“That’s Dean Nixon,” Kimbrough said.
I stood straight and nearly beamed myself on the low ceiling. Something was coming down the railroad track straight for me, and I didn’t have time to move.
“You were a deputy with him, right?” Kimbrough said.
I nodded. “Jesus. I haven’t seen him in twenty years.”
I stepped back out of the trailer, feeling the stickiness clinging to my shoes. Kimbrough followed me. It was only about 5:30, but the daylight was nearly gone. The sky above the White Tank Mountains was washed with brilliant orange and rust. A single cloud to the north stood out like a pink-and-white cotton ball. If you painted the Arizona sky realistically nobody would believe it. We walked far enough away that the only smell was the familiar mixture of Phoenix smog and dust.
Dean Nixon. He was a forgotten figure in my personal history. I had joined the Sheriff’s Office halfway through college, full of idealism and restlessness. Despite a lifelong attraction to books and ideas, I had wanted to be a doer, not some pasty egghead in an ivory tower. I think I had a vague plan of going on to get a law degree. But I also had a high school buddy who had become a deputy sheriff. He told me I’d be great at the job. His name was Dean Nixon.
Somehow the department took me. I spent four years on the job, mostly as a patrol deputy. The jail held no fascination for me, and the administrative bullshit increasingly bored me. On the side, concealed from most of my colleagues, I finished my degree in history and went on to get a master’s. Then the Ph.D., and a chance to teach at a well-respected college in the Midwest. The world of ideas had me by the mind and the heart. I left law enforcement behind as a cherished youthful adventure. And although I stayed in touch with Peralta for the next twenty years, the connection with Dean Nixon had begun to lade even before I left the department.
Imagine having the name Nixon in the mid-1970s. In fact, Dean was handsome and magnetic in a rough way, with dry, wheat-blond hair and a tall frame that muscled out in high school working summers on Texas oil rigs. Women would walk up to him and give him their phone numbers. I saw it happen more than once. He had the inevitable nickname “Dick Nixon,” but that held more irony than most people realized.
“When did you last hear from him?” Kimbrough said.
“Who knows?” I said. “Maybe 1980.”
I realized with a pang of guilt that I hadn’t even thought to look for him at my high school reunion last fall. I never imagined I’d find him like this. Law enforcement is full of unhappy career endings. Retired cops who put the service revolver in their mouths. Dean never seemed like that. He played the guitar and laughed a lot. Last I heard he was dating a doctor. I imagined he’d retired to the happy life of a kept man.
“He’s been gone from the department for years,” Kimbrough said. “He made ends meet as a bounty hunter and security guard.”
I looked around us. “Not much making ends meet.”
“No,” Kimbrough said. He licked his lips and adjusted his suit coat. “The guy had a service record with lots of brutality complaints. A tough guy. Didn’t get along with his bosses, either. Went through three marriages. Counseling for alcohol abuse. Looked like the wine department of Circle K in his refrigerator.”
I said, “He was just a kid I knew in high school.”
Kimbrough said, “You believe in destiny, Sheriff?”
I kicked at the ground and ruined my loafers in the dust. I realized the frustration and anger that had been building in me. Yeah, and insecurity But it was too late. “What a joke. Sheriff.” I said. “I’m just the chump you guys decided on while Peralta’s down.”
The glass crunched under our feet, opaque shards of beer bottles mashed into the timeless topsoil of the desert. “Is that what you think?”
“You tell me. Captain Kimbrough.”
He smiled unhappily. “Maybe that’s what some of them think. I don’t know. I think you’re a good cop, Mapstone. Maybe because you and I are the only people in Arizona law enforcement with good taste in clothes.”
He made me laugh. It was true. “So what is it?”
He shook his head. “They need a sheriff. The brass agreed on it. It’s the first time Abernathy and Davidson have agreed on anything in the fifteen years I’ve been in this department.”
He faced me. We had walked as far as we could, and stood above a bleak ditch filled with garbage and standing water.
“Just go with it, David,” he said. “Hell, fuck with ’em if you want. You’re the sheriff. The real deal. For now at least. Look at it this way: if Peralta recovers, you’re looking out for his interest.” He paused and all we heard was the deep growl of the trucks out on Grand Avenue. “If things don’t work out, well, you and I will both be looking for new jobs.”
“I had to drive a long damned way for a pep talk.” I said. It came out badly. “I mean, thanks. Consider yourself acting chief of detectives.”
“But…”
“Nope,” I said. “I’m the sheriff. You have the job. What did you say about fucking with them? Now go find Peralta’s shooter.” I walked toward the BMW, feeling bad for Dean Nixon and sick of this day. “I’m going to check on him, then have a martini with my girlfriend and go see some hoops.”
“Damn it, Mapstone,” Kimbrough said. “That’s what this is about. We’ve found the damned trail of Peralta’s shooter, right here.”
I stopped in my tracks, then faced him.
“What the hell?”
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a clear plastic evidence envelope. It held a business card. I took the bag and peered through the plastic. It was an MCSO card. “Mike Peralta, Sheriff,” it said.
“What the hell?” I mumbled, then turned it over. In block handwritten letters was a name. “Leo O’Keefe,” and a phone number in the city.
I handed the bag back, feeling a numbness in my hand, as if I’d touched something toxic.
“That was found in the pocket of our deceased former brother officer back there,” Kimbrough said. “You know what it’s talking about?”
I pulled off my coat and draped it over my arm. It was almost dark but it suddenly felt hot.
“Leo O’Keefe,” I said, “was involved in a shoot-out in Guadalupe. Years ago. May 31, 1979. Two deputies were murdered. Two suspects were killed. Leo was arrested as an accomplice. So was his girlfriend.” I licked the dust off my lips. My stomach hurt again. “Two of the deputies on that call were Nixon and Peralta.”
Kimbrough was impressed. “You’re a hell of a departmental historian, Sheriff.”
I said, “I was there.”
Out on the highway, a truck downshifted loudly and knocked away some of the images going through my mind.
“I was there.”
Chapter Six
Peralta and I could work an entire shift and never say five words. That was just the way he was. It drove rookies crazy. They were already intimidated by his size and stage presence, that way he seemed to fill up a room just by walking in. And when he didn’t say anything, they might spend an entire shift trying to get a conversation started. Not me. Three years before, when I ran my first training shift, I realized he was most comfortable sitting in the heart of a long silence. It was also good for police work: listening and watching, while others revealed themselves. It was my first eureka moment with him.
That seemed a long time ago. He was a sergeant now, but we rode together this night as part of a county plan to double up deputies and save gasoline. Last month, it had been a ban on driving more than fifty miles during a shift. Energy crisis. Inflation. It was always something. Riding with the sergeant kept me off the most routine calls. But it didn’t matter this shift. We were bored as hell.
So much of police work is bone-achingly dull. Especially a shift like we were having, where even a minor accident or a low-grade burglary report would have been a welcome break. Instead, we cruised slowly through the unincorporated roads that ran off the dry riverbed, several miles of cinder block buildings, high cyclone fences strung with concertina wire, and some of the nastiest bars and massage parlors in the Valley. Neither Tempe nor Scottsdale wanted the land. So it stayed under county jurisdiction. But today even Ace’s Tavern and Terry’s Swedish Massage Institute (“real coeds”) were quiet.