Page 41 of It Takes a Thief

Wolf Glaser, who like Noodlum seemed to have no sensitivity chip for murder or mayhem, grabbed the chair and sat down. He even leaned closer to the screen, as if he was trying to enter a contest by finding a hidden logo in the woods. He avidly watched as Noodlum plunged the knife again and again about halfway to the hilt, adroitly avoiding ribs. I heard him grunting with the effort, and the woman’s screams quickly died down until she was limp. When he stepped back to focus on his work, he was out of breath. Not such a hearty and hale guy, physically.

“We don’t need this excess baggage. It holds a company back from turning a profit. Now as you can see here…” He panned to another bound and gagged woman, a white woman whose breasts popped out of her underwire bra. “This one will be worthwhile. She will carry a hefty price tag.” Something clattered—he put the knife down. Now we could see his grasping hand, claw-like reaching for a boob.

That was Lytton’s final straw. “For fuck’s sake! Why is he showing this to us?”

“Turn it off!” cried Toby, facing the wall.

“No, no, no,” said Wolf, grabbing the mouse. “There’s something here…” And he rewound the video to the part where Noodlum first grabbed the camera. Start, stop, start, stop, Wolf found the part I’d been noticing, too. The neon.

“What is that?” breathed Lytton. Tobiah still wouldn’t look at the screen.

“It’s a piece of neon light, I noticed it before,” I said. “Can you capture that one frame or whatever you call it and sharpen it with another program?”

Wolf turned to his nemesis. “Tobiah? Do you have a program like that on this little kiddy’s computer?”

“What? Yeah, yeah,” Tobiah said distractedly, bumping Wolf out of the way with his butt. He plopped into the chair, took a screen shot or whatever of the neon sign, then went to work with another program. Mousing away, he said, “As long as it doesn’t involve dead bodies, I’m good.”

“Yeah,” I said, “we should save that video before YouTube takes it down. Wolf, you can find out where it was posted from? Give us more clues?”

“I can,” shouted Toby. “It’s my computer, isn’t it? Okay, here’s your image. Looks like…hmm…it’s green…”

“Bowling ball?” suggested Wolf.

“No, you know what it is?” I said. “It’s a fucking cactus, a saguaro-looking cactus. I’ve seen that sign before. It’s something like ‘The Cactus Inn.’”

Lytton said, “Tobiah, google around for motels with words like that. Bro, you remember where you saw it?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall. Was I a kid or something? Cactus Inn, Cactus Inn…Wait! I knew!

“How’s about this?” Tobiah said at the same time, rolling away from the screen so everyone else could lean in.

The Saguaro Inn was a retro motel that had been in existence since the 50s down in Show Low. Just on the border of Fort Apache Indian Reservation.

Where Lytton and I had been born.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MADISON

“These pinnacles are called ‘sky islands,” said Ellis.

Dr. Chesbrough had told me, casually, to call him Ellis. He was a casual kind of guy, I was finding out. He’d been a sort of hippie, at least prior to the cancer, because at his house I saw a photo of him with long, pre-chemo hair. His heart was all about helping people on the Rez. I think it took the place of his wife and child in Denver.

Yes, I said “his house”—he held weekly lunches for all his residents and interns. Between our socializing, which was like blowing off steam, and the grueling pace of our work, Penny and I literally fell into bed at night and slept the sleep of the dead. We mostly hiked, guided by childlike maps drawn by Galileo, our other roommate. He slept on our couch and got up before sunrise to drive his truck back into the canyon and care for his herd. It was now November, and the thought of him sleeping in that icy hogan choked with smoke from the wood burning stove made me much too sad. He still hadn’t been able to find anyone to take over his herd—another cousin had been arrested for drunk horseback riding down near Gallup.

Today, he was testing out yet another cousin, so he’d been free to hike with us. Or clamber, I should say. It wasn’t even climbing—it was definitely clambering. This pinnacle that thrust straight from the desert floor was almost vertical, although Ellis seemed to know where to go.

We were hunting for wild mushrooms.

We’d been waiting for a decent rain, and it had come last night, thick and drenching and cleansing. It was Ellis’ one day a week off, a day he usually spent working anyway, but he’d eagerly texted me and Penny around six AM.

Wild shrooms are sprouting. Anyone up for a climb?

Penny had to work, but it was also my weekend off, a day I usually spent driving to see my kids and friends. I can’t describe to you how excited I was. The constant parade of broken limbs, bloody noses, scabby body parts, and venereal disease, well, I guess it got to me. I never realized how badly until I was in Ellis’ van heading toward the sky island.

We had passed the stands of pinyon pine and I’d stuffed my pockets with their chubby little cones, to use as decoration in our sparse apartment. Now we were up into the conifers, their fallen needles churned with sand, making for an especially treacherous climb. Sandy mud was packed under my unpolished nails, and the little daypack I’d strapped on felt like a bowling ball. Ellis was the fittest man I’d ever seen, clambering up the cliff like a daddy longlegs while I held on for dear life to a tree root.

“Mushrooms exist in a symbiotic affinity with conifers,” Ellis called back down to his exhausted students. The athletic Desiree kept up with us, but Justin and Alyssa had fallen way behind. “The trees take water and nutrients from the shrooms. But don’t get too excited. Eating wild shrooms is dangerous, as we’ve seen in the ER.”