I stopped off at the courthouse, where a plain envelope was sitting on the floor in front of the door. At least it wasn’t one of those damned dolls. I took it in, put it on the desk as the phone was ringing. It was James Yarnell.
“How are you?”
I told him how I was.
“I’m no worse for wear,” he said, his voice a little raspy. “The good ladies and gentlemen of the Scottsdale Police are keeping a twenty-four-hour watch on me.”
“No problems?”
“No, everything’s fine,” he said. “I should thank you for saving my life. I was three sheets to the wind last night.”
“Not a problem.”
“We’ll talk more,” he said and hung up.
The phone again. I was suddenly a popular guy.
“They didn’t find another doll.” It was Peralta. I muttered an obscenity.
“They checked two blocks around the Yarnell Gallery, even where the shooter probably stood.”
“Maybe he didn’t have time to leave the doll.”
“Maybe this attack isn’t connected to the Max Yarnell murder,” Peralta countered.
My own hands were shaking when he hung up. My heart was hammering in my chest. What the hell was wrong with me? I was alone in the room with my heartbeat and worries. It made me wonder why I had come into the office at all. I took out a legal pad and made more notes from my visit with Zelda Chain. Then I turned out the lights and locked up.
I drove through Ramiro’s, where you can eat like a king for five dollars, and ordered a chorizo burrito and a Diet Coke. Then I went over to Encanto Park and walked to the lagoon. In the distance, the late-afternoon sun was painting gold into the folds of the South Mountains.
Encanto was the classic city park, green and lovingly manicured, built when Phoenix was smaller. It was about half a mile from my house, and as a kid, I had fished in the lagoon on lazy, lost spring afternoons, watched the sky from the empty old bandshell, and ridden the little train in the miniature amusement park. Encanto was still a beautiful oasis, but most days now it was largely Latino. Maybe the sounds of Spanish frightened away my yuppie neighbors. Today, with a cool wind whipping in from the west and only an hour’s sun left, the place was nearly deserted.
I wanted to eat my burrito and try to clear my head of murder. I was about halfway through dinner when I heard lovely Castilian Spanish behind me. Then I turned and saw Bobby Hamid.
“I said, ‘History is a sacred thing, so far as it contains truth…’”
“I have a few phrases in Spanish for you, Bobby,” I said.
He ignored me. “Have you ever read Cervantes in his native language, Dr. Mapstone? It is a true epiphany. Rather like the difference between learning Shakespeare in Farsi, and then learning him in English. Or discovering for the first time the real Dante in Italian…”
I set aside my burrito. “Why are you here?”
“It is a public park. I actually bring my children here sometimes. They love riding the little train.” He pointed across the lagoon.
He studied me carefully. “Does it surprise you that I have children, David? Make it a little harder to see me as evil incarnate, as Chief Peralta believes?”
“Stalin had children,” I said. “Anybody can reproduce.”
“Not you, apparently,” he said. “You and Patty had no children, as I recall. Maybe she instinctively knew something.” For a moment I felt strangely stung by this man who mattered nothing to me at all, except as a threat to the community.
He sat next to me on the bench. His gray slacks draped perfectly. I wished I knew his tailor, or maybe not.
“You had an adventure last night,” Bobby said.
“Have your goons been monitoring the police radio?” I looked around for hired muscle with automatic weapons, but only saw the light fading on the greenish water. I wished that would just make him disappear, too.
“Businessmen do have to think about security nowadays, David,” he said. “Anyway, I get my news off the Internet.” Just two guys talking in the park.
“Do you think this murder of Max Yarnell and the attempted murder of his brother are related to the skeletons you found?”
“You know I can’t discuss that.”
“So you don’t know.”
“Do you know? Are you the man who killed Max Yarnell, Bobby?”
He smiled indulgently, then said, “All over the world there is violence. The violence of the murdered. The death squad. The secret wars. The violence against people who merely vanish. Political prisoners. Refugees from wars. My parents disappeared in the revolution, back in 1979. My sister, too. None of us is safe in the world, I suppose.”
I had heard one of Bobby’s favorite methods for dealing with informants was to stuff them in oil drums and toss them overboard into the Sea of Cortez. But when I said that to him, he just gazed away and sighed.
“I hope you find your answers,” he said finally. Then, “I also read that you failed to positively identify the bodies found in the old warehouse. A frustrating week for my friends at the sheriff’s department.”
“The DNA profiling was no help,” I admitted. It would be interesting to see how current his intelligence was.
“And what do you think that means?”
I suddenly wanted to strangle him. I understood Peralta’s Ahab-like obsession. “Bobby, this is none of your goddamned business.”
“You don’t have to shout and use profanity, Dr. Mapstone,” he said. “Actually, as I told you, buying that warehouse is my business. Do you realize the costs that even a week’s fluctuations in interest rates can add to the bridge loans?”
“So, sell more cocaine,” I said, and went back to the burrito.
“Have you looked at the will of Hayden Winthrop Yarnell?”
The chorizo became a tasteless lump in my mouth. I was tempted to lie, but I said nothing. I could feel my facing turning red. Damn it.
“It is actually in the probate records,” he said. “You might find it interesting.”
So much for David Mapstone, expert researcher of historical mysteries.
I said, “And tell me again why this case interests you?”
“Just as I said, Dr. Mapstone, I have an interest in purchasing the building. I hope I can save our city’s vanishing warehouse district before it is too late. Surely you won’t begrudge me a desire for historical preservation.”
He smiled and looked at me with dark eyes encased in long lashes, eyes that seemed to reflect no light.
I said, “Okay, Bobby, what does the will say?”
“It has a codicil that states if any new evidence emerges that a Yarnell family member was involved in the kidnapping, then his entire estate and all its subsequent earnings will be passed on to charities, mainly the Yarnell Foundation.”
I let his words sink in, still not sure about his game. “So the old man didn’t believe Jack Talbott kidnapped his grandsons?”
“At the least, he believed the kidnapping was more complex than it appeared.”
“Based on what evidence?”
Bobby spread his manicured fingers and shrugged.
“I’ll look at the will. Anyway, this Yarnell case will be solved fast, we’ve got so many cops working on it. So I’m sure you can get the building at a fire-sale price from Yarneco.”
“Buy low and sell high,” he said. “In Phoenix, we buy high and hope we can sell higher. But Yarneco, they are difficult people. A very complicated company. So many shell corporations and obscure relationships. Almost the way an illegal enterprise would be structured, or so I have read in books.”
“It’s not a good day for a mind fuck, Bobby.” I tossed the remains of the Mexican food in a trash can and rose to leave. My stomach felt like it was getting an acid bath. My life was descending into permanent weirdness. The biggest drug dealer in the Southwest was becoming a fixture in it.
I was about halfway across the grass when he called to me.