Cactus Heart

11

As I flew back at eighty miles-per-hour across the waterless expanse, it sank in how little Frances Richie had really told me. I had conversed with living history. But I had learned about a twenty-four-year-old’s beloved hat, not about the most notorious kidnapping in Arizona. Then the old woman was asleep again. I gave a list of questions to Heather Amis, and she grudgingly agreed to ask them.

It didn’t feel as if a millennium was coming to an end, but the year 2000 was only six weeks away. I didn’t have much to show for it. It was an arbitrary piece of calendar, to be sure: the year 2000, A.D., Anno Domini, the Year of the Lord. Or, for historians, the more inclusive C.E., for “common era.” Still, it felt amazing and strange to be alive to see this arbitrary turning of the calendar. As the homely sprawl of Mesa flew by the car windows, I thought about what was happening in the world at 1000 C.E.: the Middle Ages in Europe, and widespread fear of the end of the world. Leif Erickson supposedly discovered America. Beowulf was written. In what would become Phoenix, the Hohokam civilization was thriving. I was deadly in any trivia match.

Back in the city, I spent what was left of the afternoon showing photos of the pocket watch to jewelers. One shot showed the watch open: the hands were frozen at eleven-fifty. The owner of an antique jewelry shop in downtown Scottsdale identified it as a Waltham, Model Ninety-Two, eighteen size with twenty-one jewels.

“It’s a beauty.” He looked at the photos with a magnifying glass. “Railroad quality. Solid gold hunting case, and I would assume that’s fourteen-karat gold. Double-sling porcelain dial. Very nice.”

“Is it rare?”

“Waltham made a lot of watches. In fact, they were the first company to mass produce watches in America, did you know that? But they also made some exquisite watches, too. The Ninety-Two, it’s not a terribly rare watch, but it’s not that common, either, especially with the gold case. I’d bet fewer than a thousand of that model were made. Looks like yours is in very fine condition.”

“When was it made?”

“Around 1892. Model Ninety-Two, get it?”

I asked him if the serial number could be traced. He wasn’t optimistic. “The company went out of business in the fifties,” he said. “I could tell you more if you brought it in.”

Sure, I thought, I’d be happy to bring in, when Lt. Hawkins lets me check it out from the evidence room. When hell froze over. But I knew this much: The watch found with the twins’ bodies was not just a workingman’s brass watch, not something likely left behind by Jack Talbott. Yet there was nothing in the reports about a missing watch from the Yarnell house. The watch was never mentioned at all.

I drove downtown with the top down on the BMW. The day had turned cooler with a line of high clouds from the west, and it was hard to imagine that one hundred ten degrees or the raw sun of July were even possible. By the time I reached the courthouse, the streets were jammed with office workers heading out to the suburbs, out to one of those new cul-de-sac developments carved out of saguaro cactus forests. The days were definitely getting shorter, even in the Valley of the Sun. I could tell it by the dusky texture of the light in my office, which just a month before had been filled with sun at this time of day. Now, not yet five-thirty, the room felt faded and tired. Or maybe it was just me. I walked to the substantial old desk, set my notes down and sat myself, feeling the weight of all the violence and loss. I wished Lindsey didn’t have to work tonight.

The old jail had been located on the floor above me, the jail where Jack Talbott would have stayed during his trial. Ugly legends surrounded the place, and one day I had toured the cells with Carl. They still possessed a shadowy smell of captivity. For a minute, I just listened to the old-building sounds, waiting for a ghost to appear and explain everything. And that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone in the room. Sitting elegantly in a straight back chair ten feet away from me, staring out the window and picking a piece of lint off his cuffed pants leg, was Bobby Hamid.

“I hope I didn’t startle you, Dr. Mapstone.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” I said, too damned obviously startled. I wished I hadn’t left my Colt Python at home.

“Forgive me,” he said. His accent was vaguely of the British public schools. “I came here looking for you, and the security guard, a very nice fellow named Carl, let me in to wait.” It was just screwy enough to be true. “I made the assumption that you would not walk in the door and start shooting, like our friend, Chief Peralta.”

I looked around the room, as if anything there could be of interest to Bobby Hamid. Sixty-year-old murder cases, books on Arizona history, aging police logs and reports, empty Starbucks cups. My laptop was where I had left it this morning.

“You have balls the size of Tucson,” I said.

“Very good,” he said. “The Arizona allusion.”

“What do you want?”

He stood and walked over to the desk, then chose another chair and sat, posture perfect, dark suit set off with a conservative, polka-dot navy tie, any sense of menace only to be imagined by me.

“The sunsets this time of year remind me of Iran when I was a boy,” he said, looking out the window. “Before the revolution there. But we live in revolutionary times, do we not, Professor Mapstone? Can you think of a time with more upheaval than our own? Even Europe in 1848? ‘Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.’ Do you recall who said that?”

“Emerson,” I said. “I’m not going to have a graduate seminar with a drug dealer. For all I know, you broke into a county office. I’m sure the Crips and Bloods down in the holding cells would love to help you off with that five-thousand-dollar suit.”

He laughed softly. “Ah, David, you do not wear the tough-cop mask with the ease Chief Peralta does.” He crossed his legs and folded manicured fingers atop one knee. “Why would I need to be a drug dealer when I can get rich legitimately in the nation’s sixth largest city? And for my pleasures, I have Indian art, beautiful women, the knowledge of good acts done for the community.” In the dimness of the room, he looked like a young Omar Sharif.

He raised an arm expansively, indicating the view out the windows. “Look at downtown coming back. A new baseball stadium, science center, nightlife. And that doesn’t even take account of my portfolio of tech stocks. My goodness, the return I get from investing here is far superior to what I hear one might receive from, say, smuggling heroin. Once you factor in the true business costs and risks, of course.” A narrow smile played across his handsome features.

I reached for the phone on my desk. He said, “It was you who found those skeletons in the old building down by the Union Station, no?”

I eased the phone back into its cradle.

“I imagine it is true what the newspaper says, that they are the famous Yarnell twins that were kidnapped in 1941. A man was caught with some of the ransom money, and with a woman, if I recall what I read. He was executed. Yet the bodies were never found.”

I reached for the phone again.

“My problem is strictly business, Dr. Mapstone. That building, the Triple A Storage warehouse. I want to buy it. I want to develop that entire area. And I nearly had a deal with the owners, then this. Now the city has the building sealed. I cannot move ahead. I am losing money every day I cannot act. Do you realize how fast downtown real estate prices are rising because of the baseball stadium?”

“I don’t care, Bobby.” I let the phone be. “And even if I did, how could I do anything?”

“You have influence with Chief Peralta, and he has influence everywhere. Do you think it is easy for me to come asking a favor from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office?”

“Well, I’ll be happy to mention it to Peralta. Now, I really need to get some work done.”

He raised a hand deferentially. “I do not wish to waste your time. I know Chief Peralta has a lot on his mind, what with his marital troubles and all.”

He studied my face. “Oh, yes, I keep track of the people who, uh, do not wish me well in achieving my American dream. Frankly, I find his wife shrill and pedantic, at least on her radio show. Perhaps she is different in real life.” He shook his head slowly. A philosopher. “Ah, Americans and marriage, so much difficulty. American men confuse the things a wife can do with the things one needs from a mistress. And then those murders he can’t seem to solve. He has seen his reputation take a bit of a beating in the press because of that. I feel badly for our friend right now. I really do.”

“I bet.”

“Maybe your pretty, young friend-Lindsey, is it? -can help him trap this madman. She certainly made the difference on the Phaedra Riding case, did she not?”

“You claim to know a hell of a lot about sheriff’s office business,” I said, feeling a deep tension conquering my neck and shoulders.

“The Harquahala Strangler is a dangerous case, Dr. Mapstone. If I could help Chief Peralta stop these killings I surely would.”

I should have thrown him out of my office. Instead, I sat there like an idiot and let him talk. He had more than balls-there was a reckless intelligence and charisma to him that was both compelling and disarming.

“You have heard from him every bad thing about me, whether true or imagined,” Bobby Hamid went on. “But like me, Dr. Mapstone, you are an educated man, a man of the world. You know the purely evil man, like the purely good one, doesn’t exist.”

He sat back a bit in the chair and the wood creaked loudly. Then for a long time we just regarded each other across the desk, his eyes in shadows, me feeling my heart pound. Yes, Peralta had told me much of the bad about Bobby Hamid: a college student at Arizona State in the late 1970s, he stayed in this country after the fall of the Shah. He was reputed to have come from an upper-class Iranian family, but nobody knew for sure.

At first he ran a doughnut shop, but his immigrant’s success story quickly verged into owning topless bars that were notorious for prostitution and drugs. Around the mid-nineteen-eighties, he was reputed to have had a lock on the cocaine trade for half the city. Along the way, there was a trail of cruel murders of assorted informants, rivals, and narco-groupies. Yet he could never be tied to any of it-never did a day in jail, as Peralta put it. And he slowly bought himself into respectable business and civic life. He was Peralta’s obsession. I could understand why.

Finally, he said, “Tell me what you thought of the Yarnell heirs you met.”

“You know I can’t discuss a case.” The truth was, I still couldn’t get an appointment to meet Max Yarnell.

“You do know that Yarneco, the family development company, owns that warehouse.”

Well, no, I didn’t. Against the coolness of the room, I could feel sweat forming against my chest.

I said, “The records say a real estate investment trust in Baltimore owns it.”

“And Yarneco is majority owner of the REIT,” Bobby said. “Just thought you’d want to know. They own a lot of the property down there. Once they were produce warehouses. Now everybody wants the land. Even the county, to expand Chief Peralta’s jail.”

I felt a flush spreading into my cheeks, hoped the dark of the office concealed it.

Bobby said, “You are an intelligent man, David, not merely a prisoner of books and ideas like most intellectuals. Sometimes things are not as they seem. It would be worth your time to reconsider your assumptions about me, about many things.”

He stood up and bowed slightly. “Dr. Mapstone, it is always a pleasure. Do have a happy Thanksgiving.”

I wanted to have a smart-ass comeback but all I could think of was getting him out of the office.

“By the way, someone left you a present.”

“What are you talking about?”

I followed his gaze over to the court table I had set up for the Yarnell case.

“What the…”

It was a doll. An ordinary baby doll, maybe a foot tall, with a big head and a silly smile. It had a little blue bow tie and blue overalls. And a little sheriff’s star. It made my skin crawl.

“Are you mind-fucking me, Bobby?”

“Oh, the English language is wonderful, isn’t it?” he smiled, perfect teeth looking predatory in the half light. “Farsi has many wonderful words and sayings, but not like this. ‘Mind fuck.’ No, Dr. Mapstone, I am not mind-fucking you. This doll was sitting on your doorstep when I came in. No card attached. I merely brought it inside. It is from a friend with a peculiar sense of humor, perhaps?”

“Perhaps.”

“I have never liked dolls,” Bobby said. “Those dead eyes.”

Then he was gone, his footsteps echoing like gunshots down the hall.