Fatal Refuge: a Mystery/Thriller (The Arizona Thriller Trilogy Book 2)

  FATAL REFUGE

  a mystery/thriller

  Book 2 in the Arizona Thriller Trilogy

  by Sharon Sterling

  Copyright 2015 Sharon Sterling

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without the prior written permission of the copyright owners; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9969408-1-8

  Acknowledgements

  My heartfelt thanks to my friend and sister author, Sue Peterson, the first reader of this book. Her help in critiquing, suggesting, encouraging and supporting me while I wrote Fatal Refuge was tremendously valuable to my writing and my spirit.

  Much gratitude and many thank-you's to Priscilla Barton, my editor, for her professional discernment, insight into the art of story-telling, her her kindness, and patience.

  Thanks also to Thomas R. Schenek, Jr., former U. S. Marine Corps Corporal, currently with the South Tucson, Arizona Police Department. The information he provided about police and military procedures kept me on track and accountable to reality as I structured the novel.

  Not to be forgotten is Tom's brother, Matt Schenek, a Cleveland, Ohio firefighter and EMT who took time from his work as first-responder to supply me with vital details about EMT workers and their vehicles. Thank you, Matt.

  Last, I want to express my appreciation to the members of the Tucson Chapter of Sisters in Crime for their continuing support, education, encouragement and comradery.

  Chapter One

  KIM ALTAHA

  Kim left Yuma in the stillness before dawn and reached the turnoff to Kofa National Wildlife Refuge before the sun mounted the eastern peaks for its daily assault on the land. Her jeep bumped along the dirt access road headed due-east when the first shafts of daylight struck her high-boned cheeks like a challenge.

  She parked the red Jeep Cherokee in the tiny dirt lot at the trail head and with confident, long-legged strides began her hike into the Refuge. The trail soon faded to nothing. Undeterred, she bush-wacked over the rocky soil, skirting boulders, brittle bush shrubs, bear grass, and desert agaves.

  After an hour she slowed her pace and quieted her steps, wary she might startle the endangered pronghorn antelope she sought. Three months before, she had teamed with volunteer Marines from the base in Yuma and with local Fish and Wildlife agents to trap, transport and release three dozen of the endangered species here. She had actually touched the delicate young animals, stroked their tan and cream coats and felt the warm breath from their nostrils on her hands before watching them rise on wobbly, tranquillized legs and escape into the hills of their new home in the Kofa. It had given her a certain sense of ownership. But where were they? She smiled to herself and answered her own question. Living up to their reputation as the ghosts of the desert.

  So far she had seen scant signs of life – a few turkey vultures soaring, distant against the thin blue sky, the surreptitious chip-chip of awakening cactus wrens, the scuttle of a lizard.

  While she walked she felt the sun’s rays stab the burnished-copper skin of her forearms and press a skull-cap of heat on her blue-black hair. The shards of sunlight were so intense they had pierced the atmosphere, drained from it the last drops of moisture and stilled the feeble breeze of early morning. Reluctantly, she pulled a cloth hat from under her belt and put it on.

  With an Indian’s acceptance of the natural world, she neither welcomed the heat nor resented it. After all, in late spring, at only ninety-seven degrees, this part of the Sonoran Desert was not yet threatening spontaneous combustion.

  Suddenly, she saw the bighorn. She swept off her hat and sunglasses, raised her new Minox binoculars, narrowed her eyes against the glare and adjusted the focus until she had the ram. He stood in profile atop the rise a quarter mile away, head raised and horns in dark contrast against the sky, a defiant pose that asserted his right to be here and questioned hers. He stood more than four feet tall at the shoulders and must weigh two hundred pounds. His horns were massive. They appeared too big for his head to support. They had grown back, down and forward in a wide curve, the bottoms level with his shoulders. The grooves of the ridged horns showed a tinge of green, suggesting the growth of lichen, a badge of age. She guessed he was about fifteen years old, a patriarch of the herds, which numbered eight hundred bighorns in this preserve of over six-hundred-thousand acres. The ram remained stock-still under her inspection, as if looking straight ahead, but he inspected her, too, with his acute peripheral vision.

  Kim ended the staring match by releasing her binoculars to let them dangle from the strap around her neck. She picked up her sunglasses and blew off the fine, dry dirt before replacing them, then took the cloth field hat from between her knees and pulled it onto her head. With a last glance at the bighorn and a deep breath, she resumed her hike, taking in the high desert landscape and listening to the silence.

  Half-way up the ten mile climb that formed the base of the rugged Castle Dome Mountains, she turned back toward the west where she had entered the trail head. The parking spot appeared no bigger than a postage stamp and her red vehicle a pencil dot.

  Resigned that she would not find the antelope today but happy about the unexpected gift of the ram, she started back down. She remembered the advice of a Hopi Indian friend, “Never retrace your steps,” and chose a slightly different route than the one she had climbed.

  Memory of the Hopi friend brought to mind thoughts of her own Apache ancestry, one remnant among many native tribes. The presence of White settlers had started as a trickle – pilgrims debarking the Mayflower – and had grown exponentially with each decade. Their presence escalated the decline of native humans, animals and vegetation. The settlers’ and pioneers’ progressive and relentless conquest of the wilderness drove antelope and other wildlife to the brink of extinction and drove Native humans to reservations.

  It was ironic, but just, Kim thought, that now the Whites called the antelope and other animal survivors “endangered” and studied, tended and nurtured them; thus the descendants of men who had once almost destroyed the species now sought to preserve it, lavishing the survivors with the balm of remorse.

  Her thoughts soon yielded to the wordless enjoyment of her senses: the smell of sage and creosote, the skitter of a zebra-tailed lizard, the sudden scarlet of penstemon blooms brushing against her legs, the sun’s heat on her shoulders, the sound of her own steady breathing and solid footsteps. Soon the ache in both thighs reminded her of old wounds, and that descending from a height was often harder than the climb, a simple metaphor for life itself.

  When she remembered the Kofa’s strangely diverse history Kim began to keep an eye out for dangers other than rattlers, scorpions and mountain lions. The name Kofa began as “K of A," an abbreviation for the name of a gold mine called “King of Arizona,” an ostentatious name from the floridly ostentatious and optimistic Victorian era. The miners’ avid search for gold, silver, manganese and lead ended after only a few decades when the ore petered out. The miners left behind open pits, drift tunnels, deep vertical shafts and slopes of scree that could send the most sure-footed hiker sprawling.

  Along with those relics, huge holes in the ground, called tanks, dotted the land. Some were natural, a few man-made and they were often filled with water. The tanks we
re the main source of water for Kofa’s larger wildlife. Rabbits and other small wild life quenched their thirst at tinajas, shallow, natural scour holes in bedrock.

  Open mine pits, tanks and other hazards, along with detritus from military trainings during World War Two were rare within the perspective of hundreds of thousands of acres until an unwary hiker stepped into or onto one. What nature had created pristine over millennia, three generations of mankind had made inroads to destroy.

  Aware of the danger as well as the beauty around her, Kim became more vigilant. Soon she spotted a metallic object on the ground ahead. She dug her heels in to stop on a downward slope, skidded and almost sat down hard before she saw what it was. Not an unexploded artillery shell, just an empty beer can. She removed the water bottle from her day pack and hooked it to her belt to make room for the piece of junk. The metal felt warm on her finger tips as she shook off ants and loose dirt and put the can in her pack to discard later.

  Three miles from the entrance to Palm Canyon and five miles from her parked vehicle, the odor of decaying flesh fouled the hot air. She stopped. Oh, no. One of the antelope didn’t make it. Her next steps produced a whirr of vulture’s wings rising from fifteen feet downhill. Her eyes followed the flight of the vulture to where others soared high above, waiting their turn. The area was partly shadowed by a large boulder. She couldn’t see what lay on the ground there.

  Dread slowed her steps. When she saw the carcass she felt a flash of relief followed in a split second by disbelief. Not a graceful antelope body with long slender legs and split hoofs. This body was smaller. This was a human being. The arms and legs were shriveled and discolored by decay, clothing stiff with dried body fluids, feet hidden inside tan hiking boots. It was a woman’s body lying face down in the dirt.

  • • •

  Chapter Two

  WINSTON VERBALE AND CINDY CAMERON - Two weeks earlier

  “Winston, will you please stop looking out the window. Nothing’s going on out there.”

  “This damned rain! We came here to bird watch, not hang out in this dismal hotel. It’s barely stopped the whole three days we’ve been here. We could have seen more birds if we’d stayed in Yuma.”

  “Kofa gets some wonderful migrating species in the spring but I’ve seen them all. We’re in Costa Rica to see the tropicals.”

  “Well, how many have we been able to see through this damned rain? And don’t call me Winston.” His mouth tilted in irony. Now that we are what you call ‘lovers,’ get used to calling me ‘Win’.”

  Cindy put down the magazine, a Spanish-language version of People, and slid further down under the bed covers. “Better to be ‘lovers’ than ‘friends with benefits.’ That expression is so crude.”

  “And ‘lovers’ is sentimental tripe.”

  An angry denial flashed into her mind but she didn’t voice it. She refused to be led into a dispute. “Win – I can’t decide if the name reminds me of a pack of cigarettes or New England, old-money, living-off-the-interest snobbery.”

  He flung the curtain back into place and turned with a look of annoyance. “You know I’m not in their league.”

  “Not if money is a league. Anyway, Winston does have a classy ring to it.”

  “I guess my mother figured with the last name Verbale, she’d better come up with a more American-sounding first name. I like it. ‘Win’ for winner.”

  “You haven’t told me much about that – winning at the casinos and card games back in Chicago.”

  She saw his face brighten and imagined his mind fixed on distant memories until he snapped, “I wish I hadn’t mentioned it to you at all. It’s behind me. I’m cut out for better things.”

  “Okay. . .”

  “There’s more to me than someone who can win games!”

  “Don’t growl at me like that, Win. It isn’t like you.” Cindy was more puzzled than offended by his recent silence, then this ill-mannered funk. In the two months she had known him he had given her more attention, more compliments and more flowers than any man she had ever known. It had been lovely. Now she needed to placate him and maybe this was like him. With just a hint of resentment she said, “You’re a natural born competitor, alright. Bet you were the first kid on your block.”

  “As a matter of fact, I was the up-and-comer. And if I was first at something I wanted people to know it. I got my picture in the local paper more than once.”

  “Were you a prodigy of some kind? It reminds me of how little you’ve told me about yourself.”

  “Not a prodigy, exactly. I worked on my badges to reach Eagle Scout. When I made it the newspaper printed a half-page spread about me. And I played trumpet in the school band. I ran for senior class president. People noticed me. At least in high school they noticed me.” His lips tightened.

  “I notice you, Win, and this isn’t high school – thank the Lord.”

  Ignoring her, he sat down in the upholstered chair, took off his shoes and socks, then pushed back the drapery with one hand and again stared outside at jungle-green foliage shined glossy by the steady downpour. The only sounds in their small hotel casita were the monotonous white-noise of steady rain fall, the whir-whir of the ceiling fan and the background whispers of Win’s dejection.

  Cindy was attuned enough to hear his unhappiness, spoken or unspoken. From the bed she could see only his profile but every nuance of Win’s face was already familiar to her: broad, clear forehead, short nose, wide mouth, thin lips and a rather small chin. She could imagine him when he was a boy, a sprinkle of freckles across his cheeks, hair a sun-streaked yellow instead of a sandy color. His body, too, held a suggestion of whip-thin youth that was denied by a gestating little pot-belly. She had been charmed by her image of him as a fresh-faced, wholesome young boy. What she was beginning to realize was that that boy could not have grown into this man. She needed to reconcile image with reality.

  She asked, “So how did someone who likes the spotlight end up in Yuma? It’s such a low-profile, understated place.”

  He replied without turning. “You’ve got to start someplace if you want to go into politics. I guess you could call me the big fish in the small pond. People in Yuma government are beginning to know me.” As if stimulated by the thought, he stood abruptly and began to pace the tile floor of their room.

  Finally she voiced her impatience. “Will you stop, please? You’re harshing my mellow.”

  “Harshing your. . ? That’s one thing I’ve never been accused of doing to a woman, whatever it is.”

  “Mellow, Win. You’re just too intense. You’re harshing my mellow. Why can’t you relax?”

  “Is that surfer or stoner slang?”

  “Never was a surfer and I’m not a stoner – well, not anymore. I admit I did a little toking in high school and that first month in massage school.” She stretched her bare arms up and behind to touch the headboard. “After my handsome Marine deployed it was either go back home to a thoroughly whacky mom, or find some way to make it on my own. I had to work and pay my way through so there were a few luxuries, like the weed, that I had to give up.”

  “A massage therapist who gawks at birds. You might just be a little peculiar, you know?” The tone of his voice seemed to bring in the sodden atmosphere of the outdoors.

  “Aren’t you playing judge today? Remember, marijuana is legal in some states. And I can tell you how I got interested in birdwatching. It’s not peculiar at all.”

  “Sure,” he mumbled. He stopped pacing and went back to the chair to stare out at the rain, making her wonder if he was really interested and if he would really listen.

  “It started when I finished school and was trying to build my massage clientele. That’s when I got sick.”

  Win leaned back and propped one ankle on the other knee. “What does being sick have to do with being a bird-watcher?”

  “It was when my fibro was at its worst. I was in pain all day, every day. And I think I had a lot more going on than just fibromyalgia. I had a lot
of what’s politely called intestinal distress. But the doctors couldn’t diagnose it and they couldn’t help me. Even the right kind of weed didn’t do it. I couldn’t eat and when I did, I’d throw it up or shit it all out again in less than an hour.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t know you then.”

  “Yeah, it was gross. I fainted onto the bathroom floor more than once.”

  “You’re not the fainting type.”

  “I was then. I felt like I could have died there, hugging the porcelain, but no such luck. After two or three months I got so skinny my clothes hung on me. Then I developed agoraphobia. I couldn’t go out of the house, not even to get the mail or pick up some milk.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you at all.”

  “It was me back then. My stomach just couldn’t digest real food. I used to watch cooking shows on TV – all that beautiful food – and just weep.”

  “Well, you don’t look undernourished now and you did fine at dinner last night. You still haven’t explained the bird-watching.”

  She smiled and propped her head on one hand, letting the sheet fall away from her bare breast. She knew that she was attractive to Win, with or without clothing and without a touch of makeup. She continued. “Back then I was so sick I’d lie in bed by the screen door, the big sliding door to the patio, and listen to the doves outside. Such a sweet, cooing sound. They woke me so gently in the morning. During the day they reminded me there was a world out there and they soothed me to sleep when I had to nap.”

  “You love the little feathered dinosaurs, don’t you?”

  “Of course. They were company, then. They were comfort. They were my only connection to the real world – the healthy, functioning world. Then, when I got a little better, I’d sit on the patio and notice other birds, and I’d want to know what they were, so I got a bird book. And then I got binoculars. And that was that.”