The Desert Behind Me Page 3

  A tidal wave of voices rose and fell as I scanned the crowd for the toddler’s parents.

  Frank yelled at me. “You let him take that girl.

  I didn’t need my phone to hear Frank, but I used it in public when I felt I needed to answer him out loud. I spoke with as much calm authority as I could muster. “I’ve got my eye on him. He’s not in any danger.”

  Only slightly mollified, Frank fumed. “Like you protected her yesterday?”

  A young woman in a blousy tank top, with an improbable array of spaghetti straps crisscrossing her back, appeared and scooped up the little boy. He giggled and the mother collected the tiny cars, toting toys and boy toward the stands.

  I slid the phone into my uniform pocket, tugged the bill of my cap to shield the glare of the sun and continued to patrol.

  Three girls and one boy about eight-years-old, in shorts and tennis shoes, hair dark with sweat, and grime rubbed into faces, zipped through the beams of the stands in a frenzy of tag. A cluster of teenaged girls strutted past me on their way to the concession stand, their Daisy Dukes too short to hide the half-smiles of underage cheeks, tight tank tops creeping up their bellies. They seemed wrapped up in each other, but I’d bet they knew the location and level of interest of every potential boyfriend. They didn’t spare a glance for a middle-aged woman in a uniform and badge.

  All of these children. Vulnerable, stupid, asking for the world to do its worst and not even aware of their danger. Like Zoey Clark. Parents had no clue how fast little Johnny or Becky could be snatched. I watched the children of others, but I hadn’t paid enough attention. And now she was gone.

  Patricia stood thirty yards away, talking with a couple in their early forties. Someone in her neighborhood with kids in the same grade school as her own. Their serious faces told me they were probably talking about Zoey Clark, and Patricia’s gaze traveled beyond the couple, quickly scanning the concession stand and alighting for a fraction of a second on me. If I were the envious type, I might be jealous of her blonde attractiveness, robust energy, and abundant friends that she ran into whenever we drew an assignment together. I didn’t have the room to waste on those kinds of feelings anymore.

  Apparently satisfied that everything remained orderly, she turned back to her friends.

  I swept the area behind the bleachers, noting the knots of parents in red and blue. People meandered to and from the stands and I scrutinized each one, concentrating on not hearing specific conversations.

  This was my least favorite tournament site in Tucson. The two diamonds were well manicured and facilities maintained, but the location concerned me. Only a chain-link fence separated the playing fields from a large park, with well-spaced palm trees providing puddles of shade, and scrubby grass rubbed bare in places. Not much of a park by my northeastern standards, without leafy trees and thick lawn, but by desert measure it afforded reasonable comfort for a large homeless population.

  I suspected most of them were harmless, and more than one talked to invisible companions. Sometimes those voices told people to do things they wouldn’t normally do. Bad things. Those voices could be clever and seductive and quite convincing. So, I kept a nervous vigil.

  Three girls in tight yellow and black cheerleader uniforms and skirts lingered by the fence, showing no interest in the ball game. Even though they were dressed the same, down to the oversized bow in their ponytails, the sight of the tall blonde jolted me and I braced for shock waves.

  The bright bow constructed of polyester ribbon encasing the silky blonde hair caused me to lose my breath.

  I closed my eyes and saw our kitchen, the table littered with her geometry homework. She’d strung red ribbon across the kitchen counter and plugged in the glue gun. With one eye on the clock so I’d have enough time to get ready for my evening, I pinched and held while she glued the loops of red to create a ridiculous concoction for team pictures. I told her that hideous monstrosity will never stay on the barrette she’d glued it to. She laughed until tears flowed and offered to let me wear it for my date. She left it on the counter amid snippets of ribbon and the abandoned glue gun. She anticipated wearing it the next day.

  These bows were yellow and black. Not red. Zoey’s disappearance had me rattled. I reminded myself this is now. Not then.

  After I felt sure I wouldn’t crumble, I looked closer. I did recognize her. She was the teacher’s aide from Kino Elementary. The girl who stepped into the gray car. Alive and safe, no need to worry about her.

  Less than two feet from the others, she seemed outside the circle. She joined in with a forced giggle. The other two girls rolled their eyes and turned from her, they raised voices too excited by nearness of adulthood to hint at caution.

  My job was to make sure they didn’t have to learn the truths I knew. If I could, I’d tell their mothers to grab the girls’ delicate wrists, shroud their fragile limbs in thick canvas, lock them behind steel doors. Keep them safe. Dear mothers, keep them safe.

  I sauntered toward the group, expecting that one glance at my crisp uniform would scare their laughter from lips slathered in bubble-gum flavored lip gloss. They’d lower their eyes and turn away, barely noting a forty-something woman, brown hair in a neat ponytail, face that was slowly learning to smile again. They’d only register authority. Even though they weren’t breaking any rules, I’d bet they’d created mischief too often to be purely innocent. So, they’d whisper until I paced away.

  The blonde spotted me, then looked to the ground. Her slender neck stretched as if she placed it on the guillotine. Her straight blonde hair clasped in the oversized bow with wisps straining to escape in the hot breeze. She glanced up again, her face registered recognition. She started toward me.

  The other two girls didn’t notice me. Both with fawn-brown hair, the face of one was marred with acne and she seemed to take the lead from the shorter, obviously more confident of the trio. Stout and compact, the leader thrust a hip and tossed her head, like a filly straining to run. Her eyes sparkled and she laughed up at a dark-haired man on the other side of the chain-link.

  The guy talking to the girls wasn’t the high school quarterback, not even a frat boy. Maybe early thirties, almost six feet tall, straight shoulders, Levi’s slung on narrow hips below a flat belly, blue golf shirt, dark hair. A young girl’s ideal of suave and handsome.

  Red flags flapped in a gust of suspicion. Blue golf shirt. Like the man at Kino Elementary. Except this man was taller, younger, and didn’t have the arrogant tilt of his head. Nothing about him, save the blue shirt, should bring to mind the man from the grade school. Yet, there it was, throbbing inside my head. Someone said, “Remember.” The word evaporated on the wind.

  The blonde took a few steps in my direction. The others huddled close, vying for the man’s attention. The scent of budding desire wafted around them like the odor from a dead mouse in a basement.

  My fingers started to tingle and an unseen fist squeezed my brain. The guy raised his arm and rested it on the fence, leaning into it. A pose like a centerfold.

  “Stop him! You can do it right this time.” Frank’s voice echoed mine.

  I shouldn’t have taken today’s assignment. I’d probably stretched myself too far and the most dreaded day of the year was close. But my intuition triggered a warning about this guy. I couldn’t risk ignoring that tingle, even if my inner struggles had thrown off that cop’s sixth sense.

  “Um, hi.” The blonde girl approached me. “You were at the grade school yesterday, right?”

  I shifted my attention to her, trying to keep an eye on the other girls. “Good to see you again.”

  A brief smile slid on her face and disappeared. “How’s your partner? It looked like she was really having trouble.”

  The girls at the fence giggled and flirted. At least this girl was safe with me. “Thanks for asking. She’s fine. In fact, she’s here today.”

  Her face brightened. “That’s great. Well, I’d better get back.”

  Not sure h
ow to caution her about the man at the fence and my strange feeling that whomever she got into the car with yesterday was bad news, I hesitated. For all I knew, the driver was perfectly safe.

  “You know he wasn’t.”

  “When you left the school yesterday—” Before I could form the words, I was interrupted.

  “Hey. Hey, you.” The voice behind me slipped off as soon as I heard it. I struggled to articulate my fear for the girl.

  She backed up and waved. “Glad she’s okay. Bye.”

  “Wait.” What was I going to say to her?

  The same voice sounded more urgent: “Will you help me?” I needed to address the guy at the fence. The girls didn’t know how close they were to stepping on a land mine.

  The man in the blue shirt called to the pretty blonde and she smiled shyly. She appeared not to question why a man, more than a decade her senior, would be fascinated by her. Girls on the cusp of becoming women assumed their position in the center of the universe. That could get them killed.

  The short, confident one must have said something mean because the blonde colored and frowned. Both of the other girls laughed.

  I needed to send that guy on his way. Whatever his game, I’d bet one look at my uniform and gun would drive him away. Unfortunately, like a wasp, he’d probably return when danger passed.

  “Please, she’s all I have. I—”

  The hand on my shoulder made me twirl around and grab for my gun, heart jumping up my throat, eyes taking in everything at once. Several clusters of people standing around, more meandering to and from the concession stand, the group of teens behind me, kids under the bleachers, fans watching the game. The crowd of voices raised in confusion.

  A man in a battered cap, with bad teeth and skin weathered to jerky by the sun, jumped back and held both hands up as if afraid I’d pull my gun. He shrieked and a few people stared at us. “Don’t kill me. Please.”

  One deep breath to still my nerves and get my bearings. “It’s okay.” I used the calm voice I’d perfected by talking to Frank. “What is it?” The girls at the fence needed my full attention but this guy seemed on the edge, and if I looked away, he might go berserk.

  Dirt covered his face like a mask. Once, he might have been as handsome as the creep coming on to the teens. Living on the street took a toll.

  His eyes flicked around, absorbing as much of our surroundings as I’d done. Maybe he felt out of place on this side of the fence. “I lost my Petunia.”

  The high-pitched giggles of the girls rose above the noisy crowd. I held up a finger to the ratty guy, already turning away. “I’ll help you in just a—”

  He grabbed my arm and a chorus of shouts burst, drowning him out. His lips moved but I heard roaring and cheering. I pulled my arm away and the sounds faded enough I made out his voice. “She’s my baby. My little girl.”

  My stomach lurched and bile swirled. “A child is missing?”

  He grimaced, his mouth a mess of yellowed teeth, black lines against too-red gums, outlining each single tooth. “Not my daughter. My pup. Petunia.”

  Because of the anguish in his voice, I wanted to help. But the girls. “Okay, just give me a sec— ”

  “Please help me. I always watch over her. But this once I left her alone. Only for a little while. Now she’s gone.”

  “I’ll help you as soon as I—”

  Tears overflowed his eyes and left streaks in his dirty cheeks. “You see, I’m always with her. But this one time I went out with a friend. And someone took her. What if they hurt her? What if she’s dead? At the end of the day, she’s all I’ve got.”

  He couldn’t know how he dug at a scab that would never heal.

  Once again, he reached to touch me, but I jerked away before his grungy fingers landed. The crowd roared again. I focused on the guy. “My partner will be here in a second.”

  I whirled around, striding away before I realized the group of girls no longer stood behind me.

  A rush of people surged from the bleachers, making their way to the concession stand, bathrooms, and toward where the girls had been, with the parking lot beyond the park. One game over and the stands spilled, creating chaos.

  Even though I fought to stop it, my heart kicked in and the tingling increased in my hands. My head whipped as I scanned the crowd, searching for the yellow and black uniforms.

  Patricia’s cheery greeting kept me from panic. “Look at this crowd! I’m sorry I wasn’t patrolling with you. I couldn’t get away from them. They’re trying to get a teacher fired—hey, are you okay?”

  People dodged around us, intent on their business. The voices rose and fell like waves, and I concentrated on Patricia, on her calm and normal appearance. “There’s a guy with a lost dog. Can you talk to him?”

  Patricia cocked her head and studied me. Her questioning expression wasn’t anything new to me. “Of course. Where’re you heading?”

  I tipped my head toward the opening to the bleachers. “I want to check on something.”

  She snapped to. “What cha’ got?”

  I could tell her the truth, that I saw a guy yesterday who gave me the willies and—for some reason—think it’s related to a girl who got in a car and probably has nothing to do with the same girl and a creep by the fence here. It swirled in a partial memory, and that made it smell bad. Instead, I hoped she’d give me the benefit of the doubt. “Probably nothing. Just icky hairs, you know?”

  She knew what I meant by icky hairs. “I’ll come with you.”

  I waved her off. Those neck hairs, what most cops rely on, had betrayed me before, and since then, even I questioned their truth. I didn’t want others to witness my bad intuition if I’d really lost my instincts. I pointed to the homeless man. “That guy is worried about his dog.”

  Patricia’s frown deepened. Clearly, she didn’t want me running off on my own, leaving her with a homeless—probably disturbed and confused—man.

  I only needed a second or two to prove to myself that I was overreacting, then we’d all quiet down. I hurried away before Patricia could stop me.

  The buzz of conversation swirled around me, growing louder with the frantic beat of my pulse. The girls couldn’t have gone far. I sprinted up the stands, hoping an elevated view would help.

  There, that flick of the yellow and black hair bow and toss of brunette pony tails. The girls swayed and strutted away from the ball park along the sidewalk on the far side of the stands. The dark-haired man wasn’t with them.

  A voice in my head shouted at me. Count them! There were three girls talking to him.

  I looked again. The third girl. The blonde was missing.

  4

  The acne-faced girl and the confident short girl, who couldn’t pull off the tiny cheerleading skirt, sauntered away from the park. The shy blonde might be the most vulnerable to a man’s attention, and she’d fallen for his compliments.

  One small voice wished it had been either of the other girls, not the blonde.

  I lunged down the bleachers, bumping and shoving my way through spectators, some arriving for the next game, most making slow progress toward the parking lot.

  “Move it.”

  “Hey!”

  “Excuse me.”

  Words bounced through my head and out again and I wasn’t sure they were mine. It created a constant stream of static.

  “Jamie!” Patricia’s voice came through clearly.

  I fought the urge to run after the girls and waited for Patricia to catch up. Trying not to sound breathless, I asked, “Did you find the guy’s dog?”

  Patricia held her palms out, unconcerned about anything. “I didn’t see a guy with a lost dog.”

  My answer didn’t sound as frantic as I felt. “Must have found his pooch and left.” If I didn’t hurry the girls would disappear and I’d never find the missing one. Except I had no good reason to think anything was wrong.

  “You have a very good reason.”

  I fought my imagination that presented it
self as a memory. One that didn’t belong to me.

  The junkyard is quiet—no one to hear her screams. She has no protection from the evil, the pain. Cold rain and icy wind shake the trees with branches sharp as bones, damp leaves and mud rubbed into her soft skin, stinging and raw. Skin her mother had lovingly sponged in her first bath the day she’d come home from the hospital.

  I shook my head to stop it. Tucson, spring, blinding sun on a late afternoon. No musty leaves. Only saguaro and mesquite.

  I couldn’t ignore my icky hairs, even if they lied.

  “A kidnapping.” That’s all the explanation I spared for Patricia before I took off.

  Through the hubbub Patricia called me. She was as easy to ignore as all the others.

  Heavy with my utility belt, awkward in polished black boots, I plowed through the people wearing tank tops, shorts, jeans, and sundresses. I nudged aside slow-movers in T-shirts, flip-flops, and ball caps. The smell of sun-ripened bodies and sunscreen twinned with hints of hot dogs and nacho cheese, overlaid by the desert-rare scent of freshly mowed grass.

  The bright slash of yellow and black slapped against bare smooth leg. “Hey!” My voice sounded scratchy with fear.

  Fifty yards out of the entrance the globs of fans had dropped off to a few people and the girls directly ahead. “Arizona Ranger. Stop!”

  A young couple in front of me spun around and the woman reached for the man. Two grandma-types with sun visors gawped. But the girls, intent on their own hilarious conversation, bounced away from me, slapping each other and throwing back their heads in laughter.

  I whipped by the people who’d stopped to stare, the sound of the crowd mixing with Patricia’s light-footed race hitting the sidewalk behind me.

  A few steps before I reached the girls, the taller one with acne twisted around and startled when she saw me. “Wha—?”

  The other girl jumped back, eyes wide. They reached for each other instinctively, as if between them they’d find protection. One more lie they told themselves.