“Hey, Dave,” she said. “I figured you could use a friend.”
“You figured right,” I said.
“I told you to be careful.”
“I tried.”
She reached out her hand and I pulled her up. We took the elevator and escaped into the night.
We went to her apartment in Sunnyslope, where we sat on an old couch covered with a comforter, drinking Chardonnay, listening to angry young music, and talking for hours.
She had a cat, a big languid gray tabby named Pasternak, reflecting a late-teen obsession with Russian literature and history. We talked about Dr. Zhivago and Lindsey said she had always been touched by the character of Lara, wrenched from love and doomed by revolution. In the movie, there was the streetcar scene, of course, where Yuri and Lara see each other years later but are hopelessly separated by time and motion.
I always remembered Zhivago’s brother, the Soviet officer, who talked about how Yuri and Lara were among the millions murdered to realize the Communist ideal, which of course was a sham. Tens upon tens of millions killed in this bloodiest of centuries, all in the service of murderous ideologies that sought to kill even history-especially history! — a trail of inhumanity and rage and social disintegration, a steady return to barbarism that led even to Maricopa County, Arizona, and young women left dead in the desert.
This was the point at which my dating life usually self-destructed, but Lindsey stayed with me, for some odd reason genuinely interested. “I wish I could have studied history with you,” she said.
The cat purred at my feet. I let it sniff my finger and then chucked it under the chin. “Pasternak likes you,” she said. She took my hand and stroked it lightly, skin on skin, touch on touch. She had long, elegant fingers. “I do, too.”
She held my hand against her warm lips and kissed it.
“I don’t have any answers,” I said.
“I don’t want any.” She ran a finger down my face, tracing the curve of my cheek, mapping out my lips.
I looked at her. Her eyes were a subtle blue, something I had not noticed before, overpowered by the monochromes of her dark hair and clothes and white skin.
“I don’t know the human heart.”
“I don’t, either,” she said, and kissed me lightly.
“I failed in my marriage,” I said.
“Stop living in the past, History Shamus.”
“I’m thirteen years older than you. I don’t have movie-star looks or a sailboat. I don’t even have a real job.” I sighed. “I’m feeling pretty broken right now.”
“I like the way you’re broken,” she said, and kissed me again, our tongues touching lightly. “I know what you are.”
I started to open my mouth, but she put two fingers against my lips. “Shhhh.”
And so I took her in my arms, Lindsey Faith Adams, and kissed her like I’d wanted to from the first second I ever laid eyes on her.
In the morning, I cooked us breakfast, Mexican omelettes and English muffins, and we sat in bed eating and reading about the shooting in the Republic. As usual, the media got the story only half-right. Pasternak went out on the balcony and provoked a mockingbird, who fussed at him loudly.
“So what’s your unified field theory?” Lindsey asked.
“I prefer lying in bed with a beautiful naked woman, reveling in what a sexy, wonderful find she is,” I said. I felt sore in all the right places, all the forgotten, out-of-practice places. “Out there!”-I nodded out the window-“they can all go to hell.”
Lindsey ate a forkful of omelette. “This is very good, Dave.”
“My theory?” I said. “Add Brent McConnico, the next governor, to our list of people who have landed in bad shit. I kept thinking this Copeland guy from the Metrocenter had to be tied into Phaedra’s murder. But I guess-and here’s where my theory runs out of track-he’s connected to McConnico, which means he’s connected to Rebecca Stokes, who was murdered forty years ago. But he’s no damned ghost.…”
“Something from that long ago still matters,” Lindsey said. She put some preserves on a piece of muffin and fed it to me. “Something matters enough to kill for.”
“So we get a break in one case, and it knocks the legs out of the other one. Shit. I just need to let that go. Let Peralta throw Julie in jail forever.”
She read my face and said, “You know this isn’t going to be a happy ending with Julie, don’t you, Dave? Are you sure you want to go there?”
I tried to smile. “You’re pretty smart for a computer nerd.”
“It’s the database of the heart,” Lindsey said.
“I’m with you,” I said, kissing her hand. “It’s where I want to be.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m glad for both of us.”
Afterward, I took our plates to the kitchen and then climbed back into bed. Lindsey draped a long leg across me. Young, taut skin-the most amazing feeling.
“So let’s tie up some loose ends,” I said. “Why did Julie say she was being followed?”
“We know she’s truth-challenged,” Lindsey said. “But if she’s on the level, maybe she first saw this guy Copeland when he was actually watching you.” She smirked. “She obviously thinks every man wants her. Then Copeland sees Julie with you and decides to find out if she’s important, so he follows her.”
Lindsey was under the covers, kissing my calves, running her fingers up my thighs. The exquisite softness of her hair brushed against me. Every pore of my skin was tingling. All my reasoning powers ran away and I just wanted to feel her wonderful lips and mouth.
“What about-Oh God, that feels so good-what about Metrocenter? That was about Rebecca Stokes?”
Lindsey popped her head out of the covers. “It made sense to think Copeland was after Susan Knightly and Phaedra. Actually, it looks like he was after you.”
“Then he really is a bad shot.”
“And I’m glad of that, too.” She smiled. “Now, stop thinking, Professor.”
I lay back and did just that.
Chapter Twenty-five
In a small street-side building in the shadow of Camelback Mountain is Vincent Guerithault, one of the best restaurants in a city that has finally developed a reputation for world-class dining. They say Vincent’s is classy, not snobby. I guess so. On Sunday night, a twenty something, goateed maitre d’ floated ahead of me through the restaurant’s small rooms, leading me to a nearly empty nook in the rear. Brent McConnico rose gracefully and extended his hand.
“David, it was so good of you to come,” he said. “Please, sit.”
A waiter hovered silently, unfurling my napkin for me.
“I believe Dr. Mapstone will have a martini, Bombay Sapphire, as I recall. Very dry, right? One olive.”
I nodded and the waiter went away. McConnico was drinking what looked like bourbon on the rocks.
“David, you must forgive me,” he said. “I very much lost my head last Tuesday. I said some things I didn’t mean. I want to make amends.”
I made an apology, too. I hadn’t meant to upset him about his cousin’s murder. But that might be the least of his problems after tonight. Over the past four days, I’d learned a lot about Brent McConnico-things that started as rumors and legends, recalled by Lorie Pope over drinks at Durant’s, then hardened into evidence with the help of Lindsey and hours spent gleaning obscure documents. For the moment, though, cordiality reigned.
“All can be forgiven,” he said. I thought it was an interesting choice of words. “We all lose our heads. But you and I, we have a lot in common. We’re both real Arizonans, for one thing.”
“There aren’t too many of us, I guess.”