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Don’t hate your old man, Dana. I had to do these things, for you. I loved you whether you knew it or not.
Dana didn’t know who “Z”’ was. All she knew was the directions to the property, which the will had made hers. Her father had a notion of raising cattle on it. But this was rough country, with little more than creosote bush covering the hard, rolling ground. Not even a Texas longhorn would last out here, which is why it was so unappealing to settlers in the nineteenth century. They passed through, if they had to, on the way to California. Yet after another thirty minutes of bumping over a dirt road, I was pretty sure I was there, and the country had changed. Several saguaros with multiple arms towered over dense stands of prickly pear, pincushion, and cholla cactus. Beyond were palo verdes, hackberries, and even a couple of cottonwood trees. A creek was nearby. Bright orange flowers were starting to bud on the long fingers of ocotillo and gnarled deep green branches of buckhorn cholla. Even the ubiquitous creosote looked greener. I could see why the land had appealed to Dana’s old man. An ancient wooden gate parted a long, disheveled fence of barbed wire. Behind it, maybe half a mile away, was a smooth butte the shape of a fez. I parked the Crown Vic in front of the gate and was grateful to stretch my legs.
Dana said the property was an even thousand acres. As the desert floor swept up to the butte, it became craggier and strewn with burned-looking boulders the size of a Mini Cooper. Closer to me, it was especially thick with the yellow-white fuzz of teddy bear cholla. Jumping cactus. It made me glad I didn’t go out in the desert like a tourist from the Midwest—in shorts. The land was utterly silent. It was almost a frightening sensory experience for a city boy. Although the soil was dry and the sky was bright blue with fluffy February clouds, the ground smelled of rain.
The gate was no problem. Although it still kept watch with a rusty chain and padlock, one post had pulled away enough for me to slip through. I walked along a trail toward the butte. Sure, I could have tried to bring out a team of forensic specialists. But that would have required permission from Peralta. And I was supposed to be writing his damned book. And I didn’t know what I thought of the letter. An old man’s ravings—stranger things had been imagined by the dying and committed to paper. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
The trail took me through the cactus stands and across the undulating, sunblasted ground. In a few months, it could be fatal to be out here. Today, it was cool—almost chilly to thin-blooded Arizonans. I liked it, though. The old Boy Scout in me couldn’t help but think of rattlesnakes and listen for a telltale sound. But the snakes were hibernating, and all I heard was the breeze through the arms of the ocotillo and my boots scuffing against the rocks and sand. The ground was dry. The rain of the previous night had spurned this place. I walked alone surrounded by nothing made by man.
My plan was to look around. Look around, go back and talk to Dana. And then turn her over to the sheriff’s detectives. Maybe Peralta was right—I was doing any task to avoid sitting before that blank computer screen and writing. A task like seeking an old homicide victim in a thousand acres of wilderness. But the instructions in the letter were true. I walked a couple of hundred yards on the trail, heading for the butte. Then, as promised, I found a metal fence post, alone in the ground. Turning left, I could see an odd break in the ground, off to my right.
I wandered toward it, and in a moment an arroyo appeared. It was maybe 20 feet deep and held a dry wash. But its walls were steep and sudden. I didn’t want to stand too close to the edge. The arroyo’s edge was flush with the desert floor. A casual hiker would never know it was here. I started thinking of the hidden canyons where the Apache had eluded the cavalry. And then I saw a formation of bowling-ball-sized rocks exactly the shape and size of a man. They were maybe ten feet from the arroyo edge, and on the hard dirt of the desert floor. I looked around for similar sized stones, and none were nearby. These had been placed here. For a grave.
That was when I heard footsteps.
“This is private property.”
The voice went with a giant. I’m six feet two, and I swear my eyes were on the level of his chest. With him, was a skinny kid wearing a football jersey bearing the lettering ghetto.
I started to speak and the giant shoved me to the ground. My hand blazed in pain at breaking my fall against an outcropping of shale. But that was nothing compared to the kick in the ribs, and then I felt cholla biting into my arm. The kid was laughing, a high-pitched keening. I tried to roll off the cactus, but something sharp erupted into my stomach. I saw a large hiking boot flash between the ground and me.
Then I wasn’t seeing anything.
6
By the time I made it home, the sky was rippling in deep scarlets and oranges. It would be a sunset for the record books, but right that moment I just wanted a martini with Lindsey. My right hand was on fire from the jumping cactus, and my left side felt as if it had been caved in by a rockslide. I kept touching it, and was surprised my ribs were still there. But every time I touched it, a bolt of pain zagged across my chest and up my neck. So much for helping old students. No good deed goes unpunished.
The lights were already on, glowing warmly through the picture window that faces Cypress Street. But when I came through the door, I heard muffled sobs. A look around the archway into the living room, and I saw Lindsey and Robin sitting close. Lindsey’s arm was around her sister, who had her head down and was hunched forward on her elbows. I quietly closed and locked the front door, and took the right turn into the hallway that led to our bedroom, there, to pick out the remaining cactus spines with tweezers and take stock of my mess of an afternoon.
When I’d come to, I was about an inch from the edge of the arroyo. I was still woozy, and the wrong twist would have deposited me two stories down into the wash bed. I was surprised my attackers hadn’t thought of it. But they were gone. As I spat a mouthful of bile into the sand and tried to rise, I could hear a distant buzz. Motorcycles, or all-terrain vehicles. Fading away.
By the time Lindsey came in, I had washed the worst of the desert off me. I managed to kiss her and let her snuggle into my arms without getting my ribs involved or letting her take hold of my injured hand. She offered to make martinis, and I let her.
“Do you feel better about Robin now?” I asked, after we had settled on the leather sofa that faced the picture window.
“Oh, Dave,” she said, a small smile. She lithely swung her legs onto my lap while hanging onto her drink, and lolled her head back against the arm of the sofa.
“Are you all right?” She must have noticed I winced. I said I was. I was getting better at least. Despite a kick in the stomach, my system eagerly accepted the gin.
She said, “I guess I feel a little better. I know I’ve been acting weird. Seeing her for the first time in years…it brought back a lot. But time really can help things.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“Dave, you know I have to tell you everything.” She sipped her drink and ran one of her long, elegant fingers around the rim of her glass. “She’s my half-sister, you know? She had a different dad. She’s two years younger, but by the time she came along, Linda was already living with some new guy. I know you think it’s weird to call my mother by her first name…”
“No,” I said. “From the way you describe it, you kind of had to raise her.”
“The dutiful daughter Lindsey,” she said, an ambiguous shade in her voice. “Robin was a sweet girl, so creative. That all changed. She got into drugs by the time she was about thirteen. It didn’t help that we moved to a new school every year, and Linda always had some new man she was self-destructing over. You’ve heard this a million times.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” I said gently.
She sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.” I stroked her feet with my free hand. In a moment, she continued. “For so many years, I felt like an orphan. When I found you, I just didn’t want to dredge all that up. I never thought I’d see her again.” She took an uncharacteristic gulp of her drink. “When I was twenty-five, I was leaving the Air Force. And Robin showed up. It was bad. She was still doing drugs, lying. Oh, Dave. My family sounds like a white trash reality show. I’m not like them. But I knew Robin was going to turn out just like Linda. God, I knew that when I was fifteen years old.” By this time her eyes were full of tears.
“We don’t choose our families, darling,” I said. “I was lucky. But even so, I lost my parents when I was a baby. Then I lost my grandparents. Sometimes I almost wish some long lost brother or sister would arrive.”
“I chose you,” she said. “And I had a good visit with Robin. Maybe she has changed. Everybody gets older, and some people even grow up. She went back to college. My gosh, she’s lived in New York and Paris. She sounds very accomplished.”
“I’d call that a change for the better.”
