Fatal Refuge: Book Two of the Arizona Thriller Trilogy

By Sharon Sterling

The Wild West town of Yuma, Arizona is again the site of murder and mayhem in this present-day thriller, Fatal Refuge. A beautiful but troubled Apache woman, Kim Altaha, her search-and-rescue dog Zayd and psychotherapist friend Allie Davis are embroiled in a set of grisly killings. What happens when a mentally ill woman dubbed the "Peace Poet" and a clinically sane but morally deranged killer meet? Between the pages and among lines of suspense, a romance blooms, a friendship deepens and lives are transformed by cowardly and heroic acts. Action rushes from nearby Kofa National Wildlife Refuge to Yuma Proving Ground, then dashes for the Mexican border while a severed head and top-secret, drone-mounted laser weapons complicate the horror. The Colorado River, an infamous casino, and the Old Town Yuma barrio are unique historic settings for encounters between the players in this intense drama. They keep the action churning and psychological motives emerging until the end when readers will know why as well as "who done it."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sharon Sterling
• Release date: Jun 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370457908

Sharon Sterling

Sharon Sterling, author of award-winning mystery/thriller novels: The Well, Fatal Refuge and A Killing at Lynx Lake The Arizona Thriller Trilogy by Sharon Sterling was a delight for her to write, as a long-time resident of that State. Ms. Sterling was a wife, mother, and office worker before she attended Northern Arizona University then Tulane University in New Orleans. She received a master’s degree in social work and was licensed as a clinical social worker, qualified to diagnose mental illnesses and provide psychotherapy. Her work as a crisis counselor, psychiatric hospital social worker, and medical hospital social worker provided a wide range of experiences with fascinating people and dramatic situations. Those experiences and her familiarity with the towns, deserts, snow-capped mountains and red-rock formations of Arizona lend both credence and spice to her writing. All three books feature social worker Allie Davis and Kim Altaha, Apache native and search and rescue worker, with her dog, Zayd.

Book preview

Chapter One

KIM ALTAHA

Kim left Yuma in the stillness before dawn and reached the turnoff to Kofa National Wildlife Refuge before the sun mounted the eastern peaks for its daily assault on the land. Her jeep bumped along the dirt access road headed due-east when the first shafts of daylight struck her high-boned cheeks like a challenge.

She parked the red Jeep Cherokee in the tiny dirt lot at the trail head and with confident, long-legged strides began her hike into the Refuge. The trail soon faded to nothing. Undeterred, she bush-wacked over the rocky soil, skirting boulders, brittle bush shrubs, bear grass, and desert agaves.

After an hour she slowed her pace and quieted her steps, wary she might startle the endangered pronghorn antelope she sought. Three months before, she had teamed with volunteer Marines from the base in Yuma and with local Fish and Wildlife agents to trap, transport and release three dozen of the endangered species here.

She had actually touched the delicate young animals, stroked their tan and cream coats and felt the warm breath from their nostrils on her hands before watching them rise on wobbly, tranquillized legs and escape into the hills of their new home in the Kofa. It had given her a certain sense of ownership. But where were they? She smiled to herself and answered her own question. Living up to their reputation as the ghosts of the desert.

So far she had seen scant signs of life–a few turkey vultures soaring, distant against the thin blue sky, the surreptitious chip-chip of awakening cactus wrens, the scuttle of a lizard.

While she walked she felt the sun’s rays stab the burnished-copper skin of her forearms and press a skullcap of heat on her blue-black hair. The shards of sunlight were so intense they had pierced the atmosphere, drained from it the last drops of moisture and stilled the feeble breeze of early morning. Reluctantly, she pulled a cloth hat from under her belt and put it on.

With an Indian’s acceptance of the natural world, she neither welcomed the heat nor resented it. After all, in late spring, at only ninety-seven degrees, this part of the Sonoran Desert was not yet threatening spontaneous combustion.

Suddenly, she saw the bighorn. She swept off her hat and sunglasses, raised her new Minox binoculars, narrowed her eyes against the glare and adjusted the focus until she had the ram. He stood in profile atop the rise a quarter mile away, head raised and horns in dark contrast against the sky, a defiant pose that asserted his right to be here and questioned hers.

He stood four feet tall at the shoulders and must weigh close to two hundred pounds. His horns were massive. They appeared too big for his head to support. They had grown back, down and forward in a wide curve, the bottoms level with his shoulders. The grooves of the ridged horns showed a tinge of green, suggesting the growth of lichen, a badge of age. She guessed he was about fifteen years old, a patriarch of the herds, which numbered only eight hundred bighorns in this preserve of over six-hundred thousand acres.

The ram remained stock-still under her inspection, as if looking straight ahead, but he inspected her, too, with his acute peripheral vision.

Kim ended the staring match by releasing her binoculars to let them dangle from the strap around her neck. She picked up her sunglasses and blew off the fine, dry dirt before replacing them, then took the cloth field hat from between her knees and pulled it onto her head. With a last glance at the bighorn and a deep breath, she resumed her hike, taking in the high desert landscape and listening to the silence.

Half-way up the ten mile climb that formed the base of the rugged Castle Dome Mountains, she turned back toward the west where she had entered the trail head. The parking spot appeared no bigger than a postage stamp and her red vehicle a pencil dot.

Resigned that she would not find the antelope today but happy about the unexpected gift of the ram, she started back down. She remembered the advice of a Hopi Indian friend, Never retrace your steps, and chose a slightly different route than the one she had climbed.

Memory of the Hopi friend brought to mind thoughts of her own Apache ancestry, one remnant among many native tribes.

The presence of White settlers had started as a trickle–pilgrims debarking the Mayflower–and had grown exponentially with each decade. Their presence escalated the decline of native humans, animals and vegetation. The settlers’ and pioneers’ progressive and relentless conquest of the wilderness drove antelope and other wildlife to the brink of extinction and drove Native humans to reservations.

It was ironic, but just, Kim thought, that now the Whites called the antelope and other animal survivors endangered and studied, tended and nurtured them; thus the descendants of men who had once almost destroyed the species now sought to preserve it, lavishing the survivors with the balm of remorse.

Her thoughts soon yielded to the wordless enjoyment of her senses: the smell of sage and creosote, the skitter of a zebra-tailed lizard, the sudden scarlet of penstemon blooms brushing against her legs, the sun’s heat on her shoulders, the sound of her own steady breathing and solid footsteps. Soon the ache in both thighs reminded her of old wounds, and that descending from a height was often harder than the climb, a simple metaphor for life itself.

When she remembered the Kofa’s strangely diverse history Kim began to keep an eye out for dangers other than rattlers, scorpions and mountain lions.

The name Kofa began as "K of A, an abbreviation for the name of a gold mine called King of Arizona," an ostentatious name from the floridly ostentatious and optimistic Victorian era. The miners’ avid search for gold, silver, manganese and lead ended after only a few decades when the ore petered out. The miners left behind open pits, drift tunnels, deep vertical shafts and slopes of scree that could send the most sure-footed hiker sprawling.

Along with those relics, huge holes in the ground, called tanks, dotted the land. Some were natural, a few man-made and they were often filled with water. The tanks were the main source of water for Kofa’s larger wildlife. Rabbits and other small wild life quenched their thirst at tinajas, shallow, natural scour holes in bedrock.

Open mine pits, tanks and other hazards, along with detritus from military trainings during World War Two were rare within the perspective of hundreds of thousands of acres until an unwary hiker stepped into or onto one. What nature had created pristine over millennia, three generations of mankind had made inroads to destroy.

Aware of the danger as well as the beauty around her, Kim became more vigilant. Soon she spotted a metallic object on the ground ahead. She dug her heels in to stop on a downward slope, skidded and almost sat down hard before she saw what it was.

Not an unexploded artillery shell, just an empty beer can. She removed the water bottle from her day pack and hooked it to her belt to make room for the piece of junk. The metal felt warm on her finger tips as she shook off ants and loose dirt and put the can in her pack to discard later.

Three miles from the entrance to Palm Canyon and five miles from her parked vehicle, the odor of decaying flesh fouled the hot air. She stopped. Oh, no! One of the antelope didn’t make it.

Her next steps produced a whirr of vulture’s wings rising from fifteen feet downhill. Her eyes followed the flight of the vulture to where others soared high above, waiting their turn. The area was partly shadowed by a large boulder. She couldn’t see what lay on the ground there.

Dread slowed her steps. When she saw the carcass she felt a flash of relief and in the next second, disbelief. Not a graceful antelope body with long slender legs and split hoofs. This body was smaller. This was a human being. The arms and legs were shriveled and discolored by decay, clothing stiff with dried body fluids, feet hidden inside tan hiking boots. It was a woman’s body lying face down in the dirt.

Chapter Two

WINSTON VERBALE AND CINDY CAMERON

Two weeks earlier

Winston, will you please stop looking out the window. Nothing’s going on out there.

This damned rain! We came here to bird watch, not hang out in this dismal hotel. It’s barely stopped the whole three days we’ve been here. We could have seen more birds if we’d stayed in Yuma.

Kofa gets some wonderful migrating species in the spring but I’ve seen them all. We’re in Costa Rica to see the tropicals.

Well, how many have we been able to see through this damned rain? And don’t call me Winston. His mouth tilted in irony. Now that we are what you call ‘lovers,’ get used to calling me ‘Win’.

Cindy put down the magazine, a Spanish language version of People, and slid further down under the bed covers. Better to be ‘lovers’ than ‘friends with benefits. That expression is so crude.

And ‘lovers’ is sentimental tripe.

An angry denial flashed into her mind but she didn’t voice it. She refused to be led into a dispute. Win. I can’t decide if the name reminds me of a pack of cigarettes or what we could call New England, old money, living-off-the-interest snobbery.

He flung the curtain back into place and turned with a look of annoyance. You know I’m not in their league.

Not if money is a league. Anyway, Winston does have a classy ring to it.

I guess my mother figured with the last name Verbale, she’d better come up with a more American-sounding first name. I like it. ‘Win’ for winner.

You haven’t told me much about that–winning at the casinos and card games back in Chicago.

She saw his face brighten and imagined his mind fixed on distant memories until he snapped, I wish I hadn’t mentioned it to you at all. It’s behind me. I’m cut out for better things.

Okay.

There’s more to me than someone who can win games!

Don’t growl at me like that, Win. It isn’t like you. Cindy was more puzzled than offended by his recent silences, then this ill-mannered funk. In the two months she had known him he had given her more attention, more compliments and more flowers than any man she had ever known. It had been lovely.

Now she needed to placate him and maybe this was more like him than she had known. With just a hint of resentment she said, You’re a natural born competitor, alright. Bet you were the first kid on your block...?.

As a matter of fact, I was the up-and-comer. And if I was first at something I wanted people to know it. I got my picture in the local paper more than once.

Were you a prodigy of some kind? It reminds me of how little you’ve told me about yourself.

Not a prodigy, exactly. I worked on my badges to reach Eagle Scout. When I made it the newspaper printed a half-page spread about me. And I played trumpet in the school band. I ran for senior class president. People noticed me. At least in high school they noticed me. His lips tightened.

I notice you, Win, and this isn’t high school–thank the Lord.

Ignoring her, he sat down in the upholstered chair, took off his shoes and socks, then pushed back the drapery with one hand and again stared outside at jungle-green foliage shined glossy by the steady downpour. The only sounds in their small hotel casita were the monotonous white-noise of steady rain fall, the whir-whir of the ceiling fan and the background whispers of Win’s dejection.

Cindy was attuned enough to hear his unhappiness, spoken or unspoken. From the bed she could see only his profile but every nuance of Win’s face was already familiar to her: broad, clear forehead, short nose, wide mouth, thin lips and a rather small chin.

She could imagine him when he was a boy, a sprinkle of freckles across his cheeks, hair a sun streaked yellow instead of a sandy color. His body, too, held a suggestion of whip-thin youth that was denied by a gestating little pot-belly. She had been charmed by her image of him as a fresh-faced, wholesome young boy.

What she was beginning to realize was that that boy could not have grown into this man with this personality. She needed to reconcile image with reality. She asked, So how did someone who likes the spotlight end up in Yuma? It’s such a low-profile, understated place.

He replied without turning. You’ve got to start someplace if you want to go into politics. I guess you could call me the big fish in the small pond. People in Yuma government are beginning to know me.

As if stimulated by the thought, he stood abruptly and began to pace the tile floor of their room. After five minutes he still paced. He appeared oblivious to her and everything else around him.

Finally she voiced her impatience. Will you stop, please? You’re harshing my mellow.

Harshing your...?. That’s one thing I’ve never been accused of doing to a woman, whatever it is.

Mellow, Win. You’re just too intense. You’re harshing my mellow. Why can’t you relax?

Is that surfer or stoner slang?

Never was a surfer and I’m not a stoner–well, not any more. I admit I did a little toking in high school and that first month in massage school.

She stretched her bare arms up and behind to touch the headboard. After my handsome Marine deployed it was either go back home to a thoroughly whacky mom, or find some way to make it on my own. I had to work and pay my way through so there were a few luxuries, like the weed, that I had to give up.

A massage therapist who gawks at birds. You just might be a little peculiar, you know?

The tone of his voice seemed to bring in the sodden atmosphere of the outdoors.

Aren’t you playing judge today? Remember, medical marijuana is legal in some states, and some are going for recreational. I can tell you how I got interested in birdwatching. It’s not peculiar at all.

Sure, he mumbled. He stopped pacing and went back to the chair to stare out at the rain, making her wonder if he was really interested and if he would really listen.

It started when I finished school and was trying to build my massage clientele. That’s when I got sick.

Win leaned back and propped one ankle on the other knee. What does being sick have to do with being a birdwatcher?

It was when my fibro was at its worst. I was in pain all day, every day. And I think I had a lot more going on than just fibromyalgia. I had a lot of what’s politely called intestinal distress. But the doctors couldn’t diagnose it and they couldn’t help me. Even the right kind of weed didn’t do it. I couldn’t eat and when I did, I’d throw it up or shit it all out again in less than an hour.

I’m glad I didn’t know you then.

Yeah, it was gross. I fainted onto the bathroom floor more than once.

You’re not the fainting type.

I was back then. I felt like I could have died there, hugging the porcelain, but no such luck. After two or three months I got so skinny my clothes hung on me. Then I developed agoraphobia. I couldn’t go out of the house, not even to get the mail or pick up some milk.

That doesn’t sound like you at all.

It was me. My stomach just couldn’t digest real food. I used to watch cooking shows on TV–all that beautiful food–and just weep.

Well, you don’t look undernourished now and you did fine at dinner last night. You still haven’t explained the bird-watching.

She smiled and propped her head on one hand, letting the sheet fall away from her bare breast. She knew that she was attractive to Win with or without clothing and without a touch of makeup.

Back then I was so sick I’d lie in bed by the screen door, the big sliding door to the patio, and listen to the doves outside. Such a sweet, cooing sound. They woke me so gently in the morning. During the day they reminded me there was a world out there and they soothed me to sleep when I had to nap.

You love the little feathered dinosaurs, don’t you?

Of course. They were company, then. They were comfort. They were my only connection to the real world–the healthy, functioning world. Then, when I got a little better, I’d sit on the patio and notice other birds, and I’d want to know what they were, so I got a bird book. And then I got binoculars. And that was that.

Win crossed his arms. Yeah. You’ve made quite a name for yourself at the local Audubon Society. And with those articles in the birding mags.

She said nothing, wondering if he expected an apology for her success or assurance he would someday surpass her in the narrow and competitive world of serious bird-watching.

Suddenly he pounded the arm of the chair with his fist. Damn! I hate doing nothing. With the weather like this it’s too crappy to go out, and with no Wi-Fi in this excuse for a hotel I can’t even go on line to make plans for another trip.

"Win, don’t you like bird-watching just for the fun of it?

He stared at her.

The excitement of the hunt, the glory of the birds! Well, aren’t some of them gorgeous? When I look through the binoculars they take my breath away. She couldn’t read his expression.

He said, Very smug and self-satisfied about your little hobby, aren’t you?

It sounds nasty when you say it that way. But as a matter of fact I am very satisfied with my life right now, not just the birding. I love my work and my clients, and I love the birds. I’m the ‘Life is good!’ girl.

He didn’t answer.

A rush of disappointment filled her solar plexus with heaviness and her mind with remorse. She had taken this trip with Win hoping it would be the beginning of a long and loving relationship. Now she couldn’t see that goal clearly enough to continue the pleasant fantasy.

I know you’re not enjoying yourself, Win. Maybe it’s not just the rain. You and I come from such different backgrounds.

What is that supposed to mean?

It means maybe we aren’t good for each other.

That’s crap. I don’t have to be like you. You don’t even understand who I am, and you’re starting to think about ending us?

Then tell me who you are.

He sat forward in the easy chair with both feet on the floor and his forehead in his hands. Finally he said, When I sit around like this, not accomplishing anything, not earning any recognition at all, I feel useless. It’s like I don’t even exist.

Don’t even exist? How can you say that? You get a lot of recognition when we’re home. You do a good job as H.R. director, you belong to those two civic groups, you even got into the most eligible bachelor" section of Yuma Now."

He stared at her for a long moment, then said You’re right. I’m being a complete pig. I adore you, Red, and I know you love me too much to think of leaving me. It will be okay when we get home tomorrow.

Cindy fell silent, muted by uncertainty. Could the warm, emotional connection and satisfying sex life she had imagined with Win still be within reach?

Words failed her but she had hope. She lifted the sheet and bedspread from her naked body and pushed it all the way down with her feet. She watched his boredom give way to interest, his eyes focus and grow avid.

Come here, Win, she said. We’ll find some parts of you that exist.

Oh. When all else fails, let’s f-.

Win! You know I don’t like the F-word.

Whatever. At least for this I won’t need my freaking binoculars. He stood and began to unbuckle his belt.

She fell back on the pillow and laughed. No, you don’t need binoculars for sex, Win, not even spiritual sex.

No answer. She saw his eyes on her diaphragm and stomach and knew he was mesmerized by their rise and fall. His eyes lingered on her pubic patch. The rich, red color never failed to arouse him.

Damn, he muttered, looking down at his groin. You always hit me like a jolt of electricity. He lifted his shirt off and carefully unzipped his pants over the obstructing erection.

When he reached the bed, he stopped, as if her words had just registered. He looked down at her. "Spiritual sex? Spiritual sex?"

Haven’t you ever...?. No, I guess not. She closed her eyes and said softly, Sometimes when the emotion is there and it’s slow and lovely, the world disappears and you’re just floating in space–both of you in one body, but without a body. It’s...it’s heaven. It’s pure.

She knew he hadn’t heard. The urgency of his arousal had rendered him deaf. Naked, he climbed onto the bed. She rose to her knees and pushed him onto his back. Moving her hands down his body, she spread his legs far apart, leaned her head to the side and with exquisite slowness trailed her long, silky, red hair from between his thighs up and over his quivering genitals.

Chapter Three

Kim realized she was holding her breath, whether from shock or to block the odor of the decaying body, she didn’t know. She closed her eyes for a second, forced herself to open them again and took a deep breath, resigned to take in all that demanded to be witnessed.

On the thin rocky soil in front of her the terrible stillness of the woman’s body contrasted with a perceptible stir of activity. Ants, beetles, flies, lizards, things pale and squirming, were active around, on and inside the dead flesh.

The woman’s less fleshy parts, the wrists, fingers and lower legs appeared partially mummified. The smell of decay emanated from the woman’s midsection and open chest. Kim stared, thinking it must have been a mountain lion or coyotes that consumed her internal organs, because powerful jaws had twisted the rib cage upward.

The positioning was a bizarre pose never seen in life, upper and lower body facedown, with midsection tilted upward so the ends of the lower ribs on one side were visible. The arms and hands were out-spread with fingers claw-like, death blackened nails still digging into the dirt, as if the woman had made a last, desperate attempt to claim the earth, claim life.

Kim coaxed her mind toward analysis and reason. The woman was probably a hiker or bird-watcher who became lost and died of heat stroke. Her shorts and shirt, stiff and darkened by the process of decay, were just what a hiker would wear, although now they appeared too big for the shriveled and decimated body.

Kim had seen worse death scenes, both in