High Country Nocturne (10 page)

She turned away and placed her hand against the wall, lightly at first and then with such force that it was if she were trying to push the building off its foundations. When she faced me again, her eyes were still wet with tears.

I had never seen Sharon cry in all the years I had known her, all the years she heard other people tell their psychological nightmares, all the years she had endured her husband's moods and tirades.

“I didn't know what Mike meant,” she managed in a husky voice. “When he called on the old county landline as Paco and told you to watch your ass. I should have done more. Should have realized. Now Lindsey is hurt.”

“It's not your fault. I'm to blame.”

“I'm afraid…” she began. Then she lowered her head for a long moment before finishing. “For the first time in my life, I'm afraid he's in over his head. We can't lose both of them, David. And you lost Robin, too.”

“We won't lose them,” I whispered without conviction.

“He's in trouble, David, and he needs you.”

I suddenly felt angry again. “If he needs me, he has to do more than drop a cryptic note on a business card.”

“I know, I know.” She put both hands on my shoulders, calm again. “I don't know how to ask for your help because you're totally focused on Lindsey. As you should be. But…”

“We can help each other.” I said it not knowing what it meant, what I was promising. “I'll try to find him.”

“Thank you.” She pulled my face close. “You're exhausted. Go home and get some sleep. I promise we'll call if anything changes here.”

She turned me and pushed my numb body forward.

The automatic sliding glass doors gave their kissing sound and I walked through. When I looked back, she was watching me with those wide brown eyes. I shook my head and forced myself to move along.

Chapter Fifteen

A cop had given me a ride to the hospital, so I crossed the expanse of Thomas Road and walked the nine blocks home, past the narrow streets I had memorized on my bicycle as a child. Edgemont, Windsor, Cambridge, Virginia, Wilshire, Lewis, Vernon, Encanto Boulevard, Cypress.

Hardly anyone lived in the neighborhood from those days. One friend from grade school went into the Diplomatic Service and was posted to Budapest, another was a lobbyist in California. Yet another was living in London. So many had left town.

Willo was one of the safest neighborhoods in the metropolitan area. If I didn't live here, if I hadn't brought trouble, there would barely have been a violent crime in years.

There was no time for those thoughts. No time to appreciate the distinctive character of each house or mourn about the idiots who had put in desert landscaping where this had always been the oasis. No time, for now, to worry about Lindsey. All my senses had to be on high alert.

It was Sunday night in the heart of the city and few cars passed me on Fifth Avenue. A couple walked their dog. No assassins were hiding behind oleander hedges in the service alleys. Overhead, high thin clouds lingered, turned pink by the reflected city lights. A slight breeze tousled my hair.

At home, I armed the alarm and took a long shower, locking the bathroom door and setting two guns and my iPhone on the vanity. I let the needles of hot water pummel my battered face, let the room fill with steam.

I dried off and approached the dreaded mirror. Even after using several cold packs at the hospital, the tissue around my right eye was colorful and swollen, plenty of purple, red, and orange like an Arizona sunset. It hurt in colors, too, all in the red zone. My left cheek bore the slashes of the killer's fingernails. I popped four Advils.

The little meteor strike of skin was four inches above my right nipple, the remains of the only time I had been shot. It had come on the first case Peralta gave me to clean up. I lost enough blood to pass out and they airlifted me from Sedona to St. Joe's. I was lucky my lung didn't collapse. When I woke up, Lindsey was there. We weren't even married. Sometimes when we were in bed, she would lightly worry the scar with her fingertip, trying to erase it. Fragments of the bullet were still inside me.

“Lord, have mercy.”

I spoke the words to myself and said them conversationally, not exactly as a petition to the almighty but a stress valve letting off. The moment stunned me. My grandmother, a daughter of the frontier who knew much loss in her long life, had used that phrase often and in exactly that tone of voice. Now I said it.

A few years ago, I realized that if I were in a relaxed situation, especially sitting down, my hands would join in my conversation. This was not wild gesticulation. It was hands and wrists. Grandmother had done the same thing. When I was a little boy, I had thought it was strange. Now I did the same thing all the time.

The grandparents who raised me were long dead and yet they lived on through me. I considered how I had underestimated Melton. Yes, I had taken the badge out of unreasoning fear, to buy time for Lindsey, even though I didn't believe a word he said about her. But he had also gotten to me about how “I owed” my hometown.

Grandfather talked that way. He told me stories of the early pioneers, the heroic acts of dam and canal building that had turned a wilderness into a garden. That's how he told it. “Never forget that you owe,” he said. “Never forget that you are from Maricopa County, Arizona.”

Grandfatherisms, I called them. Melton had made a snare for me with those sentiments.

Even though it was Sunday night, I dressed in a pinstripe blue suit, starched white shirt, and muted red tie. For the first time, I noticed the pattern—tiny diamonds. My new watch, the one Lindsey had given me for Christmas, went across my wrist. I stashed a pair of latex evidence gloves and badge case in my pocket, slipped on the Colt Python and the backup gun. I was a deputy sheriff again.

The case file from Melton was sitting in the living room. I decided to let it be for a few hours. I would do three more tasks associated with Peralta and then pause, if not stop.

It was not clear to me that he was safe. The man was very capable on his own—I was not indispensible. For years, he had given the orders and saved the day. But on a case a year ago, I had saved him. Now he had left the cryptic second business card. Whatever trouble he was in required my assistance.

That's what I told myself.

His undercover adventure, predicament, descent into lawlessness, whatever it was, also twined up with the assassin who met me on the front lawn last night. I wasn't going to get in Kate Vare's way, as long as she did her job. But the shooter remained at-large and anything I could learn about her connection to Peralta would help.

It couldn't be a coincidence that she had come after me after he made off with the diamonds.

The first task was quickly foiled.

Find Matt Pennington.

Lindsey said she had news about this, but before she could tell me more we had begun fighting about the new job with Melton. I sat at the desk and carefully folded Lindsey's glasses, studying the acetate tortoiseshell frames with round lenses and small earpieces that perfectly fit her thin face.

“My nerd girl look,” she would say.

Unfortunately for me, Lindsey's computer was password-protected.

I tried every word and number combination I could think of and got through with “Dave” and the date and year of the first time we had sex. That delightful memory, and the fact that she recalled it, was followed by anxiety that I should call Sharon to check on her. I resisted the temptation. I had only been gone for forty-five minutes.

The computer screen was neither sentimental nor anxious. It brought me to a gray backdrop with a red box demanding “Keystroke Authentication Pattern.”

She was too clever for me. I gave up. I could at least Google Pennington later. Hell, I might even Bing him. But I needed answers no search engine was going to supply.

I went outside, the Colt Python in my hand. The air was magically dry and pleasant.

The darkened carport was clear of assassins, so I climbed in Lindsey's old Honda Prelude, and drove west.

Our office on Grand Avenue, a squat adobe that was about all that remained of a once-charming 1920s auto court, looked quiet. The neon sign of a cowboy throwing a lasso, the other survivor of the motel, blinked benignly. Otherwise, the place was surrounded by a twelve-foot steel fence and watched by surveillance cameras.

I pressed the remote in the car to open the gate, let it close behind me, then got out of the car and went in, unlocking two heavy deadbolts and disarming the alarm.

Inside, the front office held its usual smell of dust and old linoleum. I turned on the banker's lamp atop my desk and for a long time merely listened. Everything sounded and looked much the same as when the FBI had arrived with a search warrant Friday afternoon.

Why was the FBI investigating this case? For that matter, why did they arrive so soon after Peralta's robbery?

The walls stubbornly refused to give me answers.

Next I went into the Danger Room, unlocking the steel door. I compared the assault rifles, sniper rifle, machine guns, shotguns, and pistols in their neat racks and drawers with the firearms inventory from the files. Over time, the bookish David Mapstone had learned all the details and capabilities of each weapon. Nothing was missing.

Peralta had gone on the diamond run carrying only his .40-caliber Glock sidearm. Not only that, but he had emptied out the weapons locker in his truck.

I retrieved a shortened M-4 carbine—the technical term was close quarter battle receiver—and extra magazines. Don't forget a Remington pump shotgun with a belt of shells. No party is complete without one. Rounding out my kit were two pairs of binoculars, one with night-vision capability. I zipped them up in a black duffle bag and set it aside.

Next, I sat at the small desk in the far end of the small room. It held a laptop connected to the video cameras.

I quickly spun through forty-eight hours worth of digital information, learning nothing new. At 8:15 a.m. Friday, Peralta came in the gate, parked his pickup, and walked inside. Unfortunately in this case, we lacked cameras watching the interior of the building. Thirty minutes later, he left. At 3:12 p.m., the cameras showed the FBI arriving and, two hours later, leaving. Images of me appeared, walking out and driving away. Otherwise, not a single car pulled to the gate even to turn around.

Back in the main room, I pulled out Peralta's plush chair and sank into it, studying his desk. The top was as usual immaculately empty. The FBI had gone through the credenza behind his desk, taking his laptop and the files in the credenza cabinet as evidence.

“Good luck with that computer,” I said out loud, thinking of how little he used it.

Then my eyes settled on the dictaphone, still sitting atop the credenza. It was at least twenty years old, the same one he had used when he was sheriff. I suppose the county had so little need for it they let him take it when he left office.

The feds probably thought it was an objet d'art and left it alone. They were wrong. He used it almost daily, despite Lindsey's efforts to match him with a voice-recognition app.

She had considered it a breakthrough when she successfully walked him through setting up a Gmail account. On the other hand, she had also taught him about GPS tracking of cell phones, and how to remove the battery and SIM card to avoid it. That, he had immediately absorbed and put to use on Friday after leaving the mall.

I pressed the “play” button but immediately stopped the machine. Who knew, the agents who searched the office might have been givers as well as takers, and now were listening on the bug they had left behind. Putting on the spindly headphones, I started the dictaphone again and his deep voice immediately echoed out only for me.

“Mapstone, it's Friday morning and I need this letter to go out today.”

I thought again,
Jeez, we need to hire an administrative assistant
. If we live through this.

Over the headphones, I heard, “Date today. To, Mister Dan Patterson, Three-fifty East Encanto Boulevard, Phoenix. Look up the ZIP Code. Dear Mister Patterson. Thank you for your inquiry about our services. However, we do not handle marital disputes or surveillance. I would recommend these firms that might be of assistance…”

I listened as he droned on, sounding routine and even bored, not like someone about to steal a million dollars in diamonds. But there was nothing routine about this dictation. My stomach tightened the moment I heard the address. Encanto Boulevard only runs west of Central. On the east side, it becomes Oak Street.

He finished the letter with “and that's all for today. Aren't you happy?” and the machine was silent except for a subtle scratching every fifteen seconds or so.

I let it run.

“Mapstone.” Now his voice was different, dead serious. “By the time you find this, things will be pretty crazy. You're going to hear a lot of things about me. Don't believe them. The FBI has probably questioned you. I kept you out of this so you wouldn't have anything to tell them. Also, you and Lindsey would be safer.”

The machine scratched and seemed to hesitate. I hit it, the universal fix for all things mechanical, and Peralta continued.

“Don't trust anyone. If things go according to plan, I'll be back in the office Monday morning. If they don't…” After a pause, the voice said, “If they don't, find a man named Matt Pennington and he'll know how to contact me.” He gave Pennington's number and address. “There's no time to tell you more and it's better that you don't know. Run frosty, Mapstone.”

After more silence, I whispered. “Easy for you to say.”

Things had obviously gone wrong as early as Friday evening, hence he had left the note to me on the business card in Flagstaff.

I would find Matt Pennington. First, I decided to play a hunch.

Ready to leave, I thought about turning off the neon sign, but didn't. Robin had insisted that Peralta restore this little remnant of old Phoenix, when the blue highways ran past miles of neon-lighted motels. We could keep paying the electric bill for this little bit of whimsy on what was now an otherwise dismal stretch of roadway.

With the extra firepower now inside the Prelude, I drove out Grand. It was the only major street that cut at a southeast-northwest angle through the monotonous grid of Phoenix.

Once, Grand had been the highway from Phoenix to Los Angeles. Railroad tracks still ran beside it. Now Grand would take me to Indian School Road where I turned west again.

Indian School was another bleak six-lane Phoenix raceway across flat land bordered by pawn shops, payday loan offices, tattoo parlors, strip joints, empty buildings with for-lease signs out front, and even an outfit in a defunct Wendy's that promised money in exchange for your auto title. Little shrines decorated the joyless landscape, commemorating the loss of loved ones in a traffic mishap. Off on the curvilinear side streets were the cinderblock houses of Maryvale.

This was Phoenix's first mass-produced single-family-home development, John F. Long's American Dream in ranch houses built atop former fields of cotton, alfalfa, lettuce, and beets. It was the opposite of Willo, but in the 1960s it was new, with all-electric kitchens and backyard pools.

Builders such as John Hall, Ralph Staggs, and Elliott Whitehouse copied Maryvale on various scales all over the Valley. Del Webb built Sun City. They drew an Anglo middle class and retirees from Back East and growth paid for itself. That's what the city leaders said.

The last of that generation, Whitehouse, had died only a year ago.

Some areas fared better than others. In Maryvale, the Anglos moved out and the poor Hispanics moved in. Many of them were followed by successive waves of illegal immigrants that staffed the hotels, restaurants, and lawn services. It was suburbia aging badly, a linear slum.