Jon Talton - Dry Heat

The place was not “done” like a Taos or Sedona, but it had aspirations. Art galleries lined the old dusty streets, a subdivision uglied up the south edge of town and the local paper promised rising property values and development. Tubac had survived 400 years of history, often bloody, but I found myself wondering if it could survive the Arizona growth machine. I asked directions at a coffee shop and used a little bridge to cross the Santa Cruz River. There was water in the river. A dirt road diverged through a thick stand of cottonwoods, then rose up a slight hill covered in brittlebush. Through the brush, I could make out a shack-it was no more than that. Four unpainted adobe walls, a window, a door, and a dilapidated roof. A rusty mailbox sat sideways on an old railroad tie, with “Hardin” painted in black letters. It looked like a scene out of one of those “forgotten West” books. But it made me feel uneasy. I was a man with ambiguous relations with the FBI and maybe with the sheriff of Maricopa County. My relations with the Russian mafia were fatal. I came unannounced.

As it turned out, A.C. Hardin was a she. Later I learned that A.C. stood for Amelia Caroline, and she cared for neither name. At that moment she didn’t care for the tall stranger walking toward her house, and her displeasure took the form of a double-barreled shotgun aimed at me. She was twenty feet away but the barrels looked only slightly smaller than a pair of howitzers. I felt a huge pool of sweat gather on the small of my back. I wondered whether I stood a better chance if I identified myself as David the historian, or Deputy Mapstone the cop.

“I know who the hell you are,” she shouted. Her voice had a little trill-did I detect just a hint of hysteria in the vocal cords? I noticed her finger was inside the trigger guard, putting me one spasm of her knuckle from kingdom come.

I said something about putting down the gun and talking, or maybe something about me being happy to turn around, walk back to my car, and drive away. I forget exactly. Shotguns have that effect on me.

“I don’t want any more Maricopa County, Phoenix, bullshit!”

And who wouldn’t agree with that? Maricopa County, Phoenix, bullshit had led me to the doorstep of a crazy woman with a shotgun. She didn’t know the half of it.

“Don’t you know there’s been a break in the Pilgrim case?” I said hurriedly.

The shotgun came down. She stared at me. Then she turned and walked into the little adobe house. I heard her say, “I don’t care about that.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t see it on the TV.” I walked slowly toward the house.

Her small face crinkled. “I gave up TV, especially the Phoenix stations. Too depressing. Every night it’s three fatal wrecks, a child molestation, and a shooting. Every night.”

“Lorie Pope at the Republic says you were interested in the Pilgrim case for years,” I called into the doorway. I let my hand rest on the butt of the Python in its holster, just in case the shotgun urge hit again.

She said nothing and I called to her again. Arizona was full of eccentrics. Bikers, mountain men, cowboy wanna-bes. The state with freaks of all flavors. Young misfits without the energy or originality to get to Seattle or New York. Old grudge-holders who rolled West until there was nothing left but California, and the money ran out. Californians who were too weird for the Golden State. Street-corner mumblers. Neighborhood junk collectors. And, of course, crime buffs. They obsessed about police work. A few of them were professional confessors, who claimed to have committed any high-profile crime of the moment.

“I gave up on that,” she said. She reappeared in the doorway without the shotgun. She was a slight old woman wearing jeans and a long-sleeved Madras shirt. Her face had been plowed into a thousand furrows by the sun and the world, but she had naturally high cheekbones and large, pretty eyes. They were green eyes and provided the only color in her face. In fact, there was something oddly girlish about her, beginning with her hair, which was still long and straight, parted in the middle like a 19-year-old’s but turned to the color of a winter river.

“Pilgrim killed himself, right?” she said.

“Do you believe that?”

“Why not? That’s what the FBI always said.”

“We found Pilgrim’s badge,” I said, watching her eyes take the news in.

After a long pause, she said, “Then I guess you’d better come in.”

“Nothing personal. I like my privacy out here. I lived in Phoenix for nearly forty years, and I was happy to get away from it. My grandparents were pioneers. They farmed down by Seventh Avenue and Broadway. The pioneer stock is gone now. Down here, I feel safe. Until they pave this over, too. God willing, I’ll be dead by then. I know who you are. You’re the history guy. I’ve seen you on TV. Guess it makes sense you’d be the one to find Pilgrim’s badge. Makes sense. He floated ten miles in the Grand Canal, then got sucked into a lateral. You know what a lateral is, right? The small ditches that flow out of the big canals, take the water to the fields. Water does strange things to a body.”

The small woman sat across from me in a room with Navajo rugs on the floor, faded 1960s space age furniture covered with colorful drapings, and an aggressive clutter of newspapers, magazines, and clothing. A fat white cat watched me from a nearby chair. The woman’s voice tended to squeakiness, and on some vowel sounds her throat constricted as if saying the words hurt. When she laughed, she covered her mouth with her hand. Her shirtsleeves were too short. We both sipped iced tea from old jelly jars. Hardin was a talker now that the shotgun was back in the closet. Unlike Vince Renzetti, Hardin had no family photos displayed. Instead, the room was dominated by unframed paintings that crowded against each other on walls. Most of the canvases were watercolors, landscapes from familiar places in Arizona, the kind of sunsets and mountain views that sold well with the tourists in Tubac. I am no art critic-the work seemed competent enough illustration, but only slightly above what you might find on the walls of a motel in the Southwest.

“The canals looked like that.” She pointed to a large canvas showing a reedy, tree-shaded waterway, with a blurred dark cluster of picnickers on a bank in the distance ahead of a stormy sky.

“You know, children used to swim in the canals in the Valley. The laterals were all open, not covered with streets and concrete like now. They had trees and grass along the banks. It was very beautiful. People had boats. When I was in high school, my buddies would drive their cars along the banks and pull us on water skis. I read that Pilgrim’s hat floated all the way with the body. Isn’t that strange…”

“Do you collect art?” I asked.

“I paint it,” she said. “It’s not much. It calms me. I sell a few. Anyway, you remember 1948, the year he was killed? Of course you can’t. You’re too young. They were having UFO scares then. I saw a girl in a bikini for the first time. It looked very scandalous. The FBI must not like you. Looking into their precious closed case.” She made this segue without any change of expression. “How’d you pull that off, Mapstone? They fought me for every scrap of paper. I bet they didn’t give a damn about John Pilgrim when he was alive. But dead, he was their property. His murder was egg on their faces…”

“Ms. Hardin…” I tried to break in.

“Have you ever shot anyone, Mapstone?” she asked.

“Let’s talk about the Pilgrim case,” I said.

“Oh, I get it,” she said. “You’re asking the questions here.” Laugh. Cover her mouth. She folded her small hands under her arms. “You sound like them.”