Desert Vengeance Read online

  “The others…” His voice trailed off. “Let’s just say you’ve done the best of them. At life, I mean.”

  “You’ve been following me?”

  “I’ve kept tabs on you all. But don’t worry, I’ve never crossed over into stalking territory, just the odd computer check or two to see how you were getting along. Plus, you make it onto the evening news from time to time. Do you enjoy the fame?”

  “Not especially.” I pointed at my scarred forehead. “I used to think my appearance would jog someone’s memory and I’d finally find out what really happened to me, and who my parents are. Or were. But that never happened. Look, I didn’t stop by just to chat; I’m here for a reason. Because of the case I’m working, I want to get in touch with the others, and you can…”

  He lifted his right hand, palm up. “Stop right there, Lena. Their names are confidential and I won’t reveal them to anyone, not even you.”

  I frowned. “But they’re no longer minors.”

  “Doesn’t matter. And before you go getting any bright ideas—you are an investigator, after all—those court records are sealed and will remain so.”

  “Mr. DeLucca, one of them might know…”

  “They don’t know anything.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “Leave them alone!” he ordered. “They’ve been through enough.” He straightened his back and crossed his arms in front of his chest, the universal sign for Back the hell off.

  I thanked him for his time and left.

  ***

  The only drawback I see about apartment living is that we renters never have enough room for storage. No attics, no basements. Because of that, we seldom turn into packrats, and shy away from anything we don’t really need, keepsakes of the past among them. As a foster kid, I’d never had much baggage anyway—at least not the material kind—and during my early adult years I’d lived in tiny studio apartments until I leased the two floors for Desert Investigations. Being habitually short of space, I’d fallen back on that old remedy of renters everywhere: the commercial storage unit. South Scottsdale abounds with them, both air-conditioned and non.

  Stor-More, located off Hayden Road just north of the Tempe border, was non, which was one of the reasons I seldom visited the unit in the summer. The other reason is that I’m not a fan of the scenery along Memory Lane.

  Still, sundown found me in that sweltering, dusty place, rummaging among cardboard boxes until I found the banker’s box I was looking for. For a while I just stared at the thing, hesitant as always to even touch it. In fact, there had been times in the past twenty-five years that I’d been tempted to take the box out in the desert and burn it. Now I was glad I hadn’t. Why I’d held onto it, I don’t know. It was a box of nightmares, and burning would have been the wisest course.

  But today I needed the information in that box. Shivering with disgust, I lifted it, pulled down the accordion door on the unit, secured the lock, and drove away.

  ***

  Once at my apartment above Desert Investigations, I stashed the box in the furthest corner of the living room, out of my sightline as I nuked a container of ramen for dinner. Instead of eating I sat there for a while, staring at my bowl. I finally gave up and left the table.

  Steeling myself, I grabbed a pen and notebook and approached the box again. Opened it. Lifted out the scrapbooks and the folder of newspaper clippings. Set them aside. Pulled out the envelope of eight-by-ten color glossies. The first shot showed a child’s size four dress, which was about my age when I last wore it. The blue had faded to a muddy gray, the bright bloodstains darkened to brown. After holding the photograph longer than necessary, I set it aside.

  Second photo: formerly white shoes and socks, more blood spatter.

  Third photo, a little girl’s panties, not as bloody as the dress.

  I didn’t bother looking at the photographs of myself lying comatose in a hospital bed. Too disturbing.

  I put the photos back into the envelope and picked up a folder of newspaper clippings. They were brittle and yellow with age, but still readable.

  First clipping: the header on page three of the Arizona Republic read CHILD FOUND SHOT. The following story detailed how an unidentified Hispanic woman had carried the child into the Emergency Ward at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, then disappeared, leaving no information other than saying she’d found the little girl lying in the street on Thomas Road. She thought the child might have fallen from the white bus she’d seen disappearing around the corner. Upon examination, the girl was discovered to have a bullet lodged in her right temple. Her condition was listed as critical.

  Second clipping: same newspaper, same page, dated four days later. SHOT CHILD STILL UNIDENTIFIED. The story, in which the comatose child was referred to as Little Girl Doe, described her as pale-complexioned, with long blond hair, green eyes, and—other than the bullet wound on her temple—seemingly well cared-for. After surgery, her condition had been upgraded to serious. The authorities encouraged anyone who might know of a missing child fitting that description to step forward. The dress she’d been wearing was blue.

  Third clipping: same newspaper, page seven, dated two months later. SHOT CHILD AWAKENS FROM COMA. An unnamed hospital source was quoted as saying, “The poor kid doesn’t seem to have any awareness of who she is or who her parents are. She can’t walk or even talk.” The article went on to say that the police were actively pursuing leads in hopes of learning Little Girl Doe’s identity.

  Fourth clipping: different newspaper, dated five years later. The forty-eight-point Gothic headline on the front page of the Scottsdale Journal, shouted: CHILD STABS MAN WITH KITCHEN KNIFE. The story, which described the assailant as the nine-year-old foster daughter of the victim, said, “Because the assailant is a minor, her identity is being withheld.”

  Brian Wycoff, a Scottsdale resident, was named as the child’s victim. Further down, the Wycoffs’ neighbor, Mrs. Imelda Bassel, was quoted as saying, “I heard this horrible screaming, at first a child’s, and then a man’s, and the next thing you know I saw a little girl run out the door covered in blood. I thought maybe she was hurt and I tried to get her to come to me, but she ran away, so I called the police. It was only when I saw the paramedics carrying Brian out that I realized he’d been hurt, too. This is so awful, he was such a sweet man. I’m praying for him and Norma, his lovely wife. They both belong to my church, and you’ve never met two nicer people.”

  The only statement the police would give was that the investigation was ongoing. Meanwhile, the article assured its concerned Scottsdale readers, the unnamed assailant had been apprehended and turned over to juvenile authorities.

  Fifth clipping: a week later, front page of the Scottsdale Journal. The coverage had taken a dramatic turn, and for the next dozen or so clippings, reporters stopped using the word “assailant” when referring to the unnamed child, substituting the word “victim.” Wycoff had become the “accused assailant.” One of the reporters managed to get a quote from Linda McCracken, identified as the first Scottsdale PD officer on the scene, who found the unidentified child hiding behind a Dumpster two miles from the house where the stabbing had taken place.

  “Considering everything that had happened to her,” McCracken said, “she appeared calm, but maybe she was in shock. She sat in the back of my patrol car with her hands folded like a little lady. Never at any point did she pose a threat to me nor to anyone else.”

  The photographers had caught up with McCracken as she left the courthouse. She’d kept her head down, but you could still see the classically clean lines of her features, her long dark eyelashes, her shining hair.

  Moved, I reached out a hand and caressed her face.

  Chapter Thirteen

  That night I dreamed about the white bus and my mother screaming, “I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her myself!” then the noise of a gunshot almost sim
ultaneous with the kick that propelled me though the door. Then nothing but black until I woke up to the glare of hospital lights.

  Dreams aren’t linear. Instead of seeing a white wall…

  ***

  I looked out on a dark forest, where children were running through the woods. Then the trees disappeared, replaced by a bright sun shining over collection of rough cabins and teepees strung out across a meadow. Nearby, a group of men and women weeded a garden, while in the distance, children—the forest children?—played tag around a tall man dressed in white as he looked on. Night fell again, revealing a fire pit encircled by the garden people. The man in white sat off to the side with a golden-haired boy who looked just like him. The circle people were listening to a young red-haired man as he played the guitar and sang “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.” After a while, my father changed chords, segued into “Rock My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham” while everyone sang and clapped along with him. One of the finest singers was my mother.

  Then we were back in the forest, but this time, the children were screaming…

  Just like I was screaming when I woke up.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Still shaken from my dream, I showered, donned my running gear and my concealed-carry fanny pack—unlike my pocket holster, the fanny pack provided a more balanced run—and headed for Eldorado Park.

  In summer, when the temps routinely shoot past the hundred-fifteen-degree mark, we runners hit the trail early, thus the park was busy when I arrived. As I huffed along with the others, drops of sweat sprinkled the concrete path. One of the reasons I chose that location during summers was because olive trees shaded much of the park’s trails, cutting down on the collective misery. By six-thirty I’d reached Tempe Town Lake, and took a short break on the pedestrian bridge overlooking the water. As I gulped down Gatorade, I spotted several egrets fishing in the shallows, every now and then spreading their snowy wings to cool off. One of the smaller egrets speared a fish and gobbled it down before his larger buddies could take it away from him. Or her. When it came to egrets, I couldn’t tell the difference.

  Rested and rehydrated, I turned around and jogged more slowly back to where I’d parked my Jeep in the Eldorado lot, and returned to Old Town Scottsdale. When I pulled up, the thermometer on the side of my building read 105. At seven-thirty a.m.

  Oh, what fun.

  By eight, I was showered and dressed in fresh clothes, my .38 back in its pocket holster. Deciding to take a chance by not phoning ahead—cops can be funny about phone calls from people they don’t know—I drove straight to 47298 East Esmeralda Way, Peoria. There was always a chance the bullet scar on my face would do for me what a disembodied voice couldn’t.

  As luck would have it, both retired Police Sergeant Linda McCracken and her daughter, Officer Delores McCracken, were home.

  They lived in a small Mediterranean-style townhouse on Phoenix’s northwest side, tucked into a planned community of single-family houses, garden townhomes, and a boutique-ish shopping center. It was easy to spot the McCrackens’ unit because of the wheelchair ramp leading to the front door.

  A tall woman in her thirties, muscular and narrow-eyed, answered the doorbell, her entire body on alert. The daughter. When I introduced myself, she immediately looked at the scar on my temple. Finding it, her expression changed from cop caution into delight.

  “You’re the little girl my mom told me about! Only you’re not so little anymore, are you?”

  Before I could answer, she ushered me in and yelled, “Mom, get out here! Guess who just dropped by? It’s that PI we saw on the six o’clock news last month, the one you said was called Little Girl Doe!”

  A hum, a whispery sound, then a gray-haired woman in a powered wheelchair emerged from the hallway. Sergeant Linda McCracken. The years hadn’t been merciful. The left side of her craggy face drooped, and her left arm had contorted into a claw. But her eyes were as kind as I remembered.

  “I recognized you the minute that reporter started talking to you.” Her voice hadn’t changed, either, still gruff but with an underlying note of warmth.

  After I’d given her the demanded hug, she gestured me over to the sofa. “Sit, sit.”

  I sat.

  Their house wasn’t what you’d expect of two women living together. The overstuffed furniture was designed for comfort, not appearance, and I saw no frou-frou, no flouncy toss pillows, no pictures of family or cats. Only the de rigueur gun cabinet that played host to a plethora of firearms, from a small .22 rifle to an AK-47. The wall next to it displayed commendations and photographs of both women in dress uniform. Bookshelves lined the other walls, the books organized in categories: history, science, economics, and row upon row of mystery novels, many written by L.D. Hutchinson. I’d read several of them, and had been struck by how well-versed the author was in police procedure.

  “You like mysteries?” Sergeant McCracken’s smile lifted the corner of her face that wasn’t paralyzed. Her daughter had hurried into the kitchen to get us iced tea, the usual hostess offering during Valley of the Sun summers.

  “Especially Hutchinson’s. He always gets it right.”

  That crooked smile again. “She gets it right.”

  I got it, too. “Your daughter?”

  Sergeant McCracken nodded. “Partly. We collaborate. Hutchinson was my mother’s maiden name. Delores comes up with the characters and plot, I write the dialogue and descriptions, and do the fact-checking.” She raised her good hand and pressed her forefinger to her ruined mouth. “But it’s a secret so don’t tell anyone.”

  I laughed. “That explains why L.D. never shows up for book signings. But why the secrecy?”

  “We’ll let the cat out of the bag when Dolores retires from the force, but not until then. You used to be a cop. Can you imagine working next to someone you’re afraid might put you into a book?”

  “That would creep me out,” I admitted.

  She winked. “There you go.”

  Just then Delores returned with the iced tea. She took one look at her mother and said, “You gave away our secret, didn’t you?”

  “Little Girl Doe knows how to keep her mouth shut.”

  “I’m Lena Jones now,” I reminded her.

  “Of course. That social worker gave you the name.”

  “No imagination,” her daughter snapped, taking a sip of her iced tea. “Jones, for Pete’s sake.”

  “And why not Smith?” Sergeant McCracken proposed. “Or White? Or Gray?”

  “Oh, Mom, you never could come up with decent character names. Remember that time when most of your characters’ names began with the letter ‘C’? And a lot of the others’ names ended in ‘Y’?”

  The two bantered good-naturedly for the next couple of minutes, each trying on different names for me, which ranged from Delores’ choices of Tova Svenson because, she said, with my blond hair and green eyes I looked Swedish, to the Eastern European, like Ilsa Milovic, for similar reasons. She proved correct about her mother’s lack of naming expertise when her mother held out for the relatively bland “Carol Green.” As entertaining as it all was, I wasn’t a character in a mystery novel. I was real, and today I had a very real problem.

  “Not that I’m not enjoying the process of finding a more suitable name for myself, ladies, but I’m here to see if you can help me out with a case I’m working on.”

  They alerted like hunting dogs catching a scent.

  “You’re talking about the Wycoff case, right?” Sergeant McCracken said, her good hand clutching at her wheelchair’s armrest. “But why would you care? Considering what they did to you and the others, I thought you’d be tripping the Light Fantastic all over Scottsdale.”

  I told them about Debbie Margules and the women in Parents of Missing Children, and how Debbie had come under suspicion.

  The two looked at each other. They didn’t say anything
right away, but Sergeant McCracken finally broke the silence. “If that woman killed the Wycoffs, I wouldn’t blame her one bit. Of course, if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll say you’re lying.” She softened her statement with a lopsided smile.

  “I don’t know much about the Margules case other than what I read, but I worked the Archerd case,” Delores said, her expression grim. “Jacklyn Archerd’s son, Stevie, was taken from El Camino Park several years ago. Never found. The mother being affiliated with one of those biker gangs—I think it was the Moguls—that didn’t help the public’s perception any, and people blamed her. Some even thought she’d killed the kid herself or had one of her biker buddies do it for the insurance money.”

  “Stevie Archerd was insured?”

  “For five thousand dollars. That might not sound like much, but there were rumors of a drug problem, so it could have meant a lot. We couldn’t prove anything and after a while, the trail went cold.” The harsh look on her face told me where her own suspicions lay.

  I remembered the tattoo across Jacklyn’s chest, and the pain in her eyes when she talked about her son. There being nothing I could say that would change Delores’ mind, I switched cases. “How about the disappearance of Candice Beltran? Either of you know anything about that?”

  They both shook their heads. “Just what I read in the papers,” the old sergeant said. “That poor mother. Nicole, her name was. When it happened—Delores and I both followed the case—she was in such terrible shape we thought for sure she’d wind up in a psychiatric hospital or a suicide, but she didn’t. Got a law degree instead. We see her every now and then on TV, talking about missing children. She’s become quite the advocate.”

  Now that their memories were primed, it was time to bring up the real reason for my visit. Directing my next question to Sergeant McCracken, I said, “I’ve gone through some old newspaper clippings trying to find the names of the kids on the witness list at Brian Wycoff’s trial, but since they were all under age, the two who testified before he struck a deal were just referred to as Minor A and Minor B. Did you ever get wind of their names? Or the names of the other four minors on the list? They’d all be around my age now, so…”