Desert Shadows (9781615952250) Page 2

  When Scottsdale North, the police department’s main station, had been built a decade back, the city had pretty much ended at Bell Road. Now urban sprawl continued all the way to the foothills of the McDowell Mountains, more than twenty miles north of where the town first began. The pristine Sonoran Desert I loved was being replaced by tract homes and strip malls; the protests of various environmental groups had been unable to stop it. Not even the groups backed with Alden-Taylor money.

  Gloriana had loved the desert, too, although this trait seldom endeared her to other environmentalists. She actually considered the wilderness her family’s private legacy, not a resource to be enjoyed by everyone, rich or poor, Anglo or non. I suspected that if Gloriana had had her way, the entire Sonoran Desert would have been strung with barbed wire and patrolled by armed militia to keep out the riff raff.

  Come to think of it, that kind of thing was already happening down by the Mexican border.

  The more I reflected on Gloriana’s self-involved life, the more I realized that her murder didn’t surprise me. Given her ability to make enemies, it was odd that no one had killed her until now.

  Chapter 2

  The distressed look on my old boss’ face resembled Jimmy’s, so I didn’t launch into the denunciations I had planned. Instead, I asked Captain Kryzinski why Owen Sisiwan had been the first person tagged for Gloriana’s murder. As I listened to his reasons, I tried not to stare at his new gray suit. The current police chief, an Ivy League yuppy imported from the East Coast, had come down hard on Kryzinski, making him shed all his colorful Western wear. Now the captain looked just as dull as everyone else.

  Maybe that had been the point.

  “Let’s see, why did we arrest Mr. Sisiwan? Well, kid, why do you think? Could it be because he had motive, means, and opportunity? Lena, our guys found water hemlock in his jacket pocket, more than enough to do the deed. You know what I think?” Kryzinski’s tone softened and his face grew sorrowful. “I think the poor guy stayed in Afghanistan too long.”

  There it was, the standard excuse for any veteran’s odd behavior, an excuse sometimes used to let a perpetrator off the legal hook, but more often to rachet up the charges. This time, our local hero was the vet du jour. Welcome back to the States, Corporal Sisiwan.

  “Oh, please, Captain,” I said, not bothering to hide my disgust. “Where’s the murder book?”

  Kryzinski tugged at his K-Mart tie until I thought he’d choke himself. “You know I can’t let you see that, Lena. If the chief caught me, I’d get fired.”

  We’d danced this dance before. Kryzinski, still trying to lure me back into my old job at Scottsdale PD, had helped Desert Investigations sub rosa on various occasions. In return, Jimmy and I allowed his department to take credit for cracking cases that we had actually solved.

  “You’re not going to get fired and you know it,” I said, confident that Kryzinski, a close friend of the mayor, knew too many secrets to be professionally vulnerable. His job was secure until the mayor, like so many other Arizona government officials, was indicted for corruption.

  Kryzinski looked around and saw several other detectives watching us through his office’s clear glass partition. When he scowled at them, they looked away. They probably knew why I was here, though, and wouldn’t rat the captain out because they disliked the new police chief as much as I did. Besides, I knew most of them from the days I’d worked Scottsdale North, before a bullet acquired during a drug bust put an end to my police career.

  With a theatrical sigh, Kryzinski slid a Sports Illustrated over his desk to me. “Check out the story on the Cardinals, page twenty-nine.”

  “Those losers.” But I duly opened the magazine to the page, where, nestled next to the quarterback’s mug shot (Drugs? Sexual assault? Insider trading?), Kryzinski had tucked some case notes and crime scene photos. There Gloriana Alden-Taylor lay, twisted like a pretzel on the carpeted floor of the Desert Shadows banquet hall, swollen tongue protruding from her mouth. A regurgitated leaf of something or other dangled from her ear.

  I looked through the rest of the material while Kryzinski gave me a quick rundown. “The M.E. says that water hemlock, commonly known as cowbane, is some pretty serious shit. It used to be found only in elevations above six thousand feet, but lately has been popping up near San Antonio, San Diego, and now Oak Creek. Ain’t we lucky? Apparently what we’re getting is wicked potent, too. Affects the central nervous system, causes grand mal seizures, the mucous membranes swell, the throat constricts, then lights out, heart failure, el finito, sayonara. Toward the end there, the M.E. says that old Gloriana couldn’t breathe at all. That’s why the doc at her table was trying to give her CPR, not that it would have done the poor woman any good. In fact, it’s damn lucky the doc didn’t get any of that crap in her mouth or we’d be looking at more than one murder here.”

  I studied the close-ups of Gloriana’s body a little longer, then moved to the photographs taken of her table. The centerpiece was some weird-looking purple vine twisted around an unidentifiable silvery object, the usual Southwest Modern decor nonsense. The place settings looked just as silly: white, gold-rimmed plates decorated with minuscule helpings of something that appeared to be a burnt chicken breast criss-crossed by strips of purple and green crepe paper. The whatever-it-was hadn’t been touched.

  “Raspberry Lemon Chicken à la Étienne,” Kryzinski explained. “They got themselves a new chef up there, won all kinds of awards.”

  “Looks like the same old chicken shit to me,” I muttered. “Give me a taco anytime.” I continued to shuffle through the photos until I’d seen them all, then went through them again. “Let’s see, Gloriana ate the salad, too bad for her, but didn’t make it to the main course. How long after the waiter took her salad away did the chicken arrive?”

  “The waiter took the salad away with one hand, served the chicken with the other. Here’s the deal. People tell me that these big resorts try to hurry people through the meals so the staff can go do something else. By the time Gloriana exhibited symptoms, some folks had already started on the main course, the chicken shit, as you so delicately put it. All told, we’re talking maybe ten, fifteen minutes. With water hemlock, ten minutes is apparently time enough to die.”

  I frowned. “Do you have any idea how Owen—if it was Owen, which I doubt—could have slipped the hemlock into the salad without being seen?”

  “Easy as pie,” Kryzinski assured me. “This was one of those damned big conventions, Lena. Bunch of publishers calling themselves SOBOP, short for Southwest Book Publishers Association. Most of the folks were in publishing seminars all afternoon. The last one, something about offshore printing, ran late and didn’t end until about five minutes before the banquet was due to start. The salad plates were already on the table when everybody filed into the banquet hall.”

  “So how did the murderer know where Gloriana was going to sit?” Maybe it had been a random killing, some thrill-seeker playing a game of chance.

  “Place cards,” he answered. “Hand-inscribed by some fancy hired calligrapher. Apparently it was the same seating arrangement they’d had the evening before.”

  Not random, then. A thoroughly planned, cold-blooded killing. Owen was looking at a Murder One conviction, and in Arizona, we give the needle for that. I looked at the photograph of Gloriana’s contorted body again, considered the anguish she must have felt.

  Suddenly I couldn’t look any more. A stab of pain crossed my eyes as I pushed away from Kryzinski’s desk, stood up, and walked to the glass partition that separated his office from the rest of the Violent Crimes Unit. It was early in the day, so the detectives still hunted and pecked at their computers, typing up the previous days’ notes. The giant mugs of strong coffee I remembered from my days on the force still covered their desks, but the overflowing ashtrays were gone. Times change, and even cops clean up their act. As I gazed at the too-clean room, I realized how much I missed the camaraderie, the jokes, even the spit balls. Back then
, all the perps were strangers.

  “Lena?” Kryzinski’s voice.

  “Yeah, yeah.” I rubbed my forehead, hoping to make the pain go away. It didn’t work. I returned to my chair and picked up Gloriana’s death photo again.

  “The M.E.’s sure it’s water hemlock, then?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s already writing a paper about it, gonna send it off to that dead people magazine he’s always reading.”

  I put the photo back into the magazine and handed it back to Kryzinski. “Coroner’s Quarterly.”

  “Yeah, that one. He’ll probably write a whole book on this case before he’s finished. Says it’s the first recorded water hemlock death in the state, give or take a few cows.”

  “How nice for him. Tell me, how did Gloriana’s family take the news of her death?” Were Mayflower families like cops, did they stick together regardless of how offensive some blue-blooded cousin might be?

  Kryzinski snorted. “Other than her grandson, who seems like a pretty decent guy, none of them batted an eye. But who knows? They say those old families believe in keeping a stiff upper lip.”

  Or maybe they just didn’t care.

  ***

  Thanks to the ongoing construction on the Pima Freeway, the trip from Scottsdale to the Fourth Avenue Jail in Phoenix took longer than it should have. The stop-and-go gave me more time than I needed to gaze out over the city’s once-pristine flatlands and surrounding mountains. Dense smog already choked the azure sky, yet more cloverleafs were planned. How long before we turned into Los Angeles? How long before our ozone count rivaled that of Watts? How many cars could dance on the head of a pin?

  By the time I maneuvered the Jeep into the crowded First Avenue garage, I felt more depressed than ever.

  Oblivious to my mood, a whistling corrections officer led me back to the visitor’s area, a long, fluorescent-lit rectangle with all the sickly charm of a morgue. Through the door’s reinforced glass window I could see Owen waiting for me at a battered table, his back straight, eyes forward. Only a slight tic at the corner of his mouth betrayed his desperation. As the cheerful C.O. opened the door and I entered the room, Owen stood up, manacles clanking. Ever the polite soldier.

  “Ms. Jones, thank you for coming.” His brown eyes looked slightly to the left of mine. Pimas believed it impolite to meet another’s glance. This deference could have easily passed for a guilty conscience to someone unfamiliar with the tribe.

  “Ms. Jones? C’mon, Owen. You’ve never called me anything but Lena before, and there’s no point in changing that now, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Not much better, but at least he didn’t snap his heels together and try to salute.

  I sat down, hoping he’d do the same. He didn’t. He just kept standing, feet slightly apart, manacled hands clasped in front of him. If he were a murderer, I’d eat my Jeep.

  “Owen, I need you to tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out, no matter how inconsequential it seems. But, damn, guy, sit down first. It’s lonely down here.”

  Back still straight, Owen lowered himself into his chair, but as he talked, he continued staring at the wall, not me. “There’s not much to tell, nothing I haven’t already told the detectives. The day before, just when I was getting ready to go home, Gloriana ordered me to take those people for a nature hike. I’d already put in sixty hours that week, the extra twenty without overtime pay, but she just said that if I wanted to keep my job I’d do as I was told.”

  For all the emotion Owen showed, he could have been reciting the alphabet. But the tic at his mouth had worsened.

  Nothing about this sounded right. “You mean to tell me that Gloriana just up and volunteered your services for a nature hike to a bunch of strangers?”

  He nodded.

  I didn’t buy it but decided to let it pass for now. “Had you two been on bad terms? Is that why she threatened to fire you?”

  He turned his face even further away from me. So I couldn’t see his mouth? “Gloriana liked people to do what she wanted, when she wanted. Anyway, you know I’ve got that new truck and I’m still adding to my house on the Rez, so I needed the job. I called Janelle and told her I wouldn’t be home that night.”

  I began to feel even more uneasy. “But Owen, that doesn’t make sense. The Rez is, what, less than five miles from Gloriana’s estate? Why couldn’t you go home to your wife and then drive back in time to lead the hike the next day? Most people commute a lot farther than you do.”

  He finally looked me in the eye. The fluorescent light gleamed softly on his shoulder-length blue-black hair, and I noticed—not for the first time—what a handsome man he was. Had Gloriana thought so, too? I dismissed the thought as unworthy of everyone involved.

  “Ms. Jo…Lena, You didn’t know Gloriana. Once she got an idea in her head, it was the only thing that counted, not anybody else’s plans. She said she wanted to fill me in on who was going on the hike, who was important and who wasn’t. So I slept at her house that night. She calls…called it the Hacienda. There’s a cot in the storage room. I’ve slept there before.”

  “Her house doesn’t have servants’ quarters?”

  “Oh, sure. Over the garage. The thing is, her niece Sandra lives in it with her two kids. There’s a small room at the back of the house, but that’s Rosa’s room. Rosa cleans and cooks, sometimes babysits for Sandra’s kids, and I do everything else, which is a lot. The Hacienda is pretty old and something’s always breaking down. When I complained about all the overtime, Gloriana always told me that work meant job security, and to just shut up.”

  I looked at him more carefully, noting his large, callused hands. They contrasted with his velvety skin and bulging biceps, the type that generally formed only after dedicated hours at the gym. Did he work out? And if so, where did he find the time? Nothing about his story rang true.

  Ignorant of my growing suspicions, Owen continued. “Anyway, the next morning Gloriana sent me downtown to rent this big passenger van. Then I picked up the SOBOP folks, the publishers, at the resort at eight and drove them up to Oak Creek Canyon. But we didn’t hike in any of the usual places. I know of a tributary on state land, kind of hidden, where it’s less crowded but just as pretty. So that’s where I took them.”

  “How many of the SOBOP people went along?” I leaned over to take a pad and pencil out of my carry-all, ready to add the names to my suspect list. Then I remembered I’d left everything except my I.D. in the Jeep’s bolted-down strongbox. No one, not even a licensed detective, can carry firearms into the jail. Purses were contraband, too, because purses—especially those as big as my carry-all—could contain large stashes of drugs. I’d have to work from memory.

  “There were eight, plus me, on the hike,” Owen said. “She knew most of them, I think. They’d all been talking at dinner the night before and somehow she came up with the idea that it would be nice for everyone to get away from the resort for a few hours. Take a break. So, yeah, she volunteered my services.”

  Without bothering to ask him first. “But she didn’t go. Why not?”

  “She was due to lead some morning seminar on niche publishing, whatever that is. I…I wish she’d come with us, then maybe.…” His big hands clenched and unclenched. Then he forced them still. “The creek was running pretty heavy and flowers were blooming. We walked around for a couple of hours, and I gave everybody a rundown on desert wildlife, the bobcats, the javalina. You know, the usual. I identified the prickly pear blooms, Colorado four o’clock, blue eyes.…”

  Owen sounded like he was ready to reel off the entire Arizona botanical litany, so I hurried him along. “And the water hemlock, right?”

  A pause. “Yeah. And the water hemlock.” He looked down at the floor.

  “Was the water hemlock blooming? Was that why you pointed it out?”

  He looked back up at me through thick, dark lashes. I couldn’t read his eyes. “No, Lena, hemlock doesn’t bloom creekside until later in the season. The problem was, since all tho
se books have come out on herbal medicines, everybody thinks they’re experts. I caught a couple of people picking flowers, parsley, harmless stuff like that. The water hemlock looks an awful lot like the wild celery we’ve got around here, so I picked a handful of the hemlock and passed it around, pointing out the differences. I told them that just a few crushed leaves or root shavings could kill a thousand-pound horse in minutes, let alone a human being.”

  And by doing so, Owen had delivered a recipe for murder. “When everyone finished looking at the water hemlock, did they give it back to you?”

  “Sure. I watched them every minute and I made sure none of them took any. I’m not dumb.”

  “I never said you were.” I thought for a moment, then asked, “What did you do with the hemlock?”

  “I put it in my jacket pocket.” His brown eyes darkened to black, and his tic, back once more, jumped like a live thing. “I wanted to dispose of it where it wouldn’t hurt any animals. Or people.”

  It all sounded strange to me, the impromptu hike, the flower-picking. But stranger things have happened here in the desert. “I have to ask you this. Other than your squabbles over working hours, how did you and Gloriana get along?”

  He looked down at the floor, but not before I saw his tic increase big time. “She wasn’t an easy woman, but I didn’t get along with her worse than anyone else.”

  What a terrible liar. My excitement over the eight other suspects began to fade. “Had she threatened to fire you before?”

  He gave me the first smile I’d seen since I entered the visitor’s room. Damn, he was a good-looking man. “Only about once a week. Like I told you, Gloriana wasn’t easy. But I needed that job. My house is running me double of what I thought it would. We’ve got the baby now.…”

  I still didn’t understand why he hadn’t left Gloriana long before. “Owen, with your background, you could have found another job.”