Hoch's Ladies

by Edward D. Hoch

  “I met Marci McGreggor. She’s very friendly. She said she knew you.” Symons grunted “In a place like Cactus Valley everybody knows everybody.”

  “The sheriff said there’ll be fireworks at ten thirty, but I’m a bit tired.”

  “They last for ten minutes tops. It’s not the fancy stuff you see on TV.”

  He was right about that. From her window she saw a few sparklers and bursting skyrockets, climaxed by a fiery display in the shape of a big green cactus. As the last of it faded and died, she was about to pull down the blinds and go to bed when a movement in the motel parking lot caught her eye. Someone was walking toward a dark pickup truck parked a bit away from the other vehicles. It looked like Bill Symons and he was carrying a long cloth bag over his shoulder. Golf clubs, she thought.

  Or maybe a rifle.

  Annie was still dressed and she went quickly down the stairs to the parking lot, reaching it in time to see the pickup turn right on the highway, heading away from town. She slipped behind the wheel of her car and followed.

  Symons stayed on the main highway for about five miles, and then turned off to the left Annie had doused her headlights, relying on moonlight to show the way. There was virtually no traffic on this stretch of highway, and she could follow the pickup’s lights easily as it made its bumpy way up a slight hill. Then suddenly the truck stopped and the lights went dark. If he was looking back he might have seen her in the moonlight, so she kept driving for another quarter mile before making a U-turn on the highway. Then, as she approached the turnoff, she pulled off the highway and killed her engine. She opened the window to the cool night air and sat there for a few moments, waiting. For all she knew, he might be up there driving golf balls. Then, with the suddenness of a summer storm, the shots came—four of them bunched together. Annie left her car and started up the hill on foot, past the fat, rain-swollen cactuses. She heard four more shots in the distance and presently came upon a partly collapsed cactus, still leaking water through its side “Bill Symons!” she shouted. “I know you’re up there! Come down here

  and talk to me!”

  There was only silence for a moment and then his voice shouted back. “Who is it?”

  “Annie Sears. I followed you from the motel.”

  More silence. She waited. Presently she heard him approaching and made out his silhouette against the night sky. “It’s not wise to sneak up on someone with a rifle in his hands,” he told her.

  “I knew you wouldn’t shoot me. You only shoot cactuses.”

  He pointed the rifle at the ground as he came closer. “How did you know that? Why did you follow me?”

  Close up, even in the semidarkness, he did not seem as dour and brooding as he’d first appeared. “I think I know why you’ve been killing those cactuses. I just wanted to see if I was right.” She felt the chill of the desert night air. “Can we talk in your truck where it’s a bit warmer?”

  He hesitated, and then said, “All right.” She followed him over to the truck.

  He slipped the rifle back into its case and slid it behind the seats. Then he stood with his hand on the door handle, waiting for her to speak.

  “When I registered at your motel you happened to mention that the blossoms of the Saguaro Cactus bloom in May and June. Later the sheriff told me that cactus shootings have occurred mostly in those months. I got to thinking about that. Could there be a tie-in between the shootings and the blossoms? Could this so-called cactus killer be firing at cactuses with blossoms? That hardly seemed likely. The blossoms open at night and only last till midday. Besides, if the shooter were aiming at the blossoms at the top of the branches, he wouldn’t be hitting the middle of the cactus where it could split and collapse. That made me wonder if the opposite might be true. If he was shooting mainly during the blossom season, but not aiming at the blossoms, was it possible he was aiming at cactuses that didn’t have blossoms?”

  “Why would he do that?” Symons asked uneasily.

  “Well, what did he accomplish by drilling cactuses with several bullets until they burst open? He established at a distance, by moonlight, that they were really cactuses and not a plastic fake, like the one standing in the town square right now.”

  He moistened his lips nervously. “How do you know all this?”

  “A kid shooting at cactuses probably would have moved on to other amusements after the first year. I was looking for another motive. This is the third year of the shootings so they started two years ago, and the artificial cactus in the square replaced a shorter one three years ago. What if someone had placed that ten-foot-tall artificial cactus out in the desert among all the others, weighted down inside so it wouldn’t blow away? What if someone like you suspected this and went hunting for the fake cactus?” Before he could answer they both saw the lights from a car driving slowly along the highway. Annie remembered she’d parked her own vehicle just off the road, and the new arrival stopped behind it. “That’s not a sheriff’s car,” he told her, and she detected the alarm in his voice.

  She slipped the cell phone from the pocket of her jeans. “Do you have a 911 system here?”

  He nodded. “But it might be faster to call the sheriff direct I know his number by heart after running that motel for three years.”

  “That’s when your dad disappeared, wasn’t it?” She punched in the number he gave her and waited. “Sheriff Redmont,” a voice answered.

  “This is Annie Sears. I’m with Bill Symons on the hill off Route—” She glanced at Symons for help.

  “One eighty-six,” he told her. “Just before the turn-off for Fort Bowie.”

  She repeated what he’d said. “We may be in trouble, Sheriff. It’s the cactus killer”

  “I’m on my way.”

  She turned off the phone and waited with Symons in the darkness, crouched low so as not to be visible in the moonlight. Soon they heard someone approaching. “It’s Russ Jewitt, isn’t it?” she whispered.

  “It has to be. I must have picked the right area this time. But how did he know?”

  Before she could answer they heard Jewitt’s voice call out, “I know you’re here, Symons. Let’s talk about this.”

  “All right,” he called back, but Annie placed a restraining hand on his arm before he could stand up.

  “Who’s with you? That’s not your car on the highway.”

  She answered for him. “Annie Sears, from the motel. I followed him out here.”

  “Well, Miss Sears, then you must know he’s our cactus killer.”

  “I know that.”

  She could see him then, less than twenty feet away, moving toward them between the cactuses. He was carrying something in his hand and in the darkness she thought it was a long stick. Then as he got closer she saw it was a double-barreled shotgun, pointed at the ground. “Tell me something, Symons,” he said, stopping about ten feet away. “Why have you been destroying our cactuses like this?”

  “You know why. And I must be getting close if you came out here with a gun. What’d you do, attach one of those global positioning gadgets to my truck?”

  “Maybe I did. Maybe I suspected you and wanted to catch you in the act.”

  “That’s no good, Jewitt,” Annie told him. “He started shooting cactuses after his father disappeared, which was the same year that you replaced your ten-foot plastic cactus with one twice as big. You know he’s searching for his

  father’s body, hidden out here inside your original plastic cactus.”

  “That cactus is back at my lumberyard,” Jewitt told them.

  But Bill Symons was ready for that. “No, it isn’t. You were the only one who saw my father with this woman he supposedly ran off with. I never believed that for a minute. You killed him, didn’t you? And hid his body inside that plastic cactus. Your lumberyard was the first place I checked, and the original cactus isn’t there.”

  “Are you accusing me of killing your father?”

  “Damned right I am! You’ve wanted that motel property
for years, probably to build the discount store you were touting. When he wouldn’t sell it, you killed him expecting I would sell it to you with him gone.”

  “You’ll need a body to prove that,” he said.

  “The sheriff will find it,” Annie assured him. “It’ll be in this area and it won’t have a blossom on top. You could hardly take a chance coming out here to attach a fake blossom that only lasts one day anyway. That’s why Bill has been shooting at cactuses without blossoms.”

  As she mentioned the sheriff they saw his car speeding along the highway toward them. The siren was off but his red lights were blinking. Jewitt raised the shotgun. “You’ve brought this on yourselves. At this distance I can blow you both away!”

  Annie and Symons had been backing up until they felt the needles of a cactus pricking them. Now, with a sudden motion, Annie shoved Symons aside and hurled herself after him just as the double-barreled shotgun roared. The giant cactus shredded as the water gushed out and it toppled forward, catching Jewitt before he could jump aside.

  Sheriff Redmont and his deputies located the false cactus within ten minutes, not far from where Russ Jewitt had been fatally injured. Inside they found the body of Pete Symons, wrapped tightly in plastic sheets to help preserve it against the desert heat.

  “Why did he do it?” Marci McGreggor asked Annie the next morning, as she was checking out of her room.

  “For this property,” Annie replied. “He thought Bill Symons would sell it to him after his father was gone.”

  “No, I mean why did he hide the body inside a fake cactus instead of just burying it out there someplace?”

  “I had to think about that, but I finally figured it out. Jewitt had spread the story about Pete Symons running off with some woman. If Bill had been willing to sell the property, Jewitt would have had to wait seven years until the state declared Pete Symons legally dead and ownership passed to his son. In that case, he could have unwrapped the body and left it along the highway to be found and identified sooner. Since Pete’s son wouldn’t sell, he left the body in the cactus. It was probably a safer place than in the ground, where it might have been found or dug up by animals.”

  Marci simply shook her head in wonder. “You know, you should have been a detective.”

  Annie Sears smiled. “I am. I was with the El Paso police force, and now I’m on my way to take a better job with the San Diego force. If you’re ever out that way, look me up.”

  FIRST BLOOD

  If the cactus forest of Arizona had impressed Annie Sears on her drive from El Paso to San Diego, she was almost as impressed with the line of giant wind turbines atop a hill where cattle grazed. Somehow they seemed

  to symbolize this new megacity, already the seventh largest in the country and almost twice the size of San Francisco.

  “You know, we have a much larger department than El Paso,” Chief Williams told her the first day she reported for duty.

  “Of course.” She’d dressed conservatively for their first meeting, deciding on a white blouse and gray cotton suit for this warm June morning. Her long hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, and she’d kept her makeup to a bare minimum. “We do have some of the same problems, though, with illegal border crossings that add to the crime statistics. I need all the help I can get.”

  She shifted uneasily in her chair, hoping they hadn’t hired her away from the El Paso department merely to chase illegals across the desert. “I’ve been wanting a chance on a big-city force,” she told him. “I hope I’ve found it here.”

  “Your record speaks very well for you, Ms. Sears.” He pressed a button on his desk. “I’m going to assign you to work with Sergeant Reynolds in Homicide. I think you’ll find him to be a good teacher.”

  Annie wasn’t really looking for a teacher, just a partner who knew his way around the city until she got her bearings. But the door opened and there was Sergeant Reynolds extending his hand. “Call me Josh,” he suggested with a wry smile. He was a good decade older than her, probably around forty, with dark hair and a strong jaw line. “Good to have you aboard, Annie.”

  He showed her around the squad room and took her down to the forensic lab. Along the way, she met over a dozen people whose names became a blur in her memory. She guessed she’d sort them all out eventually. Reynolds assigned her an empty desk just outside his own cubicle and handed her the badge and holstered pistol he’d picked up from the captain.

  “You’re one of us now,” he said. “You’ll want to put in some time on the range with the weapon, just to familiarize yourself with it. You should carry

  it even when you’re off duty.” Over coffee he explained the workings of the department and the geography of the city. “City Hall, the courthouses, and the Metro Correction Center are all here within an area of a few blocks. Unfortunately, police headquarters is a dozen blocks to the east.”

  He showed her the map on one wall. “This is all San Diego?” she asked. He laughed. “It’s a big city. Some people call it the birthplace of California.

  Most of our work will be downtown.” As if on cue, the phone on his desk rang. He answered it with a brusque “Reynolds, Homicide.” When he hung up, he reached in a drawer for his service automatic. “Your first case, sooner than I expected.”

  “What is it?”

  “Robbery and shooting at the Essex Jewelers in Emerald Plaza. Let’s go.” The time was 11:25.

  Emerald Plaza, Reynolds explained as they drove west on Broadway, was barely ten years old. It consisted of three hexagonal towers topped with emerald neon rings, with a hundred-foot-high atrium featuring a huge chandelier made of emerald green panels. Essex Jewelers had offices high up in one of the towers. “They’re not looking for walk-in business. They buy gold and diamonds from estates and sell it to wealthy buyers in Beverly Hills or Miami Beach.”

  He pulled up behind an ambulance and police car already on the scene. “The chandelier is impressive,” Annie admitted as they hurried across the atrium to a waiting elevator.

  “Pin your badge on,” he told her. “These guys won’t know you.”

  “Right.”

  They took the elevator to the twentieth floor, where a uniformed patrolman was awaiting them. “What’s the story, Rodriguez?”

  “Attempted robbery. One man dead. In here.”

  They followed him through an open door into a small reception area. There was no desk for a receptionist, only a leather sofa with two matching chairs. On the wall was a sign calling attention to an intercom speaker. Another officer was inside, directing them to a small, windowless office with a thick wooden door. Two empty chairs faced a desk where a man was slumped face down in a welter of blood.

  A gray-haired man in a conservative pinstriped suit and blue tie followed them in from an adjoining office. “I’m Matthew Kirk, president of Essex Jewelers. The dead man is our vice president, Perry Valencia. I don’t know what happened.”

  Sergeant Reynolds introduced himself and Annie. “Suppose you tell us what you do know, Mr. Kirk”

  The forensic people were arriving on the scene, so they moved into Matthew Kirk’s somewhat larger office. This one had a window, with a magnificent view of downtown San Diego.

  “I was here in my office, going over some figures. None of us heard a thing.”

  “Who else was here at the time?” Annie asked, making notes. He seemed remarkably calm for someone who’d just had an employee killed in his office. “There are usually five of us: myself, Perry, Jenny Presburg, Chris Fox, and Ashley Cooper. Ashley is out ill today. For business reasons, our offices are soundproofed, with thick doors.’’ He motioned toward a corner of the ceiling where Annie had already observed the tiny eye of a security camera. “We have cameras in every room, and each of us has a small monitor to observe the entrance. You understand, we don’t sell jewelry here. Our business is buying gold, silver, diamonds, and other precious stones, mainly from

  estates. These are resold to dealers around the country.”

>   “We’re more interested right now in the killing of Perry Valencia,” Reynolds told him, trying to mask his impatience. “If you didn’t hear the shot, you must have at least seen who was in the room with him.”

  “I didn’t, but the monitors for the rooms are in Chris’s office. He’s our treasurer. He’s the one who spread the alarm.”

  “I guess we’d better talk to him,” Reynolds decided.

  Kirk called him in from the next office. He was a blond man in his thirties, with frown lines already deeply etched around his eyes. A small goatee seemed out of place on his face. “Tell them what you saw,” Matthew Kirk said.

  Chris Fox was a bundle of nerves, taking a seat and then immediately standing up. “Have you caught him yet?” he wanted to know.

  “Just tell us what you saw.”

  “Well, first I saw someone entering the office on the door monitor. We need magnetic key cards to get to the inner offices. Outside of us, the only other cardholder is Miguel, on the cleaning crew. He personally comes in each morning and empties our trash. I only caught a glimpse, but I knew it was him.”

  “Could anyone have come in with him?” Annie asked.

  “I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Usually when someone enters the waiting room, whoever’s free greets them on the speaker, asks their business, and then comes out to escort them inside. I don’t do appraisals, which is why the monitors are in my office away from visitors.” He sat down again. “God, this is awful! I can’t believe it happened.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I’m not often watching the screens. They’re out of my line of vision. But I suddenly became aware that Perry was slumped over his desk. I never heard the gunshot, but that’s not surprising, with the soundproofing and the thick doors.”

  “Don’t you have sound on the security cameras?” Annie asked.

  “It’s against the law unless there’s a sign advising people they’re being recorded.”

  “Had Miguel left by this time?”