by Betty Webb
As Evelyn locked the rifle away in the gun cabinet, Friedman closed down the computer and gestured for me to take a seat. “Let’s hear it, Ms. Jones. If the Halls didn’t hire you, why are you so interested in Nicole?”
I explained the situation, finishing with, “After Precious Doe’s murder and then Aziza Wahab’s disappearance, I’m worried about her. I just want to make sure she’s all right.”
He shook his head. “I hope she is.”
My heart fell. “What do you mean? Isn’t she here?”
“She called us last night from a payphone, very upset, not making much sense,” he said. “You heard that she stayed with us a couple of years ago?”
I nodded and waited for him to continue.
“Nicole was pregnant then. Like so many girls, she panicked, not sure what her parents’ reaction would be, but after a few days with us, she decided to go home and face the music. Judging from what she’d told us about her father, Evelyn and I weren’t all that happy about her decision, but we certainly weren’t going to keep her against her will. After all, she was a minor, and no crime—not one that we saw evidence of, anyway—had been committed against her, so we drove her to her boyfriend’s family’s house and let them take it from there. That was the last we heard from her until last night. This time she wasn’t worried about herself, but about someone else.”
“Did she say who?” I asked, frowning.
“She never gave us a name, just that ‘this person’ was about to be hurt, and she refused to let it happen. She wanted to bring ‘this person’ to us. Then I heard a child talking in the background, so of course I asked her how old ‘this person’ was.”
“And?”
“She said ‘this person’ was a seven-year-old girl.”
Aziza Wahab’s age. I remembered Peggy Binder telling me that Nicole had once been friendly with Shalimar, Aziza’s older sister. Had the two met through her? But what could have happened to make Nicole kidnap the girl—if it really was a kidnapping, something I was no longer certain of.
Before I shared my suspicions, Evelyn jumped in. “Victor told Nicole that if she was really worried about a seven-year-old’s safety, to take her concerns to the authorities. They were the ones who should deal with it, not her.”
He raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “Nicole said there was no point in telling, that nobody would believe her anyway. But she had to make sure no one else died.”
My concern for the two girls catapulted into alarm. “Wait a minute. No one else died?” Could she have been referring to Precious Doe? Or Tujin Rafik? Or both?
“I got the impression she was talking about someone else, but maybe I’m wrong,” Friedman said. “Anyway, she started crying, so against my better judgement, I told her to bring the girl on over.”
Evelyn spoke again. “We waited up all night, but Nicole never showed. She didn’t call again, either. Believe me, we’re as worried as you are.”
***
As I drove away from the ranch, my concern over Nicole’s welfare increased. She was only sixteen, yet had somehow allowed herself to become involved in kidnapping, and possibly even murder. The more I tried to figure it out, the more frustrated I became. For some reason, the teenager seemed to believe she was saving Aziza, so she obviously had no intent to harm her. Since Nicole had taken the family car, maybe she and Aziza drove to a friend’s house before heading to the Friedmans’. If so, I would find out soon enough, because Victor Friedman had promised to call me the minute the two showed up.
In Sierra Vista, I placed a long distance call to Angel Grey while I filled the Jeep up with gas. Yes, I reassured her, unless something broke in the case of Precious Doe, I would be in L.A. tomorrow for Desert Eagle’s production meeting. I couldn’t stay long, because as soon as the meeting ended, I needed to fly straight back. Too much was happening.
Angel sounded disappointed. We’d become friendly during the past few months and usually followed the meetings with lunch or boutique hopping, but she understood the way P.I.’s worked. After ringing off, I called Warren, but with no better luck than earlier. Before I could leave a message, the gas pump dinged, announcing the Jeep had guzzled its fill. Intending to try Warren again as soon as I reached Los Perdidos, I stuffed the cell phone into my carry-all, replaced the Jeep’s gas cap, and continued on my way.
Now that the area’s version of rush hour was over, I made the trip quickly, turning my police scanner down so I might puzzle through Nicole’s actions, but the relative silence didn’t work. Teenagers were like aliens from distant planets: completely unknowable.
When I drove into Los Perdidos, I spied a small crowd milling around in front of the sheriff’s office. Had the girls been found? Or had another child disappeared? Alarmed, I pulled to the curb. The shadows of night cloaked most of the men, but the glow of a passing car’s headlights illuminated old Clive Berklee.
“What’s going on?” I asked, leaning out of the Jeep and interrupting him in mid-chuckle.
“You haven’t heard?” He sounded quite jolly.
My concern diminished. “I was out of town for a few hours. Did the sheriff find the missing girls?”
His smile faded. “Afraid not. But at least Los Perdidos is minus one big problem now.”
“Which problem is that?”
The smile returned. “Floyd Polk. Some Good Samaritan burned the sumbitch’s shack to the ground. With him in it.”
Chapter Fourteen
Vigilante justice, seldom more than a necktie party away from modern Arizona courtrooms, had reared its ugly head. I jumped into the Jeep and sped toward Duane Tucker’s place, fearing he might be next on the revenge roster.
The minute I drove into Geronimo’s Rest Trailer Park, I noticed a difference in the air. A party mood sparked the night. Couples chatted on their front steps. A group of men stood near the playground, sipping their beers and laughing. Children, no longer hidden behind closed curtains, played on the swings while their parents watched with relaxed smiles. As I rolled up to Duane’s trailer, the reason for all this celebration became apparent. Most of the trailer’s windows had been smashed, and the open door revealed a gutted interior.
Next door, Ladonna Lundstrom skipped rope with her sister Labelle. She gave me a wave. “Hey, lady! The perv and the bitch are gone.”
Her father shouted out the window, “Mouth!”
“What happened?” I asked Ladonna.
Her smile almost reached her ears. “Some guys came by and messed up Duane’s place. Messed him up, too. Then him and his mother booked. Didn’t take hardly nothing, just took off in that ratty old station wagon of theirs. Now me and Sis can play outside again.”
“No one tried to intervene?” I used the word before I remembered I was talking to a ten-year-old.
The precocious child understood, though. “You nuts or something? Ain’t nobody gonna stand up for Duane. Or that slut Joleene.”
Her father stepped out the door and glared. “You back again?” At least he wasn’t lugging his baseball bat.
“Just trying to find out what happened to Duane.”
“He got run off.” Foo Fighter Man fell silent for a moment, then added, “I tried to make them boys leave him alone and let the law do its job, but they wanted him gone in a big way.”
I noticed he hadn’t mentioned Polk. “You heard what happened to Floyd Polk?”
He nodded. “Wish I could say I was sorry, but I’m not. Still, Polk shoulda been the law’s problem, not some lynch mob’s. This ain’t the Wild West anymore. Or at least it ain’t supposed to be.” Then he glanced at his daughters. “You two. Party’s over. Time to come in.”
Grumbling, they looped up their jump rope and complied. Before their father closed the door behind them, Ladonna shot me another big smile.
Life was good once more in Geronimo’s Rest.
***
A full moon had just cleared the peaks of the Dragoon Mountains, illuminating the desert in its pale light, so when
I arrived at Floyd Polk’s place I could see that his shack was all but gone. Behind fluttering remnants of police tape, the ruins smoldered as wildlife began to reclaim the land. From behind the outhouse, which improbably remained standing, several pairs of yellow eyes peered at me from the darkness. The wild rabbit pens, a safe distance from the shack, had been spared, their prisoners released into the wild by some unknown benefactor. On a nearby hilltop, a coyote painted silver by moonlight studied the scene with interest. Drawn by the odor of burned meat?
Surprised by my own pity, I hoped that Polk had died from smoke inhalation before the flames reached him.
Chapter Fifteen
My night was made turbulent by a recurring nightmare about a terrified, seven-year-old girl running across the desert. More exhausted than rested, I awoke to a pale dawn. The first thing I saw was Precious Doe gazing at me from the flier I’d propped up on the night stand the night before.
But she hadn’t been the girl in my dream.
I stared at the flier, reminded that Precious Doe lay in cold storage in the hospital basement. The possibility that Floyd Polk lay near her troubled me even more than my nightmare.
Decades ago, a murder victim was often kept in storage until an arrest was made, but as people grew meaner and the body count climbed, that practice declined. Quick burial being the perfect solution to overcrowded morgues, bodies were now released to their families as soon as possible. If no one showed up to identify the victims, they were relegated to a county grave site, the final resting place of the unclaimed and unloved.
I refused to let that happen to Precious Doe.
The night stand clock told me it was too early to start calling funeral homes to find out how much it cost to bury a child, so I headed for the shower to wash the horrors away.
A half hour later I emerged from the cottage and saw Selma Mann leaving the barn. “Morning, Lena,” she called. “It looks like you didn’t sleep last night. Something wrong with the bed?”
I told her the bed was fine, but that I’d be flying out to L.A. for the afternoon.
She grimaced. “You’d be better off catching up on your sleep. L.A.’s got too much pollution, too many people.” Then she abruptly changed the subject. “Hell of a thing about Polk, isn’t it?”
“Sure is.” Around us, early birds sang. The river breeze rustled cottonwood leaves. The world seemed so innocent.
“Polk’s no great loss, but the whole thing stinks,” she added. “By the way, I sent a couple of my men over to join the search party for Aziza Wahab. I’d go out there myself, but one of my mares is about to foal and she’s prone to breech. The vet’s down near Tombstone trying to keep some useless show horse alive, so I’m on my own with a long rubber glove.” Her face twisted with distaste, then just as quickly brightened. “Say, want some coffee?”
Her slightly plaintive note made it sound like she wanted to talk. Or maybe she was just lonely. Ranch living could do that to a woman. “Sure, coffee sounds great.”
She led me into the ranch house kitchen and poured a steaming mug of coffee so black and thick it could have walked to the barn on its own. Neither of us said anything for a while, just sat there companionably. When I decided it was time, I broke the silence. “Polk didn’t kill Precious Doe, Selma. That old truck of his couldn’t make it across the road, let alone out to the place where the killer hid her body. And he couldn’t have carried her all that way on foot.”
She nodded. “Vigilantes are good at hating, not thinking.”
I agreed. Hate short-circuits the brain. “Have you thought of anything else since we last talked, something you saw or heard that might have seemed unimportant at the time?”
“Such as?”
“Anything.”
She set her coffee mug down. “All right. Something has been bothering me. It probably isn’t related to what’s been happening, it’s just that, well, there’s a situation I haven’t told you about before. But like I said, there might not be any connection to those girls.” Her tone gave the lie to her words. She did think there was a connection.
“Tell me.”
Her answer, seemingly out of left field, was startling. “Labor troubles.”
It sounded so out of sync with what was going on that I almost laughed, but her grim expression kept me silent.
“All three girls were minorities, Lena. Have you thought about that? Aziza. Precious Doe. Tujin Rafik. Not one Anglo among them.”
I told her that everyone was worried about the minority connection and that the sheriff, DPS, and the Feds were diligently scrutinizing local White Power groups.
Impatience clouded her attractive features. “No, no. I’m not talking about a racial crime, which would be relatively easy to solve. Just find out what local asshole has a Nazi flag hanging in his bedroom and there you are. Those jerks are too stupid to cover their tracks. I meant something else entirely. For the past few years, minorities have made up most of Los Perdidos’ unskilled labor force. Hispanics, mainly, but lately more and more Middle Easterners and Africans, even a few Asians.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“You’ve been around long enough to know what that means,” she said. “Cheap labor for management, bad working conditions for the minorities. There have been a string of small accidents, mostly cuts and burns up at Apache Chemical, where that man lost his hand a couple of years ago. After OSHA investigated, the company did make some big changes, I’ll give them that. The worker’s name was Jwahir Hassan. Did I tell you he was Somali? Besides Worker’s Comp, he received a small settlement, but to him, it must have seemed like a fortune.”
Selma had told me some of this when we’d first met, but I knew better than to interrupt. She was building up to something.
“Anyway, Hassan and his family moved up to Phoenix. I hear through the grapevine he’s attending ASU now.”
We were almost there, but she needed a little encouragement. “Go on. I’m listening.”
She studied the plastic tablecloth. Beige, with a raised pattern of leaves. Nothing special enough to create such apparent interest. “I’ve seen the girl’s picture. It was in the newspaper.”
Tacked on every utility pole in town, too. “And?”
“I think she might be Somali.”
Frowning, I pulled the ever-present flier out of my carry-all and studied it again. Selma might be right. Precious Doe’s face appeared as dark as most Somalis’, although death had grayed her skin tone to the extent it was impossible to tell for certain. Color aside, the child’s features exhibited that exquisite delicacy common to the North African tribe, a delicacy that led so many of its non-tribal descendants into careers as fashion models. But the dead girl’s beauty proved nothing.
I voiced my concerns. “Why does it matter if she’s Somali? As opposed to Kenyan? Or even African-American?”
“Because of that Somali man who lost his hand at Apache Chemical. His settlement was nowhere as high as it should have been. An attorney from Tucson wanted to represent him and raise the settlement a few decimal points, but the man and his family blew out of town in a hurry, almost as if they were afraid of something. And, Lena, I heard they had three daughters. If I remember correctly, one of them was around five, which would make her seven now.”
I finally understood. “You think that girl might be Precious Doe.”
“It’s possible. When they left, the youngest girl was too young for school, and therefore had no teachers to recognize her. The Somalis around here pretty much keep to themselves, so she might not have had any play friends, either. Anyway, I’ve never been convinced of Bill Avery’s pet theory, that Precious Doe was part of some family sneaking across the desert from Mexico.”
I wrote down the Somali’s name so that Jimmy could run a check and make certain the family wasn’t missing a daughter. But I saw another problem. The time line didn’t make sense. If Selma was right, the family had left Los Perdidos two years before I found Precious Doe’s body.
Se
lma had a theory to explain that, too. “Maybe she was kidnapped and held ransom for her father’s settlement money, as meager as it was.”
And buried in the desert near where she used to live? It sounded like a bad TV movie plot, but kidnapping for ransom had become common. Especially in Arizona, where coyotes, the two-legged kind, often held hostage the very people they helped cross over from Mexico, to wring more money from the families left behind.
I wasn’t convinced. “If Precious Doe was kidnapped from the Phoenix area, there would have been a report of a missing child in the Phoenix newspapers, and there wasn’t. The only kid gone missing up there in the last six months was the girl abducted by the mother’s live-in boyfriend, and she was found unharmed a couple of days later. Whereas Precious Doe…” Belatedly, I realized that Selma didn’t know the details of the autopsy, the mutilations which revealed a particularly disturbed pedophile, so I filled her in.
It took a while for her to recover. “Oh, good Lord, that poor little girl. Lee might be greedy, but he would never hurt a child. Especially not like that.”
“Lee?” The name sounded familiar.
“Forget everything I just told you. I have an overactive imagination. Must be the stress of waiting for that damned mare to foal. I’ve been up all night.”
Lee. Lee. The name clicked when I remembered the plaque at the entrance to the hospital: DONATED BY LEE CASEY IN MEMORY OF CAROLINE SOMERS CASEY, 1953-1998. He owned Apache Chemical, the plant where the Somali man’s accident had taken place. “Does Casey have a reputation for violence? Or problems with little girls?”
Still shaken by the revelation about Precious Doe’s injuries, she said, “Just for fostering unsafe working conditions.” Then she added, “Well, let me backpedal somewhat. Lee’s not originally from Los Perdidos so I can’t be one hundred percent certain what he was like before he moved to town. He grew up on a ranch near Flagstaff and went to Northern Arizona University, where he met his wife, Caroline. When she died in a car accident, he inherited enough money to start Apache Chemical. His degree is in chemical engineering, by the way.”
