Desert Cut (19 page)
“Cutter? What’s a cutter?”
I wanted to slap her. “Olivia, give me her name. She needs to be stopped before she kills someone else.”
“That was an accident!” Then she gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.
So she knew all about Sahra Hassan, a.k.a. Precious Doe, and probably knew about Tujin Rafik, as well. Yet she had done nothing. Cowardice was just another form of evil, wasn’t it?
Since she only understood fear, I grabbed her by the arm and squeezed hard enough to make her wince. “Tell me her name!”
Terrified, she shook her head.
Behind us, the door opened and Reverend Hall, having abandoned his adoring throng, walked through. Seeing me, he smiled without sincerity. “Ah, Miss Jones. I’d say it’s nice seeing your lovely self again, but then I’d be lying, wouldn’t I?”
Olivia cringed away from him. “I didn’t say anything, Daniel!”
What kind of hold did the man have on her? Then I remembered an earlier observation. He was
her
monster, and as such, she was loyal to him. Feeling a twinge of pity, I said, “Your wife kept her mouth shut, Reverend. She followed your orders, so I’ll direct the question at you. Who’s the Cutter?”
He gave me the same eyebrow-lifted expression I’d seen on O.J. Simpson, the usual ham actor’s portrayal of innocence. “‘Cutter?’ Well, if you’re looking for a good butcher, I might recommend Gravelli’s Meats, on Dragoon Street. Wonderful sirloin. Just turn left on Apache Avenue, then…”
“Stuff it.”
That insincere smile again. “No need to be rude. I was just trying to help.”
My gun hand itched. But he wasn’t worth doing time over, so instead of shooting him, I left.
As I drove into town, my rumbling stomach complained that it hadn’t been fed since I’d bought some fry bread off the catering cart outside the sheriff’s office, so I stopped at the Nile Restaurant for an early dinner. The place was already crowded, but several stools were available at the counter, where I found myself waited upon by Asenath Nour, the restaurant’s manager. She looked as tired as I felt.
“The Special,” I said, giving back the menu. “Shish kabob and pilaf with pine nuts.”
“Beef, mutton, or goat?”
Sheep were too cuddly and goats were, well, too goaty. “Beef.”
Instead of carrying my order to the kitchen, she leaned closer and said, “You are a detective, I hear, but not with the police. Is that correct?”
This wasn’t simple curiosity. “What do you want to tell me?”
She gave me a searching look, then appeared to come to a decision. “Perhaps before you eat, you would like to see the back of my restaurant?”
I stood up. “Sounds fascinating.”
She handed off her order pad to a much younger waitress who bore a strong family resemblance. “Table five has not yet been waited upon. They need water. This lady’s order, the Special, do not bring it until you see us return.”
With a resigned expression, the younger woman nodded. She was already balancing two plates on each arm.
“The back” turned out to be an unpaved alleyway behind the restaurant. It was heaped with empty crates that once held produce. A fat calico cat sat on one, eyeing us expectantly.
“Go away, Farouk,” Mrs. Nour told it.
The cat ignored her.
“I fed him one time and now he thinks he owns me.”
“Cats are like that.”
“Farouk is not my pet, you understand. I am too busy to care for pets.” Although Mrs. Nour tried to hide the affection in her voice, she didn’t fool me. She was crazy about that cat.
I once had a pet I’d loved like that, but it was long ago, in a time best forgotten. “Mrs. Nour, do you have some information for me?”
Farouk began washing himself. She watched as if fascinated. “I hear you are investigating the dead girls.”
Girls, plural. “You think the Iraqi girl who disappeared six years ago is dead, too?”
“She was a Kurd, but yes, almost certainly. But Tujin Rafik and the little Precious Doe remain
pure
, do they not?” The sarcastic stress on the word revealed her true feelings. And, possibly, knowledge.
I needed to be careful here. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Last spring, when Aziza’s mother and I were talking over the fence, she said that when it came to the marriage market, an impure girl was a worthless girl.”
“Mrs. Wahab actually used the term
marriage market
?”
With a sudden motion, the cat leaped off the crate and ran down the alleyway. Mrs. Nour watched as he ducked under a parked pickup truck. With Farouk gone, she turned her whole attention to me again. “Do not let the Wahabs fool you with their nice college degrees and nice house and nice cars. Inside, where no one can see, they are no different than ignorant Nile Valley tribesmen who cut their daughters with tin can lids. Do you understand what I am speaking of?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Shalimar, the Wahab’s oldest girl, she was sick once.”
I thought about that. “Before or after your conversation with Mrs. Wahab?”
“After. My granddaughter, who was in her class, says Shalimar missed a week of school. When she returned she was very different and spoke to no one. Afterward, when I saw her watering the flowers in her garden, she limped. That particular kind of limp, it is common in Egypt. The scar tissue, you see, it sometimes pulls at the leg. Many girls who are cut do not walk well ever again. I was more fortunate. I do not limp.”
When I realized what she was telling me, that she herself had been cut, I shuddered. I tried to say something, but failed.
Dismissing remembered pain, Mrs. Nour waved her hand. “In Cairo, these things are usually done by midwives or barbers, women who are experts with straight razors. For Shalimar, well, American barbers do not perform such procedures. Neither do American doctors. So the Wahabs went to the woman known as the Cutter.”
Further along the alley, a dog barked. Farouk scampered out from under the pickup and resumed his perch on the empty crate. Mrs. Nour smiled at him, he purred back.
I hated to break up the love fest, but an obvious question needed to be asked. “Mrs. Nour, if you suspected what was going on, why didn’t you report it?”
An expression of shame crossed her face. “Because I am a widow with no man to protect me, and after 9/11, I have been afraid. After all, what proof did I have to claim bad things about another Muslim when we are all so disliked now? Not that the Wahabs are true Muslims. Like the terrorists, they only practice the sections of the Koran that suit them.”
Terrorists?
She must have noticed my alarm. “No, no. I have not made myself clear. Dr. Wahab is no terrorist. He is happy here in America, he likes it very much, especially the money! In Egypt, despite his education, he was considered to be from a low family. The same with his wife. In the Middle East, family is everything. This is why they so desired that particular marriage for Shalimar. You know about the marriage?” At my nod, she continued. “That family is a good one, very respected. But the groom is the youngest son.”
This information begged another question. “Then what did this ‘good’ family want with Shalimar, if her family was, um,
low
?”
A bitter smile. “To strengthen a connection to America. Like her parents, Shalimar is a citizen now. Her new husband and two of his brothers wish to immigrate to make their own fortunes. Having an American in the family eases that process, correct?”
“I don’t know anything about immigration law, Mrs. Nour.” My anger, formerly under control, surged again. “Let’s see if I have this right. In anticipation of making a ‘good’ marriage for Shalimar, the Wahabs had her genitals cut off.” I refused to use that inaccurate word,
circumcised.
“Of course. And now she is gone. To Egypt, to marry a man she has never met, a man who already has one wife. When he emigrates, he will probably leave First Wife behind in Egypt, that is the usual way of things. Or he might bring her here, too. The first wife would act as maid—how do the young people say it here?—a maid ‘with privileges’? This is sometimes done.”
At my shocked expression, she said, “Ah, I see that you disapprove. Well, Shalimar did not want this marriage, either. As you must have noticed, our houses are close to each other, and the night before she left, I heard her crying.”
So much sorrow hardly bore thinking about. “That’s terrible,” was all I could find to say.
“It is
wicked
, and someone should stop it. But no one ever does. It is as if little girls do not matter. Not even here, in America.”
I’d often thought the same thing myself. For all our so-called concern about human rights, when the world’s victims were women and girls, America turned a blind eye. Churches and charitable groups, for instance, made so much fuss about the Lost Boys of the Sudan, yet never spared a though for the Sudan’s lost girls.
Weren’t girls human, too?
No time to worry about American hypocrisy now. “Mrs. Nour, do you have any idea who the Cutter is?”
Her dark eyes burned into mine. “If I did, she would no longer breathe.”
***
The sun had almost set when I arrived at the ranch, where I saw Selma in the corral with a mare and a brand new foal. She waved. I would have walked over to talk to her, but she looked every bit as exhausted as had Mrs. Nour. Ah, the joys of owning your own business. Up before the sun, to bed with the moon—if even then.
My work wasn’t finished yet, either. While the sun cast a buttery glow through the window, I plucked my cell phone out of my carry-all, and started returning messages.
“The Hassans are in real trouble,” Jimmy told me, when I reached him at Desert Investigations. Half-owner of the business, he was still working and probably would be for a couple more hours. “A little bird in Phoenix PD told me that the Hassans entered the U.S. with one more daughter than they can presently account for, and she’d be around seven years old right now. They claimed they sent her back to Somalia last week, but INS says that’s the first they heard of it, and they would know. Both parents just had their mouths swabbed, too.”
For a DNA test. “Already?” Getting that kind of court order usually took longer.
“CPS doesn’t like the condition the two girls were in. Little Bird says they were missing essential parts.”
In other words, the girls’ genitals had been amputated.
“Did Little Bird have anything else to say?”
“Nope. I guess he figured that was enough. Lena, I want to drive down there and help. You don’t need to be by yourself in an investigation like this. Those poor children.” His voice broke on the last word.
To give him time to recover, I stressed how much I needed him to remain in Scottsdale, then filled him in on my search for the Cutter. “She’s a menace, Jimmy, and needs to be deported. At the very least.”
“
Deported
?” Fury replaced sorrow. “I’m thinking serious jail time! Life without parole! In a windowless cell! With rats!” This, from Desert Investigations’ gentler partner.
“I’m working on it.” I could not keep a picture of the Cutter from forming in my mind. Big, well-muscled—she would have to be to hold a struggling girl down—lips curled in sadistic pleasure as she sliced through tender flesh. I was certain I would recognize this handmaiden of evil if I ran into her on the street. And then I would…
Jimmy snapped me out of my own revenge fantasy. “All right. I’ll mind the store up here as long as you need me to, but call me the second you need help, promise?”
“I promise.”
“Good. Now promise something else.”
Sighing, I said, “What?”
“That you won’t go anywhere without your service revolver. People who would do such rotten things to children wouldn’t hesitate to hurt an adult.”
“I promise. Again.”
“You sure?”
Sometimes my partner’s over-protective tendencies became irritating, but I didn’t let my impatience show. “Yes, Jimmy, I’m sure. The .38 goes wherever I go. Listen, I have a few more calls to return, so I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
He grumbled a good-bye and hung up.
Several phone calls later to clients anxious to know how their cases were progressing, I was ready to return the message I’d been putting off.
“It sure took you long enough,” Warren said, picking up.
Sometimes I hate Caller I.D. It makes first words so abrupt.
“I had places to go, people to see,” I told him.
He caught the mockery. “Too bad I wasn’t one of them. Listen, we really need to start working on our…”
“Relationship?”
“Exactly. And that’ll be easier once I move to Scottsdale. Speaking of, have you done any house-hunting?”
What gall. “No, I haven’t. I’ve been working a case.”
“Oh. That’s right.” His embarrassment bounced off the satellite all the way from California. “Don’t tell me that what I’ve been hearing on the news is true. Female circumcision? In America?”
I disabused him of the “circumcision” part, insisting on the proper terminology by describing the procedure. “It’s
amputation
, Warren, not circumcision. You’re circumcised, and it sure hasn’t kept you out of action. But these people, they slice
everything
off the little girls, right down to the root, without anesthesia. Now let’s change the subject. When I was in L.A. Friday, I drove over to your house.”
“At about what, ah, time?” He sounded wary now.
“At about,
ah
, the same time you and the blonde were leaving on what looked like an out-of-town trip. You two still together, or are you tired of her already? I’ve noticed that you Hollywood types seem to have a short attention span.” A
real
short attention span.
After a moment’s silence, he said, “Lena, didn’t you recognize her?”
His question kept me from hanging up. Come to think of it, there
had
been something familiar about the woman, but in my shock, her face hadn’t truly registered. “What do you mean, did I ‘recognize her’? And what difference would it make, anyway?”
“That blonde was Delphi Forrester. I was taking her to Promises, the rehab facility.”
Delphi Forrester.
As the blonde’s face came into focus, I remembered reading a tabloid story while waiting in line at Safeway. A former child star whose film career had been sidetracked by heavy partying and even heavier drugs, Delphi’s friends had been trying to get her into rehab for months. “You know Delphi Forrester?”
“She’s been my next-door neighbor since she was a kid. And that kiss you saw? I didn’t initiate it and I certainly didn’t respond to it. That’s just the way Delphi is, gloms onto people all the time, especially older men. There were problems with her father when she was younger. I’m sure you can guess what kind.”
Another scandal the tabloid had hinted at. Supposedly, Forrester Senior had his own drug problems, not that drugs excused his treatment of his daughter. He was currently doing time in some medium security facility, and if it were up to me, he’d never get out.
Warren was still talking. “When Delphi finally made the decision to check into Promises, I happened to be the only person nearby that she really trusted, so what was I supposed to do? Tell the poor kid to call a cab?”
No, he couldn’t. He wasn’t that kind of man.
Before I had time to respond, he said, “Look, I know you’ve got trust issues, Lena. What with your childhood and all, it would be a miracle if you didn’t. I can deal with them, but you need to meet me halfway. Don’t go running off half-cocked when you see or hear something you don’t understand. Talk to me first. And as long as we’re having this heart-to-heart, I should probably tell you that regardless of our arrangement, I haven’t been with another woman since we got together. I haven’t wanted to. You’re the only woman I want. Will ever want.”