his phone. Then I called the front desk, where they told me he hadn’t checked out. Thinking about maybe having to tell Zach that Floyd Lynch wasn’t the killer and Carlo continuing to look at me funny made me nervous.
But I still couldn’t bring myself to look at the video just yet. How to explain it? Like feeling a lump that was probably nothing, but not ready to show it to the doctor.
Carlo went out to sand and paint the back fence and I went to the gym and worked out with the free weights, but it wasn’t enough.
That was the day when I decided to go down to the wash to find some rocks and clear my head even though it was Africa hot. And let a homicidal rapist get me into his van.
I pulled the same walking stick from the faux Louis Quatorze umbrella stand in the front hall that I had used when we went to find the mummies on Mount Lemmon. It’s not like I’m feeble or anything, just need the stick for balance and as protection against the occasional rattlesnake. I put a bottle of water and my garden gloves in my dusty backpack and strapped it on. Cell phone in the pocket of my cargo pants. Headed down Golder Ranch Road to the Cañada del Oro Wash that runs underneath the bridge.
I have this little warning signal that has served me well in dangerous times. The nerve on the side of my neck sparks. I don’t know why it didn’t spark when I first glimpsed the white van, old and dirty, on the bridge, its driver leaning out the open window, staring down at the dry riverbed. Maybe my internal warning battery is wearing out.
Intuition aside, I should have noticed the van was illegally parked and that it looked all wrong. Instead I rested my backpack near the skeleton of half a tree that had been carried down the river during some flood long ago when the rivers still ran strong. I put on the garden gloves and began poking rocks with my stick, occasionally picking up a nice piece of rose quartz or mica-encrusted granite to put in my bag.
The van caught my attention again when it drove slowly down the packed dirt path leading off the wider road running close by the wash. As I pretended to examine more rocks it made a three-point turn to position itself for easy departure back up the steep slope. So far still not terribly suspicious; this was a public place where people sometimes exercised their dogs.
The man who emerged from the driver’s side wasn’t the throw-stick-let-dog-run type, though. With the nerve now sparking in the side of my neck big time, and my continuing to act as if this day was only going to be about rocks, I watched him as he opened the back doors of the van, arranged something I could not see, and closed the doors without shutting them altogether. Then he turned to watch me.
After glancing at his license plate for later reference, I refocused on the wet sand at my feet, poking my walking stick here and there to dig out smaller rocks. But I could feel him when he started to move, slipping down the bank of the wash, pretending to look around, but relentlessly coming closer and closer.
Another nerve nestled in the pit of my stomach, one I hadn’t felt for a long time. It had been years since I was in a position like this and I was, frankly, afraid. Then I turned to him because now it was too late for fear.
The assailant stood within about ten feet of me. He was nearly six feet tall, approximately one hundred and forty pounds, thin frame, jerky movements, red-rimmed eyes and blotchy skin indicating chronic stimulant abuse. Lank hair that was not so much long as uncut. Early thirties. A sleeveless University of Arizona track shirt, a piece of yarn around his neck, orange nylon shorts with trim that once was white. No underwear. Green flip-flops with the rubber breaking around the toe from a habit of bending it back and forth as he was now. But the most telling thing, worse than the boner that told me he wasn’t about to ask for money, was a strip of duct tape plastered against the front of his shirt.
I prepared for his next move, which was some inane conversation about geology, with which he hoped to put me at