Arizona Dreams Read Online Free

father killed a man.”
    â€œAnd you didn’t know about this?”
    She shook her head. “If he did, he got away with it, David.”
    I let out a breath, too loudly. “He confesses this in the letter?”
    â€œThat’s all the letter is about,” she said. “It’s very matter of fact. I would rather have learned that he had a mistress or that I had been adopted…”
    â€œWhy would he write it down?”
    Her hair had come loose again. She swept it back and said, “I think he finally wanted me to know. After he’d been diagnosed, and knew he didn’t have long. He knew I’d take charge, and I’d find it. But the crime—if it happened—was in 1966.”
    â€œWas your father the kind of man who would kill somebody?”
    â€œI thought he was when he found my boyfriend in bed with me when I was seventeen,” she said. “And I mean that. He had a bad temper. And he’d had to have been tough to make it in Cleveland. But, no, nothing like that.”
    â€œWho was this man he killed?”
    â€œIt doesn’t say. Now, don’t dismiss me. I know what you’re thinking. He only refers to him as ‘Z.’ He writes that he felt he had no choice, but nobody would have believed him. But there’s so little to it—just a few sentences. No sense of really why this happened, what drove him to do it. There are so many questions.”
    â€œDana,” I said, “I’m sorry to hear this. I know it’s got to be a shock, coming on top of losing your father. And I’m honored you’d look me up. But I don’t really see how I can be any help.”
    â€œThis is what you do, David,” she said, her eyes bright. “Crime and history. I remember you said that every historian’s dream is to discover a letter in an attic.”
    â€œI think I probably said something like a letter from Abe Lincoln or George Washington…”
    â€œWell, it’s not that,” she said primly. “But I need to know if my father really did kill a man.”
    I tried to watch her closely, but instead I felt the largeness of the room around us. My eyes drifted to the Republic on my desk, with headlines about continuing drought, a twenty-car pileup on Interstate 10 and a six-year-old boy found chained by his parents in a box. So much trouble in my city. I said, “Do you really want to know? Sometimes it’s better not to know everything.”
    â€œYes,” she said quietly. “I have to know. Wouldn’t you want to know if your father was a murderer?” She pushed the envelope at me. I didn’t touch it. She said, “Anyway, that’s not all. The other thing he writes is where we can find the body.”
    I felt relief. “Then it’s clear. If you really fear that this is possible, you’ve got to go to the police back in Ohio.”
    She shook her head violently, unleashing a small cascade of hair. “No, David. I came to the right police. The man is buried right here in Arizona.”

5
    A few days later, I checked out a Ford Crown Vic from the sheriff’s motor pool. Lately I’d been riding the bus in anticipation of Phoenix finally finishing the light-rail line on Central; when that happened, I could take the train the mile-and-a-half between the house and my office in the old courthouse. With this well-used piece of county property, I drove west and left the city. I tried to leave the city, but it kept spreading out. The cotton and alfalfa fields that stood when I was a kid had long since been covered with subdivisions. Now many of them, once new safe suburbia, had become slums. The little farm towns had turned into cities, densely packed red tile rooftops stretching to the horizon. Farther out, the remnants of farms sat like an unwanted tenant as the shopping strips, car dealerships and houses encroached. Signs hawked new developments from a dozen builders.