The Corpse in the Cactus Page 13

  Her desk phone rang. She answered it.

  “Interesting,” she said. “An imaginative cause of death to say the least.”

  A few more words were exchanged before she hung up.

  “They’ve got the cause of death on our guy,” she said to Aaron. “The weapon might have been a philips screwdriver. Maybe an ice pick or something similar. Whatever was used it was

  narrow and sharp and the damage wasn’t easy to detect. It was jammed through his ear canal and into his brain.”

  “Maximum results with minimal blood.”

  “You any good with computers?”

  “Easy-peasy. I’m as good as any pimple-faced geek out there.”

  Maggie handed him the copy of the worn out driver’s license.

  “Our John Doe has a name. Delbert Frimel. I ran him through CODIS, ran his prints, ran his name through the system. Nothing. Why don’t you play around and see if you can find a hit? There’s got to be something on him somewhere.”

  Delbert Frimel was living rent-free inside Maggie’s head and she wanted to evict him as soon as possible. If they could find something on the who, maybe they could figure out the why. And the why might give them the lead they needed to make some kind of connection.

  Somebody out there had a reason for wanting him dead.

  “While you’re working on that,” she continued, “I’m going to take one final look-around out at the museum grounds. It’s been gone over thoroughly so odds are the weapon walked out with the perp, but I’ll give it another once over before I okay taking down the tape.”

  “That ought to make the Museum happy,” he said.

  “Later,” she said as she rose and headed for the door. The officer working the front desk motioned her over. Like most of the other cops wandering around this morning, he didn’t look as if he’d had much sleep. Thinking about a dead fellow officer can do that. You start to think about yourself, how you’re just one pull of the trigger away from sharing his hole in the dirt.

  “911 got a series of calls last night,” he began. “Several hang-ups from the same number. The operator called back and was told everything was fine. But something about it doesn’t sit right. The caller said her kid had been playing with the phone, but who’s kid is up at 3:30 in the morning?”

  “Could be something. Could be nothing at all.”

  “Would you swing by there when you find time?”

  He handed her a piece of paper scrawled with the name and address of The Pink Flamingo Motel on Oracle Road.

  “The 911’s came from Room Twelve,” he said. “Maybe it’s because this wouldn’t be the first time somebody took a permanent slumber on one of their mattresses, but something about those calls doesn’t smell right.”

  “If the world smelled like fresh-baked cookies we’d be out of work.” She shoved the paper into her pocket and headed for the exit.

  * * * *

  “Go away!” she yelled through the motel room door. “Just go away.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  “No.”

  Knock. Knock.

  “I’m a friend.”

  Knock.

  “No, you’re a stranger.”

  One blue eye peered out the keyhole only to see another blue eye staring back.

  Could he see her too?

  She placed her hand over the keyhole and took a step backwards.

  It was unnerving.

  The knocking stopped.

  “A stranger? No, a friend.” The voice said.

  “You speak in tongues. Go away or I’ll call the front desk.”

  “Think on it,” the young man said. “I can wait. I’m good at waiting, but I’ll be back.”

  She didn’t want him to come back. Despite his kindness in leaving her food, maybe because of it, he frightened her. Why should anyone care about her? How could he have known she was in trouble? Did he know her husband was missing? And if so, how and why? And why should it matter?

  She turned back into the room, listening as his footfalls faded farther and farther away until she could no longer hear them. She didn’t exhale until she heard a door close down the hall. The possibilities spun around in her head, making her dizzy. Making it impossible to relax.

  The only thing she knew for sure was what her husband told her. Everyone is a stranger. Strangers are danger. Never trust anyone.

  * * * *

  Maggie spent an hour walking the grounds at the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum. At least now she had a better idea what she was looking for. It wasn’t a gun. It wasn’t a knife. She looked under cacti, kicked her feet through the dirt that skirted the pathways, looked beneath the foliage of the sturdy and strange desert plants. There was no sense checking the trash cans and bins. They’d been sifted through and nothing resembling a weapon had been found. Whatever had been used for the kill had definitely walked out through the front gate with the person who’d left that body behind like yesterday’s garbage.

  The sun was climbing higher in the cloudless sky. She was wasting time and was ready to move on to the next step of the investigation. Hopefully Aaron Iverson had come up with something on Delbert Frimel. There had to be a record of him. Nobody went through this world without leaving a footprint somewhere.

  Something more than a beat up driver’s license.

  She pulled out her cell and called headquarters.

  “You can send someone out to AZDM to pull down the tape,” she said. “I’m heading over to Oracle Road. No, it was probably nothing but a liquor-soaked spat, but who knows? Sometimes they fight ’til they pass out, but sometimes it escalates. Hopefully it was the former.”

  Maggie hiked back to the front entrance. The same grouchy woman was sitting behind the glass at the ticket window staring into space with nothing to do but tell people they were closed. Apparently not everyone had heard. Some people came from out of town. Some people lived in a bubble.

  The woman jumped when she tapped on the glass and told her to spread the word that they could once again open for business. Their big shot had been hounding them and Maggie was in no mood. Grumpy could have the pleasure of relaying the news.

  And the Captain would be relieved to have him off his back.

  She exited and walked across the parking lot.

  The car seat was a hot plate, the interior even hotter. She revved the engine, rolled down the window and turned the air conditioner full blast to blow out the heat. She pulled a cigarette from it’s pack and cupped it in her hand so she could light it. It was amazing how anything so bad could taste so good. It was her guilty pleasure, like a fat person savoring a banana split and telling himself it had no calories if no one was watching.

  Sliding into drive, she headed out and smoked her way towards town. She ground out the stubble in the ashtray and turned on the radio to an oldies station. Julie London was singing Cry Me A River. One of her father’s favorites. Julie’s sad, smoky voice whispered its soulful lament, blending with the zephyr of cold air blowing through the air conditioning vents.

  Maggie daydreamed her way to Oracle Road.

  * * * *

  The young man’s determination had paid off, but his patience was gone. He couldn’t help himself. It was time for the next step. Once again he stood outside the door to room twelve, knocking.

  No one answered.

  Not even a voice telling him to go away.

  He’d try again later.

  Maggie Reardon sat in her car in the parking lot of The Pink Flamingo Motel, watching. She watched as the man turned and walked away and entered his room two doors down. No one had opened the door when he’d knocked. Maybe the woman who’d made the emergency calls had already checked out. Maybe he’d been a customer from the previous night looking for a mid-day encore before hitting the road.


  Turning a trick was as common as working in a fast-food joint and didn’t pay much better.

  She unhooked her seatbelt and exited the car.

  When she knocked no one answered, but she could hear the soft murmur of the television. She knocked again.

  “I said to go away,” said a female voice.

  “Tucson police,” Maggie said. “Open up.”

  A shadow crossed the peep hole.

  “Just a few questions, ma’am.” She smiled, imagining that’s how Jack Webb would’ve said it back when he wore Badge 714.

  The lock clicked, the chain slid, the door opened a crack.

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Just a follow-up on your 911 calls. Can we talk?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Life’s full of choices. Consider me an easy one.”

  Hesitantly, she opened the door and let her in.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Maggie. The girl wore no make-up to cover her pale features and her long prairie skirt made her look more like a Utah child-bride than a hooker. She didn’t have to be holding a Book of Mormon for Maggie to guess she wasn’t a working girl. She was alone, but noticed a few men’s shirts hung between them and the bathroom. No indication of a child; the one who supposedly dialed 911 several times by accident, beating the odds of winning the lottery.

  “Your name?”

  The question caught the woman off guard. She looked up at the popcorn ceiling as if it held the answer to the simplest of questions.

  “Mary,” she finally said. “Mary Smith.”

  “Detective Maggie Reardon.”

  The best she could come up with was Mary Smith? If she was lying she was no pro, not by a long shot. And her husband’s name was probably John. Yea, right. John and Mary Smith from Anytown, U.S.A.

  “About those calls…”

  “It was a mistake. I told the operator I was sorry.”

  “Are you here with someone?” Maggie asked, indicating the shirts.

  “My husband is out working,” she said, toying with the cheap wedding band on her finger.

  Maggie saw no bruises or scratches on her, but some men are good at doing damage where it doesn’t show.

  “Did you have a fight?”

  “No. Nothing like that. We never fight. Never.”

  “You can tell me.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  So the husband takes off for work and the man down the hall comes knocking? She didn’t seem the type, but looks can be deceiving. Something about her wasn’t right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe it was just that she seemed so child-like, so unsure of every word. Maggie looked over at the television, at the cartoons. Embarrassed, the woman picked up the remote and turned it off.

  “Where’s your child?”

  “My child?”

  “The one that made the phone calls.”

  The woman wore that familiar deer in the headlights look. One simple question, yet she had to think before answering. Maggie waited. And wondered why the hesitant woman was so guarded in her words as well as her actions. Every move she made was thought out. Every word carefully chosen.

  The cop back at the desk had a good nose. Most cops did. She was hiding something. But everybody was hiding something. Big things, little things, it didn’t matter. We all hide something we fear would make the world think less of us. Or make us think less of ourselves.

  “Oh,” she finally said. “That 911 person must’ve misunderstood me. It wasn’t my child. I was babysitting.”

  “Babysitting?”

  “A little boy. For a couple on the second floor. I figured why not make a few dollars, you know?”

  Maggie wondered if she’d picked up some spare cash from the guy down the hall too, but it just didn’t fit. Being odd didn’t make her a criminal.

  “And you babysat all night?”

  Another long pause.

  “They went partying or something.”

  “Their names? Their room number?”

  The young woman stared down at the dingy carpet, flicking cereal crumbs with her bare toes.

  “They picked him up first thing this morning. They checked out.”

  No way to back up her convenient answer. Maggie was getting nowhere fast, so she wrote her off as a waste of time. Just one more person who couldn’t figure out 911 was for real emergencies and not for complaining that McDonald’s forgot their slice of pickle. If that was a crisis how did the idiots handle a real problem?

  “That’s it then. How long will you be staying?”

  “Why?”

  “In case I have more questions.”

  The young woman shrugged her shoulders. She wanted the cop to go away. And stay away. She didn’t like questions. Lying was hard. Why all the fuss over a stupid 911 call? Making those calls was dumb and now she had this cop snooping into her business.

  “Why did you come?”

  “To make sure you were alright.”

  “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Again, I’m sorry for your…inconvenience.” There, that sounded good. Inconvenience was a big word.

  “How long did you say you’d be here?”

  If she’d been brave enough to go through the door alone, she’d have been gone. But he’d be upset if he came back and she wasn’t there. She had to wait for him.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said.

  It was barely perceptible, but when Maggie placed her business card in the woman’s hand she noticed a slight tremble. The woman quickly covered that hand with her other one.

  “My number’s on there should you need me,” Maggie said and left. She had more important items on her menu, none of them appetizing.

  Aaron Iverson would have said she had bigger fish to fry.

  Hopefully he’d come up with an ingredient or two so they could stir up some Delbert Frimel.

  It was time to pull out the pan and start cooking.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Highways and Headstones

  “I got a hit on that Frimel guy,” Aaron Iverson called out when he saw Maggie Reardon enter the room. He was sitting at the computer with a big, mid-western grin washing across his face. “Delbert Frimel has an address and it’s not the vacant lot he had listed on his Ohio driver’s license.”

  Maggie walked over and leaned against his desk.

  “What’ve you got?” she asked. “Where’s his home base?”

  “I’ve been going around and around with that name and finally found something,” he said proudly. “I even went on Ancestry.com and started searching birth and death certificates. The guy had to be somewhere.”

  “Cut to the chase, Iverson.”

  “Okay, okay. You’re an impatient one, anybody ever tell you that?”

  A thousand times, Maggie thought. It was a comment that signaled Aaron was entering the comfort zone. It was better than having him tiptoeing on eggshells, worrying about saying the wrong thing or making the wrong move. He was finally right where he needed to be.

  “No argument on that,” she said, unoffended. “Patience isn’t one of my virtues. Now give me the skinny on Frimel.”

  Aaron cleared his throat.

  “He resides in Sunbury, Pennsylvania.”

  “The address?”

  “Get this,” he said. “He’s sleeping peacefully in a plot at Holy Cross Cemetery.”

  “Son of a…”

  “Now it gets interesting. Our mystery man got his driver’s license a couple months after the real Delbert Frimel got covered with his dirt blanket back in Pennsylvania. I.D. theft. He probably just read the obits or walked through a couple of graveyards.”

  “All you need is a copy of a dead person’s birth certificate. Somebody close to your own age. It’s easy. And even eas
ier to get a driver’s license from that. Then you’ve got a nice, new identity with your photo to prove it.”

  “Easy peasy. But it makes me wonder why he didn’t use those ID’s to get a passport and skip the country.”

  “It depends what he was running from. It could’ve been anything from petty theft to murder to anything in between.”

  “Or maybe he wasn’t smart enough to think that far ahead.”

  Aaron and Maggie bounced their ideas back and forth like ping-pong balls.

  “If he was stealing plates he was probably stealing cars.”

  “If he was smart he lifted plates from cars other than the ones he stole. Old cars. Cops might keep on the lookout for recent models. They’re worth more. The owners would complain more. But older cars wouldn’t be worth the bother. If an officer stumbled across one fine, if not then no big loss.”

  “Right. And he kept heading west. His target might have been Mexico.”

  Aaron laughed. “Here in Arizona I’ll bet you don’t get many people sneaking across the border into Mexico.”

  Maggie sat down and shuffled through the mess on her desk. She picked up the Polaroid photo of the license plates she’d gotten from forensics and studied it. A trunk full of tin, in no particular order stared back at her. She picked up the phone and called down to the evidence room.

  “Detective Reardon here. You got the evidence in yet from the murder out at the Desert Museum? Great. I’m sending down Aaron Iverson.”

  She hung up.

  “Aaron, get downstairs and pull the box on this. There should be a big bag of license plates in the evidence locker. Bring those up here asap. We’ve got some traveling to do.”

  Aaron took off and Maggie pulled up a map of the United States on her computer.

  He returned in record time, the large bag of license plates in hand.

  “Clear your desk. Push it up against mine,” she said, clearing off her own desk. “We need some room to spread these out.”

  The sound was like the metal on metal screech of a train coming to a halt as he pushed his desk the few inches across the floor. He lined it up against hers, then dumped out the plates.