Forcing Amaryllis

by Louise Ure

  He answered on the third ring and agreed to come by at seven thirty that evening. At exactly half past the hour a beige Taurus rolled into the driveway and parked behind my car. I had the feeling he’d been waiting down the block for the right time to arrive.

  Giordano had the squat, sturdy build of a barrel cactus, and wore a bolo tie and a bad hairpiece. None of it did much for his image. The string tie, held together at his neck with a black square of onyx or plastic, looked like a relic from the airport souvenir shop. And the toupee, several shades darker than the gray at his temples, reminded me of a tree dying from the roots up. He blew his nose into a white handkerchief as he shambled up the walk.

  “Sorry,” he said, stuffing the handkerchief into a back pocket, “it’s all this back and forth from air-conditioned buildings to the heat outside and back again. You’d think I would have gotten used to that after all my years in Chicago.” He sniffled once.

  “You’re from Chicago?”

  “Oh, I’ve been here almost ten years already.” He waved away the years. “Shouldn’t keep calling myself a Chicagoan.”

  I ushered him inside. “You didn’t say what you wanted to talk about. How can I help you?”

  He looked around the room for his seating options, and seeing only two, chose the armchair in front of the TV. I sat on the rump-sprung couch.

  “It’s about Miranda Lang. She says you came to see her over the weekend and that you may have some information about her rape last year.” He dabbed at his nose.

  Thirteen months and twenty-five days now, but who’s counting.

  “She says you may know of a similar attack.”

  I’d have to be careful. I couldn’t disclose any information about Cates or my association with his trial. But I could certainly tell Giordano about Amy.

  “I don’t know anything specific. My sister was raped and maimed in an attack in Nogales seven years ago. She attempted suicide soon afterward and had head injuries that have left her in a coma. She never filed a police report, but lots of the details she told me about were similar to Miranda’s.” I clasped my hands in front of me, the perfect example of a helpful citizen-witness, then took a sip of water.

  “How did you know about Ms. Lang?” He held a pen poised above a small spiral notebook.

  I almost spit out the water. How could I have known about Miranda? I didn’t want to get Enrique in trouble, but I couldn’t say I read about it in the paper. They never use the names of rape victims in the news. I wiped at the drop of water at my lip to buy myself time.

  “I don’t remember. I think someone at a bar told me about her. It was a friend of hers, or a friend of a friend. Something like that.”

  He raised one eyebrow and jotted a short note that could have been a checkmark or a question mark or the first line in a game of Hangman.

  “And why have you started this investigation now? Has your sister’s condition improved? Or have you learned new facts? After all, it’s been seven years.”

  What could I say that wouldn’t lead back to Cates? I hesitated, then gave him the truth.

  “It’s hung over me like a shadow for seven years. I feel like I was the one he tried to kill, and I’m tired of living like a victim. I want him to pay for this, and if that means I have to go after the facts in Amy’s rape, I’m ready to do it now.” I nodded twice to demonstrate my resolve and sat up straighter. It may not have been the whole truth, but it was certainly a big part of it.

  He waited three long beats, then, satisfied with my answer, flipped to a clean page in his notebook. “Tell me as much as you can about your sister’s attack. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do much with it after all this time, but it can’t hurt to take a look.”

  I forgave him for the plastic bolo tie and the bad toupee.

  When I got to work the next day, I shut the office door for privacy and made two phone calls. The first was to the hospital in Nogales to see if they had run a rape kit the night I brought Amy in. It took a lot of cajoling to get them to agree to look up seven-year-old records and then to provide that information to someone other than the patient herself. I explained about Amy’s comatose condition and then referred them to the “person responsible for payment” line at the bottom of their form. I guess they decided that if you provide the money, you’re entitled to the information.

  They said it would take hours to look up the records and agreed to call me back when they were available. I hoped there was something to find. If they had done a rape kit, it would be invaluable. The information it contained, and the doctor’s supporting statements, could verify that an attack had taken place. And if there was a semen sample and it matched Cates, I could prove he was the rapist.

  The second call I made was to the DNA lab where I’d sent Amy’s clothing. They had completed the test and confirmed that they had two separate DNA profiles from the material.

  “Let me get this straight. Traces from the blouse and the skirt have the same DNA as the hair in the brush I sent you.” I had included Amy’s brush from the nursing home, thinking that it was one way we could match at least one sample of the DNA. Okay, Amy’s DNA was on all three items: skirt, blouse, and hairbrush. Makes sense.

  “Yes,” the lab technician replied. “But we found a second DNA from saliva on the denim strips as well.”

  I gave a silent cheer. Maybe this was the real proof I needed. I pictured the squalid Nogales motel room. If Amy’s attacker had pulled on the strips of cloth with his teeth as he was tightening them, or even if he’d drooled on them, it might have trapped saliva or skin cells in the denim.

  “I don’t know much about DNA. Is it a clear profile? Is there enough there to analyze?”

  “It’s a small sample, but that’s fine. We use a process called PCR—it’s kind of like molecular xeroxing—to complete the sequence. Glad the cloth was stored in a paper bag and not plastic. It hadn’t deteriorated to a point where we couldn’t use it,” he said. “What we don’t have is a person to match it to.”

  I knew how to fix that.

  16

  Cates was in jail, so I had no real reason to be afraid of going to his house. But sometimes the lion’s den is just as frightening without the lion in it.

  I took a deep breath for courage. If I had a prayer of finding out whether Cates had been in the hotel room with Amy, I had to get a sample of his DNA to the lab.

  His Tucson house was on the near north side of town and was buffered from the city’s noise and traffic by several acres of desert vegetation. I turned into a narrow driveway that was marked by a galvanized tin mailbox and followed the meandering dirt road between creosote bushes for about a hundred yards.

  It was one of the original, rammed-earth adobes with small graceful windows set almost three feet deep in the earthen walls. It was a house that would stay cool in the summer and warm you all winter long. I coveted it.

  Beams as big around as my waist protruded from the roofline, and a scarlet bougainvillea ascended the wall like a wisp of red smoke to meet them. Crickets chirped in the bushes, and a sprinkler ratcheted a watery spray someplace in the back; otherwise the house was silent. I opened the screen door and knocked three times on the heavy timbered front entrance. No response. I reached for the knob and jiggled it. The door was unlocked. Maybe there was someone in the back of the house, near that sprinkler.

  I turned the handle and opened the door enough to stick my head in. It was a small parlor with a fireplace, a love seat, and two straight-backed chairs. The only thing moving was the pendulum on a grandfather clock on the mantel. I eased the door open and took one step inside. “Hello?”

  “What are you doing?” The voice came from behind me. I jumped, whacked my elbow on the doorknob, and spun around. It took me a minute to place him.

  “Mr. Salsipuedes, isn’t it? I was with Tony Strike the day he came down to the ranch to talk to you. I’m Calla Gentry. I’m with the legal team defending Mr. Cates. I didn’t think anyone heard my knock.”

&nb
sp; “Then why did you go in?” There was no curiosity in the question, just a deadpan delivery.

  “Mr. Cates’s lawyers asked me to come by and pick up something. But now that you’re here, maybe you could help.”

  He shrugged and took off the heavy work gloves he’d been wearing, then reached past me to open the door all the way. Still hearing Amy’s plaintive nightmare cry of “day-doh,” I surreptitiously checked out his hands. Salsipuedes’ nails were dirty, but his hands were otherwise ordinary looking.

  I preceded Salsipuedes through the parlor to a large kitchen at the back of the house—a kitchen built for a gourmet cook. Unglazed Mexican tiles on the floor, a solid granite countertop, and Wolf and Viking appliances that cost more than my annual salary. A separate pantry for countertop appliances and pastry preparation was tucked into an alcove at the back of the room. It was a kitchen Emeril Lagasse would have been comfortable in.

  He dropped the gloves on top of a handwoven red and blue runner on the table. “I’m just here fixing the fence out back. I don’t know how I can help you.”

  The air had a touch of lemon, an undertone of furniture polish, and a lush, rich floral smell like frangipani. Since Cates had been in jail for almost six weeks, I was sure someone else was in charge of household maintenance.

  “Does Ray cook?” I asked, gesturing to the pristine surfaces.

  “No, it’s Mercedes, his housekeeper. She does most of the work around here. What are you supposed to pick up?”

  I stalled for time. “May I have a glass of water, please?” He filled two tall glasses with cold water and waited for my reply.

  “I’m supposed to look for his gun,” I ad-libbed. “Smith & Wesson Model 57, I think he said.” I pawed through my notebook looking for verification. “Mr. Merchant thought it might be helpful for a new pair of eyes to check for it. Make sure that Ray’s father hadn’t overlooked it in a cupboard or something.”

  “I think I’d better check with Mr. Cates first,” Salsipuedes said. “Ray doesn’t like people getting into his things.”

  “I understand. But if he’s innocent, then finding the gun can only help him, don’t you agree?” I couldn’t help thinking about the bartender’s memory that Cates had been in Tucson at nine thirty.

  Salsipuedes braced his arm across the archway to prevent me from moving further into the house. “Mr. Cates said the gun isn’t here.”

  “At least we haven’t found it yet. Shall we call his lawyer right now?” I bowed my head toward the telephone as if it gave direct orders from God. “I’m sure he won’t mind taking time away from Raymond’s defense to make his request a second time.”

  Salsipuedes’s deference to the bosses was clear. He wasn’t going to make Cates’s lawyer ask twice to have a simple task performed.

  “Don’t mess up anything,” he warned. “Mercedes will kill you if Ray doesn’t.”

  “May I use the bathroom?” I hadn’t seen anything in the kitchen or entryway that I could use to get a sample of his DNA, but the bathroom was likely to have something.

  “Down the hall. Last door on the left.”

  I followed a gray and black Navajo rug down the cool hall and ducked into the bathroom. I turned on the taps to disguise my movements, then opened drawers and cupboards looking for my sample. No toothbrush. No hairbrush. No dirty drinking glass. Damn that housekeeper. And damn my luck for having used the guest bath instead of the one off his room. But I could use the ruse of searching for the gun to find my way back to the bedroom area and look for both a hairbrush and a sun-shaped belt buckle. I returned to the hallway.

  Salsipuedes was on the phone in the kitchen. I didn’t know whom he was talking to, but if he was checking on me, I’d have to move fast. I traveled farther into the house instead of back to the kitchen. The room across the hall looked to be a study or guest room, so I turned left, toward the room at the end of the hall.

  Yes. The master bedroom. It was a symphony of deep green, tan, and black. A Nile-green leather chair and footstool anchored the left side of the room, along with a stained-glass reading lamp in shades of pearl and cream. The bed was a four-poster, with thick, round-top newels like fence posts.

  There was a four-drawer dresser against the wall, and I hurried across the room to search it. The top drawer held more ties than any self-respecting cattleman should own. The second drawer had an array of belts, curled up like cinnamon buns in a baking pan. None of the buckles was sun-shaped and silver.

  Chrome faucets glistened from the next room. I scooted around the bed and into the bathroom.

  Nothing. It looked like the finest hotel bathroom awaiting a new arrival. No personal toiletries on the countertop. Even the bar of soap was new. I created a couple of new cusswords in my frustration and reentered the bedroom just as Salsipuedes came around the corner.

  “Are you done now?” he asked, glancing behind me to the open bathroom door.

  “I was just admiring the house.”

  Then I saw it. There, just to the side of the bathroom door, was a small semicircular hall table with an arrangement of dried flowers and a palm-size porcelain ashtray tucked under a trailing stem of lavender. An ashtray with two cigarette butts. Camel. Non-filter. I had never seen Cates smoke, but he lived alone, so they might be his. Would the tidy Mercedes have overlooked this little ashtray for six weeks? I didn’t know, but I had to take that chance. I leaned against the small table, palmed the butts, and gestured back to the bedroom.

  “I’m going to start looking for the gun in there.”

  “You’re not going to start anywhere. George Cates said to throw you out.”

  “Come on, Hector. You know Ray couldn’t have killed anyone. He was with you. How can the gun possibly hurt him?” Unless Cates was in Tucson at nine thirty and not at the ranch like you said he was.

  He leaned closer and reached to pinch my collarbone between work-hardened fingers.

  “Get your hands off me.” My voice was neither as loud nor as threatening as I’d hoped. I wrenched my shoulder out of his grasp and quickstepped to the door.

  Once I was safely in the car, I looked back to see Salsipuedes glowering in the doorway. For a small man he sure was good at looming.

  17

  I mailed the cigarette butts to the DNA lab first thing on Friday morning.

  When I got home after work, Giordano was parked in my driveway. He got out of the car and stopped to blow his nose, then tucked away the handkerchief and ambled toward my front door.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Gentry. I have just a few follow-up questions.”

  “Come in, Detective. How’s Miranda’s case going?” I held the screen door open for him and deposited my briefcase and purse on a dining-room chair. The room felt closed in and dead, too much hot air trapped inside all day. I opened the sliding-glass door to encourage a breeze.

  “We’ve been busy. Ms. Lang said you wanted us to compare her rape to any recent attacks that had happened in Tucson.” He waited for me to fill in the uneasy silence. I didn’t.

  “We looked back at all the cases that had occurred within the last twelve months,” he continued. “You know what we found? Another date rape where a man picked up a woman, a Miss Chavez, and raped her with a weapon. Also at Gates Pass, like Miss Lang.” It was about time he noticed the similarities, I thought. I tried to look interested without looking like I knew anything about the Chavez killing. A mourning dove called a pitiful refrain from the yard.

  “Here’s the funny part. We’ve got the perp on this other case; he raped her with a gun and then killed her.” He waited to see my response, then asked, “Do you know the name Raymond Cates?”

  “Cates? I think I’ve heard the name before. He’s going to trial soon, isn’t he?” I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. If Giordano didn’t already know about my trial consulting role for Cates from his own research, then he would find out in a few short weeks when the trial started, and it would look as if I’d been lying to the police.


  “What do you know about all this, Ms. Gentry?”

  I held my lips together to prevent a spurt of information. I didn’t want to mislead him, but I couldn’t start talking about working on Cates’s case. If I did, I wouldn’t know where to stop. My suspicions, my doubts, the grid of other victims, Amy’s information, the details on Cates’s current case—it would all come pouring out, woven with suppositions, hypotheses, wishes, and regrets.

  “I’d like you to come downtown with me,” Giordano said, pulling his car keys from his pocket.

  “What for?”

  “I had Miranda Lang come down from Phoenix. She’s going to attend a lineup for us and see if she can identify anyone.”

  I looked back into the dining room, where my notes from the interviews with all the other women were spread across the table.

  “Just let me get my purse.”

  I locked the sliding-glass door and placed a wooden dowel in the metal trough to secure it. Then I picked up the shoulder bag from the dining-room chair, straightened the incriminating papers into a stack, and placed the morning paper on top of the pile.

  He let me ride in the front seat so I didn’t feel as if I were under arrest. “Detective, I can’t possibly help you with a lineup. I never saw my sister’s rapist and, except for calling him a cowboy and a possible reference to his fingers, she never described him to me. I don’t understand why you want me there for Miranda’s lineup.”

  As much as I wanted to catch my sister’s attacker, I couldn’t get involved in Miranda’s case. If Cates was her rapist, she was going to have to prove it with her own information and not from anything I told her. Otherwise it would put both me and my job in jeopardy.

  “You may not think you know him, but maybe he was stalking her. Maybe you saw somebody hanging around.”