Jon Talton - Cactus Heart

The city settled into serious holiday business: the run-up to the Fiesta Bowl, high season at world-class resorts, packed five-star restaurants, a big golf tournament. The days were brightly sunny and the nights cold, magical. The smog wasn’t too bad. The twentieth century ticked out its last days. In Willo, the winter lawns gleamed as if every blade of grass was lit up by electricity, and the neighborhood put out luminarias along all the sidewalks. Gretchen and I had our own celebration, two or three times a night.

The bricks were set in place one at a time. It was done by a man’s hand, a thick hand with copious hair on top, an ape’s hand really. He ladled on the mortar and it ran off the sides like pancake batter. And I could only watch. It was dark and for a long time I watched with interest. So this was how bricks were laid. The hand moved very precisely. Every brick lined up perfectly. But I was inside, inside a tiny opening, so small I couldn’t move. The wound on my foot seemed better, but my legs were inert. My hands were dead at my sides. And by the time I realized what was happening, every brick took away a little more air, and the hand kept laying them in place, and the mortar kept running like batter, and I couldn’t breathe. I could only scream.

“David! Wake up, baby. Wake up. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

Gretchen was next to me, stroking my face. “You were having a nightmare. It must have been awful.”

I took big breaths and surveyed her large bedroom with relief. “I know, don’t tell a dream or it might come true.”

She held me close. “I have dreams about you and me, and I want those to come true, David. Oh, baby, you’ve been through so much. But you’re safe with Gretchen. This awful thing is over. James is in jail. They killed that kid who stabbed Max with the petrified wood. It’s over.”

I let her rock me to sleep, my face nuzzling her russet-colored hair.

Then I came awake. I just stared into the dark for a long time.

“David? Couldn’t you go back to sleep? The holidays are so hard.” She leaned over and kissed me, holding a hand against my forehead. “You feel clammy.”

She got out of bed and brought me a glass of water. She looked more beautiful than ever: the ambient light playing off her hair; the shadows accenting the lovely planes and curves of her face, her robe open and revealing.

“What is it? You’re upset.”

I didn’t want to speak, didn’t want words or a voice to say them.

A wave of nausea just kept washing across me, again and again. But then I was letting her reach under the covers. It was a nice feeling.

“I know just what the patient needs,” she said. I was hard as a twenty-five-year-old.

Grandfather used to say that corruption ultimately wasn’t about payments under the table or anything so prosaic. It wasn’t even about evil, at least at first. It was about what happened inside when a person got comfortable with what he knew was wrong.

“No,” I said, pushing her away. She flashed those rich brown eyes and drew back.

I swallowed some acid saliva down my sandpaper throat and said, “How did you know Max had been killed with petrified wood?”

“David, what are you talking about?”

“We held back that information. Nobody knew how Max was murdered except the cops and the suspect.”

“You told me, you goof!”

God, I wished it were true. “I didn’t, Gretchen. I never told you that.”

She didn’t protest. She just watched me. We stared at each other a long time, until I looked away.

“If I call the city archaeologist’s office, am I going to find out that there’s no Gretchen Goodheart on the staff? That’s what I will find, isn’t it?” I swung out of bed and reached for my clothes.

“David, please! You’re going to start the bleeding in your foot. What are you doing? It’s the middle of the night.”

“I’m going down to Phoenix PD and see if they have a city staff directory.” In agony, I pulled my pants over my injured foot, then slipped on the sweatshirt.

“I don’t work for the city.” She sat back against the headboard and pulled her robe tightly around her. “I did help you, David. I helped you in ways you don’t even know.”

Why the hell was I starting to cry? I whispered, “You probably don’t even wear a cowboy hat.”

“I thought eccentricity would be disarming,” she said.

“I was disarmed.”

I waited for her to protest, to say she could explain, oh, God, how I waited. She just leaned forward, put her arms around her legs and rocked. With every throb of my foot the room and the world were collapsing around me.

“And the dolls. That was you.”

Silence.

“So what organization, Gretchen? Who are you with?”

“What?”

“The FBI has been obsessed with eco-terrorism, and I thought they were overreacting. Apparently I was wrong. You used me to get close to Max.” I was talking in short bursts. I couldn’t do more. “That night, you probably used my name to get him to let you in. Tell me a former smoke jumper isn’t strong enough to knock a man down with a kick or a punch, and then…” God, my foot was throbbing in pain. “…And then pick up an ornamental piece of petrified wood and plunge it into his breastbone.”

“It’s not like that.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I’m not with anybody but me!”

My clothes were on and I should have left. But I just sat on the other side of the bed, our body language nothing worse than a couple having a fight.

She said, “I never meant to hurt you.”

The damned pulse against my eyes.

She came over, bent down and kissed me on the forehead, and then on the lips. I let her do it.

“I really love you,” she said. “I thought you hungered for justice like I did.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you know Max offered me money?” she said. “As if that could make up for anything.”

All I could muster was a deep sigh. She took my hand and stroked it. I felt so tired.

“Three years ago, I learned that my dad had been adopted. He didn’t know anything about the circumstances. It happened when he was a baby, so he has no memory of his real mother. A year ago, I learned I could never have children. It became really important to me to know where I came from. So it took some time. It took some money, and some other things. But I finally found Frances. She’s my grandmother.”

My foot was caught somewhere between the worst cramp you can imagine and the deep pain of a broken bone. I just let it throb.

“I said I was a law student looking into wrongful convictions, and they let me visit her. I knew she was my grandmother, my flesh and blood, immediately. But she was so far gone, she didn’t even realize who I was. And then I learned the whole story. How the Yarnells had kept her in there for all those years. What they had done to her.”

“So you murdered Max.”

“Those are your words.”

“God, Gretchen, stop lying to me. If you love me, give me the truth.”

“I’m not sorry for what happened to Max, whoever did it. That’s the truth.”

“That’s because you did,” I said dully. “Then James Yarnell. I remember. You checked your watch that night, after we had dinner, and you suddenly left. You needed to be there when he was locking up the gallery and walking to his car. It didn’t seem to matter to you, that night in Scottsdale, if you shot me along with him.”

“If that had been me…if it had been, I’m a good shot.”

“You have the perfect alibi for that night: dinner with your lover, the deputy.” My mouth felt as if it were coated with acid.

Gretchen said softly, “Frances was a twenty-four-year-old girl who never did anyone harm. Her only fault was to fall for an old man who was betrayed by his sons! And then their sons carried it on. They could have stopped it any time. Just let her out and let her be. They had the money to let it go away.”