Jon Talton - Cactus Heart

“Only the man who kidnapped them would know that.”

“There was never any speculation in the family about what happened?”

I could see the cords in his neck tighten, but his face and voice stayed calm. “What happened? What happened was that my father and grandfather died within a few years of that awful crime. My brother and I were raised by relatives back East. The family was nearly destroyed.”

“Do you remember the night your brothers disappeared, Thanksgiving night?”

“I already told you no. My brother James is older, so maybe he does.” He crossed his arms and bore those light blue eyes into me. “This is just an academic exercise for you.”

“Not at all,” I said. “I’m not trying to revive your pain. I am trying to wrap up an open kidnapping and homicide case, and there aren’t many people still living who can give the information I need.”

Whether that satisfied him or not, I don’t know. He stared at the doors, maybe wishing Megan would appear in her nicely cut powder-blue suit and elegant legs. Hell, I did, too. I asked, “Did your father carry a pocket watch?”

“No, he wore wristwatches.”

I showed him the photo of the pocket watch with the HY brand. “That’s grandfather’s brand,” he said. “But I’ve never seen that watch. What does it mean?”

“We found it with the remains.”

He shook his head a couple of millimeters. “What can any of this mean?” he said. “They caught the man and executed him. This is all history.”

“They caught a woman with him, too,” I said. “I talked to her yesterday.”

He sat back, stared out the window toward Camelback Mountain and gave the top of his right hand a savage scratching. Then he stopped and regarded me again.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Frances Richie is still in prison.”

He raised his hands as if to let the information slip through.

“She’s nearly senile,” I said. “She wasn’t much help.”

He was on his feet. “I have another meeting, Mapstone. I’m sure you understand. You read the paper, so you know Yarneco is involved in a very difficult project at the moment. Lots of controversy. We’ve received threats.”

I rose, too.

“What kind of project?”

The thin executive lips pressed hard together. Then, “We’re in a consortium to build a new copper mine in the state. It will be the first new mine here in decades. I’m sure you can understand, this has angered some environmental groups.”

I thanked him for his time.

“This Lieutenant Hawkins said the DNA test should establish the identity. So we will finally have some closure.”

Closure. Even CEOs had learned the therapeutic language of the age. “I may need to call you again if there are other questions.”

“I can’t imagine that would happen,” he said, and saw me to the door. He didn’t offer his hand.

I was falling into a rotten mood on a beautiful day. Within an hour of leaving Max Yarnell, I was summoned down to police headquarters for as much of an ass chewing as a lifer bureaucrat like Hawkins could muster. “Mr. Yarnell was offended by your questions and manner,” Hawkins said.

I was getting offended, too. After had I left Hawkins, I went to the County Recorder’s Office, where I pulled the deed records on the Triple A Storage Warehouse. It had been owned by Yarneco before the company even took that name. The original paper listed “Yarnell Land and Cattle Co., 1924”-seventeen years before the kidnapping. There was more: The recorder kept a clipboard for signing out paper deed records. It wasn’t much used, what with grantor-grantee records on computer. But the occasional title company employee needed to go deeper. The records to the warehouse had been checked out just the day before, to a Megan O’Connor of Yarneco. She had to be Max Yarnell’s Megan. So why did he tell me he didn’t know the warehouse was owned by his company?

By the time it was five, I didn’t want to stay in the office and I didn’t want to go home. Earlier in the day, I sent Lindsey a dozen yellow roses, her favorites. But when I got back to the courthouse, a note was folded into my office door.

I opened it and read in Lindsey’s rat-a-tat-tat handwriting:

Dave, I am taking Linda back to Illinois for the funeral. I know you would want to go, too, and try to save me from myself. So I will remove the temptation. You can have a nice, normal Thanksgiving with El Jefe and Sharon, and I will be with my crazy family and thinking of you. If you would look in on Pasternak from time to time, I will do unspeakable things to your body when I get back. Don’t worry, History Shamus.

L

So I sat on a bench in Cesar Chavez Plaza, between the old courthouse and the municipal building, and I read and re-read the note. Then I watched the western sky gather pink and orange. The killjoys liked to say that the Phoenix sunsets were a product of smog and dust in the dry air. That was probably information that would please Lieutenant Hawkins, if he ever looked up at the sky in the first place. I didn’t care. The deepening streaks of color restored me little by little. When I started to dislike Phoenix again, the sunsets reminded me of the things I had missed so much the years I had been away.

This part of downtown was utterly deserted. The government employees raced to the suburbs early on a Friday evening, and the Suns and Coyotes were out of town tonight. So you could have lain down in the middle of the five lanes of Washington Street and been completely safe. Even the panhandlers and street people were nowhere to be seen.

Then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and Gretchen Goodheart stepped out from between two palo verde trees. She smiled and waved and walked to me.

“I was walking up to your office when I looked out one of the stairway windows and you were out here. You looked lost in thought.”

I smiled and stood. “Come join me.”

She didn’t have the cowboy hat today, and her auburn hair fell free in a longish pageboy, brushing the tops of her shoulders. She was wearing a denim top and print cotton skirt, looking springy in the fall as you can do in Arizona. She looked me over and sat next to me.

“You clean up nicely,” she said. I still had on the blue pinstripe from my meeting with Max Yarnell.

“Thanks, I went visiting. Mr. Max Yarnell.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s a prick,” I said. “But maybe I’m in a mood to judge harshly.”

“Not everyone, I hope.”

“Not Gretchen Goodheart,” I said. My girlfriend’s mother just committed suicide and here I was flirting. I closed up that compartment and watched the sunset.

“Max Yarnell is developing five thousand acres of pristine desert north of Scottsdale,” she said. “In two years, you’ll have houses and roads where there are only saguaros and empty spaces now. As if Phoenix needed more space. Then his company is trying to build a new copper mine near Superior, and they’re doing everything they can to sidestep the environmental reviews.” She shook her head, making the red-brown hair wave gently against her collar. “So I’m no fan of Mad Max.”

“Is that what people call him?”

“I don’t know, it’s what I call him.” She held up a file folder. “I have something for you. These are copies of plans submitted to the city over the years on your warehouse. I thought they might be useful.”

We spread the sheets of paper between us.

“See, it’s actually two buildings.” She traced a ring-less finger across a floor plan. “This is from 1947, when a new water main was routed down Fourth Avenue to Harrison.” Sure enough, the paper showed a larger building abutted by a smaller one on the corner by Union Station.