Cactus Heart

4

I climbed into the BMW, slid in Coltrane’s Blue Train CD and took Seventh Avenue downtown. Dammit, I liked the car. Somewhere, the cold autumn wind was whipping leaves down streets scented with chimney smoke: the genuine fall of our movie-and-TV-seeded collective memory. But in Phoenix, it was seventy-five degrees and intensely sunny. The desert did change with the seasons, but the transformation was very gradual: autumn was a sweet mildness in the late afternoon, a change in the quality of light, a wistful abbreviation of the day. You had to pay attention.

When I hit Indian School, the cell phone rang.

“So, David,” a woman’s voice said, “I hear you got into some trouble last night.”

“I didn’t think Pulitzer Prize winners got up this early,” I said to Lorie Pope of the Arizona Republic.

She laughed without humor. “Yeah, well, the fad-du-jour over here is re-engineering the newsroom into ‘teams,’ where we all get to rotate into the cops beat. It’s supposed to make everyone feel equal. I feel like I’m twenty-one years old again.”

“I remember when you were twenty-one.”

“And I remember you, my love,” she sighed in her husky alto. “But I digress. So what about it? A robbery downtown last night? The heroic Chief Peralta saving the distressed damsels in a dramatic showdown. Then something about a chase and a couple of skeletons being found? A certain history-professor-turned-deputy involved. Something tells me it isn’t just another body drop here in sunny Phoenix. Tell me something I can put in the paper.”

Idling at a red light, I flipped down the sun visor and used the mirror to check the damage to my face. Not too bad: a cut on my left cheek, ugly bruise under my left eye, a little swelling. Hurt like hell. The light changed and I said, “You know how Peralta is. Go through the public information officer.”

“They’d just send me to that damned sheriff’s Web site for a press release.”

“Or buy me a drink off the record.”

“That interesting, huh?” she said. “So how about tonight? Or do you have plans with that X-er girlfriend, whatshername, Ashley?”

“Lindsey.”

“Whatever.”

“You ever hear about the Yarnell kidnapping?”

“Sure,” she said.

“What do you know about it?”

“You’re the historian, David. Weren’t they grandsons of Hayden Yarnell? Twin brothers, right? I think a guy was finally caught.”

“Jack Talbott,” I said. “He was a handyman, who did work at the Yarnell place. He was arrested for some minor thing down on the border and they found some of the ransom money on him. But he never admitted to the kidnapping and they never found either the bulk of the ransom money or the twins.”

“So, why are you telling me this?”

“I am preparing your mind,” I said. “I’ll call later.”

Ten minutes later, I parked outside Phoenix Police Headquarters, a sterile monstrosity of the 1970s that uglies up the corner of Seventh Avenue and Washington Street. On the Washington side, about thirty protesters walked in a long circle, carrying signs: “Stop killing us!” and “NO Police War on Minorities.” In a vacant lot off Van Buren Street last night a sixteen-year-old Hispanic kid decided to get in a gun battle with the cops. Nobody knew why. The newspaper said he was hit by sixteen bullets. Sixteen years and sixteen bullets. I limped around the corner, feeling the Advil I had taken for my ankle wear off, took the side entrance and checked in with the desk cop.

Half an hour passed before I was given a visitor’s badge and sent up to the investigations division. It took up most of a floor, but with its cubicles, computers, and neutral-tone decor, it looked more like an insurance office than a police station. A receptionist sent me back to a glass office where a man sat staring at a messy desk. All I could see was the top of his head: dark, straight, dry hair, parted on one side. The name-card on the door said, lt. augustus hawkins. He sure as hell didn’t look like a Roman emperor.

I rapped on the doorjamb and stepped inside. “David Mapstone, MCSO.”

“I know who you are,” the lowered head spoke.

The bullshit cop hazing was well under way. The long wait downstairs. Now he would let me stand awkwardly while he balanced his checkbook or wrote to his girlfriend, or whatever. It was like dealing with a tenure committee and I was really bad at it.

I waited at least a minute before speaking. “Look, Hawkins, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be. But I’ve got orders, same as you do.”

The dry, dark hair went back and a face rose up. A most ordinary, suburban face with thin, pale lips, and blotchy, pale skin. A face that would always be just a few hours ahead of needing a shave. Below the face was a wrinkled gray dress shirt and a goldish pattern tie with an enormous knot. The face regarded me and nodded grimly.

“Yeah, well, right. Sit.”

I did.

“This is a city case.”

“No!”

“We have a cold-case squad.”

“Seriously?”

“We don’t need your help.”

“I’m crushed.”

“We don’t want your help.”

“So call Chief Wilson and tell him that.”

He sighed heavily from somewhere south of his lungs and went back to staring at his papers. He didn’t like eye contact. “My orders are to cooperate. I follow my orders. This is just a job. Not a crusade.” He signed a document and looked at me again, briefly.

“And this is your lucky day,” he went on, “because I have way more homicides than I have detectives. We have three thousand open-unsolved cases, and they’re from five and ten years ago, with living loved ones who care about what happened. I sure as hell don’t have time for my guys to be mucking around with some bones from sixty years ago. So if you stay out of the way and write your little report, we’ll get along fine.”

“Yessir,” I said. “Out of the way, little report, get along fine.”

He looked up and his eyes narrowed down to slits. A pillbox face ready to resist invaders.

“Look, what do you need to get this over with as fast as possible?”

I told him: access to records, somebody to push through the testing of the crime scene and the skeletons, and time to interview the Yarnell family.

He leaned back and expelled a breath. “You’re talking about one of the most prominent families in the state. What do you need to talk to them about?”

“You know, we talk to family members in murder investigations. At least at the sheriff’s office we do.”

He shook his head and his voice became whiny. “Jesus. It’s virtually a closed case. We just need to tie up loose ends. There’s no mystery here. We don’t need to make waves or piss people off.”

“I can be quite charming,” I said. “Look how I’m winning you over.”

He rubbed his neck. “You will wear your MCSO identification in the building at all times. There’s no smoking in here. No using our office supplies. You will gather evidence and take no action-none-without informing me first.”

He smoothed the papers before him. “No cowboy tactics, no Peralta shoot-em-ups. This is a nine-to-five job, a professional, civil service job. I’m taking my kid to soccer practice tonight, right on time. I expect that from everyone on this floor.” He added: “We’ll get the lab work moving ahead.”

I rose and started to leave.

“You’re an outsider times two, Mapstone,” Hawkins said. “You’re not a Phoenix officer. And you’re not really even a deputy. You’re some kind of professor. Outsiders don’t do well in this department.”

“There goes my self-esteem,” I said, and left him staring at his desktop.