Sarah's List

by Elizabeth Gunn

  She was encouraged by his response to the challenge – his eyes grew a spark, like, all right, and he sat up straighter and got ready.

  ‘It was out on East Speedway, in that section that’s all antique shops and paint and decorating places and there’s a bar with off-track betting. Four young Hispanics, standard south Tucson street gang types, hanging around an ancient Cadillac Eldorado – the one with the killer fins, I couldn’t believe there was one still running – it had a repaint job, hot pink – and they were parked on the side of that bar with the painted pony, what’s the name?’

  ‘The Spotted Pony?’

  ‘Yeah, that one. They were all high, making a big show of smoking pot, and every so often they’d pop the caps on a couple more cans of beer – they had a cooler in the open trunk of the car.

  ‘They had a buddy, all smiles, a PR-type guy a little better dressed than the rest, who came and went, talked to everybody. He’d pop into one of those sports bars for a while and then come back and share a joint.

  ‘And you know, there wasn’t anything seriously criminal in what they were doing, but all their moves were kind of provocative. I could have got in there and charged them with loitering, creating a public nuisance – they might have had enough pot in the car to call it suspicion of dealing. But I thought it was more interesting to wait and see what they were up to.

  ‘It was all pretty juvie, ball caps reversed, jeans hung so low they showed their rumps every time they bent over for another beer – the whole thing was so schoolyard, and yet kind of ominous – they were set up, waiting for something. Or someone.

  ‘So I circled the block a couple of times, left to answer a nuisance call and came back. They were all still there, showing off their little bits of Spanish to each other and speaking English to passers-by who stopped to admire the car. So I pulled into an alley up behind them where I had a view of them but they couldn’t see me, called Dispatch and asked what’s going on in this part of town today? “Pretty quiet today,” the officer said, “everybody’s in the bars with TV, waiting for the race to start.” Turned out it was Kentucky Derby day.

  ‘I had a hunch then, so I tuned in the race on my radio and waited. Pretty soon the race was run, there was the usual screaming and crying and talk about a Triple Crown, and then, along the sidewalk from the off-track betting bar came the better-dressed buddy, smiling brighter than ever with his arm around the shoulder of a new best pal. He was your typical race-day gullible Tucson drunk who had just won the trifecta, and now he had come out with his new friend to see the wonderful antique car that was parked out here. Right then I knew this was what we were all waiting for, so I wheeled my black-and-white Ford down around the corner just as the four young studs were clustering around the winner, who was outraged to see that his new pal from the bar was helping his buds to the contents of his wallet.

  ‘They were all so busy and happy with their victim, Sarah, he was protesting and they were debating whether to strangle him right there or gag him and put him in the trunk – oh, wait, we gotta get the cooler out first! – it was a walk in the park, really. I grabbed my shotgun off the rack and, you know, there’s just nothing like the sound of a pump-action shotgun to get everybody’s attention.

  ‘And all that about me bringing in five bad guys single-handed – I had told Dispatch what I was watching, had him all primed so as soon as he got my call he sent me plenty of help. It’s true I had them all lying face down on the gravel in The Spotted Pony’s parking lot by the time they got there – that did make a nice picture, didn’t it?’

  ‘Beautiful. So now you’re in homicide, is it the answer to all your hopes and dreams?’

  ‘Well …’ He did the hapless shrug again and they both laughed.

  ‘Nothing’s ever quite perfect, is it? What’s the worst thing about being a detective?’

  ‘The hours. On patrol you put in your eight or ten, depending which schedule you got, and when your shift is over you go home. Investigations sometimes go on and on.’

  ‘That’s true. Many a marriage has foundered after one of the pair got a job in homicide.’

  ‘And on patrol I was just getting seniority enough to try for weekends off. Now I’m years from getting weekends and so far I can’t even get two days together. Right now I’ve got Wednesday and Friday, and that may change on short notice.’

  ‘Makes it hard to buy season tickets, hmm?’

  ‘Makes it hard to keep a steady girl.’

  ‘Guess you’ll have to try being extra adorable.’

  ‘Eee. Recent polling indicates that’s not likely.’

  They laughed together as they paid their checks. The other problem with detective division was that once out of uniform, cops didn’t get much free pie.

  ‘That’s plenty of corned beef,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll take some more cabbage, though, and another potato.’ The pie hadn’t even begun to fill the vacancy left by the missed lunch, so she had been very glad to find a good meal waiting at home. ‘This is a terrific dinner you cooked up for us tonight, Denny. What inspired you?’

  ‘I’m celebrating,’ Denny said. ‘I took the last of the tests today for admission into advanced placement classes next semester. If I did as well as I think, I get to take computer coding in the spring.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Will said. ‘You do well enough at those super-geek courses; maybe you can find the deposition I blew off into outer space yesterday morning.’

  ‘I better not promise until I see if I can pass the tests.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll pass them all right,’ Will said. ‘If you can figure out all the moves to make a dinner like this, you can certainly conquer a batch of ones and zeroes.’

  ‘Grandma helped me with this dinner,’ Denny said. ‘She understands vegetables, do you realize how profound that is?’

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ Aggie said. ‘Profound.’

  ‘I mean it,’ Denny said. ‘Anybody can cook a meat loaf and a baked potato, but Grandma knows how to make a big dinner with many different parts and make everything get done at the same time.’

  ‘You’ll get it soon,’ Aggie said. ‘Be patient. It takes a lot of carrots and onions to get to where I am in the cooking game.’

  ‘Which is a wonderful place to be,’ Sarah said. ‘But you’re right about timing, Denny. It’s the trickiest part of everything, isn’t it? I spent all afternoon with another detective trying to answer questions we wouldn’t be asking if everybody’d been in the right place at the right time.’

  ‘Be a rare day when you achieve that in a police department,’ Will said. ‘Which detective was helping you learn that hard lesson?’

  ‘Oh, the new one, the one they all call Bogey – Boganicevic.’

  ‘Oh yeah, the one that brought in the street gang single-handed.’ Will looked thoughtful. ‘It’s funny about that guy.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The way he’s turned his career around. His first couple of years, he got kind of a reputation for messing things up.’

  ‘Did he? I guess I never heard about that.’ She finished the last of the potato and sat back with a sigh. ‘Ah, well, but anybody can change, can’t they?’

  ‘God, yes,’ Will said, ‘I’d never have made it through seventh grade if that wasn’t true.’

  FOURTEEN

  Tuesday

  ‘I thought I heard thunder during the night,’ Sarah said, coming out of her bedroom Tuesday morning. ‘Is it possible we had some rain?’ In a dry summer, they had all been complaining about what Denny was calling ‘the little monsoon season that couldn’t.’

  ‘Sure did,’ Will said, pulling open the front blinds. ‘Look, puddles in the low spots!’

  ‘Oh, I have to go outside and smell it,’ Sarah said, and hurried out onto the front walk to stand with her nose in the air, sniffing, crying, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ The desert gave off that wet-creosote aroma, and a cactus wren broadcast its creaky buzz of approval.

  ‘Love it, love it, love it,’ Denny
crooned behind her. ‘We should dance to show our gratitude!’ She whirled into a mad caper of joy around the wet gravel, crying, ‘Thank you, Mother Nature!’ and nearly collided with Will when he came out to say breakfast was on the table.

  ‘Easy there,’ he said. ‘You girls get kind of nutty when you’re pleased, eh? Don’t think I want to be around you when you win the lottery.’ He held the door for them, chuckling, and they all sat down at the round table and poured milk over cereal and berries, and began grabbing parts of the paper.

  After a few minutes’ rustling silence Will took his head out of the Sports page to say he might be a little late tonight. ‘Another one of those dismal board meetings.’

  ‘Mmph,’ Sarah said, behind the front page.

  Denny said, ‘I’ll be right on time but I might need CPR. Our math teacher is going to dump on us today – a killing load!’

  ‘Tell Aggie if the pain is serious,’ Sarah said. ‘She understands tween-agers even better than vegetables.’ She got up and found her purse on the sideboard where she always left it, and loaded it with spare tissues, two good pens, a small flashlight, and her list. It had more than thirty items on it now, but most of them were crossed out.

  ‘Try not to shoot anybody today, Aunt Sarah,’ Denny said as she loaded her backpack.

  ‘Never fear,’ Sarah said. ‘Today I’m going house-hunting.’

  Denny giggled and waved goodbye. She knew her aunt was not going house-hunting; they already had this house that suited them fine, and besides this was a workday. So she didn’t get the joke but she was in a hurry. And she knew she would find out tonight, if she asked (maybe even if she didn’t), what her aunt had been doing all day. That was the grand thing about her situation now – she lived with three capable adults who weren’t afraid of the truth. If she wanted to know what was going on with them, Denny thought, all she had to do was ask.

  In her workspace on South Stone Sarah pulled up the database for car registrations and entered Amanda Petty’s auto stats. It came up with her home address, 255 Jenny Mine Road. When she fed it into her Google map site and saw where it was, she stepped around the corner to Ollie’s cubicle. He was sitting at his desk, staring at his computer monitor. Ray was behind him, looking over his shoulder. They both looked as if they had found some very good news.

  She tapped on the thin wooden panel that outlined the doorway. Both men peeled their eyes slowly off the screen to face her, but their minds, obviously, were still on the monitor. Ray said, ‘Que pasa?’

  Sarah said, ‘I found this address off Ocotillo—’

  ‘Good for you,’ Ollie said. ‘I’ve always wanted to do that. Haven’t you, Ray?’

  ‘God, yes,’ Ray said. ‘I told my bride yesterday, if only I could find an address off Ocotillo, my career would be made.’

  Sarah stepped into the space beside Ray and stared at the screenful of gross pornography they were both watching. ‘I see you’re madly busy,’ she said, politely, ‘but could you spare a minute to come and look at my monitor?’

  ‘Of course,’ Ollie said, closing his screen as he got up. ‘Why wouldn’t I be glad to help a colleague when she’s proving what a major pain in the butt she can be?’

  Ray followed them into her cubicle, muttering, ‘Although it’s hard to understand what she’s doing in the detective division if she needs help to read a map.’

  ‘So are we trapped on silly street today?’ Sarah asked them. ‘Or what’s made you both so frisky?’

  ‘We finished all our interviews at the bank,’ Ollie said. ‘We don’t have to listen to anybody cry today.’

  ‘That hold-up was a big bummer, huh?’

  ‘Hard enough to put up with the waterworks,’ Ray said, ‘but then we couldn’t get any useful evidence. The bad guys all wore balaclavas so nobody knows what they look like, and they used some kind of freak accents and talked in high, piping voices so we don’t have a clue where they’re from.’

  ‘And they were all gloved up and wearing slippers, so we’re not getting any prints or DNA,’ Ollie said. ‘These guys are pros. The only thing that went right in this deal is that they didn’t get the money.’

  ‘Still, in a robbery that’s a lot to go right.’

  ‘Especially in a bank,’ Ollie said. ‘We do have happy bankers. So grateful to our fine police force, that’s what the chairman of the board said.’

  ‘The chairman did not say, but I believe it’s safe to assume,’ Ray said, ‘that he was also pleased that he was not in the bank that day getting shot at and abused like his underpaid employees.’ He did an elaborate stretch to ease his neck. ‘Shall we stop talking about it now? I’m afraid I’ll stop feeling frisky.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Sarah said. ‘Let’s talk about this address I want to find. I think it must be in this cluster of little streets out here in the desert …’ She pointed. ‘Do you know anything about that – is it a wildcat village or what? I suppose if I go west on Ocotillo—’

  ‘Actually I think that’s south,’ Ray said.

  ‘Oh, please,’ Sarah said, ‘let’s not start that or I’ll never get out of the building.’ Built on the bias and around many hills, Tucson was a hard place to keep a fix on true north.

  ‘OK,’ Ray said, ‘just keep your GPS on.’

  ‘I will. Where’s Bogey? I might as well take him along.’

  ‘He’s off today.’ Ray smirked. ‘Poor kid’s got splits.’

  ‘That’s right, he told me that. No problem, this is basically sightseeing – I don’t need any help. But tell me, have you driven that section of the desert much? Should I go out on Ocotillo?’

  ‘You can do that,’ Ollie said, squinting at the screen, ‘or go on down the highway to Gould and turn west there. But remember, Sarah, west of Silverbell you’re mostly out of the city limits.’

  ‘I know. I’m not going to arrest anybody. I just want to look.’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘At whatever’s on the lot at Amanda Petty’s home address.’

  ‘Who’s Amanda Petty?’

  ‘She’s the steno, secretary, bookkeeper – whatever – at Fairweather Farms.’

  ‘And that makes her yard interesting?’

  ‘It wouldn’t, except she doesn’t want anybody to know where it is. The address she has listed at the company is a Mail Boxes address. She told her boss she’s hiding from an abusive ex, and probably that’s all there is to it. But I’m stalled out on this case, none of my leads has worked out. So I’m working my way back through my list, thinking I must have overlooked something. And the first thing I came to is Amanda Petty’s home address, which I promised myself to verify, and then forgot.’

  ‘Well, good luck trying to find it out there,’ Ray said. ‘I went out in that neighborhood once with a buddy, looking for an open spot to do some skeet shooting. We stumbled into that neighborhood by mistake and were totally lost for half an hour. All those little lines marked as streets? They’re just gravel tracks – some are just dirt paths, and they all run steeply up and down hills. Old mine sites, mostly, and what look like storage sheds. Holes you can fall into. Good place to stay out of. You sure that steno lives in there? Must be some kinda girl.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah said, ‘I think that’s a fair description of Amanda.’ She decided to take along her day pack, and began checking to be sure it held extra batteries, a county map, energy bars and bottled water.

  Watching her take her phone off the charger and zip it into the outside pocket on her day pack, Ollie said, ‘I’d ride out with you, Sarah, but I got two humongous reports to write, and Delaney wants them right away.’

  ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea,’ Ray said. ‘I’m tight with the deputy sheriff, he’s one of my thirty-seven cousins. Would you like me to call him and ask him to meet you out there?

  ‘Guys, I’m only going a few miles out in the desert, it’s not the South Pole,’ she said.

  ‘I know, but some places out there are pretty desolate,’ Ollie said. ‘You got both our n
umbers handy on your phone?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good. And listen, send me a text when you get out there, will you? I’m going to be right here all day, typing my fingers to the bone.’

  ‘Me too,’ Ray said. ‘So feel free to call us when you run into a ditch and can’t get out.’

  ‘You bet.’ When pigs fly, I will call you for help getting out of a ditch. What ailed them today? This was the condescension she had fought off years ago.

  She did double-check all her supplies, though, added a box of band-aids and extra sunscreen, and changed into the old ranch boots she kept in the office for days when she might want to walk a lot. For comfort, as long as she was taking the pack, she zipped her Glock into the holster on her day pack, next to the phone.

  Tuning her radio to NPR as she headed out, she told herself, It’s a beautiful day, let’s enjoy the trip. And it was beautiful in the car, with the A/C cranking out cool air. The dashboard indicator said the outside temperature was ninety-five, and the morning news predicted Tucson would be around a hundred and three by mid-afternoon.

  It was a small point of pride with Sarah that she seldom needed the GPS in her car. Having spent thousands of hours patrolling city streets, she stayed oriented in town and always knew the shortest route to wherever she was going. Her knowledge of the desert surrounding Tucson was mostly confined to major roads, except for her family’s ranch, a few hundred acres north of town where she knew every track and slope. But anywhere in the Tucson valley, she drove with the confidence of a driver who knew roughly where she was just by glancing at the mountains around her.

  So she reviewed the map before she set out, thinking about the turns she would make to reach her destination, in the middle of the cluster of short streets she was driving toward. She decided to set her mileage when she left Silverbell, drive five miles west and take the next left turn.

  When that took her to a sign on a padlocked gate marked, Private Property, do not enter, she took three tries to turn in the tiny space between two deep ditches, went back to Ocotillo and turned west again.