Dry Heat

Chapter Two

The rubber bag held a misshapen fat man. But the bones of his face, with their narrow planes and prominent juts, seemed to go with a man of average, even lean, build. The sun had done its relentless job bloating, burning, breaking down the remains. Even a few days in this heat were enough to do it. I searched the sore-ridden face, darkened by the pooling of blood. It was an old face with wrinkles around the mouth. He had spiky yellow-white whiskers, like the weeds in the yard, maybe a week’s growth of beard that would grow no more. The pupils were blown out black, the tear ducts large. Parts of his face had a hint of fair skin. A mole was still distinct on the crease running below his right cheek. The smell was god-awful, rotting human flesh. I fought my gag reflex and breathed through my mouth.

Pham handed me a pair of gloves, but I didn’t put them on. What I knew about forensics I had mostly learned as a young deputy on the street years ago. When I got my Ph.D. in history, emphasis on America from 1900 to 1940, I thought it was my ticket away from dead bodies. Funny how things turned out.

I asked, “How do we know he’s homeless?”

Markowitz pointed to a raggedy backpack and two white plastic shopping bags on the ground nearby. An evidence technician was starting to separate and inventory their contents. Another technician used a digital camera to record each piece of evidence.

“We found those near the edge of the pool. Old clothes inside. No wallet or ID. No logos on the clothes. But there’s a meal voucher for Shelter Services.”

“Name?”

He shook his head.

“But the badge was sewn inside his jacket?”

Pham nodded. “He was wearing the jacket, too.”

Just the thought of it made me instantly hotter. I edged toward the dust-caked wall of the house, trying to at least catch as much shade as the small roof overhang would allow. The sliding glass door stood open and hot air drifted out. I thought, Turn on the damned air-conditioning and let’s go inside.

I said, “How do we know he’s not some undocumented alien who fell in the pool and drowned, or he died here and the coyotes threw him in the pool?”

Pham said, “Next-door neighbor, a Mrs. Morales, said this old homeless Anglo had been out in the alley a couple of days ago. She’d never seen him before. She didn’t talk to him. But she says he had some plastic shopping bags, and white whiskers.”

The sky had lost all color. It was bleached white. The air felt under pressure. I looked around the yard. It was a hell of a place to die. Sun-blasted dirt. Back fence faded and broken. The house looking like it had been abandoned years ago. I tried to imagine the happy suburban memories, tried and failed.

“So what do you guys think?” Pham asked, his hands on his hips.

Kate Vare had been silent through all this. She suddenly said, “We just don’t know enough to know yet. I don’t work with guesses. Let’s trace the badge number.” She looked at me like a small dog that had intimidated a cat. Then they all looked at me expectantly.

“I don’t know much,” I said. “There was one FBI agent killed in the line of duty in Arizona. It happened in 1948, and the case was never solved. The agent’s name was John Pilgrim.”

“Go on,” Pham said.

“That’s all I know,” I said. “So is that Pilgrim’s badge?”

“Yeah,” Pham said. “The badge was never found in 1948. That fact was withheld from the public report. I’m just learning all this in the past half hour.” He studied me. “We hoped you could be a help.”

“Well, that’s what I know,” I said, starting for the street. “If you don’t mind, I just got back from a trip, and I’d really like to go home and change.”

Markowitz put a gentle, heavy hand on my shoulder. Pham said, “I can understand, Dr. Mapstone. But we asked Sheriff Peralta for you to be assigned to this case. You have some skills we might need. So don’t leave us quite yet.” He turned to Kate Vare. “You don’t mind a team that includes Dr. Mapstone, do you, Sergeant Vare?”

She was all smiles for the head fed, a talent called “managing up” that I had never mastered. She said, “We’re always happy to have David.”

That was when the air force arrived. A yellow helicopter swept in over the trees and did a pivot maybe a thousand feet above the backyard, swinging around to view us. It had the markings of a TV network. The heat seemed to push the engine sound downward until it was as prevalent as the smell of the body.

“Goddamned TV stations,” Markowitz said over the din. “Must be a slow news day, if they come out for a stinker in a Maryvale pool.”

The first chopper took up station to the northeast, and in a few seconds another one appeared. Kate tried to hold her hair in place from the wind blast, but soon this craft moved off a bit and hovered to the southwest. When I was able to see past the glare to make out the network logo on the second chopper’s door, I saw two more helicopters. We were bracketed for the evening news, looking like idiots staring up into the sky. The whap-whap roar of the rotors assaulted our ears. Then I noticed a commotion over toward the side gate. The uniforms parted, the helicopters seemed to shimmy downward, and a giant in a tan suit and white Stetson strode into the backyard. Mike Peralta.

His physical presence washed into the space like a concussion wave. In my mind’s eye, for just a moment, it was 1977 and academy instructor Peralta was stepping onto a gym mat to show me how to dominate and control a resisting suspect. I was eighteen, with an idealistic urge to be a cop, and my ears rang for a week after he slammed me onto the inch-thick fiber that separated my head from a full-blown concussion. “Dominate and control” were his words, classic cop speak. But his tree-trunk frame, impassive dark gaze, and confident wide-legged stance made any threat a promise. With his record of combat in Vietnam and heroics on the streets of Phoenix, he scared the hell out of the cadets.

He could still intimidate. But in the years he climbed the cop bureaucracy, years I was gone from law enforcement and from Phoenix, he had learned some polish and politics. He’d learned to smile. The media, hungry for charisma, had taken to him. People I respected said he’d be governor someday. I still wasn’t sure he was comfortable with any of it. I knew him in the way ex-partners know each other, but I couldn’t tell you where the old Peralta ended and the new one began. He was a complicated man who denied it.

Pham shook his hand. Markowitz and Kate Vare got nods. He ignored me.

Pham said. “Sheriff, I was just telling Dr. Mapstone how much we need his expertise on this case.”

“I’m sure he’s grateful for the opportunity,” Peralta said, doffing his Stetson. “So is this connected to the John Pilgrim murder?”

I stared at Peralta. “It looks that way,” Pham said.

We trailed Peralta and Pham on another once-over. I wondered how the victim got into the pool. Nothing was obvious, such as bloodstains on the concrete. Peralta walked over to the body, handed me his hat, slipped on some gloves, and felt around the man’s face. Then the corpse’s hands were in his giant paws, being minutely examined.

“A prior suicide attempt…,” Peralta said. “See the scars on his wrists.” Everybody nodded, but it was the first time they noticed the small, whitish rivulets under the skin. “But they’re damned small.”

“Maybe a small suicide attempt?” Markowitz said.

“Long time ago,” Peralta said, unsmiling, sliding the arms back into the body bag.

Peralta studied the FBI badge intently, holding it up to the sun. I retold the story of John Pilgrim, the only FBI agent to be murdered in Arizona, an unsolved crime. Markowitz offered a briefing on what little the neighbors could tell. Peralta was complimentary. Peralta was grateful. Jurisdictional niceties must be observed. He slipped off the latex gloves and took back his Stetson.

He put a meaty hand on Pham’s shoulder. “So tell us what you have in mind, Eric?”

“A cross-jurisdictional, multidisciplinary task force,” he said, “Dr. Mapstone, Sgt. Vare, some of our people, of course. They say alliances are the way to get things done in the New Economy.”

This was not the G-man talk I expected. Peralta said, “And you can push some of the costs onto us local peace officers.” He smiled.

Pham smiled. “Well, Sheriff, it’s no secret that we’re stretched with the war on terrorism. I know you folks are, too. That’s why I thought we could be more effective together. This may be connected to the murder of an FBI agent, so we’re definitely serious players. But we need your help.”

Peralta’s handsome features changed subtly. “I’ve got my problems, too. The state fiscal crisis keeps running downhill to the county. We’re humping it just to keep shifts covered. Got a major war between the Hell’s Angels and the Mongols. My jail system is over capacity…”

“Of course, of course.”

“But,” Peralta sighed, “we’re always happy to help. Mapstone will be assigned to this for as long as it takes.” He shook hands again and swept out, this time with his arm around me. Past the gate, he said, “He’s the nicest damned fed I’ve ever met.”

I said, “How the hell do you know about John Pilgrim?”

“I know history and stuff, Mapstone. You keep teaching me, remember.”

“Despite your best efforts,” I said. We walked past TV cameras and TV questions, which Peralta ignored. He motioned to a uniform, who corralled a handful of TV reporters in the side yard. Peralta was already striding to the street.

“Sheriff Peralta with his media coterie,” I said, making a gesture to take in the reporters, the helicopters, the world.

“What the hell is a coterie? You sound like my wife the Famous Shrink.”

“Wait.” I caught him at the curb. “What the hell good am I supposed to do in an investigation that should be the feds’ business?”

“Why are you in such a foul mood?” he asked mildly. “You got to get out of this place for a few days. I thought you liked Portland.”

I was about to say something I’d probably regret, but he was talking to the neighbors in a patois of Spanish and English. They crowded around him as if he were a star. An ice cream vendor pushed his cart up the street, and the children abandoned Peralta for the sweet stuff.

In a few moments, he took my arm again and led me down the sidewalk, but not far enough to find shade. A huge river of sweat was running down my back. He looked as cool as a November morning.

“You look miserable, Mapstone,” he said.

“How the hell do you stay so cool? It’s a hundred degrees on the first of April.”

“It’s a dry heat,” he said.

I said, “Hell is a dry heat.”

Peralta glanced back toward the house. “All those reporters are going to be disappointed. To them, it will just be a story about a homeless man who died in a green pool.”

“The badge?”

Peralta shook his head. “Pham doesn’t want to release that information yet.”

“But,” I said, “a homeless man doesn’t fall in a pool without the Maricopa County sheriff noticing.”

A carload of young men drove slowly up the street, slowing more as they passed us. It was a Cadillac Escalade, big as a starship, and emitting enormous pulses of sound. It made my heart beat funny. The noise almost concealed a few hissed profanities concerning our parentage and relationship to swine. Peralta ignored it, except for a subtle gesture-he slid his hand around his waist, pulling back his suit coat just enough that they could see the large.40-caliber Glock semiautomatic in a shoulder rig. They couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Tough young stupid guys with nearly shaved heads. Just past us, they kicked in the hydraulics and the Escalade hopped along, slowly thrusting itself into the asphalt and coming back up. We could hear the sonic thuds long after the car made a languid turn and exited the neighborhood.

“Aren’t you curious about how an FBI badge missing for more than a half century turned up on a homeless guy in a swimming pool in Maryvale?” he demanded, his voice freed of the constraints of public attention.

“Sure, but ‘cross-jurisdictional’ is another word for cluster fuck.”

One side of his mouth started to smile. He said, “Not always. Look at Lindsey’s big score.”

“So I heard,” I said, missing her even more.

“One of the biggest credit card fraud operations, taken down by her work with a federal task force.”

“I read about it on the plane. The New York Times carried the story.”

Peralta’s large black eyes fluttered. I could see his publicity meter running. That was the most obvious reason to get me involved in this case: good press meant more resources from the citizens of Maricopa County. “Anyway,” he said, “the feds are in trouble since 9/11. They’ve had to shift over to preventing terrorism. They really could use our help.”

“When did you get generous?”

“Be a good soldier, Mapstone. Your bride cut the nuts off the most profitable worldwide operation of the Russian mafia. You should be proud. It should motivate you to outdo her.”

“We’re not in competition. She’s a lot smarter than me.”

“Don’t play games, Mapstone. No fucking April Fool’s.” I could sense his mood withdrawing into a darker basement. “This is a serious investigation. The feds need an independent third party to investigate this. And I want the sheriff’s office to come out looking good.”

“Sure,” I said, gratefully feeling a hot breeze interrupt the blazing stagnant atmosphere. “And everything will be dandy and collegial with Kate Vare.”

“You just have to know how to handle her.”

“She can’t be ‘handled,’” I said sarcastically. “Why the hell does she hate me?”

Peralta paused. We’d reached an intersection maybe two hundred yards from the drama at the orange-striped ranch house. The street was completely empty. “Because,” he said, “you’re the enemy.”

I started to speak but a wall of dust slapped me in the face, stinging my eyes.

“Hope they get that scene secured,” Peralta said, rubbing his heavy jaw. “We’re gonna get a helluva storm.”