Desert Vengeance Read online

  I have a memory…

  ***

  I was nine years old. It was Thursday morning, the day Norma always volunteered at her church, the day Papa Brian always came home early from work, the day he always raped me. It had been going on for weeks and I couldn’t stand it anymore. This time I would tell, no matter what he threatened to do to me or to my dog Sandy.

  Norma was in the kitchen, where several loaves of banana bread sat cooling on the counter. She was adding an egg to a large bowl of what looked like cookie dough. As I watched her, Sandy leaned against my leg, giving me the courage I needed.

  “Mama Norma, I have to tell you something.”

  “Make it quick, Lena. I still have four dozen cookies left to bake. Those homeless families, these might be the only treats they get all month.”

  I took a deep breath. “Papa Brian’s been doing things to me, bad things.”

  Norma dipped a finger into the cookie batter. Tested it. “Needs more sugar.”

  “Bad things.”

  She looked up. “You’re late for school.”

  Last week one of the girls at school, another foster child, had used the word so now I knew how to say it.

  “He raped me, Mama Norma. Papa Brian raped me.”

  She added sugar to the bowl. Tasted the batter again. “I said you’re late for school!”

  “He raped me lots of times. The first time he was hiding in my closet when I got home from school and he told me that if I ever told anyone he would kill Sandy.”

  She didn’t look up. “Little liars go to Hell.”

  “He hurts me a lot. Every Thursday because you get home from church late.”

  She still didn’t look at me or raise her voice in the slightest, but she said, “Get out of my kitchen you lying little bitch before I knock you from here to wherever. And if you ever say anything about this to anyone, I’ll cut out Sandy’s heart with a knife.”

  I got out of her kitchen.

  Papa Brian raped me twice later that day, but Mama Norma had given me an idea.

  ***

  Pleased to see Brian Wycoff join his wife at the window, I reached into my tote, and pulled out the Vindicator. When I was nine, he had looked so big. Now, wizened by decades in prison, he looked little taller than me. Norma, however, had fattened to twice his size.

  Hoping they could hear me or at least read my lips, I shouted, “Maybe my Vindicator isn’t as long as the knife I gutted you with years ago, Papa Brian, but it won’t break like that one did!”

  I sat there for another hour until the AJ cops pulled up and ran me off.

  Chapter Three

  Monsoon rain and thunder woke me at one in the morning. I never got back to sleep, so by six I was again parked in front of 70325 E. Sarsaparilla Lane. The Wycoffs must have had trouble sleeping through the monsoon, too, because through the living room window I could see someone moving. He or she—it turned out to be Norma—looked out, noticed my Jeep, shook her fist at me, and closed the curtains. Smiling with satisfaction, I settled in for the long wait.

  When you’ve been a cop, then a PI, as long as I have, you learn a lot about stalking. The average stalker is an intelligent but underemployed male in his thirties who has trouble maintaining relationships. He often suffers from a borderline personality disorder, magnified by a fear of abandonment. His only goal in life is to make his victim pay attention to him.

  Simple as that.

  His victim—usually female—being unaware of the stalker’s true motivation, unknowingly encourages him. She answers the phone when he calls. She doesn’t turn away from him when she runs into him on the street. Instead, she repeatedly pleads with him to stay away. Sometimes she even initiates a contact herself, thinking that if she can only find just the right words or present a good enough reason why any relationship between them is impossible, he’ll finally get the message and leave her alone. In reality, she has accomplished the exact opposite of what she wanted.

  She gave him a food pellet.

  In 1953, Psychologist B.F. Skinner ran his classic conditioning experiment on lab rats. At the beginning of the experiment, every time the rats pushed a lever, they received a food pellet. After a while, they only received a food pellet every other time. The rats quickly adapted and would give the lever two quick pushes. Then the pellets came only randomly, seemingly unconnected to the lever pushes. Toward the end of the study, the rats could push the lever as many times as they wanted, but wouldn’t get any pellets. Oddly enough, this didn’t make them give up. They kept pushing the lever again and again and again, in an obsessed frenzy.

  Stalkers are like rats. When you reward them with any kind of attention, negative or not, you’ve given them a food pellet. Like the food pellet Norma just gave me.

  ***

  By seven, and one more fist shake and an upwards thrust middle finger—two more food pellets!—I pulled away from the curb and headed to L.A. Fitness. Sitting on your butt all day isn’t good for your muscle tone.

  As usual for this hour, the gym was crowded with the standard desk jockeys, attorneys, accountants, and upwardly-mobile IT nerds attempting to vanquish their broadening rear ends on the Nautilus machines. I ignored them and went straight to the treadmill area, where I pounded through five miles. Loosened up, I hit the free weights for a while, then the leg press, and finally returned to the treadmills for a leisurely cool-down. While jogging along next to Terri Richter, an attorney friend of mine, I planned my next assault on Casa Wycoff.

  Given the après-rain humidity and rising temps, I decided a dead fish on their doorstep should be good for a few more food pellets. God knows the timing was right. Safeway was having a sale on mackerel, a particularly smelly fish, so sometime today I would stop by and purchase one. Or two. Or three. Humming happily, I shut off the treadmill, said goodbye to Terri, and headed for the shower.

  ***

  I arrived at Desert Investigations mere minutes ahead of Sylvie and Bob, which surprised me. Since when did non-violent stalking garner an early morning visit from the cops? Jimmy had that I-told-you-so look on his face again.

  “So what’s Apache Junction PD’s complaint now?” I asked, heaving a sigh. “Littering? I’ll save you some time and plead guilty. We might have enough in our petty cash to cover the fine.”

  “Lena Jones, we need you to accompany us to the police station, and, uh, you’d better call your attorney.” I had never heard Sylvie sound so formal, yet so hesitant.

  I looked at Bob. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “What happened, Bob? Wind blow one of my flyers into some litigious asswipe’s face?”

  Bob cleared his throat as if he was getting ready to speak, but said nothing.

  “Sylvie?”

  Damned if the woman didn’t have trouble meeting my eyes, too.

  “Look, Detectives, unless you have an arrest warrant I don’t need to go anywhere with you.”

  “Lena’s right, Detective Perrin,” Jimmy said. “Without a warrant, you can’t force her to go anywhere.”

  Sylvie glared at him. The glare softened when she turned it on me. “Call your attorney, Lena. This could take some time.”

  Her very softness made up my mind. “Come to think about it, I’d kinda like to see what this is all about, so just give me a sec.” I picked up my phone and dialed Terri Richter, who—judging from the background noise—was still on the treadmill at L.A. Fitness.

  “Can you meet me at the cop shop in ten?” I asked.

  “Which one?” Thud, thud, pant. Thud, thud, pant.

  “Scottsdale Headquarters, Indian School Road.”

  “Ah, your old stomping grounds. Be there in a half hour, gotta shower first.”

  Dial tone.

  ***

  My old stomping grounds being mere blocks from Desert Investigations, we beat Terri Richter to the cop sho
p by twenty minutes. Up until she arrived, I continued yesterday’s conversation about the weather, careful to avoid all mention of the temps in Apache Junction.

  “It’ll rain by noon.” Me.

  “One can only hope.” Bob.

  “Where were you between six and nine this morning?” Sylvie.

  “I like the way the rain makes everything smell so fresh.” Me.

  “Makes the flowers bloom, too.” Bob.

  “Wrong season for flowers, they’re all dead by now,” Sylvie groused. “Just like…Well, we’ll get to that later. Anyway, what’s the problem with telling us where you were this morning, Lena?”

  The interview room door opened and my attorney rushed in, her hair still wet. With her sun-streaked blond hair and hazel eyes, the former Miss Arizona was still beautiful, but she could turn ugly on you in an instant. She was looking pretty ugly now as she narrowed her eyes at the two detectives.

  “Are you charging my client with something? If not, she’s out of here.”

  Sylvie, who had faced down many an attorney in her years on the job, said, “We just want to ask her a few questions, that’s all.”

  “Questions about what?”

  Sylvie flicked a quick look at me. “Her whereabouts this morning. Maybe even what she did after papering Apache Junction with a million flyers.” She handed one to Terri, who gave the flyer a brief glance, then handed it back.

  “It was only two hundred,” I said. Oops.

  “Don’t say another word, Lena.” Then, to Sylvie, Terri said, “What makes you so interested in my client’s movements this morning? You have nothing else to do with your life other than harass my client? Get a boyfriend, for Christ’s sake!” The way those two talked to each other, you’d never guess they’d been friends since childhood.

  “Just trying to map out a timeline, Terri.”

  “Again, for what reason?”

  Sylvie looked at Bob.

  Bob looked at Sylvie. Shrugged. “Might as well tell her now. It’ll be on the noon news anyway, so what’s a couple of hours?”

  With no expression on her face and no inflection whatsoever in her voice, Sylvie said, “A UPS driver found Norma Wycoff dead at her Apache Junction home at eight-thirty-six this morning, and there are indications the death wasn’t, ah, natural.”

  I resisted the urge to jump up and cheer.

  Terri, attuned to the lightening of my mood, placed her hands on my shoulders and pressed down hard. “And you dragged my client down here why?”

  “There was no dragging involved. She came voluntarily. But to answer your question, we want to interview Ms. Jones because several witnesses saw her Jeep parked in front of the Wycoff house this morning from six until seven.”

  Terri laughed. “So? It’s a free country, and there are plenty of Jeeps around here.”

  “Not sandstone-colored 1945 Jeeps decorated with Pima Indian designs. There’s only one like that I know of, and it belongs to your client. Mention was also made that a blonde was sitting in it.”

  Terri thought for a moment, then said, “Even if my client was seen parked outside a convicted pedophile’s house from sunrise ’til friggin’ midnight, so what? The Superstitions are a well-known scenic area, prone to spectacular sunsets, and if I remember correctly, we had a wowser of one last night before the monsoon hit. Pink, purple, orange, it looked like an orgy in a Crayola box. This morning’s sunrise was a copycat. Anyway, a little fresh air does a gal good, and as for the blonde bit, get real. Last I heard, bleach is still legal in this state.” She flipped her own dyed locks for emphasis, then lifted her hand off my shoulders. “C’mon, Lena. We’re out of here.”

  I followed her out the door.

  Neither of us said a word until we reached the parking lot, then she snapped, “Stay away from Apache Junction, you idiot.”

  I looked up at a gray-and-white sky. A thin layer of clouds blocked the scalding sun but hiked up the humidity. “I thought you said it’s a free country.”

  “Yeah, but attorneys aren’t, and unless you stay far, far away from Brian Wycoff—don’t give me that surprised look, I read the newspapers, too—you’ll be paying me enough to add onto my house that new sunroom I’ve been thinking about.”

  “Nobody in Arizona needs a sunroom.”

  “You don’t listen, do you?”

  I imagined the murder scene. I hoped it was messy and that her death had been slow and painful, because I hadn’t been the only little girl Brian had raped while Norma looked the other way. From the trial transcript, I knew that at least two of the other children had told her what he was doing to them, but she’d ignored their accusations in the same manner she’d ignored mine.

  “I wonder how she died. Shot? Stabbed? Strangled?”

  “Lena! Shut up and listen to me!”

  “I also can’t help but wonder where Brian was when she got offed, either.”

  “Oh, dear God, you’re hopeless. Look, I’ll say it again. Stay. Out. Of. Apache. Junction.”

  “Huh?”

  “Stay out of Apache Junction!”

  “You don’t have to shout.”

  Looking ugly again, Terri climbed into her pearl white Cadillac and sped away, leaving me to walk fifteen blocks back through the heat to Desert Investigations.

  ***

  An hour later I was parked a quarter mile away from the Wycoffs’ house on Sarsaparilla Lane. The street had been cordoned off, with what looked like the entire Apache Junction Police Force attending the festivities. Several yards away, a couple of plainclothes guys were talking to a UPS driver—I made note of his truck’s license plate—but the moment the detectives spotted my Jeep, they sauntered over.

  “Something tells me you’re Lena Jones,” said the one who introduced himself as Detective Guillermo Arrize. He was in his mid-forties, Hispanic, and in terrific shape. No hanging around Dunkin’ Donuts for him.

  “Pleased to meet you, Detective.”

  His partner, at least a decade and a half older and considerably wider, said, “We should take her down to headquarters.” A Mississippi drawl. Light blue eyes. Frown lines bracketing his mouth. Two chins. Close-cut brown hair in the process of graying.

  “And you are?” I asked.

  His quick smile surprised me. “Detective Bruce Cole. Pleased ta meetcha, too, but y’all still need to come down to headquarters with us. Just a little interview, nothin’ serious.”

  Now, I could have played the same game I’d played with Scottsdale PD, but I had no history with either of these guys. While letting them take me in for “a little interview” was my best chance of getting more info on Norma’s murder, what with the video cameras and all in the interview room, it was too risky.

  “Sorry, Detectives. To save you the trip, I’ll tell you what my attorney told Scottsdale PD—I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “We could always just arrest you,” Arrize said.

  I conceded the point. “Maybe. Pat me down, stuff like that. Whatever.”

  Still smiling, Cole said, “You’re packin’, right?”

  I smiled back. “Always.”

  “Handgun? Rifle?”

  Cole’s blue eyes narrowed slightly when I answered “handgun,” so I took a chance and gestured toward my tote sitting on the Jeep’s passenger seat. “Colt .38, snub-nose revolver.” I hadn’t been to the firing range for two weeks, and had cleaned the revolver since, so I figured I was in good shape there.

  “Might we see it?” Arrize looked almost bored, which was also interesting.

  Instead of drawing out my handgun myself—no point in taking needless risks with the long arm of the law—I handed the bag over to Arrize. He pawed through it. “Jesus, what else you got hidden in here? Mickey Rourke?” He finally cleared away enough debris that he was able to pull out the Colt. He unsnapped the holster, looked at t
he Colt, sniffed at it once, then put it back.

  “Norma was shot, right?”

  The two detectives looked at each other. “What makes you say that?” Cole asked, squinting at me.

  “Because you didn’t ask about my knife. But you can take a look at that, too, if you wish. It’s called The Vindicator. I keep it in the glove compartment, along with the faux leopard-skin concealed-carry pocket holster I bought last month.”

  “We’ll pass.”

  “So where was she shot?”

  I meant in which room—foyer, living room, secret torture dungeon—but Cole surprised me again. “Both eyes, double-tap. Probably died instantaneously.”

  What a disappointment. I had hoped for a belly wound, because it usually takes people a while to die from those and the dying time hurts like hell.

  “Anybody hear the gunshots?”

  Cole laughed. “In this neighborhood? Half of them are deaf and the other half mind their own business.”

  Since he was on an information roll, I asked, “Then may I ask where Brian Wycoff was between six until nine this morning? And where he is now?”

  The two looked at each other again before Arrize answered my question with another question. “What makes you ask about that particular timeline?”

  “Because Scottsdale PD did.”

  Cole sighed. “See, Guillermo, what’d I tell ya? That’s always the problem with these mixed jurisdiction messes. Somebody’s always sayin’ too much to the wrong somebody.”

  Arrize snorted. “True, that.”

  This whole thing felt off, as if neither of them gave a damn about Norma Wycoff’s demise and were just going through the motions. But maybe one or both had read the trial transcript in anticipation of Brian’s release from the Florence Correctional Facility. Come to think about it, Mississippi accent or not, Cole was old enough to have been a rookie cop in AJ or Scottsdale when the whole ugly thing went down.

  “Where’s Mr. Wycoff now?” I asked.

  Arrize handed me back my tote. “Waiting for us down at the station, gonna help with our inquiries. You know the drill.”