had said, all on a single floor, four bedrooms, three baths, new kitchen, big pool, a block from Kyle’s house and all that crap. Juliana was so fussy, she was all “our house has to have this and our house has to have that,” but all Ali needed was a yard for Misty and to be close to Kyle and most of all a house that didn’t look anything like her old house, the house where…