But, yes, aside from Sharon, I supposed that I was his best friend.
I watched a strand of crime-scene tape break loose and fly off toward Williams. A deputy watched it, too, wondering whether to chase the debris, and deciding to let it go.
“I wasn’t always a fed.” Mann’s voice was low and friendly. “I started out at Chicago PD. My brother-in-law got me in. We were really close.”
He paused and I nodded, turning in my seat to face him. His eyes now appraised me as companionable orbs.
“Trouble was, he was a drunk. A mean drunk. He beat his wife, a saintly woman. And you know what I did? Nothing. Not a damned thing. I let him off once when I stopped him for DUI. The guys and me didn’t arrest him when we were called to their apartment and he was being abusive. It was the code. So I understand where you’re coming from.”
“Peralta isn’t a drunk and doesn’t beat his wife.”
He watched me attentively, gave a few sympathetic nods of the head.
“You want to have your friend’s back, Dave. I totally get it. I respect that. But Oscar, that was my brother-in-law, he never had my back. See where I’m going?”
Having been on the other side of countless interrogations, I did.
“You seem kind of nervous, Dave.”
I realized that I had unzipped my jacket, then I had rezipped it. It wasn’t much, but this was how it worked. If I seemed nervous, it was because a woman had come close to killing me forty-five minutes before, but he didn’t know that and I wasn’t saying anything about it. If I seemed nervous, it was also irritation. I was not a “Dave.” Only Lindsey got to call me that. Otherwise, I suspected my body language was neutral and he was fishing.
“Things aren’t too far out of hand yet,” Mann said. “You can help yourself. All you have to do is tell the truth. What really went down?”
I ran my fingers through my hair and picked at some imaginary lint on my jacket. I turned away and shook my right leg. Now I had his attention, although he did a good job of concealing it. Then I smiled at him.
“The Reid technique has been debunked as junk psychology, Horace. It produces false confessions. It won’t produce a confession here because I have nothing to confess. I got to our office after Peralta had left for the diamond run. It was routine. He’s been on six or seven of them since we became PIs. I didn’t know anything else until your people showed up with a search warrant.”
His hands came off the steering wheel. “You think you’re smart. Doctorate in history, all that. You’re playing it really stupid. But that’s the way you want it. I can’t help you.” He let the quiet fill in, and then, “This truck being dumped up here, that surprises you?”
I nodded.
“How do I know you didn’t drive the truck up here yourself and then slip back to Phoenix.”
“I was at home all night.”
“With your wife, Lindsey?”
I didn’t like him bringing her name into the conversation. I nodded.
“Let’s say you’re telling the truth. Why would Peralta abandon his truck up here? What does he have going here?”
Nothing, as far as I knew. We had never worked a case in or near Ash Fork. I told Mann that.
“Dave, you know Mike Peralta better than anyone.”
“That’s why I know that he’s innocent. He’s the most by-the-book cop I ever knew. He may be under duress. Or he’s working a case that is above your pay grade and your bosses haven’t clued you in.”
“Dave…” he started again.
“David.”
“Dave, we have witnesses and video footage showing Mike Peralta shoot a guard at Chandler Fashion Center, then carry away a million dollars in diamonds.”
I shrugged.
“He was on duty, Horace. He was one of the two guards protecting the diamond shipment.”
“He told you he was going to do this?” Ask the same question, again and again, try to find an inconsistency in the answer.
“Guard the shipment, yes. It was routine.”
“The diamonds are gone,” Mann said. “Peralta took them.”
“Your people keep telling me that.”
“It’s all on the video. You’ve seen it.”
I shrugged.
He looked over at the Lexus convertible. “Who’s that with you?”
“My girlfriend.” The last thing Sharon needed was more harassment from the FBI.
He snorted. “Does Lindsey know about that?”
“She’s open-minded.”
“Considering that vehicle is registered to Sharon Peralta, I’d guess that’s who is in the car. Is she your girlfriend?”
“Why don’t you give her a break? She was interrogated for hours. She doesn’t know anything.”
“But she came up here with you.”
“That’s because she was afraid her husband was dead in that truck.”
He slipped a hand into his suit jacket and held out an evidence envelope. It contained a small rectangular piece of paper.
“Recognize this?”
He flipped on the dome light. Inside the plastic wrapper was my business card:
Peralta & Mapstone P.C.
David Mapstone
Private Investigator
I asked him where he got it.
“That was sitting on the dashboard of the truck, Dave, right in front of the steering wheel.”
I reached for the bag and he pulled it back. Let’s play keepaway. I didn’t want to play.
“Why would that card be in the truck?”
“Why would I know that, Horace?”
His mouth tightened. He didn’t like the familiarity, either.
“What about this?” He turned the bag so I could read handwriting on the back of the card.
MAPSTONE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS.
TELL HIM NOT TO TRY TO FIND ME.
“Is that your buddy’s handwriting?”
It was. Peralta wrote in an old-school draftsman’s capital letters. I had received countless notes and memos in that same script, when he was Maricopa County Sheriff and later, when he lost the election and we set up our private detective business.
Mann folded the evidence envelope, slipped it back in his coat, and breathed out a sigh. “We are going to find him. He’s only been on the run for less than twenty-four hours. And sooner than you think, you are going to be charged as an accessory. Don’t think that writing on the card lets you off. If I were you, I’d get a lawyer.”
Peralta’s pickup left the lot hooked to the tow truck, headed back to the Interstate. A deputy took down the yellow tape.
I faced Mann.
“Did you have somebody follow me up here?”
He looked through me. Classic fed move. “You should consider yourself under surveillance. I won’t say more.”
“What about a blond woman in a DPS uniform? Was that part of your game, Horace?”
He stabbed a finger into my chest. “Don’t push me. I don’t know anything about blondes, Dave. You’re going to be lucky if you don’t leave here in handcuffs.”
I tamped down my anger. He could probably rendition my ass to Saudi Arabia for “enhanced interrogation,” if I wasn’t careful.
“Look, I’m as shocked as anybody about what happened. You know everything I do. Probably more. Am I free to go?”
He stared hard at me, that stone face trying to turn me into a pillar of salt. It wasn’t working.
He snapped off the dome light.
“For now.”
I opened the door, stepped out, and turned back to face him.
“Peralta didn’t do this.”
He raised his voice against the wind. “He shot a man.”
“How’s he doing?”
Mann looked surprised by the question. “The hospital sent him home. It was a flesh wound.”
I said, “That proves my point.”
“What point?”
“If Mike Peralta had really intended to do damage, that man would be dead.”