Jon Talton - Cactus Heart

He sat next to me on the bench. His gray slacks draped perfectly. I wished I knew his tailor, or maybe not.

“You had an adventure last night,” Bobby said.

“Have your goons been monitoring the police radio?” I looked around for hired muscle with automatic weapons, but only saw the light fading on the greenish water. I wished that would just make him disappear, too.

“Businessmen do have to think about security nowadays, David,” he said. “Anyway, I get my news off the Internet.” Just two guys talking in the park.

“Do you think this murder of Max Yarnell and the attempted murder of his brother are related to the skeletons you found?”

“You know I can’t discuss that.”

“So you don’t know.”

“Do you know? Are you the man who killed Max Yarnell, Bobby?”

He smiled indulgently, then said, “All over the world there is violence. The violence of the murdered. The death squad. The secret wars. The violence against people who merely vanish. Political prisoners. Refugees from wars. My parents disappeared in the revolution, back in 1979. My sister, too. None of us is safe in the world, I suppose.”

I had heard one of Bobby’s favorite methods for dealing with informants was to stuff them in oil drums and toss them overboard into the Sea of Cortez. But when I said that to him, he just gazed away and sighed.

“I hope you find your answers,” he said finally. Then, “I also read that you failed to positively identify the bodies found in the old warehouse. A frustrating week for my friends at the sheriff’s department.”

“The DNA profiling was no help,” I admitted. It would be interesting to see how current his intelligence was.

“And what do you think that means?”

I suddenly wanted to strangle him. I understood Peralta’s Ahab-like obsession. “Bobby, this is none of your goddamned business.”

“You don’t have to shout and use profanity, Dr. Mapstone,” he said. “Actually, as I told you, buying that warehouse is my business. Do you realize the costs that even a week’s fluctuations in interest rates can add to the bridge loans?”

“So, sell more cocaine,” I said, and went back to the burrito.

“Have you looked at the will of Hayden Winthrop Yarnell?”

The chorizo became a tasteless lump in my mouth. I was tempted to lie, but I said nothing. I could feel my facing turning red. Damn it.

“It is actually in the probate records,” he said. “You might find it interesting.”

So much for David Mapstone, expert researcher of historical mysteries.

I said, “And tell me again why this case interests you?”

“Just as I said, Dr. Mapstone, I have an interest in purchasing the building. I hope I can save our city’s vanishing warehouse district before it is too late. Surely you won’t begrudge me a desire for historical preservation.”

He smiled and looked at me with dark eyes encased in long lashes, eyes that seemed to reflect no light.

I said, “Okay, Bobby, what does the will say?”

“It has a codicil that states if any new evidence emerges that a Yarnell family member was involved in the kidnapping, then his entire estate and all its subsequent earnings will be passed on to charities, mainly the Yarnell Foundation.”

I let his words sink in, still not sure about his game. “So the old man didn’t believe Jack Talbott kidnapped his grandsons?”

“At the least, he believed the kidnapping was more complex than it appeared.”

“Based on what evidence?”

Bobby spread his manicured fingers and shrugged.

“I’ll look at the will. Anyway, this Yarnell case will be solved fast, we’ve got so many cops working on it. So I’m sure you can get the building at a fire-sale price from Yarneco.”

“Buy low and sell high,” he said. “In Phoenix, we buy high and hope we can sell higher. But Yarneco, they are difficult people. A very complicated company. So many shell corporations and obscure relationships. Almost the way an illegal enterprise would be structured, or so I have read in books.”

“It’s not a good day for a mind fuck, Bobby.” I tossed the remains of the Mexican food in a trash can and rose to leave. My stomach felt like it was getting an acid bath. My life was descending into permanent weirdness. The biggest drug dealer in the Southwest was becoming a fixture in it.

I was about halfway across the grass when he called to me.

“David,” he said. “You know that he stalks them over the Internet? The Harquahala Strangler. That’s how he gets his girls.”

“You’re yesterday’s news,” I called.

“So you know Peralta is using your pretty friend Lindsey as bait.”

“I know.” I kept walking away from him.

“Very well. I can imagine she probably likes the change-being out there on the streets as a detective. And with that handsome partner, I hear they are an item now…”

I ignored him.

“I thought the newspaper took a lovely photo of her for that article.”

I stopped and turned back. He was holding out a page from the Republic . I stalked back and tore it from his hand. Sure enough, a large photo showed Lindsey and Patrick Blair, standing outside the doorway to the detective bureau, and yes, she looked radiant.

“What the…?” I read the paper every day, and somehow I hadn’t seen it. Then I checked the date: it was the morning after Lindsey’s mother died. I had missed the paper that day. Now I skimmed the article, but soon I was rereading it closely, squinting in the gathering dusk.

“A nice feature story about the lead team on the Harquahala Strangler case,” Bobby chirped. “I have to say, the local newspaper is not enterprising enough to just go out and profile the detectives investigating a sensitive case, and I doubt the sheriff would cooperate.”

I finished reading it and looked at him. “What’s your point?”

“Only that the sheriff wanted everyone to know that Miss Lindsey is on this case. And I do mean everyone.”

“Okay, so he likes publicity.”

“I see Chief Peralta’s shrewd hand here, Dr. Mapstone. You see, this monster stopped killing prostitutes last year. He’s killed college students. The most recent victim was a housewife. And they all have straight dark hair and pale skin…”

I drove to Sunnyslope in a fog of urgent anxiety that was unrelieved by the rivers of car lights on the busy streets. It had been weeks since Lindsey’s mother had killed herself. It had been weeks since we had last made love, since I had last seen her. I was suddenly not in a mood to be a good, docile post-modern man. I didn’t even think about my new affair with Gretchen. And it was only as I bounded up the outside stairway to her second-floor apartment that I realized I might well find her with a new lover. Suddenly I had a pornographic image of Patrick Blair impaling Lindsey as she writhed and moaned.

Instead, I found nothing but a locked, dark apartment and Pasternak nosing at me through the window. I waved at him with my finger. I folded one of my Sheriff’s Office business cards into the door and walked slowly away, down the stairs, past the pool, through the breezeway, all the time wishing she would appear at the door and invite me back inside. Then I walked back up and retrieved my card. What the hell.

I drove home alone, feeling aloneness all around me as the SUVs and low-riders sped past me on Seventh Street. At Thomas Road, I was overcome by a feeling I was being followed. But when I tacked over to Fifth Avenue, nobody was in the rear-view mirror but my momentary paranoia.

Somebody was killing the Yarnell family.

The Harquahala Strangler was stalking Lindsey.

“Where did you hear that?” Peralta demanded, sitting up in the leather chair and nearly upsetting his Gibson. “I swear I’m gonna shut down your pipeline to Lorie Pope once and for all.”