I pulled in behind a Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department cruiser with its light bar flashing. Nobody seemed to notice us. The cops were on the other side of yellow crime-scene tape, milling around a pickup truck illuminated by multiple spotlights.
It was a new Ford F-150, extended cab.
Mike Peralta’s truck.
“David.” Sharon touched my hand. The poor lighting couldn’t conceal the agony in her eyes. “If he’s…”
She stopped, squeezed my hand hard.
“It’s going to be fine.” I gently disentangled her hand, took off my gun, slid on my leather jacket, and stepped out into the chill. The wind was coming hard from the west and the air smelled of pines.
My stomach was tight, but after the encounter with the woman in the DPS uniform, I was focused and calm. Thanks to some fluke of brain chemistry, I usually excel in these situations. Panic only hits me later, when I am safe and alone.
But I had no confidence that it would be fine, as I had assured Sharon. He might have come up here and blown his brains out. He might have been murdered. His body might be in the truck awaiting me.
Another black SUV rolled past us down the street, turned around, and came back to a halt at the far end of the lot. It didn’t take a Ph.D. to guess this had been the vehicle tailing us, which had chosen to come down the off-ramp at the right moment to save our lives. The SUV’s lights went out, but no one got out.
As I drew close, gusts caused the yellow tape to make a snapping sound. A voice ordered me to stop. Two burly deputies and a woman wearing an FBI windbreaker came toward me, hands on their weapons.
Everybody was gun-happy tonight.
I said who I was. They told me to wait.
The woman walked toward the truck and I studied the deputies. Both wore Level 2 holsters. They saw me looking at their guns and both changed their stances as if in a dance move. I looked away.
You could tell who was from Phoenix. A dozen feds were in dark windbreakers with yellow “FBI” emblazoned front and back, and they all looked uncomfortable and cold, hands in pockets, some stamping their feet like old beat cops. The Yavapai County deputies wore heavier jackets. A DPS officer looked me over and I looked away.
A man wearing only a suit, crisp white shirt, and burgundy tie approached me. He looked perfectly at ease in the thirty-degree weather and steady wind. He was substantial, not an ounce of flab, all muscles and sinews and teeth. His face was most striking, long and heavy jawed, milk-chocolate skin with a shading of fine gray. It was a face to carve into a monument.
“You’re David Mapstone?”
I said that I was, and he thrust his credentials directly in my face, waiting for me to read them. Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were issued to Horace Mann.
He was the namesake of the nineteenth-century father of universal public education in America. This Mann immediately began to school me.
“I’m the special agent in charge in Phoenix.”
My breath came out as white mist. “Eric Pham is the SAC.”
“Not anymore.” He lifted the crime-scene tape and nodded for me to follow him.
I wasn’t going to argue. It was two a.m. and I was surrounded by suspicious minds. I wasn’t here to plead Peralta’s case or change anybody’s mind about what should have been the unthinkable.
Our feet crunched on the old concrete of the gas station pad. Mann stared ahead. “We called over a locksmith from Flagstaff and we used pry bars. We tried to drill into it. Nothing can open it, short of explosives.”
I took a long breath when I saw that the inside of the F-150 contained no body of my friend, no blood.
The FBI agent who called had told the truth. The reason they wanted me was for the key to the truck’s weapons locker.
And perhaps to see if I made any suspicious stops on the way that might lead them to Peralta.
Behind the front seats, rising from the floor of the cab extension, was the steel case that held Peralta’s armory for the road. I handed Mann the key.
“Stand here.” He placed me ten feet away from the action, but I could see him reach inside, turn the key, and raise the lid. He spoke quietly to other agents standing nearby but the frustration cutting into his expression was easy to read.
“Come here.”
I obeyed. The gun cabinet was completely empty. Closer up, I inspected the cab. It looked showroom new. Peralta always had at least a stainless-steel coffee mug in the console cup holder. That was gone, too.
“This is Peralta’s truck, correct?”
“Didn’t you run the tag and VIN?”
He threw me an acid look.
“Yes,” I said, “it’s Peralta’s truck. Who reported that it was here?”
He ignored my question. “What did he usually have in this thing?” He tapped the heavy edge of the gun compartment with a boxy finger.
It depended on the case we were working-and on Peralta’s mood. I ran down a few of the essentials: a Remington pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, at least one assault rifle, usually an M4, and a Kel-Tec RFB Bullpup rifle-short, homely and highly effective. Plenty of ammunition. One of the FBI minions took notes.
“Why would a private citizen carry that much firepower?”
“This is Arizona.”
“Are you trying to be clever?”
Behind me, someone muttered, “Can’t fuckin’ believe it. We’ve been all over it and not a goddamned thing…”
I tucked that information away.
Mann nodded at an agent. “Put him in my unit.”
That wasn’t good. At least I wasn’t in handcuffs…yet.
This agent was wearing a parka, same FBI emblems. Somebody from the Flagstaff field office, prepared for the cold. He walked me over to a black SUV and I climbed in the passenger side. The engine was running and it was warm inside. The door closed and I resisted the temptation to examine Mann’s paperwork. That was another thing missing from the cab of Peralta’s truck: the files and other job-related documents he always toted around.
Peralta was a techno-Luddite and proud of it. I could barely get him to use a laptop. He did use a dictaphone. Without a secretary, I was left to transcribe his words to the computer and print them out for him.
The driver’s door opened, Mann slid in with surprising grace for his size, shut the door, and faced me.
“I’ll share a little dirty laundry,” he said. “Since your friend did his thing, Eric Pham is on his way to a new posting in Anchorage. You ask me? He should have been fired.”
That was fast retribution. Very fast.
Eric Pham and Peralta went back a number of years. Each respected the other and they had collaborated without the friction common between local law enforcement and the feds. After we opened our private detective business, Pham had tossed some cases our way. Who was I kidding? Tossed them Peralta’s way. As I had spent hours on Friday being interviewed by the FBI, I kept wondering if Peralta was working a new case. If he had gone undercover without even telling me.
On the other hand, the bureau was very conscious of its image. If Peralta had really gone rogue, of course Pham would be shipped out as punishment.
“Dave.” Mann rubbed his heavy hands together and rested them on the steering wheel. “We know all about you. Ph.D. in history. You were a professor at Miami University and San Diego State. Then you came back to Phoenix and went to work for the Sheriff’s Office, clearing cold cases.”
That was the shorthand, yes.
“We know you are Mike Peralta’s partner as a private investigator and his best friend.”
He stared out at a tow truck that had arrived and was loudly snagging the F-150. I let the words settle on me. Peralta was so self-contained, controlled, formidable, and often so maddening that he didn’t make friends. He didn’t need friends. He had been my training officer and then my boss. Even now, I hesitated to use the word “partner” to describe our business arrangement.