“I turned the log over to Internal Affairs,” I said as we missed the signal at 44th Street.
“What else could you do, Dave?”
I just shook my head. “I didn’t even want to know who else was in the book. There’s such a thing as due process. Even if this stopped twenty years ago, we’ve got evidence that could tarnish good cops. Who the hell was Dean Nixon? A bad cop. I owe it to everybody to make sure we do this right.”
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”
“Maybe it’s not badge numbers,” I said, not believing it. “Maybe it’s something else.”
“Partial zip codes?”
I took a left at Arcadia Drive. The oleanders and citrus trees gave way to the arched mass of Camelback Mountain, sitting blacker than the night sky, directly ahead. The road began to rise.
“I need to stay out of this and let IA do its job. The feds might get involved, too. I just need to stand aside.”
“But you won’t,” Lindsey said quietly, proudly.
Arcadia made a hard right, turning into a street called Valle Vista Road. Off behind us you could see why. The city lights expanded grandly behind us, an electric empire flowing out to the far mountains.
“Oh, I love this view,” she said, turning in her seat to take it in. Her hair glowed darkly in the reflected light.
I came to a closed gate, immersed in rock and hedges. The car sighed into park. “This should be it.”
“What is it, Dave? Your old college make-out spot?”
“Look.” I pointed through the landscaping to a modish adobe house perched out on a crag. “It’s Camelback Falls.”
“Wow. Pretty cool spot. Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.” The house was as dark as the street was deserted. “Do you know who owns it now?”
“No. I just wanted to see it. In a way, this is the last message I have from Peralta.”
The city twinkled back at us. Across the Valley, the TV towers on South Mountain beat a tempo in red lights. Airplanes, two abreast, floated into Sky Harbor at a regular tempo. The BMW’s engine idled gently. I turned and cupped Lindsey’s face in my hands, caressing her cheek, the slope of her neck. She turned her lips up to meet my kiss. I ran a hand across her knee, around the edge of her holster, up the silky tension of her stockings, into the taut, loamy warmth of her inner thigh. She sighed happily.
“That,” I said, coming up for air, “is the first kiss I ever had on Camelback Mountain. Thanks for fulfilling a fantasy.”
“Take me home, Dave, and we’ll take care of more fantasies,” she whispered.
I slipped the BMW into drive and started down the mountain. It was at the curve into Arcadia Drive that I noticed the white Ford Crown Victoria sitting beside the road with two figures inside. A block farther on, I saw headlights behind us.
Chapter Fourteen
Lindsey left me at the door to my office at the old courthouse. She managed a great kiss despite having a laptop slung over one shoulder and a bag of files over the other. “Anything you want from central records?” she asked. As a matter of fact, there was.
Ten minutes later, I went over to the sheriff’s headquarters building on Madison Street myself. It was Friday, five days since Peralta was shot, and I was damned if I was going to hide. My office was claustrophobic. Sheriff Hayden’s stern face on the wall demanded answers I didn’t have. It felt good to walk, to be out in the warm morning air. The most dangerous thing I encountered was the traffic trying to cross Jefferson Street.
I signed in at headquarters and avoided a covey of civilian employees trying to direct me to meetings. That wasn’t why I was there. Three days before, I had ordered Peralta’s office locked. I didn’t know why Jack Abernathy had been in there the day of the shooting, but I did know I wanted Peralta’s aerie off limits to even the senior commanders. Now I used Peralta’s keys-Sharon had given them to me yesterday-and let myself in.
His Daytimer sat undisturbed on the credenza: “Mapstone-Camelback Falls.” I sat in his big chair, feeling the indentations his body made in the leather through years of staff meetings, phone calls, report reading and late-night brooding. He had settled into that chair the day three years before when I had just returned to Phoenix and accepted his invitation to come downtown to visit. My old partner in the Chief Deputy’s office. The world had turned around quite a few times. As I talked about my life, he sat in this chair, swinging back and forth or shaking his leg nervously. He had always been that way. Antsy. Uncomfortable in an office.
But I realized by contrast how much he had changed since I had left the department in 1980. It was something that hadn’t been fully disclosed by exchanges of Christmas cards and brief visits every year or two. He seemed to have conquered the moody anger that hid just below his preference for silence. I noticed him bark at a young deputy, but send the man away with a smile and a back pat-definitely a skill the old Peralta didn’t have. He had acquired polish and connections, whether from Sharon’s rising affluence or a closer relationship with his father or his own grit. He greeted me in a suit and seemed comfortable in it. He took me to lunch at the Arizona Club. Back at his office, I noticed a photo on the wall of him laughing with an elderly Barry Goldwater.
When I ran out of words that day, he merely reached into a drawer, produced a thick file folder, and tossed it to me. “Look into that, will you?” he said. “I just want to know what you think.” It was a forty-year-old murder case, unsolved. I don’t know if he really expected anything from me. But he had the instincts of a proud man, and he gave his gifts accordingly. At the end he needled me. “Mapstone, I hope all those years chasing young skirts on campus didn’t fry your brains.”
Now I thought, You would know about that, my friend, wouldn’t you?
I shut out my interior voices of doubt and caution, and began a gentle inventory of the room. The bathroom was spotless and empty, save for a can of cheap shaving cream, a safety razor, and a uniform hanging in its cleaning bag. A closet held file cabinets and a safe. But the file cabinets were stuffed with personnel records-I resisted the temptation to check mine-and the safe was empty, its door open. Over at the conference table, I found a well-worn county budget, along with architectural renderings and blueprints for the new Fourth Avenue Jail. They were probably just as he had left them Monday before going to the swearing-in. I lifted seat cushions, looked behind the furled Arizona flag. Various law enforcement magazines sat on a coffee table in front of the leather sofa.
I returned to his desk, sank into the big chair again. Swiveling it, I attacked the credenza, with its geologic strata of files and reports. I didn’t have time to inventory every file, but the labels didn’t draw my attention. Murder, mayhem, and memos. Then I turned to the desk drawers. A Smith amp; Wesson 9mm pistol sat in the top drawer, barrel facing toward the front of the desk. I popped out the magazine-loaded, all right. I replaced it and moved on.
The bottom drawer was locked. I worked my way through his heavy key ring until one key fit. Inside the drawer were ammunition, mace, handcuffs, cigars, and a file folder. A bolt shot up my spine when I saw the hand-written labeclass="underline" “Leo O’Keefe.”
I set it aside and walked in a wide circle, adding more wear to the institutional carpet. I leaned into the narrow window and stared down to the street. If I went further, I might be interfering with the integrity of the Internal Affairs investigation. Outside, a little boy and an elderly woman were crossing at the light. I thought of me and Grandmother. I didn’t know why that made sad down to my bones. Why did Peralta have a file on Leo O’Keefe? Why had I come here today? The neat historical analogies that would give me some confidence stayed frozen in my head.