Camelback Falls

Chapter Eleven

We didn’t have far to go. The map, a detailed plat from the U.S. Geological Survey, showed the area around Shaw Butte in the North Mountain Preserve. It highlighted a trail in yellow marker, then diverged to what the map said was an abandoned mine shaft. Next to that, in a precise hand, were instructions on how to find Dean Nixon’s buried treasure.

We walked up the trail armed with a shovel, crime-scene tape, and more evidence containers from the trunk of Kimbrough’s unmarked Crown Victoria. Ahead of us were bare sunbaked mountains that once cradled the northern edge of the city, marking the beginning of the desert wilderness. Now the city had run around them. But somehow Phoenix had mustered the momentary courage to save the mountains themselves from development. Today we passed a handful of hikers, but the preserve was mostly deserted on a weekday.

As we walked, Kimbrough talked about his family. One child, a boy, was six now, and another was on the way in June. His wife had left the County Attorney’s Office-they met when she was a prosecutor-and she was going to set up her own family law practice. This was Kimbrough’s fifteenth year with the Sheriff’s Office. He was five years younger than me, and came here from the Drug Enforcement Administration when the former sheriff, also a DEA man, won election.

“Now I know why I like you,” I said. “You’re an outsider in this department like me.”

“That and we have great taste in clothes.” He laughed.

We walked up a well prepared trail, but it was still work. The hard desert ground was defined by loose rocks, sand, and outcroppings of jumping cactus. I felt every foot of elevation in my knees and calves. But as we kept walking, the pain lessened, as did the immediate memory of the gunshot that made me dive for the sidewalk just a few hours before.

“Luckily the snakes are hibernating in winter,” I said.

“Great,” Kimbrough said.

“’Course it’s been a warm winter, Dave,” Lindsey said.

As we neared the summit and left the trail, the ugliness of the day became evident. A weather inversion had clamped the smog down hard on the city, just like the lid on a bowl. Only Phoenix’s bowl was the purple and brown necklace of mountains that surrounded it. From where we stood, we should have been able to see the soaring blue towers of the Sierra Estrella to the south and the sheer expanse of the White Tanks to the west. Both were gone, replaced by a yellow-brown haze that spread out across the desert floor. Even Squaw Peak and Camelback, much closer, were barely visible. To the south, the Sunnyslope section of the city fell away in a series of rooftops, palm trees, and billboards until it, too, disappeared in the muck. The line of skyscrapers on the Central Corridor shimmered and faded. To the north, Moon Valley and Deer Valley, newer parts of Phoenix, sprawled around Lookout Mountain, itself cloaked in brown air.

“Yuck,” Lindsey said. We were all winded from the climb, and the sight of the air didn’t make breathing easier.

“I remember when the sky here was the bluest blue in the world,” I said, working my way up a slick boulder. “But I’m sounding like an old fogey.”

Lindsey grabbed my hand and pulled herself up on the next level of rock. “You’re a young fogey,” she said, “like me.”

We paused and studied the map. Sure enough, a slab of concrete was set into a cluster of boulders, marked off by signs that warned “Danger. Abandoned Mine.”

“I didn’t realize there was mining in the Valley,” Lindsey said, kindly teasing my eternal pedagogic sensibility.

“Yeah, my wife thinks these mountains just look like giant slag heaps,” Kimbrough said. “But she’s from Pennsylvania.”

“Well, these mountains were really not much. The mining districts east of here, around Globe, or north in the Bradshaw Mountains actually had some gold and silver.” I restrained myself. “Anyway, there were a few mines around Phoenix. Squaw Peak had some quicksilver mines. A German POW hid in one for awhile when he escaped, back in World War II.”

I could go on all day, and Lindsey said my history talks were wildly romantic. But we fell silent as we studied Nixon’s instructions. Northeast corner of the concrete slab, right by the fence pole. I stuck the shovel in the hard, dry dirt and started digging.

After several cuts at the ground, I was about to let Kimbrough take his turn digging. Then the blade of the shovel struck metal.

“That’s it,” I said. I changed the angle of the shovel and soon outlined what looked like an old metal ammunition box, just the size of a bread box, its olive green paint suddenly peeking out of the blond and gray desert soil.

“Whatever it was,” Lindsey said, “Nixon didn’t want it at his trailer. But he didn’t want it that far away, either.”

I grasped the handle of the box and pulled it out of the ground. “Well, we’re about to find out.”

I put latex gloves back on and released the metal catch on the ammo box. The top swung open, releasing sand and rocks. Inside it was empty.

“I don’t believe it,” Kimbrough said. “This is like when Geraldo opened Al Capone’s vault.”

“Wait a minute.” I put my hand on the bottom and it gave way. A piece of dark metal, cut to create a false bottom. I pulled out the metal plate and beneath it was some kind of book, wrapped in plastic. I pulled it out and shook it off, being paranoid about scorpions and other desert creepy-crawlies. But inside it was clean and dry, a red, hardcover journal. It was the kind of logbook you might have seen in any small business a generation ago.

“Hmmmm,” Kimbrough said, reacting to the cover. It was a vivid cartoon of two pigs in police uniforms, having sex while riding a Harley. Beneath it was inscribed, “MCSD RIVER HOGS.”

“That dates it,” I said. “Back in the seventies, it was the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, MCSD, when we were trying to prove how big-city we were.”

“What were the River Hogs?” Lindsey asked.

I shook my head, looking over at Kimbrough.

“Before my time,” he said. “But I never heard the phrase before.”

“When did Nixon’s ex get that envelope?” I asked.

“She didn’t recall exactly,” he said. “They divorced in 1991, and she moved to Tempe. She knows Nixon gave her the envelope to hang onto after they divorced. She said she hadn’t even seen Nixon since 1995.”

“Dave’s ex gave him a BMW,” Lindsey said, poking my ribs.

“So he was anticipating somebody killing him for at least five years, maybe longer?” I said.

“Maybe,” Kimbrough said. “But he was a drunk and a washout as a law enforcement officer. Maybe he was just paranoid.” I held out the book again and opened the cover. Beyond some blank initial sheets, the pages turned dense with columns. Pages and pages of numbers and columns. I flipped through. Nothing but numbers and columns. One column appeared to be dates, starting in 1977. On the last page, the date was 12/31/80. Another column was clearly about money: Each page saw that column set off with a precisely-drawn dollar sign-and the same person appeared to have written all the entries. The sums weren’t small, $1,000 being a common amount, and some lines showing as high as $15,000.

“What’s that?” Kimbrough indicated another column, with four-digit numbers.

I shook my head. “Some kind of code, maybe.” I scanned the pages, and the four-digit numbers frequently repeated themselves. A few appeared quite regularly, every week.

“Like a book-making operation?” Lindsey asked. I shook my head, feeling suddenly like something cold had wrapped itself around my neck.

“Or payoffs,” I said. “Bribes to cops. Nixon left nothing in this case except this book. He obviously thought it was self-evident, and that the information was explosive. We’re not talking about records of poker games, here.”

“That’s why he wrote the thing about taking it to the U.S. Attorney,” Kimbrough said.

“So what is the code?” Lindsey asked. “Maybe there’s a key somewhere in the book.”

Kimbrough’s star and gun hanging on his belt caught my eye, and it was clear. “They’re badge numbers,” I said.

Lindsey drew closer. “Jeez, Dave, are you in there?”

“What was Nixon’s badge number?” I asked. Kimbrough shook his head.

“Hang on,” Lindsey said, pulling out her Palm Pilot.

“I guess I have to get one of those,” I said.

“This one’s old,” she said, using a stylus to make some marks on the little screen. “It takes a long time to beam into the mainframe down on Madison Street.”

I looked out, past the blown-apart, burned boulders, over the brown haze obscuring the city. Badge numbers. So this was what Nixon wanted someone to see in the event of his death. Leo O’Keefe? No, Dean Nixon had been fearing something for a very long time, and it had to do with badge numbers.

“Got it,” Lindsey said, reading out Nixon’s number from the central computer. And, sure enough, Nixon was a regular in the book. In just one month, he accounted for $8,500, and that was 1979 money.

Lindsey drew close to me and began scanning the pages herself. Suddenly, she drew in a sharp breath. “Oh!”

I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to. But there it was. And it reappeared. Again and again, on page after page.

“That can’t be,” I said.

“What the hell are you guys talking about,” Kimbrough demanded. But then his eyes picked up the four digits, too.

“Oh, my God,” he said.

There was only one badge number that was so familiar in the Sheriff’s Office that everyone knew it by sight.