by Betty Webb
She seemed to know a lot about him. Then again, like most Arizona cities, Los Perdidos was small, and on the social ladder, the two probably occupied the same rung.
“If Lee Casey isn’t a pedophile, why would he kidnap Precious Doe?” I asked. “Surely he doesn’t need the money.”
She sighed. “I was thinking he might have done it as a warning to her father, but after what you’ve told me about those injuries, it doesn’t sound likely. I can’t imagine Lee doing anything like that to a child. He’s a father, himself.”
My experience in law enforcement has taught me that fathers could be pedophiles, too, but I saw another possibility. Casey might have hired someone to do his dirty work, and inadvertently hired a pedophile.
Now a more likely motive had emerged. Perhaps the Somali man’s Tucson attorney had finally convinced him to bring a civil suit against Apache Chemical. I pitched that possibility to Selma.
She appeared horrified. “To kill a child over money?”
“It’s been done.” Maybe Casey thought the hired hit of one little girl was cheap at twice the price.
But what about Aziza Wahab and Tujin Rafik? Dr. Wahab was one of the scientists at Apache Chemical. Tujin’s father, before he took his family back to Iraq right after 9/11, had been a janitor at the same plant. Then I remembered something I should have remembered sooner. The U. S. Army Intelligence Center was located only a few miles down the road in Sierra Vista. So was Fort Huachuca.
In these days of terrorist attacks, some of the usual civil liberties protections had been suspended in the name of self-defense, and rumors abounded that biological experimentation, heretofore forbidden in populated areas, had begun again. Could Fort Huachuca be involved? If so, had some of the work been handed off to a nearby chemical plant whose owner could pass the necessary security check? Anything was possible.
“Selma, do you know if Apache Chemical has any government contracts?”
My question startled her. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“Just trying to cover all the bases.”
We talked for a few more minutes until she grew fidgety about her mare and left for the barn. I returned to the guest cottage, where I placed a call to the Friedmans, only to learn that Nicole hadn’t shown up yet. Next I called Sheriff Avery, who with a weary voice, told me that, no, neither Aziza nor Nicole had been found, but he and his deputies were doing their best, so would I please stop bothering him? Controlling my irritation, I rang off as politely as possible.
Taking a few deep breaths, I called a local funeral home, where the answering service connected me with a man who sounded like he’d just got out of bed. I asked if a fund had been set up to cover Precious Doe’s burial expenses, and at his negative answer, gave him my credit card number, telling him to give her the best.
With nothing more to do, I threw the Desert Eagle script into my carry-all and left for Tucson International Airport.
Chapter Sixteen
The joke in Arizona is that it takes longer to get through the Tucson International Airport security line than it does to fly to LAX, and this morning’s wait proved no exception. Due to some fool who blew through the line, we all needed rescreening, and by the time we boarded, I could have flown to Los Angeles twice and had time left over for a side trip to San Diego.
When the Southwest Airlines flight rolled down the tarmac, I hauled out the Desert Eagle script and yawned my way through the pages. The script, bristling with Angel’s yellow Post-it notes and green highlighter, was beyond ridiculous. Crammed with technical absurdities, the thing also had plot holes large enough to swallow the entire state of California.
My estimation of Hollywood intelligence, never high, dropped even further.
Less than an hour later, the plane bumped to a landing at LAX. I shoved my way down the aisle and headed straight for the Alamo counter, where I rented something tank-like to navigate the Los Angeles freeway system. Then I girded my loins and steered through the smog to Century City.
I hate L.A. because it’s a forecast of what Phoenix is becoming. Bad air, bad freeways, too many look-alike subdivisions, and thanks to current trends in cosmetic surgery, too many look-alike people.
Because of a series of fender-benders on the 405, it took more than an hour to go ten miles. When I arrived at the Century City complex, my nerves were so frayed that I snapped at the parking attendant who stared too blatantly at the scar on my forehead. His own features, of course, were movie-star perfect.
Once I entered the mirrored elevator, the better for all those perfect people to admire themselves in, I checked my watch and saw I was late. After a stomach-lurching ride, the door dinged open on the twenty-third floor, revealing the charcoal-on-charcoal offices of Speerstra Productions, Inc. Black minimalist paintings hung on the wall, and spiky constructions of various metals squatted in the corners. Furniture? Sculpture? I’d never been able to figure out which. All in all, the place was so aggressively PoMo that it made a bus station seem homey.
Stepping around a twisted metal pile that vaguely resembled a chair, I announced myself to the silicon-enhanced receptionist. Forty-five double D’s, or my name wasn’t Lena Jones.
Then again, it probably wasn’t; I’d been named by a social worker.
“You’re eight minutes late,” the top-heavy receptionist pointed out while buzzing someone on the intercom. Within seconds, a woman so thin she almost wasn’t there ushered me into the conference room, where the charcoal color scheme was relieved by the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the yellow California sky.
Angel, the Emmy-winning star of Desert Eagle, sat with her arms crossed near the head of the brushed-steel table. At the low end sat the writers of the series, wearing sheepish expressions.
Eight feet across from Angel—the conference table was that wide—slumped a boy of around ten who wore a severe black Armani suit more appropriate for a studio head’s funeral than a script meeting. The presumptive shaman? An overly cosmeticized woman wearing a feminine version of the same suit sat so close next to him that their shoulders touched, her bejeweled hands folded neatly in her lap. Stage Mom, otherwise known as Kelli Keane, a failed actress who’d once screamed a scream or two in a Bruce Campbell movie.
“You look pretty rough, Lena,” Angel said. Her beauty was flawless, with creamy skin and blond hair so glossy it reflected the room. “Those circles under your eyes are as dark as these awful walls. After the meeting, why don’t you let me take you to this terrific day spa on Rodeo Drive where they can fix those without injections.”
I managed a smile. “I don’t need a day spa, just a good night’s sleep. Where’s Ham?” But I knew the answer. Hamilton “Ham” Speerstra, in keeping with that fine old Hollywood tradition of one-upmanship, would arrive exactly fifteen minutes late. We had six minutes to go.
“Maybe somebody murdered him,” Angel said, hopefully. Then her expression changed. “Oh. I’m sorry. I forgot you’re working on that case with the chi…” She glanced at the boy and caught herself. Like most mothers, she knew what was and was not appropriate to discuss in front of children. “…on the case with the, um, young woman.”
“Yes, the case with the young woman. It’s keeping me up nights.”
She wasn’t ready to give up on her offer. “Then you definitely need some ‘me’ time. The spa would do you a world of good, and afterward we can get in some shopping. It’s been months since we’ve spent time together. Outside of work, that is.”
“Maybe next visit.”
The boy, who had been silent until now, suddenly spoke up. “Are you two lezzies?”
Angel ignored him. So did I.
The writers pretended they weren’t there.
The boy raised his voice. “I said, are you two lezzies?”
I stared at him. Over-styled hair, a body too chubby beneath that too-formal suit, and a tiny Cupid’s-bow mouth twisted with ill temper. Speerstra expected this brat to battle the forces of evil? At a loss, I glanced at Stage M
om, expecting her to step in and tell him to behave himself.
Then I remembered where we were: in La-La Land, where good manners took a back seat to bad scripts. Stage Mom smiled as if her son had said something brilliant. “Cory’s very precocious.”
Angel rolled her eyes. The writers kept pretending they weren’t there.
Someone had to break the silence, so I took the plunge. “How about this weather, huh?” I said to Stage Mom. In my desperation, I was prepared to ask what her sign was, too, since they still talked about that kind of thing in California, but Hamilton “Ham” Speerstra saved me from myself by entering the room in a rush of woven silk and Moroccan leather. Even shorter than Tom Cruise, whom I had once seen toddling out of a Rodeo Drive bistro, he made up for his lack of height with a supercilious manner.
“Glad you’re all here,” he off-handed.
“As we have been for the past fifteen minutes,” Angel groused.
Speerstra didn’t reply, just opened his briefcase and removed his copy of the script, on which I recognized more of Angel’s Post-it notes. “Let’s start on page six, where the child shaman summons help from the local wildlife.”
“No,” Angel said, sidetracking him.“I want to start with the entire shaman concept itself. There are no child shamans, at least none who can fly and shoot death rays out of their forefingers.”
The boy piped up again. “There are if the script says so, lezzie!”
Speerstra shifted his cold eyes toward him. “Let me take care of this, Cory.”
“But I want to say something!”
Ignoring him, Speerstra said to Angel, “We’re keeping the character because our new sponsor wants it. Moving on to page eleven, the scene where the little shaman tells the bear that Global Warming will ruin the climate for migrating buffalo.”
I was just about to say that there were no bears in the Arizona desert competent to discuss Global Warming and its effect on migrating buffalo, when Cory, his face red with outrage, yelled, “Little shaman? What the hell you talking about? I’m taller than you are, Shitstra!”
At first I thought Stage Mom would continue to ignore her son’s bad behavior, but I was wrong.
“Shut up, Cory.” When she shifted position slightly, he flinched. A pinch under the table? Although the woman hadn’t minded him insulting the program’s lead actress and its technical consultant, she apparently drew the line at insulting the money man.
After a moment, Cory said, “I apologize for what I said, Mr. Speerstra. It won’t happen again. ” His words were as formal as the expression on his face.
The writers looked at each other.
Angel looked at me.
I looked at Cory.
Cory looked down at the table.
Speerstra turned another page of the script. “Objection duly noted, Angel. We’re having trouble finding the right bear, anyway. Let’s see, page thirteen, where the little shaman…” He repeated the phrase. “Where the little shaman asks the owl to bring him the shotgun. No problem finding owls these days, fortunately, so that scene stays in and I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
Time to earn my consultancy fee. “Ah, Ham, an owl isn’t strong enough to fly around carrying a double-barreled shotgun. And continuing this thread about the child shaman, if he can shoot death rays from his forefingers, why would he need the owl to bring him a shotgun in the first place?”
Speerstra scribbled a note in the margin. “Nice catch, Lena. Page twenty-four. The scene where Angel’s character finds the dead man, that’ll be a close-up, so we can see her reaction. Maybe we’ll have her faint. That way we’ll be able to lift her blouse a little and let the viewers see the sights.”
It continued like that for the next half hour, with me suppressing yawns from the night’s sleeplessness, and the writers speaking only when spoken to. As, thankfully, did Cory. Not so Angel, who argued vehemently against every child shaman scene.
The only objections Speerstra took notice of were those where the script too obviously flaunted the laws of physics, such as the levitating tortoise. Listening to all this nonsense I marveled at how far afield we’d strayed from what had once been a decent TV series about a half-Cherokee private eye. Well, kind of decent, anyway. Every now and then, the script called for Angel to flash a tit.
When the meeting ended, we all, with the exception of Speerstra, fled toward the elevators. The writers were miserable, but Stage Mom appeared gratified. None of her son’s scenes had been cut.
“Holy crap,” Angel muttered beside me.
“Is that a prayer or an editorial comment?” I asked, squelching another yawn, and hoping that my return flight would be smooth enough for me to catch a nap.
Stage Mom either didn’t notice Angel’s funk or didn’t care. In a fit of après-meeting brown-nosing, she said, “Miss Grey, the meeting went by so fast that I didn’t get a chance to say how honored Cory feels working with you. Isn’t that right, Cory?”
“I guess.” Cory didn’t try to hide his malice. The bout of trouble we’d experienced with him at the start of the meeting was probably just the beginning of our woes.
Angel’s face went professionally blank. Before she had time to answer, the elevator dinged open and we rode down together. Stage Mom bragged the whole way about the commercials Cody had been in, the movie walk-ons, his brief stint on a reality TV show.
Desert Eagle was to be his first “also starring” role. “He’s a full-time actor now,” Stage Mom said, her face smug.
Curious, I asked, “And what are you doing now? Broadway? Summer stock?”
She gave me a hard-edged smile. “I manage Cory’s career.”
In other words, Cory was her meal ticket.
***
Upon exiting the parking garage, instead of turning south toward LAX, I turned north toward nearby Beverly Hills, believing that some face time with Warren might help heal our relationship, or at least stem the hemorrhaging. The flight to Tucson didn’t leave until four, so there was time to swing by his house.
Warren lived in one of Beverly Hills’ oldest neighborhoods, in the same Mediterranean villa where he had been raised by his porn king father and porn actress mother. Unlike most of his neighbors’ homes, his boasted no guarded gate. I had just begun to turn into the U-shaped drive when the front door opened and Warren stepped out, carrying an overnight bag toward his idling Mercedes. I was congratulating myself on arriving in the nick of time when another person, also carrying an overnight bag, followed him out the door.
A blonde.
Unlike Warren’s naturally sandy mane, the woman’s tresses were strictly artificial. So were her breasts, the size and shape of party balloons. Her skimpy pink dress barely reached her crotch, and when she loped toward the car, I saw a flash of lavender panties.
Not the maid.
Instead of turning into the drive, I parked across the street and watched. Warren had no sisters. Besides, the kiss the blonde planted on him as he paused to open the car door was far from sisterly. After they came up for a few gulps of smoggy air, she drew him close again. When her hips ground against his, he took a long time to move away.
It hadn’t taken him long to replace me, had it?
More angry than hurt, I pulled away from the curb and headed for LAX, where at least one of my wishes came true. The return flight was turbulence free, and my seat mate, a Middle Eastern man with kind eyes, was not inclined to talk. Within seconds of the plane reaching cruising altitude, I fell asleep…
…only to awake running across the desert. Overhead, something big, black, and scary flapped down from the sky and landed on a nearby rock. To my seven-year-old eyes, the raw-necked bird appeared the size of a dragon. I almost expected to see flames shoot from its mouth.
I veered away, and as soon as the distance between us seemed safe, turned again toward the curved line of earth where the sun rose every morning.
East.
East was home. East was where my mother and father lived. Live
d! My father hadn’t died in the forest, and my mother hadn’t died on the white bus.
I hadn’t actually seen them die, had I? Just heard the shots. Yes, the social workers believed my parents were dead, but I knew that social workers didn’t know anything. My parents would never go away forever like dead people do, would never leave me to be raised by strangers. Mom and Dad were in trouble, that’s all. Not dead! When they finally made it to Scottsdale to pick me up, we’d all be together again.
They were probably looking for me right now, but the social workers, those stupid, smiley-faced people who didn’t know what a seven-year-old knew in her heart, had moved me around so much my parents couldn’t find me. It was up to me to find them.
East.
I had to run east, east across the desert with the setting sun at my back, east until I reached the place where the trees grew thick and tall, east to the house at the edge of the creek, east where…
The bird landed in front of me again, but as I shrank back, it turned away and began tearing the flesh of something that lay half-hidden behind a stand of prickly pear cactus. I craned my neck to see.
Oh, horrible!
The vulture’s dinner was a girl my own age, and not quite dead. She was beautiful, with glistening skin almost as black as the bird’s feathers and delicate features that in some ways resembled my own. Like me, she must have been running across the desert, headed for home, but unlike me, she hadn’t been careful enough.
Now the big black bird had her.
The girl opened her brown eyes, held out a bloodied hand, and whispered, “Help me.” Then she closed her eyes again.
As the bird tore into her flesh, I screamed. The bird ignored me. Its curved beak opened, red flesh dangled, and I screamed again and…
“Lady, wake up, please!” A man’s voice.
I opened my eyes to find my kind-eyed seat mate shaking me. “Wha…?” Groggy, I gazed around at the interior of the plane, saw two flight attendants hovering in the aisle, and a grim-faced man with the demeanor of an air marshal closing fast, his hand reaching under his suit coat.
