High Country Nocturne (6 page)

Now, under the enchanted metropolitan sky with blessed ice water sitting next to the beers, I shrugged. “So?”

“There's been a new development in the case.”

“Turn it over to your cold-case unit. I'm sure they're quite capable.”

He shook his head. “I want you to investigate this. It requires your special skills.” He leaned in and touched my arm. “David, this is your home, your hometown. You belong with us at the Sheriff's Office. I'll warn you, the county is going paperless. I should have given you the documents digitally. But I thought the paper files might be easier.”

I drained the glass and stood. “Thanks for the beer, Sheriff.”

I was halfway out when his voice stopped me.

“Lindsey.”

I turned to face him. My feet felt heavy.

He beckoned me back with a flipping of his fingers, as if he were summoning a child. “Call me Chris. And you forgot your star, Deputy.”

I walked back and stood over him. “Why did you mention my wife?”

“Sit down, David.”

I did.

“Your wife is a hacker. She has been all her teenage and adult life.”

“You're being cute with words,” I said. “Lindsey was a sworn deputy in the Sheriff's Office cybercrimes unit and then she was recruited by Homeland Security. What made her so valuable is that she's a ‘good hacker,' if you want to use the word. A knuckle-dragger going by some manual from Microsoft isn't going to have that expertise.”

“That's what made her so effective. She's one of the best hackers we ever encountered.”

A coldness spread in my limbs as I wondered who this “we” was.

“Your wife's time in Washington, D.C., was not what you believe, David. I hate to put it this way, but sometimes it's better get the truth out there. She wasn't faithful.”

“My marriage is not your business.”

“There were several instances where she strayed. I know it hurts, but my sources are golden. You need to know this.”

“Good-bye,” I said, but made no effort to leave the chair.

I knew Lindsey had played and strayed, knew it because I had found a confessional letter she intended to mail to me but never did—and then I had tucked it back in her things and never spoke of it. It had been a mad time for both of us. Her sister Robin had been alive then. If the sheriff was trying to mind-fuck me to do his bidding, this wouldn't work.

He lowered his head. “She was unfaithful to the country, too.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“You know about the F-35 fighter? It's our most advanced jet. We're fortunate that Luke Air Force Base was chosen as the primary training base.”

I looked him in the eyes.

“You're giving me a chamber of commerce pitch,” I said.

“Unfortunately not.” He leaned in a few inches. “You may also know that China stole important information about it. An airplane we thought would give us a twenty-year advantage. Now the Chinese are incorporating its features into their advanced fighters, especially the Shenyang J-23. Try explaining that to the young men and women who will die in combat if push comes to shove in the South China Sea or over Taiwan…”

“This is a long damned way from being Maricopa County sheriff.” I tried to throttle down the anger in my voice and failed. “Running the jails humanely. Serving warrants. Dull job, but necessary.”

“Listen to what I'm telling you, David. The feds have reason to believe Lindsey actually helped the Chinese gain access to the F-35 designs. They know a man she was sleeping with did it and he is about to be indicted. They think she was involved, too.”

“She was working for Homeland Security!”

His voice was calm, the eyes sympathetic. “There's so much you don't know.”

“You're accusing my wife of treason.” I couldn't stop the heat from burning my cheeks. I tried to center myself by staring at the empty swimming pool, the water as flat as glass.

Melton said, “You can help her…”

“By working for you? I've said too much already. You're probably wearing a wire. What I need to do is get the best lawyer in town and go to the papers.”

His shoulders hunched in tension.

I said, “If Lindsey did these things, why isn't she in prison already?”

“Because federal investigations take time. There are open questions. But the White House is putting on pressure to go after leakers and spies, especially involving China. Listen to me, David. I can help you if you'll help me.”

“Me, working an old DB case can somehow balance the scales of an active investigation of treason? Involving my wife?” I spat the words. It was not my best moment.

“This ‘dead body' case, as you put it, is important to me. As for your wife, I can buy you some time. I know people, more than you realize, and they can work in her favor. That's a guarantee. And maybe with that time and influence, Lindsey can…well, do whatever she needs to do.”

What the hell did he mean? Clear her name? Leave the country? Meet up with Peralta to split the diamonds?

“I want to know more about the accusations against Lindsey.”

“I can't do that, David. I'm already out on a limb for you. Washington could come in with a National Security Letter. Do you know what that is?”

I nodded, not exactly sure but it wouldn't be good. It would prevent us from discussing the case, perhaps even deny Lindsey counsel.

“Don't think it can't happen. So you need to be very careful. The country changed after 9/11 and nothing got softer with the election and re-election of Obama. These are dangerous times and the government holds enormous power to protect us.”

For a few moments it was silent enough to hear glasses clinking behind the bar.

Melton shrugged. “Me, I tell my wife everything that happens in my day. You'd better not say a word of this to Lindsey.”

“So how can she help herself?”

“She can tell who she was working with inside the government…”

“Flip,” I said. “Become a snitch.”

“She might be able to work for the government again.”

I wondered if he was wearing a wire. “She did nothing wrong. But if a person did what you claim, I don't think he'd get off so easy.”

“Provide help and the charges could be reduced or dropped,” he said. “I've seen it happen. She might have to work at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store for awhile but it beats thirty years in prison for espionage.”

“And the sheriff of Maricopa County knows all this, how?”

He slapped the table. “I've said too much already. Are you in?”

“Goddamnit, slow down! I need to talk to Lindsey first…”

And then I was aware of the murmur twenty feet behind me. Turning, I saw dozens of people, young, beautiful, stylishly dressed, waiting to get into the bar.

“No time, David.” His eyes bore into me. “Are you in?”

Thucydides, the father of historians, said that men are motivated by fear and then by honor and self-interest. And here I was.

But I was not beyond churlishness.

“I want my old office back.”

He made an amused face. “The historic courthouse has been remodeled. I'm afraid your old space is now a courtroom.” He smiled. “But there's another office on the fourth floor you'll find to your liking.”

He fished a key out of his pocket and placed it on top of the file.

I signed papers from the Sheriff's Office and a certification document from the Arizona Peace Officers Standards and Training Board. Next came a Bible out of that damned messenger bag. We stood up and he swore me in at the rooftop bar. So help me, God.

He fished out a business card and scribbled numbers on the back. He held it up and I took it.

“You'll report directly to me. Read the case file and call me in the morning. We'll get started.” He paused and then put his hand on my shoulder like we were good buddies. “It gets better, David. Trust me. You're from Maricopa County. This is your hometown. You owe, don't you think? To leave it a better place for our kids than we found it?”

I wanted to break his hand.

“Do you want a ride home?”

I shook my head. “I'll take light rail.”

“Glad somebody uses it. I hear it runs empty all the time.”

I picked up the file, slid the badge case in my blazer pocket, and walked away.

As I reached the elevators, the crowd was surging into the bar, and Call-Me-Chris Melton had disappeared.

Chapter Nine

I walked out of the hotel in a trance, oblivious to the perfection of the evening, crossing First Avenue mid-block. I was about to step over the light-rail tracks, across the low concrete barrier where it was stenciled DO NOT CROSS, when the horn shook me into the moment.

The train was no more than half a block to my right, the operator flashing his lights and laying on the horn. I stepped back and let the train come into the station, walking around it.

The majestic old county courthouse was as lovely, dignified, and enduring as when it opened in 1929, an art deco interpretation of Spanish architecture. It had been built as a combined city-county building. So, here, facing Washington Street, was the courthouse. On the west side, guarded by carved Phoenix birds, was the entrance to old city hall. With such attributes, it amazed me that Phoenix had not torn it down.

Enough damage had been done. When I was a boy, lush grass and shrubs, shaded by queen palms, surrounded the building. Now all that was gone, replaced by dirt and the skeletons of palo verde trees. Somebody thought they were saving water, even though it was being misused to fill artificial lakes in subdivisions thirty miles away.

I wondered about the workers that had ripped out those noble trees back in the 1980s and whether they had realized the damage they were doing.

Then I made the mistake of looking back at the graceless, sterile cube of CityScape and how it overpowered the flawless art deco Luhrs Tower in the next block, its fourteen stories with elegant setbacks built for a low-rise city that held 48,000 people. CityScape, heavily subsidized by the taxpayers, was doing fairly well for now. It had a comedy club and a bowling alley. The bottom of the Luhrs Tower was empty except for a Subway shop. This was Phoenix.

At the front of the courthouse, the old fountain was still there. A plaque read:

IN MEMORY OF
LIEUT. JACK W. SWILLING
1831-1878
WHO BUILT THE
FIRST MODERN IRRIGATION DITCH
AND
TRINIDAD, HIS WIFE
1850-1929
WHO ESTABLISHED IN 1868 THE FIRST
PIONEER HOME IN THE
SALT RIVER VALLEY.
ERECTED BY
MARICOPA CHAPTER
DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
1931

I sat on the fountain's concrete lip and listened to the water.

“Swilling's Ditch” was one of the hundreds of miles of canals built by the Hohokam to divert water of the Salt River in this great alluvial valley. “Those who have gone”—the disappeared civilization, the canal builders. Then the Anglos came, found the ancient waterworks, the most advanced in the New World outside Peru. They cleared out the ancient canals, built new ones and the Phoenix was reborn.

Old Phoenix kept its secrets. Jack Swilling was one of the town's founders. He was also a scoundrel who helped betray the Apache leader Mangus Coloradus, leaving him to be tortured and killed by the U.S. Army. It was an act of treachery that helped ensure twenty years of war. But this wasn't engraved on the fountain.

And people like Chris Melton didn't even know or care. They moved into their new subdivisions far from the heart of the city and thought the only history was back home in the Midwest. I would bet he had never read this plaque.

The water trickled in a melody that should have been comforting. Not tonight. Because I knew. Too much and not enough.

Maybe even Mike Peralta was a scoundrel who would throw everything away for a case of diamonds. And here I am carrying that damned badge. I never should have come back here. Not to this building. Not to this city.

Better to be teaching history in Southern California or Denver, Portland, or Seattle, even in a community college if need be. Anywhere but here.

Yet Peralta never stopped trying to get me back to the Sheriff's Office and he had finally succeeded. When I didn't get tenure in San Diego and returned to Phoenix, intending to sell the house and move on, he hired me to clean up some old cases. And I stayed.

I never should have stayed.

Phoenix is not my city now.

It belongs to the millions of newcomers drawn here by sun, a pool in the backyard, and big wide freeways to drive. To the ones that bulldoze its history and throw down gravel and concrete where there once were flowers and oleanders and canopies of cottonwoods, eucalyptus, and Arizona ash over open irrigation ditches.

I hear the ghosts of the Hohokam and love it when it rains. Newcomers want championship golf and endless sunshine.

They own this place now, not me.

They tell me every place changes, but why did my place have to get worse? It's not as if we traded the Valley of Heart's Delight to become Silicon Valley.

What right have I to hate them? They have no memory of my garden city when the air was so clear it seemed as if you could reach out and touch the mountains. They don't miss the passenger trains at Union Station or the busy stores and movie palaces downtown.

How could they miss what had been wiped away?

The problem is me, for loving Phoenix still.

The blame rests with me, for coming back, for staying.

I should have sold the house in Willo, where the historic districts carry strands of the old city's loveliness—sold it and left for good.

But it had been built by my grandfather, had always been in the family. How could I endure seeing a photo of it on the Web, knowing a stranger owned it, and had probably put rocks in place of Grandmother's gardens?

But it is a house, nothing more, and sentimentality disables me.

What fool would mourn Phoenix? It makes as much sense as pining for Muncie, Indiana, in the nineteenth century.

My fool's punishment is that I am from nowhere.

“David, this is your home, your hometown.”

I have no hometown.

I am a fraud.

I'll never make it home again.

Had I not come back, I never would have met Lindsey, the young Sheriff's Office computer genius with the nose stud and wicked sense of humor. She would have been so much better off without me.

I should not be here.

It's not healthy.

It's not sane.

I am like a mad archeologist trying to conjure ruins back to their past glory.

Or like a dog that can't leave his master's grave, ending up a stray that howls all night in the cemetery, crying,
loss…loss…loss…

So help me, God, I am so lost.

The water shut off, as if on a timer.

I made my legs stand and take the steps two at a time up to the grand arched main entrance where I buzzed the night bell.

“Mapstone! I haven't seen you in forever. How the hell's it hanging?”

The deputy didn't even realize I had left the department.

A metal detector and X-ray machine with a belt had been installed inside, but otherwise the lobby and airy atrium looked the same. No, better. The county had actually done a good job restoring the building to its period beauty. The brass elevator doors glimmered beyond.

Instead, I took the staircase that wound up the atrium, walking on the brown Mexican saltillo tiles, gripping the railing that so many thousands of justice-seeking hands had touched. The decorative tiles on the risers had been polished and replaced where needed. The wrought-iron chandeliers burned through yellow panes set off with colored medallions.

When Peralta had first put me over here, the building was an afterthought holding a few county agencies. Now, I guessed it was busy on weekdays. Tonight, it was silent enough for my footfall to echo. I reached the fourth floor and walked past the doors of dark wood, pebbled glass, and transoms. Overhead were white globes spaced every few feet.

My phone vibrated. A message from Lindsey: “You ok?”

I texted back, “Yes. Home soon.”

I was anything but okay.

Then I found the correct door, slipped in the key, and went inside.

My new office was perhaps ten feet by twelve feet, a comedown from my old digs. But it had a large window looking north. I turned on the lights and there they stood, the antique wooden desk I had scrounged from the county warehouse, swivel chair, and two other straight-back chairs in front. Against one wall was the 1930s courtroom bench I also had appropriated. Another wall held the historic map of Phoenix that was yet another of my finds, one I didn't take with me when I left the job.

It was as if Melton had planned it all before we ever talked.

And I had fallen into the snare.

Treason, indeed.

I switched the lights back off, crossed to the desk chair, and slowly lowered myself to sit. The empty desktop received its first employment since I had resigned and cleaned out my old office—the case file Melton had given me. I thought about reading through the case now, thought better of it, and instead spun around to watch the cars moving along Washington Street.

I wondered where Peralta was, if he was safe, what the hell was going on. I needed to be working on finding him, deciphering the messages on the cards, not rehashing a thirty-year-old case.

The dread had hold of my throat and chest before I realized it. My heart galloped insistently inside my chest. I was conscious of every chamber of my heart opening and closing, opening and closing. In only seconds, it seemed, the trap door to oblivion would open beneath me.
Yes, Sharon, I still get panic attacks.

The only remedy was to move, to get up and flee the building, get into the night air and see some other human souls. At Central and Washington, I boarded a train so full of them that I had to stand all the way home.

On the way, I tried to figure out what to tell Lindsey.