High Country Nocturne (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-one

Lindsey's color had returned and the medicos were happy with her vital signs. For the first time, the hard realist inside me began to have hope.

I read her some favorite Emily Dickinson. But not about death kindly stopping for me.

When the nurses left, I said, “I almost got her. But she escaped. I let you down. They say her name is Amy Morris. But the name doesn't lead anywhere. Her driver's license is bogus. If you were up and around, you'd identify her in a heartbeat.”

The ventilator's rhythm was the only reply.

I was about to continue when a nurse returned to show me out.

As I sat down in the waiting room, my phone rang.

“Are you alone?”

It was Cartwright.

“Yes.”

“There's good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

“Good, please.” I felt my body bracing against the institutional furniture.

“Lindsey isn't under investigation for anything. Melton lied to you. It turns out he was partners with Horace Mann…”

“I know. Kate Vare told me they worked together.”

“Vare? The Phoenix detective?”

“She's pissed. She doesn't like being shut out by the feds.”

“Melton wanted you distracted. He's obviously working with Mann. Maybe your instincts weren't wrong.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“Meaning Pamela Grayson went back to her hotel. She visited her father in north Scottsdale. He retired and sold his business back in Ohio. We didn't know she had a family connection here. Her visit might not be connected to the diamond theft. Now I wonder about Horace Mann, too. He might be a suspect, after all. The man was very prompt to volunteer to take over this investigation. Back in the Army, the first thing I learned was never to volunteer.”

I asked for the bad news.

After a long pause, “Lindsey had an affair with her boss.”

And several lovers while I was letting Robin seduce me. It was our time of madness. I didn't tell him that or that all I wanted was to have her back with me. So I said I knew. No stranger can really see the inside of a marriage.

“I'm sorry, man. Anyway, time for you to make the phone call to the guy who contacted you in Matt Pennington's office.”

I was suddenly exhausted again.

“Go have a hotdog at Johnnie's across the street,” he said.

“Johnnie's is closed.”

“Go to Johnnie's,” he said. “Knock on the back door six times and be prepared to show your identification.”

“Should I come highly armed?”

“That would be a bad idea. Remember, back door.”

I thought he was going to end the call, but I heard a sigh. “One more thing, David. Don't contact me again. I need to lay low for this operation to work and for me to keep my cover.”

I said, “I'm going to find Peralta. And I'm going to find the woman who shot Lindsey.”

“I know.” And he was gone.

Chapter Thirty-two

Johnnie had made the best dogs in central Phoenix but now his shop was another empty storefront facing Thomas Road. The windows were covered with brown paper. Still, I did as Cartwright told me and walked around back. Puddles had gathered in the rutted asphalt.

I stood against the wall behind the liquor store and waited. Situational awareness: No one seemed to be following me. The alley was empty.

The back door to Johnnie's was white and battered, with a slit of a window guarded by bars. A sign was pasted to the center, black with orange letters, the kind you could buy at a hardware store: “Construction workers only.”

I rapped six times slowly.

A piece of paper peeled back from the slit, as if I were trying to get into a speakeasy. I held open my badge case until I heard a lock turn and the door opened long enough for me to step inside.

A big man with an assault rifle and ballistic vest told me to turn around and put my hands in the air to be searched. The lanyard around his neck showed an FBI identification.

“That won't be necessary.”

It was Eric Pham.

“Anchorage is hell this time of year,” I said. “But with climate change, it will get better up there.”

He didn't laugh. He had no sense of humor in the best of times. But in the best of times, he also dressed like a fed with a fussy streak. If it was a hundred ten degrees, he wore a suit, dimple perfectly centered in his tie, gold-and-blue FBI pin properly centered on his lapel. Today, he inhabited jeans and a baggy gray sweatshirt. It made him look much younger and not in a good way.

He and his team were also perfectly concealed. The FBI had recently built a huge new Phoenix field office, but it was way up north by Deer Valley Airport. The Bureau had been located in Midtown all my life, but even it had become another hustle in the sprawl engine tearing the city apart. Now this was the last place anyone would look for the feds.

“You weren't supposed to be part of this.” He glared at me.

“Peralta made me a part.” I could glare, too. “He left the business card that said, ‘find Matt Pennington.' Then this hitwoman…”

“We don't know she's a hitwoman or even a part of this operation.”

My temples started throbbing. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

“Walk across the street to the ICU and tell that to my wife. Oh, you can't because she's in a coma after the hitwoman shot her and nearly killed her…”

“Calm down, Doctor Mapstone.”

So I was a doctor again.

I was about to go from zero to asshole in 3.6 seconds so I forced my temper down.

The room was dim, lit by a few overhead fluorescent lights long past their prime. The dingy tables from the restaurant had been set up with computers, two and three screens each, with four agents at work. All wore hoodies or T-shirts. They looked me over and went back to their screens.

Other than the computers, it looked nothing like an FBI control center from the movies of television. No expensively designed techno-wonder. A white board stood at one end of the room. Someone had sketched boxes with lettering inside:

PERALTA

RUSSIANS

SUSPECT AGENT

PENNINGTON

OTHER?

Lines connected some of the boxes. It didn't seem very helpful.

Pham said, “Our asset tells me you found Pennington dead, a suicide.”

The asset being Ed Cartwright. Pham wouldn't say his name even among this trusted group.

I said, “That's what it was made to look like. The woman…”

“I understand why you're obsessed with her, but there's no evidence she has anything to do with this case.”

“Outside our house on Saturday night, she stuck a gun in my face and said, ‘Where are my stones?' I don't think she meant her rock collection. She said she would have preferred to ‘suicide me.' Exactly what happened with Pennington. I disarmed her but she fought and ran. She had a backup gun and shot Lindsey.”

Pham's finely chiseled features exuded skepticism.

“Are you sure that's what she said? You had a gun pointed at you.”

“Yes!” The agents looked at me again and I lowered my voice. “She said something else, too. That she made Peralta a promise and killing us was part of it.”

“Let's talk privately.” He led me into a cubbyhole made by two six-foot tilt-up panels. Inside was another table where Lindsey and I had probably eaten Chicago dogs many times. Now it was covered with files surrounding a desktop computer. On the wall was an FBI seal and framed photo of the president. Were it not for these totems, I would have thought we were in a mortgage boiler room from the days of the subprime boom.

Pham sat forward on his chair, perfect posture, and waited until I took the seat across from him.

He slid a paper toward me. It was from the Department of Corrections and showed a woman with stringy long hair and cellblock eyes.

“Fourteen years ago, her boyfriend beat her little girl to death. She helped him bury the body in the desert. Shallow grave. She called the police and told them her daughter had been taken by a Mexican man. This was while you were away, but it was a big deal in the media. Peralta interrogated her personally, played it perfectly, got her to confess and testify against the boyfriend. He went away for life and she was sentenced to fifteen years as an accessory.”

I held up my palms: so what?

“Look at the sheet again.”

I scanned it. The woman's name was Amy Sue Morris. But she didn't look anything like the woman who had shot Lindsey.

“Women can redo their hair,” he said. “Here are the two salient facts. First, in the sentencing, she went nuts. Peralta was in the courtroom and she threatened to kill him and his family. Second, she was released a week before Christmas from the Perryville prison.”

“Eric, it's not the same woman. The one who nearly killed Lindsey is after the diamonds. She wore Chanel Number Five. How many released prisoners do that? I smelled Chanel Number Five in Pennington's office. She had been there.”

“You're a perfume expert?”

He was almost making me start to doubt myself. But the woman I had tangled with had moves they don't train you for in prison.

Pham cut me off. “I don't want to get distracted here. The asset told me that the phone rang while you were in Pennington's office, you answered it claiming to be Pennington. The man expects you to call him.”

I nodded.

“What did he sound like?”

“No accent. Baritone. No background noise. When I asked about Peralta, he said that he was ‘a different problem,' that it was better for me not to know. Also, he told me that Mann's window is closing.”

Pham stiffened. “He named Horace Mann?”

I nodded and he wrote it down on a legal pad.

“What about Pamela Grayson? Did that name come up?”

I shook my head. “But he also knew about the hitwoman. He named her. Amy Morris. That's the same name that Phoenix PD identified when they raided a place up by the Biltmore this morning. She's been wounded but she was gone.”

“Wounded?” Pham raised an eyebrow.

“I shot her last night but she was wearing body armor. I followed her to the house. If she doesn't have anything to do with the diamonds, why did Horace Mann show up there this morning?”

“Because you called it in.”

“But…”

“You're creating a feedback loop to bring everything back to the person who shot your wife. It's understandable. You're emotionally involved. You're also blinded by it.” He tapped the corrections report. “That's your female. Give that to Phoenix PD.”

“I know what I know.” Still, I forced my breathing to slow down and took a careful, objective look. It wasn't her. The eyes, mouth, and cheekbones were all wrong, even if she could have changed her hair so radically.

I said, “Why are you so goddamned uncurious about this woman?”

He was unruffled, his voice the schoolmaster dealing with an unruly and not-so-bright pupil. “Do you have any idea how serious it is for evidence to be stolen from a secure Federal Bureau of Investigation facility?”

“I know it's embarrassing.”

Now he did a little stretch with his head and neck, a man struggling with his temper. I was half a second from being thrown out of his sanctum and pushed away from the case.

He said, “This is very real, Doctor Mapstone. Someone with the clearance to smuggle out that evidence might be greedy. Or she could have the means to penetrate other highly secure Bureau operations. This is a national security matter.”

I tried nodding with great seriousness. Then, “Where did these diamonds originate? Before they were in your evidence room?”

He squared his shoulders. “It's not a ‘room,' and I can't disclose the origin of the evidence. Retrieving the diamonds and arresting the rogue agent is Washington's top priority, right from the director.”

“And Peralta's safety?”

“He volunteered,” Pham said. “I have confidence he can take care of himself.”

“Even though you don't know where he is?”

“You talked to him.” The schoolmaster's tone again. “He sounded like a man in control of the situation.”

God, I hated the feds, most of them anyway. Peralta could conceal his troubles better than anyone I ever knew. The only thing I learned from calling him was that he was still alive.

Pham said, “I know you have many questions.”

That was an understatement.

“I'll tell you what I can. The Bureau owes you as the one who wrapped up the only unsolved murder of an FBI agent in history.” His eyes bore in. “But goodwill only goes so far, and I need you to make that call. Are you on the team?”

I pressed my jaw together and nodded. “I do have a few things to clear up.” Best to start with a relative softball. “Why were you fired as the SAC, at least that was the cover story? Seems to me it might telegraph to your suspect that the Bureau was waiting for him.”

“We thought about that but decided the suspect wanted her diamonds so much she wouldn't be thinking that way. She would likely know we were tracking the gems and knew they were coming here. She'd find a way to create a distraction and get them.”

“Pamela Grayson.”

Pham tapped on a six-inch set of files. No paperless office at Johnnie's “We're talking about a senior person with plenty of access to evidence and intel. She fits perfectly. Look, if we had played it straight, we might have gotten the Russians. But there's a very good chance we wouldn't have caught the rogue agent or anyone else she was working with. This could be a conspiracy within the FBI.”

“‘Anyone else.' The question mark on the white board.”

“Exactly. Removing me as SAC sent a powerful message through the Bureau. I was to blame for the failed operation. The suspect would let down her guard. We've got her phones and computers under surveillance.”

“But Horace Mann fits this profile, too,” I said. “He fits it better.”

Pham shrugged. “The asset told me you believe this.”

“So did the guy who called Pennington's office.” I studied Pham's face and decided not to push it. “So let's say I'm wrong. Mann is totally legit. Why is he leaving me alone? I haven't seen him since Friday night in the High Country.”

“He doesn't take you seriously,” Pham said. “Don't be offended. You're a former history professor who worked for the local Sheriff's Office. He's done enough checking to believe you didn't know about the robbery in advance and Peralta won't be contacting you. Your phones might be tapped but that's it. He's only got so many agents to stake out locations and follow people.”

Once again I was grateful Lindsey had turned my iPhone into an impenetrable dark device. No reason for Eric Pham to know this.

I tried something tougher. “So how was the operation supposed to go down?”

He hesitated and drew a deep breath. “All right, Doctor Mapstone. But this is confidential FBI information. Do you understand?”

“Sure.”

He swung his computer screen so we could both see it and tapped on the keyboard. A color video appeared.

“This is Terminal Four at Sky Harbor on Friday morning. As you can see, Peralta and the other guard approach this man.” He pointed to a nondescript middle-aged Anglo in a cheap suit. “That's the jeweler. He's passed through security to the main terminal. Peralta signs for the shipment and takes the rolling suitcase. It has the diamonds inside.”

More tapping and black-and-white images came up. “This is from the service hallway at the mall.”

Here was something I had already seen. A mall security guard lets in Peralta and Cartwright. There's a conversation and the mall guard walks ahead several paces and disappears around the corner. Then Peralta pushes Ed back and draws his weapon. He fires and Ed goes down. Peralta walks quickly toward the camera, pulling the suitcase, and going back the way he came.

I said, “So far, so good?”

“All according to plan.”

Another view appeared on the screen, this time in color. Peralta was walking fast, carrying the suitcase now. He opened the door to his pickup, tossed the bag inside, backed up, and drove toward the street. It is a huge parking lot. Almost every space was taken. Two, no, three shoppers walked by as he cruised past.

“Here.”

Pham froze the screen. Peralta had stopped at the outermost bank of parking. The truck was beside an old Toyota. The one belonging to Catalina Ramos.

The action moved forward slowly. As I had suspected, Peralta used a Slim Jim to open the driver's side, from which he could pop the trunk. He dumped the suitcase inside, closed the trunk, and drove away.

“This is where things went sideways?” I asked.

“No,” Pham said. “We planned for him to do this so the GPS tracker in the suitcase would be useless.”