Camelback Falls

Chapter Seventeen

Driving home, Lindsey and I had a short, sharp fight about the ’70s. I found myself in that worst of debating positions, defending an argument I didn’t really believe. Resolved: The decade of the 1970s was a pretty good time, after all.

“How can you be saying that?” Lindsey shot back, and not quietly. “Are you envious of Peralta for having a chick on the side?”

“Of course not,” I said. “That’s not what we’re talking about. Infidelity has occurred in every decade.” Ah, the debater’s half-Nelson. It only made things worse.

“That doesn’t make it right,” she said firmly. Then, “Dave, you’re making me sound like some kind of prude. That’s not fair.”

“I just get tired of the X-ers blaming everything on the Boomers,” I said. “And ten years of complicated events and social forces can’t be reduced to one or two cliches.”

“I didn’t say that,” she said. Like all fights between people who love each other, this one was full of ciphers and code strings, and not at all about what it appeared to be. In a softer voice, she added, “You know, I had to raise myself because of all those good times and complicated social forces.”

“I know.” It was all I could say. She spoke the truth. “I didn’t have much fun back then myself,” I said. “I could barely get a date. The young women didn’t seem interested in me. I never had the great lines that the personality boys have.”

“Oh, you’re a personality boy, Dave,” Lindsey said. Out of my peripheral vision, I could see her luminous smile. “A thinking woman’s personality boy.” She put her hand on my neck and rubbed-oh, that felt good!

“Now you’re flattering me. Don’t stop rubbing.”

“And,” she said, “true personality boys don’t have lines. They have stories.”

“That unmarked car is still behind us,” I said, as we exited to the Seventh Street ramp and paused at the light. Two homeless men, with clothes, beards, and skin the same color as a paper bag, stared at us from behind hand-lettered cardboard signs. Several car lengths back, the Ford had also taken the exit and now prepared to shepherd us home.

“Kimbrough is nothing if not efficient,” Lindsey said. “I guess they don’t trust me to be your bodyguard.”

“Should we stop at Good Sam?”

She stroked my arm. “You know they won’t let us up at this hour, Dave.”

“He’s the only one with the answers.”

“I know,” she said, as the light turned green and the traffic surged onto Seventh. “I’ve started a database for you.”

“You are so good to me.”

“Seriously, personality boy.” She poked me gently in the ribs. “I took a month out of Nixon’s logbook, May 1979, when the Guadalupe shooting happened. I also scanned in the duty rosters and beat lists for the East County patrol district for the same time period.”

“So that we can see if any interesting patterns emerge when we compare everything?” I said.

“Exactly. That may give you a few more answers, at least.”

The stucco houses on Cypress Street gave off a happy, Friday night glow. I drove around the block once, just to make sure everything looked right at home. It did, and I was really ready for a drink, a book, Duke Ellington on the stereo, and a warm bed with my woman, who is definitely no prude.

***

Kimbrough brought bagels and bad news to the doorstep next morning. We all migrated into the kitchen, which was bathed in sun before noon, where I fixed coffee for Kimbrough and Lindsey.

“The Justice Department is on our backs,” he said, settling into one of the white straight-backed chairs at the kitchen table, and setting a file folder before him like a place mat. It was Saturday, but he was wearing a blue blazer, and a subdued burgundy tie with a crisp white shirt.

“About?”

“The logbook.”

“So they won’t even give us time to complete our own Internal Affairs investigation?”

“I’m just telling you what I heard from a friend at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

I opened up the Republic, half expecting to see giant headlines about a scandal in the Sheriff’s Office. But the front page was full of idiot consumer news. Plus a prominent smog story. The Phoenix Open promoters must be getting worried.

“It’s obvious to me,” I said, “that Peralta was already looking into the Guadalupe shooting and whatever Nixon was involved with.” I told Kimbrough about Camelback Falls, the file in Peralta’s desk drawer, and the conversation with Lisa Cardiff Sommers.

“Jesus,” he said. “You’re supposed to be holding together a department that’s about to come apart. Instead, you’re running your own little private investigation here.”

Irritation was wired all through his body language. I poured coffee, trying not to let a defensive little tremor show in my hand.

“I had some hunches, that’s all.”

“Well, let me give you another interpretation,” he said. “Peralta’s dirty.”

“What?” Lindsey jerked her shoulders back.

Kimbrough knotted his brow and plowed ahead. “I know the man is lying in a coma, and I care about him, too. But I can’t just wish away his badge number in that log book, entered next to sizable amounts of money. And we’re running out of time.”

He sampled the coffee, then sipped deeper. “Maybe Nixon was blackmailing Peralta? Maybe Nixon raised the stakes too high and Peralta killed him, I got the lab work back yesterday, and Nixon was dead at least twelve hours before Peralta was shot.”

I felt blood rushing into my face. “This is nuts.”

“David, we found one of Peralta’s new business cards there in Nixon’s trailer. One of the cards with him as sheriff, not chief deputy. I checked and those were only delivered two weeks ago. So within the past two weeks, Peralta and Nixon have had contact.”

“Well, if Peralta was going to kill Nixon, would he leave a damned business card?”

“Maybe it didn’t start out that way,” Kimbrough said. “Maybe they had an initial meeting and just talked. Something went wrong. Nixon tried to put the squeeze on Peralta, whatever.” Kimbrough made a gun barrel out of his finger. “Bam, end of problem. But maybe he’s interrupted before he can clean up the evidence.”

“It sounds to me like Peralta was investigating this case himself!” I heard my voice echo angrily off the wall.

“Hear me out, if you’re going to play Lone Ranger,” Kimbrough said through gritted teeth. “Think of the pressure Peralta could have been under. He’s about to be sworn in as sheriff, and here’s this scumbag Nixon blackmailing him.”

Lindsey said, “So then Peralta finds a way to shoot himself on the day of his swearing in? Just to make it look good?”

“No.” Kimbrough’s eyes were large and earnest, incapable of irony. “There was obviously some kind of double-cross. Maybe Peralta had threatened to implicate the other dirty cops, those other badge numbers. And one of them had to take him out. David, I have seen the list of badge numbers in the logbook. There are nine current Sheriff’s Office employees among them. Nine. Including Peralta. There are fourteen former deputies, including Matson and Bullock.”

“Damn it,” I said, “none of this is proven yet. I didn’t even want to know that information before Internal Affairs completes its investigation. These deputies deserve due process.”

“The point is,” Kimbrough said, “who knows what kind of shit these cops were into twenty years ago? Maybe they were still in it this year. Those kind of people would go to any lengths to keep it covered up.”

I poured myself some orange juice and put some salmon spread on a bagel. My stomach hurt.

“There’s just one problem,” I said. “Yesterday’s prime suspect, Leo O’Keefe.”

“He’s probably involved somehow,” Kimbrough said. “Maybe O’Keefe is the tie-in at this Camelback Falls thing. But in the real world, we have to go for the quickest path that’s going to break a case. Who has the bigger motive for murder here, some convict or some dirty cops who could lose everything if their past comes out?”

My anger boiled back up again. “One of them shot at me. So I am presumed dirty, too? How the hell did they even know I was going out at three in the morning to meet O’Keefe?”

Kimbrough said, “You do keep public company with Bobby Hamid.”

“Oh, Jesus!”

“Didn’t you have dinner at Durant’s with Hamid?”

I held out my hands. “Put the cuffs on me. You got me, copper.”

Kimbrough slapped the tabletop. “Damn it, Sheriff. How do you explain Peralta’s badge number in that book?”

“I can’t,” I shouted. “Yet. How can you believe this man, who we have both worked with for years, is dirty? Not only that, but that he is in so deep that he’s willing to order a murder? Then the other dirty cops could shoot him in retaliation?”

Kimbrough silently studied the table. “I don’t know what I believe,” he said. “I’m just telling you what the feds are talking themselves into.”

“You sounded like a believer.”

“I don’t know who to trust,” he said. “The whole department is just crazy with talk and paranoia about this logbook. You saw it yourself with Abernathy. How the hell did he find out? None of it makes any damned sense. I wish O’Keefe would contact you again.”

“That’s not likely with your guys always on my tail,” I said.

“What?”

Lindsey said, “White Crown Vic. It’s been tailing us for a couple of days. We assumed it was you or Phoenix PD.”

Kimbrough fell suddenly silent, studying his hands. “David,” he finally said. “We haven’t had any units following you. The most we’ve done is ask for extra PD patrols past the house here. Phoenix detectives don’t even have Crown Vics now. They make ’em drive Chevy Cavaliers.” He sighed. “Jesus Christ, what is going on?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “The next damned time you see that car, I want you to call backup. It may be the feds, or it may be connected to whoever took a shot at you the other night. Call for help.”

I nodded and tried to eat. The bagel was warm and flavorful, but my insides felt cold and vulnerable. I instinctively stepped away from the kitchen window.

“Shit,” Lindsey said. “If it’s not the good guys following us…”

“There’s something else,” Kimbrough said, tapping the folder he had placed on the kitchen table. He traced invisible horizontal lines on the top of the folder. “Look, it takes a lot to make me blush, get it? But we found this stuff with all the trash and wine bottles inside Nixon’s trailer. It’s pretty heavy duty.”

I took the orange juice and pulled up a chair. Kimbrough pushed the folder at me. “I figured since you knew Nixon way back when, maybe this might mean something.”

I opened the cover and a half dozen color photos were inside, eight-and-a-half by eleven, lots of skin. Kimbrough was right. The images were extremely explicit. Full frontal nudity and penetration were just the beginning. Check your imaginations at the door for all will be revealed.

“Tryouts for the gymnastics team?” Lindsey said, looking over my shoulder.

It was an orgy. The top photo showed several couples in various copulatory positions. I hadn’t been a porn aficionado since we had the secret stack of Penthouse at the substation when I was a twenty-year-old deputy. Spectator sports were not my thing. But these photos stood out as, well, real. They had none of the retouched bodies and professional lighting of sex industry images. The people looked average, the moments carried the edge and flaws of the spontaneous.

The scene wasn’t some sleazy motel room with a pizza-colored bedspread and velvet Elvis on the walls, either. Take out the writhing bodies and the room could have been in Architectural Digest. White marble stairs and levels flowed out of a roomy conversation pit, which contained expensive-looking sectional sofas and spare, modern tables. African sculptures, with stone erections to match the flesh ones of the orgy, stood on one set of shelves. A large abstract painting, hot colors and geometry, dominated one wall, and another wall was all glass. The real eye-catcher, though, was what looked like an indoor waterfall, cascading down from a second level into a pond in the center of the room. But this, too, was not quite a “done” room-you could see the reefers, pills, and cocaine scattered around various tables.

The second photo stopped me. It centered on a man with Mark Spitz hair, naked except for dirty white socks. He was upright, on his knees, connected doggy-style to a curvy brunette who had matted hair and wore a black merry widow. Her face was buried in a cushion. The man had turned his head to face the cameraman, giving a goofy-drunk grin and looking so young I didn’t recognize him at first.

“That’s Nixon,” I said.

“Holy shit,” Kimbrough said. “So much for stereotypes about the relative physical endowments of white men.”

“That’s how he got his nickname,” I said. “He was very popular with women.”

“Oh, please,” Lindsey said. “Men with giant cocks are bad lovers. They think they don’t have to do anything else but show up.”

How did she know that? A tremor of insecurity swept through me. But turning back to the picture, I felt the same dizzy, intrusive feeling as when we talked to Lisa the night before. We weren’t meant to see these photos. They were Dean’s trophies, from when he was virile and desirable and the world existed in a happy teacup of youth and promise.

I set it face-down. The next photos showed a pretty young girl fellating an older man. He sat Buddha-like on an Eames chair with the girl on her knees. His skin was leathery brown, but he had an old man’s spidery stretch lines around his stomach. They were in the same room, but closer to the waterfall, the spray sluicing off white marble behind the two lovers. A display of red, black, and orange pills was splayed across a nearby tabletop. Next to that was a hand mirror with neat lines of what might have been baking soda, but wasn’t.

The girl was truly beautiful, with a heart-shaped face, flaxen hair parted in the middle, and an exquisite young body, lightly tanned. She looked languidly at the camera.

Something kicked my memory. I knew her.

“What?” Lindsey said.

“That’s Marybeth,” I said. “Marybeth Watson. The girl who was with Leo that night in Guadalupe. She was his girlfriend.”

“Not when this picture was taken,” Lindsey said. “You know who this is with her?”

I studied the man’s face. He wasn’t looking right at the camera. Something about his wispy white rim of hair contrasted with dramatic black eyebrows looked familiar. But I had to shake my head.

“That,” said Lindsey, “is Jonathan Ledger, the author of The Sex Instructions.”

I sat back in the chair and pointed at the photos. “So this must be Camelback Falls.”