“Yes, what is it?” the man snapped.
“Mr. Hodge, I can’t tell you how sorry I am to have to tell you this, but it’s about your daughter. She’s been the victim of—”
“What is this, some sort of goddamn joke or something? Who the hell is he?” Hodge sneered at Apkaw.
“My name is Detective Daniel Apkaw, sir,” Dan said quietly.
“I wish it was a joke, Mr. Hodge. I’m very sorry to tell you that your daughter has been the victim of a terrible crime. The injuries she sustained were fatal,” Conover said.
“That’s absurd,” Hodge replied. “Where is she?”
“She’s been taken to the medical examiner’s office downtown.”
“This is absurd!” the old man repeated, but this time his voice sounded less certain and his shoulders visibly sagged. “Kelly?” he said. “What did that fucking punk do to my little girl?!”
“Do you mind if we come inside for a moment?” Conover asked gently.
Ron Wheeler sat in the interrogation room across from Detective Apkaw. Tears streaked his face as his shaking fingers lit one cigarette after another. Grief and outrage alternated in his expression, struggling for dominance.
“I can’t believe he was fucking her! That fucking asshole! Jesus Christ!”
“You mean you didn’t know that Kelly Hodge was sleeping with Brian Cortaro?” Apkaw asked. “Wasn’t she your girlfriend, Ron?”
“Yes! Yes! She was my girlfriend. I loved her!”
“Did you kill her?”
“Kill her? What, are you fucking kidding me? No, I didn’t fucking kill her!”
“But you were mad at her, weren’t you?”
“Why would I be mad at her?!” Wheeler started to cry again. “I loved her. She was so beautiful,” he sobbed. “That son of a bitch!”
“Your boss said that you left work early last night … at, let’s see, approximately 2:45 a.m.” Apkaw said. “Is that correct?”
“Yeah, but I was sick! You can ask anyone, I was puking my guts out.”
“Boss said you were too drunk to work.”
“He did? Shit, yeah, I guess I had a few too many.”
“So here’s what I think,” the detective explained. “You get off work early and Kelly comes to pick you up. Brian was with her in the car. You’re really pissed off. This dude’s hitting on your woman. You go for a little ride, party a bit more … then—”
“No! Goddamnit, I went straight home. Boss called me a taxi. You can fucking check!” Wheeler slumped forward on the table with his head in his hands.
“—then you guys score some junk, shoot up a few speed-balls—”
“Speedballs? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
The door opened and Conover motioned for Apkaw to come out into the hall.
“Thanks, Dan. That’s enough for now.”
“No problem, Gene. Kid’s exhausted. You make him for this?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“I don’t believe Ron Wheeler had any idea what he’d gotten himself into.”
Several weeks later, Conover was in his office sipping a cup of coffee when the telephone rang. It was Blankenship. Some hikers had discovered a badly decomposed body out in the Harquahala Desert. The dead man hadn’t even been buried, just dumped out there. He’d been shot execution-style with a .45, and his face was nearly gone, but dental records identified the man as one Anthony Everett, a.k.a. Everett James, a.k.a. James Anthony, and various other aliases.
“Son of a bitch had a rap sheet a mile long.”
“Is that right?” Conover asked.
“Damn straight, Gene. He’d been indicted for all kinds of shit—assault, possession with intent to distribute. But here’s the thing, almost all of the charges were dismissed.”
Conover thanked Blankenship for the call and hung up. The detective sat at his desk, staring out the window a long time.
Later that afternoon, Conover picked up the red Camaro as it headed north on Tatum Boulevard. He lagged several cars behind in the rush hour traffic as the woman turned east onto Shea and continued toward Scottsdale. She pulled into a strip mall just before the light at Scottsdale Road and parked in front of a Nautilus Fitness Club. The detective backed his car into a space at the other side of the parking lot and watched Charlotte Hodge step out of the Camaro. She took a drag off of her cigarette, threw it to the curb, and slammed the door shut. Then she slung her workout bag over her shoulder and disappeared into the club.
Conover waited a moment and then got out of his car. He made his way through the crowded lot to where the blond woman had tossed her cigarette. He bent down and picked up the still-smoldering butt. The green lettering on the filter was clearly visible—Kool. Conover smiled and started walking toward the gym.
TOM SNAG
BY LAURA TOHE
Indian School Road
The waitress at Denny’s had just turned down his proposal for a drink. His old hook ’em line, “I’ll tell you my Indian name,” no longer enticed. She wasn’t buying his tired act. She tore the check out of her book and slapped it down next to his coffee cup. “You pay up front,” she said, and pointed with her chin in the direction of the cash register, then turned away. He watched her walk away and lusted after her ass anyway.
Lately he was losing his touch with picking up women. Hell, maybe it wasn’t so lately. He looked at his braids hanging across his chest. His hair was thinning and his braids were getting down to the diameter of a plastic straw, though it was still black thanks to his mother’s genes. He was grateful that he didn’t have to pour dye on it monthly the way some nosebleed Indians did.
He was wearing the T-shirt he took from his son’s closet. Path was written across his chest in big white letters and he had no idea what it meant. His once thin torso had taken a turn south and now stationed itself around his thickened waist. Surprised that he jiggled when he laughed, he took up running in the mornings at the old Indian School grounds. One morning he tripped on the gravel and came down hard. “Damnit!” Tom had rubbed his ankle, hoping it wouldn’t swell. Boarding school still kickin’ my ass, he thought.
Used to be he could walk into a conference, a bookstore, a nightclub, and the women would turn their heads at the tall, dark, handsome Indian man who could’ve been on the cover of the romance novels they scooped up in the grocery line, his hair draped over the pulsing pink bosom of the woman in his toned arms. When he was younger he let it hang loose like a wild pony testing the spring wind. Long hair drew the looks and the women. Someone once asked if he was the actor, Wind in His Hair in Dances with Wolves. It became a line he used to pick up women. “Did you see Dances with Wolves? That was me,” he lied to a co-ed who paid for his drinks at the college bar after a poetry reading at MCC. Time was when he could turn the charm on like a light, when women dropped into his lap and all he had to do was scoop them up.
Did he ever love any of them? He wanted to tell one that she was the love of his life, his candle in the wind, his San Francisco peak.
Eliza was a Jew and a former hippie and New Yorker. She was a nurse and rotated among programs and facilities in Phoenix. Tom was working at the Phoenix Indian Center at the time coordinating GED programs for the urbs. Eliza arrived one afternoon to give flu shots to the elderly Indians. Tom helped set up chairs and brought her a cup of coffee during her break, which she accepted though she normally avoided caffeine. She stirred the coffee and impulsively told him she hated that Indians were forced to live on reservations like concentration camps.