Arizona Dreams Read Online Free Page A

A billboard half the size of a football field and as well constructed as a city hall promised yet another project, the words standing out in ten-foot gossamer, “Arizona Dreams.”
    Where Interstate 10 curved around the booming suburb of Goodyear, the horizon opened up. The White Tank Mountains spread out in front of me, a vast purplish expanse slathered with the distinctive pale rocks that give them their odd name. The mountains, which I usually saw as a smudge to the west, suddenly looked majestic and wild. Behind them, the sky was an electric blue, ornamented with similarly bright fluffy white clouds. It was a scene increasingly rare in my town, with its dirty air. But the land I passed through was not empty. The sun glinted off the rooftops. Elsewhere, every empty parcel of land had a sign that proclaimed “available.”
    As traffic lightened up, I let myself hear Lindsey’s voice in my head. She had awakened me at three that morning to hear the rain. It was a rare and lovely sound in the thirsty land. I slipped out from the covers to watch the drops fall with increasing force on the dark street outside. Then I came back to bed and she had warmed me. Then our hands conjured their usual magic, but later, as she lay panting, sprawled atop me, I knew her mind was someplace else.
    After she had tucked her toes under my legs, as was her custom, I ventured, “Are you okay?” She just pressed her head against my shoulder and said nothing. The rain had settled into a gentle brushing sound on the roof. I listened for a while, then whispered, “Is it Robin?” But again, she had been silent, and she became so still that I thought she was asleep. I just held her, feeling her heart beat against mine.
    â€œI spent so many years trying to escape it, Dave.” She spoke in a whisper, as if she didn’t want the room to hear. “Why is Robin here? Why was she on our street?”
    I just listened and stroked her soft hair. Knowing that Lindsey had a tough childhood didn’t help me understand her reaction to this mystery sister. I knew other things might have been on her mind, too. She was indeed the valuable one in the family, as Peralta noted. Lately she had helped bust a money-laundering operation working through a small bank in North Scottsdale. But there was nothing small about the players. The feds claimed the money was part of a complicated financing scheme involving Mexican drug lords, the Asian sex-trade, and Middle Eastern terrorists. It reminded me of the eighteenth century trade triangle of slaves, rum, and molasses. It worried Lindsey. Robin worried Lindsey. For that matter, there was an unsolved murder just down the street. There was a lot to worry us all. But it didn’t seem like the right time to ask her for anything more. I could feel her tears on my skin. And then I felt her breathing smooth out, and pretty soon I was asleep, too.
    Now I was so far west that the mountains had shifted. The White Tanks were to the east, and south of them the Sierra Estrella piled up massively, an unfamiliar view. Due south was a low ridge of bumpy tears in the horizon; the Gila Bend Mountains, I think. When I came off the interstate, the city was gone. After a mile of driving on a two-lane road, even the scruffy trailers and junkyards of the desert rats had been replaced by chaparral and brittlebush and empty country. The bones of an old gas station passed my window. The freeway didn’t exist when Dana’s father allegedly killed “Z” and buried him. The way into the desert would have been longer and more tortuous, but the directions were clear enough.
    Stashing bodies in the desert was nothing new—this Harquahala Desert had been the dumping ground for a serial killer a few years back. Lindsey had finally stopped him. That had been when we were first getting together. This desert had memories, secrets. And yet another one, courtesy of a dead man’s letter. I still