Jon Talton - Cactus Heart

“Hayden Yarnell?” I coaxed.

Paz stiffened. “There is only one Mr. Yarnell,” he said. “His older sons were…” He let the sentence hang between us, as if only a fool would not understand.

“After he died, I started my own lawn business.” He relaxed a millimeter, no more.

“Sir, may I ask how old you are?”

“Ninety-three,” he said.

“You don’t look it.”

He smiled a little. “I feel every year,” he said. “But I am not here about me.” He sighed and looked across the desk, then met my eyes. “What happened in 1941, all those years ago, I’ve carried it in my heart.”

We fell into quiet that seemed endless. It was a taste of the silence the Yarnell twins must have felt, an absence more frightening than their cries for help, the silence of Jack Talbott before the executioner did his job, or the endless years for Frances Richie. But I didn’t dare break it. Finally, Paz did.

“At first I could tell myself stories, that maybe I was mistaken about what I had seen and heard. And then it didn’t seem to matter, so much had gone wrong it couldn’t be made right.”

I spoke into the next long gap. “What couldn’t be made right?”

“You don’t understand. They were so powerful…”

“The Yarnell family?”

He nodded slowly. “First they told me to keep my mouth shut, that Mr. Yarnell wanted it that way. I couldn’t believe that, but he became so sick, and I couldn’t talk to him.” He sighed heavily. “I was afraid. I had my own family, and I was afraid. Later, when the Yarnells offered me money to start my own business, I took it.”

His hands bunched into gnarled, hard-time fists that sat on his knees like holstered weapons. “Do you know what it is like to hold something terrible in your heart for so many years?” he asked. “Do you know how heavy it becomes?”

Carl stepped in and put the coffee on the desk. He started to say something. Then he saw Paz’s face, and walked quietly out, closing the door without a sound.

Paz sipped the coffee. “They tell me I should not have caffeine, or anything else I love. Am I going to live another twenty years? I hope not. A man can live too long.”

I didn’t try to guide him. I just sat and listened.

“Mr. Yarnell could have lived forever but he died of a broken heart,” Paz said. “I was so young and stupid then, I would not have believed such a thing. But I watched it happen.”

“When his grandsons were kidnapped.”

“Yes!” Paz erupted. “Yes, it killed Mr. Yarnell.”

“You were there the Thanksgiving they were kidnapped?”

He nodded.

“And you stayed with Mr. Yarnell until he died?”

“I was there the entire time,” he said. “I didn’t understand all that was happening. I didn’t know how to help Mr. Yarnell. There was no straight course that I could see.”

“You cared about Mr. Yarnell.”

Paz stared at his fists, opened them and stared inside, as if the lifelines on his palms could translate for him.

“Do you understand what I am trying to say?” he demanded.

“I think I do,” I said. “But I need you to tell me in your own words, from the beginning.”

He sat for a long time in that death silence, the big room swallowing up even the sound of our breathing. Then he set the coffee cup carefully on my desk and began to talk in a strong voice.

The rain stayed all week, under a sky that looked like boiling lead. On Friday morning, I walked across Jefferson Street to the sheriff’s administration building, showed my ID at the deputy’s entrance and used the back hallway to reach the private entrance to Peralta’s office suite. His space held the comfort of the familiar: the big Arizona flag furled in its coppery sunset behind his desk; the framed photos of a storied career on the wall; a bulletin board on wheels with the latest case reports; a wall-sized map of Maricopa County; the contrast of his credenza piled high with files, law books, and used legal pads with the utter emptiness of his big modern desktop. He was leaning back in his chair, black cowboy boots on his blotter, sipping a caffeine-free Diet Coke.

“Where have you been? I’ve eaten all your leftovers at home.”

I dropped a two-inch-thick file folder beside his boots. I said: “Progress.”

He lifted his dark brow a quarter of an inch. I sat down and gave my report.

In the end, he wanted to talk to Luis Paz himself. All the way down, Peralta quizzed me rapid-fire. Turned my ideas on their head. Turned my words against me. Questioned the sequence. Questioned the motives. He could demolish the careless truth-seeker in one sentence, and I needed that. He reminded me we would face tougher questions from the county attorney-and from Superior Court Judge Arthur C. “ACLU” Lu, if we were to get the court order we must have.

But after spending an hour with Paz in the living room of the modest, well-kept home, Peralta was uncharacteristically silent. All the way back downtown he was as pensive as Mike Peralta can get. Only when we got to a dark booth in a deserted corner of Majerle’s did he speak.

“I’ll go to Judge Lu for a court order this afternoon,” he said. “How do you want to play this?”

I laid it out and he listened with his eyes closed and his hands folded, a massive tent of fingers on the tabletop. He asked a couple of questions. Made a couple of changes. Finally, he gave a sniff, set his face and hardened the dark eyes.

“You’d better fucking be right.”

I just shut up and sipped my beer.

Gretchen’s apartment was dark except for the yellow-blue flame in the fireplace. It was just cold enough outside, otherwise she would have had to use the air conditioning. I came in at the sound of her voice, closed the door behind me and locked it-it had one of those old deadbolts, turned by a delicate T-shaped latch in the hardware. Then there was Gretchen, standing in the archway, backlit by a gentle lamp in the kitchen and the remnants of a scarlet sunset, wearing a short black cocktail dress and carrying martinis. Was that Coleman Hawkins on the stereo?

“I know you like these,” she said, holding out a drink.

“Definitely the whole package,” I said. I crossed the room and kissed her passionately, toasted her, and then felt the gin on my lips, cold and warm at the same time. She smelled vaguely of old rose petals and clean bedsheets.

She had a body made for the look: long and leggy. Right down to the expensive black pumps. I’d never seen her in a short skirt before, and as much as I appreciated the rough-gentle denim she wore like a uniform, this was something else again. Gretchen!

“Are you close to solving your case, deputy?” she asked, sipping her drink, animating those lips and dimples.

“I think so,” I said.

“I’m very proud of you,” she said. “I’m very honored to know you.”

“I couldn’t have done anything without the help of the city archaeologist’s office. Specifically, one archaeologist…”

She started unbuttoning my shirt with one hand. She was good with one hand: long, elegant fingers dominating the buttons of a man’s shirt. She should have played the piano. Instead, she dug up the remains of ancient civilizations.

“I don’t want to know more,” she said. “I won’t put you on the spot. I can read about it in the newspaper, and then I can smile to myself and say, ‘I know that man.’”

She slipped her hand in my shirt and caressed my chest, teased my nipples.

“I have more plans for you,” she said, taking another ounce of gin.

I set my glass down and took hers, too. “Maybe I have plans for you,” I said.

I lightly kissed her lips. Her tongue came out to meet me, but my mouth moved on to her high, aristocratic cheekbones, to her long, warm neck, to the loamy-smelling province where her neck met her shoulders. She pressed herself against me and gasped. I could feel her nipples harden like pebbles under the dress.