Arizona Dreams Read Online Free Page B

had it locked in my desk drawer. It was one page of inexpensive white paper. The writing was in blue ink, in a jaggedy script. But it was legible, and, as she had said, it was matter-of-fact:

    Dear Dana,
    If you’ve found this letter and opened it, then I’m gone. I’m sorry to give you another shock. But it has to come out. I killed Z in March 1966. I had to. You have to know he left me no choice. I took his body out to the property west of Tonopah and buried him. It wasn’t a proper burial. Just rocks.
    There was one sentence in a different tone. At the bottom of the page. It read:

    Don’t hate your old man, Dana. I had to do these things, for you. I loved you whether you knew it or not.
    Dana didn’t know who “Z”’ was. All she knew was the directions to the property, which the will had made hers. Her father had a notion of raising cattle on it. But this was rough country, with little more than creosote bush covering the hard, rolling ground. Not even a Texas longhorn would last out here, which is why it was so unappealing to settlers in the nineteenth century. They passed through, if they had to, on the way to California. Yet after another thirty minutes of bumping over a dirt road, I was pretty sure I was there, and the country had changed. Several saguaros with multiple arms towered over dense stands of prickly pear, pincushion, and cholla cactus. Beyond were palo verdes, hackberries, and even a couple of cottonwood trees. A creek was nearby. Bright orange flowers were starting to bud on the long fingers of ocotillo and gnarled deep green branches of buckhorn cholla. Even the ubiquitous creosote looked greener. I could see why the land had appealed to Dana’s old man. An ancient wooden gate parted a long, disheveled fence of barbed wire. Behind it, maybe half a mile away, was a smooth butte the shape of a fez. I parked the Crown Vic in front of the gate and was grateful to stretch my legs.
    Dana said the property was an even thousand acres. As the desert floor swept up to the butte, it became craggier and strewn with burned-looking boulders the size of a Mini Cooper. Closer to me, it was especially thick with the yellow-white fuzz of teddy bear cholla. Jumping cactus. It made me glad I didn’t go out in the desert like a tourist from the Midwest—in shorts. The land was utterly silent. It was almost a frightening sensory experience for a city boy. Although the soil was dry and the sky was bright blue with fluffy February clouds, the ground smelled of rain.
    The gate was no problem. Although it still kept watch with a rusty chain and padlock, one post had pulled away enough for me to slip through. I walked along a trail toward the butte. Sure, I could have tried to bring out a team of forensic specialists. But that would have required permission from Peralta. And I was supposed to be writing his damned book. And I didn’t know what I thought of the letter. An old man’s ravings—stranger things had been imagined by the dying and committed to paper. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
    The trail took me through the cactus stands and across the undulating, sunblasted ground. In a few months, it could be fatal to be out here. Today, it was cool—almost chilly to thin-blooded Arizonans. I liked it, though. The old Boy Scout in me couldn’t help but think of rattlesnakes and listen for a telltale sound. But the snakes were hibernating, and all I heard was the breeze through the arms of the ocotillo and my boots scuffing against the rocks and sand. The ground was dry. The rain of the previous night had spurned this place. I walked alone surrounded by nothing made by man.
    My plan was to look around. Look around, go back and talk to Dana. And then turn her over to the sheriff’s detectives. Maybe Peralta was right—I was doing any task to avoid sitting before that blank computer screen and writing. A task like seeking an old homicide victim