The Well - Book One of the Arizona Thriller Trilogy Page 3

  A quote about Arizona that she had read during an especially cold and dreary Long Island winter came to her. 'Arizona is where summer spends the winter and Hell spends the summer'.

  Even unscarred by fire, the natural beauty of this area was sometimes hard to appreciate. In the searing days of summer, the unrelenting sun in a vast expanse of blue overhead redefined for her the word sky.

  A person could feel smaller, lonelier and more vulnerable out here under its immensity. At times, she felt she had been opened up by the openness of the land and sky, and didn’t quite know how to behave or what to do with herself. It was an environment and a way of life foreign to her, a native of Long Island, the area sometimes called 'New York City’s parking lot'.

  She wondered what had possessed her to come here. She certainly couldn’t remember the labyrinth of thoughts, conversations, electronic paths and actions that had led her to this particular place rather than one of a dozen other places. Maybe it was fated, she thought. Maybe I’m an instrument of karma and just don’t know yet how it will play out.

  Chapter 2

  She had the day off from her job at the hardware store but it would be a mistake to try to kill him now. It was too soon. The plans weren’t finalized. She needed to focus on the details, the process, and not on him. When she thought about him, an image of a different horror from her childhood emerged, a neighbor boy hunkered in the dirt, his back an avid arch as he struck matches and with them burned insects alive. The look of savage glee on his face when he glanced up at her, trying to draw her in, burned in her memory. “See,” he said, “see how fun it is?”

  Sickened, she had turned and walked away. Now she willed herself mentally to walk away from the man she planned to kill, instead, to consider every eventuality, reduce every risk. She pulled a bag down from the top shelf in her hallway closet and began to gather her supplies.

  The rope and new roll of duct tape came from her utility drawer. She would dispose of the packaging and any unused remains in a construction site dumpster instead of bringing them home. That way they could never be matched as hers. She would take the little 32-caliber pistol, just in case. It couldn’t be traced to her either, because the serial number had already been filed off when it was bought on the street in Phoenix. Now it lay sandwiched in a padded sleeve, tucked at the bottom of a spacious black gun bag, a Wal-Mart find from several years ago.

  She loved Wally-World but Wally-World had security cameras. Smaller stores or even the local Wal-Mart were too risky, too close to home. In spite of security cameras, she decided the one in Flagstaff would be the best place to get the black clothing and other things she might need.

  When she disguised herself, it suddenly felt like fun, in the spirit of Halloween. She tucked her hair into a black baseball cap, pulled on jeans and a plaid cotton shirt, and then tried darkening her chin and upper lip with black chalk to mimic a five-o-clock shadow. Her reflection in the mirror made her laugh. It might fool the camera but a too-close appraisal by the cashier or another shopper would give her away. That would attract attention she wanted to avoid.

  She flattened her breasts with a tight sports bra and donned a pair of work boots, beat up and too large. She had scavenged them from a thrift shop and at first try-on, she thought they were a mistake but she practiced walking in them until she did it without tripping. Thus disguised, and unusually tall for a woman, she made a passable man.

  Well after dark, she left, grateful Wal-Mart provided a twenty-four hour venue. The stretch of highway between here and Flagstaff was a well paved, well lit, two lanes in each direction with some downslopes but overall an inexorable uphill climb of four thousand feet.

  On the road, the usual phalanx of semis resolutely labored upward, outnumbered by cute little cars piloted by college students, probably on their way back to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Their cars and small pickups darted in and out between the trucks and her vehicle at reckless, speeds. The young drivers obviously believed they were immortal.

  Darkness and solitude invited her to feel a sense of companionship with them, the anonymous camaraderie of travelers on any road anywhere. She wondered if the truckers were tired, if they had far to go. She wondered if the college students were hung over on their way back from a weekend of diversion or dissipation in Phoenix or Tucson.

  She knew it was only idle speculation that lacked emotional connection. Because she had enveloped herself in a cloak of secrecy, she wasn’t able to see them any more than they could see her; she couldn’t get inside them. She felt her difference from them as total alienation, as if she and they were different species who shared nothing but miles of road unravelling into emptiness.

  So deep was her sense of detachment that she didn’t notice when she entered the ponderosa pine forest with its energizing scent borne on crisp, cold air. Usually she breathed it deeply, with zest.

  Fifteen minutes later the terrain leveled out. When she neared Flagstaff, the highway crossed a main artery of East/West travel, I-40. The darkness of conifer forests abruptly gave way to bright lights and traffic. Alert and wary again, she threaded the congested streets, entered the parking lot of the Wal-Mart store and looked for a spot that was dark but not isolated.

  The parking lot and the store were never empty but tonight was a slow shopping night, sans crowds. She felt unnoticed and safe when she got out and walked toward the store but when the automatic doors anticipated her approach and opened, her imagination provided a security camera picture of herself. A moment of panic threatened to overwhelm. She shook off the feeling that knowing eyes watched and instead concentrated on the pretense that she was just like anyone else out for an evening of low end shopping.

  The cart she selected wobbled a bit. Not wanting to draw attention by replacing it, she headed for the department at the back of the store. She had to remind herself to slow down, look casual by stopping to examine some clothing, a few house wares, and islands along the aisles heaped with Halloween candy.

  Her circuitous route finally ended in the right department. It took just a few minutes to find what she needed without the interference of a single clerk. The checkout went quickly, this time of evening.

  Back in her car and on the road, she coasted most of the way down the mountains, relief and anticipation raising her spirits. Dawn had not yet brightened the eastern horizon when she arrived home, a deliberate timeline calculated to avoid the curious eyes of neighbors. Mission accomplished, no speed bumps.

  Finding and buying the stun gun proved more of a problem. It would be too risky to buy it in person. These days you could buy anything on the computer but she knew that meant you also left a cyber trail.

  She drove the short distance to Prescott, to the beautiful new library on the side of a hill. She found a spot at the end of the row of computers reserved for patrons, strategically located at the back of the room.

  The web site she found was impressive. The 'self-defense' company had a Better Business Bureau rating of A+. They were listed with Dun & Bradstreet. They accepted all major credit cards and Pay Pal. They had just what she wanted.

  Now, how to pay for it, provide the e-mail address they required and get it shipped to her but not to her own address? In other words, how to keep her anonymity? She created a new e-mail address on the library computer, then rented a mail box at the friendly Mail Boxes Special just down the highway.

  She knew those steps would be a waste of time and money if she couldn’t solve the payment and shipping issues, but somehow she knew it would work out. Work out it did, a week later with the help of an elderly aunt, for whom she often did errands and shopping.

  Auntie was afflicted with both diabetes and arthritis. She seldom left her house except for infrequent visits to the doctor, with a friend or relative driving.

  Aunt Iva's house was as old as Auntie, but she managed to keep the interior, with its 1950's furniture and hardwood floors, clean and neat. A few male relatives helped tend the small front yard. When Aunti
e telephoned for shopping help this time, she wanted some moderate ticket items from the Target store in Cottonwood.

  She must have been watching from the window as her young helper mounted the wooden steps. Not waiting for a knock, she made her way to the door with wide placed steps and a rolling gait, as if she walked on the deck of a wave-tossed ship, her painful progress the result of degenerated hip joints. She carried her purse in her arms. It was a once colorful but now ancient bag reminiscent of home made pot holders, woven from thin ropes of stretchable yarn.

  In the open doorway, the old woman accepted a kiss on the cheek then withdrew a list and credit card from her purse with fingers shaken by a fine tremor. She handed over the card and list with a smile that said, “I trust you completely; I have confidence in you.”

  At Target, the would-be murderer shopped for items Auntie wanted, with special attention to a toaster oven that approximated the cost of the stun gun she had selected from the web site. She mentally calculated the price of the stun gun plus shipping. Not exact. She added the price of one of the gun’s optional accessories. Better. The cost of the toaster oven matched the price of her items within pennies. At the checkout counter, she kept the toaster oven in her cart while she paid for the other items with Auntie’s credit card. Then she paid for it in a separate transaction, with her own cash.

  A hurried trip back to Prescott to place the order on line with Auntie’s credit card completed this part of the plan. She doubted the old woman would notice the discrepancy on the receipt or the credit card statement but if she did, she would reassure her that she hadn’t lost any money from the silly computer error, it was just a comical glitch in inventory data that listed a toaster oven as a stun gun.

  It had been a challenge. Now all the supplies were in the gun bag, safely stowed in her car. They included a long handled pitch fork with three curved prongs and a rubberized handle grip. It wasn’t made for what she had in mind, but it would do. Now she had to wait for the right time. Soon. She hoped it would be soon. She could picture it clearly.

  With a start, she recognized her eagerness and sternly told herself that it was not something she wanted to do; it was a thing that she needed to do. Then why did a thrill of anticipation course through her to ride up her spine in slivers of ice? And why did it subside into a warm tingle between her legs?

  ***

  Allie arrived at the apartment complex but before she drove into her covered parking space, she stopped at the bank of metal letter boxes near the office. She slid out of the car seat, found the small key on her key ring and inserted it in the little mail box door with her apartment number. She reached inside, thinking, Surprise me, will you?

  No surprise. She let out an exasperated groan at the envelope from The Department of Education, her nemesis. She had told friends that her chief goal in life now was to pay off her college loans before she retired or died of old age. Oh, well, the price of a good education and the price of being my own person again.

  The other envelope bore the familiar handwriting of her ex-husband. After almost twenty years she had escaped the marriage with the last of her dwindling self confidence and the only material possessions she valued, a few sticks of antique furniture for the sentiments they embodied and an aging, deteriorating but valiant Subaru for freedom of mobility.

  She had left the marriage and the last of a succession of office jobs to return to college for the education needed to do what she somehow knew she was meant to do, counseling. This was the career she was destined for since the age of sixteen, although she hadn’t known it at the time.

  That summer she had gone to the library as usual, but not as usual, had lugged home just one book. It was a heavy tome with tissue thin pages filled with tiny print. The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. She had waded through it with frequent helps from the dictionary.

  All around her, other teens were working on their tans, getting a job or getting pregnant. She began to wonder if perhaps she wasn’t normal. When her interests came to include astrology and mythology, her self doubt increased. It didn’t help that her best friend confused her yoga practice with that new milk product, yogurt. When Allie wondered aloud if there was anything to numerology, her friend accused her of flirting with witchcraft. Allie decided she certainly wasn’t a witch and probably wasn’t normal but she was okay with that.

  The radically changed life style she was now living wasn’t typical or perhaps even normal, and it hadn’t come easily. Her first steps, fraught with economic, mental and emotional danger, were as tentative as those of a tightrope walker on a wire above the Grand Canyon. It took all the courage and persistence she could muster to sit in classrooms with students young enough to be her children.

  She remembered one classmate not long out of her teens who told her, “When I’m your age, I hope I’m just like you. You don’t say much but when you do it’s important and it’s smart.”

  Allie wasn’t sure whether to consider this a 'when I grow up' or a 'when I get old' comparison but she felt touched and took it as a compliment. Since then she had come to realize that her quiet nature was a personal asset and silence could be a valuable tool for a therapist, who couldn’t listen and understand while talking.

  Looking at the mail in her hands, she hesitated over the note from Paul. She knew from his text message yesterday that the super storm ravaging the East coast had left his house–what had been their house–untouched. He was safe. Her intuition said this note would be another plea for her to come back, to come 'home'.

  She didn’t open it. Slowly, without emotion, she tore it in half and dropped it in the nearby trash can. It slipped down and out of sight, settling amid empty Coke cans and heaps of junk mail. Paul and the marriage were years ago and thousands of miles behind her.

  When she entered the apartment, she reminded herself to be happy it was new and fresh, although very small, less than four hundred square feet.

  Management had decorated it in neutral colors. 'Earth tones' they called it. Ha, she thought. I see plenty of earth tones every time I step out my door. On Long Island most of the ground had long ago been paved over, built on, carpeted by grass, or was covered with planted or native shrubs. The common view in most neighborhoods was limited to the neighbor’s house or a highway.

  In the Verde Valley, Nature’s palette consisted of shades of grey and brown splashed across vast expanses of bare dirt and rock, relieved only here and there by patches or threads of dusty green. The blotchy pattern on the hillsides reminded her of camouflage fabric.

  She had whimsically wondered what these mountains and valleys hid from. Perhaps the sky itself. The vault of blue, where sometimes clouds lowered enough to dampen her outstretched fingertips, encompassed the vast landscape of nearby hills, distant mountains and towering rock formations.

  Allie had enlivened her apartment when she hung colorful prints on the beige walls and inserted touches of blue, yellow and green with sofa cushions and plants. That helped but there was nothing she could do about the brown carpet except keep it clean. The tiny bedroom appeared a little brighter with a spread in vivid pinks, purples and blues that matched a valance over the single window.

  Closing the door behind her, she hung her car keys on a hook, dropped her purse on a side table and went into the bedroom to take off her shoes. She planned to change into lightweight exercise clothes and go for her usual power walk. Instead, she plopped down on the bed, realizing she felt drained.

  It was the usual routine, the usual places, the different clients with the same problems, the iron bond of debt, the enervating pull of a love she no longer shared and the barrenness of a life alone. The thoughts invaded her mind leaving her overwhelmed, empty.

  She began to take stock of her life, something she hadn’t done often in the past years because they were years dominated by the exigency to survive and achieve.

  Long ago, within a year of marriage, she and Paul had produced Brian, the beautiful, perfect baby who had blessed her life. Grown
now, he lived in Boston, working on a degree in electrical engineering. She loved him dearly but this distance, this physical and emotional separation from him gave her no distress. It was healthy.

  She picked up the stuffed rabbit that he had cherished as a toddler. When she had packed to move out of their house, she discovered it in the attic and brought it with her to this new place, a talisman of love and family happiness. Now it again held the place of honor on a bed. Without conscious intent, she had begun a morning ritual. On days when she had time, she amused herself by posing it on the pillows with its floppy ears and limbs in an expressive arrangement to match her mood.

  Still seated with her feet on the floor, she let her upper body fall back on the bed. She thought of Paul and as the memories returned she stretched her arms above her head then allowed her relaxing muscles to recall another body next to her in bed, the warmth of touching, cuddling, and the deliciousness of sweaty, energetic coupling.

  Hum, she thought, if that’s my problem, I can always have sex with Bob. Their friendship of almost a year hadn’t progressed to the 'benefits' stage yet and she felt comfortable with the status quo. Bob had let her know that he wanted more but so far, he hadn’t pressured her. Bob was handsome, very handsome, with tanned skin, dark hair, golden brown eyes, a dazzling smile and a nicely muscled body kept in shape by his construction job. He was smart and sweet and there was no reason she shouldn’t want him fiercely, but she just didn’t. She wondered what subtle biological or psychological force was missing. Hormone deficiency? Was she getting that old?

  What is it that I want? I have what I thought I wanted. I’m free and independent. My life is a great adventure out here in the West. I love my work, even though I sometimes wish I could live up on Second Mesa and counsel the Hopi.