by Betty Webb
With his ruddy, weathered face, Beltran himself could have been half-Pima, but before making the appointment, I’d had Jimmy run him through the system. Beltran’s parents both hailed from Connecticut.
In his early fifties and graying, Beltran remained slim and fit. My research showed that he had finished the Iron Man triathlon twice, and once made it almost to the summit of Everest before bad weather forced his party to return to base camp. He was giving it another try next year. In the meantime, he was keeping busy with weekly visits to the gun range with one of his many weapons even as his eco-friendly houses were going up all over the desert.
After a firm handshake, he said, “I have a client due in fifteen minutes, Ms. Jones, so let’s make this as brief as possible. Unless you have news about my missing daughter.” Brisk as he sounded, he couldn’t keep the hope out of his eyes.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but no. When we talked I thought you understood that I’m looking into another case.”
“Please don’t tell me another little girl has been kidnapped.”
“Not that I know of. Tell me, are you still a member of Parents of Missing Children?”
“I’ve given all that up, don’t have time for it.” He looked out of an eastern-facing window and pretended to be entranced by the sight of a mother javelina and her small brood rooting around in the brush.
“Your ex-wife remains a member.”
Still watching the javelinas, he said, “That’s her business, not mine.”
Like his ex-wife had pointed out, people grieve differently. Women tended to join support groups, finding comfort by sharing their grief with others, but most men buried their grief under frenetic action. They organized searches, as I’d read Beltran had done in the early days of Candice’s disappearance, or they doubled-down on work or a flurry of other activities. And then there were their marriages. When faced with tragedy, many marriages did not survive. The odds against them were even higher in the loss of a child, because you couldn’t help seeing the child’s features in the face of your spouse. It took a strong person to live with that kind of daily reminder.
Beltran finally tore his eyes away from the javelinas and looked at his watch. “Ten minutes, Ms. Jones, that’s all that’s left. Say what you need to say or ask, but that client’s going to be here any minute, and I don’t like to keep the Morgansterns waiting. They’re good people and they care about the environment.”
“Did you follow Brian Wycoff’s trial?”
“Who’s he?” Dead pan.
As I gave a brief summation of the case, his face remained immobile.
“Can’t say I pay much attention to the news these days,” Beltran finally said. “But it sounds like this Wycoff fellow got what was coming to him. Her, too, if she knew what was going on yet did nothing to help those children.”
No pity, not even for a woman.
“You never felt an urge to, ah, exact revenge against Mr. Wcoff? Or his wife?”
“Be serious.”
“You have a nice gun collection, I hear.”
“I’m proud of it, yes. I even have the very Winchester John Wayne used in The Searchers. Ever see it?”
“Wonderful film. My favorite, even though that particular firearm wasn’t manufactured until years after the period in which the action supposedly took place.”
He looked pleased. “I like a woman who knows her firearms. You carrying now?”
“Nothing fancy, just an old snub-nosed Colt I’m particularly fond of. By the way, the article I read in Phoenix Magazine said you own quite the selection of .22 rifles.”
“Same as most sport shooters in Arizona, except mine have a story behind them. My Smith & Wesson M&P 15, for instance, was once owned by Audie Murphy. Carved his name on the stock. Know who he was, Murphy?”
“Another actor. Won the Congressional Medal of Honor, among a slew of others.”
Beltran liked that, too. “Why are you so interested in .22s? I’d figure a gun-savvy woman like you would be up for something more powerful.”
“Just asking.”
His happy expression vanished. “Oh, I get it. That Wycoff fellow and his wife? They were killed by .22LRs, right? And you came in here expecting to find some frothing-at-the-mouth vigilante. Sorry to disappoint you, but some time ago I decided to do something with my life other than obsess about what happened to…to…”
He swallowed. Searched for the javelina family again, but they had vanished over the ridge. Then he checked the north-facing window, where I saw a silver Mercedes angling into a space underneath an olive tree. In summer, smart Arizonans park in the shade, bird poop be damned.
“If you’re looking for someone out for revenge, Ms. Jones, you should try…” He checked himself, took a deep breath, then began again, a note of finality in his voice. “Someone else. There’s probably a long list of people who’d have been willing to do the honors for the Wycoffs. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see that the Morgansterns are here.”
He stood up and escorted me out. As I crossed the parking lot, I saw a nicely dressed couple in their thirties exit the Mercedes. They had a little girl with them. She was about nine.
The same age I’d been when Brian Wycoff started hiding in my closet.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I arrived at Desert Investigations in a thoughtful mood. If someone hadn’t shot at me, I wouldn’t care who killed either of the Wycoffs. I had only begun my investigation because of my liking for Debbie Margules, proven innocent after the attempt on my own life. But the fact that the Wycoffs’ killer had tried to kill me—and perhaps Nicole, too—meant that even after he or she had served his own brand of justice to those monsters, he was willing to kill the innocent.
Some poet once said, “After the first death, there is no other,” and the meaning of that line has been debated by literary critics for years. I had my own interpretation because as a cop I’d seen it in action. After you’d killed one person, killing someone else came easy. For some people, it became downright addictive.
Then again, I had taken it for granted that only one killer was out there, but why couldn’t there be two? Yes, I’d already dismissed the Agatha Christie solution of multiple killers as too fanciful. But killings committed by a couple weren’t rare. Bonnie and Clyde, for instance, possibly the most famous lover/outlaws of all. Then there was Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, whose killing spree topped off at eleven bodies. Not to mention Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, who helped her lover romance vulnerable women, then robbed and killed twenty of them. Or David and Catherine Birnie, who together tortured and murdered five women. And Rosemary and Fred West, perpetrators of the torture killings of at least twelve women.
Maybe…
“Good grief, Lena, what are you thinking about?” Jimmy’s voice pulled me out of my funk. “You look like you’re about to kill someone.”
“Who, me? I’m gentle as a lamb.”
“Says the woman who a couple of days ago marched Frank Gunnerston in here at the point of a gun. You’d have shot him dead if he’d put up a fight, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t like wife-beaters.”
He gave me a pitying look. “How long has it been since you saw that shrink of yours?”
“A year, maybe. Two. Three. Hell, I don’t remember.”
“Now don’t blow up at me, but you might give some consideration to going back.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“Says the computer expert moonlighting as a psychiatrist.”
“When the Wycoffs were killed, I hoped that would be the end of it with you, that you’d be able to put the past behind you and live a normal life. Instead, this case has just dragged it all up again, just like I warned you it would. Leave it alone now, Lena. Norma and Brian Wycoff are dead. End of story. Dri
ve back to Carefree and take a ride on that new horse of yours. Or go upstairs and pet your cat.”
I actually considered his advice for a moment, but then I belatedly remembered something. I got up and headed for the door.
“Where are you going now?” he called after me.
“Glendale.”
***
So many liars in the world, I thought as I knocked on Jacklyn Archerd’s door, especially when you count lies of omission.
“What are you doing here?” Jacklyn said, opening the door just as I was about to knock again. Her hair was mussed and her lipstick smeared.
“Let me in and I’ll tell you.”
“I’m busy.”
“Sure you are. Your boyfriend in there?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Tell me another one.”
She was getting ready to slam the door in my face when a familiar male voice called out, “Oh, go ahead and let her in. She apparently knows.”
Resigned, she opened the door. When I walked through, I saw Richard Fairfield sitting on the sofa, a Budweiser in his hand. She’d planted so much lipstick on his face he looked like an Estee Lauder ad. Old cons, they just can’t resist an adrenalin rush.
“While the cat’s away the mice will play, eh, Richard?” I asked him.
“Why can’t you mind your own business?” Jacklyn asked, taking her seat beside him. “We’re not hurting anyone.”
“Try telling that to his wife and kids. And, point of fact, when someone shoots at me, it becomes my business.”
She crossed her arms across her chest. “Better lay off the weed, bitch. I never shot at you. If I had, you’d be planted in a cemetery somewhere.”
Oddly enough, I believed her. Turning to Fairfield, I said, “How about you, Dick? Try any target practice lately?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Where were you last Thursday, say, around three-thirty?”
“Damned if I know. You think I keep a diary?”
Jacklyn gave him a look, then said, “He was here. With me.”
Now that, I didn’t believe. Ignoring Jacklyn, I said to Fairfield, “So you let your kids come home to an empty house.”
He blinked. “Nah. That’s something I’d never do. So I musta been there. I always am when they get home from school. You can ask them.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “But you better not tell them why you’re asking. Come to think of it, you stay the hell away from my kids in the first place. And my wife. You say anything to her about this and I’ll…”
“You’ll what?”
“Make you sorry.”
I gave him a long look. Saw the truth in his eyes.
Couples.
You never know what’s going on with them. Their relationship can look idyllic on the outside while they seethed with resentment inside. And yet if you threatened either one of them, the other would tear your head off.
On my way back to Scottsdale, I thought about the couples involved in the case, couples who despite their personal quarrels, might lie for one another. Jacklyn and Richard. Nicole and Sean Beltran, both still grieving the loss of their daughter. Casey and Kay Starr, although I’d not yet talked to her. Note to self: interview that woman. Then there was Cyril and Roseanne Sanders, two heartbroken people. Debbie and…No. Debbie was a widow. No man in the offing there. At least not as far as I could see.
Then again the word “couples” didn’t always refer to the married or having-an-affair kind. They could be father and daughter, like Mario Genovese and Shana Genovese Ferris, both of whom had the motive and the spine to kill both Wycoffs.
Speaking of Mario Genovese, I remembered him telling me that for a brief time he and Debbie had been lovers. When I interviewed him at his house, I’d noticed a .22 rifle in his gun cabinet. Had the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office thought to run a ballistics test on the thing? Maybe not, because they were investigating a torture killing, not a shooting, and Norma Wycoff had been shot in Pima County, not Yavapai. As an ex-cop, I understood the gaps that can happen when different jurisdictions are involved in an investigation.
Roseanne Sanders had told me that while Mario had helped pour her drunken husband Cyril into the car the night Brian Wycoff was murdered, she’d never seen Shana. So Shana had lied about her actions that night. Because she’d been busy elsewhere, taking care of the threat to her children? I could easily imagine Shana shooting her uncle to death, but try as I might, I couldn’t see her torturing him to death.
Torture takes a whole different level of hate.
***
During the drive back to Desert Investigations I received four calls from Dusty, but after listening to the oh-I’m-so-sorry-we’ve-got-to-talk message on the first call, I deleted the rest. One of the ranch hands must have seen me go into the tack room and had delighted in telling him.
Determined not to let the two-timing son of a bitch bother me again, I wiped him out of my mind by placing a call to Yavapai County Detective Yvonne Eastman. She wasn’t in but I left a message on her voice mail: had a ballistics test been run on the .22 rifle in Mario Genovese’s gun cabinet? Then I brought up my case notes and began going through them. I was puzzling over one discrepancy when Jimmy’s voice cut through my mental fog.
“Lena, you need to see this.”
Leaving the discrepancy problem for later, I walked over to Jimmy’s desk, where I saw he’d pulled up a short newspaper article from the Reading, Pennsylvania Eagle on his computer. The article was an old one, dated twelve years back.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“An obituary.”
“What’s so fascinating about the death of some engineer named Gordon Hazelit?”
He ran his finger along a sentence. “See here? ‘Survived by spouse Kay Winston Hazlit.’”
“So?”
“Follow the magic cursor.” He clicked out of that screen and brought up another obit, this one from the Arizona Republic, eight years earlier. Chiropractor Elias Mumford had died in a fall while hiking with his wife in the Superstition Mountains. Aloud, Jimmy read the obit’s concluding sentence. “Survived by spouse Kay Winston Mumford.”
What a coincidence. “Kay Winston, whoever she is, sure has bad luck when it comes to husbands.”
He gave me a grim smile. “Remember yesterday, when you asked me to look up Casey Starr’s wife’s maiden name. Guess what it is.”
Light dawned. “You’re going to tell me it’s ‘Winston,’ aren’t you?”
“Exactamundo, Kemosabe. Kay Winston, born in Pittsburgh, PA, only child of Jennifer and James Winston. She’s a Scorpio, in case you’re interested.”
“Not.” After taking a deep breath, I said, “Look, before we get all excited here, we need to know how her first husband, the unfortunate Gordon, died.”
“I’m way ahead of you.” Jimmy pulled up another Reading Eagle article, a two-incher on page three, which reported that Gordon Hazlit, an engineer for DiaCom Industries, had fallen in the bathtub, hit his head and drowned. After a brief investigation, his death was determined to be accidental.
“Looks like our Kay goes for guys who are unsteady on their feet,” he said.
“What are the odds.” It wasn’t a question.
“Bet you’re interested in the financials.”
“Lay ’em on me, Almost Brother.”
That grim smile again. “Kay inherited estates of mid-six figures from each husband, no great fortune, but…” He paused.
“People have killed for less.”
I wondered what Casey Starr’s business was worth. Somewhere in the millions, certainly. “Maybe she married for love this time around.”
“Or as Scarlett O’Hara’s father said to her in Gone With the Wind, ‘Like marries like.’”
***
&nb
sp; Not certain of my motive—former foster kids gotta stick together?—at the end of the day, I climbed into my Jeep and drove straight to Litchfield Park. Luck was with me. Casey Starr was home, but Kay was nowhere in sight. She didn’t seem to spend much time with her husband.
Casey pretended to be glad to see me. Flashing a toothy grin, he asked, “Don’t tell me you came back for another cat.”
“Then I won’t tell you.” I looked around. “Where’s your wife?”
The grin didn’t dim. “Stuck in another meeting.”
Husband Killers Anonymous, perhaps?
“Busy lady, isn’t she?” I took the newspaper printouts from my tote and handed them over. Waited.
Casey was a good actor; most psychopaths are. He sounded perfectly normal when asking, “What made you think I’d be interested in this?” His eyes looked wary.
“A word to the wise. And, on second thought, I just might be interested in the rest of those kittens. And their mother. What kind of package deal can you give me?” Whatever was going to happen in this house—and something would—I wanted the cats safe. I’d worry about finding homes for them later.
Still smiling, smiling, smiling, Casey named a price so exorbitant I could have bought a racehorse with it.
Instead, I wrote out a check and walked to my Jeep, four felines richer.
***
After depositing Mama Snowball, Snowball No. 2, Snowball No. 3, and Snowball No. 4 in my apartment to help Snowball No. 1 finish tearing the place apart, I went downstairs to the office and pulled up the case notes again.
Scrolled down to the problem area.
Not that there was only one problem; there was a baker’s dozen. As a crotchety TV doctor once said about his patients, “Everybody lies.” That observation held true for murder suspects, too. People lied for so many reasons—fear, guilt, embarrassment—and every now and then, they lied to protect the innocent. Or even to protect the guilty.
Two evil people had been murdered. Norma Wycoff had died quickly, but Brian Wycoff only after a lengthy torture session. No one mourned either.
