Concrete Desert

Chapter Twelve

Peralta hunched down in his big chair, head propped on his hands, staring at a can of caffeine-free diet Coke, gnawing his cuticle. He didn’t look at me when I came in.

Then, in a little high-pitched sneer, he said, “‘Oh, gee, Sharon, Julie and I are just friends now.’”

“We are,” I said. “Sometimes things happen between friends, especially during times of stress.” My head was throbbing. I sat down. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“It is my business, since you are a Maricopa County deputy,” Peralta said. “And you’ve really stepped in some shit here. Two bodies in two days. Julie can’t account for her whereabouts when Townsend was killed. And when I come by to ask you about it, she’s climbing out of your goddamned bed. I thought I’d been sent back twenty years in time.”

“It was a case you didn’t give a shit about, Mike. While we’re digging up unfortunate quotes of the past month, I recall a certain chief deputy saying something like ‘Phaedra’s just shacking up with some guy and she’ll turn up.’ Now you’re acting like I somehow created this situation.”

His eyes darkened visibly and I knew I was in for it. But he just sighed and leaned back in his chair. Up came his legs, and his fine lizard-skin boots claimed the desktop.

“I suppose you have a hypothesis?” he asked.

“I thought this belonged to the task force.” I didn’t have a clue.

“It does, for now. But Townsend complicates things. If he was Phaedra’s lover, it’s hard to believe it was just a coincidence. There were thousands of dollars’ worth of art and electronics in his house up there, and it was all left. This was no robbery gone wrong. Maybe big sister decided to give paybacks to little sister’s nasty-boy lover.”

“Wait a minute.” My head was spinning. I vowed never to take another drink as long as I lived. “When was Townsend murdered?”

“Best guess until the lab work comes back is yesterday afternoon. Probably not long after you left.”

“So you’re saying Julie already knew Phaedra was dead, drove at ninety miles an hour to Sedona to ice this guy, turned around and drove at ninety miles an hour to get back to the hotel so she could be there when I told her about finding her sister’s body?”

Peralta’s face tightened. “I don’t know what I think,” he said. “Something’s not right about this, David.”

“Have you gotten lab work back on Phaedra?”

Peralta shook his head. “The medical examiner takes his time because he knows this thing is going to be seen by everybody, including the feds. Hell, it only happened half a mile from the La Paz County line, so I’ve got this little-town Buford Pusser busting my chops. And it’s only a matter of time before the Republic starts doing more on this serial killer than the isolated stories about the body of a suspected prostitute turning up in the desert.”

My stomach did a little free fall. “What did the evidence technicians find?”

Peralta looked disgusted. “They didn’t find dick.”

“The car? Blue Nissan Sentra?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

I walked over to his little refrigerator and got a diet Coke. I sipped it cautiously. “Mike, answer me this: How many times before did your Harquahala killer call the Communications Center to say where a body could be found?”

“None.”

“Have the others been this close to La Paz County?”

“No, no, goddamn it. But what does that prove? Green River crossed county lines. Ramirez did Orange County and L.A. County-hell, even San Francisco. None of these guys can read a map ’cause they’re too busy talking to Satan or their neighbor’s terrier.”

“And did the MO of the body dump jibe?”

Peralta sighed again.

“It didn’t, did it?”

“We can’t be sure,” Peralta said. “He changes his routine every time. He’s not as ritualistic as some I’ve seen. Look, David, even if she wasn’t turning tricks, we don’t know what we’re dealing with yet. By your own report, Phaedra answered personal ads, had lots of men in her life. Who knows who she met out there.”

“Come on, Mike! Most people who answer personal ads don’t end up dead. You know this isn’t related. You’re just letting this thing run on bureaucratic momentum. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to group some homicides so when you get your Harquahala killer, you’ll have a higher clearance rate.”

“Okay, hotshot. What’s your theory?”

I sat back down and sipped the cold drink. “I don’t have one yet. But I have a strange feeling about it.”

Peralta looked at me.

“She was meant to be found. Most body dumps, the killer hopes the victim won’t be found. This guy calls nine-one-one and gives directions. And she was meant to be found in a certain way, just like those women forty years ago.”

Peralta threw up his hands. “This shit again.”

“Hear me out,” I said. “So he’s a media junkie. He read about Stokes, saw you and me on TV. Wanted to make a point.”

“What point?” Peralta fairly shouted. “Why would he even know you knew Phaedra from Adam? And how do we know he didn’t grab her weeks before the story broke about the Stokes case?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know yet.”

Two days passed. Julie and I holed up at my house like two hermits in winter. Only we were hiding from the sun and the heat and our own heartbreaks. We made love and held each other. It was both familiar and strange, as if we had always been together and yet we were only touching copies of our sensual selves from long ago. The oleanders and citrus trees protected us from the world for a while.

We talked more. Julie slowly filled in some of the blanks of her life: She married a lawyer named Royce. He beat her up at least once a month. They went to a lot of parties and did a lot of cocaine. They had a daughter. When Julie finally grew sick of the beatings and the husband’s affairs, she sued him for divorce. Royce got custody of the daughter, Mindy, after a protracted fight. “He went to law school with the judge, for God’s sake,” she said. Then a couple of aimless years-“I went kind of crazy when I lost Mindy”-spent with a succession of bad-news lovers. Then some therapy. Now, she was trying to get her life back together, maybe get the court to modify the custody award. And was dealing with the death of her younger sister. There was nothing for me to do but listen.

At night, I slept fitfully, the.357 just under the bed, the outside noises casting sinister echoes. Julie burrowed deep against me, pulling my arm across her body, nesting her feet against my legs. Sometimes I would wake up and hear her sobbing softly, and I would hold her closer.

In the daytime, we wandered off separately for our lonely rituals. I tried to read some, write some, keep my mind distracted. Books had never been a comfort to Julie, so she watched daytime TV and drank alone, until she couldn’t stand it any longer. Then she came and wrapped me up in her arms, trembling and sobbing.

On Saturday, I woke up from a five-fathom-deep sleep and the other side of the bed was empty. The phone was ringing and the clock said five minutes ahead of noon. When I picked it up, the line was silent. And then a deep voice said, “Mapstone. This is Harrison Wolfe. Detective Harrison Wolfe, Phoenix PD, retired. I think we need to have a talk.”