Desert Run

by Betty Webb

  When five o’clock came, Jimmy headed toward his truck and I went upstairs to see if a Leave It to Beaver marathon might improve my mood. At least the characters on the TVLand reruns were happy.

  ***

  On Saturday, I was still in a funk, so I decided not to go down to the office just to watch Jimmy type. Instead, I nuked a Sausage ’N Egg Hot Pocket, turned on CNN, and sat back to see who else in the world was having a bad day. The Midwest, apparently. A serial killer was working his way through Kansas and Nebraska, and in Minnesota, two state senators were arrested after throwing punches at a Wal-Mart opening. I then switched to the FOX news channel, only to find the talking head du jour extolling the virtues of the latest Hollywood water diet. I tried TVLand again, but the Beav wasn’t on, just some rerun of a ’50s Western. Since I wasn’t in the mood for singing cowboys, I switched the TV off and roamed the apartment aimlessly for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do with myself.

  I needed to relax, but had no idea how to accomplish that. I could read more of Gunter Hoenig’s journals, but they would probably just stress me further. Or I could read a book. After glancing through my bookshelves, I realized I had read them all, some of them twice. For a few minutes I thought about going over to the Scottsdale Library, this time just for fun, but decided against it. I’d just wind up gravitating to the Criminal Justice section like I usually did, and that definitely wouldn’t be relaxing.

  Maybe I should call someone, just to chat. Warren, perhaps. But thinking about the conversation I needed to have with him made me more tense than ever, so I dismissed that possibility. I could always call my foster father and find out if enough money had been raised yet to bring Rada Tesema’s family to the U.S., but I figured I already knew the answer. If the Rev had been successful, he would have informed me. Besides, on Saturdays he always switched off his phone to work on his sermons, and only made call-backs in case of emergencies. Frustrated, I opened up my address book and went through the list of girlfriends I’d accumulated over the years, but soon realized that all were living lives almost as complicated as mine. Finally realizing that I didn’t know anyone who could provide me with mindless conversation, I broke down and hit Captain Kryzinski’s number on my speed dial.

  “Yeah?” He sounded much the same as always. Gruff, abrupt. It meant nothing.

  “How goes the packing?”

  After an uncomfortable silence, he said, “Lena, I shipped everything out three days ago. Don’t you remember me telling you I leave for New York tomorrow?”

  Hearts, being attached to a human being’s upper left quadrant by a network of tendons and muscle, aren’t supposed to fall, but I’d swear mine did. “Tomorrow?” I barely recognized my own voice.

  A sigh. “Yeah, tomorrow. My plane leaves at 8:30 a.m.”

  There was so much I wanted to say, but all I could do was ask, “Do you have a ride?”

  “Cab’s gonna be here at seven sharp.”

  “Cancel it. I’ll take you to the airport. It’s the least I can do.”

  “You sure? You weren’t all that, ah, supportive about my decision the last time we talked.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “See ya then, kid. But if you don’t show…” With that undefined threat hanging in the air, he hung up.

  I sat there, thinking about how much I’d miss him, both personally and professionally. Then I shrugged, went into the bedroom, picked up Gunter Hoenig’s journals, and carried them back into the living room. Who needed to relax?

  For the next few hours, I sat on the sofa reading and re-reading various journal entries, still puzzled by Gunter’s ongoing guilt over Joyce Bollinger’s death. If his writings were accurate, he had tried to save her, so how could he consider her death his fault? His constant references to her pale blue eyes made me almost believe that he had half-fallen in love with her, which was a ridiculous theory, given the condition she would have been in at the time. But Gunter had been a young man. He had spent most of his war years stuffed into the hull of a submarine with nothing but other men for company, only to eventually wind up in a prison camp surrounded yet again by nothing but men. Joyce Bollinger was quite possibly the first woman he’d seen in years, and from what I’d heard, she had been extraordinarily beautiful, maybe even beautiful enough to impress a young man so deeply that he never forgot her or her children.

  Ah, how different men must have been in those days.

  As I went through the journals this time, instead of trying to keep them in some semblance of order I set aside the entries relating directly to the Ernst case, making a series of neat piles on my new cactus wood coffee table.

  1945:

  I will always remember those pale eyes, their pleas to me.

  1950:

  But I guess I will never see Josef again. Like me, he probably abandoned Das Kapitan.

  1978:

  Kapitan still lives. This can not be allowed.

  I stared at the pages, thinking. Then I got up and paced for a while. Something…

  When I sat back down and went through the pages I’d selected again, an idea that had only been half-formed finally coalesced.

  Could Gunter Hoenig still be alive?

  Was it possible that he hadn’t, after all, died in that Canadian car crash?

  I snatched up the phone again and called Jimmy’s direct line. “Look, I know you’re trying to finish up loose ends, but could you please do me a favor?”

  A sigh. “What is it now?”

  “I want you to follow up on that Canadian car crash which supposedly killed Gunter and his wife.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “Trust me. Something’s not copacetic there.” As soon as he agreed, I hung up before he could change his mind.

  Things were becoming clearer. If Gunter Hoenig was still alive, he would be in his eighties, but as I had already seen with Tommy Bollinger, old didn’t necessarily mean helpless. Still, if Gunter had killed Ernst, why would he feel the need to kill Fay Harris? And Harry Caulfield? I thought about it for a while, then came up with an answer. Fay, who had hoarded all her unused notes from Escape Across the Desert, might have reached the same conclusion I’d just reached—that Gunter was alive and living in the Phoenix area. If so, she would have recognized that she was sitting on a story which might rival the Pulitzer-nominated piece she’d written on human trafficking. As for Harry, even into his eighties he maintained a cop’s mind and heart. If he had begun to suspect that Gunter was still around and might have murdered Das Kapitan, he would contact the authorities. Unless someone stopped him.

  Granted, in his journals Gunter came across as a gentle man, especially given his romantic writings about his golden-haired wife, his joy in his son and grandchildren, and his cute-but-awful drawings of animals. But when driven to extremes, even gentle men could do cruel things. If Gunter had driven the speed boat which almost killed Erik Ernst, what else might he have done?

  I looked at the journal pages some more, shifting them from one pile to another. As I was transferring all of Gunter’s drawings to the same stack, my attention was caught by one in particular—the clumsy line drawing I’d puzzled over days earlier without success. Deciding to solve this one mystery, at least, I studied it carefully. On the top left of the page were two animals of indeterminate species, possibly a jackrabbit and a frog. Below the frog were two stick figures. To their right was some spindly object which I was almost certain was a tree.

  The amateurism of these figures was nothing compared to the big mess in the center of the page, a series of wobbly but concentric circles. A nest of snakes? I started to laugh at such an outrageous guess, then remembered that in breeding season, some snakes do slither into a dark lair together and form a tightly packed lump called a “snake ball.” But if Gunter had drawn such a thing, why hadn’t he bothered to give them little dots for eyes like he had for all his other animals? I turned the drawing upside down, then sideways. Deciding the lines probably weren’t snakes after all and that
I was wasting my time, I went ahead and placed the drawing on top of the others.

  By now, I’d been sitting in one position too long, and my canal-bruised muscles were stiff. To get my circulation going, I decided to rearrange my new furniture. I moved the cactus wood sofa to a spot underneath the living room window, but when I sat down on it again, I could no longer see out. Duh. So I shoved the sofa against the opposite wall, where it merely looked stupid. Frustrated, I tried angling it kitty-corner so that it faced the window and my television, but that looked even dumber. After an hour of furniture pushing and dragging, I gave up and returned everything to its original position.

  All that furniture hauling wasn’t exercise enough to relax my muscles, so I went out for a slow, careful run. After logging only five miles, I limped back home and moved the furniture around some more. Is this what owning furniture does to you? Turns you into an idiot?

  Disgusted with myself, I took a quick shower, dressed in a less grungy T-shirt and jeans, and drove over to the nearby multiplex to see the latest Clint Eastwood movie. It turned out to be a poor choice, with a body count almost as high as that in the Erik Ernst case.

  I should have opted for the Disney.

  But on the way home, an idea occurred to me, and I sped up, almost catching the attention of a bored motorcycle cop lurking in the parking lot of the Olive Garden Restaurant. I slowed down, but only until I was out of his sight. Then I put pedal to the metal and raced all the way to my apartment.

  Reeking of popcorn and JuJu Beans, I ran up the stairs, unlocked the locks, and rushed to the coffee table, where I’d left Gunter’s journals separated into various stacks.

  I stared at the top drawing again.

  Not snakes.

  A topographical map.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  On my way to take Captain Kryzinski to Sky Harbor the next morning, I left a note on Jimmy’s desk reiterating how important it was that he follow up on Gunter’s supposed death in the Canadian car crash. Then, secure in the knowledge that Warren was an early riser, I called him, but when he picked up, he sounded every bit as snappish as yesterday. Our phone connection was foul, too.

  “I’m in a hurry here, Lena, so be quick.” Hiss, hiss. Was that his phone, or mine?

  “Are you on set?” A hollow background noise that made its way through the hissing didn’t sound right for either his motel room or Papago Park.

  “No, I’m…Damn! Gotta go.” A click and he was gone.

  I stood by my desk staring at the phone, tempted to call him back and give him a piece of my mind. But when I checked my watch, I saw that only by exceeding the speed limit could I drive over to Captain Kryzinski’s place, pick him up, and get him to the airport in time for the slow slog through Sky Harbor’s long security lines. Pushing Warren’s rudeness to the back of my mind, I grabbed the file folder containing the Erik Ernst case notes and ran out the office door, pausing only to lock it behind me.

  When I reached Kryzinski’s house he was waiting at the curb, wearing a tacky brown suit and an ugly bolo tie. He had a frown on his face and his cell phone was in his hand. “I was about to call a cab.”

  “Sorry. I had some last minute business to take care of.”

  “At seven on Sunday morning?”

  I didn’t want to go into it. “You have everything you need?” Only a carry-on bag little larger than a woman’s purse sat by his feet. Not much to show for twenty years in Scottsdale.

  He picked it up and climbed into the Jeep. “I told you I already shipped everything.”

  “Even your clothes? Maybe you’d better go back into the house and…”

  “Lena, let’s get started or I will call that cab.”

  Feeling more miserable than ever, I let the clutch out and aimed the Jeep toward Sky Harbor. The traffic was heavy for a Sunday and Kryzinski back-seat drove all the way, but we arrived at the airport with forty-five minutes to spare. Kryzinski wanted me to let him off at the curb, but I refused and found a spot in the Terminal Four parking garage. Despite his protests, I followed him into the terminal itself.

  All the while, his cranky expression became crankier. “This is silly. They won’t let you past security. Why don’t you go back to the office, since you’re so determined to work on Sunday?”

  “Humor me.” How could I tell him how much I’d miss him, that when he left he’d be taking with him some of the happiest years of my life, and that I wanted to put off our inevitable parting until the very last moment? So I didn’t tell him. But as soon as he reached the first security check-point, I found myself hugging him, pressing my face against his chest.

  “Please don’t go,” I whispered to his bolo tie.

  He pushed me away gently and patted my cheek. “Sweetie, it’s time for you to start living your life.”

  Before I could tell him not to call me Sweetie, he turned and was gone.

  I spent the next few minutes in the nearby ladies’ room, drying my eyes. You’d think that a childhood spent saying good-by to one foster parent after another would inure me to this sort of thing—and it had, for a while—but therapy had begun to dissolve the scar tissue around my heart. Silently I cursed my short-sighted therapist, who’d grown up in a large, loving Hispanic family. What the hell did she know about serial good-byes?

  Face repaired, I emerged from the ladies’ room only to suffer another shock. Standing where I’d last seen Kryzinski were Warren and Lindsey, she leaning against him in the same way I’d leaned against my boss. After the security guard handed back her ID, Lindsey turned, threw her arms around Warren’s neck, and gave him a long, hard kiss. But unlike Kryzinski did me, Warren didn’t push her away.

  My mood must have shown on my face because when I arrived back at Desert Investigations to find Jimmy still hard at work, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything’s peachy. How about you?”

  “The same.” He gave me a smile that held little humor. I noticed that although he’d dressed with more care than the other day, he still looked rough. Especially in his eyes.

  “Poor Jimmy. The house-hunting must be doing you in.”

  He sighed. “No more hunting. Yesterday we made an offer on the condo.”

  It was probably the size of a mouse trap. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? You two can finally get settled?” As if he wasn’t already settled in his reservation trailer with the prayer lodge in back.

  “Sure, after we buy all new furniture. We’re supposed to hit the stores again today. Esther’s picking me up around noon.”

  “Gonna buy some Persian Pink stuff, eh? Wonderful. I’m sure your new condo will look, ah, interesting.” Since I had nothing to say to Esther because of the changes she was putting both me and my partner through, I’d make certain to be somewhere else at noon. Refusing to meet his eyes, I sat down at my desk and started going through the Erik Ernst case files. With increasing puzzlement, I reread my notes on the interviews with everyone involved: Rada Tesema, Tommy Bollinger, Fay Harris, Harry Caulfield, Frank Oberle, and Ian Mantz. Slowly, I began comparing them to the old newspaper articles I’d printed out at the library and the information I’d gleaned from Gunter Hoenig’s journals. When I was through, I sat there frowning. Someone was lying.

  As I re-examined the Harry Caulfield notes for the umpteenth time, I paid no attention to the hum of the printer until Jimmy called over, “Lena, I have something for you.”

  I looked up. “Such as?”

  “That note you left me, asking me to come up with more information on that Canadian car crash? The one which supposedly killed Gunter Hoenig?”

  “What do you mean, supposedly?” But I could guess what he was about to tell me.

  He didn’t disappoint. “There was no death certificate issued for him, either in Canada or here.”

  “But the Calgary Sun article said, ‘an elderly couple from Phoenix.’”

  “Newspapers say lots of things, then they run the truth on the corrections page next day.” He ha
nded me a printout from the Calgary Sun dated September 27, 1999.

  In an article yesterday about a thirty-two car collision on a highway near Didsbury, the Sun misidentified the home town of two of the victims. Killed in the crash were a couple from Phenix City, Alabama, not Phoenix, Arizona, as our article previously stated. The victims’ names are being withheld pending notification of their relatives.

  “Want to see the next day’s article? It identifies the dead couple as Nathan and Emma Lassen. Of Phenix City, Alabama.”

  “Thanks, but that’s not necessary.” Someone—probably Gunter’s son—had inserted the original misleading article into the journals in order to convince me that Gunter Hoenig was dead. To disguise his manipulation of truth, he’d also stuffed in all those loose recipes and drawings.

  But had he, in his rush to cover his father’s tracks, realized what one of those drawings portrayed?

  It didn’t matter. Since Ian Mantz had taken so many pains to make me believe that his father was dead, it meant Gunter was still alive. There was also a good chance that Gunter had finally succeeded where he had once failed—at the murder of Erik Ernst. I felt a brief stab of disappointment. I had liked the Gunter I’d met in his journals, the gentle man who loved animals and children. I could allow him his viciousness toward Erik Ernst—a killer himself—but not toward Fay and Harry.

  Those deaths were inexcusable.

  ***

  When I next looked at my watch, I discovered it was past ten. On the chance that Ian Mantz and family weren’t in church, I gave him a call. His wife told me he was busy and would have to call me back, but I insisted he come to the phone. “Tell him I want to talk to him about the death of an elderly couple named Nathan and Emma Lassen in Didsbury, Alberta.”

  “Didsbury? What…?” Her voice rose in alarm.