Cactus Heart (David Mapstone Mystery 5)

“Hayden Yarnell,” I said. “The cattle baron.”

Cop faces stared at me impatiently.

I nodded toward the bones. “These must be the Yarnell twins. His grandsons. They were kidnapped back in the Depression and never found.”

Lindsey whispered what we were all thinking: “Oh my God.”

Chapter Three

Hayden Winthrop Yarnell burst into Arizona history on an April day in 1889, the year my grandmother was born. That day, at a desolate one-shack siding on the Southern Pacific Rai

lroad grandly called Gila City, a gang of robbers attacked a train as it took on water. They wanted the express car, which they heard was carrying payroll strongboxes bound for the mines at Bisbee. The gold was there, all right, but so was Hayden Yarnell with two Colt Peacemaker revolvers.

A photo of him taken two months later shows a clean-shaven man with delicate lips and a long, strong nose, looking uncomfortable and stern in a high collar, string tie and suit coat. But something behind his eyes burned with the obstinate clarity of the pioneer—that’s the way I’ve always pictured him at Gila City.

The leader of the outlaws, a murderer and rustler named Three-Fingers McMackin, shot a deputy in the face and strode to the door of the express car. When Three-Fingers slid the door open, Yarnell put a .45 caliber bullet between his eyes. Another desperado nearly severed Yarnell’s left arm with a rifle shot, but the young guard managed to get back in the express car and close the door. For the next half-hour, the outlaws emptied their pistols and rifles into the car as Yarnell clung to the floor by the payroll boxes. But they didn’t have the guts to try to open the door again, so they rode away empty handed.

This wasn’t the last Arizona would hear of Hayden Yarnell. With reward money from the train robbery, he talked his way into becoming a partner in the Copper Queen mine, the legendary dig that for a time made Bisbee, Arizona, the most important city between St. Louis and San Francisco. Five years later, Yarnell cashed out a rich man, not yet thirty years old. By that time he also owned three saloons in Brewery Gulch, Bisbee’s notorious pleasure district, and was a director of the town’s biggest bank. Every history of Bisbee in the 1890s had a Hayden Yarnell story or two: about the day he faced down a gang of outlaws trying to rob the Goldwater-Castenada Department Store, his marathon poker games that would go for days, the orphanage he quietly bankrolled.

With the Apache subdued and the coming of the railroad, a young Anglo with vision and money could build many an empire. Yarnell chose cattle, one of the touchstones of the West. His first ranch, Rancho del Cielo, spread two thousand acres across the high southern Arizona grasslands around Tombstone. Eventually, he had more than a hundred thousand head of cattle scattered across ranches and pastureland from the Mexican border into the Arizona high country two hundred miles north. And every one of them bore the distinctive brand of his initials—the large Y, the small h—looking just as we found them engraved on the pocket watch beside two small skeletons.

I was telling this story over breakfast at one of my favorite morning spots, an unassuming little eatery on Glendale Avenue called Susan’s. It had recently been called Linda’s. Such are the comings and goings in the Valley of the Sun. Peralta sat across from me, occasionally nodding as he munched on a giant skillet breakfast, picked through that morning’s Arizona Republic and made notes in a stack of manila files spread out among the salsa, ketchup, jam, and coffee. The television was tuned to CNBC. Susan came by to fuss over my black eye.

Peralta was decked out in Brooks Brothers and had the annoying energy of a morning person. I was in a suit, too, charcoal gray with a subdued navy tie that had been an early gift from my ex-wife, Patty. In my years away from Phoenix, I had come to love suits. Now it made me stand out as an oddball in a town of golf-course attire. I didn’t mind.

“Mapstone, your mind is a wondrous thing.” His tone was ambiguous. “How do you know these things?”

“I wrote a paper on Hayden Yarnell in college. Then my dissertation was on the Great Depression in the West, remember? Of course not. Anyway, he was one of the most important cattlemen in the state’s history.”

“This Hayden Yarnell is related to Max Yarnell, the businessman?”

“Where do you think Max got his money? Max Yarnell is a grandson. If I’m not mistaken, he’s a brother of the twins who were kidnapped.”

Peralta crooked his mouth down and squinted at me. “So why the hell haven’t I ever heard of this Yarnell kidnapping case?”

I shrugged. “I only know about the kidnapping because my grandparents used to talk about it. It happened in 1941, right on the eve of World War II. The cops caught the guy and he was executed, so there was no real mystery aside from where the bodies were buried. Then the war changed this town forever. You know ancient history in Phoenix is three years ago.”

“I can’t imagine not seeing Jamie and Jennifer grow up,” he said, speaking of his grown daughters. It was a stunningly introspective remark for Peralta and I made no reply. He went on, “Don’t you want to have kids, Mapstone?” He didn’t even wait a beat. “You seem to know a lot about this case. So go down and help our friends at Phoenix PD. You can use the money.”

It was my deal with the county: two thousand dollars if my research into an old case led to some substantial new information; five thousand if it closed the case. I did need the money. But I ate my omelet in silence, which would annoy him; he was a quick-answer man. Finally I said, “There’s nothing to be done. We have the bones. Find a Yarnell relative and test the DNA. Looks pretty open-and-shut.”

“That’s even better,” Peralta said.

I was losing my appetite. “This is a city case, and the only thing they want less than a sheriff’s deputy sticking his nose into it is a sheriff’s consultant.”

Peralta shook the ketchup bottle violently and doused his concoction of eggs, ham, peppers, and potatoes. “Let me see your wallet.” I played along and handed it over. “I see a star—a good-looking badge, if I may say so—that says ‘Maricopa County Deputy Sheriff.’ I see a deputy sheriff’s ID card with your name on it.” He tossed it back at me. “As I recall, you graduated from the academy and worked on the streets for five years before thinking you wanted to go off and teach college.”

“Four and a half years.”

“Any teaching jobs out there you want?”

“I got a call from a Bible college in Houston,” I said. He almost smiled.

“Anyway, your help on the case has been requested by Chief Wilson himself.” The big enchilada of Phoenix PD. Peralta added, “After I volunteered you. He liked the work you did on the Phaedra Riding case.”

Peralta was just being himself, but I couldn’t hide my annoyance. “You are the master of the hidden agenda. I should have known we weren’t just having breakfast to raise our cholesterol levels and gossip.”

“We work for America’s Toughest Sheriff, remember? So theater is important.”