The Night Detectives

5

It was ten p.m. when the Phoenix cops finally cut us loose. Out on Grand, it had been a full response: half a dozen marked cruisers, chopper, news helicopters, Phoenix Fire paramedics, crime scene, and the avenue blocked for hours. Back in the air conditioning of the office, two young detectives had interviewed us. Peralta was cagey. No, he outright lied. Nobody could tell when Peralta was lying, certainly not this pair. He had come back outside and taken control of the narrative and of me.

Here’s the way he told it: we were waiting in the office for a potential client when we heard the shots and went out to find the Benz and the dead body. That was when we called the police. Had this potential client given a name? No, Peralta said. It was a man and he didn’t give his name. Peralta didn’t think to ask for it. We were here and he told him to come on by. Were the detectives thinking this was the man?

They didn’t say. They did ask if we knew a subject named Derek Zimmerman.

“Is that the D.B.?” Peralta gave them his best command stare and they responded.

“Maybe, Sheriff.”

“Never heard of him. Have you, Mapstone?”

No. I hated him. Why was he lying? I felt all this, forgetting that I had wanted to muck with the investigation by reading the recent calls on our late client’s cell phone.

“How about Felix Smith? James Henry Patterson?”

“Who are they?” Peralta asked.

“We’re only starting our investigation,” one detective offered. “But you might be glad you didn’t get this case. The guy was carrying multiple driver’s licenses.”

I thought about the Desert Eagle on his passenger seat.

They left their cards. If we remembered anything else, please call us at this number…I had done the routine a hundred times myself, when I was on the other side of the badge. Then they left.

“Why did you do that?” I whispered it, as if the detectives were listening at the door.

“I want a trip to San Diego.”

“Our client is dead.”

“Exactly.”

Afterward, I drove east a few blocks on Encanto Boulevard and was enveloped in the trees and grass of the park and the historic districts. The temperature dropped ten degrees. This was a good thing considering that the air conditioning in Lindsey’s old Honda Prelude had seen better days. On the north edge of Palmcroft, I sat through the long wait at the Seventh Avenue light, brooding over what had happened. Then I crossed into Willo, past the old fire station, and headed home. A right on Fifth Avenue and a left on Cypress. The street was quiet and most of the houses were dark. Normal people had gone to bed. My house was dark and not inviting. I vowed again to get some lights on timers and drove on.

At the Sonic on McDowell, I ate a foot-long Coney dog and drank a medium Diet Cherry Coke. The bright lights and blaring bubblegum music gave a false sense of protection. The condition of the car gave me no choice but to turn off the engine and open the windows. The climate could thank me later.

An AK-47 was a crappy assassination weapon, so Peralta told me after the cops left. In all but the most expert of hands, it had a tendency to ride up and have bad accuracy. On the other hand, who could miss at that range? Smith/Zimmerman/Patterson had pulled onto Grand and another car came alongside. Did he recognize the car and stop to talk to its occupants? Did the encounter have something to do with the phone call I had seen him making?

Peralta didn’t offer any theories. He did say, “Somebody who uses an AK that way, it’s his preferred weapon. He likes it.”

I ate the wonderful crunchy Sonic ice, marinated in cherry, and took a little comfort that I was the only car in the place. A little comfort.

Oh, I wished Lindsey would call and ask, “How are you, Dave?” and being Lindsey she would know from my voice that I was not fine, nowhere near it, not even in the same state as fine. But my cell phone was silent.

There was nothing to do but go back to the house, which I did after driving around the block four times.

The 1924 Spanish Colonial on Cypress was lovely and forlorn. The old locks and new alarm system were fine, but I still swept through the rooms with my revolver out. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that ran the length of the stairway looked at me indifferently. More bookshelves lined the study, books accumulated by my grandparents, by me alone, by Lindsey and me.

Except for the few years I was away, I had lived in this house all my life, and my grandparents before me. Yet the walls silently said, “You are only passing through here. We will remain.” The walls didn’t care about the tragedies this house had endured.

In the kitchen, I pulled the Beefeater out of the freezer and stirred a martini, the perfect chaser to diet cherry Coke. The only thing I had done to the house lately was to put up new curtains that completely hid the back yard from view when one was standing at the sink. They still did provide privacy, but I couldn’t avoid pushing them against the glass as an extra measure of safety.

I have stopped turning on the lights. I have stopped listening to jazz. I have stopped reading books. The outside world holds no appeal, either. I’ve made myself go to several movies at the AMC downtown at Arizona Center, but I left each one after a few minutes. I couldn’t stand any of it. So I sat in silence in the living room, sipping the cold gin, staring out at the street, trying to keep my mind locked down. At least the neighbors had stopped their well-meaning water torture of relentless expressions of sympathy over Robin’s death and inquiries about when Lindsey is coming home.

I went to the bedroom and stripped down without turning on any lights. I lay down on Lindsey’s side of the bed. It turned into Robin’s side, too, bastard that I am. Over on the bedside table sat John Lewis Gaddis’ biography of George F. Kennan. I felt all of Kennan’s emotional shakiness and had none of his brilliance. My “long telegram” would not be about the Soviet Union but about my own union that was breaking up, if not hopelessly broken. I picked it up and tried to read. Nothing caught the gears of my brain. It wasn’t Gaddis’ fault. So I tried to sleep. Peralta would be here at seven, packed for San Diego.

Too soon, I found myself on a Central Avenue bus. No, it was an airliner. I didn’t recognize anyone around me. But I dropped my cell phone on the floor and it slid backwards. What if Lindsey suddenly called? I got on my knees and found the phone two rows back.

Then I was out on the street. The sidewalk was broken and I had to watch my step. New buildings were going up and others were being restored. Bright paint was being applied. The city had never looked better, with a huge downtown skyline against majestic, snowcapped mountains. I would have to stop criticizing it.

A door was open and I walked in. Instantly, I was in my former office at the old courthouse. The big room was nearly empty and I felt sad, until I saw Robin sitting at the desk. She looked up and gave me that roguish smile. She stood and I took her in my arms, brushing back the long, tousled blond hair and covering her with kisses, sobbing and holding her while she laughed and we talked over each other. She put a finger over my mouth and I was silent, listening to her tell me… Tell me…

Then she was gone.

I was in a hallway painted blood red, looking for Robin. I walked for what seemed twenty-five paces, trying locked doors, and then turned into a narrower passage. I was completely alone. In my pocket, where my cell should have been, was only a wallet. I pulled it out again and it was a pack of Gauloises, the brand of cigarettes Lindsey smoked.

My gut was in full panic gear now but I kept walking, finding new hallways, each one smaller than the one that came before it, turning and turning. Where was I? It seemed as if I was going in circles. There was nobody to ask for directions. My cell phone was gone and my legs moved only with ever-greater effort. I kept going. Behind me was only darkness. Then I could barely make it through the hall; it was so narrow I turned sideways to make it into the next section. Finally, the walls tapered together in a “V” and I was at the end.

I knew by now that I shouldn’t push against the drywall, but I did.

I couldn’t stop myself.

I always did.

That was when the explosion came.

We were in the back yard on Cypress. Night. Robin was on the ground and I was on my knees, trying to resuscitate her, trying to stop the bleeding. Her blouse was wet from the blood and it was all over my hands.

I looked up and this time the woman with the gun was still standing there.

This time the woman was Lindsey.

Then the dark bedroom greeted me and I was awake, in the dimension where the mountains were low and the city was not reclaiming Central. Where the downtown skyline was still squat, monotonous, and ugly and the only real event of where I had been was Robin’s death in the back yard from a single gunshot.

I had this dream nearly every night. I called it my maze dream.