If anything had come from last night’s scheduled meeting in Scottsdale between “Matt Pennington” and the man on the phone, nobody had told me.
This was infinitely better than clearing a case. I sat and said, “Thank you, God.”
Thumbing through Emily Dickinson, I found what seemed appropriate: Angels In the Early Morning.
It was only eight lines. I read them with a slow, exhausted reverence.
“…the flowers they bear along.”
Those last words were in Lindsey’s voice.
I raised my head and saw those blue eyes I loved, looking at me.
“Dave, my chest hurts…a lot. What happened?”
“I’m going to get the nurses.”
She reached feebly and I took her hand.
“Wait. Stay with me, Dave. What happened to your eye? Where am I?”
“Mister Joe’s”
“What happened?”
“You were shot. Do you remember?”
Her eyes closed and my first reaction was fear, but the heart monitor was steady and her chest and rising and falling.
Her eyes fluttered open.
“It hurts, Dave. I remember…fajitas. And you went with the deputies…” Her voice was raspy and she licked her lips.
I was relieved. I had been so afraid her last memories would be of our terrible fight.
She said, “Wait. Where’s Peralta?”
“I haven’t found him yet.”
She struggled to keep her eyes open.
“You’ve got to find him. He’s in great danger. Pennington…”
I prompted. “Matt Pennington?”
She nodded. “While you were gone to see Meltdown, I did some searching. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“He’s DEA. Pennington is.” She laughed and winced. “I sound like Yoda. Pennington is deep cover. Nobody but the top echelon of the agency knows.”
I thought about Ed Cartwright.
She struggled to get the words out. “Pennington is close to the cartels and handles diamond shipments. But it’s a cover. He’s active DEA. You’re crying, Dave.”
I had been too transfixed by Lindsey awake and talking to feel the tears running down my cheeks.
“My mouth is so dry.”
“Let me get a nurse,” I said. “I love you more than anything. I promise once we get through this we’ll live a different life. We’ll read books.” I was babbling.
She tried to smile. “Love you, too, Dave. I’m sorry I ruined your dark blue blazer. I know you liked it.”
“Lindsey, don’t worry about…”
Suddenly her words caught up with me. She had already fallen unconscious Saturday night by the time I thought of using the blazer to staunch the bleeding. She was out. I could barely feel a pulse.
I must not have heard her right.
She tightened her grip on my hand.
“I saw you pull it off and roll me to the side…put it under me. I was floating. Sounds crazy, right? And I saw your parents…and Robin and my mother. Dave, I saw our daughter. It was so sweet and I knew things were going to be all right.” She talked faster and faster, then dropped to a whisper. “You think I’m…” She searched for the word. “…hallucinating. I’m not. It was real. But I had to come back to you.”
“Thank you.”
In the next seconds, nurses were hovering.
“We need to control her pain,” one said.
“Dave,” Lindsey stroked my hand. “Find Peralta.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
For the first time, she was able to look around and take in all the tubes, cables, and machines. That sweet, sardonic smile returned. “Doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere. I’ll be here…”
Then the pain med was flowing into the IV and she went back to sleep.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Sharon was waiting when I stepped outside. I told her about Lindsey and she hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe.
“David, this is the best gift. It’s worth more than all the rough in the world.”
Her arms fell away and her face suddenly went slack. My black eye, which had been feeling much better, was the target of thousands of little arrows.
“What did you say?”
But I had heard her fine. A tight circle knew the diamond shipment was valuable, gem-quality rough. There were her husband, Horace Mann, and Strawberry Death. The Russians and Cartwright. Me. Sharon was not among them.
Sharon began crying. “Oh, David. I messed up so bad.”
“What the hell?”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
I grabbed her arm hard enough to leave a bruise and steered her twenty feet down the hall, out of hearing of the uniformed officer by the ICU entrance.
“What wasn’t supposed to happen? And how the hell do you know about rough? You said rough.”
“Lindsey was never supposed to get hurt…”
“You were in on it with him.”
She shook her head. “No. Not at first.” She stammered. “Well, not much. Friday morning, he told me he was going on a special case. He gave me a prepaid cell phone and told me to only use it if he called or texted me on it. He told me not to be home between ten a.m. and two p.m., to be near the Piestawa Parkway, and not to trust anyone but you. Then he was out the door.”
“But you didn’t think to tell me this until now?”
“He didn’t want you to know about this case. He thought you’d be safer if you didn’t.”
“And dumb.” I shook my head.
She said, “He called me on his new cell around noon Friday. Now I know it was a little after the robbery. Something had gone wrong. A woman had tried to take them while he was changing the tag on his truck. I met him in north Phoenix and he gave the diamonds to me.”
“Where are the diamonds right now?” I demanded.
“They’re beneath the spare tire in my car. In socks.”
My whole face throbbed. “What about when the FBI-executed the search warrant?”
“They were all over the house, but didn’t spend much time on my car.”
I tried to shake off the shock of the lie. I asked her what Peralta’s plan was.
“I don’t know. He said wait for his text. If everything was clear, he would call.”
I hemmed her in with my arms and called her a liar.
“I’m not! He said the less I knew, the better. And there wasn’t a lot of time. He wanted to get on the road.”
I asked if it were possible he meant for her to give the rough to Matt Pennington? She said she didn’t know, only that she was to follow his instructions. He was afraid the FBI might be able to pick up her prepaid cell if she used it more than once or twice.
When he thought things were safe, he would send her a text with the words, “ready for dry cleaning pickup?”
If someone else saw her phone, it would seem innocuous. If she were in trouble, she would respond “no.” If she were safe, she would text “yes,” and he would then call with fresh instructions for her. It was a more elaborate version of the asterisk signal between Lindsey and me. But his text had not yet come.
For me, pieces came together.
Not only had the original plan been blown when Peralta encountered Strawberry Death, he also began to doubt even Eric Pham or one of his agents. Peralta was careful that way, seeing possibilities five moves ahead. So he had gone to ground. His worry must have only increased when he didn’t hear from the real Pennington.
I pulled out my iPhone and read out the number I had called and Peralta had briefly answered.
I said, “Is that the number you have?”
She nodded. “He made me memorize it. It’s not even in the new phone.”
“I called that number and he acted as if he didn’t know me.”
“He hadn’t texted me and I hadn’t responded,” she said. “He probably thought you were under duress to make the call.” She thought about it and asked how I found his secret cell number.