by Webb, Betty
“Big Mr. Zach?”
“Little Mr. Zach’s father. He died with his wife in a terrible wreck, right down the road from here. A tire blew, and their car rolled into the canyon and burned. The doors, they were smashed in and Big Mr. Zach and Mrs. Zach, the poor things, they could not get out. We heard the noise and we ran to them, but.…” She shrugged her shoulders. “Miss Gloriana grieved so hard I thought she would die, too. She walk around like a zombie for months, not caring about nothing.”
I remembered Gloriana’s stern face. A buttress against pain?
Rosa continued. “When she start that magazine, I was so glad. It gave her something to think about, something else to love. Then it went wrong, like so much of what she do. But she could not see because she in the grip of the Fever.”
“The Fever?”
“That is what I called it, the Fever. It is when Miss Gloriana begin to do things that start off good, but keeps doing and doing until they turn bad. When Miss Gloriana in the grip of the Fever, she doesn’t notice nothing. She was like that with this house, always the Fever for her Hacienda.”
Fever was as good a word to describe obsessive-compulsive behavior as any other I’d heard.
“I’d like to see the storeroom where Owen slept, if I may.”
Rosa waved a hand. “Little Mr. Zach said show you whatever you want.”
Little Mr. Zach. I smiled, wondering if she called him that to his face, then decided that she probably did. Old habits die hard.
The storeroom was just that. A room to store things, mainly broken lamps, odd pieces of china, and boxes. A cot had been shoved into one corner, a set of barbells in the other, which might explain Owen’s buff bod. Considering his complaints about overwork, I thought it odd that Gloriana would allow him the opportunity to work out.
I poked around in the room for a few minutes, finding nothing more of interest, then had Rosa lead me to the second floor.
The upstairs rooms proved in little better shape than those on the first. Stucco crumbled, windows rotted, carpets frayed. Several of the bedrooms had been turned into display rooms for Gloriana’s various collections of Revolutionary pewter, film noir posters, miniature tea sets, and Route 66 memorabilia. One room, not yet filled, held sketches and paintings of Thomas Jefferson and his home at Monticello, as well as several objects I couldn’t put a name to. I did admire, though, the large soup tureen which stood in lonely glory on a gilt-edged table.
Farther down the hall were two more rooms housing an extraordinary collection of Barbie dolls, most of them still in their shiny cardboard and cellophane boxes. What a pack rat. Everything from the sublime to the absurd.
Turning away from the dolls, I said to Rosa, “Had she always collected like this?”
“Not so much before Mr. Michael died. This Fever came after.”
A reaction to grief, then. Apparently even monsters could feel sadness. “I’m ready to see Gloriana’s personal rooms now.” The lair of the dragon was preferable to this.
Gloriana’s bedroom would have suited Queen Elizabeth, if the Queen had been down on her luck. The canopied poster bed in the middle of the huge room looked like it was about to collapse, and a tall oak wardrobe canted sharply to one side.
But the view was a killer. Standing at one of the three matching floor-to-ceiling windows, I could see acacia, creosote, and saguaro rolling all the way to the sage-stippled rise of Mummy Mountain. A veritable Eden. Gloriana must have enjoyed the view, too, because to the side of one of the windows stood a tripod with a Pentax Spotmatic fitted with a long lens perched atop it. As I looked around the bedroom, though, I saw only one photograph, that of a handsome, silver-haired man with lines of humor bracketing his mouth. The picture stood on the nightstand in an antique silver frame, angled so that anyone lying in the bed could see it.
“Mr. Michael,” Rosa said. “She never forget him.”
Studying the photograph more closely, though, I thought I saw a trace of cruelty in the man’s eyes. What had been the true relationship between Gloriana and her husband? But since he was long dead, it hardly mattered.
I turned back to the window. Directly below, someone had been in the process of constructing a patio, the centerpiece of which was a conical adobe fireplace. It seemed odd to me that Gloriana would begin a new project when there was so much work to be done to keep the old house from collapsing around her ears.
I pointed to the camera. “Was Gloriana into photography?”
Rosa didn’t answer right away, choosing instead to smooth the ancient velvet spread on the canopy bed. But the spread couldn’t possibly have been made any smoother, not even if she whipped out a steam iron. Obviously, my question made her uncomfortable.
“Tell me about the camera, Rosa.”
She straightened up and gave me a nervous smile. “Miss Gloriana used it to take pictures.”
Well, duh. “Pictures of what?”
“Things.”
“Such as?”
“Deer. Coyotes. You know, animals. They come out of the canyon, right up to the house.” She began smoothing the bedspread again.
Then where were the photographs? I hated to bully the woman, but I needed to find out what she was hiding. “Don’t you remember what Mr. Zach said, Rosa? Show me Miss Gloriana’s photography. All of it.”
The hands smoothing the bedspread began to tremble. “Little Mr. Zach, he don’t know about this. If he did, he not let you look.”
What was the problem? A collection of photographs so poorly done that they made Rosa cringe in embarrassment for her employer? I left the window and strode toward the double doors on the other side of the room. I had taken it for granted they led to a master sitting room, but perhaps I’d been wrong.
Rosa followed closely behind. “Miss Gloriana no let me clean in there, she do it herself. She say it her private place!” She sounded breathless, frightened.
“Calm down, Rosa. I won’t damage anything.”
I opened the well-oiled doors to find not a sitting room, but a photography studio mounted with surprisingly expert black-and-white prints. No embarrassment for Rosa here. On one wall were landscapes: large, sun-splashed images of giant saguaros, roiling storms above the Grand Canyon, eagles caught in mid-flight.
The prints on the facing wall at first didn’t appear to have any theme at all, until I remembered Gloriana’s interest in genealogy: a large stone with the numbers 1620 carved into it—Plymouth Rock, probably; the houses and outbuildings of Monticello; and a host of graves, graves, and more graves, most of them situated in cemeteries framed by huge oaks dripping with Spanish moss.
“Did she travel to all these places just to take pictures of the graveyards of her ancestors?”
“Yes,” Rosa replied. “When Miss Gloriana have the Fever, she do anything.”
Yet another wall had been devoted to portraits, most of them posed by the tall window I recognized from downstairs: more photographs of Gloriana’s husband; one of a furious-looking teenage girl in a headband and tie-dyed shirt; several of a handsome young couple dappled in morning light; then one of a little boy with haunted eyes wearing a funereal black suit. Zach.
“That her family,” Rosa said. “She take the pictures herself. So. You seen it all. We go back downstairs now.” She walked hopefully toward the double doors, motioning for me to follow.
“Wait.” I wasn’t through looking. The photographs that interested me most were the three self-portraits on the family wall. One showed Gloriana as a young woman, smiling into a mirror, pointing a camera. Pale eyes, pale hair, the glacial beauty of a young Grace Kelly. Then, Gloriana at around forty, smiling into a different mirror, holding a different camera. Fine lines outlined her eyes and mouth, but her beauty remained essentially intact. The last picture, unflatteringly lit, showed Gloriana as an aged ruin. She no longer smiled into the mirror. Instead, her expression was empty of any emotion at all. The desert had done its work on her face, sucking the moisture out of her skin, turning it into
crackled parchment.
I had to marvel at Gloriana’s blunt honesty. It had taken courage to turn such an unforgiving lens on herself, to accept and document the ever-deepening lines and sagging flesh. Had her husband shared her courage? But he had died before his own beautiful face had begun to disintegrate.
“I said we go back downstairs now,” Rosa called from the doorway.
“Not yet,” I told her. I’d once taken a photography class at ASU, only to find that I had neither the talent nor the dedication for the craft, but my studies had given me the knowledge to understand what this room told me. The photography equipment in the studio was anachronistic. A large collection of cameras sat in glass-fronted cabinets: a couple of Leicas, a Rolleiflex, a Kodak Retina, some Nikons, and several brands I had not run across. Probably more than a hundred cameras in all, but not one digital unit among the lot.
“Is that the darkroom?” I pointed to a closed door on the far side of the room.
Rosa glared at me from the doorway. “What you mean, darkroom?”
I waved my hand at the cameras. “Gloriana was a wet room photographer, and I’m betting she developed her own prints.”
“It nothing but trays and machines and chemicals in that place. Smells real bad.”
I bet it did. “Show me.”
With a disapproving grumble, Rosa came back into the studio, fished a key out of her pocket, and unlocked the door.
“You should be ashamed,” she said over my shoulder as I shoved my way past her. “Nosing into Miss Gloriana’s private life.”
I had worse things to be ashamed of, so I didn’t apologize. Besides, after I’d pushed my way into the matt black room, past the long table crowned by a Litz enlarger, I was struck dumb by the dozens and dozens of prints clipped to several clotheslines to dry. Prints that explained the tripod at her bedroom window.
Photograph after photograph of Owen.
Owen picking up litter, his long dark hair shading his face. Owen, stripped to the waist, skin gleaming with sweat as he hoed weeds. Owen troweling cement onto the new patio outside. Owen hauling tiles in a wheelbarrow, bulked-up muscles stretching his skin taut. Owen sitting on a boulder in the back of the house, staring up at the face of Mummy Mountain. Owen urinating into the canyon, a pale tip of penis protruding from his dark jeans.
Owen. Gloriana’s latest Fever.
Chapter 12
More interviews at Desert Shadows Resort turned up no new information, so I shed no tears when Captain Kryzinski finally let the SOBOP attendees return home.
My investigation proceeded anyway.
Two days after the last Californian climbed aboard Southwest Airlines, I headed for the Arizona State Prison complex in Florence. There are two ways to get there from Scottsdale, the quick way and the scenic way. Since the wildflowers were in bloom and the morning air so crisp you could almost touch it, I opted for the scenic route. Highway 60 to Florence Junction, then south on 79 to the old town itself.
Out-of-staters who visit Arizona in spring usually go away believing it to be Paradise. On 60 alone, they view purple mountains’ majesty along with a riot of primary color, courtesy of the three-foot stalks of crimson monkey flower erupting from a carpet of yellow bottle primrose. These were accented by orange desert mariposa and the purple redmaids creeping near the tall green saguaros. Myself, I was partial to the more subtle oxeye daisy, with its creamy center peeping out from its surrounding white petals. A common flower, but unlike Gloriana, I was a common gal, and proud of it.
Then why my fixation on the past? Easy. Denials to Dr. Gomez notwithstanding, most past-obliterated adoptees and orphans want to know more about themselves. Even if you discovered you sprang from a long line of horse thieves, drunkards, and whores, you’d at least have the certainty of knowing the worst.
Knowledge is freedom.
Look at the Alden-Taylors. They obviously knew everything they needed to know about themselves. And it showed. When I had talked to Zach, he had exuded that casual self-confidence knowledge always brings. He knew where he’d come from, and didn’t doubt where he was going.
However, self-confidence isn’t everything, is it? The photographs in Gloriana’s darkroom proved that even knowing your ancestors’ names couldn’t keep you from making a mess of your life. Neither could extraordinary beauty. Beauty fades, and always betrays you in the end. But does desire?
At the end of her life, as the final remnants of her beauty fell away, Gloriana desired Owen, a married man who probably saw her only as his employer, not as a woman with soft, giving flesh. What shared emotion could ever pass between them, what meaningful conversation? Her words to him could have been little more than—Owen, move that rock; Owen, fix that fence; Owen, build the patio….
So I can take pictures of your naked back.
I wondered if Owen had known the depths of Gloriana’s obsession.
And if so, had he done anything about it?
***
After little more than an hour’s drive, the cotton farms on the outskirts of Florence began sprinkling the landscape, and soon after that, I approached the town itself. Looming above it were the heart-numbing towers of Arizona State Prison. I could almost sense the hate and despair seeping through the reinforced concrete walls. It did no good to remember that some inmates were here because of me.
I parked in the visitor’s lot and began the long clearance process to the sub-complex known as Death Row. My calls to my friends in the State Attorney’s office had gained me access, but it still took more than an hour—and one uncomfortable, too-intimate pat-down—before I was allowed to clear the holding area and enter the Death Row visitor’s room.
Barry Fetzner looked nothing like I remembered. When I had worked his arrest, he had been clean-cut enough to pass for normal, but those days had vanished. The sides of Fetzner’s shaved head revealed a wealth of new tattoos. Intertwined snakes wrapped around his skull from ear to ear, and a blood-colored swastika the size of a saucer blanketed his bare dome. Running up his thick neck were the double lightning bolts I’d seen on the goons up at WestWorld and in Cave Creek. His new look left no doubt that Fetzner was a full member of the Aryan Brotherhood.
His sleeved-out arms were variations on the same theme. Tattooed all the way down to his wrists, the illustrations included more snakes, several naked women, Germanic-looking eagles, and a horrifyingly accurate lynching scene. I had to look back up at Fetzner’s nightmare face simply to gain relief. But his eyes hadn’t changed. Jittery, never resting for long on any person or object, always skittering around the room as if on alert for some unseen enemy.
Not too different from my own eyes, actually.
“It’s been a long time, Officer Jones,” God’s Avenger said with a broad smile.
I smiled back. “I left the force some time ago, Mr. Fetzner. I’m on my own now.”
“So I hear.” Still the smile. “You must still have friends in the D.A.’s office, or you wouldn’t be here. They screen my visitors pretty good these days.”
All the smiles were beginning to creep me out, so I erased mine. “I’ve kept my contacts up. I came down because I was hoping you can help me. I’m working a case.…”
“Why should I help you?”
I gave him the only answer that would stand the remotest chance with this mad creature. “Just for the hell of it.”
His white-toothed maw opened and I heard a sound like two garbage trucks colliding. Fetzner was laughing. “Oh, I like you, I do, Officer Jones!” His laugh was so flagrant with madness that I marveled he had been judged sane enough to stand trial.
His laughter stopped so suddenly that I had to catch my breath. But his smile remained. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll help you. Just for the hell of it. After all, Hell and I are intimate friends, aren’t we?”
Fetzner leaned across the table, and I had to force myself not to lean away from him.
“What do you want to know, Officer Jones?”
There was no point beati
ng around the bush. “Why did you write Gloriana Alden-Taylor and tell her to cancel publication of your book?”
Fetzner didn’t reply right away. He kept staring at me with that horrible smile. Then, in an almost-whisper, he said, “Even serial killers have a code of ethics.” The garbage truck laugh again. “I discovered that Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor was not a Believer.”
“Not a believer? What do you mean?”
He looked at the ceiling and for the first time I noticed the tattoo under his chin: a cockroach crawling out of a bleeding wound. “You heard what I said. Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor was not a Believer. Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor was not a soldier in the Army of Righteousness.”
I knew better than to laugh. “I grant you that Gloriana didn’t wear fatigues and combat boots, but judging from Patriot’s Blood’s publications, I think you could at least call her a camp follower.”
“A witty but unperceptive comment, Officer Jones. You are so wrong. Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor did not believe in the superiority of the true Aryan. Like a true agent of Satan, her belief was in the almighty dollar.”
“I don’t think.…” I stopped, noticing for the first time how pointed his white teeth were. Somehow I kept from visibly shuddering.
“No, you don’t think,” he continued. “But I do. Because I have so much time to think, I finally figured out the truth. That Gloriana Whore Alden-Taylor would publish any lie as long as it made money for her.”
I remembered Patriot’s Blood’s book titles, the games, the CDs. “I’m not sure you’re right there, Mr. Fetzner. Her publications all seem to have a certain, ah, slant.”
“American stain, American pain!” he howled. He slapped his manacled hand on the table. The two corrections officers guarding him moved forward a few inches.
With an effort, I kept my voice steady. “I don’t understand. What pain? Yours?”
His voice returned to normal. “It’s a book title, you idiot.”
