High Country Nocturne

Chapter Twenty-six

When I reached the ICU, Sharon was back with her daughters. Lindsey’s condition hadn’t changed; none of her physicians were there; and the closest I could get was watching her through the window. So I took Sharon down to the Starbucks in the lobby and told her what I could.

“At least he’s still alive,” she said

She seemed distracted. I studied her face but could only see her struggling to keep up the strong front. I had expected her to be happier, but she looked gaunt with worry.

I said, “No calls on that landline?”

She looked at me curiously, then shook her head.

I asked if the FBI was still tailing her.

“Like white on rice,” she said. “We’ve started taking coffee and sandwiches out to the unit watching the house. I’m not worried about us. I am worried about Mike. And you, David. When was the last time you slept?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been taking catnaps.”

“You look awful. Go home and let us keep watch. I promise to call when something changes.”

“Sharon, you only left a little while ago.” I was about to protest more but the exhaustion hit me deep in the bone. I was struggling to keep my head up.

So I left and the farther away I drove, I became strangely happy to be momentarily freed from the hospital.

Back on Cypress, I had to fend off concerned neighbors. How is Lindsey? How are you holding up? We saved your mail and newspapers. What can we do to help? Willo was that kind of place.

Then I scoped out the property, finding nothing amiss. The landscaping service had come and gone and the winter lawn looked glorious.

Inside the bedroom, I locked the door and slid a chair against it, set an alarm for two hours, and collapsed into the bed. For a few seconds, I looked at the stack of unread books on the bedside table. Then I was gone.

By three thirty, I was out the door in a light gray suit and navy blue rep tie. I drove over to our office on Grand Avenue and went into the Danger Room. There, I ran through the surveillance tapes on fast-forward. At two a.m. today, a dark four-door Chevy pulled sideways beside the gate and a woman emerged.

Strawberry Death.

Looking for her stones.

She was dressed entirely in black and put a dark watch cap over her distinctive fair hair. Then she stepped onto the hood, mounted the roof of the car, and draped what looked like a comforter over the spikey top of the security fence. One smooth move and she was over, pulling off the comforter and moving toward the office door. The entire maneuver took less than a minute. She had been trained.

Any passing patrol car would merely see a parked vehicle. The angle kept me from getting a tag number.

I switched to an outside camera that showed her disappear around the northwest corner of the building. The back door was secured with a heavy gate meant to defeat the most skillful burglar. Nor would that burglar find the concealed alarm box. Sure enough, she emerged on the other side in a few minutes and went to the front door.

She suddenly looked toward Grand Avenue and fell to the ground. That passing police car might have appeared. She stayed there for seven minutes, not moving.

Finally, she stood and again approached the door. I tried another camera, one mounted to the edge of the roof. She was working with small lock-picking tools. Her head swung around, then went back to her attempted break-in.

“Good luck with that,” I said out loud.

I grew more concerned when I saw a small crowbar in her hand. But she backed away and moved lithely to the edge of the building. The parking lot was already illuminated cadmium orange by two sodium lamps. A bright white spotlight joined in, sweeping the front of the building. I switched to the camera that showed Grand. Sure enough, a PPD unit had pulled in behind the Chevy.

Calling up the rear-facing camera, I watched her sprint to the back fence. It was ten feet high, but she shimmied up the steel, stood with her feet between the spikes, and launched herself into the darkness. She was in amazing shape.

I fast-forwarded the front camera. Within a half-hour, the single police cruiser had been joined by two more, then a tow truck departed with the Chevy. She lost her wheels. Was it too much to hope they had caught her nearby? Probably. But I could check with Vare on the provenance of Strawberry Death’s car.

I should have been frightened. I was elated.

I was edgy enough, though, to jerk when my phone rang. It had a Sheriff’s Office prefix.

“David, it’s Chris. How is Lindsey?”

We were so damned casual and friendly. I told him.

“I read your report. It’s exactly the kind of excellent work I expected. And I appreciate you doing this at a time of tragedy.”

I mumbled a single-syllable response, wondering if he always spoke as if he were on television.

“Let’s talk about it. I know this is a tough time, but maybe you could come down to headquarters. Better yet, I can meet you at your office in the courthouse.”

I wanted to protest but didn’t, mindful of Cartwright’s admonition. I sure didn’t want to go to the new headquarters building at Fifth Avenue and Jackson Street, in what was once the downtown warehouse district. The ninety-three million-dollar building looked like an alien battlecruiser was mating with a 1970s shopping strip. But ugly as it was, it was Peralta’s baby: he conceived it and fought for the funding and now it was Chris Melton’s temple. The idea of going inside made me sick.

“How about the courthouse?” I said.

“Does twenty minutes give you enough time?”

I told him that it did.

On the way downtown, I called Kate Vare and told her what I had found.

Her voice was icy. “Are you working my case, Mapstone?”

“No, this is why I’m calling you. I stopped by our office and checked the surveillance tapes.”

“Why?”

“Because I was the victim of a crime. Because I wanted to make sure our office was secure. Because I wanted to. Why does that have anything to do with what I’m telling you?”

“I’ve seen your act, Mapstone.”

What the hell did that mean? I started to speak but she cut me off.

“I want to see these tapes.”

“Sure, fine.”

“And why were you there?”

I went through it again. To me, the point was easy: The woman was not only in town, she was still stalking me, trying to burglarize our office. Not only that, she had almost been caught and the police would have the car, the license. Hell, they might have even picked her up a few blocks away, or at least done a field interview until Strawberry Death sweetly talked her way out of it.

I said, “She was here early this morning, trying to break in. If you check the logs and find the suspected four-five-nine call, where a vehicle was towed from our address on Grand, you might find the identity of this woman.”

“Quit telling me how to do my job,” Vare said. “You have bigger issues. You have something she wants.”

“I don’t know what,” I said, trying to keep any “tells” out of the timbre or rhythm of my speech. “Any thoughts?”

She chuckled joylessly. “I know you’re into history, so I’ll tell you a story. When I was starting out, they told stories about the old police headquarters. It had an elevator up to the city jail. It was a really, really slow elevator. And when they had a suspect who was holding back, the detective might ride up with him and carry a rolled-up phone book in his hand. By the time that really slow elevator reached the jail floor, the suspect would be talking like his life depended on it. I always liked that story.”

She would love for me to be the guy handcuffed in the slow elevator and her with the phone book. Properly used, it could inflict terrible pain and never leave a bruise. Or so the old-timers had told me. I didn’t take the bait.

I said, “The Chandler detective told me they recovered the diamonds.”

“I know. Too bad for your buddy. He did the crime and he didn’t even get to keep the diamonds.” Another chuckle. “I read the report you sent to Meltdown on your old case. You fucked up.”

“The detective fucked up.”

“You were the first officer on the scene, Mapstone. The Sheriff’s Office was pretty shoddy back then. They let you be a deputy, right? Now they’ve brought you back, so that tells you a lot about Sheriff Meltdown.”

“Kate, what are you doing to find the woman who shot my wife?”

“I’ll let you know when we have something concrete. I’ve picked up three homicides since Saturday night, okay? So you’re not the only family member asking for help from the police.”

I struggled to keep my voice even and professional.

“Any luck with fingerprints from the gun she lost? Or the burglar bag?”

“No prints,” Vare said. “She probably wore tactical gloves and you didn’t notice. Not even one hair from the bag.”

I suppressed a sigh.

“Look at it this way, Mapstone. You disarmed her of the big gun. What shot Lindsey was smaller caliber. We recovered a.32 shell casing. So things could have been way worse if the woman had fired her primary weapon.”

“Yes.”

“If she’s a pro, the Beretta Bobcat or Tomcat is fashionable now. Small, concealable and it can carry a silencer. So we are working this case.”

I thanked her and asked again if she would check into the impounded Chevy from Grand Avenue.

But I was only speaking to myself. She was gone.

I wondered how long it would take her to make a connection to the late Matt Pennington. “Suicided.”

But by that time, the FBI would already be involved and Kate Vare’s life would be a jurisdictional goat fuck, as Peralta would say. Peralta, who had answered the phone that went with the number on the inside of Pennington’s matches. The number his killer had been seeking.

Downtown, I parked the Prelude in the CityScape garage and crossed to the courthouse, showing my identification and being let past the metal detector as if I really worked there.

Beside the door to my office, the county had placed a new placard:

DAVID MAPSTONE

Sheriff’s Office Historian

It was much like the one that sat on the wall outside my old office, including the MCSO star emblem. Below was added: Christopher J. Melton, Sheriff. Even Peralta hadn’t thought of that granular bit of self-promotion. Seeing the thing made me queasy.

For ten minutes, I admired the restoration-high ceiling, art deco light fixtures, dark wood moldings, frosted glass panel of the door. Someone had hung a large photo from the 1950s showing citrus groves spreading out below Camelback Mountain, not a house in sight. Behind my desk was a photo of Chris Melton in his black uniform, furled American flag in the background, Hollywood smile.

Then when there was a tap, like a doctor about to come in the exam room, and Melton stepped in.

“You didn’t have to dress up,” he said.

“I like to.”

Melton was dressed up in black BDUs-battle dress uniform-with baggy cargo pants, combat boots, and ballistic vest. Cops playing soldiers. I thought about Peralta’s rising concern about the militarization of law enforcement, and that was even before the Department of Defense started showering even the smallest police forces with gear.

“I was tagging along with SWAT.” He pulled up a chair.

“Everybody safe?”

“Sure. We were serving a warrant.”

I remembered serving warrants alone, but said nothing.

“Turned out there were no weapons,” he said. “But we got fifty dollars’ worth of marijuana.”

I wondered how much it had cost the taxpayers to mobilize the SWAT team for a petty drug raid. He went through the motions, asking about Lindsey, and I went through the motions, telling him the basics. He wanted to know if I liked the “historic photo” and I told him that I did.

“You did an outstanding job digging into that case.” He slid a UBS flash drive across the desk. It was black, like his uniform.

“What’s this?”

“Paperless office, remember? The new county policy. So this,” he tapped it, “is the murder book for your case.”

“Wait a minute, Sheriff…”

He smiled and switched his index finger at me.

I tried again. “Wait a minute, Chris. You have a homicide unit this should go to if you think Frazier’s death was suspicious. I’m not a homicide investigator.”

“You sell yourself short, David. How many murders did you solve for Mike Peralta? Fifty?”

“Sixty-two.”

“There you go.”

I felt as if I had rubbed against poison ivy but the itch was deeper than my skin. I wanted him out of this office. I wanted out of this office.

He pulled a clear plastic bag out of one of his commodious pants pockets and placed it beside the data stick. It said EVIDENCE in red. Inside there appeared to be a wallet.

“Check it out,” he said.

I held up my hands. “No gloves.”

He fished a pair out of his pants. Of course he had some. He probably had a complete crime-scene kit in those cargo-pants pockets. I reluctantly slid them on and opened the evidence envelope.

The wallet was blue nylon with a Velcro seam. It was dated only by its design and materials. Otherwise, it was in surprisingly good shape for being so old. I already knew what it held before I pulled it open and saw Tom Frazier’s driver’s license. He had dark hair and the card said he was six feet, two inches, two hundred pounds, brown eyes.

“He’s not so different from your build,” Melton said. “About the same age. He had lost his mother, his last family member. You only had your grandmother at that age.”

He had done his homework on me. I didn’t like that.

I made a quick inventory of the other contents: an emergency medical technician card issued by the state, an Associated Ambulance employee identification, thirty-two dollars in currency signed by Donald Regan. No credit cards, but hardly anyone that age back then would have qualified for one. No photos.

Other things seemed missing, too: dirt or sand from the desert, and faded material from being out in the sun.

I said, “Where did you get this?”

“Are you interested in the case?”

“Mildly.”

He leaned forward. “Enough to have a conversation with the person who found the wallet?”

“I’m a historian,” I said. “That’s the way I approach cases. It seems like you need a real homicide detective who works cold cases.” I mentioned a couple of names.

“So what’s the difference between a historian and a detective?”

I had been asked this so many times, thought about it when Peralta first brought me aboard, that I should have had a neat elevator speech. But I didn’t.

Good detectives and historians had much in common. They wanted to find the “how” as well as the “why.” Both gave heavy weight to primary sources-whether witness interviews documents, diaries, and other reminiscences of the people actually involved in the event-as opposed to secondary sources such as newspaper accounts. Both were mindful of bias.

There were important differences, too. A good historian wanted to understand causality and complex underlying social and economic forces and pivotal personalities, not merely assemble evidence. He or she was open to new interpretations as fresh scholarship emerged, formerly secret archives were opened and key players who had kept silent decided to talk.

Understanding history meant acknowledging when the facts didn’t go your way, when they challenged or undermined your thesis. Some detectives would cherry-pick facts to assemble a case. Only shoddy historians did that. History was an argument without end. A criminal investigation resulted in a conviction that was rarely overturned, even if the suspect was innocent.

History was especially about distance and objectivity. Unfortunately, I had lived part of this history, being the first deputy on the scene.

“Sounds good to me,” Melton said. “Sounds like what I need here. But don’t worry about footnotes.”

The man had such a wry wit.

I said, “What about the chain of command?”

“You’ll report directly to me,” he said, “like you did with Peralta.”

That was good. Melton had brought in or promoted thugs to the highest ranks of the department. Hard asses with a history of brutality complaints who relished his campaign against illegal immigrants and poor people in general. And as a former academic, I had never really been welcomed by many of Peralta’s commanders, either. The only thing they hated worse than a meddling professor was a reporter.

“You can’t help him, you know. That’s an FBI case, and you can only get in the way. Or worse. You could be charged with obstructing if you start digging around. These feds, believe me I know, they see the suspect’s friend meddling and they don’t like it. It might even cause them to think you’re an accessory.”

I nodded. “How do you know I’m not?”

“Because I’ve checked you out. I know your work. I trust my gut.”

“And you blackmailed me over Lindsey.”

He shook his head and blew out a breath. “No, David. I was trying to help you. I’m going to help you and Lindsey.”

My ass, I thought, wondering about his real motivations besides self-aggrandizement. Sliding the wallet back in the evidence bag, I asked him about forensics.

“I’m going to send it to the lab to test for latest prints and DNA,” he said. “It’s hard to know what we’ll find. But there are photos of the wallet and its contents in your murder book.”

I folded my hands and leaned back. “What’s next for me?”

He pulled out a notepad and scribbled, tore off a sheet of paper in the paperless county office, and placed it on the desk.

“She found the wallet. Go talk to her. That’s all I’ll say. You can approach it with fresh eyes.” He pulled a box out of his cargo pants and handed it over. Business cards. “Do you have a check?”

“A check?”

“So I can get you in the system for direct deposit.”

I pulled one out of my wallet and gave it to him. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer-and get paid for the trouble.

He stood and started to leave. “I’ll hook you up with an IT person so we can get you access to the MCSO computers. A few things have changed since you left. Got a Homeland Security grant to upgrade the system.” He smiled. “Good hunting, David.”

As the door closed, I slipped some business cards in my pocket and remembered the person who had first taught me the Sheriff’s Office computer system, a young deputy named Lindsey Faith Adams.

This was the first time in a couple of hours that I had really thought of her. It made me wonder if this was a natural recharge mechanism or if something was missing inside me. Or, worse that a cold, detached spectator was living in my soul.

“Lie down with the devil,” Lindsey had said.

And wake up in hell.