by Betty Webb
I had my own theory about that. “Geronimo was the last Apache to surrender, which sounds pretty romantic, at least to Easterners.”
She nodded. “After his surrender, the Indian Wars were over. Theoretically, anyway. Apparently he became an ideal prisoner, and even turned up at political rallies and county fairs.”
My stomach growled, cutting her off in mid-lesson.
She smiled. “Well, so much for history. Now for more immediate concerns.” Ushering me into a large, eat-in kitchen, she motioned me to a long trestle table. Delicious cooking smells permeated the air, making my stomach growl even louder. Bending down, she peered into the oven. “I hope you like chicken stew. We raise most of what we eat—the beef, the chickens, the vegetables, the herbs, right down to the olives on the salad.”
“We?” The ad for the Lazy M Guest Ranch had just mentioned, SELMA MANN, RANCHER. No Mr. Mann.
“Me and the ranch hands. Marriage isn’t for me, too many compromises. As for children, well, that’s another story.” She said no more, and I didn’t ask. Her personal life was none of my business as long as it wasn’t connected to the investigation, and I didn’t see how it could be.
The chicken stew was delicious. Not a gourmet recipe, perhaps, but due to the ingredients’ freshness, more flavorful than many meals served in Scottsdale’s high-end restaurants.
While I scarfed up some apple cobbler, she said, “I’ve done a lot of thinking about the child they’re calling Precious Doe. People see places like Los Perdidos, the pretty mountains, the river, they hear the big silence and think the town’s as benign as Walden Pond. But this is rough country and a lot of rough people live around here. You know about that other girl, the one who went missing a few years ago?”
I nodded again.
“Bill considers her his personal failure.”
“Bill?” If she and the sheriff were close friends, I’d chosen the wrong guest ranch.
A wry smile. “We used to date. But unlike me, Bill’s the marrying kind, as evidenced by two ex-wives.” She shuddered. “He wants a third, the idiot, but it won’t be me. Anyway, we’re not on good enough terms that you have to worry about him dropping by to chat, so you’ll be able to use the Lazy M without any interference from him. Or me, for that matter. I don’t care who finds out who’s killing little girls, or what they have to do to find the creep, just as long as he’s stopped.”
Her phrasing intrigued me. “You say ‘killing little girls.’ Plural. Then you think that other child, Tujin Rafik, is dead.”
Her long fingers worried at a loose thread dangling from her purple sweater. “If she wasn’t, she’d have been found long before now.”
I thought of Elizabeth Smart and other missing children who turned up after being gone for months and even years. “Maybe you’re wrong.”
Troubled eyes met mine. “Nothing would make me happier.”
We talked a while longer, until a call of nature made me ask the whereabouts of the bathroom. “Down the hall, second door to the left,” Selma said.
The hallway, not visible from the more public areas of the ranch house, was decorated not with Old West paraphernalia, but with a collection of African masks, shields, and spears, along with several photographs of assorted African wildlife. One picture showed Selma in a crowded village, holding the hand of a dark child. Neither looked particularly happy.
Upon returning to the kitchen, I asked Selma about her African vacation, but she seemed disinclined to talk about it, saying only, “Even ranchers like a change of scene every now and then.” Then she steered the conversation around to Geronimo and the Apaches again, regaling me with more tales of bloody raids and even bloodier reprisals. “Did you know Geronimo was considered fairly peaceful until his wife and children were murdered by Mexican troops while he was away conducting peace talks?”
I nodded. Warren had discovered that relatively unknown piece of history while researching his documentary.
“That’s what turned him, I think, because after that, he couldn’t get enough blood,” she said. “He and his band began slaughtering every settler they ran across. Even here. If you walk south along the river, and you should because it’s gorgeous this time of year, you’ll see the remains of a burned-out farmstead and six graves. The Johnston family. Geronimo himself massacred every last one of them, including the baby. The other settlers vowed to avenge them. Wyatt Earp even rode up from Tombstone to join the search party but didn’t have any luck. Two months later he—Earp, that is—shot up the Clantons down at the OK Corral.”
Through the kitchen window I saw the Dragoons rising into a crisp sky. They looked so peaceful. “A lot of history in the area.”
“Yeah, and most of it violent.”
After several more stories about Apache and Anglo ferocity, Selma must have noticed my flagging interest, because she offered to walk me over to my quarters. I smiled with relief.
The guest house sat to the east of the main building, far from the ranch hands’ quarters but close enough to the river that I heard water rushing against rocks. The small cottage was no more elegant than the house, but that only added to its charm. A hand-made quilt lay across the bed, a rag rug covered the scarred oak floor, and a big armoire—as scarred as if it had lain out the yard for a century or two—stood against a whitewashed wall. There were no guns or other implements of destruction here, just photographs of various Apaches, including one of Geronimo standing in a garden, proudly holding a big watermelon. Beside him stood a woman and a child.
Geronimo the family man. Geronimo the gardener.
Apaches weren’t the only stars of the photo display. I also saw a picture of a uniformed Bill Avery accepting a plaque from a smug-faced man.
“You keep a picture of your ex-boyfriend?” With me, when a relationship was over, it was over. Well, usually. I talked to Dusty, one of my own exes, from time to time.
Selma laughed. “You’ll notice it’s not in my living room. But my guests like it, probably because that Smokey-and-Stetson outfit of Bill’s makes him look like their idea of an Old West sheriff. That’s Lee Casey next to him, Los Perdidos’ richest man. He owns Apache Chemical, the big insecticide plant on the edge of town. He talked Bill into being Guest of Honor at the company’s annual banquet.”
Tujin Rafik’s father had worked at the plant, I remembered. And hadn’t I seen Lee Casey’s name on the bronze plaque at the hospital? When I studied the photograph more closely, I noticed that the sheriff’s body language resembled a virgin trying hard not to let her horny date get too close.
Selma’s next words affirmed my observation. “Lee’s not one of Bill’s favorite people, but the picture was taken soon after the election, while he was currying favor with county movers and shakers. Lee’s turned out to be a real pain in the butt for him, always expecting special favors, like making his speeding tickets go away. Not that Bill ever complies.”
“Why would a chemical plant want a sheriff as guest of honor at a company banquet?”
“Right after 9/11, Bill rode herd on the White Power types around here who were making life miserable for the immigrants, and suggested strongly that they vamoose. Most of the outright thugs did leave, the guys who’d been convicted for assault at one time or another. Because of his actions then, reasonable people—and for all his faults I include Lee among them—believe Bill kept a bad situation from getting worse.”
I remained confused. “I still don’t see why the sheriff’s efforts would be cause for celebration at Apache Chemical.”
“Because half the chemists and engineers on staff up there are from points east. Way east. Indians—the New Delhi kind, not the Apache kind—plus a bunch of folks from Africa and the Middle East. The company recruited them because they have all the brains and education of our own college grads, but work for half the money and under worse conditions.”
Life had never been easy for immigrants, but that didn’t make it right. “What about OSHA?” The Occupational Safety and Health
Administration tried to keep the workplace safe, but it did have blind spots, especially where immigrants, legal or illegal, were concerned.
“OSHA does what it can, but there’s a lot of ground to cover out here, lots of new plants springing up in the desert, industries that cities like Scottsdale don’t want in their own backyards because of the pollution factor. Maybe I shouldn’t paint such a bleak picture. Apache Chemical is pretty safe as these kinds of plants go, and hasn’t been hit with many citations. Oh. Come to think of it, there was a bad accident a couple of years back, when one of the immigrants, an African, lost his hand.”
That didn’t sound “pretty safe” to me. “Why wasn’t the plant closed down?”
“If OSHA closed plants every time there was an accident, there would be no industry in America today. They just fined the company, the guy received Workers Comp, and Casey gave him a payoff. Since then, conditions up there have changed for the better, partially because Casey’s been more careful, but also because some people around town started paying more attention to what was going on up there.”
That sounded promising. “Who in particular?”
“A group of community activists, mainly retired legal types, social workers, store owners, even a rancher or two. Not me. I stay out of politics. Horse manure’s cleaner.”
With that, Selma helped me unload my luggage from the Jeep, and we returned to the main house where we spent the rest of the evening in friendly chat over coffee so thick it could have fueled a Stealth Bomber. By the time she excused herself to attend to some paperwork, I knew enough about Los Perdidos to add some perspective to my investigation.
Best of all, she had confirmed information Jimmy had provided me with that morning.
The names of the town’s two convicted child molesters.
Chapter Five
“When the Iraqi girl went missing, Floyd Polk and Duane Tucker were the first people my predecessor questioned,” Sheriff Avery said, sliding the men’s mug shots across his desk. He wasn’t happy talking to me, but once I convinced him that I’d paid my guest cottage tab two weeks in advance and wasn’t going anywhere until the case was solved, he relented.
Somewhat, anyway. The hostility in his eyes remained.
Avery’s office displayed no I’m-A-Big-Shot certificates on the pine-paneled walls, just a large studio-posed photograph of him with three blond children who had his eyes, and one tiny brunette who appeared partially Hispanic but had his firm mouth. The fruits of different wives? I knew from my own years on the Scottsdale Police Force that due to the tension of the job, cops had trouble staying married. Things appeared no different here in the boonies.
I studied the mug shots. Polk, who appeared to be around seventy, squinted at the camera through his one good eye while the other, cataract white, walled out to the side. Tucker was younger and looked fairly normal, except for the puckered scar on his forehead. It resembled my own.
“Considering that Polk’s been in and out of prison all his life, he’s pretty healthy,” the sheriff continued, tapping his finger on the old man’s picture. “At least healthy enough to snatch a kid. He’s a serial child molester, but thanks to our so-called justice system, his longest stretch was only eleven years, and that for the rape of a nine-year-old. Nice, huh?” Avery made a disgusted sound. “His parents died while he was in prison, left him their place, so he moved back here once he was released. The house isn’t much more than a shack, really, right up against the Dragoons and secluded as hell. Anything might go on out there. He was a prime suspect when Tujin Rafik disappeared, too, but nothing came of it.”
Tujin. The girl with the sad eyes. “You sure you asked him the right questions?”
He turned surly again. “How’s this for a question: why don’t you go home?”
I could have kicked myself for endangering our truce. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right. For reasons I’d rather not explain, I feel personally involved in this case.”
At this, Avery moved the papers on his desk, uncovering a folder labeled, JONES, LENA. Spilling from it were xeroxed copies of two old newspaper articles, both dated thirty years earlier. One asked the public to help identify a four-year-old girl found on a Phoenix city street, because the bullet that had almost killed her left her with amnesia. The other was a copy of the article reporting my knife attack against the foster father who’d raped me when I was nine.
“Not the world’s greatest childhood, I see,” he murmured, his voice turned gentle. “You ever regain your memory?”
I shook my head. “Just fleeting visions.” My father dying in a forest clearing. A white bus carrying me away. My mother aiming her pistol at my head.
He opened the folder and stared at the article. When he looked up, his hard eyes had softened. “Let’s try this again, Ms. Jones. If you stop being a smart ass, I’ll stop being a prick. Bargain?”
“Bargain.”
“Truce, then. Friday afternoon, as soon as the judge faxed me the search warrant, we went out and tossed Polk’s place but he came up clean. The guy’s either real smart, which I doubt, or he’s innocent. Of this particular crime, anyway.”
Now that sentencing standards against serial child molesters had become more rigorous, Polk might have killed his latest victim to make sure she couldn’t testify against him. “What about Duane Tucker?”
Avery grimaced. “Ah, yes. Duane Gerald Tucker, one of Los Perdidos’ most notorious imports. Born in Cheval Blanc, Louisiana, moved to our fair city with his mother when he was twelve. Began having run-ins with the law right away, mainly shoplifting and a few school fights. There was some problematical stuff early on with girls, too, but nothing serious until he was caught having what he called ‘consensual sex’ with a thirteen-year-old. At the time he was fifteen. The county attorney piled on a few other charges and the court shipped him off to juvie until he turned eighteen.”
“How old is Duane now?” The face that peered at me from the photograph was so lacking in character that he might have been anywhere from his early twenties to his late thirties.
“Twenty-three but still a bad boy. He’s suspected in a few recent break-ins, but we haven’t been able to pin anything down. It’s just a matter of time. Talk about your basic bad seed.”
“Meaning?”
“His father, the illustrious Gerald Tucker, was executed in Louisiana a couple years ago for murder following a rape.”
I sucked in my breath. Sex offenders frequently practiced on their own kids, who in turn, sometimes took up the practice themselves. “Was the victim a child?”
“Convenience store clerk. Gerald carjacked her, took her out to the bayou, did his freak thing, then carved her up. Duane was almost eight at the time. After Daddy took up residence on Death Row, his mom, Joleene, started seeing some guy who moved them out here, where he had family. Couple years later, the guy took off, stranding them. Not that it made any difference to Joleene, because she’s been on Welfare all her life. What with the government’s money and her turning a trick every now and then, they get by.”
I stared at Duane’s picture, thinking about bad childhoods and what they could do to a child. “Tell me, was he in or out of juvie when Tujin Rafik disappeared?”
A faint smile. “Now there’s a good question. He’d been released a month earlier, and yes, we questioned him and came up with nada, just like we did the other day.”
I touched the mark on Duane’s forehead. “How did he get that scar?”
For a brief moment the sheriff gazed at my own scar, a visible record of the bullet that had condemned me to fourteen years’ worth of foster homes. Then he looked away, as if embarrassed to be caught staring. “His father beat him, his mother never interfered.”
Usually it took two people to turn a child’s life into a living hell: a violent man and a weak woman. Or, as in my own case, terrified children screaming somewhere in the distance, my mother carrying me silently through the dark woods. The rest? It was probably just as well my memory was
a blank.
“Does Duane have a long history of violent outbursts? That’s a not-uncommon side effect of brain injuries.” I’d had some trouble along those lines, myself.
He nodded. “We always know when our boy’s out drinking. Miracles begin to happen, like chairs flying through barroom windows.”
Brain injuries and booze, a bad mix. Another reason I didn’t drink.
After some pleading, the sheriff gave me both men’s addresses, if you called the map to Polk’s desert shack an address. Its location, less than five miles from where Precious Doe had been dumped, gave me pause. Duane lived in a Los Perdidos trailer park close to the center of town.
“Don’t bother going by Duane’s place yet,” Avery volunteered. “He’s working on a yard maintenance crew and won’t be home until sundown. Joleene, if she’s not off drinking somewhere, won’t tell you squat. Polk’s ‘retired,’ and is home all day. A real gentleman of leisure.”
Returning the mug shots to their respective folders, he asked, “Is there anything else?”
“I’d like to see Precious Doe’s autopsy report.”
Some of his earlier hostility returned. “Forget it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t need my nightmares.”
I could have told him I had nightmares of my own, but didn’t bother. Recognizing that his cooperation was at an end, I said good-bye.
***
An hour later, after wrestling the Jeep over several miles of rutted dirt road and a bottom-scraping dry wash, I spotted Polk’s shack hidden behind two sickly mesquite trees. The tar-papered walls listed to one side and rust spotted the tin roof. Trash blown about in the hard wind funneled down from the Dragoon Mountains littered the front “yard,” which was nothing more than bare desert heaped with filled garbage bags. In the rear, near a faded pickup truck, stood a line of jerry-built cages housing rabbits. The drying skins tacked to the side of the shack told me they weren’t pets.
