Desert Angel Read online

  That got Vincente’s attention. “No. Hell, no. That’s … a big mistake!”

  Angel continued to avoid looking at him.

  “Rita would never forgive herself. Or me for that matter,” he said, turning, facing her squarely. “The kids would be wrecked … Bad example. Your life gets super tough? Suicide. Real bad example.” He leaned over and backhand slapped Angel on the knee. “Don’t even think it. Bad as it is, we’ll figure it out.”

  Another gun. For a number of reasons. That’s what Angel needed. Kill Scotty. And if she couldn’t? If she missed? Kill herself so he couldn’t have her.

  “Forget about it.” Rita was standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.

  Angel could feel the heat from her stare.

  “I mean it. I never want to hear that word again. Ever. For the rest of our long life.” Rita gave Angel the stern look for a few seconds more, then turned and went back in the kitchen.

  Oh. Angel had thought Rita somehow knew about the gun idea, but it was “suicide.” That’s what she heard. So. Did Vincente have a pistol she could steal?

  “You want an idea?” Vincente said.

  She barely heard him. “Do you fish? Hunt?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, dismissing the question. “You want an idea?”

  “Where do you even hunt around here?” she asked, inching her way toward her goal.

  “Scrub, ridges,” he answered, “but we’re not going hunting, so listen up.”

  “Can I see your stuff?” she asked. “Like a compass? You use binocs or … or you got a scope on your gun?”

  His eyebrows crinkled and she could see his puzzlement. She saw she was going too fast, maybe even in the wrong direction. He might not have a gun or, if he did, he might not keep a pistol and his rifle in the same place. Dinner. During dinner she’d excuse herself to the bathroom and search their bedroom instead. A pistol, if he owned one, would probably be near the ceiling on a closet shelf.

  “Don’t be a goofball.” His confusion had morphed to anger. “You want a suggestion or not?”

  She didn’t. “Sure,” she said.

  “What about my tractor?”

  It was her turn to be puzzled. “Tractor?”

  “My truck. My truck cab has a sleeping cabin behind it. Can’t tell a person’s in there from the outside. Got a bed. Reading light. Cooler. Runs on battery. It’s parked a block over. You’re not going to find a place better’n that.”

  Wow. That was a good idea. Maybe an amazing idea. Angel couldn’t have been more surprised.

  “You and me, sneak out after dinner. Take a look at it. You don’t like it, no big deal,” Vincente said, rising. “I’m gonna set the table.” He left Angel alone to consider it.

  She did. Along with considering whether their bedroom had more than one closet.

  * * *

  THE TRUCK CAB WAS ACTUALLY COZY. And safe. And for the first time in weeks, Angel got a good night’s sleep. And toward morning, a dream.

  She is alone, walking, way out in the desert. She begins to understand she is following something or someone, tracking actually, and she begins to pay attention to the ground in front of her. The tracks, depressions in the sand, are blurred, and she cannot tell whether they’re made by an animal or a person. She follows them along a dry wash, past a smoke tree, and then the prints begin climbing a ridge. She understands she will be able to see what she is following when she reaches the top and she begins to feel more and more anxious. Her sense of danger gets unbearable near the crest.

  She awoke to complete darkness inside the sleeping compartment, her heart thumping like she’d been running. She lay still, going back over the dream, wondering why it had been so scary. What had she thought was over the crest of the hill? Scotty? Her mother? A dead body walking? No. She had to stop thinking and get out of the truck. Since she’d slept in her clothes, all she had to do was crawl out of the compartment and peek through the windshield to see whether the coast was clear.

  The night before, she’d searched Rita and Vincente’s bedroom. Not a wooden box. A thick canvas bag with a drawstring. In his closet, on the highest shelf under a blanket, the first place she’d looked. Two pistols, each wrapped in an oily handkerchief. One had a long thin barrel and looked weird, almost like a squirt gun. The heavier one had a short barrel and round cylinder that held larger bullets. She’d shot that kind before at the trailer. She replaced the canvas bag, leaving the weird pistol in it, and hid the other gun behind the towels in the bathroom closet.

  So now, today, she needed time to search for the bullets. She’d have to be careful since Vincente would probably be home for the weekend. She was pretty sure he stored the bullets fairly near the gun; close enough to grab if there was trouble. She bet they were in the nightstand by his pillow or in his top dresser drawer where he probably kept his underwear. She knew a thing or two about this. Since ten or eleven she’d been searching through the men’s belongings wherever her mom stayed. Like a treasure hunt. Finders keepers.

  * * *

  ANGEL OPENED RITA’S FRONT DOOR to the cheerful buzz of children. Their mood had been quiet and watchful since the night they’d been sent to friends’ houses for safety. This morning they were teasing, arguing, chattering. Either they were glad it was the weekend or something good had happened.

  Angel could hear Vincente laughing in the kitchen. When she walked in for breakfast Rita and Vincente were standing by the sink, his arms around her waist.

  “What?” Angel said, coming to the table.

  Rita blushed and turned out of his grasp. “TJ called,” she said. “Cops picked him up. Outside a pawnshop in south Palm Springs. Handed him over to the feds.”

  “Scotty?” Angel could hardly believe it.

  “Scotty. You can stop worrying.” Rita went to her side, hugged her, swung her around, and set her down. “Free … You should celebrate! We should celebrate. What would you like?”

  Angel was at a loss. She knew she should be happy but really, she was stunned. Safe? Free? It was unbelievable. If that were true, what would she like to do? A rush of sadness invaded. Had her mother, her poor dumb dead mother, ever asked her how she would like to celebrate? Angel turned away quickly to keep Rita and Vincente from seeing her eyes. “I don’t know.” It came out like a croak. “Uh, what could we do?”

  “Go to that place in La Quinta for a seafood dinner?” This from Vincente.

  “Aye, cabrón,” Rita teased, “you always think with your stomach.”

  “Not always,” Vincente teased back, giving Rita a look that Angel would have understood immediately if she’d been facing them.

  “Okay, um, that’s an idea but with the kids eating, you’d have to sell the truck,” Rita said, smiling and shaking her head.

  “Yeah, pretty ’spensive,” Vincente agreed. “How about that all-you-can-eat place? Kids free there?”

  Angel quickly realized she didn’t want to cost them any more money. “We could eat an early dinner here, and after you could take me to the club, maybe an ice cream, and we could walk along the water and you could show me places you like.” Her face was dry now, and composed. She turned and faced them, smiling. “Going for a walk without looking over my back all the time.”

  The kids scurried out the door to play with neighborhood friends and Angel followed soon after, hoping to give Rita and Vincente some time alone together. Without having to worry about being jumped, she liked being outdoors again, the sunshine, the desert landscape, the stubborn plants. The land was rough but it wasn’t barren like she’d first thought.

  Giving the area a slow once-over, she spotted the house with the high platform that she and Rita had climbed. Now that she was looking, she realized several houses had a platform like that, over a carport, or on the corner of the house with the best view. That brought Scotty to mind again. Where had he parked a couple of nights ago? Had he left a cigarette butt or anything? She pictured where Vincente had parked his truck when she�
��d first arrived and imagined where the ruts would be that she’d seen from the rooftop. Walking slowly, examining the west side of the street, sure enough, Angel easily found the furrows leading back toward the highway.

  After several steps, she noticed that she was looking at tire tracks. There should be at least two sets: Goot’s cruiser when he drove up to check Scotty and Scotty’s own, and maybe more, but in the few days Angel had lived with Rita she’d never seen any other car parked in that place. As she walked, she saw only two different prints, one a couple of inches wider than the other. The pickup was probably the wider. And she remembered. Her dream. Tracking. And then something else. Something big. She couldn’t believe she’d thought of it.

  Rita had asked her if there was any way she could prove Scotty had killed her mother … His tracks? His tire prints leading to her grave? Had it rained? No. And these were his truck’s tire prints! A sheriff could make some kind of copy and compare them with the tire prints leading north from the ruined trailer. And find where her mother had been buried … and if he’d moved her, where he’d gone, probably up closer to those jagged ridges.

  Got you.

  * * *

  THAT SAME AFTERNOON, waiting for TJ to respond to Rita’s call about the tire tracks, Angel wondered for the first time where Norma lived, wondered whether Norma would like to go for a walk. Salt Shores was such a strange mix between an old-fashioned village and a ghost town. Exploring it reminded her of hunting for arrowheads like she’d done one time with her mother and Scotty. If you looked closely, you never knew what you might find.

  Through Rita’s front window, Angel saw the cruiser arrive, saw TJ get out and reach back inside for his hat. She lost sight of him as he walked to the door. The kids were off playing with friends and Vincente was in the love seat watching some ball game on TV. Angel sat with Rita on the couch, holding pencil and paper, making a list of words for a game she was going to play with the children. Angel knew Rita was nervous. She’d already bitten the erasers off two pencils.

  Angel was ready, but TJ’s knock startled everybody else. Vincente muted the TV and Rita set her things aside while Angel let TJ in. He was taller than she’d remembered. Her head was level with his adam’s apple.

  “Thanks…,” she said, faltering. Figuring out this tire thing had given her some confidence, but she seemed to lose it in TJ’s presence.

  TJ looked past her. “Rita, Vincente,” he said, standing just inside the front door. “You had something you wanted to tell me?”

  Angel could sense Vincente and Rita looking at her. She’d told them she had to talk to TJ. She hadn’t told them what this was about. “Uh, I thought of something,” Angel began.

  TJ breathed through his nose, his face blank, waiting.

  “Okay, uh, you want to prove Scotty killed my mom, get his tire prints from where Goo—” She stopped because TJ was already impatient, grimacing. Angel’s stomach dipped for a second, but she started again. “You get his tire tracks where the deputy checked him out, across the road here. You take those to the burned trailer up by the Gom—” This time she was stopped by Rita’s head shake and the pained expression on her face.

  They aren’t legal.

  “I got things to do,” TJ said, looking at Vincente, like he was sure another man would understand.

  Angel wouldn’t back off. “You said people were investigating a fire east of Cathedral City. I know that place. That’s where Mom and I lived with Scotty. In a trailer at the end of some ruts. Rita can probably tell you pretty close. That’s where the fire was. That’s where he killed Mom and drove away and buried her. I told you. I followed him. Later, when he knew I knew, he came back to the trailer and tried to kill me, too. Burned everything to wreck the evidence.”

  The disdain left TJ’s face while he dug in his shirt pocket for his notepad. “Okay, give it to me,” he said, “but I don’t know what’ll happen. We just got your word. No body or nothing.”

  19

  TJ’s visit had put a damper on Saturday evening. Remembering about Angel finding her mother’s fresh grave was just too gruesome. They rushed through a tamale dinner and afterward made popcorn, watched a TV movie, and went to bed early.

  Sunday morning the whole family took a long walk south from the club, following the water’s edge. Angel asked about the white crunchy stuff that they kept stepping on. Picking up a handful, she examined delicate hollow shells that looked like beads. Barnacle shells, Vincente told her. Zillions of them, joining the dead drying fish and matted bird feathers that made a carpet beside the sea. “Too salty,” Rita said. “No boats ’cause motors get ruined, and most fish can’t survive, but the birds love it.”

  The kids taught Angel the funny bird names—grebes, cormorants, egrets, bitterns—but her favorites were the big white pelicans that glided five or six feet above the water’s surface and crash-dived whenever they spotted a fish. Jessie found an old oar, Rita picked up a mangled pair of reading glasses with one frosty lens remaining, and Angel discovered a corroded black-and-yellow license plate that she decided to keep for a souvenir.

  Back at the club, everybody had chocolate-covered ice cream cones and Vincente had a beer. That night they all fell asleep in the living room listening to a new CD that Vincente had brought home from a store in Tucson.

  * * *

  ANGEL AWOKE MONDAY MORNING in the tractor cab feeling more than just rested, feeling good, energetic. On the short walk to Rita’s she ran her fingers through her hair. Would Rita give her a haircut? She noticed a tall, thin cactus with red blossoms. Had that been there before? The white grit, the weathered pastel houses, the tall palm trees and scrubby plants, could this place actually be beautiful? She smiled. What was the matter with her? Gas fumes from the truck?

  Rita and Jessie were on the porch waiting when she walked up. Rita handed her a banana. “Breakfast,” she said. “Let’s get going. You can wash up at the school.”

  Jessie bounded ahead of them and Angel felt like holding Rita’s hand as they turned the corner but she didn’t.

  “Another scorcher,” Rita said, fanning her face. “Next couple of weeks could be in the hundreds and it’s just the end of May. You know school’s almost out. What you gonna do then?” she asked. “Think you might stay around here?”

  Angel didn’t answer but the question made her feel even better. Rita didn’t hate her. Didn’t resent her for all the trouble she’d caused. What would she do next, once Scotty was in prison? It seemed like a miracle. She wouldn’t have to keep running. She could choose. A future.

  * * *

  LATER THAT MORNING AT SCHOOL, Angel was waiting for Norma in the vestibule. “Hi. You still mad at me?” she asked, offering Norma a fat red grape from the food supplies.

  “You suck,” Norma said, batting at the grape but missing.

  “You’re a grouch,” Angel said, popping the grape in her own mouth.

  “Hey, that’s mine,” Norma complained.

  “You didn’t want it,” Angel said, kneeling down a little so she’d be more on the girl’s own level. “Want me to see if I can find you another one?”

  Norma turned her back like she was mad.

  “Go on in,” Angel said. “I’ll look.”

  Angel picked the biggest grape she could find off the bunch reserved for morning snack and found Norma standing by the table-games shelf, pulling out one box after another. “Want to teach me Candyland today?” Angel asked, handing her the red seedless.

  “Primo did,” Norma said, pouty.

  Angel was surprised the girl had noticed. And glad. “Want to teach me something else?”

  “No,” Norma said, walking away.

  But at game time, Norma was shuffling through the boxes again.

  Rita, observant as usual, asked, “Who would be willing to teach the big girl a new game?”

  Primo’s hand shot up. “Me, me.”

  “You did a great job showing her Candyland yesterday,” Rita said, “so let’s give someone el
se a chance.”

  Norma, carrying a small cardboard box, practically stomped over to the table where Angel sat. “Tic-toe,” she announced, defiant, daring anyone to dispute her claim.

  “That’s a good one,” Rita said. “Thanks. Tomorrow it can be another person’s turn.”

  Norma frowned, sat down, dumped the contents, and shoved the O’s at Angel. “I start,” she said.

  * * *

  AT NAP TIME ANGEL SAT BESIDE RITA, watching the children, trying to remember if she had ever taken naps.

  “Looks like you have a friend again,” Rita said, pursing her lips.

  “She told me her and her sister are going to run away. Buy their own house,” Angel said. “I used to dream about the same thing.”

  “I know Norma’s real troubled by the things she’s seen at home, but she’s fierce. She fights back, tries to hold her own,” Rita said. “I can’t understand this domestic violence thing. The wife, it’s usually the wife, keeps expecting the guy’s going to change or really, really hopes he’s going to change, and she keeps coming back for more … or maybe she thinks she doesn’t deserve any better. Maybe she saw it in her own home as a kid and assumes that’s just the way families are. I guess I should study it, ’cause it really stumps me. I’d shoot Vincente if he pounded me in front of the kids.”

  Angel nodded, remembering the gun she’d hidden. That afternoon a gray-haired woman hand-delivered Rita’s and LaDonna’s paychecks and that evening Rita drove everyone to the huge Safeway in Indio for the month’s new groceries.

  * * *

  TUESDAY NORMA WAS STANDING in the hall waiting for her when Angel came out of the bathroom. “Hi,” Norma said, “I got new panties.”

  “That’s nice,” Angel said, laughing, “I wish I could say the same thing.”

  Norma stepped back and examined Angel’s face.

  “I’m not kidding,” Angel said. “Let’s do a quick tic-toe before circle starts.”