Bad Country: A Novel (32 page)

Anderton followed Luis out to the dirt parking lot to give instructions to one of his crime scene colleagues. After the stretcher came in and the bagged dead man went out, Rodeo left the store proper to stand on the porch, where Theodore Anderton joined him.

Are you okay, Mr. Garnet?

I’m fine, Officer. I appreciate you asking.

Theodore Anderton leaned over the hitching post and looked up at the sky.

It’s special out here in the desert, he said. This is how it was in the Holy Lands. You can actually smell the sand. Like the ancient Hebrews must have.

Smells like blood and dirt to me, Rodeo said.

The men watched the CSI crews at work around and about the trading post. When flashlights strafed and illuminated small areas these small lights made the rest of the desert seem very dark.

Do you know what’s going on around here, Mr. Garnet? Have you solved the crimes?

Rodeo grimaced as he smiled slightly. I appreciate you thinking I could, Mr. Anderton. And yes. I think I do know what’s going on around here. And I think I know how and why the Indian men have been murdered around here, including Sheriff Molina. I just don’t know yet what she needed me for.

*   *   *

Rodeo retrieved the academic book from his truck. Anderton brought in another State Patrolman as Rodeo moved behind the glass-topped counter of the Trading Post.

Just you and me, Mr. Anderton.

That’s a violation of protocol for reception of oral evidence unless you want what you say recorded.

What I am going to visit with you about is not evidence of any kind, said Rodeo. He poured himself a cup of cold cowboy coffee and took a sip. It’s just visiting, Officer. And I suspect you’ve broken rules before. Like those photos you seem to have gotten ahold of. The ones of the evidence, the Indian artifacts found at crime scenes.

Anderton put his hand on his second’s shoulder and guided him toward the door with whispered instruction. The second cop touched his walkie-talkie and left. Anderton shut what was left of the saloon door behind him and turned toward Rodeo.

Any other stipulations, Mr. Garnet?

Pull the walkie off your belt and your cell phone out of your shirt pocket and bury them in those blankets over against the far wall.

Anderton frowned but then did as instructed.

You want a coffee, Officer, or do you have your own water bottle in your vehicle?

I’ll take a coffee, said Anderton. He took Rodeo’s usual barstool. Black. And in as dirty a cup as you have, please.

Rodeo poured a cup and slid it in front of the Statie. You weren’t Marines I gather, Mr. Anderton?

Nossir. I was Regular Army. In the MP, which made sense as my father had served in Vietnam as an MP and then on the State Police Force in Utah for thirty years.

Raised in Utah?

Yes, I was raised in Heber City, said Anderton. And then I studied for two years at a community college, worked one year as Security at the Gateway Mall, then I performed my two years of service for my church, LDS.

Where did you go on your Mission?

Amsterdam, Holland, the Mormon said. He smiled. With zero converts. Then I signed up and did three tours with the Army, mostly Iraq, with no kills but numerous GI arrests. When I mustered out I wasn’t ready to go back to school, so I let myself get recruited into AZDPS Highway because I found out in Iraq that I like the desert. I have been in Arizona for four years. No wife or wives, no children, not homosexual. No personal or personnel issues. So now you know who you are dealing with.

The facts of a man’s life seldom tell me much about the kind of man he is, said Rodeo.

I have studied your background, Mr. Garnet, so I hope that is true for you. Because some of your past actions indicate that you seem to have little respect for the rule of law.

As with Charlie Constance…? That what you’re talking about?

For one, most notable instance, sir.

I generally get the job done. Rodeo slid the University of Arizona publication
Paths of Life
over the countertop. This is the key to your quest, Mr. Anderton. Just open up the book at the beginning and start reading the list of tribe names from the table of contents, Rodeo said.

Tarahumaras … Anderton said aloud. What sort of tribe is that?

Mexican Indians, from what I read, said Rodeo. So are the Seris. And it was a Seri man killed out at my place.

Or made to look like a Seri anyway, said Anderton. The evidence found under that vic’s body was obviously a plant. But someone at the University confirmed that it was ironwood and that’s the material the Seris from Kino Bay prefer to use to manufacture their tourist ware. And they especially like to carve sea turtles so that was a wing of a sea turtle under that vic near your property.

So we got a dead Seri Indian as one victim, said Rodeo.

The first vic under the interstate bridge was positively identified as Navajo, said Anderton. The trooper more closely examined the book Rodeo had given him since the cop now obviously understood his task.

And that fella in the barditch at the Turn-Out? asked Rodeo.

Hopi. We got a DNA match off him through Prison Systems’ data bank. He was a registered sex offender.

And then Ray was an Apache, Rodeo said. In an advertising sort of way if not by blood.

And then there was a killing just within hours of Sheriff Molina’s, probably just after the sheriff’s murder, on Well’s End Road, said Anderton. There was a fragment of a woven basket found on that crime scene though it’s yet to be identified as regards place of origin.

So we got the Dine dead under the bridge and then later Apache Ray in the same location, said Rodeo. So that’s a Navajo and an Apache. Then we got a Hopi in the Turn-Out near the county line and the little Seri at my place. And if Luis had been killed that would be the O’odham. And me, I would count in the toll of dead Indians as the Pascua Yaqui. Rodeo paused. That would make Indians from six of the ten major tribes of AMexica all dead in Los Jarros within the last few weeks, Rodeo said. And so who have we got left, Officer?

The Tarahumaras, Yumans, Paiutes and Havasupai, said Anderton.

The kid who was murdered near the Dairy Queen in Sells was from Lake Havasu, said Rodeo. So that kid might count as the Havasupai. Rodeo paused.

Or he could have been just a drive-by, said Anderton. Since he was killed with a .38 and not as the others with a shotgun.

Or that Havasupai kid could have been the “practice run” for our serial killer, said Rodeo. No easier way to kill somebody than a drive-by. It’s simple, no blood spatter on you, expelled cartridges, if there are any, stay in your vehicle and you just drive away. If you’re just looking for a target, any random person to kill, you just troll around until you get somebody in the right circumstances, on a lonely road on a bridge and cap them.

It seems like you have thought this out to some degree, said Anderton.

A case I’m working. Rodeo did not give any details of the Samuel Rocha case.

Anderton did not press Rodeo but checked the crude map in the front of
Paths of Life
. If that vic in Sells, the young man near the Dairy Queen, was Havasupai then that would represent the seventh of the ten tribes mentioned in this book. He tapped his manicured fingerend on
Paths of Life
. Plus the unidentified victim who was killed on Well’s End Road very shortly after Sheriff Molina was ambushed under the bridge of the interstate.

What tribe was that victim? Rodeo asked.

No specific identification has been made on that vic, but he was Native-American. Anderton scrunched his smooth brow. So there is a serial killer at large in Los Jarros County, Arizona.

A for-profit serial killer, said Rodeo.

What’s the profit angle?

If you’re a student of crime, Mr. Anderton, you’ll remember the Tylenol Murders.

The cop nodded. Seven people were poisoned when they took capsules laced with potassium cyanide, the cop said. The case has never been solved. The main theory was that the serial killings were part of a plot to extort money from the parent company of Tylenol.

But let’s say if you wanted to kill just one person but had no compunction about killing a few more people in order to obscure the real victim, wouldn’t a setup like that be handy? asked Rodeo. Say a man poisons a lot of bottles of aspirin in several locations so that when his wife turns up dead from poisoned aspirin she is just one victim amongst many, said Rodeo. Suspicion is spread around and that creates reasonable doubt.

Multiple murders are perpetrated to conceal the one real target murder. And even if the murderer is properly identified and prosecuted there might be enough reasonable doubt to sway a naïve jury, said Anderton.

But once you know that only one of the victims was the main target, the job of law enforcement becomes a simple murder investigation, Rodeo said.

And that means we look at the family and the finances of the principal vic, said the SIU cop.

I doubt any but one of the dead men or potential dead men around here had a pot to piss in, Rodeo said. Me included. Several of them rotted right beside a road and nobody even missed them.

Except for Sheriff Molina, said the Statie.

And Sirena and her daddy have some history and I don’t know exactly what it is but it’s not good. And that’s what all this is about. Sirena wants the land, the rancho, the cars and trucks and she wants the cattle and cash money and stocks and bonds and the life insurance on Ray. And she wants all this on her own, without her daddy around.

Are there no other relations?

Her momma killed herself by OD, said Rodeo. Or got herself killed by OD.

Anderton considered this for a moment.

Knowing Sheriff Molina’s habits why not just doctor his alcohol with a fatal dose of barbiturates?

That’s probably about how her mother died, said Rodeo. So I imagine Sirena didn’t want to run the risk of both her parents dying the same way. Sheriff Molina couldn’t overdose himself since her mother had already done that. And Ray could hold his liquor.

Did Ms. Molina murder her mother too?

I wouldn’t put it past her, said Rodeo. Since it would have been very simple to do and Sirena Rae doesn’t suffer from conventional morality or normal fealty.

You really think Sheriff Molina’s daughter is capable of all the recent murders in Los Jarros County?

I would imagine that Sirena probably hired a sicario to do her dirty work for her. A contract killer paid per hit. She wouldn’t do it herself, said Rodeo. Except maybe the drive-by of the Havasupai kid in Sells near the Dairy Queen. She could have done that one since it was clean and easy pistol work from a truck.

Why would she do that one murder and not the rest? Do you think that young Havasupai man was her “practice run” and after that she lost her nerve and hired out the rest to a professional hit man?

No. I think if she did the drive-by it was not practice for her, but a way to create evidence to frame a patsy she had.

Who would that be?

Rodeo shrugged as if he didn’t know.

But the way I imagine it, Sirena finds out that her patsy has a gun, a .38 to be exact, she steals it from the patsy’s house, kills the Havasupai kid with it, puts the gun back in the patsy’s house. There again, if she has to go to trial she gets her lawyer, Willis Jarred, to get a court order to search the patsy’s house, they find the .38, ballistics links it to the murder of the Havasupai kid near the Dairy Queen in Sells and she’s got more “reasonable doubt” on her side since here’s another likely murder suspect, the patsy.

I am very impressed, Mr. Garnet. Anderton looked stunned. Where did she get the hitman?

She probably brought a sicario across the border. And unless he gets caught in the act or acts real stupid, there’s no way to catch him.

Ms. Molina has those sorts of contacts?

This bad country down here is full of contract hitmen ready to kill pretty much anybody for a thousand bucks a pop, Rodeo said. And since the freelancers just work for money, they have no allegiances to drug cartels or political entities or governments and so they leave no traces. They are real professionals, said Rodeo. So whoever hires them is not running all that much risk on that end.

Rodeo sighed out a big breath as he collected his thoughts. My best guess would be that her lawyer probably set up a meet for her with some cartel people he did business with. Willis Jarred defends half the bad guys in AMexica. And once her sicario is gone away from Los Jarros—and he’s probably hiking back across the desert to Mexico with a pocket full of cash money right about now—then Sirena’s pretty much home free.

She’s still taking a serious risk, Mr. Garnet. You make a good case and so might the prosecuting attorney were she privy to what you know, so an acquittal for Ms. Molina is not at all guaranteed, said Anderton. I don’t think an entirely sane person would take such risks.

I’m not a psychologist, Rodeo said. But I know Sirena and have studied her and I think she’s a borderline personality disorder. Which means she has a natural predilection for taking high risks, even very high risks most people, even most murderers would not take. Risk-taking is bone deep with her. And she is very smart. So “reasonable doubt” would satisfy her.

Rodeo looked out the broken window to see if anyone from Law Enforcement was lurking. Anderton readjusted himself on his barstool, pretended to take a drink of the World’s Worst Coffee.

How did Ms. Molina get the Native-American victims into Los Jarros County? Some are not local.

Well, Ray was local and Luis and I were local too, said Rodeo. As for the other victims, if the men came from Mexico, like the little Seri man nearby my place, then she hired them like everybody else around here hires Undocumented Aliens, but instead of putting them to work she kills them or has them killed. You said one of the victims was a registered sex offender and those guys will go anywhere for the promise of sex, so she used a public computer and found that guy on a Internet chat room for perverts. The sheriff said that his deputy, Pal Real, found out that the kid from Lake Havasu was something of a porn addict maybe. So Sirena could have also hooked up with him on the Internet. She chats him up for a while and gets him to come down to Los Jarros to visit his O’odham cousins and meet her. She sets up an appointment with him at the Dairy Queen at a specific time so she knows where he’s going to be. Then she shoots the poor kid in a drive-by. Haven’t you ever seen “To Catch a Predator”? Men will go anyplace for sex with a teenaged girl, so she just takes on that persona and they would come down here like flies to shit. She could arrange these hook-ups using public library computers or powwow fliers or personals in the
Tucson Weekly
that couldn’t be legally traced to her.