Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

shadows. My mainly beige living room, the only spot of color being the huge George Haozous painting, proved free of lurking assassins. So did the hall closet, kitchen and bath.
    But the bedroom had always scared me the most, and as I approached it down the short hallway, my breath hitched as if I had run a four-minute mile. With a kick, I slammed the door back, hoping to injure anyone who might be lurking behind it. No one was. Then I walked over to the bed, jerked the spread away and knelt down, revolver thrust forward. All that greeted me there were a few harmless dust bunnies.
    But now came the worst part: the long, dark closet. My foster father had hidden in a closet.
    Gun still before me, I rolled back the sliding door and jumped away, ready to blast anything that moved.
    Nothing did.
    I sighed in relief, and after double-checking to make sure no one had crept into the apartment behind me, I returned to the front door and double-locked it.
    Now I was safe, or at least as safe as my .38 and my fortress of an apartment could keep me. I wandered over to the stereo, inserted a John Lee Hooker CD, then went back to the kitchen. As John Lee sang about empty beds and lonely nights, I put my gun down within easy reach on the kitchen counter, took a Michelina’s Lasagna with Marinara Sauce out of the freezer and nuked it. I ate my dinner standing up, my back to the sink all the while, keeping a steady eye on the front door.
    A girl can never be too careful.
    Later that night I lay awake until the wee hours, watching the light show on my ceiling made by the headlights of passing cars. I knew that as long as I could see them I was safe. But at some point I drifted away, lulled by the noise of tires on pavement and the sweet whisper of the air conditioner.
    I awoke to find myself on a bus filled with singing people. A woman who looked like me held me in her lap, her fingers tightened into claws. Something cold pressed against my forehead.
    “I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her!”
the woman screamed, pressing the gun closer to my head.
“You just see, I’m going to kill her right now!”
    A sound of thunder, a gunshot. Pain.
    Then I was thrown away into the night, only to awaken in my Scottsdale apartment.
    I sat up and kicked the sweat-dampened sheets away.
    “Damn you, Mother,” I whispered.

Chapter 4
    “We’ll fight extradition as long as we can, but in the end, Ms. Corbett will have to return to Utah to face murder charges,” Ray Winfield warned, as we spoke over the phone the next morning. “We can get a Utah attorney as an assist once she gets up there.”
    “How long can you stall for?” I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Jimmy paid close attention to my side of the conversation.
    A pause. Then some throat-clearing. “A couple of weeks if we’re lucky. You know, Ms. Jones, the Utah officials appear pretty confident about their case, which gives me some concern. Just how much do you know about Ms. Corbett’s movements that night?”
    Damned little, I realized. I thought back to that night at the motel and Esther’s oddly prescient question, “Solomon was shot?” True, this was the twenty-first century and many unanticipated deaths arrived by gunshot, but still, there had been absolutely no surprise in Esther’s eyes at the news of Prophet Solomon’s death. Even Rebecca, in all her panic, noticed it. How could a woman so transparent ever hope to outwit the Utah court system?
    “Ms. Jones? Ms. Jones?” The attorney’s words startled me out of my reverie.
    “Lena.” I picked up a pencil and began drawing a hangman’s noose on a scratch pad.
    “What’s that?”
    “Call me Lena, Ray. I’m not into formality.”
    “I asked how much you know about Ms. Corbett’s movements that night. You’re certain to be subpoenaed when this case goes to trial, and it’s better to tell me now so there won’t be any ugly surprises later.”
    I gave him my rehearsed answer. “As far as I’m concerned, there won’t be any ugly surprises. Esther was waiting for us when we got back to the motel.”
    “This is just a supposition, but is there any way she could have been at Purity that night and made it back to the motel before you did?”
    I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I drew a man’s head in the noose.
    “Let me rephrase that, Ms. Jo…uh, Lena. How well do you know the area up there?”
    “This is privileged information, right? Nothing I tell you can be used in court?”
    “Right.”
    In