High Country Nocturne (7 page)

Chapter Ten

Our block was awash in white lights and hemmed in by the dark silhouettes of satellite trucks bearing the logos of television stations. As I drew closer, I saw that the lights were from television cameras and pointed at our house. The house looked good. Lindsey looked even better, standing on the front patio and talking into microphones that five reporters held to her very telegenic face.

Setting aside my initial alarm, I held back on the sidewalk.

“Sheriff Peralta is a man of the highest integrity,” she said. “I worked for him for a long time and my respect for him grew with every year. I'm sure a logical explanation will come out about what happened.”

Logical explanations. I was all for that.

“Why would he shoot a man and steal the diamonds?” A woman's voice.

“These are allegations,” Lindsey said. “I only know what you people have reported. The police are investigating.”

“Have you heard from him since the theft?” A man shouted the question.

“Of course not.” Not a second's hesitation, her tone earnest. She turned her head to move the hair out of her eyes.

“Not a word? Your husband is his partner in their private detective business.”

“Not a word.”

She was a good little liar, my wife.

I walked on to the end of the block as they ran out of questions and packed up. Not one word I could say to them would make things better.

The neighborhood was as magical as the surprised deputy had found it. The period revival houses had all been restored and were some of the priciest real estate in the city now. It seemed as if only Lindsey and I had not put in a pool.

Willo had been built slowly, almost one house at a time, a huge contrast to the industrial-scale subdivisions laid down elsewhere, later in the life of the city. A couple of blocks over were bungalows that dated back to before statehood. Most of our block had been built in the twenties. The City Beautiful Movement even infused the sidewalks, which ran between small “parking lawns” on one side and the larger lawns that extended to the houses. Only philistines put in desert landscaping. This had always been the oasis.

Ten minutes later, the street safely in darkness, I unlocked the front door and stepped inside.

“You were impressive.”

“Thank you.”

She tilted her face up and I kissed her.

I said, “I wondered how long it would take for them to show up. Better you speaking to the media than me.”

She looked at the brown file folder. “Is that from the High Sheriff of Maricopa County?”

I nodded.

“And?”

After hesitating, I showed her my star.

“No, Dave.” She pushed it away and shook her head. “Why would you go back to the Sheriff's Office? For Sheriff Meltdown. My God, that's not right. What happened?”

I sighed. “Oh, Lindsey, talk to me, and I'll rub your feet.”

The temper drained from her face. “Deal.”

We went to the sofa and I pulled off her shoes, running my fingers along the perfect facets of her cheerleader ankles. I avoided her concerned look. I kissed the left foot, sucked her toes for a few moments, and began to massage.

“Ooooo, History Shamus…”

“Why is the FBI investigating this case?” The question suddenly entered my crowded mind.

“I don't know. It's not an interstate crime yet. The FBI has really changed since 9/11. It's very focused on counterterrorism. Now that you mention it…” She shook her head.

“This should be Chandler P.D.'s case. Not one Chandler detective was in Ash Fork early this morning.”

“So I'll give you one, Dave. Why would Mike Peralta need a million dollars?”

I pressed my fingers into her calves and attempted to study her face. Only one lamp was on and her expression was shadowed. I turned away and meditated on the tall bookshelves on the far wall and the stairway that went up beside them.

Oh, for time to do nothing but read books and hang around with Lindsey, free from the outside world, free from the burden that had been hung around my neck beside that perfectly still rooftop pool.

“A million isn't what it once was,” she went on. “Like when you were young, my older man. Not only that, but it's a million in stolen, traceable, hot-as-hell diamonds. You can't exactly take that to the pawnshop. So I did some digging around.”

The bottom fell out of my stomach.

“Keep rubbing.”

I did as I was told.

“The Peraltas have a net worth of 2.4 million,” she said. “Part of that is in their home, which is paid off. Sharon still gets more than a hundred thousand a year from the sales of her self-help books, DVDs, and speeches. Mike's pension is ninety-two thousand a year. In the past six months, the private detective work has brought in a net sixty-seven thousand, twice what it did when you guys were starting out.”

I moved to worshipping her right foot. I would never get used to the tattoo on the top. “Emma.” She got it in D.C., after the miscarriage, after she nearly bled to death and saving her meant we could never have children, after she fled from me. But there was that ink, in one of the places where it was most painful to get a tattoo. And on her perfect fair skin. To me, tattoos were trashy or belonged on sailors, especially in
Moby Dick
. I was a dinosaur from the twentieth century. I also wouldn't have chosen Emma. But there it was. I had never mentioned it.

She said, “If you dig deeper—oh, right there, that feels so good—the Peraltas have 1.25 million dollars in what you would call ‘investable assets,' money that can be put in stocks and bonds and mutual funds. And all this is as of the latest account statements. Nothing has been pilfered. No evidence of accounts being drained for, say, a gambling habit or to pay off a blackmailer. They have no debt. Imagine that in today's America.”

I said, “So why would he need a million bucks in diamonds? It's more evidence he didn't turn rogue.” Or, as Lindsey had suggested earlier, that he had committed the crime to prove something, to stick it to the voters that had betrayed him. But I didn't say that.

She smiled. “Are you proud of me? Wait until I tell you about Matt Pennington.”

I nodded and rubbed her feet. Maybe that would be enough, we could wind down and go to bed, and none of this would be real in the morning.

Part of that might even have happened if I hadn't said another word.

Instead, I said, and I said it very carefully, lightly, trying to avoid a vowel of accusation in my voice, “Please tell me you weren't hacking the Peraltas' financial data, Lindsey.”

After a pause, her voice was smaller but had an edge. “I talked on the phone with Sharon. Want to tell me what's wrong, Dave?”

And so I did.

All the way home, I had rehearsed a way to discuss our mess in a conversation that would be careful, nuanced, calm, and fluent. All that preparation deserted me the more I began to speak.

It took about fifteen minutes to get it out and by the end I was talking too fast and too loud.

Her perfect ankles and feet withdrew and she sat at the other end of the sofa, her arms wrapped around her legs.

“You don't buy any of this, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“What else did he tell you I did in Washington?”

That was the leading question from the depths of hell.

I hadn't told her that he had mentioned her affairs. I didn't now, looking straight at her and lying convincingly, or so I thought. Her blue eyes darkened, never a good sign.

After a searing pause, Lindsey finally spoke, her voice as hard as, well, a diamond.

“He's using you, Dave. He's trying to scare you and he's trying to use me to get what he wants.”

She walked off to the kitchen and began cleaning up, loudly banging pans.

Of course, he was using me. I was a fool on a hundred fronts but I knew this much. I walked to the kitchen and stood in the doorway.

“What should I have done?” I said. “I can look at the file. It can't do any harm.”

She stared into the sink and scrubbed harder. “Don't talk to me like I'm a child, Dave.”

That came out of nowhere and I started feeling the same anger that was motivating her manic kitchen cleaning.

She dried her hands with a striped dishcloth and turned. “You should have called me. We should have made this decision together.”

“There wasn't time.”

“Why not?” Her tone was sharp. “Did he have an arrest warrant?”

I struggled to find a response. She was right, of course.

I said, “I couldn't let him throw you to the wolves.”

She smiled with cutting false sweetness. “Aren't you the white knight?”

Everybody has an interior jerk. Mine was about to lash back but I stopped it. For a long time the house enclosed us in a tense quiet.

She made a lithe move across the room and I stepped aside. When I followed, I found her sitting on the wide starting step. The staircase led to a door, then a walkway that spanned the interior courtyard to the garage apartment. She put her head in her hands. I touched her shoulder.

“And you're a deputy sheriff again. Working for this racist pig.”

“It won't last,” I said. “I wanted to buy time.”

She turned her shoulder to avoid my hand. I sat in the leather chair and pressed ahead.

“We need to talk to a lawyer. This is serious stuff, Lindsey. I'm worried.”

When she spoke again, the sarcasm was gone. “I was loaned out to an interagency unit, CIA, NSC, DIA, that's the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

She looked up. “Did you think I was in D.C. dealing with Nigerian email scams? My God, you're naïve.”

“I guess so. You told me it was a temporary job at Homeland Security.”

“Look, Chinese hackers got a bunch of information on the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35, by penetrating a British contractor. That's not news. You can find stories about this on the Web, at least the defense press.”

“So you don't have to kill me if you tell me?”

She didn't laugh and I regretted interrupting.

After a moment, she continued. “The efforts to steal information didn't stop there. Our job was to find out who were the bad guys, how big the breach was—what had they learned? Then the task was trying to feed them false information, flawed design elements. I also created a back door into their network and a malware bug that would have rocked their world, but they wouldn't let me use it. Said it was shot down by the White House.”

I wasn't surprised her work would attract attention in high places. She was so damned smart and good at what she did.

She sighed. “The damage was much worse than the brass feared. They stole design elements and critical systems information involving not only the F-35 but the F-22.”

“Did you find out who they were?”

“Unit 61398. No surprise, probably.”

When she saw the My-God-you're-naïve expression on my face, she explained.

“It's one of the most important hacking groups of The People's Liberation Army. The Internet is a battlefield.”

I let out a long breath.

“So why would Melton have his story backward? Why did he say I needed to buy you some time because you had given the Chinese information?”

“Because he's evil. Because he's using you!” Her shoulders stiffened and she used both hands to whip back her hair. She stood and walked past me to the picture window, staring out on Cypress Street.

She whispered, “My God, you believe him!”

“I do not.” I said it forcefully. And I meant it.

I stood up and embraced her from behind. She pulled away.

“Part of you believed him when he was telling you about…whatever he told you went on with me in Washington. I could see it in your face, Dave. I know you.”

This is where I should have stopped it. Diffuse the situation. Go to bed, safe in our cocoon, you and me against the world, babe. But the alcohol truth serum was still in my bloodstream.

I said quietly, “Maybe he was misinformed. When you came home, you told me that your security clearance had been revoked and they confiscated your laptop. Can't you understand why I was concerned after what Melton said? Somebody could be out to get you. Blame you for something that went wrong. I'm not so naïve that I don't know how shit rolls downhill in government agencies.”

“You don't know anything,” she said, her voice rising uncharacteristically. “Jesus, David…”

It was the first time I could recall her ever using my full given name.

“Lindsey, please sit down. Let's work this out together. I only mention the security clearance because…”

“Oh, now you want to work it out together. Why didn't you tell Meltdown to stick it and come home so we could work it out together then? But, no, you believed what he told you about me and you rolled over like a coward. Where else do you think I'm a liar?”

“Hang on.”

“Fuck you, David! You were screwing my sister right in our home.” She shook her head. “You must have felt like quite the stud.”

I slowly shook my head. “It wasn't like that.”

She dropped to her haunches and stared at me.

“Really? Tell me what it was like? Tell me everything. All the details. What it felt like. Then tell me what it felt like when Robin died.”

I turned away from her glare, felt my cheeks burning.

“It felt like hell.”

There was no avoiding it.

Robin. Lindsey's half-sister was a curator for the art collection of a rich man in Paradise Valley. The job went away with the real-estate collapse, when his empire proved to be built on nothing but debt and promises, and he used a revolver to blow his brains all over a Frida Kahlo original hanging in his living room.

The collection went to his creditors and Lindsey insisted Robin move into the garage apartment.

Then a family tragedy estranged us and Lindsey fled to D.C. For months, I was sure I had lost her.