High Country Nocturne

Chapter Thirty-nine

Sharon was waiting when I stepped outside. I told her about Lindsey and she hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe.

“David, this is the best gift. It’s worth more than all the rough in the world.”

Her arms fell away and her face suddenly went slack. My black eye, which had been feeling much better, was the target of thousands of little arrows.

“What did you say?”

But I had heard her fine. A tight circle knew the diamond shipment was valuable, gem-quality rough. There were her husband, Horace Mann, and Strawberry Death. The Russians and Cartwright. Me. Sharon was not among them.

Sharon began crying. “Oh, David. I messed up so bad.”

“What the hell?”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

I grabbed her arm hard enough to leave a bruise and steered her twenty feet down the hall, out of hearing of the uniformed officer by the ICU entrance.

“What wasn’t supposed to happen? And how the hell do you know about rough? You said rough.”

“Lindsey was never supposed to get hurt…”

“You were in on it with him.”

She shook her head. “No. Not at first.” She stammered. “Well, not much. Friday morning, he told me he was going on a special case. He gave me a prepaid cell phone and told me to only use it if he called or texted me on it. He told me not to be home between ten a.m. and two p.m., to be near the Piestawa Parkway, and not to trust anyone but you. Then he was out the door.”

“But you didn’t think to tell me this until now?”

“He didn’t want you to know about this case. He thought you’d be safer if you didn’t.”

“And dumb.” I shook my head.

She said, “He called me on his new cell around noon Friday. Now I know it was a little after the robbery. Something had gone wrong. A woman had tried to take them while he was changing the tag on his truck. I met him in north Phoenix and he gave the diamonds to me.”

“Where are the diamonds right now?” I demanded.

“They’re beneath the spare tire in my car. In socks.”

My whole face throbbed. “What about when the FBI-executed the search warrant?”

“They were all over the house, but didn’t spend much time on my car.”

I tried to shake off the shock of the lie. I asked her what Peralta’s plan was.

“I don’t know. He said wait for his text. If everything was clear, he would call.”

I hemmed her in with my arms and called her a liar.

“I’m not! He said the less I knew, the better. And there wasn’t a lot of time. He wanted to get on the road.”

I asked if it were possible he meant for her to give the rough to Matt Pennington? She said she didn’t know, only that she was to follow his instructions. He was afraid the FBI might be able to pick up her prepaid cell if she used it more than once or twice.

When he thought things were safe, he would send her a text with the words, “ready for dry cleaning pickup?”

If someone else saw her phone, it would seem innocuous. If she were in trouble, she would respond “no.” If she were safe, she would text “yes,” and he would then call with fresh instructions for her. It was a more elaborate version of the asterisk signal between Lindsey and me. But his text had not yet come.

For me, pieces came together.

Not only had the original plan been blown when Peralta encountered Strawberry Death, he also began to doubt even Eric Pham or one of his agents. Peralta was careful that way, seeing possibilities five moves ahead. So he had gone to ground. His worry must have only increased when he didn’t hear from the real Pennington.

I pulled out my iPhone and read out the number I had called and Peralta had briefly answered.

I said, “Is that the number you have?”

She nodded. “He made me memorize it. It’s not even in the new phone.”

“I called that number and he acted as if he didn’t know me.”

“He hadn’t texted me and I hadn’t responded,” she said. “He probably thought you were under duress to make the call.” She thought about it and asked how I found his secret cell number.

I told her.

She dropped her head. “Oh, no. No!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t,” she said. “Then you would have known I had the diamonds.”

“So all the way up to Ash Fork and back, we had them in the trunk.”

“Yes.”

“In Ash Fork, the old cowboy told me he got into a car with some men. What about that?”

She sighed. “He told me there was a man up there who would let him borrow a car and lie convincingly to the FBI about him getting in a car. He used to run a hunting lodge near Hell Canyon where Mike would go, back before I made him stop killing innocent animals. They remained friends.”

Orville Grainer. A patient of my grandfather, Doc Mapstone, my ass.

I slapped the wall in frustration, but my voice was resigned. “Oh, Sharon…”

“The landline was a lie, too. There is no landline. I made up the Paco stuff because he was adamant about you knowing there was real danger, after he was nearly ambushed in the garage.”

Who could lie better than a shrink?

“What about Saturday night, when somebody called you to the hospital” Was that Mike?”

“No,” she said. “I swear, David. That was a voice I didn’t recognize.”

She kept apologizing, tried to put her hand on my shoulder, but I brushed it away. I made no attempt to comfort her.

“So why the hell did you beg me to find him? What was that about?”

She shrugged. “I lost my nerve. He didn’t say anything about going to the High Country. I panicked.”

“But not enough to tell me the whole truth.”

She shook her head.

I said, “What happens if you text him the key word first, before you hear from him?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know. He was afraid the whole plan is compromised. He made me promise to wait for his signal before I did anything, including involving you.”

I thought about that. This would be a good time for a sensible person to walk back over to Johnnie’s and knock on the back door. Peralta must be overreacting. Or contact Kate Vare, bring in the entire cavalry. There was Ed Cartwright, too.

But for various reasons none of those options felt right. Cartwright had said he needed to lay low. The local law would muscle me out of the way and wreck the mission, which was to bring down the person who stole the diamonds. Pham…He was trustworthy, right? After the past six days, I trusted fewer and fewer people. I recalled the agents inside the former hotdog place watching me. Pham might be penetrated and not even know it. Then there was Strawberry Death. She belonged to me.

So I told Sharon to text “DM is bringing the dry cleaning per the dictaphone.” That should make it clear enough.

I watched as she typed the words and pressed send.

In only a few seconds the text appeared. “Yes.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Bring the rough.”

“But I don’t even know where he is.”

“I have a good idea,” I said. “Give me your car keys.” After I pocketed them, I added, “Watch over Lindsey.”

“But what if someone follows you?”

“That’s the idea.”

As I walked away, she was leaning against the wall sobbing.