You couldn’t touch a house out here for less than a half-a-million dollars, and it was the older part of Scottsdale. I went through McCormick Ranch into the horse properties. Past Shea Boulevard, across the Central Arizona Project Canal, and into the estates running up to the McDowell Mountains. A discreet sign promised “gated canyon living.” Twenty years before, this had all been empty desert.
Before I got into Fountain Hills, the developments thinned out as the road climbed. I reached the scenic lookout for the city lights-we used to come up here in high school to make out. Then off to the left was a road named Cheryl. I took it and climbed deeper into the foothills until I reached a gate of black steel.
I slipped the car into park and it purred at idle, just the way the engineers in Munich intended. All around me, hills and mountains stood out black against the night sky, and beyond them the city glowed with a ghostly sheen. A small black communications box stood by the gate. I pressed a glowing red button. I waited and nothing happened. I shut the car off and listened. The hum of traffic on Shea, and farther away on Beeline Highway coming down from the Mogollon Rim. Closer in, the desert sounds: the breeze in the palo verde leaves, a rustling in the mesquite, the indescribable but very real sound of the emptiness. You could even see the stars out here. But I couldn’t see what was on the other side of the gate, and the communications box failed to return my affections. I gave another couple of tries and turned back toward the city. Apparently the booze had answered whatever questions Max Yarnell had for me.
He was right: It took about half an hour at this time of night. I exited off the Red Mountain at Third Street and turned toward home. It was around eleven-thirty, and I was suddenly feeling jumpy. The vastness of the city felt claustrophobic. I was too aware of every breath. I raised the top and didn’t feel better. When I turned onto Third Avenue and headed into Willo, I swear I saw that damned Ford Econoline van again, making the turn with me, on my tail. When I checked the mirror again, crossing Palm Lane, the street was empty behind me. Time to call it a day.
Back at home, Peralta was snoring contentedly in the guest bedroom. I closed his door, got undressed for bed and slid in the sheets naked to read. That’s when the phone rang.
I thought it might be Max Yarnell. But it was Gretchen.
“Did I wake you?” she asked.
“Nope, I was just reading.”
“I’m glad I didn’t wake you. How is your quest going?”
“Oh, not so good. There don’t seem to be any answers.”
“There are always answers, David. You just have to know where to look.”
“Well, you have the patience of the archaeologist,” I said.
“I’m not always patient,” she said. “In fact, I can be very impulsive.” She paused and I was very aware of the softness of the sheets against my body. “In, fact, I was calling to ask you if I could come over and be with you.”
“I would like that very much,” I said.
“I hoped you’d say that. That’s why I took the chance.”
22
When I came awake, Gretchen was lightly stroking my hair and staring at me intently.
“You have the softest hair. Just like a baby’s hair.”
Then the pounding on the door resumed. I sat up a little and groaned. My head ached like I’d finished off a bottle of red wine, but I hadn’t sipped a drop. My shoulders and arms, legs and back ached, too, but I knew what that was from.
“Who could that be at this hour?” I whispered through a cotton mouth. The clock on the bedside table said one but it was bright sunny outside.
“Jesus,” I said, and sat up. Gretchen just watched me. She was wearing one of my white dress shirts and nothing else. I looked back longingly at her, slipped on my robe and limped out into the house. Peralta’s bed was made and he was nowhere to be seen. Out the window was an unmarked police unit. Something bad.
“Quit screwing around,” came a voice through the little grille in the heavy wood door. The voice went to the body of Sheriff’s Detective Patrick Blair.
“What the hell, Mapstone?” he said. “I’ve been pounding on the door for fifteen minutes.”
“What’s going on?” I demanded, suddenly wide awake. I was instantly worried about Lindsey, so worried that I momentarily forgot who had been in my bed last night. Then I felt immediately guilty.
“Can I come in?”
“The house is a pit,” I said. “What do you need, Blair?”
He was as tall as me, and several light years more handsome. Just about thirty, he had luxurious black hair, merry Irish blue eyes, a perfect central casting face, a robust body. He had on a denim shirt, chinos and a Glock in a cross-draw holster, but he still looked like he just stepped out of a fashion magazine.
“What do I need?” he demanded. “What did you have going with Max Yarnell?”
I opened the door, suddenly angry. “Quit giving me the cop fuck-around,” I said. “I was doing that when you were in grade school. Give me some straight talk.” It brought out all the adolescent jerk in me, but it worked. His gorgeous face registered surprise and he said simply, “Max Yarnell has been murdered.”
We drove out to Scottsdale in silence, Blair at the wheel of a department Ford Crown Victoria, and me sitting in the passenger seat cloaked in a feeling of oppressive strangeness. Sometime after Max Yarnell had called me at the courthouse last night, he had been killed. Blair didn’t know the details; he had simply been sent by Peralta to fetch me. And Blair was the guy who was seeing Lindsey every day. Jealousy is the most irrational and destructive of emotions, and I let it take a run through my mind all the way out to Max Yarnell’s gated canyon living. Lindsey and Patrick Blair. Lindsey who didn’t return my calls anymore. So this was why.
But almost as a backbeat was my memory of Gretchen from last night. When I had met her at the door, we had fallen hungrily into each other’s arms with the telepathy of lonely people. Every centimeter on my body had been electrified as her mouth explored my lips, my ears and my neck, and then her hands had worked their way around me. I had kissed her greedily, wrestling her tongue gently with mine, stroking that miraculously lovely reddish brown hair. I had felt so lucky that she wanted me.
Gretchen Goodheart. She was very different in bed than I would have imagined. I loved aggressive women, but she had surprised me. The kind of gentle foreplay that Lindsey craved had just made Gretchen more demanding. We shouldn’t make comparisons among lovers, but we all do, don’t we? Lindsey had that little oscillating move when we made love in the missionary position-it was the most amazing sensation and when she started it, I could never last long. Gretchen-Gretchen had her own moves, but they were all so different. I learned quickly that Gretchen’s favorite position was from behind. There’s no polite, romantic way to put it. This was pure fucking, as she had clenched the sheets and screamed into the pillow and pushed back to me for more. Gretchen was a screamer. I had trusted the thick walls of the house for our privacy. I hoped she’d still be at home when I got back.
The deliciousness of the memory lost some of its taste as we pulled up into the desert cul de sac, past half a dozen sheriff’s cruisers, Scottsdale Police units and unmarked Crown Vics. A TV van pulled in after us and started setting up. Blair shifted into park and said, “You’re Lindsey’s friend, right?”
“That’s right,” I said, mindful of any ironic inflection in either of our voices. We slipped our badges onto our belts and walked through the gate.
The house was long and low, hugging the side of a hill with lots of glass and modern adobe. From one side, the McDowells towered above. From the other, the city fell off through an arroyo, the view going all the way to the Estrellas, which today were cloaked in yellow-brown smog.