High Country Nocturne (5 page)

“He may be feeling old,” she continued. “Feeling as if…”

After a few minutes, I finished her sentence, “Feeling as if he needed to prove he was still capable. So maybe that drove him to accept a dangerous assignment.”

“Or,” she sipped her coffee, “become a jewel thief.”

We finished breakfast in silence. I knew what she was thinking: nobody really knows anybody else.

Afterward, we boarded the train and rode down Central to the Encanto station, we walked two-and-a-half blocks to the 1928 Spanish Revival house on Cypress Street. The street was blessedly free of satellite trucks, black SUVs, and strawberry blond DPS troopers.

The temperature had warmed into the high sixties and the air was dry and magical. It would be the kind of day when you could say, yes, this is paradise. When I was young, it had been a flawed Eden, a garden city surrounded by citrus groves, farms, and the Japanese flower gardens, and beyond that the empty majesty of the Sonoran Desert.

That was almost all gone now that the builders had turned the Valley into fifteen hundred square miles of lookalike housing developments, shopping strips, and tilt-up offices and warehouses built on spec. Even Baker Nursery, a reminder of the days when even the most humble place was lovingly landscaped, had closed. Newcomers threw down gravel and thought they were being responsible. “We live in a desert,” they would say. They knew nothing about this wettest desert in the world and the oasis they were profaning. There was Scottsdale and Paradise Valley, if you had the money. But it wasn't my paradise anymore.

Time was, we had seven lovely months and five hellish ones. Now it had almost flipped. It didn't cool down until after Halloween and the heat kicked up in March. The temps had gone up ten degrees in my lifetime, and that was local warming, replacing the groves and farms with concrete and red tile roofs. Nobody wanted to talk about what climate change would do here. I kept friendships by not bringing it up

But on Cypress Street, in the historic districts, especially within this property line, here was the magnet that kept me in Phoenix.

Inside, I thought momentarily about driving into the office and going through recent cases we had worked, everything I could discover about the diamond runs. To find Matt Pennington.

But I made the mistake of going into the bedroom to change clothes and then I was on the bed. It took about two minutes for me to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Chapter Seven

The sun was low by the time I woke up. It didn't seem as if it should still be Saturday, but it was. Lindsey was sitting beside me in bed with her laptop open.

“Any news?”

“Hashtag Peralta is the most trending item on Twitter in Phoenix,” she said.

I asked if that was a good thing.

“Oh, Dave, not in this case. Most of it is ugly, racist stuff. So much hate in one hundred forty characters.”

“Someday we'll have social media trials and summary public executions.”

She cupped my face with her hands and kissed me. That always took away the darkness and made our little oasis a bright and hopeful place.

Afterward, we had cocktails, Beefeater martinis, stirred, with olives. It was one of our healing rituals against the crazy place that began outside the property line, where the voters were such fools that they had kicked my friend out of office. Cocktail time was sacred.

As we watched the last light outside the picture window, I told her what some sleep had enabled me to realize. I had kept saying that this was an ordinary diamond run. But it actually wasn't.

“There were two guards, not one. In the past, Peralta had gone alone.”

I didn't know much about this part of our business, only that it was good money, plus the background that Peralta had given me.

Up until about 2000, the jewelers themselves had transported the diamonds. That stopped after a couple of robberies, including one where some Colombians had murdered a jeweler in the lobby of a Florida hotel and took his suitcase.

After that, many jewelers set up armed security teams in every state that picked up the diamonds, took them to the shows, and returned them to the jeweler at the airport.

But some firms hired two local guards to meet the jeweler at the airport outside the secure area—where they could still carry their weapons. They would take the diamonds, worth anywhere from three hundred thousand to a million dollars, to Kay, Zales, and other stores for special shows. Then they would return them to the jeweler, waiting safely at the airport.

“The companies didn't mind losing a guard but they didn't want to lose a jeweler.”

Then, around 2005, they cut back to one guard, I told Lindsey. A few months after we became private detectives, Peralta won a contract from Markovitz & Sons to transport diamonds in the Phoenix area. The most recent job before yesterday had been to take special-show diamonds to an invitation-only event at the Royal Palms Resort. Peralta told me Charlie Keating had been there.

“Don't forget the ‘savings-and-loan kingpin' part,” she said.

“Peralta said Charlie was still complaining that the feds wouldn't pay for his knee replacement when he was incarcerated in Lompoc.”

That transport had gone according to standard procedure. Peralta took the suitcase back to Sky Harbor and handed it to the jeweler, who went back into the secure area and discreetly examined the contents. I only knew the details because Peralta wanted to tell his Charlie Keating story.

“But this time it was two guards,” she said.

“That's what the FBI told me. I assumed Peralta was going alone.”

Lindsey asked who had provided the second guard. I didn't know. Mann had told me that he was a private investigator.

“Who Peralta shot.”

“Winged,” I said.

“I can find out who he is.”

“Lindsey, your computer snooping worries me.”

“Nobody can catch me, Dave. Trust me.”

I knew she was the best. She had been the star of Peralta's cybercrimes unit and then she had spent a year in Washington working for Homeland Security. It still concerned me. The FBI would be all over us and in ways we couldn't tell.

She distracted me by suggesting fajitas for dinner. We sliced onions and peppers together in the kitchen. I made guacamole. Then I grilled the veggies, steak, and chicken inside the old
chimneria
in the backyard while she warmed the tortillas in the oven and assembled the salsa, shredded cheese, and sour cream.

I was way too full and loving it when Lindsey said, “I found Matt Pennington.”

Before I could learn more, the front door registered a knock. Three loud thumps. Whoever it was didn't bother to use the wrought-iron knocker.

Maybe it was a neighbor. Maybe it was the tamale women selling door-to-door or a television crew wanting to know about the “gem heist.” Whoever it was, I moved quickly to the front bedroom and peeked outside.

The porch light showed a black Ford Crown Victoria was sitting in the driveway.

Crown Vics with their wonderful Interceptor engines were on their way out as the standard police vehicle in North America. They were becoming rare. Ford had stopped making them. This one had an eight-inch scratch on the right edge of the push-bar that was attached to the front bumper. It was one of the vehicles of the sheriff's personal security detail.

The three thuds came again. That was the way cops knocked.

I opened the door to see one man. His partner had stepped into the flowerbed to peer in the picture window. One of Lindsey's impatiens was under his boot.

“May I help you?”

Peralta's old detail had been reassigned, of course. Still, I knew one of this pair, a sergeant named Gordon who had been in the patrol division under Peralta and was on the edge of being fired for what appeared to be a righteous brutality complaint. The other one, two decades younger than Gordon, came back to the step and showed his star.

As if I didn't know.

They could have been brothers. Both were about five eleven, wearing cheap Dockers and polo shirts to show off their biceps. Both had thinning-hair crew cuts. They looked like personal trainers at a second-rate health club. Gordon's partner was giving me the cop squint.

Gordon said, “The sheriff wants to see you.”

Chapter Eight

I did not walk out to the Crown Vic without consideration.

They wouldn't say what “the sheriff” wanted of me—and it felt like a metal file being dragged across my teeth even to hear the title connected with anybody but Mike Peralta, certainly not this pretender.

Don't think I didn't consider that they might not really be deputies. Too much was in flux: Peralta on the run, his messages to me, and the mysterious traffic stop early this morning. But I recognized the car and I knew Gordon from my days with the department.

I decided to take the chance, but not before I excused myself. In the bedroom, I slipped my easily concealed BUG—backup gun—into a holster in the small of my back and covered it with a blue blazer. The Smith & Wesson 442 Airweight revolver held five potent .38 special hollowpoint bullets. If the worst came about, it would be my last resort.

Back in the living room, I looked at Lindsey. She smiled and winked at me,
See what they want
.

I paused in the long twilight to admire the cool breeze, and then I climbed inside. The personal trainers even let me ride in the front passenger seat, with Gordon driving.

“I didn't even know this neighborhood existed, Mapstone.” Gordon took in the elegant period-revival houses as we went west on Cypress and then turned south on the one-way that was Fifth Avenue. On the other side of McDowell Road were bungalows more than a century old and beautifully restored.

“Thought everything downtown was a slum, but this is something. Reminds me of back home in Minnesota, the old houses and front porches.”

“It's not downtown.” My voice was friendly. “It's Midtown. Downtown only goes as far as Fillmore.”

My pedantry shut Gordon up. We were passing Kenilworth School, where I had passed kindergarten through eighth grade, when I heard Gordon's partner behind me.

“So how is Miss Cheerleader Legs?”

In the history department, his query would have led to a disciplinary action for using sexist language and objectifying a woman, followed by sensitivity classes and perhaps therapy.

In the cop shop, the proper response would have been, “Your wife looked fine after I fucked her this morning, kid. Thanks for asking.”

But I wasn't a cop any more.

I didn't answer.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gordon give his partner a “back-off” glance and the voice behind me fell silent.

The kid was too stupid to stay on an elite detail. Soon enough he would find himself alone on a dark road with a guy less forgiving than me. One who would cause him much pain and require years of facial reconstruction and he would squint because it hurt to open his eyes.

Dark road—I thought again of Strawberry Death. I was still not persuaded by Lindsey's explanation.

At Van Buren Street, we jigged east to First Avenue. I dreaded seeing the new occupant in Peralta's former office suite, where I had spent many sessions hearing his demands for progress on a case. That seemed like another person's life now.

But the car turned left on Jefferson Street and pulled in to valet parking for the Hotel Palomar.

Nobody said anything. We merely got out and I followed them inside.

The Palomar was the crown jewel of CityScape, the latest attempt to revive a downtown that the city had nearly killed in the sixties.

The development had been presented in the newspaper with renderings of audacious skyscrapers. The reality was vapid and suburban, turned in on itself instead of recreating a walkable downtown commercial district. Still, it was better than the brutal empty plaza it had replaced, and Lindsey and I spent as much as we could at the limited selection of shops. We tried to be civic stewards, supporting downtown rather than driving to Scottsdale or the Biltmore.

Inside the hotel was another matter. The Blue Hound restaurant and bar had a flashy LA feel, with dark wood, swag lamps, large mirrors hung at menacing angles over the tables, leather sofas in front of a fireplace that was lit even in the summertime, textured walls, and a big crowd.

I followed the plainclothes deputies past the fun to the elevators. We rode up in silence.

The car opened onto a rooftop bar called Lustre. With the temperature still above seventy, it was a beautiful night to be here. But the place was empty. A sign said, “Reserved for Private Party.”

That would be the casually dressed man at the bar with a messenger bag on the floor beside his feet. He stood up and smiled at me. Then he extended his hand.

And I shook it.

He saved me the impossibility of speaking his title by saying, “Call me Chris.”

Then he dismissed the detail with a “thanks, guys” and led me to a table.

Christopher Andrew Melton was completing his first year as Maricopa County sheriff. Not being a big television watcher, especially what passed for local news, this was my first opportunity to really see him.

He was my size and my height. I had so hoped he was a short little guy. I had dreamed most of his hair had fallen out, leaving only dust bunny tufts. But, no, it was still there, golden and expensively cut. His voice was measured and harmonized with education, not the redneck twang I expected. He was further helped by the kind of limpid blue eyes that were ubiquitous in British costume dramas.

He had moved to Sun City West after finishing twenty-five years with the FBI. He invested in some houses and made top dollar before the real-estate crash. With his federal law-enforcement pedigree, he won consulting work for the homebuilders and the rock products association—the trade group that lobbied for the asphalt, concrete, and aggregate producers—doing what, I didn't know. I did know they were two of the most politically powerful entities in the state.

Then he ran for sheriff. An “impossible bid,” the pundits had said. “Mike Peralta will be sheriff as long as he wants the job and then he can be governor.” That was what they had said.

But Melton found his issue and his timing with illegal immigration, something Peralta was supposedly “soft” on, even though the Sheriff's Office had no authority over federal enforcement of immigration laws.

It was a dirty campaign, with Melton's surrogates playing to Anglo fears and emphasizing that the sheriff was “soft” because he was “a Mexican himself.” “What part of illegal doesn't he understand?” one bumper sticker read, with Peralta's face on it.

Melton beat Peralta by ten thousand votes in the Republican primary where the turnout was twenty percent. The county's population was four million.

And now he sat across from me.

“I know this is awkward,” he said.

The server arrived and saved me from saying many unhelpful things. In addition to the campaign, I could have mentioned the Justice Department investigation of the Sheriff's Office, brought on by Melton's highly publicized “sweeps” to round up illegals. This had destroyed years of effort by Peralta and the Phoenix Police to build cooperation in a community that was often victimized by crime. Now it was back in the shadows.

With deputies playing immigration police, response times had risen around the county, even for priority calls. Violent crime in the areas policed by MCSO was increasing. There were allegations of failure to investigate sex crimes. Jail conditions had deteriorated and prisoners had been abused. The county had already paid out three million dollars to settle lawsuits against the department. Local wags were already calling him “Sheriff Crisis Meltdown.”

And this was only from what I had read in the struggling local paper. From a few conversations with old friends in the department, I sensed things were even worse. That the model law-enforcement organization built by Peralta had been trashed.

Melton had even changed the department's uniforms from light-tan shirt and brown slacks to intimidating LAPD black. He had moved into the new Sheriff's Office headquarters that was Peralta's handiwork, the product of years of fighting the county supervisors for funding.

In the newspaper, Melton had called the building, “A sign of the positive changes I'm bringing to this department.”

The craziest part was that Melton was more popular than ever, at least among the old Anglos who voted. He probably reminded them of their favorite grandsons, in addition to being “tough on crime,” as they imagined it.

A lazy thinker would fall for it. He didn't look like a bigoted Southern lawman from the fifties. No, he was svelte and boyish and well-spoken. It would be easy for a lazy thinker to like him.

I was pretty toasty from the martini with Lindsey but ordered a Four Peaks Hop Knot IPA.

“Make it two,” Melton said.

I wondered what his constituency in the suburban megachurches and LDS meetinghouses would think.

Looking around, downtown Phoenix seemed almost on the verge of being cool. From the rooftop bar, we had views of the Suns arena, multiple skyscrapers, and the South Mountains and Estrellas in the lingering twilight. Steps led up to an azure swimming pool. Gray columns were topped with ice-blue lighting that matched the color of the still water. Lindsey and I would have fun here.

His voice brought me back to the unpleasant business at hand.

“I'm sorry about Peralta.” He folded his arms across his chest and sighed. “You probably think I'm a bad guy for the campaign. But it was politics. He understood that. Phoenix has changed and he didn't change with it. So voters wanted a change.”

I stared at him.

He released his arms and shook his head. “But this jewel robbery. Bad stuff.”

“A person is innocent until proved guilty.”

The woman brought our beers and withdrew.

“I'm afraid it doesn't look good and the FBI will be digging very hard into Peralta's time as sheriff.”

“They won't find anything but good police work.” I took a big swig and let the liquid burn my insides.

“We can hope so,” Melton said. “I wanted to talk about you.”

I put the glass down and said nothing.

“I was sorry you left. I could have used you. Your ability to employ the historian's techniques to solve cold cases is very valuable.”

“It was time for me to move on.”

“Maybe not.” He reached into the messenger bag and pulled out a book. I recognized it instantly because I had written it.
Desert Star: A History of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
.

“This is a fabulous book,” Melton said. “Really great. I had no idea there was so much history here. Would you sign it?”

He slid it across and handed me a pen.

Play to the author's shameless vanity. I opened to the title page and wrote, “To Sheriff Chris Melton, making new history. David Mapstone.”

He thanked me. Then, “Maybe you'd write a new preface. We could re-release it.”

I didn't answer. As a historian, I had written only two books, thirty articles for historical journals. Not enough to gain tenure.

He put the book away and pulled out a file. It was about an inch thick.

“I'd like you to look into this for me.”

My eyes lingered on the folder. It looked worn. I told him no, that I already had a job, and slid it back to his side of the table.

He smiled sadly. “I don't think there will be much private investigator work coming your way with your partner as a wanted fugitive in a violent crime. It wouldn't surprise me if the DPS revoked your license, as well as his.”

“But you're here to help me…” I drained the glass halfway.

“Exactly.”

So I gave it to him, exactly, “I don't like you, Sheriff. I don't like your politics. You and your people lied about Mike Peralta's record. You set people against each other.”

Remembering the thugs that had shouted Peralta down at one debate, the vicious online comments about him from Melton supporters and all the “dark money” from anonymous out-of-state donors, I started to get wound up.

I forced my voice to stay even. “I don't approve of the way you won the election or how you run the department. And I don't take clients that I don't like and trust.” I thought about it and added, “No disrespect.”

“Call me Chris.”

“If I did take your case, it would be a five thousand-dollar retainer up front, then five hundred dollars an hour after that. I would want total control of the case. No second-guessing.”

He laughed from below his diaphragm and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. His beer was still untouched.

“That's not what I had in mind.”

His hand went back into the bag and pulled out what looked like a wallet. I realized what it really was only when he placed it on the table atop the file and opened it: a star and identification card. My old badge and credentials.

“You're coming back to the Sheriff's Office, David.”

I sat back, feeling the little revolver against my shirt, and marveling at his chutzpah.

“And I would want to do this, why?”

“Open the file.”

He slid the folder toward me again.

I swept the badge case aside and flipped to the first page. It was an incident report dated July 24th, 1984. It looked like a museum artifact. At the bottom was my signature and badge number.

He tapped the paper. “Do you remember this?”

I nodded. A body of a twenty-something male had been found in the desert not far from the Caterpillar tractor proving grounds in the White Tank Mountains west of the city. Today the area is overrun with subdivisions, but then it was empty. The dead man had parked his car and walked on foot without water before he had collapsed.

I had been the first deputy to respond to the call, the one who had secured the scene and written the incident report. There was no obvious evidence of a crime. People did strange things in the desert. And then the desert did unmerciful things to their remains. Then the case had been turned over to the detectives and I had lost track of it. This was when I was finishing my master's degree and preparing to leave the department and Phoenix.