The Corpse in the Cactus Page 11

  “That cop nuts or what? We weren’t doin’ nothing, man. Nothing.”

  Aaron snapped his head around in the direction of a loud bang that came from somewhere behind him. He rose and handed the blood soaked cloth to the man who stood there shirtless and stunned and silent.

  “Hold this onto his wound,” he said, looking around for the source of the gun shot. He saw no one, but even at this distance he could see where it had landed. He wiped his bloody hands on his pants, unholstered his gun and raced to the squad car. As he neared the car, gun in hand, he spun around looking for an assailant. Again he saw no one. But he saw the pattern of blood spatter dripping down the inside of the windshield.

  As he opened the car door he faced Jerry’s lifeless body, his head leaning back against the headrest, his blood and gray matter morbidly decorating the interior. Then he saw the revolver in Jerry Montana’s hand.

  And the note gripped in the other.

  Remember me as I was, it read. Nothing more.

  There was a smile on crazy Jerry’s dead face. He was grinning like he’d been looking at something real pretty, but what Aaron saw wasn’t pretty at all. It was ugly.

  And it was eerily sad.

  He’d never seen a cop eat his gun before.

  “Geez, Louise,” he said and slammed the car door as he stifled his gag reflex. This was a mess in more ways than one, that was for darn sure.

  He holstered his gun and walked away. A small crowd had gathered below the dark clouds that accumulated above their heads. The sun no longer shone as the first drops of rain mixed with the drying blood that dotted the pavement. The curious as well as a few would-be good Samaritans circled around the wounded man as his friend held tightly to him, telling him everything was going to be okay. Aaron walked in their direction, to the source of the escalating mayhem. Their building anger filled the air, mixing with the scent of wet creosote.

  “You the cop that shot this kid?” Someone asked, pointing an accusatory finger at Aaron.

  One of the three young men spoke up.

  “He didn’t do it,” he said. “He was trying to help.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I don’t know. The other cop just went totally postal on us. If it weren’t for this one, it could’ve been a lot worse.”

  “Where’s the cop with the trigger finger? Let me get my hands on him so I can tear him apart. Goddamn police brutality. I’ll kill the sonofabitch.” The guy was flexing his adrenaline muscles and ready to pounce.

  “It’s too late,” said Aaron. “He’s already dead.”

  “You save me the trouble?” The man sounded disappointed and faced the young cop who was calmly trying to diffuse his anger.

  “He took care of that himself,” said Aaron. “Now please step back and give us some breathing room.”

  Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered the sound of distant sirens as they came closer and closer.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Murky Waters

  Maggie stood to the side of the old green Chevy and watched the forensics tea, do their jobs. The worn paint-job was splattered with the morning rain. It had washed away desert dust as well as what might have been evidence. She felt like a chained dog, forbidden to tear into things until she got the signal. If she could have taken over every job in every department she would have. Things got done faster when you did them yourself. She hated the waiting game. But she had to step back and let the forensics experts comb through the old jalopy, gathering what they could.

  “We ran the New Mexico plates,” the man named George Timberlake said. He walked over wearing a white lab coat, cotton gloves, and a slight limp that tilted him awkwardly to one side. “They came up stolen.”

  She sighed. “I need something.”

  “We lifted a few prints from the exterior. The rain took care of everything else. Man, the inside of that heap looks like a garbage dump. It’s littered with empty cigarette packs, fast food containers, worn maps, old receipts, overflowing ashtray, you name it. All that junk’s going to keep us busy for a long time. It looks like the guy might’ve been living in the old hoopty mobile. There’s even a jar that looks like it’s filled with urine. His own little port-a-potty. It smells something awful in there. Tidiness definitely wasn’t one of John Doe’s strong points. Good news is, we were able to pull a ton of prints from the inside. Joe’s running them now.”

  No sooner had he spoken than Joe entered the garage and walked over to them.

  “Looks like all those prints came from just two people. I checked with autopsy and one set belongs to our John Doe.”

  “No surprise there,” said Maggie. “But it still doesn’t tell us who he is.”

  “I ran them both through the system and came up with zilch. No criminal records on either of them. Whoever they belong to either kept their noses clean or were real good at flying below the radar.”

  “I think our vic wasn’t so innocent. Somebody had it in for him. He had to have been up to some kind of no good,” said Maggie.

  “Or maybe he just witnessed something he shouldn’t have.”

  “Wrong place, wrong time. That’s a possibility. At this point anything’s possible.”

  “I found something,” one of them yelled over to them, holding up a small evidence bag with his gloved hand. George Timberlake limped over and took the clear plastic bag from his hand. He walked back to where Maggie stood, waving it above his head before she grabbed it from him. She held it up, looking at an old, worn Ohio driver’s license, faded and curled up at its corners. Through the clear plastic bag she could see the I.D. photo. Her John Doe half-smiled back at her. And there was a name.

  It was her first bingo moment.

  “You know you can’t take that yet,” he said, taking it back from her.

  “Could you at least xerox it for me?”

  He sighed and walked away, returning a few minutes later to hand her a xeroxed copy of the drivers license.

  “Thanks.”

  Shaking his head, George limped back to the car and opened the trunk.

  “This guy’s been busy,” he said, looking at the scrap yard of license plates scattered throughout the interior. “There’s plates in here from half the states in the union. And I’ll bet my trick knee that every one of them was stolen. He was on the run from something.” He spread them out face up and proceeded to photograph them before placing them in a large evidence bag.

  “The evidence locker on this one is going to be packed tighter than Santa’s toy bag on Christmas eve. We’re going to be processing things for a long time,” George said to her.

  “Maybe there’ll be a few presents in there for me.”

  “We’ve got a ton of trash to tag and bag, but take the driver’s license copy and have at it”.

  She thanked him.

  “I’d like photos of those plates before I go,” she said. “Got a Polaroid?”

  “You’re an impatient one,” he said. “Can’t wait, huh?”

  “Patience isn’t one of my virtues.”

  George walked across the room and returned with an old camera. He dumped the bag of plates back into the trunk. His gloved hand lined the assortment of license plates face up. Maggie looked at the veritable map of the John Doe’s travels as George snapped away, then handed her the photos as the camera slowly spat them out.

  “Thanks, George,” she said, then turned and left the men to their work.

  When she reentered the main building total chaos slapped her across the face. Officers were running around the room while others huddled together, their words muffled and guarded. Tension filled the room. Phones rang, papers shuffled. From out the window she could see the press corps gathering like vultures, umbrellas held high protecting their perfect hair and their microphones and cameras from the rain. They elbowed each other for position, a hungry
mob ready to pounce.

  The Captain stood outside his office door, catching her attention with a wave of his hand. His face was ashen. His composure tenuous. She wove her way through the uniformed bodies and over to where he stood. He motioned her inside his office, slamming the door behind them.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got a real problem, Reardon.”

  He sat down behind his desk, leaned forward in a defeated posture, and held his head in his hands.

  “The press is gathering,” she said, wondering why.

  “They can stand out there until they’re soaked to the skin for all I care. There will be no press conference until Jerry Montana’s wife is informed. I’ll be damned if she’s going to hear it on the midday news.”

  Maggie took a seat across from him. “What did he do now?”

  The Captain raised his head and spoke. He filled her in on the morning’s events as best he could, barely stopping for a breath until he had finished.

  Maggie was speechless.

  “I guess this is your I told you so moment,” he said.

  “You know me better than that. I expected bad, but I never expected this bad.”

  “Either did I,” he said. “Either did I. He left a note. All it said was ‘remember me as I was.’”

  “How considerate.”

  “I remember a good cop who let his grief poison him,” he said in Montana’s defense.

  “The only thing anyone else is going to remember is a crazy cop who shot an innocent man before he blew out his own brains. The last thing he left wasn’t a note. It was the toxic waste he spilled leaving the department to clean up the mess. That’s his legacy.”

  “Point taken. The only good news is the victim is at St. Mary’s and he’s going to be okay. They got the bullet out of his shoulder, stitched him up, and he’ll probably be released this afternoon. We’ve got someone over there getting statements from all three of them. Then we just wait for the negative headlines and the law suits.”

  “Were there any other witnesses?”

  “Just to the aftermath. Except for Aaron Iverson.”

  “Where’s Aaron? Is he alright?”

  “He did a stand-up job all things considered. But we sent him straight to the department shrink. Everything else can wait. He was pretty shook up. He’ll probably end up on administrative leave. At least until both he and the situation calm down.”

  “But he wasn’t the shooter,” she said.

  “A gray area, but he was there.”

  Maggie thought long and hard before she spoke again.

  “I could really use his help with my John Doe, Captain. Rather than putting him on ice, why not give him a desk job with me? It would keep him out of the field and still keep him useful.”

  “That call isn’t yours and it isn’t mine.” He stood up. “Tell you what, Reardon. We’ll see if the shrink thinks he can handle it, but don’t get your hopes up. Right now I need somebody to go out and deliver the bad news to Jerry Montana’s widow.”

  Maggie left the office before he had a chance to even think about assigning her the task. Telling somebody that the person they love is dead sucks worse than a domestic violence call. There are no right words to soften the blow. She went back to her desk and studied the xeroxed driver’s license.

  Delbert Frimel. John Doe. Delbert Frimel. Were she him she’d have chosen John Doe over his real name any day. She booted up the computer. How many Delbert Frimel’s could be floating around out there? What had his parents been thinking when they looked at their newborn son and decided to stick him with a name like that? She doubted there were very many unfortunates stuck with that moniker.

  She guessed one.

  At least it should make the next step easier.

  She pulled up the screen and typed in his name. Although his fingerprints had no hit in the system nor his dna in Codis she hoped that somehow the unusual name would.

  Delbert Frimel.

  There was a Jonas Frimel in South Dakota whose rap sheet was filled with nothing but a long list of petty thefts. And he was about twenty years too old.

  She found a Lucille Frimel with a prostitution record in Vegas. Lucky Lucy. You go girl.

  The last name that popped up was Frederick‘Freddy’ Frimel with some minor drug charges, but he was barely of legal age and by the looks of him he’d never see thirty.

  And the address on his Ohio driver’s license was non-existent.

  Once again, she’d hit the old brick wall.

  * * * *

  He had planned on a chance meeting. That would have made the most sense. But she hadn’t left her motel room and he was growing impatient. Being alone in the world was bad enough but she also had to be hungry. Hungry and alone. The last thing he wanted was for her to suffer any more than she already had.

  He saw no alternative but to change his plan and find another approach to gain her trust.

  An hour later someone knocked on her motel room door. One. Two. Three raps. Then silence. It couldn’t be her husband, he’d have just used the key. And it couldn’t be the front desk. They’d paid up a full week ahead and hung a sign on the door indicating no maid service. She’d rather use soiled towels than have some stranger snooping and poking around and making her edgy. It was one of the things he’d taught her as they traveled from motel to motel, from state to state. She muted the cartoon channel and slowly slid off the bed, not quite sure what to do.

  Should she answer it?

  It could be anybody.

  It could be bad news.

  She tiptoed over to the door and pressed her ear against it. No human sound came from the other side, not as much as a whisper. Just the relentless, pounding rain. She pressed her eye against the peep hole. No face stared back at her. She stepped to the window at her left and pulled back the curtain, ever so slightly.

  She looked to the left and to the right and saw no one.

  After working up her courage, she slipped off the chain lock and loosened the deadbolt.

  Just one step.

  One rule broken.

  One step couldn’t hurt.

  She opened the door just enough to take that one brave step. Her bare foot bumped against something. A large paper bag encased in a larger plastic bag to protect it from the rain sat at her feet. She looked around and thought she glimpsed the back of a man as he slipped into a room down the hallway. Or maybe it was just a shadow in the rain playing tricks with her vision. Or it could have been nothing at all.

  Strange, she thought.

  The mystery bag intrigued her. She lifted it. It was heavy. She stepped back into the room, flipped the deadlock and re-slid the protective chain back into place.

  The aroma hinted at its contents.

  Food.

  Someone knew she was hungry. Were there really such things as guardian angels? She sat in the middle of the bed, turned the sound back on the television and opened the bag. She removed the first item. A large bag of iced animal crackers. They’d always been her favorites. White ones and pink ones, covered with round sprinkles. She’d always eaten the pink ones first, saving the white ones for last because they tasted best. How could the angel have known how much she liked them, or did guardian angels know everything? She found the idea of someone knowing things about her unnerving. Even if it was an angel. Were there dark angels? She’d been taught to always be on alert, to always be suspicious. He said it had served them well. Her hand reached into the bag and began pulling out the items one by one and tossing them onto the bedspread. There was a chunk of cheese with a plastic knife carefully tapes to its wrapping. A box of crackers. A quart of milk and a plastic bowl and spoon. A big box of breakfast cereal. It didn’t have a cartoon face on it, but it was welcome just the same. There were two fresh apples and an orange. The item at the bottom of the bag was wrapped in
layers of tissue paper and it was warm to the touch. She pulled it out and unwrapped it, lifting the edge of the top bread slice and exposing layers of warm roast beef slathered in mayonnaise. She ate it in record time as the voice of Woody Woodpecker laughed from the television.

  Between bites she laughed along with him.

  When finished, she rose from the bed and carefully lined up the remaining food along the length of the dresser. She’d make it last, however long that might be.

  She leaned across the bed, balled up the sandwich wrapper to shove it into the large paper bag. Something caught her eye. A small piece of paper looked up at her from its bottom. A receipt? She pulled it out, unwrinkled it and smoothed it out. Scrawled across it were three words: Don’t be afraid.

  But she was afraid.

  Was this gift of food some kind of lure, like a crumb in a mousetrap waiting for her to take the bait? Well, she’d taken it. She was hungry and now she wasn’t hungry any more. If it had been a trap it had succeeded.

  Did guardian angels leave notes? Or was it an ogre who wanted to feed her, just to fatten her up so he could then eat her himself? Had he eaten her husband and was now coming for her?

  She walked across the room and lay the note next to the stash of food.

  Her heart raced as sat down on the bed. She flipped through the channels on the television, then turned it off. She needed quiet so she could think.

  She reached for the phone, but all the instructions taped to it confused her. There were so many numbers. She studied it. She debated her next move.

  It was up to her.

  “Okay,” she finally said. “All I have to do is hit ‘9’ for an outside number.

  Her fingers hit the number, waited for the dial tone, then punched in ‘911’ and waited.

  A voice picked up at the other end.

  What would she say? That someone left her food? That would sound crazy. Would she tell them her husband was missing? That she was alone and scared? Was the voice at the other end nothing more than another trap?

  She slammed it back onto its cradle and started to cry.

  If only he was here to tell her what to do.