Mars hill murder, p.1
Mars Hill Murder, page 1
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Mars Hill Murder
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
A word about the author…
Thank you for purchasing
Rafat paused in his cleaning, stepped outside, and pulled out his golden fountain pen, a birthday present from his mother. That was the advantage to night cleaning. He could always stop to capture a couple of lines. He couldn’t be certain, but it felt like his songs were getting stronger.
Night sky, tight sky
everything all right sky,
soon no moon,
babe, let’s croon.
Maybe spoon? Both old-fashioned words—which his mom would appreciate, haha.
He was about to start another verse, but before he could write “Light sky,” he saw a flash of something in his peripheral vision, something shining in the dusty moonlight.
“No!” he thought, turning to face the assailant, Rafat’s pen extended like a weapon.
The knife cut into him before he could lunge. It struck again and again. The young man was dead before he hit the ground, notebook clenched in his hand. His cherished fountain pen rolled quietly away from his body, as steps retreated.
Mars Hill Murder
by
Mary Tolan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Mars Hill Murder
COPYRIGHT © 2023 by Mary McMahon Tolan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com
Cover Art by Kim Mendoza
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com
Publishing History
First Edition, 2023
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-5092-5177-3
Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-5178-0
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
To Larry and Sally Tolan, who loved to read—to themselves and to all six of us. And to my sons Tolan and Will, who make me laugh and boost me up.
Acknowledgements
While novels are usually written by one person, it’s a fact that we isolated writer types do not create books in a bubble. Many people helped me with Mars Hill Murder, which I wrote over a period of ten years. It took that long because of my “real” jobs—reporting and teaching.
I want to thank those who read drafts of this murder mystery including stellar writers in their own right: Mary Hays, Stephen Long, and Stephanie Innes, as well as readers Jenny Tolan, Antoinette Beiser, Mandy Metzger, Molly Brown, Tolan Thornton, Ellen and Michael Houser, and Peggy Daly. Professional writer and editor Tammy Greenwood read this when it was twice as long and half as good, and had the guts to tell me so.
When most of your siblings are writers, it’s tough not to compete and compare. Yet Tom, Kathleen, Sandy, John, and Yam Tolan—four of them writers, and one a photographer/baker—have always been fired up for me regarding my writing dreams.
Patrice Horstman and Lulu Santamaria looked over the book contract, and only let me pay them with a dinner. That was a fun night! Writers Annette McGivney, Janna Jones, and Stephany Brown were always ready to talk writing. Tolan Thornton and Will Thornton gave me good ideas, plus pep talks.
My stellar editor Dianne Rich at The Wild Rose Press was the first person in nearly a decade of sending out queries to see the potential in Mars Hill Murder. During the editing process she made insightful suggestions and dead-on corrections, always with a warm message, even reminding me toward the end of the process to breathe—and tie my shoes.
During the Covid years while I finished this book, my friends Stephany Brown and Donn Johnson were my main pod pals and helped me stay at least somewhat sane.
For those of you who know Flagstaff, you’ll notice that businesses have new names in these pages. This is for legal purposes, and not because I don’t love you as you are.
Any errors are, of course, my own.
Prologue
Alejandra Lopez put extra effort into her polishing. She wanted to see the metal rails of the telescope platform shine. Some night, she hoped to come back to this amazing Flagstaff observatory as a visitor, no scrubbing involved, and see what the astronomers watched through the glass housed in this long metal tube. She had often gazed at the distant stars from her hometown in Mexico, but she had never seen the pinpoints of light up close. She guessed it was like looking at diamonds. Los diamantes del cielo.
She felt lucky her sister and brother-in-law had asked her to work tonight. After arriving from Mexico just the month before, she was ready to help out, and she wanted to show them that. She didn’t plan on cleaning as a living in the United States, however. No, gracias! She was a teacher by trade and hoped to continue that in the States if this loco, wealthy country let her stay. She figured there must be lots of American children who needed to learn Spanish. Meantime, she would do anything for her family.
She and her sister had been close as girls, and when Feliciana left for America with Juan it had devastated Alejandra and their parents. She felt isolated without her best friend, but believed she was needed at home. Since then, both their mother and father had passed on, and now the sisters could be together again. She would get to know her nieces and nephews and start a new life. She crossed herself—quick but reverent. When her sister Feliciana caught the flu last month, Juan had asked Alejandra if she would fill in. Of course she would. Now she came up here a few nights a week.
Alejandra thought she heard something outside the telescope building. She stood up straight, cleaning rag in hand, listening to the night. She heard another train in the distance.
“Dios Mío!” she whispered. She’d never been anywhere with as many trains as this place called Flagstaff, Arizona.
She turned back to her cleaning, when a sharp, cool breeze crept up from behind. She turned around in time to see the big door had opened. She looked back into the shadows beside the door where the overhead light didn’t reach.
“¡Hola! Quién es?”
Alejandra’s screams were muffled by the sound of the freight train passing through Flagstaff, the engineer laying on the horn to keep wildlife and drunks off the tracks.
Alejandra Lopez took her last breath, imagining the glittering stars.
She didn’t feel her body being stabbed again and again, or being dragged into the nearby woods, or the cold ground underneath her. She didn’t see the dark sky of stars winking above her.
Footsteps hurried away, but she didn’t hear them.
Chapter 1
Miles Harper left the newsroom and walked over to cover the protest at Wheeler Park. He looked over the gathering assembly in Flagstaff’s small, downtown park that sat between the library and city hall.
About one hundred people stood in front of a temporary stage set up next to the dry Rio de Flag. The speaker, a young, fit Hispanic woman, spoke to the crowd, alternating between English and Spanish. The people had gathered to protest the Arizona law that cracked down on illegal immigration.
She called out, “Si se puede,” and the crowd chanted the words back to her.
“Yes we can,” she said, and they echoed her again.
“SB 1070 equals discrimination and racial profiling,” the young woman said in Spanish and then English. The crowd booed and hissed.
“It means that white people can come and go as they please, but brown and black and red people can be stopped, even if they’ve lived here for generations.”
Miles pulled his narrow reporter’s notebook out of his back jeans pocket and began writing as fast as he could.
“Does my face look like an alien?”
“Arrest me, not my friends!”
While most of the people at the rally did seem upset, there was also a festive feel to the gathering, Miles thought. A mix of urgency and camaraderie.
Miles walked through the crowd of twenty-somethings, middle-aged, and old people, about two-thirds Hispanic and a third Anglos, with some Native Americans sprinkled throughout the crowd.
After jotting down some of the quotes from the speakers, Miles walked over to a group of counter-protesters, who were waving their own signs.
“Keep our boarder’s safe,” one read. In need of some spellcheck, Miles thought, then tried to pull his own prejudices in check. If he weren’t a journalist, he’d probably be organizing gatherings like this, and arguing with this small group of counter-protesters. But, as a reporter, he knew he had to keep his neutral stance so he could tell a story to his readers through unbiased eyes.
He approached a woman dressed in red, white, and blue, who was deep in discussion with a couple others donning patriotic colors.
“Sorry to interrupt, ma’am. But can I ask a few questions?” Miles began. “I’m a reporter for the Gazette.”
“I’m surprised you’re even willing to talk to our side,” the woman responded.
“Oooooh!” one of her group responded.
“Go get ’im, Jillie,” another teased.
Her friends moved closer, and the woman faced Miles.
“What do you want to know then?”
“Just why you’re here. I assume you’re against the message of the main protesters.”
“You can say that again,” she said, nodding toward the platform. “I don’t have anything against people coming to our country, but let’s keep it legal. None of this sneaking over the borders. That’s a crime.”
“It is,” Miles conceded. “What about those who are fleeing violence and gangs, and who say they want to help their children have better lives?”
“Oh, you’ve bought all that hook, line, and sinker, have you?”
“I’m just asking.”
“Well, then. I’m just answering. My great-great grandparents came over from Europe all those years ago, but they came into this country legally. You wouldn’t have found them sneaking over in the dark of night. They worked hard, all the next generations did, and to have that all exploded into smoke by illegal aliens, no thank you. It’s just not right.”
Miles noticed her contemporaries waving her over.
“Got one more minute?” he asked. “I’d like to get your name, and what you do for a living, all that. Do you live in Flagstaff?”
“Name’s Jillie—Jillian Carruthers. I’m a stay-at-home mom, and our ranch is about eighteen miles east of Flagstaff.”
“And the ranch is—”
“Gotta go now,” she said, walking away, but then turning back to him.
“Be sure to spell my name right. The media always gets it wrong. J-I-L-L-I-A-N C-A-R-R-U-T-H-E-R-S.” And she walked off.
“Will do,” Miles called to her back. He wondered how many times she had been interviewed, and for what.
About to leave the park, he noticed the woman seemed to be arguing with a couple of men in her group. He walked back over to them.
“…not a good idea to talk to the press,” a tall man was telling Jillian.
They stopped talking when he joined them.
“Something else?” Jillian asked.
“I wondered if anyone else wanted to talk to me for the story.”
“I got nothing nice to say ’bout the illegals who sneak into our country and take away our jobs,” said the extremely tall man in thick glasses wearing a John Deere ball cap.
“That’s the truth,” added another man, shorter, skinny, and with a couple days’ growth of facial hair. “Bet you’ve never lost a job to no illegals.”
“Yeah,” agreed John Deere.
Jillian looked concerned, and Miles thought she might be worried they were taking it too far. He was wrong.
“Listen, Miles Harper. We don’t begrudge anyone coming into our country. But as these guys said, Americans who work hard should not be undercut by aliens. They are lazier than we are. It’s just their nature.”
“It’s from growing up in the warmer climates,” John Deere said, nodding.
“Got it, thanks,” Miles said, starting to turn away.
“So did you ever lose a job to anyone from outside?” asked the second man.
“Yeah, did you?” echoed John Deere.
“You’re right, I didn’t ever lose a job to someone new to this country, as far as I know,” Miles said, choosing his words carefully. “So I don’t know what you’ve been through. Either of you want to tell me your story?”
They all glanced at each other and shook their heads.
“I think you have enough from what we told you,” Jillian said.
Miles wrote down the names of the two men and walked out of the park.
They had a point. Not about the laziness, of course, but about the fact that he, Miles, was lucky enough to never have been pushed out of work due to immigration. But it still riled him. He was glad they’d talked more to him, though, so he could create a balanced story. Let the readers decide. It was kind of a cop-out on his part but, hey, it wasn’t like he was writing a think piece for The Atlantic or Harper’s. He worked for a small daily paper, covering the news.
Walking into the Gazette office, he breathed in the smell of ink from the presses, body odors, and a dustiness that was probably an accumulation of the last few decades the newspaper had been in its downtown location. He loved it all. He pushed through the half door that swung open into reception and turned left into the newsroom.
“Got something good?” hollered Ruth Swanson, his editor, a five-foot-two, stout woman with spiked orange hair and matching lipstick, manicure, and shiny four-inch heels. Her voice seemed too low for her minute body. “You’re pushing deadline here, so I hope you got a super interesting story.”
“I’m on it, boss,” he told her. “Give me a half hour.”
“Make that twenty, Harper. We held a six-inch hole for you.”
“No way!” He was shocked. “This is a big story.”
“For today, make it a little story,” Ruth demanded. “You can fill in more online and for tomorrow’s paper. I told you to get back here in under an hour.”
Miles groaned internally, then sat down at his desk and powered up his computer. He knew he had pushed it by talking to the anti-protesters a second time. And deadlines were deadlines. But, still. Tell the whole story in six damn inches? Oh, well. He’d do his best.
The newsroom workstations were across from each other. In the large room, sets of four metal desks were pushed together, each arrangement forming a rectangle where three or four reporters or editors faced each other, with monitors at each desk. There was the news section, sports, features, and the editors. Because of recent cutbacks at the paper, however, about a quarter of the desks went unoccupied. Miles’s desk, which faced away from the newsroom door, was one of the farthest from his editor’s workplace.
He jumped into the story, telling the readers the background of Senate Bill 1070, the protesters against it, and those who were protesting the protesters. Six inches came and went, and he was just finishing at about twelve inches when Ruth called out to him again.
“Harper, it’s time,” she said simply.
He reread the copy, cut out four inches, made a few Associated Press corrections, and hit the “Send” button that would place it on Ruth’s computer screen. The AP guidelines were grammar and spelling rules followed by newspapers across the country. They were picky, but for Miles they were great because it made grammar choices clear. Just take a peek at the AP Stylebook, the reporters’ Bible, and you were good as gold. Or at least silver.
“Jesus, Miles, eight inches!” It was Ruth’s turn to groan. But she was reading through it and nodding—always a good sign. He hoped there would be room on one of the jump pages to get it all in, condensed as it was.
Miles stood up, stretched tall, and walked out of the building for a breath of mountain air. He’d lived in Flagstaff for nearly five years this second time around, and still couldn’t get enough of the air, the biking and running trails, the pace. He had discovered all this as a college freshman a dozen years ago and became hooked on the lifestyle. After graduating from the University of Northcentral Arizona—UNA—with a bachelor’s in journalism, he returned to the Midwest where he’d grown up, to work at a weekly paper in Chicago, and later for a small daily in the suburbs.
